The Boy Who Couldn't Save Me

Chapter 4: The Lost Seed

when the devil is born, you'd expect him to have red eyes and horns poking from either side of his head but that isn't true, i know this because i have met the devil...
the devil is beautiful and charming and funny and for some reason, gives us the false hope that we can save him...

It's been three weeks and Sadie was still gone.
Almost everyone in town was out every night looking for but every trace of her seemed to have vanished. Dina cried every single day and Nathan stopped going to work.
None of us understood what happened, one minute she was there and the next she was gone. The cops have been in and out of this house so many times, going through her things, taking samples and trying to find any bit of evidence that could have proved what happened. Her pictures were everywhere, all over social media people were sharing posts about her, trying to spread the word but nothing seemed to be working. It wasn't helping.
I've been having cramps since last night but I wasn't sure if it was just the way the baby was laying or if it was something else but the cramps were coming and going so I wasn't too concerned. I sat on the bottom stair as Dina and Nathan sat in the living room with the door ajar, speaking to Cody about Sadie. I looked down at the bracelet she gave me for my birthday and twirled the little heart around in circles. It was a constant reminder of what she meant to me and of an unsaid promise I made to her.
Why did I leave her? I should've stayed with her.
"We looked through the surveillance footage from the night you were at the restaurant. It shows Sadie leaving through the back exit, of her own free will," Cody explained.
"No, no that makes no sense," Dina interrupted. "She wouldn't just leave us, she wouldn't."
"What else does it show? Was she with anyone?" Nathan persisted.
"She was alone in the footage, she walked down the dark alley and walked into the street at the end."
"Someone must have orchestrated this," Nathan said as he cuddled his inconsolable wife. "There's absolutely no way that she would runaway."
As I listened to their conversation, millions of questions ran through my head but only few stood out to me.
Why would she leave? What could she possibly gain from leaving her family? Was she really that troubled that she saw no other way out? Was she still alive?
It was a secret to no one that she's been acting strange for months. We should've seen this coming.
"Bailie?"
I looked up to see Zack, standing on the stairs and staring down at me. He was a mess. His hair was a wreck and his eyes were red and filled with his own tears. I put my hand out to him and he sat next to me, laying his head on my shoulder and letting his tears roll down his face and onto my arm. He's been out almost every night looking for his sister and it was driving him insane that he couldn't find her. All her life, he was able to protect her and lately he couldn't. Lately no one could save anyone.
I rested my head on Zack's and stroked his hair as his entire body shook.
"It's all my fault," he whispered. "I should've protected her. I should've protected her."
I wrapped both arms around him. There was no point in telling him he was wrong. In his mind, he was never gonna be wrong.

Days passed and Zack only shut down even more. He would sit on the edge of the bed every night just staring, reacting to every little noise he heard, talking to himself.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked Frankie who was staring at Zack. He looked at me like he wanted me to tell him what to do.
"I've never- I don't know."
"I just feel so helpless, everybody feels so helpless. She walked away, Frankie. She wasn't taken. She walked out of that restaurant and away from us."
"There's gotta be a reason."
"Well, yeah but what?"
"Has she said anything to you? You know, about feeling down lately?" Frankie asked, walking into the kitchen and away from Zack.
"No," I told him. "I've been trying to get her to talk. Whatever Hunter has done to her has fucked her up."
"Hunter?" Frankie looked back at me with a confused look on his face. "You think he knows anything about this?"
"I don't know. Why after all this time?"
"Think about it, he was at the restaurant around time that she left. If he wanted to see you on your birthday, why wait til we went to the restaurant?"
"Maybe because it was a public place? I don't know, Frankie. I'm going out of my mind."
"We need to talk to him."
"And do what? Give him another excuse to try and kill us?"
Frankie put his hand over his mouth as he thought for a minute.
"Frankie, do you really think he's gonna tell us anything if he does know something? He's a good liar."
"Not good enough," he said. "You forget, I saw through his lies before."
"Alright, so what do we do?"
"We can go around there, me and you, tonight."
I nodded my head and then fell to my knees. It felt like someone stabbing me in the stomach and every muscle in my body tensed.
"Hey, what is it?" Frankie asked me as he dived towards me and grabbed my hand. I tightened my hand around his as I breathed through the pain.
It's here....
It's still here...
It's gone...
"Sorry," I whispered, trying to catch my breath.
"What the hell was that?" His eyes were wide.
"I've been getting cramps for the past few days but that was that worst one."
"Days? You're only eight months, this isn't supposed to happen yet."
"I know, it's probably just because of everything that's going on."
"You better go get that checked out."
"No, I can't go now. Not with everything going on. I'll be fine, if it gets worse I'll go over."
I got up and walked back into the living room where I saw that Zack had finally fallen asleep. His phone fell down next to him from where he must have been holding it and his head was resting against the backrest of the chair.
"Let him sleep," I whispered to Frankie as he stared at him, and then I pulled the door closed.
I made my way to the bottom stair and sat down, ignoring my stomach cramps.
"Bailie, you can't keep doing this." Frankie shook his head as he sat next to me.
"Doing what?"
"Trying to protect everyone. You're gonna burn yourself out."
"I don't think that's possible," I told him. "I haven't fallen yet."
"Bailie, I love Sadie like she's my own sister. I wanna find her just as much as everyone else but what good are we to her if we get ourselves into these kinds of states? You're heavily pregnant, you can't just put that on hold."
"I should've never let her get with Hunter."
"We all said that," he told me as he looked at me. "We all knew that there was a few screws loose in his head and we're all kicking ourselves for not doing something sooner."
"I just wish I knew what he did to her," I closed my eyes and put my head against the wall. Frankie put his arm around me and pulled me into him.
"Why don't you go get some sleep too? I'll stay here with his parents. I'll wake you guys if there's any news."
I looked up at Frankie and then his eyes slowly shifted away from me.
"You're too sweet sometimes."
He smiled and then I walked upstairs.