Chapter Two: Clues

The rain had stopped almost a week ago. Slowly, but surely, the water had drained away through the faulty and brainless sewer system that Derry was cursed with. Puddles were still visible, however, choking every depression of ground that was lower than the drains. Neither had the clouds departed. The grey mass continued to loom ominously over the town, threatening with rain. And a threat it most certainly was. With the volume of water jam-packed into the sewers and soaked into the soil, a new storm would spell terrible flood and disaster for Derry and its inhabitants.

These were the observations chasing their way around Officer Jake Fischer's mind as he walked up the garden path to the front door of the house of Harold and Marylin Samwood. The call had come in a quarter an hour earlier. Their son had gone missing.

Now, it was Jake's job to take down statements from the parents, grab a description, do some snooping, and then report back in for the real search to begin.

On the drive over, Jake had been mulling over different stories, fictional and historical, of parents killing children. Morbid, for sure, but his former police partner had always said that sometimes the simplest answers are the correct ones. As he was led into the house by a numb Harold, Jake thought back to this assertion, and reflected that in some cases the inverse was also equally true. Best not to go into this situation with preconceived ideas.

People often only see what they want to see. This includes police officers.

That was another of his partner's favourite phrases.

"Thanks, Matt," he murmured at the memory of the officer.

Harold gave him a questioning glance, to which Jake responded with a shake of his head. The father shrugged and led the officer into the living room. Marylin Samwood was distraught, eyes red and puffy from crying. She looked to be at her wit's end. Unsurprisingly, Harold did the talking. Pleasantries were short and sharp, before Jake pulled out his notepad and began asking questions.

"The full name of the missing person?"

"Harley . . . Harley Edmund Samwood."

"Can you give me his age and description?"

"He was thirteen. Up to my shoulder in height, he had straight brown hair, blue eyes, some freckles on his face and nose. We have a picture that we took on his thirteenth birthday, if that would help . . ."

"Yes, that would help, very much. Now, can you describe the events of what happened last night?"

The clock chimed eight times, counting out the hour with a regular beat. As the clangs died away, the steady clicking of seconds being wound away inside the gears of the machine became audible again. None of the family paid them any heed. After living with it for years, the noise had blended into the ambiance that permeated the house.

Marylin was reading a small paperback novel, the kind picked up in second hand bookshops. The kind where it is a coin toss as to whether it will be any good or not. She was still unsure at this point, but hopes were for a good read.

Harold was thankful that the work crews had got the power back on so swiftly after the storm. Even so, it remained a reminder of the fragility of human civilisation, and how easily they could be plunged back into the pre-industrial era. Harold had a notepad in front of him, filling it with calculations and numbers, as he tried to figure out the juggling of money. The million-dollar question, or rather, thousand-dollar question, was if the Samwood family could afford a backup generator. The answer, as Harold found was becoming abundantly clear, was a definite no.

Harley was the only member of the family to not be sitting on one of the couches; instead, he was lying prone on the floor, supporting his head with one hand and a pencil with the other as he frowned at the page of maths equations in front of him. Within arm's reach was a fluffy blanket, intertwined with dog hairs, conspicuous for being empty. Every few minutes, Harley would steal a glance in the direction of the blanket, a mournful glance, before going back to his work.

With a violent display, Harold scribbled out all of his writings, frustrated at the result. The cost of buying and maintaining a backup generator, even the cheapest one Harold could find, totalled as much as Harley's school fees. Ah, the choices of the American family: send your son to school or secure your electricity.

Harley looked up at his father's exasperation, but he did not say anything. They caught each other's eyes, but Harley quickly broke contact.

Looking at his son brought the blanket into sight, and subsequently into mind. This reminded him of the other difficult decision he was presented with. Unlike the generator, this one did not have as clear-cut of an answer.

"Harley," he said, preparing to pop the bubble that was the elephant in the room.

"Yes, Dad?"

"It's been four days since Doug ran away . . ."

Harley knew this. He knew his dad knew this. Every single day since then had been spent in anticipation, praying that Doug would come back, that Dad would find him, that they would get a phone call that someone, anyone had found him.

"I decided to search near the older parts of the town today, near the canal, and . . . well . . . I found this."

Harold pulled a thin, blue object out of his pocket. Part of it jingled, while the metal caught the lamplight with a flicker. Harley only had eyes for the break in the leather, right in the middle of the collar. He stood up and came over, part of him terrified of the name he'd find on the tag, part of him reassuring that there was no way it was Doug's collar. Even if it was the exact same shade of blue.

He took it into his hands and held the tag up. The four-letter name was stark, just above the numbers of their home-phone. He met his dad's eyes and found them full of regret and sorrow.

"So, what does this mean?" he asked. "The collar probably just came off–"

"I can't take any more time off work to search for him," Harold explained simply. "My boss won't let me."

"So what? I'll search. I'll go on my bike after school, and–"

"I can't let you do that, Harley."

"Why not?" Red was bleeding into Harley's cheeks.

"What if you get lost? Or worse? It's bad enough to lose a pet, but to lose a–"

"Doug's not lost!" Harley interrupted. "He'll come home."

"Harley," Harold said sharply. "It's time for us to move on."

"No!" the boy stubbornly insisted. "You'd look for me if I was the one who got lost!"

"You're my son! My family!"

"And Doug's not? Did you ever really love him?"

"Oh, for goodness' sakes!" Harold snapped. "Grow up, Harley! Be a man and read the writing on the wall! I looked! I searched! It wasn't good enough! Sometimes what you do is never good enough!"

Harley was mute in shock at his father's angry words. Then he lifted his foot up and kicked out, sending his maths book skittering across the floor to collide with the couch.

"You didn't do enough, you old bastard!"

Now it was Harold's turn to be utterly dumbstruck at the venomous words. Then anger came roaring back in like the tide to retake control.

"Go to your room! You're grounded, young man!"

"Fine," Harley spat after a moment. He walked towards the stairs, climbed halfway up, and then hurtled one last remark. "You gave up so easily. I bet you'd do the same if I'd gone missing."

"That was the last time you saw him?"

"Yes."

"When did you find out that he was gone?"

Each step taken up the stairs was a heavy one. Harold's feet felt like lead, although they did not make noise or snap the wood under their weight. It took the pull of his hand on the railing to give him the extra boost needed to get his foot onto each next stair. Regret was weighing him down like ocean on a drowning man. Harold was drowning in his guilt, and the only lifeline he could see lay in his son's room.

Harley's door was shut. There had been a picture on it, one he'd drawn when he was six. Daddy and Me on an Adventure. It was now torn off, trampled on the floor in front of the room. Instead, a piece of paper marked with KEEP OUT, GO AWAY in red ink had replaced it.

Harold slowly lifted his hand and knocked on the door twice. There was no response, only a stony silence. Harold leant his head against the door.

"Harley? I . . . I'm here to apologise."

Nothing. The boy was ignoring him.

"I didn't mean what I said earlier. I–I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that I couldn't find Doug."

The door remained impassively closed, however. Every part of Harold's body looked ready to collapse.

"Can I come in?"

It was difficult, to know when to respect boundaries and when to overstep them. All part of the challenge of being a parent.

The grandfather clock chimed ten times down in the living room below as Harold grasped the door knob and pulled the door open.

The window was open. A rope of bedsheet hung out the gaping hole.

"Oh no. No, no, no."

Harold ran to the window and peered out into the pitch black of night.

"Harley!" he called, although he doubted that the boy was anywhere near the house. He bounded back downstairs, almost falling twice in his haste. He raced into the kitchen and pulled a torch out of one of the draws. It was big and black, almost like a truncheon. "What have I done? What have I done?"

"Harold?" Marylin called. "What's going on?"

"Harley's gone," Harold replied as he ran to the front door.

"Gone? What do–"

The remainder of her question was cut off by the door being shut. Harold ran around to the side of the house, his shoes squelching in the mud and wet grass. His torch scanned the yard, from the window to the ground, and across to the fence. He crouched and spotted imprints in the mud of the garden bed under Harley's window, next to the bedsheet rope. He followed them across the yard, and spotted mud scuffed into the wooden fence, the trail of a certain someone scaling the wall.

"How far did you search?"

"I ran up and down the street. And into the next street. But I couldn't see him, and I lost the trail soon after it left our yard."

"Where else?"

"Well, I was thinking about it some more, and I realised he might've wanted to search near the canal. Because I'd told him that's where I'd found the collar."

The torchlight danced and bobbed in time with Harold's feet. The roar of the choked river running through the canal formed a constant backdrop as he searched through the grounds of Bassey Park.

"Harley? Harley! It's Dad! Where are you?"

His feet were slipping on the damp ground. He was barely avoiding the trees, the bushes, or the park benches. In every shadow he saw the outline of a boy; crouching, standing, running. The deep throated roar was mocking him, like the unholy laughter of a horrid demon.

"Are you here? I'm sorry! Please speak up!"

Something metal collided with his shin. He flipped over and crashed into the soil. For a second, he lay there, while the light of the torch splayed out to one side. Unexpectedly, tears sprang out of his eyes and down his cheeks. The floodgates broke, and he curled up onto his side and sobbed.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please come home. Please."

A twig snapped. Harold's head came up in an instant. He grabbed the torch and swung it around the park.

"Harley?"

Nothing. Plenty of shapes, but nothing solid, nothing tangible, aside from the uncaring bodies of the trees.

Harold slowly got to his feet. As he cast a glance over his body, he noticed the shallow cut that marred his shin with glistening red. He cursed his clumsiness, before gingerly straightening up.

It was then that the smell hit him. Distant, it was, on the very edge of the range of his scent reception. But it was there, nonetheless. The scent of rotten fruit, both sickly and sweet at the same time. Undercutting it was another stench, of an animal enclosure that had not been cleaned in years.

Even in the miniscule amount that Harold smelt, he still gagged and recoiled. Trying not to breath through his nose, he called out again.

"Harley! Harley!"

"Why do you mention the smell?"

"I . . . well, I don't know. It kind of stayed with me. Make no mistake, it was horrible."

"Rotten fruit . . . animal faeces . . . you know, it was probably debris that had been washed into the canal by the storm, from upriver."

"I . . . see."

"So, you didn't find any trace of him?"

"None, nothing at all. Nowhere I searched. It's like he just vanished."

Jake had kept his face as neutral as possible throughout Harold's tearful recounting of last night's events. He was a police officer, after all, not a therapist or a councillor.

"Did Harley take anything with him that would suggest a long trip?"

"He didn't leave his room between when I sent him there and whenever he escaped. He only had a couple of cents in his moneybox, not enough to buy him any supplies."

Well, that certainly limited the range he could have travelled. Unless the boy got some food secretly from one of his friends.

"You called his friends?"

"Their parents. They said they hadn't seen anything either."

"Hm. Could you make a list of his friends? Just in case."

"Of course."

Jake shut his notepad with a snap.

"Thank you for recounting this, Mr Samwood. I know this must be difficult."

"No, no. Thank you for helping us to find our son."

They all stood up at the same time. Jake was about to move out into the hall, when Marylin suddenly grabbed him in an embrace.

"Please," she whispered. "Please bring him back to us."

Jake stood there stiffly. He knew that he shouldn't get emotionally attached to the family. Better to be professional.

Emotions cloud the investigation.

"The force will do its best, Mrs Samwood. We will work diligently for your son's return."

As he walked back to his car, Jake thought over all the notes he'd taken of the investigation, all the words he'd heard spoken under the Samwood's roof.

"I think I'll take a snoop down at the canal," he mused aloud. He glanced back at the house, and wished all the luck he could for the boy's safe return.

There is no such thing as luck.

"We make our own luck," Jake replied. It wasn't often that he had a witty remark to respond to Matt with, but the few times were glorious indeed.

"Doug! Doug! Where are you, boy?"

It was almost a sick and twisted game played by an eldritch horror; the similarities between what was happening now, and what was to come bare hours later. Harley was jogging through Bassey Park, the far weaker light of his own torch hardly lighting any of the ground around him. He was determined, though, evidenced by the whiteness of his knuckles as they gripped Doug's collar.

Like his father's iteration, Harley's search was doomed to failure. Tears had been running freely down his cheeks since he'd left home: tears of anger at his father, tears of worry for Doug. His torchlight scanned the edge of the canal. It was nowhere near powerful to penetrate into the gulf of the waterway itself. At this close, the water was almost deafening, forcing him to withdraw back into the main body of the park.

There was no sign that his search was yielding any results. Neither fur nor bark had presented itself to answer his desperate cries. The anger that had fuelled him, ignited his engine, and sent him headlong towards the canal, was dying down. Now he felt cold on the outside, and empty on the inside. His conscience was whispering to him, chiding him for the angry words he'd used on his father earlier that evening. He wanted to sit down and cry, but he could not. That would do no one any good, least of all Doug.

Something was caught in the light of the torch, almost at his feet. Unlike all the other darkness, which departed as soon as his torchlight fell upon it, in this patch, the darkness lingered. He examined it with wary eyes, unsure what it was, or if it was harmful. He was hesitant to even poke at it with his shoe, although curiosity was practically screaming at him to do so. A smell was also heavy on the air; of rotting fruit, of dirty animals, of something staler and fouler. Of something old, from ages past.

The last thing he heard was a dripping sound, like water falling in an underground tunnel.