The Stirlings and the Missing Statue

Chapter Eighteen: Not First, Not Last, Not Even In the Middle

The worst part was the misplaced anger at the child who would prove more difficult to find than simply returning to the cave and calling his name. He was the child who, regardless of any kind of teaching she could have offered him, treated his mother and most everyone poorly—as if it was his job to make others miserable. He was technically the third born after Ez made her appearance, and only enjoyed the existence as the youngest child for a short year until Mitchell came along. He always acted like he'd never forgotten what it was like to be the baby and that he couldn't, then, even claim to be the middle child. He had no natural distinction among his siblings, so he had to make his own. While any one of his other siblings could easily claim to be the best at any given time, Declan was the worst. And he loved it.
Ez listened to her mother go on and on, the wine she'd been consuming that morning and afternoon seeping from her pores, and chastise her second son, her most selfish son for disappearing into the cave. The light from a camping lantern the couple had brought up the hill with them danced over the carved features of the dentist's face. She was frowning, as if a patient had lied straight to her face about flossing regularly. Having done so herself a dozen times, Ez realized that the look on her mother's face was more than disappointment. She was livid.
"He's doing it on purpose," Dr. Stirling insisted again, at the top of the second hour since Declan did not emerge from the cave with the others. "He didn't even want to come. So he's taking it out on everyone."
"But mom," Ez had tried during her mother's first outburst, "he wasn't even thinking about that anymore. What we found in the cave, he was...excited? Wouldn't you say excited, Cal?"
Callum had slipped into a sheepish silence, for the most part, and only occasionally answered questions about the fact. He would not offer his opinion. He'd shrugged in response but Ez hadn't accepted that.
"Tell them! With the painting and the gold! He was...well, he was still being Deck, but he wouldn't have just gone back without a flashlight or without saying anything."
Their father had made two trips into the cave already, taking with him a flashlight borrowed from their host, who had begrudgingly left her home next door at the slightly grander manor house to help the two hapless parents locate their children. Callum had returned to the cave with him the first time, and they'd made it as far as the rediscovered cavern without any sign of Declan. The two of them had searched inside the cavern and beyond it before they returned to those waiting outside. Their host waited with Dr. Stirling and the remaining siblings, her finger hovering over the call button on her cellphone.
"It just doesn't make any sense," Ez said as her father prepared to return to the cave again. He looked ragged from his day of being sick but she knew that was no longer the cause of the pallor of his skin. "Declan's dumb, but not that dumb." She grew to regret even that small slight against her twin as the hours and then days went on.
The next time their father emerged from the cave alone, their host, Ana, had already contacted the local police, though she was clearly reluctant to be involved at all.
"David, she's called the police for us," Dr. Stirling told him. Her voice had lost its sternness and annoyance. She was worried. She may have even been on the verge of distraught.
"Ez, did you ask her about the sign? What does it mean, peligro?" Her father had already asked her to translate his questions to Ana, but he'd been too preoccupied to listen.
"It means danger," Ez told him.
"I know it means that!" her father snapped at her. "Anyone with a brain knows that. Except my children, that is."
A bit hurt, Ez opened her mouth to reply, but the sound died on her lips. She couldn't blame him. Where her mother might be on the verge of being distraught, her father was totally lost in it. Panic, not wine, oozed from his pores.
"What kind of danger?" he asked in a lower tone, perhaps noticing his anxiety for the first time.
"She said, officially, it's because of potential cave-ins," Ez said, wincing. She only realized how bad it sounded, the four of them venturing into the cave with naught but a bag of sandwiches and two flashlights, as she imagined what it felt like for her parents to hear it. She continued quickly, "But unofficially, there's a curse."
Callum let out an anxious sound that he tried to hide with a sniff for his missing brother, but both of their parents caught it. They each knew, by now, that Callum knew all about the curse. People had been going missing there for decades.
"She said that only a handful are truly missing," Ez went on, pointing her head toward their host. "Most of those that went missing...or at least those reported missing to the police...they showed up, eventually."
"How long is eventually?" Their mother had fully submitted to her own panic and her voice came out forcefully.
"A few days for some." Ez refused to repeat the word años, knowing it would drive her mother over the edge. Perhaps even literally. The side of the hill was a dark, steep ocean of rocks below them and the place had a history—according to Callum—of driving people mad.
"And the others?" their mother asked.
Ez ignored the question and simply asked Ana how long she thought it would be before the police arrived. Ana explained that she'd called their local police station but there was only one or two officers on duty regularly—neither had picked up. The state police, however, had responded, but they were likely over an hour away by car.
"Y luego tienen que escalar," Ana said. But she expressed her doubts that the officers would make the climb, especially this time of night. "Incluso ellos conocen el curso. Señora, debería bajar a hablar con ellos."
Not only could their mother not understand exactly what the woman was suggesting, but when Ez explained that the woman wanted her to come down off of the hill to speak to the police when they arrived, Dr. Stirling could not bring herself to consider it.
"If they won't come to us, we'll keep on looking. By ourselves. Useless," she spat.
"Cuidado," Ez said before she could stop herself. Speaking ill of anyone was probably not a good idea, but saying anything against the police was surely a terrible one.
"Where is your brother, Ez?" Dr. Stirling was more begging, pleading for her daughter to provide the answer she wanted, rather than asking a legitimate question.
Dr. and Mr. Stirling gathered together at the entrance and stood across from the sign that warned of danger, both clueless and both at the end of their composure. Callum had taken to calling down the cave tunnel for his missing brother and with each shout of Declan's name, their mother began to flinch and the tears began to fall.
"He hit his head?" Mr. Stirling's voice was shaking but thick. He cleared his throat as it caught on the final word and he repeated it with a stammer.
"No. No...I mean, well, yes but no," Callum said, trying to find his words. "It was like a little scrape when we were feet from the exit."
Ez pushed away from where she stood by Ana, once again on the phone with someone from the local police by the sound of it, and came to Callum's defense. "We were all totally fine but he ran ahead, just a little bit, but walked into an outcropping."
"Mitchell, you remember, tell him," Callum urged.
Their youngest sibling had been seated in the dirt and rocks by the entrance and quiet for largely the entire time the others had been searching for Declan. A permanent look of shock had taken over his face and although he rarely had any kind of love to share with Declan, Ez thought that the boy was truly concerned.
"Mitchell?" Mr. Stirling asked, coming over to him. "Do you remember something?"
Mitchell shook his head. His shoulders were hunched and he wouldn't look up at their father.
"I think I was the last to see him," Callum offered. He shook his head too. "But I don't know. His hands were all scraped up, he hit his eye on the outcrop, but he wasn't hurt badly. He wasn't crying or anything."
"When have you ever known Declan to cry?" Ez asked honestly.
Her twin had long been the one to cause tears—teasing Mitchell took up a lot of his time but over the years he'd left plenty to terrorize underclassmen at school, his less talented Pee Wee teammates, and the occasional new neighbor. Ez definitely struggled to remember a time that Declan was on the receiving end of anything that made him cry, physical or emotional injuries.
"Oh, yeah. Remember when he broke his toe in the middle of that soccer game against...oh, that other school..."
"That's kind of how games work, Ez," Callum sighed.
"He broke his toe too?" Dr. Stirling had been only half-listening to her children and was staring into the darkness of the cave.
"No, not in the—" Callum tried to explain.
"Show me again where this outcrop is."
Mr. Stirling didn't give Callum a chance to respond before he clicked the flashlight off and on a couple of times and headed into the cave's mouth. Dr. Stirling shrieked and held out a hand as her oldest son and daughter moved to follow her husband, but she curled her outstretched hand into a ball and drew it up to her lips in a fist.
"Please be careful," she whispered.
And find him, Ez knew she wanted to say but couldn't.
Into the cave again, the chill of the fallen evening and the close quarters of the cave walls sent a shiver through Ez.
"It was right here—watch out!" Callum said as his father's head passed within a few centimeters of the outer edge of the rock.
This was the first place Callum had taken their father when they'd searched the first time, but Mr. Stirling inspected the ground as if he'd never been there before. As if the beam from his flashlight would miraculously sweep across the unconscious and very living body of his son if he just checked one more time. But there was nothing. Even the offending rock that Declan had walked into showed no sign (no blood) that it had ever disturbed any of the children.
"But you discovered that other cave, that other room. By accident? Did you walk into the wall or..." Mr. Stirling theorized. Suddenly realizing that he had children who weren't missing but who might also be injured, he pushed the light into Callum's face and grabbed onto his son's shoulder with his free hand.
"Dad. DAD," Callum cried out as his father inspected his body for injuries. "It wasn't...I pulled a little rope and the wall tumbled down. Like a secret handle."
Satisfied that Callum was unhurt, he paused and, with the light bright enough to bounce from Callum's chest and back onto Mr. Stirling's face, Ez could see there a calculating look.
"Could he have fallen through somewhere, you think?" Mr. Stirling once again scoured the earth below their feet for a hole he'd missed.
"It was literally a minute. Maybe less. We would have heard...we would have..." Callum said. He moved his feet around and out of the light as his father searched. "I mean, it was dark, right Ez?"
"We would have heard something. We heard the wall when it tumbled down. We would...have..."
Their father was ignoring their actual words and had taken to putting his hands on every inch of rock and pushing, so as to activate a hidden catch, open a secret wall, find his trapped son. His alive-and-well trapped son.
Ez had seen something catch the edge of the light as her father swept the ground. She didn't mention it to Callum and she certainly didn't mention it to her father. She reached down for it, unseen by the other two in the dark, and took it in her hands, feeling the rough fabric. She wanted it.
"Look at that!" Callum said suddenly.
Ez thought he'd seen, but Callum grabbed hold of their father's hand that held the flashlight and pointed it at the ground in the opposite direction from her. The light caught on something shiny and small. A bit of color caught her eye under the glare of the light that shone on the plastic. Callum reached down and picked it up and showed it for their father to see. He flicked the flint of Declan's lighter and the flame danced, its blue center forming a soft arc peaked with just a touch of orange.
* * *
Ultimately, the family had to leave the cave without finding their son. The new day had broken over the horizon long after the state police arrived to begin their inquiry. Locals had gathered at the base of the hill, as word of the missing boy had slithered through the town, the neighboring communities, and practically the entire municipality before the first rooster had crowed.
The personal but shared hell belonging to Dr. and Mr. Stirling began as more and more government agencies became involved, the same questions were asked, and the occasional accusations of both negligence and intentional harm were made. At last, while yet another search led by a specialist called in from the City went forward, the parents were pulled away from the scene and nearly threatened with jail time by the two local officers should they fail to comply with their orders. Ana offered to take the children back to the villa but none of them wanted to be separated from their parents and neither parent was willing to trust any length of time away from their remaining children. When the word remaining was translated to Dr. Stirling, she finally relented and began to sob.