My Darkest Rose

Chapter 15

Gone

Seven Years Ago...

The security light on the side of the house clicked off just as Jack reached the water. There was no sound. Whatever was happening to Rose was going on deep under water where he couldn't reach her.

And Jack couldn't swim. He stumbled blindly along the muddy shore, yelling for Rose. Panic replaced fear as he realized it had been too long, far too long, for her to be alive if she was still under water.

He had to get help. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that he could run along the shore without running into a tree, but not so much that he could see into the shadows. He could feel the creature there, watching him. Somehow it had emerged from the lake without a sound and returned to the forest.

When he reached the path leading to the house, the security light turned on, illuminating the ground and the drag marks where Rose had tried to cling to the earth as she was pulled to the lake. Details caught his eye as he raced up to the house. A single blade of tall grass covered in blood. A brown grasshopper with a broken wing, rolling helplessly in the dirt.

The entire evening was punctuated by moments of clarity, a sigh in bed, a sudden intensity of thought, a scream.

From the kitchen, he called 911. His voice was nearly gone, but he managed to tell the operator that Rose was in the lake, under water, and he couldn't get her out.

In the ten minutes it took the police to arrive, Jack sat on the floor, his back against the wall, and waited for the creature to come for him. There was a complete absence of sound. No wind of chirrup from the forest. No creak or hum from the house. No crunch of gravel as the first police car arrived at the house.

Something inside him felt broken and he wondered if the past few months with Rose had even happened. Maybe she'd been just a dream, or a trick of a fractured mind- a way to cope after his mother died.

Detective Hernandez was one of the first to question Jack and the first to suspect drugs were involved. Jack's pupils were so large they were like two panic signs in his pale face.

"Do you have anyone we can call?" Detective Hernandez asked.

Jack sat on the couch in a daze, staring out the front window. Someone had helped him stand, had led him into the living room. Police swarmed the woods like flies on a carcass. Red and blue flashing lights lit the canopy.

When Jack didn't answer, the detective tried again. "Jack? You have someone we can call? Your parents?"

Jack could barely comprehend what he was being asked. His mind was locked around the growing realization that Rose was actually gone. She was under water with the fish that would tear her to pieces. She was dead like his mother.

Just three months earlier he and Fauna had spread his mother's ashes over the still water like macabre fish food. He'd dreamed that night that monstrous fish had risen to the surface in the quiet darkness and eaten every last bit of her, bones and all. Now he imagined the same happening to Rose and felt bile hit the back of his throat.

"Want me to call your aunt?" another officer asked. Jack swallowed hard, nodded. He didn't know how the officer knew his aunt, but everyone seemed to know each other in Tacoma. Except the detective. He was new to Orange County, having recently been transferred from Indianapolis.

His aunt Elizabeth was his mother's youngest sister. She'd helped care for his mom when she had cancer. When she arrived a few minutes later and saw all the police officers walking through the house and Jack alone on the couch in nothing but a pair of shorts, his legs scratched and muddy, she was furious.

Detective Hernandez said they had to take Jack in for questioning and photographs, and she immediately called a lawyer and insisted Jack not answer any more of their questions until one arrived.

But it was too late. Jack had already told a roomful of officers and paramedics about the creature he'd seen drag Rose into the lake. One of those officers had already told his wife, an elementary school teacher who taught Jack and Rose in fourth grade, and she'd already called and woken her sister. The story spread through Tacoma like a virus through a kiss, morphing into something cruel and destructive.

It wasn't until the next morning they were able to begin searching the lake. Divers found no trace of Rose though it was impossible to search the bottom of the sinkhole because it was so deep.

In the weeks that followed, Jack moved in with his aunt and slept on the couch. His world narrowed, grew cold and needle sharp. He feared the creature would come for him and that instead of killing him, it would keep him alive forever, in the dark. He feared the pain would never end.

One night, Fauna and Jack were up late discussing the possibility of him moving in with her in her Chicago apartment. Tacoma had decided not to charge Jak with a crime despite the near-unanimous public opinion that he killed Rose and weighted down her body so it could never be found. His lawyer said they had exactly zero evidence of a crime, and therefore couldn't charge him with one.

While Fauna was successfully convincing Jack that he could start a new life in Chicago, someone threw a rock through Mandy's bedroom window, hitting her in the back as she sat on her bed reading. On it was written: KILLERS GET KILLED, in black marker. She was just fourteen.

Jack and Fauna left the next morning for Chicago. He didn't realize at the time that he left behind a sketchbook. In it were hundreds of drawings of the creature and monstrous fish. Rose too.

Mandy, afraid the drawings were evidence of her cousin's guilt, hid it in her closet. She brought it out every once in a while to impress her friends or boys. Before Rose disappeared, Jack had been the upperclassmen all her friends had a crush on. After what happened in Moonwood, he became a legend.