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When the kids were about a day late coming home, Brock wasn’t too worried.
As much of a blockhead as he could be, he trusted Ashley to be responsible enough and keep his sister safe. He could swear up and down that she was just a nuisance all he wanted – from the moment she’d been brought home from the hospital, it was plain to see how much he adored her.
Ash was a good kid. He only got up to about as much trouble as Brock figured was typical for his age. He took good care of his little sister and he was working diligently on his degree. He’d well proven that he could be trusted. They probably just had a little delay, and when they rolled up the next morning, he’d pretend to be angrier than he was so the idiots would think to plan better next time.
A few days later and people were starting to talk. Worried murmurs about accidents or getting caught up in a storm. There was still no sign of the kids – not even so much as a phone call.
Now, Brock wasn’t the worrying type. But both of his kids were now reported missing, and he hadn’t even thought to ask where they were supposed to be in the first place. He’d figured they were adults now, they didn’t need him prying into their business. He felt like a damn fool.
But he wouldn’t panic. He just had to wait, and they’d turn up soon. There probably just weren’t that many payphones on the roads they were taking.
They would turn up. He told himself he was sure of it.
A week in, he was reeling.
One of the girls – Linda, Ashley’s girlfriend, he was told; he hadn’t even known he’d had one – had actually had the sense to tell her parents where they were going. It had taken far, far too long, what with not knowing the exact address and having to cross several state lines, but eventually, they’d managed to locate the cabin they were supposed to be staying in. Four of them were found there.
At least, what was left of them.
No one was exactly sure how the bodies had wound up liquefied, but Brock reckoned it’d keep him up for a long time to come.
Even more than that, five others were found dead, though some were much more whole. No one in town recognized a single one of their names, a family of archeologists and a pair of Tennessee natives who’d gotten unlucky.
But even with all of that, Ashley was nowhere to be found.
While the other kids weren’t exactly identifiable, their clothes and all their belongings had been left behind, along with something at least resembling human remains. Ashley, it seemed, had gotten lucky.
Or that was the hope, anyway.
There was blood everywhere, and while it couldn’t be confirmed, it was likely that at least some of it was Ash’s. His car was gone, but if they’d been attacked, it wasn’t a stretch to think whoever had done it had stolen it as well.
Most damning of all was the severed hand left on the cabin floor. The running theory was that the owner had cut it off himself using a saw. Brock didn’t have a weak stomach, but he’d been left clutching the toilet seat for quite a while when he’d heard that.
Some were hopeful that Ash was relatively safe. Maybe he’d managed to get away in his car and was hiding out somewhere, scared for his life. Maybe he’d had to travel on foot and had lost his way.
Maybe he’d succumbed to his wounds somewhere else. Maybe whatever had turned those bodies to nothing but mush had made it so he didn’t leave any trace at all. Maybe whoever had killed his baby girl had taken his son, and now he was enduring something worse than death.
Most likely, though, was that Ash was long gone. You don’t survive an amputation like that, not without very swift medical attention and, even then, a hell of a lot of luck.
It wasn’t long after that when the accusations started flying. That it was Ash himself who’d done them all in, now on the run.
Brock just couldn’t get himself to see it.
Sure, he’d been known to hang around with a few people Brock wasn’t exactly fond of – burnouts like that little Polish kid and knuckleheads like Scott. And maybe he had no problem butting heads with his old man more often than he’d like. But the boy had neither the guts nor the drive to do something so heinous, not to his own sister.
He griped and bitched to high heaven about having to look after Cheryl, but at the end of the day, he still did it. And maybe he was a little slow on the uptake, but Ashley was a good kid. He wasn’t a saint by any means, but in his whole body he didn’t have even a fraction of the evil it would take for someone to do what’d been done to those kids. And now his stupid, wonderful boy was lost, or dead, and all these people were spreading lies about him.
He’d thought so, at least.
Ashley finally made it home around noon, a little over one week after his sister’s remains were found.
It was quiet. No one was sure what to make of him, rolling up in his beat up car like it was any other Tuesday. He was visibly worse for wear, and yet, impossibly, miraculously, alive.
Predictably enough, he was short one hand. Brock didn’t have the heart to ask how it’d happened, not when he was fairly sure he already knew.
He was different in more ways than just that. He’d have expected him to be a mess; afraid, weak, half-dead. Instead, he seemed almost cocky. Proudly babbling some nonsense about demons and magic books, possession and time travel. Brock didn’t know what to make of him anymore.
As it were, everyone else certainly had their minds made up.
The whole town was looking for someone to blame, someone to hold responsible for the loss of four beloved kids with bright futures that were suddenly cut off. When Ash started spouting his insane story, no one bought a single word of it. Most of them saw it as a piss poor attempt to cover his own ass. Brock was more concerned than anything.
Ash was a shit liar. That was one thing he doubted would ever really change. He was usually too stupid to think to be anything but honest, and even when he could scrounge up something convincing, his tells were almost comically obvious. When Ash told him his unbelievable story, there wasn’t a single sign that he thought he was telling anything but the truth.
He wouldn’t be surprised if whatever really happened was just too much for him to handle. If what little he’d been able to stomach hearing about the state the cabin had been left in gave him even the smallest clue as to what had really gone on, he couldn’t blame him for going stir crazy.
The thing was, other than that, he seemed pretty mentally sound (at least, as much as he ever was), but that was exactly the problem.
He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to even consider the possibility. But the eyes that had followed the Delta as it rolled into his driveway, the whispers he’d been hearing for the past few weeks were all getting to him. He just had to make sure.
“Did you do it?” he asked, cutting him off as he filled him in on more details from his supposed trip to the 1300s.
His voice died out quickly, eyes blank as they met his own. Even after all these years, it was still so strange to Brock that they were about the same height. He swallowed, mouth dry.
“What?”
Brock breathed through his teeth.
“Ashley, I need you to be honest with me,” he managed not to plead. “Did you kill them?”
It should have been a completely ridiculous question. He wouldn’t have blamed Ash in the slightest if he’d gotten angry, Hell, if it ruined their relationship forever just to suggest it. But he had to know.
He had to hear him say they were wrong about him.
He stayed silent, mouth a flat line, staring at him wordlessly with those eyes so much like his mother’s, so much like Cheryl’s.
“Ashley, please,” he begged, though his voice remained steady.
His son’s face grew bitter.
“What do you want me to say, Dad?” he asked quietly.
Anger flared to life underneath his skin, and he knew then that if he wasn’t careful, everything was going to burn right up with him. In that moment, he found that he didn’t care.
Let it all burn. His baby was gone, and the other standing before him had done something he’d never thought to consider, even in his worst nightmares.
“I want you to tell me the truth, damn it!” he shouted, grabbing Ashley by the collar and pulling him until they were nose to nose.
“I already did,” he insisted, a little bit of life finally coming to his eyes. There was something wild in them, something that wasn’t quite anger, but didn’t look like fear, either. He could see his shoulders tense, but he made no move to push him away.
“God damn it, Ashley, how stupid do you think I am?” he growled. “Demons? Really?”
Something wounded passed his face, then, but it was gone before he could get a closer look.
Breathing deep, he muttered, “I don’t know how to get you to believe me.”
“You can’t,” he hissed, ignoring the part of him that begged him to give this up, to just pretend, if only for a little while, that he believed him. To keep the one thing he had left close and never let him out of his sight again. “Damn it, I want to believe you, but you have to give me something to believe in first.”
Ashley wouldn’t look at him, eyes fixed to the floor. Brock shook him roughly by the collar, desperate for some kind of reaction, something real, something that would tell him that it was all just a mistake and that the son he knew still existed.
“Just say something, anything! It’s like you want me to think you did it!”
And with that, he finally broke through. Ash’s face twisted into something absolutely miserable.
“Just tell me. Tell me you didn’t do it, Ashley. Please,” he murmured defeatedly, squeezing his eyes shut.
He knew he sounded pathetic, all but prostrating himself for something he should have known he wasn’t going to get. But if there was any small chance he was wrong, any way that he could keep even a small semblance of what he’d had before, he would grasp it with both hands and never let go.
But Ashley only said, “I can’t.”
There was real regret in his voice. Grief, even, and Brock knew that if nothing else, he wanted her alive about as much as he did. He wanted things to go back to the way they were, wanted to go back before he’d done any of it.
But he had done it. No amount of regret could ever change that.
It wouldn’t bring his baby girl back.
“Get out,” he demanded, voice low but no softer for it.
It shouldn’t have caught him off guard. They’d both known well where this conversation would end before it ever started. But when he finally managed to look up, there was something terrified and vulnerable in his eyes, begging for another chance, for some understanding. Brock felt that he understood plenty.
“Dad?”
“Daddy!” Ashley cried, small arms reaching for him from where he sat on the ground, tears budding in the corners of his eyes.
“Jesus, what the hell’d you do?” Brock huffed, jogging over. As he hefted him up into his arms, he made sure to be careful of the knee he’d skinned.
“I fell,” he sniffled, wiping his face unsuccessfully and far too roughly.
‘I can see that.’
Instead of saying it, he simply sighed, using the edge of his shirt to gently wipe away his tears. Shifting him in his arms to get a better grip, he pressed a kiss to the top of his head in the hopes of calming him down. It seemed to work well enough, though the way he leaned into him as the last of the hiccups wracked through him told Brock that he may have just tired himself out.
“We’d better go and get you cleaned up, then, huh?” he said, already walking back towards the house. He felt Ashley nod against him, clinging to his shirt. Unconsciously, he rubbed his back comfortingly with the hand supporting it, making him burrow closer with a tiny sigh.
His arms tightened just that little bit around him. Despite the circumstances, he found a small smile come across his face.
“Get out of my sight, Ashley. Now," he emphasized with a rough shove.
“Wait,” he tried, but Brock wasn’t interested in hearing whatever excuses he had.
“Go! Now! Before I have two dead kids on my conscience!”
He couldn’t think about how he looked in that moment, so helpless, so fragile. He had to think of his baby girl, in pain to the very last as her own brother did the unthinkable.
This man– no, this monster before him was not his son.
No matter how damningly human the heartache in his eyes was.
Looking dazed, he stumbled out the door, hurt in every possible sense and more confused than he had any right to be. Brock watched from the window as he hopped into his car (the very same one he’d bought for him what simultaneously felt like yesterday and a lifetime ago already), as he struggled to fit the key in, then as the hunk of junk refused to start. As he twisted the key again with the same result, over and over, growing increasingly agitated.
He felt his resolve crumble with each passing second. Right as he was about ready to walk out after him, (and whether that be to drag him back inside and never let him leave again or jumpstart the damn thing himself, he couldn’t say), he heard the engine finally kickstart, headlights illuminating the outside almost eerily.
He watched as he pulled out, then went down the street, engine a low, angry rumble all the way, damning in its finality. A select few townees stood by the road to shout obscenities and spit at him as he drove past, a few even running up to kick the side of his car.
And then he was gone.
That night, he forced down the sick feeling in his stomach, the pit in his gut that was telling him that he’d just made a huge mistake. He didn’t sleep any easier for it.
He woke up the next morning to a call from the morgue.
He hadn’t meant what he’d said, when he’d just been trying to get him to leave. Not that it mattered now.
Ashley was always a fairly spirited kid. It didn’t feel right to see him so still and pale. But even with that, undeniably–
“That’s him,” he confirmed with numb lips that seemed to move of their own accord. “That’s Ashley.”
As they told him what happened, he really did try to listen, but he found himself only taking in about half of it, like his brain didn’t want to let him comprehend it.
A car accident, they said, on his way out of town. He’d rammed right into a tree. Maybe a deer had jumped out in front of him, or another car. Their running theory was fatigue; that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel, or come close enough that he might as well have been.
Brock had known that he’d looked tired. He’d hidden it pretty well behind his new, boisterous attitude, but the cracks had been showing clear as day. He should have thought about it before sending him away, let him stay the night and told him to leave the next morning. He should have known something like this would happen.
He should have known.
They told him that some trucker had come across him and radioed for an ambulance, but Ash was long gone by the time one had finally gotten there. He'd stayed with him the whole time. Brock couldn't help but think that it was more than he'd done for him.
He wondered if there was any real point in having a funeral. Who would even show? How many of those would be to celebrate, rather than mourn?
Would he even want to be there?
The car was unsalvageable, but what little personal effects he’d had on him at the time were released to him once it was officially concluded that no one else was involved. A shotgun and an unfamiliar chainsaw he’d had stored in the trunk taunted him. Upon seeing them, he was just about ready to trash all of it, clear out his room and just pretend he’d never existed at all.
What a waste, he thought. What a waste his life had been. He’d done everything he was supposed to, had checked off all the right boxes. And what did he have to show for it? A wife who’d gone MiA, then left this Earth entirely. Two dead kids, with one not even worth mourning. What a waste.
But sitting there among the small collection was something curious – a book, one with quite the strange cover. He picked it up tentatively, turning it over in his hands. Something about it made him nervous, gave him this deep sense of foreboding. Or maybe he was going stir crazy, too. He could hardly be blamed.
“That thing gives me the creeps,” an officer remarked. He inhaled sharply, just managing not to gasp in surprise, turning to look at him curiously. “Looks like it’s in some ancient language. Can’t tell what it’s saying, but it has some real weird illustrations.”
“Weird?” he asked, flipping it open.
“Yeah, demons and what have you. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway,” he said, but Brock could scarcely hear him over the ringing in his ears.
The drawing itself was simple, not instantly recognizable. And yet, he knew from the first glance that it was him.
For some reason, his boy was there, in the pages of that book. He couldn’t begin to decipher the text, but Ashley looked strong, proud. Heroic, even.
He couldn’t even wager a guess as to what exactly it was that he was holding in his hands, the authenticity of it. But it seemed old, old in a way that couldn’t be replicated so easily. Not in the time that Ashley had been gone, even without taking his general lack of artistic ability into account.
If this was as real as it felt like it couldn’t be, that meant that Ashley had been telling the truth. Ashley was a survivor, even a hero, and now it had all gone to waste.
He couldn’t help tracing his finger against the figure of his son, standing tall in a way he would have been proud to see for himself.
He knew for sure then that what he had done, he could never forgive himself for.