Mule

Chapter Fourteen: Encounters

Ana scrolled down the screen of her iPad as she ready her fifth news article on the case of Robert O'Donahue. Derek had been in holding for a day, and they still hadn't gotten the DNA results back. With nothing else to do but wait, she'd been camped on the sofa for hours while her brother did work on his laptop in the kitchen and her father was meeting with Derek's lawyer.

So far, every paper had the same story. Small-town teen goes missing on camping trip. Like Derek's case, they found no trace of the teen. He was last seen while playing hide and seek with seven other kids at the camp. The seeker eventually found the others and thought Robert had just hidden very well. Then the dinner bell rang, and he still hadn't appeared. No one began looking until the counselors noticed he was missing from bed checks at eight.

The police searched for five weeks longer than they searched for Derek, and Ana didn't know if she should be offended or not. Robert came from a two-parent household. His father was a county chair while his mother was a lovable fifth-grade teacher. Ana scrolled passed picture after picture of the grieving family.

However, this website had a video. An interview from a couple of the kids who knew Robert. Unlike the other articles, this was written by a freelance journalist unaffiliated from big newspapers. Most of the stories were on unsolved crimes and unexplainable events, including Bigfoot sightings. Curious, she clicked on the video.

"Good afternoon, I'm Wendy Dickenson and you're watching Weird with Wendy." The quirky journalist had frizzy ash brown hair and cute freckles. This video was thirty-six years old, so she was probably in her sixties now.

"Today, I'm going to cover one of the strangest cases in Washington State history." She got out of her car and started walking across the street toward a house. "Just last week, Cashmere teen Robert O'Donahue vanished without a trace. With no leads and no suspects, the small town is horrified by the possibilities of what may have happened to this boy. Well, folks, I have the privilege of interviewing one of the last to see Robert alive."

Wendy knocked on the door, and Ana set her iPad up on the stand on the arm of the couch and curled up under the blanket. The video was twenty minutes long, so she might as well get comfortable.

The door opened, and a teenage girl answered. She had dark circles under her blue eyes as though she hadn't slept since it happened. Her hair was tied back in a half-hearted bun. Ana saw herself in the poor girl.

"Good afternoon, Miss Charity," Wendy said. "Thank you for speaking with me today."

The girl looked at the camera then back at her. "We have to be quick. My parents don't know I'm doing this. They said no press."

"So long as they aren't subscribers to Weird with Wendy, you should be safe."

Wendy went into the house then set the camera up close by and they sat on the couch. Ana could tell this video was shot in the eighties considering the outdated décor with the pastel, multicolored couches, flowery wallpaper, and the large box TV.

"Miss Charity, I'll cut to the chase," Wendy said. "What do you remember from that day?"

Charity started chewing on her fingernails. "I remember playing hide and seek. We'd been to that camp three years in a row, so we knew it like we knew our own home. We knew all the good hiding spots, so we were surprised when we hadn't found Robert yet. They said he would come out when he realized we'd stopped looking for him, but I was determined to find him."

She paused, and Wendy glanced at the camera for moment before speaking.

"Then what happened?"

Charity sniffed. "I walked toward the big boulder. That's where we always met up before going to the dock. While I stood there . . . I don't know how to explain it. Something changed. I couldn't feel a breeze, and it grew very quiet."