All weekend, it didn’t matter how many times he turned the pillow over. He could feel that horrible fever on his forehead. But his fever had finally broken. There was only sweat and that sweet baby aspirin smell. Matt had wet the bed again.
“Mike?” he said.
He heard nothing. Matt got out of bed and looked at the sheets. They were covered in urine. He felt so embarrassed. He couldn’t let his big brother see him like this. So, Matt peeled off his pajamas and underwear, cold and clingy, and went to the bathroom to wash himself with a towel. When he got clean and dry, he went down the hallway to his big brother’s room. He opened the door and tiptoed over to the bed.
“Mike?” he whispered.
His brother did not move under the covers.
“Mike? I had a nightmare. Can I sleep in your bed?”
There was no sound. Matt slowly pulled the blanket back, but all he found was a rolled-up sleeping bag and a baseball glove.
Mike was gone.
Matt looked around the room to see if something was wrong. There was a poster of the Avengers including Mike’s favorite, Thor. The closet was messy. The floor was littered with balls from Nerf to Wiffle. Nothing was under the bed. Nothing was out of place. But it still didn’t feel right. It felt like the street he saw in his nightmare. It just wasn’t right.
Matt left the room and tiptoed down the hall to his mothers’ room. He thought maybe Mike had his own nightmare and asked to sleep between them. But they were sleeping on opposite sides of the bed. Mike was nowhere to be seen.
Matt crept downstairs. When he reached the kitchen, he saw the carton of milk on the counter. Matt went over and touched it. The carton was warm. It had been left out for at least an hour. Matt looked at the picture of the missing girl. Emily Bertovich. For some reason, he could have sworn she was looking back at him.
He left the kitchen and went to the living room. He saw a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the coffee table. The spoon was still in the bowl. The TV was on, playing an old Avengers cartoon. Thor was speaking.
“Iron Man is in trouble, Captain America,” he said.
Matt moved out of the living room and went to the entry hall. He looked up at the coat-tree and noticed that Mike’s jacket was missing. The dead bolt on the front door was unlocked. Matt couldn’t believe his brother would have left the house. They were still on punishment for getting in the fight at the Christmas Pageant. If Mike was caught outside, their mothers would ground him forever. Something was terribly wrong.
Matt opened the door.
The air was still and quiet. There had been a massive snowfall overnight, and from the looks of the clouds overhead, there was going to be an even bigger storm coming for Christmas.
“Mike?” he whispered. “Are you out here?”
Again, there was no sound. Just a deer staring at him from the lawn across the street. Matt started to feel a deep unease. He quickly threw on his coat and boots, noticing that his brother’s shoes had been left behind. So, he tied them together and threw them over his shoulder. Then, right before he left their house, something inside him told him to go back to the kitchen and grab a knife.
Call it a voice.
Matt started walking down the street. He looked down and even with the dusting of snow covering it like powdered sugar on a doughnut, he thought he could see the slightest impression of his brother’s bare feet. Normally, he wouldn’t have been able to see very well because of his lazy eye. But ever since Christopher had touched his arm, his eye had been getting better. After a week, it was all healed. But it didn’t stop at 20/20. It kept getting stronger and stronger. He could see for miles with it. The way that his grandmother said she was farsighted and could take off her glasses and watch drive-in movies a mile away from the back porch. She could never hear them. But she saw all the great movies. Then, they closed the theater. And she died of bladder cancer. Matt didn’t know why he was thinking about his grandmother now. He followed the footprints all the way down the long hill.
Toward the Mission Street Woods.
They were covered in a slight morning fog. Like a cloud in the