Chapter Fifty-One

How did you like that chapter? Was it suspenseful? I certainly hope so, I enjoyed writing it myself and I felt that I did a pretty good job with switching back and forth between points of view. It was really hard for me to put up though, because, for some reason, I was paranoid that people weren't going to like it. It also upset me that both of my chapters that I have done recently have been sizably shorter then the ones I created before disappearing were. I feel like my writing style has changed a lot in between (blame the IB program, they are making me all critical and detailed and analytical) and that's been stressing me out. However, people seem to be enjoying this was just as much as they did the ways before, so, we're okay.

Update on this story's up-and-coming completion status: Last chapter was basically the end of all climatic action. It's basically winding down from here, and consequently we are near the end.

Once again, a thank-you to all of my reviewers: THANK YOU! You make my life that much more interesting, and make me joyful when I open my email to find a new review, or someone marking me as a "favorite author" or "favorite story" or placing my story on alert or something. Thank you. You make me happy.

This chapter ties a lot of the loose ends back together in preparation for the conclusion. It's rather complex at times, but I'm going to be as straightforward as I can be in order to help avoid confusion. As always, feel free to send me a private message if you have any questions, and I will be happy to address them. Please don't use reviews as a way to ask questions, it's difficult for me to respond to you that way, and there is a chance that I will miss your questions, which I would rather not do.

Please remember: My story accepts anonymous reviews, I don't own Unnatural History (as much as I wish I did, I could have saved it from being discontinued) and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Enjoy!

Henry's point of view:

As the ambulance pulled away, Jasper came back inside as though frightened, his face wet with tears, slamming the door behind him. I jumped, startled, and looked at him with confusion, expecting an explanation for the sudden assault to my eardrums, Jasper offered none, not even bothering to look at me, and walked past me into the living room, where he sat an the couch with his head in his hands, the picture of dismay. The door was quickly reopened, and a policeman stood in the doorway, looking at us. "Do you mind if I come in? It's very cold out there, and William has been caught so I just need to stay here until we are given the 'all clear'. I also don't really want to leave you alone seeing as Mr. Winnock is at the hospital with his daughter." I nodded and he came inside, shivering, and closed the door behind him, much more gently then Jasper had. "Thank you. We're almost done. I followed you here from the graveyard to make sure that nothing happened to you on the way back, but I heard, before I left, that he had been shot. I'm sure they've caught him, and are sending him to the hospital."

I felt my insides resettle with a feeling of relief. It was almost over. They had caught William. This whole horrible ordeal had almost finished, and we had all made it through alive, none of us had died, even when it looked like none of us would come through alive. I could finally relax without worrying about something happening to one of my friends or my parents…my parents! How were they?

"Sir?" I asked, hesitating to break the silence too suddenly, fearing that it might snap and recoil at me, striking at me the way broken silences with Jasper sometimes did, when Jasper would snap a response at me because I had disturbed him, and I would end up feeling sad and guilty for hours. The policeman turned to look at me, and smiled reassuringly. "Is everyone at the other house okay? My parents…and my uncle, and Whitney's mom and her little sisters, they're all okay, aren't they? Nothing happened over there, right?" Jasper's house was farther from the graveyard, farther than where Maggie had been, but at the same time closer to where Maggie's tracks had been laid. He would have been nearby. Something could have happened. He could have done something. If he had been angry or something, if he had just wanted to hurt us one more time, or if it…it had something to do with my parents, he wanted them to do something, and they didn't, he could have gone, gone to get revenge on them for not doing what he wanted them to do! My mom and dad, or Uncle B, or Whitney's mom, or Anya and Katina, or all of them…something could have happened!

"Everyone at the other house is completely fine," the policeman reassured me. I felt Whitney relax next to me, and let out a small sigh of relief. She had worried, as I had worried. She was worried about her mother and her sisters, like I was worried about my parents. "We don't have any reason to believe that William had any intention of hurting anyone except for Maggie, he didn't go, as far as we can tell, anywhere near either of the houses except to pass them when laying tracks. He didn't even come near to see anyone in the house. They were safe the whole time, we were just being cautious."

"Didn't he want something from my parents? When Maggie was originally taken, they wrote a letter that mentioned he had demands from my parents. Wouldn't he have wanted to make sure they had followed through or something?" I felt confused. My head was spinning, but that might have been from a variety of feelings, from lack to sleep to hunger to exhaustion to the feeling of catharsis, that sudden joy that it was finally over. Jasper was looking at me, suddenly alert, as though something I said had gotten his mind back from wherever it had gone. I smiled at him, but he didn't smile back. He was looking at me very intently, and then turned to look instead at the policeman as the policeman began to speak.

"I was confused about that myself," the policeman admitted. "Luckily, one of William's henchmen who was higher in command, and therefore more involved in the planning of this whole thing, was willing to explain it to us after he had been captured." The policeman took a notebook out of one of his pockets and flipped through it. I wondered if he could feel Jasper's eyes burning holes in him, and if so, if it bothered him. "This is my notebook from this whole case. I have everything from it in here, and…ah, here we are, the notes from the confession. I'll explain the situation best I can, these notes are kind of all over the place, and they don't have a lot of background information, because we already knew that.

"William kind of disappeared from us many years ago. He was a pretty active serial killer for awhile, killing people every few months or so, and then after the confrontation with Mr. Winnock about ten years back, he abruptly seemed to stop killing people, much to our relief. We know from the confessions of his associates that he was still involved with other crimes such as theft, but we never really associated him with these crimes, so he flew under our radar.

"William didn't want to be associated with kidnapping Maggie, at least not until after the fact. Those people your parents got arrested, Henry, used to be part of his rather complex group of people he had working for him, but were not associated with him in our eyes. By making reference to them, he had completely diverted any attention from himself. He made the issue about you and your family, Henry, instead of making it have to do with the Winnock family, something that would of caused us to catch on to him."

"I don't get it," Jasper said suddenly. His voice sounded rough and horrible, as though he had either decided to take up smoking, or had swallowed sandpaper. I reached out and grabbed onto his arm, not how it would help, but wanting to make it obvious that I was willing to do something. "He wanted revenge," Jasper continued. "I'm pretty sure he would have wanted Maggie's father to realize that it was he who had killed her," Jasper broke off, shuddered, and then continued. "He wouldn't have felt that his revenge was complete if Mr. Winnock believed that his daughter had been a victim of something completely unrelated to himself."

"William's plan did involve him eventually making the reason for the crime known to Mr. Winnock, but he didn't want to do so immediately. Since he disappeared from the life of a serial killer, we have had far less task forces trained on finding him. However, he never truly lost his status as a criminal of importance, especially with some nut or other calling in every week or so with a false lead on how to find him. William knew that if he made his involvement with the crime known, the whole nation would immediately be searching for him, and he didn't want that. It appears that his plan was to divert our attention away from himself, which he successfully did by a fake involvement with Henry's parents, get his revenge, which he almost succeeded in doing several times, and then in some way, whether by going to Mr. Winnock, sending a letter, making a phone call, or by some other means, let him know that it was his old friend who had killed his daughter."

Jasper shuddered violently, and I tightened my grip on his arm, feeling like I was going to be sick myself. "So it never was about my parents?" I said, clarifying what I had just heard. "They had nothing to do with any of it? It all was just a set-up, there is no reason why he would have wanted to hurt them in anyway?"

"No, Henry. Your parents were merely a diversion, nothing more. Your family is completely fine. Sure, William would have been glad to have these people out of custody, but they weren't important to him and he didn't really care for them. The main importance was getting his revenge and keeping us off his trail until he had succeeded. He would have eventually revealed himself to Mr. Winnock, and by doing so would have enabled Mr. Winnock to tell us that he was back, but by this point he would have been able to disappear again, probably content with his revenge. It was a very smart plot, and we never really realized the complexities of it until it was over. And now it is."

"Is Maggie going to be okay?" Whitney said, speaking for the first time since we noticed that Maggie was missing. She had been frozen in shocked silence, hardly moving for the whole thing. Her voice sounded strange, but it was her voice. She was worried. "She was really badly hypothermic, she felt like ice, and we think she was drugged in order to make her go to sleep. That would have killed her, wouldn't it? We were trying to keep her awake but it was really hard, she kept falling back asleep and she was asleep at first when we brought here here."

"I found her initially, and yes, she was asleep and very badly hypothermic. I thought she was dead at first, she was so cold and she wouldn't wake up at first. I'm thinking you are correct, I believe he chained her to a tree in order to keep her from trying to get out of the ditch or calling attention to herself in any way and drugged her, assuming that she would go to sleep and freeze to death before we would be able to find her. He was almost correct, in any of sense. She was very close to dying, but she was found in time, luckily, and I believe that she will be fine. I didn't get the impression that he had hurt her, so she should recover relatively quickly. If anything, there may have been some effect on her immune system from the sudden exposure to cold, but I don't even know about that. She'll be fine. Now, you three look absolutely beat. I was wondering, would you mind moving to the other house, so that we could have you all together? It would make you easier to watch, and I would let them know whom to call should something change with Maggie. The danger is basically gone, we just want to be sure that everyone is safe until we have William stabilized and in custody."

"No, that would be fine," I said, after first glancing at Whitney and Jasper to be sure that I had their agreement. Whitney nodded at me, but Jasper seemed too lost within himself to give me any clear response. I shook his arm, and his eyes snapped up to me, and he nodded, somewhat distracted. "That would be fine. We should take our sleeping bags, though. I don't know that we would have enough at home. Maggie's is with her, as well as one of the blankets, but we still have two others and quite a bit of blankets with us that we can take."

Jasper nodded and gathered up the blankets and one of the sleeping bags in his arms, and I took the other. Whitney went to the kitchen and got Jasper's pain medication, and debated taking Maggie's medication with her. "You can probably leave it here," I told her. "She won't be there with us, and they'll have medication for her at the hospital." Whitney nodded and set the bottle very carefully on the counter.

I took her hand, and squeezed it. "Maggie will be okay, Whitney. Now, let's go. We can see your Mom and your sisters. Our mothers are probably worried sick." I smiled at her, and she returned the smile, somewhat weakly. "You'll be okay. We'll be okay," I told her. We were at the front door now, and I could see the policeman defrosting the windows of his cruiser. "Jasper? Are you coming?" I called back into the house. He didn't respond, and I felt my heart stutter in my chest. "Can you take this?" I asked, handing Whitney the sleeping bag. "Get in the car. We'll be along in a moment." Her eyes were wide and frightened. "Don't. I'm sure it's fine. He's in the house somewhere. He's really upset." I gave her a gentle push out the door. "Go."

I watched her until she got to the car, making sure that she got there safely, and then turned back into the house. "Jasper? Jasper, where are you? We need to go home." I walked back into the living room, and found it empty. "Jasper?" I climbed the stairs quickly, trying not to panic, and then stopped to listen. I could hear breathing coming from Maggie's room, and I carefully pushed the door open. "Jasper…" I said, dismayed. "Jasper…"

He was kneeling next to Maggie's bed, the sleeping bag and blankets in a pile next to him. He had put his head on Maggie's pillow, and was crying, worse than I had seen him at any point these last few days. I was torn between going to him and giving him privacy, worried that he would be embarrassed that I was witnessing him cry like this. It was nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but Jasper had a tendency to be very sensitive about certain emotional things, especially the ones that involved Maggie, which I was sure this did.

Unsure of what I should do, I decided to make a deal of sorts with myself. I would call to him one more time, and if he turned to look at me or gave any sign of acknowledging my presence, I would go to him. If not, I would go downstairs and tell the policeman to take Whitney back home and come back for us afterwards, hopefully giving Jasper enough time to calm himself down enough to come with us. Taking a deep breath and tensing as though Jasper was a wild animal I was about to fight, I opened my mouth. "Jasper?" I said, and waited. Jasper raised his head from the pillow and turned to look at me. That was good at least. "Hey. I'm so sorry, Jasper. She'll be all right, you heard the policeman. She was just cold, she had hypothermia, and they can fix that. You did well. You got her back in time, and you helped her begin to warm up. You did really well. Now come on, we have to head back home. Your dad must be worried sick about you." I held out a hand to him.

"I thought I had lost her, Henry. I thought she was gone." His voice sounded completely broken. "When I found her, down in the ditch…when I was carrying her back, when I was trying to wake her up and she wouldn't at first, and even when she would but kept falling back to sleep, I thought I had lost her. I thought that I had been too late, and had I left just minutes sooner, or gotten back from the walk just minutes before, or hadn't left at all; I would have been able to keep it from happening. I thought she had died, and I would have been able to stop it, I just didn't know it at the time. Like when I had bat fever, and you thought you weren't going to make it back in time. You must have felt that way." I shuddered at the memory, and he nodded, as though I had confirmed something. "I felt like that. The whole time we were running back. I felt like that."

"But you didn't. You made it in time, and she will be fine. You were in time, and you didn't cause this to happen to her. It's over now, Jasper. We made it through this. Now come with us, come home, and get some sleep. She's in the best place she can be, her dad is with her, and we have made it. And seriously, that policeman will come in and drag you out if you don't come by your own means in the next few minutes. Come on." I shook my arm impatiently, willing him to grab it.

He smiled and took my hand, and I helped him up. I grabbed the bundle of bedding, and we headed downstairs, locking the door and setting the alarm behind ourselves, and climbed into the car. The three of us crammed ourselves into the backseat, the bedding heaped on top of our legs, and tried to relax our very frazzled nervous systems on the drive back.

I think I had gone to sleep, or at least began to doze off, when the car pulled up alongside the house. The drive didn't feel nearly long enough. Seeing the house outside of one of the fogged-up windows, I gathered up a good amount of the bedding and stepped outside, momentarily shocked out of my wits by the cold air. My feet slid out from under me momentarily on the ice, but I grabbed the side of the car and got my feet back under me before I could fall. "Careful. It's really icy out here," I told Whitney, who was getting out on the other side. Jasper followed me out of the car, and we made our way back to the house. The lights were on; I assumed many people were awake, if not all of them. Well, maybe Anya and Katina would be asleep, but I was pretty sure no one else would be.

Sure enough, the moment I knocked on the door, the door flew open. Whitney's mom, looking rather frazzled and stressed, yanked us in immediately. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I could understand that she was crying out of relief and joy. She hugged Jasper and me quickly and then grabbed onto Whitney as though she was never going to let go again. I couldn't understand all of what she was saying to the policeman, but I gathered that she was either thanking him or blessing him. He nodded and smiled, not really understanding her either.

My mom came around the corner next, and rushed forward to meet me upon seeing me. "Henry! Henry, thank God. Thank God. Are you okay? Are you going to be okay? We heard that…we heard that Maggie was gone, and we didn't hear anything after that, are you all okay? What happened?" She released me and took my face in her hands. "Henry, what happened?" she said, reading the sadness and worry and exhaustion in my eyes. I could see Uncle B talking to Jasper, probably asking him the same things.

I shook my head, suddenly too exhausted to say anything. Mom released me and went to talk to the policeman. I staggered into the living room, where I found Whitney's little sisters. The littlest one, Anya, blessed with the magical gift of small children to sleep through just about everything, seemed to be asleep, clutching her doll to her chest, but Katina was definitely awake and frightened. "Henry?" she said in a whisper, looking at me standing in the doorway. "Is…is okay?" Her eyes had the look of a child who had seen and heard something from a nightmare. I was sure that I looked the same.

I sat down next to her, and she climbed into my lap and pressed her head into my shoulder, suddenly bursting into tears. "It's okay, Katina. It's okay. It's all okay," I said, trying to speak soothingly, but she continued to cry. I began rubbing her shoulder gently, trying to calm her down. "It's okay. Whitney is okay."

Anya woke up then, and looked at me, completely startled. She said something quickly in Russian to Katina, who responded between sobs, and Anya looked completely terrified. Anya yelled for her mother and ran around the corner to the kitchen. I picked Katina up and followed her, and found Whitney hugging Anya, who was crying hysterically into her shoulder. Whitney's mother took Katina from me, and I turned and headed back into the living room, lying down on the floor without bothering to grab a sleeping bag or any blankets. I fell asleep almost immediately.

I awoke after what I estimated to be about ten minutes to my father shaking me awake. "Henry. Henry?" I opened my eyes and sat up, acknowledging the fact that I was still surrounded by people, which meant I couldn't have been sleeping long. My mind felt like it was full of cotton, and my mouth felt the same.

"Dad?" I mumbled sleepily. "What's going on? Has something happened?" I rubbed at my eyes and swallowed, hating the dry and sticky feeling of my tongue and the inside of my mouth. My voice felt thick, like I couldn't get the words out quickly enough, and my tongue was heavy in my mouth, a useless deadweight.

"Everything is fine, Henry. I'm sorry I had to wake you up, you were sleeping and I know you are completely exhausted. Everyone is fine, and we're all heading to sleep soon. I just wanted to tell you that I'm very proud of you, Henry. I'm proud of how you have been handling these situations with no one but your friends and yourself to help you, and I'm proud of how strong and wise and brave you have become. I just wanted to tell you this because I see you infrequently and you've been disappearing or in danger so often lately, I wasn't sure when I would get the chance. You've done well, son. Now, you can go back to sleep if you want. I won't make you stay awake."

"Thanks, Dad," I managed to mumble sleepily. His praise had been too much; I had been frightened so often, I wasn't as brave as he thought I had been. "It's been hard. I've been scared a lot. I'm so glad it is finally over, I felt like crying or giving up so many times. I wasn't really being that brave. I was just trying to stay alive, and half the time I failed at what I was trying to do or I would make a plan and it would fall apart. I couldn't get anything right. I was so tired and I just wanted someone else to come and take over for me, instead of making us try to figure it out all on our own. It wasn't really all that brave."

"Do you think I felt any different?" He countered. "Henry…when I heard that you were gone, when I heard that you were all caught up in this, and when they called to say that you had left, to try to find her on your own, with just Jasper and Whitney with you, do you think I felt any less like crying or panicking? No, Henry. I was completely terrified. The idea of my son…out without outside protection dealing with people who, for all we knew, would kill him on the spot…" he closed his eyes, wincing internally. "Henry, I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die right then." He smiled at me, his voice changing tones. "Now you, my son, have been working very hard and have had a rough last few days. You need to sleep. Go to sleep, Henry. Know that we are proud of you, we couldn't be any more proud of you if it was required by us, and we love you very much, and we are so glad that you are safe and with us again."

"Thanks, Dad," I mumbled, and let myself lie back down on the floor. Someone had put a blanket over my legs, and I pulled it up over my shoulders and fell asleep again.

I awoke again when it was very dark; the house was still and completely quiet. As I listened I could hear slow breathing around me. One of Whitney's sisters was lying across my legs, and another one was in the corner. Someone was on the couch, maybe Whitney's mom, and the other two forms, Whitney and Jasper, were visible in the dark a ways away from me. I was relieved to find my mind had cleared, but my mouth was still unbearably dry. I got up, carefully picking Anya up off my legs, and set her down on top of my blankets, feeling a sense of relief when she didn't wake up. I made my way to the kitchen.

In the dark, I felt for the cabinet over the sink and used the moonlight to select one of the cups stacked haphazardly on the shelf. I knew better than to try to drink the tap water, it was really disgusting, so instead I quietly opened the freezer and got out a bottle of water from the stock that we kept on hand. I wanted to sit down, but didn't want to make a lot of noise grabbing a chair, so I instead sat down on the floor to drink my water.

As I sat with the cold water bottle clamped between my hands, I reflected upon everything that had happened in the last few hours. I hadn't had much time to think about what was going on when it happened, I was too busy trying to make sure we all survived it. But free of the adrenaline rush that had kept my mind darting from place to place and the need to constantly make decisions, I was able to think about what had happened and how I had felt when it was happening.

I had been stressed and ashamed and desperate when we realized Maggie was gone. I felt ashamed that I hadn't noticed her leave, or being taken; I hadn't known exactly what had happened at the time. And I felt scared. Desperately scared for her, and scared for us, and for my parents, for anyone else that might have been taken.

And when we had found her, I felt sick. I had felt terrified, afraid to look at her as she was lying on the floor of her living room, scared that she would be dead and I would have to see her dead. Maggie was like a sister to me in some ways, and I didn't want to see her dead. I would never be able to forget it. But I did look, and there was so much relief inside me that I thought I would explode when I realized she was alive.

She was alive. I had to keep reminding myself of that, to make sure that I didn't loose my mind, didn't go back to that place in my head where I couldn't remember things and was just panicking. I had to stay safe inside myself, for everyone else.

I need to meditate, I thought to myself. I couldn't remember the last time I had meditated, and my mind was feeling very scattered. I finished my water bottle and recycled it, throwing away the cap, and then sat back down on the floor, making myself comfortable. I closed my eyes and waited, making a low humming sound for myself.

As the world outside of myself faded out, I felt my own peace fill me. My thoughts knitted back together, forming coherent strands, and all the worries that I had felt were soothed. I didn't realize I had fallen asleep until I woke up.