The Search for Artemis

The Search for Artemis - By P. D. Griffith



CHAPTER ONE

BLACKOUT


Landon Wicker scurried down the fire escape. Orange flecks of rust covered his bloodstained hands. Stumbling from rung to rung, he couldn’t get to the ground fast enough. His heart was racing; he felt lightheaded.

Then, in his haste to get away, his foot slipped off the ladder, causing him to clutch the crusty metal. Pressed against the steel, Landon shut his eyes and took a labored gulp as he fought to get past the nerve-wracking sensation of falling that briefly washed through his body.

As he paused to right himself, he heard the sound of the cell phone he’d dropped break into a million pieces on the asphalt below. He took a quick look back up the fire escape before continuing down. He could see the light from his bedroom as it shone out the window and cast a pale glow over the dark alley. Landon’s mind was still spinning from what had happened, and he couldn’t understand if he was making the right choice. What if he was wrong? What if he was overreacting? How could they blame him for what happened?

There was no time for second-guessing—he needed to get away. Whoever it was at the door had probably forced their way into the apartment by now and discovered the catastrophe waiting inside. To make it worse, Landon was clueless to what had happened; he just woke up, and the place was a disaster.

Unnerved and frightened, Landon clambered down the steel rungs of the fire escape and jumped to the ground, the remnants of his cell phone crunching under his tennis shoes. The impact of the hard asphalt caused him to stumble, but once he regained his footing, he stood up and pulled the strap of his duffle bag onto his shoulder.

Landon was running away from home—from what he might have done. He was running from an intuition that he was to blame for the crime. He was running, literally, as fast as he could. He was sprinting down the alley, not stopping to look back.

• • • • •

Five hours earlier.

Landon lay on his bed with a sticky film of sweat forcing the exposed parts of his body to cling to the sheets. The heat wave had been unrelenting for more than two weeks, and according to the weatherman, there was no end in sight. Even the sun setting didn’t seem to squelch the heat. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful sunset; the deep golden hues and vibrant pinks crept through Landon’s window, casting an orange glow on his unlit bedroom.

The sweat that soaked his body penetrated the sheets, creating a watery outline that looked morbidly like the chalk at a crime scene. He hadn’t moved for hours. It wasn’t that he couldn’t, but the heat was so oppressive that the mere idea of moving was exhausting. He stared at the fan as it rotated on the ceiling, trying to keep up with the spinning blades as they whirled around and around—lost in his own world.

That was why he didn’t hear his mother knocking on his bedroom door, see the shadow as it opened, or notice she’d walked in. She stepped over to his bed and gently touched his arm.

“Whoa, Mom . . . I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Well, I knocked, so you know.” She spoke calmly but sternly. “Anyways, dinner is ready. Get out of your bed and come to the table. Tonight we’re having stroganoff.”

Landon flung his legs off the side of his bed, but for a few moments that was the extent of his ability to move. He stayed that way, awkwardly contorted, until it started to get uncomfortable, and then he forced himself to sit up on the edge of the bed. His movements were lazy. He looked like a rag doll: his head resting on his shoulder, his shoulders slumped, and his arms dangling from his sides. Finally, after contemplating whether dinner was worth the effort, Landon stood up and followed his mother out to the dinner table.

His entire life they had lived in the same small two-bedroom apartment. It was one of those city apartments that cost way too much for the size, but he was lucky—he had his own room. His mother and father slept in the bedroom at the other end of the apartment, and between them was a small living space with barely enough room for a couch, a TV stand, and a dining area with a kitchen along the back wall.

Books consumed the place. His mother, an avid reader, collected them like some people collect commemorative pins. Not only did they fill the two bookshelves she crammed into the living room, but they were also stacked on the end tables, on top of the TV and all around the unused fourth seat of the dinner table. Stacks accumulated by the front door, in the corners of every room, and on the two windowsills in the apartment. A collection of James Joyce novels (and the numerous books needed to comprehend James Joyce) sat atop the microwave. Lewis Carroll found his home next to a bottle of whiskey. Coincidentally, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged held up as the replacement for the missing leg of their old leather couch. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have needed Sherlock Homes to find a copy of one of his books amid the illogical library that congested the apartment.

But books weren’t all his mother collected; she had a fondness for figurines and tchotchkes. No matter where she went, she came back with a little piece of junk. There was the pink flamingo lawn ornament she got in Florida, a snow globe from Vermont, and a miniature bronze replica of The Thinker that she acquired from a dinky souvenir shop in New York near Columbia University. There were resin replicas of every landmark around the globe: the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Mount Rushmore, The Great Pyramids of Giza, Big Ben, and Washington Monument, to name a few. It didn’t matter if she went there or not, she needed them. Countless more littered the apartment, generally resting on haphazardly constructed pedestals of bound paper and ink.

In an attempt to make the apartment a bit more normal, she put a bunch of framed pictures on the walls from their spontaneous vacations. For these trips, she would wake Landon up in the middle of the night, and the two of them would be gone as long as the money allowed. When they got back, she always seemed to pick the most embarrassing pictures to frame. As Landon neared the dinner table, he looked at one taken during their trip to Vermont last spring break. Dressed in layers of clothing, Landon stood awkwardly on a pair of rickety skis at the base of a large snow-covered mountain. He thought he looked like the Michelin Man in that photo.

It was embarrassing, but he didn’t care. It was what his mom did, and even if Landon didn’t always show it, he actually liked her. She told the craziest stories about her childhood growing up outside Atlanta, and she made the best food he had ever tasted. Her beef stroganoff was renowned throughout the apartment building. No barbecue commenced without her pasta salad. She also pushed Landon to try things, which he oddly appreciated. She saw too much of herself in him and didn’t want him to be unsuccessful because of a hereditary lack of motivation. Landon was what the school called “gifted,” meaning that he learned faster than the other kids and didn’t need to put in any effort to get by. And get by was all he did.

“Finally! I’m glad you could join us,” Mr. Wicker said as Landon shuffled toward his seat at the table.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t know dinner was ready.” Landon pulled out his chair. His father seemed to be in a good mood that evening.

Mr. Wicker directed his attention to Landon’s mother.

“Babe! Bring me my plate! I’m not waiting any longer!”

Landon’s mom put a plate of delicious stroganoff in front of his father, and then set one each for Landon and herself, steam slowly rising from the piles of gravy-covered pasta. As the intoxicating smell wafted into Landon’s awaiting nostrils, he began to salivate, just waiting to dive into the Wicker specialty. It was a rule in the apartment that no one could eat until Mr. Wicker took his first bite. Over the years, Landon and his mom had received enough painful lumps on their heads from the heavy butt end of the butter knife to know this.

Mr. Wicker grabbed the salt and pepper off the table and shook copious amounts onto his plate. He then took his fork, scooped up a hefty amount of pasta and thrust it into his wide-open mouth. That was his cue. Landon began to devour his plate of food, not even taking a moment to breathe as he scarfed down his favorite meal. His mother calmly ate her food, constructing tiny, perfectly portioned bites on her fork. The table was silent. It always was during dinner. Not because they were eating, but because Mr. Wicker liked it that way.

“Can you get me another beer and bring the pan over here?” Mr. Wicker asked after slurping down the last drop of his lager. “I want some more.”

Landon’s mother got up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator. After opening the door and standing there for a while, bent over, moving pieces of Tupperware and vegetables out of the way, she asked hesitantly, “How about some milk?” She kept her head turned toward the inside of the refrigerator, clearly dreading what came next.

“Milk? Why in hell would I want milk?” Mr. Wicker asked, evenly. “What are you waiting for? Get some in there now. And you better hope they get cold quick.”

He sat in his seat, waving his empty beer can in the air, utter disgust emanating from his exaggerated scowl. “Look at me!” Landon’s mom turned her head toward Mr. Wicker. The next words he spoke extra slowly, making sure Mrs. Wicker understood every syllable. “You better get some beer in there now, grab that pan, put more food on my plate and do it fast. Before I get angry.”

Mrs. Wicker grabbed a new case of beer out of the cabinet below the sink and unpacked the cans, putting them in the fridge to cool down. She shoved two cans in the ice bucket in the freezer in hopes they would get cold before Mr. Wicker’s patience ran out. Then, she threw the empty box in the trash bin, picked up the pan of stroganoff by its handle, and walked across the room to Mr. Wicker’s seat. She spooned some more onto his plate, set the pan on a trivet on the dinner table, and returned to her seat. The room became silent once again.

When Landon finished, he got up and brought his plate to the sink to rinse off.

“Landon, I think it’s time for you to read a book,” his mom said.

“But it’s too hot to read. It’s too hot to do anything,” he mumbled under his breath as he turned toward the sink.

“Landon, I said it’s time for you to read a book.”

Landon couldn’t think of any rebuttal. He turned off the faucet, admitted defeat and headed out of the dining area. After his bedroom door shut, he heard the murmur of his father’s voice as he started to yell at his mother.

Back in his room, Landon turned on the reading light next to his bed, blindly pulled the first book off of his To-Read stack and flopped back down on the mattress. He examined the book: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. There was water damage on its cover in a perfect circle, exactly the size of a beer can. Mr. Wicker apparently used the book as a coaster at one time.

Landon opened up the book to a random page and stuck his nose into the middle seam, taking a big whiff of the pages. He loved the smell of books, particularly old ones. There was something about them. They all smelled different, which perplexed him, and he wasn’t sure why he liked it so much. Was it the ink, the paper, or the smell of literary sweat and tears? He had no idea, but he knew he liked it, and he knew that textbooks didn’t possess the same olfactory appeal. This book had a somewhat sour smell. It reminded him of milk on the last day before it goes bad. But it also smelled like pecans and walnuts. It smelled perfect.

Landon decided to obey his mother’s wishes and turned back to the front page.

After about a half hour or so, his mind began to wander. The words started blurring together and his eyelids became heavy. He tried to pay attention, but no matter how much he focused, he couldn’t concentrate on the page. Eventually, his head became too heavy to hold up, and he decided to prop it up on his arm.

• • • • •

Thump.

“Ah! I’m reading! Wha—?”

Landon confusedly looked around his room. Nothing was out of the ordinary, just him lying on his bed. He glanced down and noticed the stream of drool that ran over his arm. David Copperfield laid open, pinned between him and the mattress. How long had he been asleep?

He could still hear his father screaming in the living room. As usual, he couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he could tell he was mad. Even though the place was small, his mom’s book collection created a kind of sound barrier in the apartment. If the door was closed, he generally couldn’t make out what happened in the other part of the house.

Normally, Landon ignored his father’s yelling. He always figured he was just screaming at the TV after his football team had made a bad play or calling for another beer, but the sound that woke him had sparked his curiosity. Landon wanted to see what was going on.

He slid off the bed, wiped his drool-covered arm on his pants, and dreamily walked out of his room. As he opened the door and entered the living room, he fought to become fully awake, rubbing his eyes with the side of his fingers.

“Please. Please, John. Please. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother said.

When Landon’s eyes focused, he saw his mother, crumpled on the ground, pressed against a pile of books in the corner of the living room, tears streaming down her face. Mr. Wicker stood over her, forcefully holding her by the wrist, and he was screaming. The thud that had awakened Landon from his Dickens-induced nap was not someone knocking on his door, but the sound of his mother hitting the hardwood as Mr. Wicker threw her to the floor.

“I told you if you stepped out of line one more time that you’d regret it! And you just couldn’t do as I asked! You brought this upon yourself!”

“Please, John. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” wailed Mrs. Wicker. “I . . . tripped. It . . . was . . . an . . . accident.”

Tears continued to pour from Mrs. Wicker’s eyes. Her pleas were staggered, forced out between her sobs.

“Let her go!” Landon was surprised to hear himself speaking with such force. He never spoke back to his father, but the scene unfolding in his living room caught him totally by surprise. He knew his father had a temper, but he always yelled. Outside of the butter knife at dinner, Landon never knew of his father to be violent.

“Landon, please . . . go back to your room,” Mrs. Wicker sobbed.

“Yeah, you heard her, go read your book,” Mr. Wicker said mockingly. “That way you don’t have to see how stupid your idiot mother is.”

As he spoke, he yanked on Mrs. Wicker’s arm. She whimpered as it was pulled. She was completely overpowered and defenseless.

“Dad, stop! She’s obviously sorry for whatever she did!”

“Yes, John, I’m sorry. Of course I know better. It was an accident. It won’t happen again,” Landon’s mother pleaded.

“Oh, shut up!”

He raised his free arm, his hand wide open. It was poised like a viper, ready to strike. And, like a snake, he attacked, his hand speeding toward the side of Mrs. Wicker’s tear-tracked face.

To Landon, it went by in slow motion. He watched as his father’s hand descended on his helpless mother.

“No! Don’t touch her!” Landon screamed at the top of his lungs.

Mr. Wicker’s hand stopped mere inches from the cringing face of Landon’s mother. He strained as if he was shackled and a chain held his arm back. Mr. Wicker fought with all his might, but his body was frozen. Pulsing powerfully just under his skin, his veins bulged from his effort to move. His muscles tensed. Sweat collected on his forehead and dripped down the side of his face.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Wicker’s body stood motionless, but his eyes pointed right at Landon.

“You’re not going to hurt her!” A strange feeling Landon had never experienced before seemed to awaken within him. It exploded like a fire igniting deep in his body. Heat emanated from his hands and feet. He was losing control; his body was trembling and his legs were weak.

A cloud built up inside Landon’s head. He was confused, but he also felt a strange sense of freedom, as if something caged inside of him had become unleashed.

“What are you doing?” Mr. Wicker asked again, still motionless but with his eyes fixed on Landon. His voice was still booming, yet Landon heard a slight tremble at the end.

“No more!” Landon’s voice echoed through the apartment. His head was foggy, and his vision blurred.

Mr. Wicker’s inert body flew backward across the room as if an imaginary hook pulled him with all its force. He bowled into a large pile of books by the doorway into the dining area; an avalanche of pages quickly engulfed his entire body.

Landon watched in utter disbelief. The feeling that awoke within him possessed his entire body. He didn’t know what was going on, and he wasn’t able to stop it. His head grew numb, and he looked through a clouded haze as he stared at his buried father. He wondered if he would move, but suddenly a book floated up, blocking his line of sight.

Books and figurines from all over the apartment steadily rose into the air and began moving around the living room. Volumes upon volumes lifted off their disorganized piles and formed a swirling vortex. The lights began to flicker, and picture frames trembled all over the apartment, creating a violent banging noise as they fruitlessly attempted to jump off the hooks that held them to the wall. The floor, ceiling, and walls rumbled and quaked as cracks formed and snaked across the surface. Drywall and dust dislodged and joined the books and miscellaneous objects in a tumultuous journey around the room. Tethered to the wall by the service cable, the TV floated off its stand, and the old leather couch shook violently on the floor. Books and objects continued to rise off their stacks and pedestals. The pink flamingo lawn ornament flew dangerously close to Landon’s head, but he stood unfazed. His eyed remained focused on his father’s unconscious body, which became visible again after the majority of the books covering him rose into the air.

Landon’s mother followed her copy of Alice in Wonderland with a look of horror as it breezed by her head. Still on the floor, she slid back and pressed her body against the wall as she watched what was happening; her body trembled with fear.

She turned to Landon, but he didn’t look back at her. His features appeared rigid and hard. His eyes were dilated, his hair whipped around from an invisible wind, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Landon, are you doing this? If you are, you can stop! I’m okay!” Trying to raise her voice over the deafening racket of the apartment, Mrs. Wicker ineffectually attempted to call to her son.

“He will never hurt us again,” Landon said, but his voice didn’t seem his own. It was guttural and commanding as if he was possessed.

“Landon, can you stop this?” asked his mother, but Landon couldn’t hear her. “Please Landon, come back to me!”

The couch shot off the ground and hit the ceiling with a resounding boom. It then zoomed across the room and collided with the wall, pinned in the air.

Then without cause, Landon’s body went numb, his vision went black, his body shook, and he collapsed.

• • • • •

Landon opened his eyes. It took a minute for his vision to adjust to the dark, dusty apartment. He had a blinding headache, and as he came to, he realized that he lay covered in a dense pile of books and random trinkets. While looking around, he cautiously got to his feet. The apartment was a disaster. A torrent of books and figurines were strewn everywhere, and the furniture was bent and broken. The walls looked cracked and crumbling; chunks of drywall littered the room, and it was dark. The light bulbs in all the lamps had shattered. Had a tornado landed? Had a hurricane blown through?

Landon perplexingly looked across the room at the overturned couch and suddenly noticed his father’s lifeless arm protruding from under its crushing weight. Landon froze, paralyzed by shock. What happened? Where’s my mom? Did I do this?

Fervently, Landon waded through the piles of debris, throwing books behind him as he searched for his mother. Volumes by Poe, Twain and Stevenson flew through the air, landing on collections of Shakespearean plays and Agatha Christie mysteries. He picked up another book, but paused; it felt wet. After wiping his hand on his pants, he pulled the book to his face to see if he could tell what it was in the darkness. When he looked closer the liquid appeared dark and thick—definitely not water. Then a ferrous smell caught his attention. Was it blood? Landon anxiously pushed aside the books until he found his mother lying on the floor. Oozing from a deep cut on her head, a pool of crimson blood spread across the cracked floor, the bronze miniature of The Thinker lying beside her motionless body.

“Mom!” he screamed as he fell to her side. On instinct, he started to shake her, violently trying to wake her up. “Mom! Please, Mom! Wake up!” He continued to shake her over and over again, but with every push, her body limply fell back to the floor. Tears stung Landon’s eyes as his body reacted to a painful truth his mind was unwilling to accept. Unable to stop himself, Landon continued to scream at her and shake her, expecting his mother to wake up at any moment.

Suddenly, the loud creak of someone in the hall caught Landon’s attention. As their feet pressed into the old floorboards of the building, the sounds of their footsteps became louder and louder as they moved closer to his apartment door.

Landon bolted upright and dragged his fingers through his hair. What would happen if someone came through that door? What would they think when they found him standing over his mother with her blood all over his hands? His family lay lifelessly amidst mountains of debris, casualties of an unknown apocalypse, with Landon as the only survivor. They’d think I did it, he realized, as there was no way for him to explain what happened. He couldn’t remember anything after he opened his bedroom door. I’ll be made out as one of those lunatic kids who go crazy and brutally murder their entire family. I’ll be all over the news!

Panicking, he plowed through the debris, pushing his way into his room. Once inside, he slammed the door shut and leaned against it. He started to lose his breath and his heart pounded within his chest. Apart from the broken door and a bit of dust, his room looked the same as he left it. The copy of David Copperfield still lay on his disheveled bed and his reading lamp illuminated the room. He walked over and collapsed beside the bed, pressing his head into his hands. What have I done? He didn’t know why, but he knew he was responsible. What do I do now?

He could think of only one option. He ran through his room as sweat soaked his clothes and dripped from his face. He shoved a pair of dirty jeans and a few t-shirts into a duffle bag then jumped over the corner of the bed to his nightstand and pulled out his special copy of Treasure Island from a small drawer and placed it on the bed. He opened it and pulled a stack of cash from its hollowed-out pages and shoved the money into his pocket.

He then grabbed a pen and a composition notebook off a stack of textbooks on the floor and rushed to his desk. As he sat there, he took a long breath and looked around his room. Pictures from his vacations with his mother and posters of his favorite rock bands lined the walls. Books and knickknacks covered his shelves. He was his mother’s son. Homework from his previous year at school and dirty clothes littered the floor, and in a corner he saw a bin with a small plastic sword sticking out of it, a pirate’s bandana dangling from its hilt. He turned back to the desk and opened up the notebook to a random page. In small letters across a line toward the top he wrote, “I’m sorry,” before tearing the page out of the notebook, folding it once down the middle, and setting it on his desk. He secured it with a third place trophy he won for the one-hundred-meter backstroke when he was eleven.

The sound of someone knocking on the apartment door startled him. He’d lingered too long. Panicked, he grabbed his cell phone off his desk, sped to the other side of his room, and opened the window. With one foot on the fire escape, he turned around and looked at his bedroom once more. Something told him this could be the last time he would ever see it. A moment later he climbed down the metal ladder into the alley.