The Face Behind The Mask

38

By the time Cameron helped Kelsey out of his car in the garage it was mid-afternoon. Skyden walked ahead of them, opening the door to the mud room. Discharge from the hospital had been a painfully slow process and the drive home took almost an hour. Assisting an impaired, heavily medicated girl out of the car, from the garage, and through the house was challenging. At the bottom of the staircase, Cameron offered to carry Kelsey up to the second floor.

"I'm not a baby," she said. Her legs were moving but there didn't seem to be much of the usual Kelsey McKenzie intensity in her glazed eyes.

"You're a little unsteady, Kels."

"I'm fine." She teetered on the stairs.

"Please hold onto the banister," Skyden said.

Brick came out of his room and watched his nearly unrecognizable sister climb to the second floor. "Hey," he said quietly.

She gave him a weird grin, the best her face could manage. "Hey," she answered on her way past.

This version of his sister brought a swell of tears to his eyes. He rubbed his nose.

As she ushered Kesley into her room, Skyden offered her son a comforting smile but could see that it didn't take.

Kelsey plopped onto her bed, her mouth gaping with a wide yawn. Skyden knelt beside the bed and helped her daughter slide her feet out of her slippers.

"Anything I can get for you?" Cameron said from the doorway.

"I'm thirsty," she said, her voice muffled by her pillow.

Skyden closed the blinds and the room went gray. She went to the bed and drew the covers over her daughter's shoulder. She couldn't resist the impulse to lightly brush the hair from Kelsey's bruised face. When she walked out into the hallway, she found Brick sitting on the top step. She sat beside him.

"She looks bad," he said.

"She's gonna be okay." She draped her arm over his shoulder and pulled him a little closer. "You doing okay with school?"

"Remote sucks," he said.

"I know it does."

"I was gonna ask if Jonas could come over later but I know that's a bad idea. Maybe I can go to his house?"

"Maybe in a few days. Let's see how things go, okay?"

He got up. Before entering his room, he said sheepishly, "I ate the last popcorn."

"That's okay."

"It was the last bag."

"We'll get some more."

She watched him return to his room and then went downstairs. She found Cameron in the kitchen filling a water glass. "I'm gonna take this up to her," he said.

"She's already asleep."

He set the glass on the counter.

Skyden said, "I wish you'd mentioned that you spoke with Lori."

"I thought you'd be glad to see her."

"Yeah, I was. Just surprised. I wasn't expecting..."

She didn't share her knee-jerk reaction at the mention of a visitor at the hospital, her mind going straight to the possibility that the psychopath had come to finish the job he'd started.

Cameron didn't mention the detective's visit, Orion asking if he owned a firearm, the implication being he needed to arm every member of his family with an assault rifle and stock up on hollow points.

Skyden leaned against the counter, worn out. Cameron put his arms around his wife and she rested her head on his shoulder. She murmured, "I don't know if I have the emotional bandwidth for this."

"Sure you do." He kissed her forehead.

During the next two hours, Skyden didn't know what to do with herself. Taking a nap would be nearly impossible. She sat up in bed several times, thinking she'd heard Kelsey moving around. When she got up to check, Kelsey was sound asleep in her bed.

Skyden gathered an armful of clothes from the hamper, carried them to the laundry room, and stuffed them into the washing machine. She added a cup of detergent and set the washer to run. She peeked into Brick's room and found him lying on his bed, earbuds embedded.

"You done with school?" she asked.

"Yep." He sat up and pulled out his earbuds. "What're you doing?"

"I was going down to the kitchen to look for a snack."

"When you say snack, you don't mean like an apple or something?"

"I was thinking something less healthy than that," she said with a playful smile.

"I'll come with you."

The kitchen counter looked like a fruit stand. Bunches of bananas, bags of apples, and cartons of berries surrounded the blender.

"Don't worry," said Skyden. "These are for Kelsey. Smoothies are about all I can get her to eat."

While she sorted through the pantry cabinet, not exactly sure what she was looking for, she watched Brick searching through the refrigerator for a snack. Skyden knew that from now on her family's lives would be different. She'd read accounts of people whose homes had been burglarized, faceless strangers going through their personal belongings, making judgments about what was valuable and what was junk. The victims said the invasions were life-changing events. Their homes didn't feel like their homes anymore. They felt exposed. They didn't feel safe. They'd been violated and that's how Skyden felt but in a much more personal way. Someone had taken her daughter with plans to do something horrific. Maybe leave her dead out in a field somewhere once he was finished using her. Maybe he'd be back or maybe he had taken another child from another family. Even if they managed to track down the monster and capture him there was no going back to normal. Not in the McKenzie household. Not ever.

Kelsey called from the second floor, "Mom!"

She rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and found her daughter near the top of the staircase looking disoriented like she couldn't quite crawl all the way out of a deep dream. Kelsey mumbled something about the garage, her eyes directed toward the entryway, her posture stiff.

"What's the matter, Kels?"

"Someone's in the garage," she said quietly.

"No one's in the garage, honey."

"I heard the garage door."

"That was Dad going to the store a little while ago. That's all." Skyden crossed the room heading toward the garage.

Kesley shrieked, "NO!" She hobbled down the stairs on one swollen ankle. She grabbed her mother's arm. "Don't open the door! Call the police! Please, Mom." She broke out in a sweat, her face glossy and flushed.

"It's okay. Dad's coming right back."

"Please, Mom. Please! Don't open the door."

Skyden strained, weighed down by her frantic daughter, reaching for the door separating the entryway from the garage.

"Don't let him in!" Kelsey yelped.

Skyden flipped on the light switch and pulled open the door. Kelsey backpedaled into the living room, her brother watching in disbelief. She took small steps backward, her eyes fixed on the entryway, her face tight.

"Look, Kels," said Skyden. "It's just my car and a space for Dad's car when he returns from the store."

Kelsey wasn't comforted. She froze.

"There's no one in the garage. Look for yourself."

There wasn't a chance Kelsey would go near the garage, no hope she'd poke her head inside to confirm that her mother was right. Skyden wished Kelsey would blink, just once, but her eyes remained wide, bulging, with a faraway look like she could see something making its way toward her, moving through a vast murkiness, something ugly, inhuman, and vile closing in.