We piled into the car that evening, my sister and I, with our mother behind the wheel, driving careful and calm. Spring was abundant in the golden fields outlining the pot-hole infested road. Rain drizzled down my slightly foggy window as depressing wind from my sister’s whipped the hair about my face. The outside had a slight grey hue to it as if storm clouds had come down and gingerly touched each blade of grass in the world.
My family and I are driving to visit my mother’s friend who had recently divorced her husband and needed some help tidying things up around the house. She, perhaps, also wanted human company for comforting her and other types of sentimental actions. I’m not one for those types of consolidations, I was only going with my mother and sister to hang around with the daughter caught up in a messy situation. We could maybe watch television together or something of the sorts.
However, fate had other plans. Upon our arriving, a woman ran out of the front door, all in a tizzy, spouting thought fragments at my mother left and right.
“Donna! Donna! My daughter! She was. . . And now!. . . Help me!”
“Lisa, for the love of God, I can’t understand you. You need to calm down.”
After a brief moment of whimpers, sighs, and tears hitting driveway pavement, the woman known as Lisa began to settle her mind.
“Now, what exactly is going on?”
“My daughter,” she started, “Kyle, was playing in the yard, waiting for Ally to arrive. I went inside to answer the phone and came back outside to nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
Lisa was ushered inside, crying and raving, by my mother. My sister and I followed far behind as to not become infected by the sadness. I know not what to do or say to make dreariness dissipate. Being ten years old has its disadvantages in crises such as this. I have nowhere near enough experience under my belt to say the right combination of words to make the situation less awkward. Following my mother with my sister by my side was all I could do.
The house was rather organized for someone as sporadic and impulsive as Lisa. Boxes separating her belongings from her husband’s were neatly stacked all about the house in straight piles. I wandered through each room, touching what felt like relics from a far happier past. Empty picture frames, ‘#1 Dad’ coffee mugs, shirts and shorts, among various workout equipment, made me think of what could have happened behind the scenes to destroy such a life. Was Lisa’s husband a cheater? Perhaps he sold illegal items such as drugs or little girls and boys. Maybe that’s what happened to Kyle. . . No, impossible. Lisa saw her tiny framed daughter playing in the backyard moments before the fateful phone call.
Even though I wasn’t the best of friends with Kyle, I came over enough and knew her just the right amount to know she wouldn’t casually run off. I could imagine her now; short, wispy blonde hair moving gracefully in the casual wind, green eyes wide with wonder and boredom. The outside was an arcade for her but it proved to be her demise, like her father always said it would be.
A shout came from the kitchen.
“I could go to jail Donna. My daughter is missing and my husband is just looking for a reason to send me away. He was going to fight for custody in two weeks, I can’t show up without Kyle! And if she is being. . .” Lisa’s voice started to dwindle. I could hear her sorrowful sobs all the way through the house, echoing like screams silenced by a ravenous cave.
I kept walking in and out of each room: the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the basement, Lisa’s room, the guest room, until I found myself at Kyle’s door. I felt almost inclined to leave it alone and let the shadows be locked away behind white painted wood topped with a golden garnish. But, a child’s curiosity is an unchained beast, and that beast led me to push open the door.
The walls were an off-white colour with blue, dark blue and even darker blue accents. Stuffed animals were strewn about in a most messy manner, throwing off the balance of the rest of the well-kempt house. In fact, her room was torn apart. The pictures she had drawn seemed smeared with tears and her clothes were haphazardly thrown on the floor in heaps of colours and wrinkles. Hangers still quietly rocked back and forth on the brass pole in her closet. The bed is unmade.
Footsteps were rushing up the stairs as I made my way out of Kyle’s bedroom. Lisa’s panicked breaths were on my neck within the oncoming seconds and her voice was shrill with despair. Her screams flooded my eardrums, shouting nonsense about Kyle’s room being off limits to anyone besides the two of them.
I ran out of the house as her scoldings died into apologetic pleas. I couldn’t stand her acting so unorthodox, even though she had a well enough reason to. A ten year old walking into her daughter’s room shouldn’t trigger her emotions so easily; Kyle has only been gone for five hours or so.
The endless drizzle continued on outside. Chills awakened across my exposed arms and legs. The rain wasn’t intense or invasive, just an anticlimactic mist. I had never really taken the time to realize the immensity of Kyle’s backyard. Her house lays on a rather tall plateau covered in the most vibrant green I’ve ever seen. The ground never flattens, it is just a continuous downhill slope that becomes interrupted by a few scattered trees around the bottom. A short, chain link fence guards the nature made playground from a man made street. Even though the road is normally barren of vehicles, the fence was still installed for the safety of one fair-haired girl. How I wished to climb the fence, run across the street, and explore the depths of the forest that laid beyond it. I could hear the stream that hides there slowly churning water through the smooth, eroded rocks.
I can think of nothing in particular to do besides mosey about from one end of the boundaries to the other. Upon doing so, I noticed a single brown teddy bear sleeping in the middle of my path. Almost completely soaked with rain, it appeared, at first, to be a dead animal of sorts, like a groundhog or opossum. I couldn’t help but pick up the forgotten toy and smile at it’s dampened fur. This one was Kyle’s favourite; I believe she named it Richard. She always carried it with her for security from the dangers that her mind imagined. She talked often about how Richard protected her from the tall man that hid behind the fence of her yard. Kyle liked this particular fantasy the most and reiterated her story to anyone who would listen. I can hear her now, telling me for the first time, her run in with this “tall man” on that sunny day.
* * * * *
“Ally,” her apricot lips parted to reveal tiny, white teeth that curved into a shy smile, “I met a friend today! He doesn’t have a name, or at least he wouldn’t tell me if he had one, he didn’t really talk at all. He is so tall! It’s weird! He’s taller than my daddy and he watches me while I play on the top of my hill! I don’t think he can come inside of the fence though, he just kind of watches.”
“Kyle, that’s ridiculous. No one around here looks like that, so who would come all this way to just watch you play in your yard?”
“I think he lives on the other side of the street. . .”
“Nonsense. There is nothing but woods that way, your mom even says all the time that it’s pointless to venture out there because no one built houses past the road. There’s too much poison ivy and too many trees.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a house. Maybe he lives in the trees, I’m telling you, he’s tall enough to be one.” Her voice rose with excitement at the thought.
I decided to indulge in this six year old’s imagination. “Hm, perhaps you’re right. I mean, if I were the size of trees, I would certainly live amongst them.”
Kyle laughed agreeably and ran to the fence before I could stop her.
“Come visit me again!” She yelled to the emptiness before her. “Come meet Ally!”
* * * * *
It was saddening to think that was only but a few months ago. I tried to remember something, anything, that might give an inclination of where Kyle could have gone. She talked of nothing extremely important except for her own made-up delights and fears. Actually, since that first mentioning of her so-called “tall man”, she talked of nothing else for months to come. Occasionally she would stop herself mid-story to see me bearing a worried expression. Kyle would laugh off her words and say that she was just kidding, but I could see it in her growing dull eyes. Every word she said was voiced with the utmost seriousness. The last thing she said to me kept me up for nights on end.
* * * * *
“He tried climbing the fence the other day, it really scared me.” She sank into my chest as my arms wrapped around the trembling child. She was crying and utterly frightened.
“Who did?”
“The tall guy! He tried climbing over the fence! His arms and legs were really lanky and moved like they were broken. His head kept twitching from side to side. All I could do was sit down and hug Richard and scream. But I couldn’t scream, I was too afraid. So I threw Richard at him and he ran off. Richard protects me from him! I can never let him go!”
“Kyle, it’s going to be okay,” I grabbed her tighter and remember feeling her shoulders shake up and down with her jagged breaths, “I’ll protect you from him. I won’t let him touch you.”
* * * * *
Still staring at the bear, I couldn’t help but wonder why she let Richard go. Why did she set him down? Normally she would never release him her small grasp, she believed the combination of plush and imitation fur protected her from the evils beyond the fence. What made her drop what she believed to be her only sanctuary?
I set Richard back down where I had found him only to notice another bear but five feet away from where I stand. This one, however, isn’t Kyle’s. It’s lilac with a pink bow wrapped around its neck that reads “Happy Easter”. Gazing farther down the hill, I see a most peculiar sight. A whole line of teddy bears, all differing in sizes and colours, has been laid down in Kyle’s backyard. I turned around to look up to the front yard. Sure enough, the trail led that way too. None of the bears were Kyle’s except for Richard, the one directly at my feet. The farthest one, a yellow bear wearing a blue shirt embroidered with a large M, sat upright in the middle of the dreary, misplaced road. It’s funny how the road seemed to be misplaced amongst all of these random bears.
I was about to run inside to ask Lisa what was going on or if I was just seeing things. I was about to pick up Richard to return him to the lackluster mother who was wallowing at the disappearance of her daughter. I was about to sit and cry at the confusion surrounding me. I was about to scream Kyle’s name so maybe she could hear my worry and run home. I was about to follow giant footprints placed in between each teddy bear to find their owner and ask what cruel game they were playing. I was about to curse the world for abducting such a promising little girl.
I was about to do all of these things, but it was then, at that exact moment, that I felt a pair of fingers intertwine themselves with my long, brown hair.