Blood Secrets

CHAPTER 5

BEFORE

I sat gawping in disbelief. My father continued to explain. I could see his mouth moving but no words escaped. It was like watching a movie on mute while the intensity of the situation caused beads of sweat to drip from my forehead and into my eye. I blinked harshly and felt a hand on my arm. It was sticky from sweat as it had previously been cradling the other. I turned my neck to Uncle Andy.

"Are you alright?"

"Well, my Dad is sitting across from us, a Dad I haven't seen in 11 years should I mention, and he's so telling us my mother is an evil witch or whatever that summoned these creepy malevolent creatures to be her minions and take over the world. Yeah, course I'm fine."

But of course my shocked, frozen state had other plans; plans to lose the ability to move my mouth and replace it with a dumb silence. Instead, I shook my head after having my mouth already fail me too many times today.

He nodded and stood up slowly. Him and Dad exchanged a few words and I was lightly led to the door to the hallway.

"No..." I stopped abruptly and slipped my arm out of Andy's light grasp. "I'm staying. You can explain" I said, scrutinising my Dad.

After a lot of deliberating, Andy left us on our own.

"Darling... I know this is almost impossible to believe, but it's just that. Almost impossible. I dedicated 11 years of my life, 11 years out of yours for answers. Your mother, she didn't die in that car accident. I believed this for 3 years, then things didn't begin to fit. It started when all the witnesses to the accident began mysteriously disappearing." He stopped only to retrieve a pack of files from his bag and place them on the table between us.

"The first to go missing was Luke Young" Dad spun round a file for me to see. It contained a single picture of a heartwarming attractive boy about my age with a lip piercing who was covered in tattoos and had the deep blue eyes you could get lost in.

"Then a young, newly-wed couple who were on their way to their honeymoon. Also missing." He tapped on the picture of a happy man and woman for emphasis.

He carried on by showing 3 more people: a mother, father and their baby. Their firstborn.

"Molly and Adam Johnson were on their way to the supermarket for last minute shopping with their son at around 11pm on the Sunday. What's odd about this one is that Molly's mother recalls them calling her at around 10.30pm"

"What's odd about that?" The sudden outburst and harshness in my voice surprised us both. He looked at me with a mixture of surprise and excitement. He gave me a small smile and spoke.

"Well, it's more about what they said. She described it as almost a goodbye unquote. That's what makes this different from the others. It's as if they knew what was going to happen. We investigated the possibility they ran away but it's very unlikely not to mention unrealistic. Here's a list written by the baby's grandmother on their usual routine."

I took the crumpled piece of paper and read to myself:

They wake up at 7.30am

Call me to pick up Johnny

I arrive at 8.00am to take him to nursery

I leave Johnny there for 6 hrs

Molly picks him up

She'd call me and cook dinner

I stopped reading there and felt a pang followed by an unfamiliar sense of guilt at looking so intimately at another person's life. I looked away and put the paper back on the table and sighed. I could barely get a word in before Dad started again. Dad... The unfamiliarity of the word seemed to have faded and been replaced with the unsafe feeling of comfort.

"Getting enough information on all the missing people took me... about 3 years" My jaw dropped. It really took that long? But I quickly remember there are still another 8 years unaccounted for. "Then, of course, I was suddenly involved in something dangerous. And it all revolved around your mother."