Carnival Souls

Epilogue

Owen paused on the steps outside his house. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. The toes of his borrowed boots pinched. They were half a size too small, but the best the hospital had been able to do when trying to find shoes for four dirty, barefoot teenagers who had wandered out of the woods onto a backroad and been picked up by a good Samaritan.

Owen had been so exhausted and foot-sore by then, he hadn't even stopped to question getting into a car with a stranger. It had taken them hours to find their way out of the woods with Jacks steadily deteriorating the whole time. He had been barely conscious as they laid him in the back of the pick-up truck and tried to steady him over the bumpy two miles to the woman's house so she could call the ambulance.

Lira, Owen, and Mitsi had been treated for dehydration and the minor injuries they had accumulated over the last twenty-four hours. Jacks had been whisked away to surgery to treat him open abdomen wound and burns. The doctor had told them he should make a full recovery, but warned there likely would be some scarring from the burns.

They had done their best to dodge the doctors' questions about where they had come from and what had happened to them, but once they had been treated, a social worker had been called in to try and tease their identities from them.

All of them had agreed during their time in the woods not to mention Genzel, the carousel, or the carnival and to be as vague about the details of their "kidnapping" as possible. Owen had been startled to discover the hospital they were taken to wasn't that far from his home, but Lira and Mitsi and Jacks were hundreds of miles from their families, which made simply leaving impossible for them. 

It had come out eventually that all four of them were listed in the national missing persons registry and a flurry of activity and speculation had ensued. How was it possible that four kids who were taken from all over the country and years apart from each other had somehow ended up together? What was the connection? They all refused to answer questions other than those that involved their names and family whereabouts, but they knew it wouldn't stop there. There would be news stories and wild conspiracies, though nothing could be more far-fetched than the truth. But, for a little while at least, they could feign exhaustion and push the desire to be reunited with their families.

They had been left alone in Jacks' recovery room while the social worker went to contact their parents when Owen had told them he was leaving.

"I gave them a fake phone number," he had said. "I want to be home before they come back. It's better if I go home on my own."

They had understood and he had given them his real cellphone number on scraps on paper. He had shaken hands with Mitsi, wished Jacks a speedy recovery, and given Lira a long hug.

"Thank you for keeping your promise," she had whispered in his ear as they embraced. He had tried to memorize the picture of her, standing in oversize jeans and sweatshirt borrowed from the lost and found, her hair freshly washed and beginning to curl around the frame of her face as it dried, and her smile radiant in the fluorescent light. The lavender swirls that had marked her arms and neck were gone. All their spirit marks had faded from sight by the time they had emerged from the woods.

"I'm not sure how I'll go on without you bossing me around," Owen had joked as they let go.

Her eyes had sparkled mischievously. "Oh, I'm sure you'll find a way."

He had left them then, a brief sadness dampening his high spirits as their presence faded and he boarded a bus outside the hospital with the money he had borrowed from the social worker on the pretense of buying food from the cafeteria. I'll pay her back, he had told himself as the guilt took a seat beside him on the bus.