Missing in Venice

Four

Lyn

  "HENRY! No!", I started sobbing heavily as my initial instinct was to plow him out of the devastation of debris and lethal solid stainless steel beam, despite the fact that the ship was still tearing into the already wrecked city, but I knew what I had to do; I took the hands of the two girls that I felt like were already my sisters, and plummeted off of the Mary Lou to locate their parents, and at long last, glanced back at the demolished street and ship and saw that they had finally stopped the vessel from going any further into Venice and medics had pulled Henry onto a stretcher; I quickly turned away in tears; I couldn't bear to look, for it would hurt me too much and distract me from the crucial task that lay ahead as a seventeen year old responsible for these innocent young girls. I got them vitally safe too their ever-so-fretful parents and the one called, Brooke's, weeping little brother.

"God bless you Lyn.", said the mother as she tearfully embraced both her daughter and her friend and asked, "Where's Henry?" We all were silent and her warm, thankful smile turned grim with melancholy. Finally she met my eyes and said, "He's, gone?"

I let myself out of my box of confined feelings; I sobbed louder with complete and utter devastation than ever and the whole family patted me on the back and cooed me content so that I could at least sputter, "He, he r-r-risked his l-life for a-all of us."

Silence fell among them. "You, you wouldn't understand. My mother died right after I had been born into my father's crestfallen presence , and he, Mr. Linden, was a perfectly healthy middle-aged librarian and had said that he'd be right back after a short stroll in my home in the US carrying a box with only, about three books in it, but when he returned and we were swept to the hospital in an ambulance, it was just traumatizing and agonizing to see his heart rate dwindle lower and lower until a flat line was present on the beige heart rate monitor when I had only been ten." Everybody was silent for a second. Although relief for their safe and sound children still lingered in the sawdust filled air, a new sense of melancholy and grief hung in the atmosphere, altering their perspective of emotional being.

The young girl with long, light auburn hair, Brooke, finally spoke; "Did you say a middle-aged man with a box of books in his hands?", she had looked both scared and surprised at what I had just said. How could she know anything about my father? But finally, I answered.

"Yes, I have a picture of him if you want to see." I pulled the small wallet sized photograph out my pocket; it was of him and me riding on the Dumbo ride at Disney World. I had always kept it close for the past faintly miserable seven years in my pants pocket where it had formed permanent wrinkles.

"It's, it's him! The guy from my dream! I know what happened to him!" she exclaimed.

"What?" I ask eager and full of hope to finally know what had happened to my deceased father as I absentmindedly slipped the vacation photo into the roomy pocket.

"I sort of remember. He had grabbed a girl with black hair with neon green tips and told her to take the books or something and to not- and that was where the dream had ended. I'm sorry if I wasn't any help.", It had still sounded pretty confusing especially the fact that she had had a dream about it as if there was some sort of empathy link between them, but at least she knew what he had done before his eternal depart. Then it suddenly clicked; no wonder Dad was so anxious and on-edge whenever I went into his cluttered study. There must have been something sinister and queer with his books, but what? And who was that peculiar girl he had given the books too? Was there a curse or something that lay behind his unaccountable farewell or the books? A million questions still raced in my head, but I knew that all of this was a mystery that maybe even he couldn't figure out.