Forgetting the Lost: Chapter 3
Missing
Six-year-old Madeline Galloway knows she's unlikeable. Unlovable. Uncanny. But when she encounters a strange man she believes to be a fallen angel, will her abilities save her life—or ruin it?
This novella serves as a prequel to Daughters of Men, but can also be read as a standalone.
Audiobook narrated by April Doty. Paid subscribers have access to the complete story.
Missing
I remember my room being orange and red as the sun went to sleep behind the pine trees. And I remember being bored and wishing I still had my bedtime book with baby animals and nursery rhymes. I didn't like the doll on the shelf that stared at me with black glass eyes, and the stuffed bear didn't like me. For a while, I practiced fancy looping letters with my new pencil, but I kept looking at the envelope I hadn't given Mother, so I put my school things away. Notes from teachers weren't for blue days.
When it was finally nighttime, I knelt at the window, watching—hoping—for Lucy; but the backyard turned gray, then black, and I fell asleep on the floor. That's when the fingers found me.
I suppose that all these years later, I should be able to describe them better. Invisible fingers sound so…childish. But ghosts and spirits can't touch us, and all the demons I've met are inside people. Perhaps evil really does deserve a capital "E" like a named thing that's the root of all that's ill in this world. Or perhaps…perhaps my memories are not entirely my own.
But they are all I have. And they tell me that I woke screaming, half in the floor, half in the wall, though I could see my small body crumpled by the open window. And they also tell me that I used Mother's broom to lift the latch on the screened door, and that I walked outside and crawled over Buster and under the azaleas to walk at the edge of the woods until I came to Miriam's house. And they also tell me none of that happened.
What I do know to be true is that people can be missing even when they're right in front of you. And at six years old, on a cold spring night, I found Miriam shivering underneath her back porch. It was a good hiding place, and we hid together until her father found us. Alice the cat found us, too, and she clawed something fierce before running away—and then my brother, the good Galloway child, found us.
Timothy raised such a ruckus, yelling loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, and helped Miriam run away while I bit Mr. Milner. I remember it felt good to be mean on purpose, and I felt hot and fiery, like maybe I was a fallen angel—but I was too small to burn him.
Lucy could, though. He grabbed Mr. Milner's head in his two huge hands and told me to go…and I ran.
Alice kept me company in the woods until Lucy was finished. Mother and Father were calling for me by then, and policemen were yelling and shining lights every which way, but only Lucy knew where to find us. He picked me up and held me so tight I thought I'd never breathe again, and then he rocked me like I was a baby until I cried.
"We did not know, young one. I did not know." He said the words over and over again until it made me angry.
"Alice knew! And she's just a cat!"
Alice yowled with me, and I felt a rush of Hell's heat like I'd made Lucy mad, too, but he just carried me back to my Mother's azalea bushes.
"Timothy!" he called out. "She is here!"
I remember feeling surprised when my brother's head popped out from under the bushes, and more than a little smug when he stood up and saw Lucy.
"You? You were at school." Timothy's flashlight bounced up and down, down and up, and I felt my giggles try to come back. Lucy was so tall that Timothy tripped backward into the bushes trying to see all of him.
"Told you," I said. "Angel."
Lucy set me down and turned away, but Timothy scooted around me and aimed his light high on Lucy's face.
"What did you do to him?" he asked. "They're saying…they say he looked…"
Lucy sighed, and I wrapped my arms around his leg and pressed my face against the rough fabric of that same suit he'd been wearing the day before. He smelled clean, like after a thunderstorm, and I felt his hand on the top of my head. Then I heard the flashlight click, and the night and the yelling adults surrounded us again.
"There is no justice higher than God's," Timothy said. And in the dark, I thought he sounded just like Father, though his voice was still a boy's.
My brother held my hand when Lucy left and kept holding it until the two policemen decided it didn't really matter how I'd ended up under that porch since Father insisted I wasn't hurt. The policemen had enough figuring to do, what with trying to explain how Mr. Milner had died. So they told Mother and Father how proud they should be of their son, and promised Timothy a special junior officer badge of his very own.
After they left, Father was very cross. He puffed two cigarettes down to nubs while he paced the room. Sometimes he frowned at me, and sometimes he frowned at Timothy, but mostly he said things like "wicked" and "ruin the neighborhood." Mother had bundled one of her knitted throws around me, and I think maybe she wanted to put me to bed like she used to…but instead, she made Timothy and me hot tea and sent us off to bed.
"Timothy?" I asked before his door closed, "Why'd you come looking? You broke the rules. You could've gotten strapped."
I remember how the dim light in the hall yellowed his skin, and how he clicked his flashlight on and off against his palm so that it glowed red, then went black. And I remember how he flickered twice, and I ran to him and hugged him so he wouldn't get squishy and sick like the lost ones. But I don't remember if he answered me.
My room was cold from the open window, but Mother's throw kept me warm while I waited for Lucy. Downstairs, Mother's voice was trying to calm Father's, and it rose and fell like a song she used to sing. I folded my arms on the window sill and rested my head to listen. If I tried, I could only hear her voice and the skittering leaves in the pecan tree.
Alice came first and climbed the tree to blink gold eyes at me. Then Lucy. He shut the window, and my room warmed as he filled it. His head brushed the ceiling where it slanted to the wall, but the wood floor didn't creak under his big, bare feet. Not that Mother or Father would have heard, since Father was doing all the talking now.
Lucy went first to my school things, flipping through my primer and shaking his head, then picking up Miss Walker's letter.
"That's not for you," I told him.
"It is unsealed." He slid one finger across the back of the envelope and the flap opened. That seemed like a little enough lie that God wouldn't care, so I tried to look, too.
"What does it say?" I asked.
"That her church can provide a lunchtime meal to any child whose parents are unable to provide one."
"She doesn't go to church."
He folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope. "She does not attend your church." His fingertip slid across the flap, and it stayed closed.
"Father says our church is the real one."
Lucy's eyes rolled up, and then he frowned down at me. "You believe your god hears prayers in only one language?"
"The Bible is in English."
Lucy took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. "You should be asleep, child. Tomorrow is a new day." He touched the flower by my bed and one petal fell to the floor.
"What's electrocution?" I asked. "The policemen said—"
"Into bed, child." His voice was low and patient, and I yawned.
"Not sleepy," I told him, but I pulled the covers down to climb in.
"Sst!" he hissed. "Your bedding needs changing."
"It's only dirty at the bottom where my feet go."
He picked up my pillow and flipped it to show my lie. "Have you not been taught to launder linens?"
Immediately, I was wide-awake again. "Can you help me? Mother gets awful mad when I dirty-up her sheets, and Miss Sadie used to wash them so she wouldn't know, but Father sent her away, and I try to only get in trouble on days Mother's cooking something I don't like."
It was the longest string of words I'd spoken since I met him. And although his face didn't change, I felt the now-familiar hot flush of Hell rush over me.
Without a word, he took the pillow to the window, unlatching the sash and lifting it in one fluid motion. Pinching the pillow by one corner, he held it out to the night and gave it one hard spank. I remember hearing a funny little crackle like the cellophane around Timothy's Christmas candy.
The night breeze tickled my nose with a sharp, bright smell, and when he handed my pillow back to me, it was perfectly clean.
Next he dangled the quilt outside, giving it a snap like when Mother hung clothes on the line. Then, the sheets, one in each hand. He even folded my thin mattress like it was nothing so much as a piece of paper and held it out the window. This time the crackling sounded more like a hundred bags of Christmas candy.
"Where'd all the dirt go?" I asked as he remade my bed.
"Where it belongs," he muttered.
"Cleanliness is next to Godliness," I said.
He turned the edge of the top sheet down over the quilt and then lifted a corner so I could slide underneath. I remember how fresh and crisp the cotton felt against my skin, and how the fluffed pillow cradled my head.
"I knew you weren't bad," I told him. "You're a good angel."
He almost smiled.
By breakfast the next morning, Father had decided that what was done was done, and of no more concern in our lives.
"He came from a good family, but bad seeds can sprout in any garden," he announced. "There is no higher justice than God's."
I grinned at Timothy, and Mother moved the dish of jam away from my toast.
Saturday was boring. Mother made a casserole for Mrs. Milner, but took Timothy with her to deliver it. He promised he'd tell Miriam that I'd wanted to come, and I knew he'd keep his promise, so that was that. Since Father was off doing whatever fathers did, and since I wasn't allowed to touch Timothy's books or toys—or the radio—I sat on the back porch steps and hoped Alice would come.
Instead, Janie did. Miriam's sister was twelve, and if Miriam reminded me of dandelion fluff, Janie was the leftover sticky bits that couldn't fly away.
She shimmied under the azaleas and over Buster, and looked up at my bedroom window. When I waved, she squeaked.
"It's okay, Janie. It's just me." I met her by the tree and pulled her hand so we could sit on one of its big roots. Everything about her felt wrong, and I could tell she was still missing, even though she was right in front of me.
We sat like that awhile, and then Alice came and climbed in her lap. Janie petted Alice with one hand, and I held the other, until she was ready to talk.
"Why is there a raincoat under the bush?" Janie's voice was hard to hear over Alice's purr.
"I sleep out here sometimes."
Her hand twitched in mine, and I squeezed. It felt like squeezing twigs in winter, when they crunch and leave dusty flakes stuck to your fingers. But I didn't let go. I think…I think I knew that if I let go, she'd be missing forever.
Lucy must have known, too, because he walked around the side of the house and waited. Janie tried to get up, but I didn't let go and she wasn't strong enough to drag me. Alice sat on one of her feet and pawed her knee, and I tugged with both hands.
"It's okay! He's an angel! He's the one who…" I stopped talking, because even when fathers were terrible, daughters might not want them to die.
"May I sit with you?" Lucy called to us. His voice was gentle, like he was thinking of crumbly twigs, too. Alice mewed and bounded over to leap up into his arms.
"Come on, Janie." I pulled again, and she sat.
Lucy and Alice settled across from us; and then Alice decided to sit in Janie's lap again and rub her whiskers on Janie's neck.
"Child…" The sunshine made Lucy's eyes shine silvery and gold. "If you will let me, I can help."
I felt my own eyes get big. "How?!" I was too loud, and Janie curled over Alice.
"You told Timothy she was missing…" He spoke even lower, softer, and Janie uncurled a bit.
"Missing?" she whispered. "I was home…sick."
"That was only this month," I told her. "You've been missing since summer."
She hugged Alice tighter.
"I can help you find yourself," Lucy said. "If you allow me."
Alice licked Janie's chin and blinked at her, and I let go of her hand. Lucy was a good angel, no matter what God thought, and Janie seemed to know that, too. She leaned forward and let him put his hands on her head.