The clouded sky loomed over Tommy as he walked across the sidewalk and towards the ever-taunting highschool.
His over-grown blonde hair that now reached to his shoulders was tied into a ponytail. His backpack was hanging heavily from his shoulders and drooping down. His feet hurt.
It had been a few days since the call and Damien hadn't contacted him once. Tommy was starting to get anxious, thinking of every bad possibility his small brain could come up with.
But one possibility scared him the most. That Damien could already be dead. His rotten corpse laying on the ground, flies swarming it and ants tearing at the body, little by little as if it were crumbs on the floor.
His stomach churned.
As Tommy entered the school, his friend approached him with a concerned look on his face.
"Hey, mate." Eryn greeted and continued walking along side him. "Any news on Damien?"
"No, not yet." Tommy said and frowned. "I'm really getting worried. What-What if he's-" he cut himself off. Just thinking about it made his throat go dry.
Eryn glanced at him filled with concern. He hoped they found Damien soon. For both their sakes.
-------
As soon as Tommy got home from a long dreadful day of school, he ran up to his room and abandoned his backpack on the floor.
He sat in his rolly-gamer chair and turned on his PC. As he waited for it to boot, he got out his phone and called Damien's number, slightly hoping for an answer but getting none.
"This number unavailable. For more information-"
A disappointed sigh escaped him. He set his phone down beside him on the desk and typed in his PC password, then loaded Discord.
As soon as it loaded, he froze in place looking at the screen. He didn't want to believe it.
1 missed message from Damien.
Only the day before Damien had gone missing, they had exchanged Discord tags. But he still didn't understand. Why Discord? Why not just text on his phone?
Without waiting another second, Tommy opened Damien's DMs and shivered at the missed message. The missed message that wasn't exactly a message, but a missed voice call.
Tommy took a deep breath and put on his headphones, bringing the volume up high. Finally, he pressed the voice call, and the recording began to play.
"H-Hey, Tommy. It's been a few days since we last spoke. You must be worried. Right? Hey, well, don't worry about me. I'm fine. You're probably wondering why I'm calling you on Discord. My parents, yeah, uh. They took away my phone so I snuck onto the only computer in the place and now here I am. Just wanted to tell you that I-"
Suddenly, another voice came out of nowhere and started shouting through the microphone. There were muffled sounds, and then recording ended with a long
Beeeeeeeeeeep.
Chills shook Tommy's spine to his very core. He didn't like the way that sounded. Damien, he seemed scared. Terrified, actually. If Tommy didn't know better, he would say that Damien was hiding. His voice was muffled, and his breathing was heavy.
Tommy took of the headphones and typed onto his computer, hoping for an answer. For anything
I'm here. Call me or text me.
He waited for a few minutes but nothing.
A little hope slipping from him, Tommy stood up and walked down the stairs to his father's office where his father sat.
"Hey, Tommy! How was school?" He asked in a most cheerful way. Tommy forced a smile that could only come up about halfway and sat down in one of the extra chairs.
"Fine. Boring as always," he began but paused. His father looked at him with concern.
"Is everything alright?"
"Of course not. How could it be? Damien is missing and I feel useless just sitting around, twittling my thumbs." Tommy said with a sigh and leaned his head on the wall behind him. " Have you gotten any leads?"
"I'm sorry, but we haven't. We were able to trace the location of the call, and he's all the way up in America, in New York. This case belongs to the American government, now."
Tommy frowned and got up from the chair. "Thanks, dad. I'm gonna go for a walk."
He left the office and pulled on his shoes and a cyan-colored hoodie, then he left the house and began his walk. He needed to think.
New York? He thought. New York was in a whole other continent. If the movies were right, NY was just a big city and a bunch of streets.
Wait. That can't be right.
If Tommy had heard correctly, when Damien had called a few days ago, 6 days to be exact, he had been running. On leaves. He had been running on miles and piles of crunchy autumn leaves. That meant he must've been surrounded by trees. The only place with that many trees was Central Park.
Holy shit. Damien was in central park.
