Peter Gregory worried the hallucinations had taken over his mind. He fought to determine what was real and what was only a figment of his imagination. All these law enforcement officers and vehicles amassed in the streets. Were they real or imaginary?
It took him a while to realize they weren’t looking for him. After he’d safely ditched the blue pickup, he became an ordinary man walking the neighborhood. His work clothes and boots helped him fit in. A tattered old ball cap he found in the glove compartment completed his camouflage.
He heard bits and pieces from their radios and their shouts to one another. Door-to-door, street-to-street, they marched. An invasion that stirred up electricity and tension in the air as thick as the humidity.
It wasn’t until he saw them checking the garage that he realized it was the boy they were looking for. He was close enough to hear the discussion about a bicycle.
He wondered why they were so far behind. Why hadn’t they started looking sooner? Now, in their urgency and turmoil, they’d even left the garage door unlocked.
They’d never find that boy.
When Gregory heard the helicopter approaching, he knew his mind had not conjured up this chaos. He could feel the vibration of the machine when it skimmed the treetops.
But this chaos and urgency that made all these people reckless also kept them from noticing the obvious. And it all played right into his hands, aiding him instead of driving him away or driving him to madness.
It was a good thing. Because for several weeks, he’d questioned his sanity. What was real? What was created by the demons in his mind? Demons, or what his mother called his “overactive imagination.”
She had drilled it in over and over again after that night. She insisted what he thought he saw had been influenced by different factors.
That’s what she told him. It’s what she told everyone.
She insisted that a young child’s mind could be easily manipulated into believing things that simply were not true.
That was her answer when his description of the events that took away his father didn’t coincide with what she had witnessed or reported. The situation was “too traumatic” for him to remember correctly. That’s what she told the authorities.
“He’s still in shock. He just lost his father,” she said. “Trauma can tangle memories and details until none of them make sense.”
Plus, her older son had a vivid imagination to begin with. He always had his nose in a graphic novel or a comic book. She sometimes thought he got reality mixed up with the made-up stories he read.
And she could be so convincing.
She’d even convinced him.
So much so that for years, he believed his nightmares about that night were convoluted by his wickedly vivid imagination.
But not anymore. Those same nightmares had finally revealed the truth about that night.
Now, after he’d walked by countless law enforcement officers, he casually entered the unlocked garage. Only one vehicle filled the huge space. Someone wasn’t home. Though Gregory had gotten a glimpse of the woman standing in the front entrance. She had flung open the door, and watched the helicopter passing overhead with a flicker of a smile. For some reason, its presence pleased her.
The rotors’ whomp-whomp masked Gregory’s attempt to check the knob on the door between the garage and the house. It, too, was unlocked. Such a safe neighborhood. It probably rarely got locked when those huge garage doors were down.
The helicopter noise concealed his entry into the gleaming white kitchen, where no one greeted him. Or blocked him. He kept the knife tucked inside its holder, hidden by his shirttails.
He passed through the dining room. In the living room, he slowed, then stopped to look at the photos on the mantle and on the walls. He shook his head. Chided himself for being disappointed.
When he finally stepped into the hallway, the helicopter sound was fading. She was closing the door. There was a whisper of the smile still on her face before she turned and gasped at the sight of him.
“What in the world?”
“Hello Mom.”