The Harvesting (ON HOLD)

Chapter Eight

He steps into the medium sized room, flipping the lightswitch on the wall beside him. Now with the light on, he can see all that the room has to offer: stacks of boxes, filled with newspapers and letters. One box is only filled with yearbooks, and as he looks inside one of the yearbooks, which dates back to 1990, he finds specific pictures of some of the female classmates circled in  red marker. One of the circled girls specifically alarms Branden, though. Annie Mullins. He’s seen that name somewhere, but can’t place where. 

He places the yearbook back in the box and looks around a bit more, eventually coming across a newspaper article, seemingly cut out from the rest of the pages that are nowhere to be found, that tells of a 17 year old girl named Jane Brown who went missing in 1994. She was last seen spending time with a boy named Brian Spane. He was a year older than her, and they had apparently been spending lots of time together months before her abduction. This must be the Brian those letters were addressed to.

Branden was speechless. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. He couldn’t believe any of it. He wondered how he could have been so clueless in the very beginning of their meeting. How the screams barely alarmed him. How could Jonathan’s ridiculous lie of those damn foxes convince him everything was okay? He felt stupid. He considered leaving. Packing his bags and driving off before Jonathan figured out what he knew. But he couldn’t.

What would he tell Maria? 

He looks around the room once more. Behind a stack of boxes, a section of a door sticks out. He realizes why the stairs were built where they were. Jonathan would surely kill him if he found out about this. He had to leave now. He put the wooden board up as best he could and moved the dressers back together, praying that Jonathan never noticed the lack of wallpaper in the closet. He probably barely went back there, anyway. 

 *******

The party was much more awkward than Branden intended. He was struggling to keep to himself about the information he had and knew he should tell the police, but he would need to get picture evidence to show first and wouldn't know when he could get the opportunity to go back inside the room.

He was having a conversation with Jonathan and one of his friends from church, but was barely contributing. Jonathan taps his shoulder, bringing him out of his thoughts. 

"You alright, Branden? Seemed pretty deep in thought there," Jonathan says, half joking. 

"Oh, yea. I'm good. What are you talking about again?" 

"Well, we were just messing around with you about how I'm roughing you up with this work, getting you away from the city, ya know."

 "Yea, you sure are. I'll be sore by the time I get home," he replies, laughing. 

"So, how's the countryside been treating you, Branden?" Charlie, Jonathan’s friend, asks.

"Oh, it's been nice! The air is definitely fresher." He chuckles. "It's nice to get away, though. It's very peaceful out here." 

"It sure is. That's one of the reasons I left the city. I've been way happier out here, too. You should consider finding yourself a place in the area once Maria and you get married, I'm sure she'd love being closer to Jonathan as well. Just a thought, y'know."

"Yea, we'll definitely think about that! But we're probably gonna be in our apartment for a decent while after that anyway. Even with both of us working, it's tough to move in this economy."

"Oh, I totally understand. I should be glad my wife and I bought a house when we did. We'd probably be stuck in a pig sty if we did now."

Jonathan interjects, saying, "Why don't we cut that cake now? I'm just dying to try it."