The Chronicles of Landon
Wicker:
The Search for Artemis
By P.D. Griffith
EXTENDED PREVIEW
Text Copyright © 2011 by Patrick Griffith
Eagle/Owl Illustration Copyright © 2011 by Joe Larralde
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, photocopied, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author
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Design by Patrick Griffith
Illustration by Joe Larralde
Text set in Times New Roman
First American Edition
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ISBN 978-0-9837017-0-5 (Kindle)
ISBN 978-0-9837017-1-2 (eBook)
ISBN 978-0-9837017-3-6 (Paperback)
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Chapters
Chapter Four: The White Rabbit
Thank You
Gryff Publishing, Ltd. would like to thank you for downloading the extended preview of P.D. Griffith’s debut novel, The Search for Artemis. It contains APOCRATUSIS, the first part of the three-part novel, in its entirety. We hope you enjoy the read and are swept away by the excitement and intrigue of The Chronicles of Landon Wicker.
Part 1 - Apocratusis
Chapter One:
Blackout
Landon Wicker scurried down the fire escape. Orange flecks of rust covered his bloodstained hands. Stumbling from rung to rung, he couldn’t get to the ground fast enough. His heart was racing; he felt lightheaded.
Then, in his haste to get away, his foot slipped off the ladder, causing him to clutch onto the crusty metal. Pressed against the steel, Landon shut his eyes and took a labored gulp as he fought to get past the nerve-wracking sensation of falling that briefly washed through his body.
As he paused to right himself, he heard the sound of the cell phone he’d dropped break into a million pieces on the asphalt below. He took a quick look back up the fire escape before continuing down. He could see the light from his bedroom as it shone out the window and cast a pale light over the dark alley. Landon’s mind was still spinning from what had happened, and he couldn’t understand if he was making the right choice. What if he was wrong? What if he was overreacting? How could they blame him for what happened?
There was no time for second-guessing—he needed to get away. Whoever it was at the door had probably forced their way into the apartment by now and discovered the catastrophe waiting inside. To make it worse, Landon was clueless to what had happened; he just woke up, and the place was a disaster.
Unnerved and frightened, Landon clambered down the steel rungs of the fire escape and jumped to the ground, the remnants of his cell phone crunching under his tennis shoes. The impact of the hard asphalt caused him to stumble, but once he regained his footing, he stood up and pulled the strap of his duffle bag onto his shoulder.
Landon was running away from home—from what he might have done. He was running from an intuition that he was to blame for the crime. He was running, literally, as fast as he could. He was sprinting down the alley, not stopping to look back.
• • • • •
Five hours earlier.
Landon lay on his bed with a sticky film of sweat forcing the exposed parts of his body to cling to the sheets. The heat wave had been unrelenting for more than two weeks, and according to the weatherman, there was no end in sight. Even the sun setting didn’t seem to squelch the heat. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful sunset; the deep golden hues and vibrant pinks crept through Landon’s window, casting an orange glow on his unlit bedroom.
The sweat that soaked his body penetrated the sheets, creating a watery outline that looked morbidly like the chalk at a crime scene. He hadn’t moved for hours. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but the heat was so oppressive that the mere idea of moving was exhausting. He stared at the fan as it rotated on the ceiling, trying to keep up with the spinning blades as they whirled around and around—lost in his own world.
That was why he didn’t hear his mother knocking on his bedroom door, see the shadow as it opened, or notice she’d walked in. She stepped over to his bed and gently touched his arm.
“Whoa, Mom…I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Well, I knocked, so you know.” She spoke calmly but sternly. “Anyways, dinner is ready. Get out of your bed and come to the table. Tonight we’re having stroganoff.”
Landon flung his legs off the side of his bed, but for a few moments that was the extent of his ability to move. He stayed that way, awkwardly contorted, until it started to get uncomfortable, and then he forced himself to sit up on the edge of the bed. His movements were lazy. He looked like a rag doll: his head resting on his shoulder, his shoulders slumped, and his arms dangling from his sides. Finally, after contemplating whether dinner was worth the effort, Landon stood up and followed his mother out to the dinner table.
His entire life they had lived in the same small two-bedroom apartment. It was one of those city apartments that cost way too much for the size, but he was lucky—he had his own room. His mother and father slept in the bedroom at the other end of the apartment, and between them was a small living space with barely enough room for a couch, a TV stand, and a dining area with a kitchen along the back wall.
Books consumed the place. His mother, an avid reader, collected them like some people collect commemorative pins. Not only did they fill the two bookshelves she crammed into the living room, but they were also stacked on the end tables, on top of the TV and all around the unused fourth seat of the dinner table. Stacks accumulated by the front door, in the corners of every room, and on the two windowsills in the apartment. A collection of James Joyce novels (and the numerous books needed to comprehend James Joyce) sat atop the microwave. Lewis Carroll found his home next to a bottle of whiskey. Coincidentally, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged held up as the replacement for the missing leg of their old leather couch. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have needed Sherlock Homes to find a copy of one of his books amid the illogical library that congested the apartment.
But books weren’t all his mother collected; she had a fondness for figurines and tchotchkes. No matter where she went, she came back with a little piece of junk. There was the pink flamingo lawn ornament she got in Florida, a snow globe from Vermont, and a miniature bronze replica of The Thinker that she acquired from a dinky souvenir shop in New York near Columbia University. There were resin replicas of every landmark around the globe: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Mount Rushmore, The Great Pyramids of Giza, Big Ben, and Washington Monument, to name a few. It didn’t matter if she went there or not, she needed them. Countless more littered the apartment, generally resting on haphazardly constructed pedestals of bound paper and ink.
In an attempt to make the apartment a bit more normal, she put a bunch of framed pictures on the walls from their spontaneous vacations. For these trips, she would wake Landon up in the middle of the night, and the two of them would be gone as long as the money allowed. When they got back, she always seemed to pick the most embarrassing ones to frame. As Landon neared the dinner table, he looked at one taken during their trip to Vermont last spring break. Dressed in layers of clothing, Landon stood awkwardly on a pair of rickety skis at the base of a large snow-covered mountain. He thought he looked like the Michelin Man in that photo.
It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care. It was what his mom did, and even if Landon didn’t always show it, he actually liked her. She told the craziest stories about her childhood growing up outside Atlanta, and she made the best food he had ever tasted. Her beef stroganoff was renowned throughout the apartment building. No barbecue commenced without her pasta salad. She also pushed Landon to try things, which he oddly appreciated. She saw too much of herself in him and didn’t want him to be unsuccessful because of a hereditary lack of motivation. Landon was what the school called “gifted,” meaning that he learned faster than the other kids and didn’t need to put in any effort to get by. And get by was all he did.
“Finally! I’m glad you could join us,” Mr. Wicker said as Landon shuffled toward his seat at the table.
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t know dinner was ready.” Landon pulled out his chair. His father seemed to be in a good mood that evening.
Mr. Wicker directed his attention to Landon’s mother.
“Babe! Bring me my plate! I’m not waiting any longer!”
Landon’s mom put a plate of delicious stroganoff in front of his father, and then set one each for Landon and herself, steam slowly rising from the piles of gravy-covered pasta. As the intoxicating smell wafted into Landon’s awaiting nostrils, he began to salivate, just waiting to dive into the Wicker specialty. It was a rule in the apartment that no one could eat until Mr. Wicker took his first bite. Over the years, Landon and his mom had received enough painful lumps on their heads from the heavy butt end of the butter knife to know this.
Mr. Wicker grabbed the salt and pepper off the table and shook copious amounts onto his plate. He then took his fork, scooped up a hefty amount of pasta and thrust it into his wide-open mouth. That was his cue. Landon began to devour his plate of food, not even taking a moment to breathe as he scarfed down his favorite meal. His mother calmly ate her food, constructing tiny, perfectly portioned bites on her fork. The table was silent. It always was during dinner. Not because they were eating, but because Mr. Wicker liked it that way.
“Can you get me another beer and bring the pan over here?” Mr. Wicker asked after slurping down the last drop of his lager. “I want some more.”
Landon’s mother got up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator. After opening the door and standing there for a while, bent over, moving pieces of Tupperware and vegetables out of the way, she asked hesitantly, “How about some milk?” She kept her head turned toward the inside of the refrigerator, clearly dreading what came next.
“Milk? Why in hell would I want milk?” Mr. Wicker asked, evenly. “What are you waiting for? Get some in there now. And you better hope they get cold quick.”
He sat in his seat, waving his empty beer can in the air, utter disgust emanating from his exaggerated scowl. “Look at me!” Landon’s mom turned her head toward Mr. Wicker. The next words he spoke extra slowly, making sure Mrs. Wicker understood every syllable. “You better get some beer in there now, grab that pan, put more food on my plate and do it fast. Before I get angry.”
Mrs. Wicker grabbed a new case of beer out of the cabinet below the sink and unpacked the cans, putting them in the fridge to cool down. She shoved two cans in the ice bucket in the freezer in hopes they would get cold before Mr. Wicker’s patience ran out. Then, she threw the empty box in the trash bin, picked up the pan of stroganoff by its handle, and walked across the room to Mr. Wicker’s seat. She spooned some more onto his plate, set the pan on a trivet on the dinner table, and returned to her seat. The room became silent once again.
When Landon finished, he got up and brought his plate to the sink to rinse off.
“Landon, I think it’s time for you to read a book,” his mom said.
“But it’s too hot to read. It’s too hot to do anything,” he mumbled under his breath as he turned toward the sink.
“Landon, I said it’s time for you to read a book.”
Landon couldn’t think of any rebuttal. He turned off the sink, admitted defeat and headed out of the dining area. After his bedroom door shut, he heard the murmur of his father’s voice as he started to yell at his mother.
Back in his room, Landon turned on the reading light next to his bed, blindly pulled the first book off of his “to read” stack and flopped back down on the mattress. He examined the book: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. There was water damage on its cover in a perfect circle, exactly the size of a beer can. Mr. Wicker apparently used the book as a coaster at one time.
Landon opened up the book to a random page and stuck his nose into the middle seam, taking a big whiff of the pages. He loved the smell of books, particularly old ones. There was something about them. They all smelled different, which perplexed him, and he wasn’t sure why he liked it so much. Was it the ink, the paper, or the smell of literary sweat and tears? He had no idea, but he knew he liked it, and he knew that textbooks didn’t possess the same olfactory appeal. This book had a somewhat sour smell. It reminded him of milk on the last day before it goes bad. But it also smelled like pecans and walnuts. It smelled perfect.
Landon decided to obey his mother’s wishes and turned back to the front page.
After about a half hour or so, his mind began to wander. The words started blurring together and his eyelids became heavy. He tried to pay attention, but no matter how much he focused, he couldn’t concentrate on the page. Eventually, his head became too heavy to hold up, and he decided to prop it up on his arm.
• • • • •
Thump.
“Ah! I’m reading! Wha-?”
Landon looked confusedly around his room. Nothing was out of the ordinary, just him lying on his bed. He glanced down and noticed the stream of drool that ran over his arm. David Copperfield laid open, pinned between him and the mattress. How long had he been asleep?
He could still hear his father screaming in the living room. As usual, he couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he could tell he was mad. Even though the place was small, his mom’s book collection created a kind of sound barrier in the apartment. If the door was closed, he generally couldn’t make out what happened in the other part of the house.
Normally, Landon ignored his father’s yelling. He always figured he was just screaming at the TV after his football team had made a bad play or calling for another beer, but the sound that woke him had sparked his curiosity. Landon wanted to see what was going on.
He slid off the bed, wiped his drool-covered arm on his pants, and dreamily walked out of his room. As he opened the door and entered the living room, he fought to become fully awake, rubbing his eyes with the side of his fingers.
“Please. Please, John. Please. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother said.
When Landon’s eyes focused, he saw his mother, crumpled on the ground, pressed against a pile of books in the corner of the living room, tears streaming down her face. Mr. Wicker stood over her, forcefully holding her by the wrist, and he was screaming. The thud that had awakened Landon from his Dickens-induced nap was not someone knocking on his door, but the sound of his mother hitting the hardwood as Mr. Wicker threw her to the floor.
“I told you if you stepped out of line one more time that you’d regret it! And you just couldn’t do as I asked! You brought this upon yourself!”
“Please, John. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” wailed Mrs. Wicker. “I…tripped. It…was…an…accident.”
Tears continued to pour from Mrs. Wicker’s eyes. Her pleas were staggered, forced out between her sobs.
“Let her go!” Landon was surprised to hear himself speaking with such force. He never spoke back to his father, but the scene unfolding in his living room caught him totally by surprise. He knew his father had a temper, but he always yelled. Outside of the butter knife at dinner, Landon never knew of his father to be violent.
“Landon, please…go back to your room,” Mrs. Wicker sobbed.
“Yeah, you heard her, go read your book,” Mr. Wicker said mockingly. “That way you don’t have to see how stupid your idiot mother is.”
As he spoke, he yanked on Mrs. Wicker’s arm. She whimpered as it was pulled. She was completely overpowered and defenseless.
“Dad, stop! She’s obviously sorry for whatever she did!”
“Yes, John, I’m sorry. Of course I know better. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother pleaded.
“Oh, shut up!”
He raised his free arm, his hand wide open. It was poised like a viper, ready to strike. And, like a snake, he attacked, his hand speeding toward the side of Mrs. Wicker’s tear-tracked face.
To Landon, it went by in slow motion. He watched as his father’s hand descended on his helpless mother.
“No! Don’t touch her!” Landon screamed at the top of his lungs.
Mr. Wicker’s hand stopped mere inches from the cringing face of Landon’s mother. He strained as if he was shackled and a chain held his arm back. Mr. Wicker fought with all his might, but his body was frozen. Pulsing powerfully just under his skin, his veins bulged from his effort to move. His muscles tensed. Sweat collected on his forehead and dripped down the side of his face.
“What are you doing? Mr. Wicker’s body stood motionless but his eyes pointed right at Landon.
“You’re not going to hurt her!” A strange feeling Landon had never experienced before seemed to awaken within him. It exploded like a fire igniting deep in his body. Heat emanated from his hands and feet. He was losing control; his body was trembling and his legs were weak.
A cloud built up inside Landon’s head. He was confused, but he also felt a strange sense of freedom, as if something caged inside of him had become unleashed.
“What are you doing?” Mr. Wicker asked again, still motionless with his eyes fixed on Landon. His voice was still booming, but Landon heard a slight tremble at the end.
“No more!” Landon’s voice echoed through the apartment. His head was foggy and his vision blurry.
Mr. Wicker’s inert body flew backward across the room as if an imaginary hook pulled him with all its force. He bowled into a large pile of books by the doorway into the dining area; an avalanche of pages quickly engulfed his entire body.
Landon watched in utter disbelief. The feeling that awoke within him possessed his entire body. He didn’t know what was going on and he wasn’t able to stop it. His head grew numb and he looked through a clouded haze as he stared at his buried father. He wondered if he would move, but suddenly a book floated up, blocking his line of sight.
Books and figurines from all over the apartment steadily rose into the air and began moving around the living room. Volumes upon volumes lifted off their disorganized piles and formed a swirling vortex. The lights began to flicker and picture frames trembled all over the apartment, creating a violent banging noise as they fruitlessly attempted to jump off the hooks that held them to the wall. The floor, ceiling, and walls rumbled and quaked as cracks formed and snaked across the surface. Drywall and dust dislodged and joined the books and miscellaneous objects in a tumultuous journey around the room. Tethered to the wall by the service cable, the TV floated off its stand, and the old leather couch shook violently on the floor. Books and objects continued to rise off their stacks and pedestals. The pink flamingo lawn ornament flew dangerously close to the Landon’s head, but he stood unfazed. His eyed remained focused on his father’s unconscious body, which became visible again after the majority of the books covering him rose into the air.
Landon’s mother followed her copy of Alice in Wonderland with a look of horror as it breezed by her head. Still on the floor, she slid back and pressed her body against the wall as she watched what was happening; her body trembled with fear.
She turned to Landon, but he didn’t look back at her. His features appeared rigid and hard. His eyes were dilated, his hair whipped around from an invisible wind, and sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Landon, are you doing this? If you are, you can stop! I’m okay!” Trying to raise her voice over the deafening racket of the apartment, Mrs. Wicker ineffectually attempted to call to her son.
“He will never hurt us again,” Landon said, but his voice didn’t seem his own. It was guttural and commanding as if he was possessed.
“Landon, can you stop this?” asked his mother, but Landon couldn’t hear her. “Please Landon, come back to me!”
The couch shot off the ground and hit the ceiling with a resounding boom. It then zoomed across the room and collided with the wall, pinned in the air.
Then without cause, Landon’s body went numb, his vision went black, his body shook, and he collapsed.
• • • • •
Landon opened his eyes. It took a minute for his vision to adjust to the dark, dusty apartment. He had a blinding headache, and as he came to, he realized that he lay covered in a dense pile of books and random trinkets. While looking around, he cautiously got to his feet. The apartment was a disaster. A torrent of books and figurines were strewn everywhere, and the furniture was bent and broken. The walls looked cracked and crumbling; chunks of drywall littered the room, and it was dark. The light bulbs in all the lamps had shattered. Had a tornado landed? Had a hurricane blown through?
Landon looked perplexingly across the room at the overturned couch and suddenly noticed his father’s lifeless arm protruding from under its crushing weight. Landon froze, paralyzed by shock. What happened? Where’s my mom? Did I do this?
Fervently, Landon waded through the piles of debris, throwing books behind him as he searched for his mother. Volumes by Poe, Twain and Stevenson flew through the air, landing on collections of Shakespearean plays and Agatha Christie mysteries. He picked up another book, but paused; it felt wet. After wiping his hand on his pants, he pulled the book to his face to see if he could tell what it was in the darkness. When he looked closer the liquid appeared dark and thick—definitely not water. Then a ferrous smell caught his attention. Was it blood? Landon anxiously pushed aside the books until he found his mother lying on the floor. Oozing from a deep cut on her head, a pool of crimson blood spread across the cracked floor, the bronze miniature of The Thinker lying beside her motionless body.
“Mom!” Landon screamed as he fell to his mother’s side. On instinct, he started to shake her, violently trying to wake her up. “Mom! Please, Mom! Wake up!” He continued to shake her over and over again, but with every push, her body limply fell back to the floor. Tears stung his eyes as his body reacted to a painful truth his mind was unwilling to accept. Unable to stop himself, Landon continued to scream at her and shake her, expecting his mother to wake up at any moment.
Suddenly, the loud creak of someone in the hall caught Landon’s attention. As their feet pressed into the old floorboards of the building, the sounds of their footsteps became louder and louder as they moved closer to his apartment door.
Landon bolted upright and dragged his fingers through his hair. What would happen if someone came through that door? What would they think when they found him standing over his mother with her blood all over his hands? His family lay lifelessly amidst mountains of debris, casualties of an unknown apocalypse, with Landon as the only survivor. They’d think I did it, he realized, as there was no way for him to explain what happened. He couldn’t remember anything after he opened his bedroom door.
Panicking, he plowed through the debris, pushing his way into his room. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and leaned against it. He started to lose his breath and his heart pounded within his chest. Apart from the broken door and a bit of dust, his room looked the same as he left it. The copy of David Copperfield still lay on his disheveled bed and his reading lamp illuminated the room. He walked over and collapsed beside the bed, pressing his head into his hands. What have I done? He didn’t know why, but he knew he was responsible. What do I do now?
He could think of only one option. He ran through his room as sweat soaked his clothes and dripped from his face. He shoved a pair of dirty jeans and a few t-shirts into a duffle bag then jumped over the corner of the bed to his nightstand and pulled out his special copy of Treasure Island from a small drawer and placed it on the bed. He opened it and pulled a stack of cash from its hollowed-out pages and shoved the money into his pocket.
He then grabbed a pen and a composition notebook off a stack of textbooks on the floor and rushed to his desk. As he sat there, he took a long breath and looked around his room. Pictures from his vacations with his mother and posters of his favorite rock bands lined the walls. Books and knickknacks covered his shelves. He was his mother’s son. Homework and clothes littered the floor, and in a corner he saw a bin with a small plastic sword sticking out of it, a pirate’s bandana dangling from its hilt. He turned back to the desk and opened up the notebook to a random page. In small letters across a line toward the top he wrote, “I’m sorry,” before tearing the page out of the notebook, folding it once down the middle, and setting it on his desk. He secured it with a third place trophy he won for the 100-meter backstroke when he was eleven.
The sound of someone knocking on the apartment door startled him. He’d lingered too long. Panicked, he grabbed his cell phone off his desk, sped to the other side of his room, and opened the window. With one foot on the fire escape, he turned around and looked at his bedroom once more. Something told him this could be the last time he would ever see it. A moment later he climbed down the metal ladder into the alley.
Chapter Two:
Run Away
Landon stopped running when he reached the park. It was only a mile or two from the apartment, but he knew that it was large and dark and that there would be plenty of places to hide for the night. Thinking of the one place he knew best, he went straight for the lake. His mother brought him there so many times as a kid that he felt he could name every tree and animal in a fifty foot radius.
Choosing a weeping willow with a large patch of grass at its base, Landon curled up, trying to sleep. It seemed impossible at first. The adrenaline wearing off in his system made his body convulse, and his mind was still spinning from what he had seen in the apartment. He closed his eyes, but there was no closing his brain, which appeared inclined to assault him with a barrage of images from the crime scene. Landon resigned himself to a long, restless night.
Landon awoke the next morning to the sound of the ducks quacking in the lake. Somehow he fell asleep, and it was now early morning. He got up quickly and looked around. The sun peeked above the horizon, the light morning fog hadn’t lifted yet, and the ground was wet with dew. Landon immediately devised a game plan. First, he would scope out his surroundings and try to memorize all the other places he might be able to run to if someone came after him. Second, breakfast. Third, he would sit down and try to write everything he remembered from the night before. If he expected to ever rid himself of this nightmare, he needed to figure out what happened.
A number of locals ran through the footpaths of the park for a bit of morning exercise. Unlike them, Landon studied the paths, mentally noting every possible unmarked path into the trees and dark spot behind a rock or root that he might be able to use for hiding in case of emergency. The park was more beautiful than he remembered. It was the middle of the summer; the flowers were in full bloom and the grass had filled in since the cold winter. Squirrels ran around playing in the grass and hoarding whatever they could find. Birds chirped and glided from tree to tree. The ducks and geese swam peacefully in the lake.
Once he finished his reconnaissance mission, the fog had lifted and the burdensome heat returned with a vengeance. Landon started to sweat. For a reprieve, he left the park and went into a little bagel shop across the street. When he opened the door, the cool air conditioning blasted him in the face. It felt wonderful. Landon sauntered up to the counter and ordered himself a toasted everything bagel covered in a lox cream cheese spread. As he ate it, he realized there was no reason to go outside to work on his third task of his imaginary To Do list, so he pulled out his notebook and pen and sat in the back of the shop to work.
He started by trying to remember everything he saw once he woke up in the living room, jotting down what he remembered of his father under the couch and his mother amidst the books with blood covering the floor. He noted the crumbling walls, the broken picture frames and light bulbs, the busted TV in the corner, and the overturned dining table pushed up against the back wall. After that, he couldn’t really remember anything. He closed his eyes and tried to think back to before he woke up on the floor. He remembered dinner, reading David Copperfield, falling asleep, waking up, and opening up his door while half asleep. Everything beyond opening the door he couldn’t remember. It was just black—a blank space in his mind. As he continued to hopelessly think back to the night before, Landon started to doodle little geometric shapes and lines in the margin of the notebook, but after about an hour of getting nowhere, he gave up and went back to the park.
For the next few days, Landon didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Every night he slept under the willow tree, ate at the little shops and food carts around the park and watched the many people that passed through. He loved people watching. He started to find a bit of amusement in the diverse outfits of the runners in the mornings. Even in the middle of the heat wave, some covered themselves in sweat pants and hoodies, and they ran right alongside men with short shorts and tiny little tank tops. Some ran in extremely bright colors and others would dress in boring greys and blues. He even thought he saw some that had blinkers and flashers on their clothing. The flashiest dressers were typically the weirdest runners, flailing about as they stomped down the path. Even so, he never understood runners. They’d get up at the crack of dawn to only run around in a circle and then turn back to go home once they tired. It just didn’t make sense.
Landon also found his amusement in watching the nannies attempt to corral their children on the playground, but his favorite thing was listening to the numerous musicians. Each of them set up their instrument at the same place every day perhaps in hopes that they might be discovered, or, Landon assumed, more likely to make a few bucks from passersby. Times were hard. Landon easily assessed the talent of the musicians based on the amount of tips they made. Some of them were amazing, one girl especially. She set up shop in the corner of the park near the entrance to the theatre district. Requiring no other accompaniment than her guitar, she sang out soulful and somewhat ethereal, always original, songs in a voice Landon momentarily labeled “sexy” before he chastised himself for thinking about girls while on the run.
He had more important things to think about, like money. Lately he paid much more attention to currency. No matter where he went, he always became aware of the person paying for a pretzel at the cart or the cash laying in a musician’s guitar case. Since he ran away from home, he’d nearly run through all of the money that was in his Treasure Island book. Even when buying cheap food in the park, it doesn’t take long for one to spend a lot on food. Hoping that the remainder of his cash would last him a few more days, Landon cut back to eating once a day.
While he continued to get more and more familiar with the park, Landon began to notice men suited in black strolling around. They weren’t regulars. Landon would have known. The only people he ever saw in suits at the park came with a few other people and they’d sit on a bench and eat a sandwich for a quick lunch—in and out in thirty minutes tops. These other guys would wander around the footpaths for a while and just disappear. The first time Landon noticed them, he thought he needed to keep an eye out, and if they tried anything, to run as fast as his legs could carry him to one of his hideouts.
As the days passed, they seemed to multiply. What started out as two of them soon became five and then seven, and Landon got more nervous with each new addition. They still hadn’t tried anything, but they quickly moved from strolling the footpaths to loitering about thirty or so yards from Landon’s position, wherever that might be. That night, he decided to leave the park and relocate somewhere else under the cover of darkness. They were closing in and he still hadn’t gotten any closer in his attempts to remember that night.
His notebook contained the same information scribbled one page after the other with a bunch of random doodles and drawings covering the margins, but after the first few days, he began to believe he remembered other things from that night. First, he thought he possibly saw his father’s hand move from under the couch. It was nothing more than a flick of his finger, but Landon could see it. Later he could have sworn that he remembered seeing his mother’s chest moving up and down after he removed all the books from on top of her. After a week, Landon was convinced that his parents still lived, but he feared going back home until he could remember what happened during his blackout. He still didn’t know if he was responsible.
Since he couldn’t remember, Landon started to concoct all sorts of theories as to what potentially happened that night. In one scenario, the thud that woke him up in his room was the sound of a mobster breaking into the apartment, searching for something that he believed they were hiding. That explained the state of the apartment, as the thug would have torn through the place searching for whatever it was he wanted, and it explained why Landon couldn’t remember it. He thought that after he opened his bedroom door, the mobster whacked him on the head and knocked him out before he saw anything. It seemed like a plausible explanation, but what would his parents be hiding and why would Landon’s room be left untouched?
Another scenario involved his father not being a mechanic but instead a special weapons developer for a secret branch of the government. He’d brought his most recent project home, a fireless explosive device that only destroys the contents of a single confined space. It was developed with the intention to be used in special situations where the government wanted to eliminate a target while minimizing civilian casualties. That explained why Landon’s bedroom seemed untouched, but that didn’t explain why he survived. There were always holes in his theories.
One afternoon, Landon remembered something he read in one of his textbooks; it was called Occam’s Razor. Supposedly, when trying to solve a problem, the simplest explanation is generally the correct one, but Landon didn’t want to believe that. If that was true, Landon did it. It was the simplest explanation, but Landon couldn’t think of any possible way he could have caused all of that destruction. One day, Landon brought himself to write, “I did it,” into his notebook, but since then he’d scratched through it so many times that he’d torn three pages.
For the next week and a half, Landon never stayed in the same place for more than two nights. By then, the suited men started popping up in crowds and around corners. This constant worry of getting caught began to take its toll. Landon became afraid he’d underestimated the severity of his potential crime. He always thought that it would be the police looking for him since it would have been a simple case of domestic violence gone wrong, but these guys definitely didn’t work for the police. They were like FBI, CIA, NSA, or something. Why would they get involved in something like this?
After feeling particularly alone and frightened, Landon went back to his apartment building—the place where it all began. By the time he got there, a storm had rolled in, and it poured down rain. Lightning was flashing overhead and the sound of thunder bounced deafeningly through the city streets. He tried not to get too close; he stayed in a dark alley across the street and just looked at the building, counting the windows until he found his apartment. Once he located it, he noticed that the lights inside were off. He stayed there, staring at the window for quite a long time, imagining what his mother would be cooking for dinner and what random school activity she would try to convince him to join next. Then a cab drove up to the building and Mrs. Bradford got out.
Landon didn’t really have grandparents. His mother’s parents died in a car accident while she was in college and his father’s parents wanted less to do with him than his father did. While growing up, Mrs. Bradford sort of stepped in. Landon even called her “Nana.” Her husband had died of a heart attack a few years before Landon was born, and she lived alone in the apartment down the hall from theirs. Before Landon started high school, she used to walk him back to the apartment building from the bus stop and watch him while his mother and father were at work. She made him cookies and other baked goods, and they worked on random art projects or played card games. Her favorite game was gin rummy, but Landon always seemed to beat her. He never figured out if it was because he was so good at it or if she let him win. He eventually decided on the latter.
He watched her ascend the stairs into the building, noticing she was having a lot of difficulty juggling her bag of groceries, her umbrella and her keys. As she tried to unlock the entry door, her grocery bag slipped out from under her arm and tumbled down the stairs, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk. Immediately, Landon bolted across the street to help her. He wrangled up all of the loose produce and canned goods and placed them back in the grocery sack. He then went up the short staircase and handed them back to Mrs. Bradford while making sure to keep his head down.
“Thank you so much, my dear boy,” Mrs. Bradford said.
“It’s no problem, Nana,” Landon replied.
“Nana?”
With a speed much faster than Mrs. Bradford should be capable of, she gently placed her hand under Landon’s chin and raised his head up to look at him. Mrs. Bradford saw the boy she helped raise over the past fifteen years.
“Landon?” Mrs. Bradford questioned. Her voice was barely audible as her tears held her words back. “Is that really you? I was so worried!”
Landon looked at Mrs. Bradford in horror. He pulled Mrs. Bradford’s hand away from his face and stumbled down to the sidewalk, never taking his eyes off of her. The rain beat down on his soaked body, weighing down his clothes and making it difficult for him to see. He realized that in an instant, he’d revealed himself and potentially jeopardized his freedom. He also knew by the face of Mrs. Bradford that he was wrong about his parents’ survival. They were not alive. If they lived, she wouldn’t have responded like she did. Once back on the street, he turned and ran back into the alley. He heard Mrs. Bradford calling to him from the apartment steps, begging him to come back. That night was the first night Landon cried.
The next morning the men in black showed up again, and Landon moved to a dark spot next to a dumpster behind a convenience store.
• • • • •
Landon awoke with a start. The convenience store clerk had thrown a bag of garbage into the dumpster he was sleeping behind, and the metallic clank reverberated in his ears. Watching the rusty water drip from the back of the green dumpster, Landon came to reality. Fortunately, the heat wave had lifted, and a breeze coursed through the dim alleyway. The wind flipped through page after page of his notebook lying next to him on the pavement, covered in doodles and notes.
Based on the date printed on the newspaper Landon slept on, it had been just over three weeks since he ran away. If he were at home, Landon would have woken up resenting the fact that he was about to spend another boring day walking the halls of his high school. Landon actually wished he were sitting in a sterile sophomore classroom listening to the monotone ramblings of a biology teacher. He even dreamed about the school lunches. After a week or so of living off of other people’s scraps, school lunches started to seem gourmet.
Landon slowly rose to his feet. His body ached from head to foot after sleeping so many nights on the hard asphalt. Once he stretched, he picked up his notebook, stashed it in his duffle bag, and threw the bag over his shoulder. Maybe he would be able to find a half-eaten meal lying on top of a trashcan. That would be the most luck he had experienced in a week.
The alley shot off of Hugo Street, one of the city’s major roadways. It was lined in dumpsters and garbage cans intended to serve the tenants of the storefronts and apartments and spacious enough for a garbage or supply truck. Loose pieces of paper and debris littered the ground and trickling down the middle of the asphalt, a small stream of grimy water snaked toward the open street. Even with its size, the alley was probably the most depressing and disgusting place Landon had slept since he ran away.
Landon stared at the metallic zigzag of a fire escape as it cascaded down the brick facing of an apartment building. Since he went back to the apartment complex, he had been haunted by random images in his dreams. They were never more than images, but they didn’t make any sense to him. How could images of flying books or couches on the ceiling make sense to anyone?
After looking through the garbage the store clerk had thrown into the dumpster for a potential morsel of food that resembled a breakfast, Landon decided to move on into the streets of the city. He wasn’t sure of the time of the day, but the city was alive. Cars congested the roads and honked at one another as they drove to their respective destinations. The sidewalks teemed with people who fought their way down the narrow paths. Landon noticed over the past couple of days that he didn’t have as much trouble moving through the streets as everyone else. People seemed to want to avoid him in any way possible and making eye contact was out of the question. He felt like an outcast. Was it the way he looked or just the way he smelled? When he ran away that night, he hadn’t thought to grab his deodorant off the dresser. Even so, this was more than stench. People seemed to avoid him like a plague, as if he were some sort of diseased menace to society. It started to take its toll on him because apart from feeling like he was running for his life, he also felt more alone than he ever had in his life.
As he walked down the sidewalk, he noticed a woman that looked surprisingly like his mother. He stopped in his tracks and turned, catching a glimpse of the back of her head moments before a sea of pedestrians blocked his line of sight. Could it really be her? Without thinking, Landon began to weave through the crowd, determined to catch another look. He ricocheted off a businessman and tumbled into a crowd of teenage girls, but none of this could avert his eyes from this woman who may be his mother. He started to gain ground, and he couldn’t wait to see her again. She looked just as he remembered. Her hair was large, brownish-black and frizzy from all her wild curls. It lay right under her shoulders and bounced with life as she walked. She also wore her favorite color, emerald green, and she was right there. Did he look so different now that she hadn’t noticed him when they crossed paths moments before? That must be it. It made sense; Landon was covered in dirt, his hair was greasy and matted to his head, and stains overran his clothes. Then he crashed into something and seconds later was plastered on to the sidewalk.
He thought he’d collided with a phone booth or maybe a street lamp. It took him a few moments to realize he was now sitting on the cold cement, but then he remembered his mother. He tried to peer through the legs and torsos of the crowd to see her, but she had disappeared. He’d lost her again. This wasn’t the first time he thought he had seen her since running away. Was she ever there or was Landon’s hunger and exhaustion playing tricks on him?
Defeated, he looked back to find out what broke his chase. He first focused on a pair of well-polished black dress shoes. They were big and wide, the laces were perfectly tied, and an even bow rested lightly on the shiny patent leather. As he raised his head, he followed the smooth legs of a pair of black pleated slacks. Once his eyes reached the man’s waist, Landon noticed the pressed white shirt with a sleek black tie and a boxy black suit jacket. The man was bulky and muscular; he hadn’t even moved an inch when Landon plowed right into him. Landon rose to his feet and looked back at the man he had run into. As he raised his head to apologize, a little scrap of paper in the man’s hand caught his attention. In a flash, Landon saw it. It was only a moment, but that was all it took for Landon to see that this suited man carried a picture of him. It was that horrible ski picture of him from Vermont that his mom had framed. Landon shot his head upward to see the face of the man who held it. He looked like all the rest of them. He had a square head and a clean-shaven, rigid jaw. His blonde hair was cut the same as the others, and out of his right ear extended a coiled wire that disappeared under his white collar.
Landon began to sweat. Drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead and his hands became clammy. He felt his heart race as his body went momentarily numb. All the sounds of the busy street faded away. They found me.
In that moment, Landon thought of one possible thing to do. He turned on the spot and began to sprint down the sidewalk, running away from the mysterious man. He forced his way through the crowds of people, who cast agitated looks at him as he bumped and pushed them.
“Wait! Stop!”
Landon heard the shouts of the suited man as he began to pursue him.
“We just want to talk to you!”
But Landon didn’t want to talk. He sped through the crowds of people, and once he reached the convenience store, he turned into the smelly alley where he had slept for the past few days. As he ran, he jolted from side to side, pulling down trash cans and throwing boxes in the path of his pursuer, hoping it would slow him down. It didn’t seem to work. Landon could hear the staccato clapping of the suited man’s shoes as he raced through the alleyway, close on his heels. The small rests in his steps made Landon envision the effortless hurdling the boxes and trashcans he’d placed in his path.
Once he reached the end of the alley, Landon turned right and sped down the sidewalk. The sound of the man’s steps gradually increased in volume as he got closer and closer. When Landon looked, he saw the man was only about 30 yards behind him, but he seemed to have more trouble working through the crowds of people.
He reached the end of the block and crossed the street. After a few days staying in the area, Landon learned this part of town well, and he figured if he got to the Financial District, he could lose himself in the thick crowds of commuters. Momentarily, Landon thought he might get away, but once he arrived at the other side of the street, he noticed another suited man running straight at him. He was almost a carbon copy of the other. If it weren’t for his brown hair, Landon would have thought the man behind him possessed some sort of magical powers.
Landon didn’t know what to do. He should have known it wouldn’t be this easy, and his new pursuer was coming from the direction he planned on going. Abruptly, Landon stopped in his tracks. His brain raced with potential routes as he tried to devise a new plan of escape. The sound of his pounding heart bounced around in his head, making it next to impossible to concentrate. He kept turning his head to the left and the right, calibrating a new route like a GPS, and watching as the two suited men moved in on his position. He couldn’t think straight; his head was clouding. Rather than wait any longer, Landon just decided to run again. He moved across the intersection, running as fast as he could from his two pursuers.
As he flew down the sidewalk, he noticed a small alley to the left and decided to dart in once he reached it. The alley was narrow, making it hard to move around the debris that littered the ground. Landon realized that he’d never gone down this alley before, and then he saw the brick wall directly in front of him—a dead end.
Frantically, Landon began to run from door to door, attempting to open any that he could. They were all locked. While gripping a new door, he looked back and saw the two men effortlessly jumping over the litter on the ground. Landon was caught. He was in a dead-end alley and the only exit available was behind two huge men determined to capture him. Landon tried the door once again, wishing it would unlock. Then Landon thought he heard a faint click, and when he pulled again, it swung open.
He jumped through the door and found himself in the back kitchen of a restaurant. Based on the smell, he imagined it was a breakfast joint. The smell of bacon wafted into his nose, making him salivate. Even though he ran for his life, feelings of hunger and exhaustion were starting to creep into his mind, and that bacon smelled fantastic. He heard the startled sounds of staff and chefs as he ran toward the service door leading into the dining room.
Unsure if anything stood in his way, Landon determinedly bit his lower lip and lowered a shoulder, busting through the door and colliding into a bus boy. Their bodies flew to the ground in a heap, dishes crashing and glasses shattering as he and the bus boy bowled into a table. The full dining room rose to their feet to get a look at the reason for the commotion. Landon popped up to his feet amidst the gasps and hollers, and looked around at all the staring faces of the shocked patrons. Once he spotted the front door, he dodged back and forth around the tables, making his way to the exit. When he pushed the door open, the bell dangling from the handle made a short melodic ring. It prompted him to glance back only to see the suited men emerging from the swinging service door, and he knew he wasn’t in the clear yet.
The racket in the restaurant caught the attention of the pedestrians, who now stood and gawked at a young, dirty, homeless teenager as he bolted down the street. They continued to watch as two suited men emerged from the restaurant and ran after the boy. Because of the attention Landon began to attract, the people seemed to move out of his path as he ran down the street, their heads turning to follow him as he passed.
Landon reached the end of the block without much resistance. He heard the screams of the two men behind him still trying to convince him to stop and talk. Landon had no intention of turning himself in for something he wasn’t sure he had done.
He turned the corner and sprinted down the sidewalk. Sweat streamed down his face and his legs started to feel like Jell-O. He also winced in pain. He had hurt his shoulder in the restaurant, but rather than dwell on it, Landon focused his attention to the task at hand and zigzagged through the cars that were stopped in traffic. Once on the other side, he dipped into another alleyway. This time it was one he recognized.
This alley was much wider than the last and there wasn’t much litter. For a brief moment, Landon’s mind wandered, and he contemplated why he hadn’t slept in this one for the past few nights. It seemed much cleaner than the alleyway behind the convenience store.
“Landon! Wait! Please! We aren’t going to hurt you! We just need to talk to you! We can help you!”
Landon halted to a stop at the intersection of another alley. He looked to the left, knowing that if he went that direction he’d be on his way to the Financial District, but that the sidewalks would probably be more crowded. The right would take him to a busy road, but because of the heavy traffic, there were never as many pedestrians. There also weren’t all the shops and restaurants like the road to the left. With no more time to think, Landon went to the right. He figured less people would make it easier for him to run and he was sure he could outrun these old men if unrestricted.
Landon was right; there was almost no one on the sidewalk. The street was congested with cars, but the sidewalks were empty, except for the occasional person or couple strolling. He ran down the street at a full sprint, but exhaustion started to take hold. Having eaten very little for days, he’d depleted all of his energy and his body wasn’t going to support the physical exertion much longer.
To make matters worse, the men seemed to move faster than ever when they didn’t need to dodge people or jump over garbage. Landon couldn’t believe he was going to be caught by two old men. There was no possible way that they ran as fast as him. Was the weight of his duffle bag slowing him down? Without fully analyzing the situation, Landon winced with pain as he pulled the duffle bag off his shoulder and tossed it to the side of the road. He didn’t like the idea of ditching his only possessions, especially the notebook. He thought he was finally making some progress on figuring out what happened that night, but in the heat of the moment, he realized that they were moving even closer, and he was running out of options.
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