999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [38]
At first, Father remained relatively calm, though annoyed that his work schedule had been disturbed; then, as it seemed that Graeme might be truly missing, he joined in our search, awkwardly, with a convalescent’s uncertain step, blinking in the harsh sunshine as he waded through the thigh-high grass brushing away gnats from his face. We heard his voice echoing everywhere—“Graeme! I command you to return! Son, this is your father speaking!” He was alternately furious and frightened; his fury didn’t surprise us, but his fear began to terrify us, for it was rare that our father betrayed so weak an emotion.
Finally Stephen searched through the things on Graeme’s cluttered desk, where he discovered the cryptic message his brother had so conscientiously hand-printed:
What have I lost: my usemame, my password, my soul.
Where must I flee: not IRL. There is none
Father was astonished by these words, as if he hadn’t known that his thirteen-year-old son was capable of such eloquence. In a puzzled voice he asked Stephen what “IRL” meant, and Stephen said, hesitantly, “I think it means ‘In Real Life,’ Father,” and Father said, “ ‘In Real Life’—but what does that mean?” and Stephen said, reluctantly, “ ‘IRL’ is a cyberspace term referring to—well, all that is, that isn’t cyberspace.” For a long tense moment Father contemplated this disturbing revelation; his pale, wounded mouth worked in silence. Then he said, “So Graeme has left us, then. He has run away. In repudiation of me. He has lost faith in me.”
Stephen protested, “But Graeme might be—lost. Even if he ran away, he’s only a kid. He might need help; we’d better report him missing,” and Father said, with an air of dismissal, “Graeme is a traitorous son. He is no longer my son. I can never forgive him, and I forbid the rest of you to forgive him or get into contact with him. He has repudiated us all—the Mathesons. We must expel him from our hearts.”
Before Stephen could prevent him, Father snatched the message from Stephen’s fingers and tore it briskly into shreds.
10. The Lost Brother
In that way it happened that our brother Graeme disappeared from Cross Hill in the late summer of our exile at Cross Hill and was not reported missing; nor was any trace ever found of him in the old ruin of a house or on the grounds; though, without knowing what she did, Rosalind often found herself looking for him, or for someone—hearing a faint, reproachful voice calling Rosalind! Stephen! that, when she paused to listen more closely, faded into the incessant wind. Rosalind wandered through distant corridors and rooms in the old house, discovering parts of it she’d never seen before; ascending narrow, creaking staircases, poking into closets, peering into the dark, cobwebbed corners where household debris had accumulated like driftwood. Outdoors, she found herself drawn to the old, collapsing barns, the rotted grape and wisteria arbors with their look of bygone romance, the tall, rustling grasses of the park that extended for acres like an inland sea. Rosa-lind! Ste-phen! Help me! Yet Graeme’s features were beginning to fade in her memory, like a Polaroid photo exposed to overly bright sunshine. And in fact there seemed to be no photos or snapshots of Graeme in the household; it was discovered that most of the family memorabilia, kept in scrap-books once obsessively maintained by Mother, had been lost in the move from the city. So, if Father had agreed to report his missing son to the police, there would have been the embarrassment of having not a single picture of Graeme to give them.
Anxiously, Rosalind examined herself in the murky, lead-spotted mirrors of Cross Hill. Through the long summer she’d grown an inch or more, her slender body was filling out, her legs long, beautifully shaped and subtly muscular; she’d become golden-tan, on the verge of her fifteenth birthday