FOREST OF THE LOST

PART TWENTY SIX

48.

Relief, there is relief, job done and everyone he had researched prior to taking on a mission were discovered, found, and aided back to reality, their own individual realities. Satisfaction, there should be satisfaction but there isn't, for some reason it just isn't there, instead it leaves something else. Emptiness, there is so much emptiness within him that his very being may as well be one very large gaping hole.

Whether he knew it or not, whether he felt it or not, his entire life centered around a mission he had been compelled to take on and now that it is done what else is there but be true to his word? What, if anything, can fill this hole once he pays his eternal debt? And does he really need to fill this hole so soon? Can't he just do something for himself first? Can't he just take some time out for himself? Live out a lengthy life outside first perhaps then return ... no ... this is not the deal he made.

Being back in 'time', his own time as he knew it, should feel good but it doesn't. The debt hangs over him. And his own time is not exactly as he knew it, though he had kinda figured that already for if and when an opportunity to leave the park would come.

Being on the 'outside' odd should be done with yet it isn't. An upcoming moment of odd cannot and will not be known, not even by Terrence. The day after he first came to town, Terrence entered a store and had been served by the store owner. As history had been, two boys were missing, two boys a Mister John McCoy knew, he had been the last to see them before they disappeared.

He had joined an unsuccessful search party and in the seventeen years up to the point when Terrence Williams came to town, Mister McCoy appeared to have aged at least thirty years. As it now is, those two boys never went missing so Mister McCoy never joined any search party; he had not been the last person to have seen them so the seventeen years that passed were kind to him, so kind that those who know him may think that nowhere near seventeen years had passed for him.

Seeing this storekeeper for only the second time, Terrence notices the difference despite not knowing who this man is. Being served once again by this man, Terrence passes no comment. It is so nice to see the difference in this man and how energized he seems to be. This man's more than pleasant demeanour is contagious and as Terrence exits the town store, he too feels ... energized.

This energy stays with him as he begins to make his way away from the town and up the hill back to his estate, the estate where his new home is located. Well, a house it is he made purchase upon, but he will not stay in here long term. Strange how that things have been coming for so long, yet his new home is still quite new to him for he has hardly had a chance to spend much time within it. There is another home he must return to.

It is only on this uphill walk that it really hits him. Mary, how is she? Where is she? She lives a few doors down from Terrence so maybe she is home. Terrence makes an effort to get back into the estate as quickly as he can and when he does it his him again. First thing he notices is that Mary's car is not in her driveway, he is stopped from considering knocking on her door for it is not her door at all.

There are no curtains on the inside of the windows and if one were to look inside through these bare windows then he or she would see that there is no furniture within this home. Not only that but there is a 'For Sale' sign in the garden. Hadn't Mary told Terrence that she had made a permanent move to this town only three years before he did, and she did this because of what had happened to her brother?

She and her brother had come to this town frequently with their family when she and he were children up to the point when the brother went missing. It all changed. Todd did not go missing so Mary now does not live a few doors down from the new house Terrence acquired. She never lived there; she never had a need to find answers.