Chapter 11

Josh was stunned when he received Shay’s text message the last evening he saw her. Feelings rushed through him one after another so quickly he could not separate them and then it felt as if they all collided creating an emotional holocaust. It felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach and he struggled to recover his breath while someone cut his heart from his chest as he watched. He felt sick and thought he would vomit while he wished the earth would swallow him up there and then if it wasn’t already doing so. It was as if he was on a long stretch of road in the dark and the road had suddenly ended. There was nothing ahead except a bottomless chasm. No way forward. Nothing. Just pitch black blackness.

Josh read the message over and over trying to understand what had happened. Shay had been herself and there had been nothing to suggest there was anything wrong between them.

He could not accept her message. He had dialed her number. It had rung and then Shay had cut him off. He had tried calling again but she had turned her phone off.

Josh had sat in his car outside his house for a long time asking himself why. He considered going back to Shay’s house to try and talk to her. But she had turned her phone off and he could not just ring the doorbell in the middle of the night. If he tried to wake her by throwing stones at her window he would probably break the window and the neighbors would call the police to report a suspected burglar.

An uneasy feeling struck him. Did this have something to do with her mother’s disappearance? Shay had always assured him that her father was harmless and innocent and had nothing to do with her mother’s disappearance. But what if she was wrong? Her father would never tell her the truth if it had anything to do with her mother’s disappearance. His mind began to wander down a variety of dark paths in his thinking. Had Shay’s father done something to her? Had he sent the message to Josh and not Shay? Just to keep Josh away while he gained time to do whatever evil he needed to do and escape? Had Shay been seeing someone else? It wouldn’t be the first time a girl had done it to him. He could not remember any one thing which suggested she was seeing someone else. But then no one would admit they were seeing someone else until they finally decided to make their choice. Josh told himself that even if Shay had been two-timing him he believed she would have broken up with him in a respectful manner. Not by text message. He had finally tried to still the runaway train his mind had become and decided it was best to go to bed. He had gone inside his house and climbed into bed where he had finally fallen into a troubled sleep.

Tired from the stress of his thoughts and Shay’s message the night before, Josh woke up later than he wanted to the next morning. He bathed quickly and had a hasty breakfast. He told his parents he was going to see his friends at the park and hoped they could not sense the sadness in his demeanor.

He left the car and took his bike. Shay’s house was not far from his and he enjoyed riding his bicycle when possible. It helped to take his mind off the night before.

Shay’s house was modern but simple. There was a low wall around the front of the property and a gate which one had to open and close manually. The gate stood open and Josh wondered if anyone was home.

He cycled up the driveway and dropped his bike at the side of the driveway when he reached the porch. Josh stepped onto the porch and hesitated briefly before pressing the bell.

His stomach turned with fear and stress. This would be awkward. There was no doubt about it. More fears surfaced. As a person in a relationship, he thought everyone feared losing their girlfriend. Or boyfriend. And when a breakup came, the party who did not do the breaking up was always left with questions. The answers to which would hopefully provide closure. The need for those answers and the pain they always caused were like a drug. A painful one but one that people craved when a relationship ended and they needed to know why. Wanting to hear the answers to their questions, the reason why came with a whole new fear. Fear of being told why they were no longer loved. Why they were inadequate. Not suitable. And no matter how simple or kind the answer was, the mind had the potential to make the answer a bigger issue than it was.

And so, here stood Josh, hesitant but ready to have the most painful drug administered, yet hoping it could be avoided and this could all be resolved. Hopefully, it was just a silly misunderstanding.

He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

He waited.

And waited… Should he press it again? Was he too early? Was Shay inside and just didn’t want to see him? He remembered how sometimes he pretended he wasn’t home when someone dropped by unexpectedly and he did not feel like socializing with them. Was Shay pretending she wasn’t home?

He rose above his fears and pressed the bell again. Twice in quick succession.

He waited. Still nothing. He thought of walking around the house and looking around. But if Shay was inside and was watching what would she think. It would just be another reason for her to be sure of ending her relationship with him. He had no right to walk around her father’s house as if he owned it to see if anyone was home and just not answering the door.

He sighed and turned to leave when he thought he heard something break inside the house.

He paused and listened intently. All was quiet. He weighed his options. He wanted to try the front door and see if it was open but his instincts told him not to.

If Shay or her father were inside then surely they would answer. He thought that it just might be someone else and that something had happened to Shay and her father. He wondered again if Shay’s father had done anything to her. He tried to push the thought out of his mind as fast as it entered. Shay had told him all about her mother’s disappearance and how the police had initially suspected her father.

He remembered that Shay had been upfront and honest with him about what had happened and made it clear that her father had nothing to do with her mother’s disappearance. Josh had to admit that on the occasions he had met and spoken with Andy, he agreed with Shay. He did not believe that Andy had anything to do with Shay’s mother’s disappearance either.

And yet, now, standing on the porch of Shay’s house, he had a sense of foreboding and his mind began to wonder if Shay and he had been wrong about her father. He felt as if he was being watched.

Josh decided to pretend to leave. It would not do for whoever was in the house to see him sneaking around. He had to appear to leave. He would double back and find a way to go around the back without being seen. He was sure though, that someone was in the house.

He turned and stepped off the porch where he picked up his bike. He climbed on and rode down the driveway without looking back. Then he turned left and rode some distance down the block until he was sure that he was out of sight.

A little further on he stopped at a bus stop and dismounted from his bike. He reached into his rucksack and removed the chain for his bike. He chained it to a pole at the bus stop and then walked back to Shay’s house. He took off his jacket and put on a cap, trying to make himself look as different as possible. He crossed to the other side of the road and walked past Shay’s house trying not to be too obvious when he looked at it.

He could not see any movement anywhere on the property and so he quickly crossed the road and hid under the first tree in the driveway. It was a tall overgrown pine that provided good cover. Josh looked around.

Pines covered the length of the property by the boundary and Josh was able to progress quickly from tree to tree while he circled the house. When he rounded the front side, he could see through the lounge window. There was no movement but still, Josh was careful.

He moved to the other end of the property. It was evident from the high frosted windows, that a bathroom was located at the corner. He left the cover of the trees and approached the house coming to a stop against the wall. He was unable to see the second story clearly due to the pine trees and hoped no one had seen him from a first-story window.

He knelt and crawled around the corner. Moving as quietly as he could, he kept beneath the level of the windows and peered into the house when possible as he crept along the front of the house. The first room was the living room and Josh was shocked at what he saw when he looked in. The room was a mess.

Andy’s grandfather clock which he admired had been tipped over. He knew that the clock was old and was saddened to see such disregard for such a priceless object. Cupboard doors had been pulled open. Papers and files were strewn everywhere. Ornaments had been swept off shelves and smashed on the floor. Chairs and tables were overturned.

It did not take much for Josh to figure out what the noise had been when he had rung the bell. He still could not see anyone inside the house though.

Josh came to the side door which was set in a small alcove. He peered around the corner and saw that it was closed. He quickly stood and entered the alcove welcoming the chance to stand and stretch his legs again.

He rested a moment and then peered around the corner through the window at the other side of the alcove. He looked into the dining room this time. It was a bigger mess than the lounge. Papers were everywhere. Every cabinet had been opened and its contents swept onto the floor. Glasses, cups, and plates all lay shattered on the floor. The dining room chairs lay broken as if someone had deliberately broken them when they had lost their temper. Perhaps because they had not found what they were looking for.

Josh listened for a while and peered inside again. There was no sound or movement now. He retreated into the alcove and tried the door handle. The door was unlocked. He quietly pushed the door open, grateful that the hinges were well oiled, and crept inside closing the door behind him.

He dashed over to the nearest piece of furniture big enough to hide behind and crouched down listening. He heard no sound but knew he still had to be careful. The house was carpeted wall to wall with thick carpets so footsteps could not easily be heard.

After a few minutes, Josh stood up and crept out from behind the couch. He moved towards the door of the lounge and peered further into the house. To his left lay the dining room which he ignored having seen it through the window.

He advanced slowly into the house. Ahead of him lay the front door with the stairs going up to the first floor on his right. To his left was a passage leading deeper into the house. He knew there was an entertainment room down the passage with a large television and state-of-the-art sound equipment. Shay had shown it to him. The room was soundproofed and she had explained to him that she spent a lot of time alone there with her music and thoughts especially since her mother had disappeared.

Josh decided to leave that part of the house alone for now. There was no mess in the passage or the rooms that he could see from where he stood. There was also no noise either. If someone was in the house, they were searching somewhere else. He found it odd that he heard no noise. Judging by the mess they had made in the living and dining rooms, they should have been making a lot of noise if they were still in the house. He thought he had scared the intruders off after he rang the bell and then left. But there was only one way to leave the property and that was via the front yard. He had seen no one leave at all.

Nevertheless, he advanced cautiously and decided to make his way to the kitchen where he could get a knife to arm himself. He had no idea if whoever might be in the house was dangerous or not but it was better to be safe than sorry.

He crept around to the entrance hall and checked the front door. It was locked. The floor was one of the few areas in the house which were not carpeted and his sneakers squeaked briefly as he stepped on the floor. Josh winced and froze. He still heard no movement anywhere. He tried to calm himself and told himself he heard no one because there was no one. But, he reasoned, if an intruder was still here, they would have done the same as he had. They would have frozen and were probably edging closer to a point where they could peer down the stairs or from another hiding place to see him.

He advanced quickly across the floor as his sneakers squeaked repeatedly giving him away. Then he broke into a run for the kitchen forgetting about stealth and stopped at the door. The intruder had been here too. Drawers had been pulled out and dumped on the floor. Broken glass was everywhere and he silently congratulated himself on wearing his sneakers. Broken glass crunched underfoot as Josh advanced into the kitchen. When glass did not crunch beneath his feet his sneakers squeaked on the tiled floor.

The fact that the kitchen had been searched made it easy for Josh to find what he needed. A knife. There was not a full cupboard anywhere in the kitchen that Josh could see. It seemed that the intruder had emptied everything on the floor. It seemed more like a fit of rage than a burglary. Josh quickly selected a carving knife with a serrated blade from the floor. He slid his fingers over the blade gently confirming that it was sharp enough to do damage if he needed to protect himself. The blade was spotless and about ten inches long.

Josh held it close and left the kitchen. Still, there was no sound from anywhere and he was sure that if an intruder was in the house they would have made a move by now. They would have known he was here from the noise he had made in the kitchen.

He began to feel more comfortable that he was alone but did not let his guard down totally. His thoughts turned again to the idea that it seemed someone had done this in a fit of rage and he began to fear for Shay.

She had told him about her father’s reclusive behavior since the disappearance of her mother and although Josh could believe that losing someone was hard, he also believed that it could send them over the edge. He wondered again if Shay’s father had snapped and done something to Shay.

He believed he knew Shay and did not believe she was the type to do break-ups by text message.

Fearing the worst, he decided to check Shay’s bedroom. He climbed the staircase to the first floor. There was still more to see on the ground floor but if anything had happened to Shay, there was a good chance it would have happened in her room. He entered the guest room to his right. It was undisturbed which he thought was strange considering the mess downstairs.

He gained confidence as he went. He crossed the landing. Another guest room. Untouched too. Next was Shay’s room but he decided to leave it for last and went to Andy’s room at the end of the passage. It too was untouched. He returned to Shay’s room and paused in front of the door. All the other doors had been ajar but Shay’s door was closed.

What would he find? His hand rested on the doorknob. He hoped that the door was just closed because Shay had closed it and not because a gruesome sight awaited him on the other side of it.

The thought made Josh take his hand off the door handle momentarily thinking of the fingerprints he had left. Then he told himself he could explain it to the police if he had to. He pressed the door handle down and pushed the door open standing away from the entrance, knife ready.

The door swung open and Josh realized he was holding his breath. He breathed out in a sigh of relief. Shay’s room was untouched too. Josh entered and checked the closets. Nothing but her clothes and shoes.

He looked around the room then crossed over to the dresser. A photo stood on the dresser. It was a photo of Shay and her parents. Josh could see that Shay’s mother was truly beautiful. He had never met her as she had disappeared before he started dating Shay. He could understand why Shay was as beautiful as she was. It seemed she had been blessed with the ideal mix of her parent’s genes.

He looked at Andy in the photo. Andy looked younger and more handsome than he did when Josh had met him - and happier. Josh sensed kindness in his eyes and thought how much he must have loved Shay’s mother for her disappearance to have affected him so badly.

For a moment he felt guilty for thinking that maybe Andy had gone off the edge and done something to Shay.

He put the photo down and lingered briefly drawing in Shay’s smell from the air in her room. Then he left her room and went back downstairs.