Epilogue: After

George steeled himself before reaching up and knocking hard on the front door of William's house. Dropping his arm, he took a step back and waited patiently. A woman's voice replied, muffled, from somewhere within.

"Coming! Just a moment!"

It had been almost two months since Bill had disappeared. Since that dreadful night when four other boys had gone missing. That was really all that any adults talked to him about these days.

It must have been so scary . . .

What happened . . .?

Was it a kidnapper . . .?

Did you see anything . . .?

Questions like these came thick and heavy, especially in a rush that started after about a week had passed. Despite the assurances from the police that his identity would be kept a secret, there were really no secrets in this small town. As a result, he was mobbed by a different adult every day, each anxious to hear the story first hand, unsatisfied with the answer their friends had given them. And George constantly had to disappoint them.

Because he did not remember a single thing from the incident. He had a vague recollection of running in the darkness, arriving back home, then waking up the next morning. But all his memory from that evening, and from the week afterwards, was extremely hazy, like he was missing crucial information, like some gaps had opened up in his mind.

Adults smiled sadly, shrugged, and patted him on the head or gave him a lolly when he could not satisfy their curiosity. Shock. That was how they explained the amnesia. But George didn't feel good about it. Every sweet he was given on account of his fame tasted sour on his tongue, and he stopped eating them, handing them out to classmates instead.

The kids at school were equally as pestering. They wanted to hear tales about blood and mystery and creepy men walking around in the dark. But George had no tales to tell. In this way, he was both the most popular and the loneliest kid at school, especially since William had stopped coming to school the same day he'd gone missing with George. He hadn't seen him once since that day.

The door opened to reveal William's mother, who looked as exhausted and as jumpy as expected for a parent whose kid vanished for several hours one day in the middle of what was suspected to be a kidnapping spree. "Hello, George. Are you here to visit William?"

George nodded, and she backed away from the doorway to let him through. The first thing he noticed as he made his way to the stairs and climbed them, were boxes. Dozens of them, stacked high in the hall and in rooms, most taped shut, but some open, revealing household items. Furniture was gone, pictures on the wall had been taken down. If not for the boxes, the house looked bare.

William's bedroom was no different; only his bed was still there. The boy himself was seated on the mattress, his legs drawn up and chin rested on his knees. His eyes were blank and staring at the opposite wall. George wasn't sure what to say, what to do. Here was a kid who really was in shock.

There was a notebook on the bed as George sat down. He glanced at the open page: a frightening pencil drawing of something with powerful limbs and glowing silver eyes. Turning his head, George thought he recognised the muzzle of a creature, maybe a wolf or a bear, but it was too indistinct to tell. Carefully, and with many glances in William's direction, George picked up the book and flicked through the pages. Each was filled with more drawings of indistinct humanoid creatures but with animal features. A tail here, a beak there. But all dark and vague and fearsome.

George glanced at his friend again as he put the booklet down. There had been absolutely no reaction on William's part. As far as he was concerned, George had never even entered the room.

How do you speak to someone who's not even properly there?

With a sorrowful sigh, George departed from the room, and came downstairs to where William's mother was packing more boxes in the kitchen.

"Are you moving away?" he asked. She stopped, pausing for a long second, staring at the contents of the box. Then she nodded.

"My husband's got a new job out in Utah," she explained. George blinked widely. He didn't even know of the existence of that American state. He wondered if she was referring to another country, and almost missed her continuing. "He thinks the Midwest will be wonderful for us."

"Oh," George said simply and quietly. "Are you coming back?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, George, but we won't be. We're leaving before the end of the week, so now might be a good time to say goodbye to William."

George thought back to the scene in the room above. The oppressive silence, the unnerving drawings, the empty look in William's eyes. He shook his head. "I should get going."

She nodded as she accompanied him to the door. "Good luck, George. I'm sorry about your brother."

George stood watching the house for a little while, hoping that maybe William might appear at the window, but this was not to be. As he sighed and walked away, he tried to remember William's last name. He'd never bothered to learn it properly. He knew it was short and it started with an 'A', but that was all he could recall. It wasn't important, anyway. He was probably never going to see William again.


That evening, he was seated in Bill's bedroom. He cast his eyes around at everything, the clothes hanging in the closet, the shoes arranged neatly underneath them. The desk, cluttered, but with Bill's writing booklet sitting in the central pride of place. The bedsheets and the quilt; folded and arranged properly. George's mother came in daily and dusted every exposed surface, as a kind of ritual. It all made it look like Bill was just out for a bit, had just hopped on Silver and gone charging away through the town.

Hi-yo, Silver, away!

Tears stung at George's eyes, and he fled as quickly as he could, away from the sights, the smells, away from the half-finished emotions that lingered in the room of the missing boy. He slammed his bedroom door shut and sank down against it to put his head in his arms. The sobs came easily after that, though he tried to muffle the sound as much as possible. His parents were overwhelmed with grief. This house was overwhelmed with grief. Everything was either sorrow or grey emptiness.

Wiping his eyes, George got unsteadily to his feet, and then walked to his closet. Opening the door, he rummaged around at the bottom for a small leather folder, which he carried to his bed. It was his photo album, which he began to slowly flick through. When he got to the image he was looking for, the tears flowed freely again.

It was taken last summer, in a field of long grass. Bill was charging forward, whooping with laughter as he carried his brother in a piggy-back. George was cheering, waving his arms in the air, head thrown back.

George reached out his hand and ran his fingertips over the photo and his brother's face. Clutching his hand into a fist, he bit his lip against the black hole of loss in his heart, sucking everything in his chest inwards.

"Someday," he promised, whispering to himself in his dim room. "Someday, I'll find you, Bill. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far I have to search. I'll find out what happened to you and bring you home."

I promise.


THE END