The Touch Of Fear

 -------- still need to write

In the summer of 1985, me and my family moved to the countryside because my dad got a new job as a tour guide. That was his passion, showing people the great outdoors and smelling the fresh country air. We were a very happy and ordinary family------- still need to finish

. I investigated everything and I’m going to tell you what happened when I made the biggest mistake of my life. My parents had been in depression since they disappeared. The heart of our lives had gone. Everything that meant something to me in my life had drifted away without any care in the world.

Silence. That was all I ever heard in my life. Silence. My parents did not want any contact with me; they did not feel ‘alive’ now that Laura and Max had gone. And I could tell you right now that they certainly didn’t act alive. Not one bit. My mum lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, frequently crying and occasionally coming down to make dinner for me and dad. ------- edit Other days, I would go to the local take out or even just do without. Dad just wandered round the house the days that he wasn’t at work, staring at the photos in the family photo album. And now you’re asking what I did? Well, usually I spent all day at my best friend Carrie’s house and in the early days of her depression my mum would ask me, ‘Amelia, Wherever you’re going, please be back by 8:00. If I’m not home, dinner will be on the stove!’ But now, now she didn’t care. Didn’t even care if I came back late on a school night like a normal parent would.  She couldn’t be bothered to know if she had a child or to even consider it. Sure, she made dinner sometimes and by sometimes I mean once in 2 or 3 months, but other than that, she didn’t have the slightest clue of her surroundings.

I thought maybe they had simply run away like I had done when I was their age but after a few weeks of searching, I cancelled that one out. I still considered the thought of kidnapping though. So I thought, to look through and solve this mystery properly, I needed to go through the events that had happened that night. So I got a piece of paper and a pen and started writing.

I came home from school and Max and Laura were watching television like they always did when they came back from school. Then after about an hour of watching television we all went up to do our homework. Max and Laura shared a room whereas I had my own as I was the eldest and they were twins. I have to admit that from time to time I would get a little lonely and creep into their bed when they were fast asleep, but other than that, I was a perfectly normal person as far as everybody else was concerned. After that, mum called us all down to dinner. The twins were normally prompt with their timing but this time, on this particular evening, they were twenty minutes late and even though mum kept shouting and shouting to the top of her lungs, it was silent up there. So, we let them be and thought that maybe they were working on a school project together that was due in for the next day. Still nobody comes downstairs. No sounds upstairs. At this point mum was getting a little worried so she ran upstairs and jumped into their room. They were gone. That’s right, gone.

Mum stayed silent for a split second then started to scream and cry.

“NOOOO!!!!” she cried.

I ran up the stairs, my heart in my mouth wondering what had gotten her to scream like that.

“Mum what’s wrong?” I asked, as I ran up the stairs.

Then I saw it. Then I saw the horror. The pure horror of an empty room.

“Where are they? Where have they gone?” I cried.

“I don’t know!  I really don’t Amelia!” mum shouted.

It sounded like she was angry at me, like it was entirely my fault. If anything it was her fault for leaving them up there alone when dad was at work.

We rang dad and searched all around the neighbourhood, all night. We asked neighbours if they had seen them and even questioned random people on the street. But there was nothing. We eventually lost hope and went home after calling the police. They said that they would begin a search party in the morning if they didn’t turn up by then. So we all went to bed. I couldn’t sleep that night. And even though I wasn’t with mom and dad, I could sense that they couldn’t either. It felt like the house was empty and full of spirits. I didn’t dare go into the twins’ room that night. Not even if my body forced me to.

The next morning I woke up and it was pouring down with rain. I heard lots of chatter from downstairs, and assumed that Max and Laura had come back just like the police said they would. So I sprinted downstairs but it wasn’t Max and Laura after all. It was Mrs Betty: the woman from two doors down with her husband and son. I hated Mrs Betty. In fact, we all hated Mrs Betty. She was intrusive, rude and most of all nosey. I could already tell that she wanted to know all the details about Max and Laura’s disappearance. Her husband was decent bloke- probably the complete opposite to Mrs Betty- he probably didn’t even want to know about Max and Laura’s disappearance. He was a very quiet man and always had been as far as I’d known.

They stayed for about half an hour and then the house was silent. Mom didn’t look all that sad but I think she was just doing it to prevent me from bursting out into tears. I could tell that she had been crying, from the eye bags and her wiping her eyes every so often. I couldn’t live like this. I really couldn’t. No talking. No happiness. So I decided what I had to do to get mine and everybody else’s life back. I had to investigate. I had to find out what really happened to my brother and sister.