Excerpt
The Lost Child
Thomas Grant Bruso © 2023
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
He watches her. She is alone.
She is six, maybe seven years old. She is having a picnic in the front yard with her dolls.
The girl’s hair is the color of spun honey. Her eyes, dark brown, innocent, come alive when he hears her talking to one of her plastic dolls.
Her voice is lively, soft, and gentle.
She laughs as the man shifts his footing in the shadowy woods across from her house. A small branch snaps underfoot, the sound of his weight on the thick twig imploding like fireworks.
She looks up from grooming her doll’s hair and stares in his direction. The man creeps behind a leafy spruce tree to hide.
Two vehicles pass along the quiet suburban street. The man stares around the massive tree, watching the young girl.
The sound of her humming to her dolls makes him smile. A splinter of electricity vibrates through his rangy limbs. Something mechanical surges through his veins and up and down his body to his scraggly face.
Trembling, he reaches a gnarled hand out against the thick bark of the tree to balance himself. His head is dizzy. His legs are unsteady.
He knows this feeling. It is familiar, like the blade of a knife skimming the surface of young flesh. Then he hears the sound of scared children panting and crying in the back of his head. He sees their frightened eyes, pleading for their parents, and he smiles.
He slips back into the brush behind the birch tree.
Watching. Waiting.
A dog walker passes two feet away. He skulks back into the coiling shadows so they won’t see him.
He wipes sweat from his neck with the back of his hand.
The man’s identity is almost discovered when the sizeable black lab points its nose toward the dense foliage. The owner tugs on the dog’s leash lightly and starts down the street, around the corner; now, they are out of sight.
The man waits for a second or two until he’s sure they’re gone. He hugs the tree limb and cocks an ear to the sound of the young girl’s mother yelling at her from the brightly lit porch.
“It’s getting dark, Susie. Come inside.”
Susie.
Sweet little Susie, the cigar-smoking man muses.
Curly-haired Susie. Doll-grooming Susie.
When the time is right, he will be back.
Chapter One
One year later
Eight-year-old Daniel Thompson Hadley, a boy who dreams of becoming a NASCAR champ someday, pedals down Olive Way on his new birthday bicycle.
A light September wind ruffles his sandy-brown hair. Six houses down, his mother and father watch from the stoop of their Victorian home, eyes intent on the erratic movement of their only child.
“Not too far,” Penny Hadley warns him over the rim of her tea mug.
Peter looks down at his wife and whispers softly, “He’s fine. Let him be a kid.”
She tugs the collar of her winter coat closed as if it will keep her warm from the chill and gazes up at the sky. “It’s getting dark.”
Peter tucks his hands into his pants pockets, slightly put off. “Let him enjoy his new wheels, Pen.”
She scoffs at her husband’s remark. “Daniel. Daniel Hadley. Come back right now,” she calls.
But young Daniel does not hear his mother’s voice. By this time, he is at the end of the unlit street, hidden in the shadows of the Jettisons’ ash tree. The elderly couple, close friends of the Hadleys, sit on their porch swing beneath a yolk-yellow light. Betty busies her fingers knitting Wendell a cozy afghan. Wendell sips his usual nightcap: scotch on the rocks.
“Did you hear your mom and dad, Daniel?” Mrs. Jettison calls out.
Wendell touches her arm, shaking his head. “Don’t bother. Kids will be kids.”
“Wendell, please. It gets dark sooner these nights.” She grips the arm of the swing and heaves herself to her feet. She stumbles, crying in mild pain against arthritis in her knees and legs. She ambles over to the edge of the wraparound porch. “You hear me, Daniel? Your mother and father said not too far.”
The young boy turns his eyes up to the raspy voice of his neighbor in a you-are-not-my-parent stare. He continues across the neighbors’ unkempt lawns, strewn with late fall leaves, to the adjacent apartment complexes a few houses down.
He wheels along, whistling against a windy night, in astonishment at his newborn freedom. The gears of his bicycle rattle around the corner, fading down the street.
Penny feels a pinprick of tears at the corners of her eyes as she races down the street, tea sloshing over the rim of her mug. Peter can’t catch up. Not after his triple bypass surgery five months ago. He follows a few feet behind his wife, wheezing, blathering obscenities under his breath. The heat of his sweat-glossed face stops him from running.
“Daniel!” Trembling, he fingers beads of sweat out of his eyes.
The Jettisons stare down at the sidewalk as Penny and Peter pass the house in a moonlit blur.
Tense with frustration, Penny glances up at the couple, scared-looking, panting. “Did you see Daniel?”
Mr. Jettison mumbles something Penny can’t quite hear. His wife points a finger down the street. “I think he went that way, dear.”
The stricken mother yields at the end of Palmer Street and Olive Way and gazes around the neighborhood she has called home for the last eight years. Daniel is nowhere in sight.
She runs into the middle of the four-way intersection, looks behind cars and in neighbors’ front yards. She stands on her tiptoes to see over the tops of hedgerows and crouches to peek behind rhododendrons and quinces. Daniel is known to carry his hide-and-seek games too far, she knows. Tonight, though, is different. Her exasperated breath and beating heart tell her something is wrong.
She kneads the side of her neck. “Daniel!” Ugly images of a lost child invade her thoughts.
Peter pants closely behind her like an obedient dog. His unsteady hand skims the top of her shoulder. “Where is Danny? Where’s my son?” He peers around frantically, calling out for Daniel.
The panicked expression on Penny’s sour face and the discomforting rhythm of her voice tells him she doesn’t have an answer.
The sudden sound of a thrumming bicycle chain stirs the air, and Daniel appears around the corner. And the bold escapee knows, as he pedals closer toward his parents, noticing their scared wide eyes, that he has frightened them. He knows he is in big trouble.
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