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When Care disappeared, Rainer was reluctant to join the search. Not because he didn’t care about his cousin: quite the opposite, in fact. He had barely been able to set foot outside his bedroom since that night in June, let alone get anywhere near the Mark household.
Or the school.
It was fucked up of him, really, because if anyone knew where to search, it was Rainer. But Rainer also knew the Care everyone remembered wouldn’t be there. She was gone for good, and Rainer was terrified to see what had taken her place.
—
The day Mike didn’t come home from school, Daniel followed his parents as they searched. Not like they really had any idea where to look, not back then. They assumed he got lost walking home, or tried to go home with a friend and didn’t tell anyone. Daniel sat at the kitchen table, listening in as his mother called every other parent she knew, hoping Mike was just at a friend’s house waiting to be picked up. After a couple hours of this, she called the police.
And that was supposed to be it. Daniel was supposed to go back up to his room and wait for the police to do their jobs. Instead, he waited until after his parents had gone to bed before tiptoeing downstairs, lacing up his boots, and carefully sneaking out the front door.
Mike couldn’t have gone far. At least, that’s what Daniel kept telling himself. He had to be somewhere close to the school, because if he wasn’t, that would involve getting in a car. That would mean he was somewhere Daniel couldn’t get to on his own.
Besides, Mike knew better than to get in a car with a stranger. That’s something big brothers are supposed to teach their little brothers, after all.
Behind the school was a small strip of trees. It made for an interesting view out of a classroom window, at least more interesting than plain grass, but not much more. Calling it the woods was kind of a misnomer, but maybe when you’re so young even a few rows of trees seems like a forest. Daniel had spent his share of afternoons there, climbing trees and rolling in leaf piles and walking through mud puddles in his boots. It should have been a familiar place.
He’d never been there at night, though. At night, it seemed much more like a forest, even though Daniel was old enough by now to know better. His boots sank into mud and wet leaves, and he was thankful that it had rained the previous day. At least he didn’t have to worry about the leaves crunching beneath his feet, alerting someone to his presence.
Daniel didn’t have time to ask himself who he was worried about drawing the attention of behind the school at night before he heard footsteps behind him.
“Daniel?”
Daniel swallowed. He knew that voice. It felt like nails on a chalkboard to him, even now.
“H-how’d you know it’s me?” He spoke softly, as if he might alert someone else if he spoke up, but he was pretty sure it was just him and Marvin. Maybe that was worse.
“I could tell by that rat’s nest on your head,” Marvin snorted at him. Daniel reached up instinctively, running his fingers through his hair. It was growing down to his shoulders now. His mother had stopped making him cut it. “What are you doing here so late?”
“I think I dropped something last time I was here,” Daniel replied. “I’m trying to find it.”
He’d lied without thinking. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason he felt like he couldn’t tell Marvin the truth.
“You can find it in the morning. It’ll be hard to see it in the dark anyway.”
“I need it now, though.”
“Really? What’s so important it can’t wait for the morning?”
Daniel paused. Marvin was still several feet away from him, but it felt too close. It felt like Marvin was digging into him, trying to get something out of him. It almost hurt.
“Do your parents know you’re out here?”
“No.” Daniel regretted it the instant he said it, but at least it was true. Besides, if Marvin did tell his parents, they couldn’t be too mad, right? He just wanted to find Mike. They couldn’t punish him too badly for that.
To his surprise, Marvin seemed to relax a bit.
“Don’t stay out too late,” he said. “Last thing your parents need right now is a second missing kid.”
“Y-yeah,” Daniel replied. For a second, he wondered how Marvin knew Mike was missing, but it made sense. His mother called practically every other parent she knew. Of course she would have called Marvin and Anna.
Something still didn’t sit right with him about what Marvin had said, though. Don’t stay out too late. It repeated in Daniel’s head as he watched Marvin walk back towards the school, slowly disappearing into the darkness. Don’t stay out too late, or else. It sounded like a warning, but what was Marvin warning him about? Even in the dark, Daniel wasn’t exactly worried about getting lost in the woods, and the school was close enough to home he was confident he could get home before his parents noticed he was gone.
Maybe it wasn’t a warning then. Maybe it was a threat. Don’t stay out too late, or else.
Daniel swallowed his fear and kept searching. He walked up and down the length of the woods, not that that took very long anyway, looking for any sign of his brother. A footprint, a dropped toy or piece of schoolwork, something.
After an hour or so, he walked home empty-handed, shivering.
Apparently, the police were searching the area around the school with dogs the next day. Daniel knew they wouldn’t find anything. It was stupid to try anyway. What were the dogs even going to find, except for the fact that Mike had been around the school? Of course he had. Their search was just as useless as Daniel’s wandering in the woods.
That didn’t stop him from going out to the woods again that night. Just in case he’d missed something. Just in case Marvin had distracted him, and he’d overlooked something.
He didn’t want to get out of bed the next morning. He nearly broke down crying, begging his mother to call him in sick, hugging his pillow to his chest. He felt like a little kid. He didn’t feel like a big brother at all.
Still, Daniel managed to drag himself out of bed and return to the school that night. I’m still your big brother, Mike. I’m going to find you. I promise.
Daniel remembered hearing someone say once that insanity was doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. It wouldn’t have been the first time someone accused Daniel Hammond of being insane. It still stung, but he tried to ignore it. Maybe looking for his brother in the same place over and over was insane, but it was the only place he could think to look.
After a couple weeks, the nights started to blend together. His mother had stopped calling the police station every day for updates, but it wasn’t because she had given up. She had heard “we haven’t found anything new” enough times, and she was sane enough to stop expecting different results. Daniel wasn’t, though. He kept going back to the woods. It was practically a ritual at that point. The only thing that hurt more than going back every night to find nothing was the idea of giving up his search.
He should have been the one to find Mike. He was the one out there every night, searching, trying. He was Mike’s big brother.
Some sorry excuse for a big brother.
Instead, Mike was found on the side of the road leading out of town. A motorist had seen him and called the police, and his parents went down to the station to identify his body. Daniel insisted on coming with them. He wasn’t going to believe his brother was dead until he saw the evidence himself. And he had to see it. If he didn’t look at what was left of his brother, he’d be failing him entirely.
The boy on the table was missing his eyebrows. They’d been plucked out, leaving scabs and red-raw skin behind. But it was still Mike. That was still his nose. Those were still his eyes.
Daniel’s mother started to cry. She left the room, followed closely by Daniel’s father. Daniel stood frozen, staring at his brother, silently asking questions the boy would never be able to answer.
What happened, Mike? Where were you? Where were you going?
He went back to the school that night. It felt wrong not to. Maybe he was used to the routine, or maybe… maybe he thought he might find answers there. Now that Daniel knew Mike wouldn’t be there himself, he could look more closely at the details, comb every inch of the school grounds and every tree in the woods in search of any clue.
As he walked by the school’s back door, it swung open, nearly hitting him in the face.
“Now what are you doing here?” Marvin scoffed at him.
“Trying to figure out what happened to my brother,” Daniel replied, matching Marvin’s tone.
“Thought he got hit by a car.”
“I meant before that, asshole.”
“Watch your language, Daniel.”
“Fuck you.” Daniel turned his back to Marvin and continued toward the woods.
“Do you really want to know what happened to your brother?”
Daniel looked over his shoulder.
“What, you think I can’t handle the truth or something?” Daniel rolled his eyes. “I’m not a little kid anymore, you know.”
“I wasn’t being sarcastic. If you really want to know, I can tell you. I just need your help with something.”
“What do you mean? How would you know what happened?” Daniel felt a lump in his throat, but he forced it down. He wasn’t going to cry in front of Marvin of all people. “What did you do, Marvin?”
“Just come with me. I’ll show you.” Marvin opened the door and nodded towards the doorway.
Daniel knew he shouldn’t have followed. Everything about this was a red flag. Everything about this was an indication that he should run and never look back, never return to the school, probably avoid Marvin if possible. Of course, Daniel didn’t do that. He stepped through the back door of the school, right into Marvin’s clutches.
He’d never been in the school basement before. The stairs down to it had always had a sort of haunting presence, a gateway to something forbidden. He remembered being Mike’s age, catching glimpses of the stairwell when the door to it was left open a crack, his friends daring each other to go in. Daniel had never been brave enough to try. He couldn’t shake the thought of the door shutting and locking behind him, trapping him in the cold concrete stairwell with nowhere to go but down.
Marvin unlocked the door to the basement stairwell. The door scraped the tile floor as he pushed it open. The sound hurt Daniel’s ears. There was barely enough light in the stairwell to see. Daniel was tempted to turn on his flashlight, but something told him Marvin wouldn’t appreciate that. He carefully followed in Marvin’s footsteps through the mess of the school’s basement, through concrete block corridors littered with empty boxes. The furnace hummed and rattled in the corner by the stairs, practically deafening in the otherwise silent space.
Finally, Marvin led him into the back room of the basement. He flipped the light switch, which turned on a single flickering light bulb on the ceiling. It was just enough to illuminate the strange furnishings: a single desk, a chalkboard, and a piano.
Standing in the corner by the chalkboard was a child who looked to be about Mike’s age. She was dressed in overalls and a purple sweater. She avoided Daniel’s eyes.
Before Daniel could open his mouth, Marvin cut in.
“This is Belle,” he said. He walked towards the piano, beckoning Daniel to follow him. “If this works, she won’t be for long.”
“What?”
Marvin didn’t reply. He patted the piano bench, inviting Daniel to sit.
“Tell me what happened to my brother first.”
“He failed.”
“Failed what?”
“You’ll see. Now sit. You still know how to play, right?”
—
Rainer was surprised to hear that Marvin and Anna were holding a birthday party for Care. Not that he was expecting an invite, obviously. He wasn’t ever expecting to be invited back to the Mark household. He was a little surprised Marvin warranted an invite, but knowing him, the birthday party was probably his idea anyway.
He was more surprised when his mother knocked on his door to tell him Care came home.