The House

Chapter 3: Lost Things

"Jake," Beth sounds dumbfounded, "It smells like Jake's cigarettes. They're low tar. He always smokes the cheap kind."

She follows the smell to a broom cupboard, opening it. Lo and behold, there's Jake, reclining on a small throne of cushions and reading a magazine. He has a ball cap twisted over his greasy orange hair, and Snickers bars stuffed in his pockets.

Beth falls to her knees and kisses Jake on the cheek. He recoils in surprise. I recoil, too. He has stuff stuck in his stubble.

"Jake! I am so glad to see you!"

"Yeah I can see that!" He scrambles away from her, holding his magazine up like a shield, "just don't kiss me!"

"What on earth are you doing here, Jake?" I try to cross my arms, but it only ends up hurting my hand. "Is this your house?"

"No genius this is not my house. I do know this house though, and it knows me." He observes us, "I never thought it would be you two."

"We two what?" I say impatiently. I never had much tolerance for Jake.

"Well, you two are the newest people to be trapped, of course. Usually she just takes one, but I guess you two are special." Jake squishes his cigarette against the cupboard, snuffing it out, and moves to climb out. We quickly move aside for him, as he closes the cupboard doors behind him.

"Trapped? And who's 'she'?"

Jake scratches his stubbly chin. "Don't ask me, I don't know either. This is probably her house though. Anyway, you should probably start looking."

Beth has her eyes closed like she's trying not to scream. "Looking for what, Jake?"

"Whatever you lost, of course."

I slam my good hand against Jake's chest, and he yelps as he is pinned against the cupboard. "I don't have much time for riddles, Jake," I hiss, "so you better tell us what's going on here, so we can go home."

For the first time that I can remember, Jake looks squarely into my eyes. Not at his shoes, not at the sky, but right into me. "You want to go home, Charlie? Really?"

Dad's face flashes into my mind. I hesitate. My hold on Jake lessens. "No...I guess not."

Jake shrugs his shoulders, as if I actually hurt him. "I was gonna tell you what's going on anyways. Let's move on to the living room."

Beth steps in, blocking his way. "You can tell us right here. What's going on?"

"Okay so, you two both saw this house, suddenly be here when it wasn't here before, yeah?"

We both nod.

"Well that's what happened to me, five years back. I was driving home on my bike and it got a flat. I saw the house and went to ask for help, next thing I knew all the doors and windows were gone. No way out. No way to call."

"So eventually when I was done pissing myself and beating on the walls, I fell asleep. And I had a dream where there was this girl..."

"A girl," I look up quickly, "was she blonde?"

"Yeah, blonde, and super hot. I don't dig the whole olden time dress or anything, but anyway she told me something was lost, and I had to find it. Obviously, I had no idea what she was talking about. So for a whole day I sat around and read books. Then when I fell asleep again, I saw like a bunch of kids. All about our age, or younger. All of them came to this house before, and lost something, but they couldn't find what they lost. So they were trapped here for years and years until they became nothing but...nothing, I guess."