Post by Mininirime on May 25, 2006 6:05:38 GMT -5
Hidden Perception is a story written and posted on this site by Sparrowng:
Hidden Perception
Prolouge
Leah watched as her brother flew away on the Delta Airplane #456 deprating from gate 28, destintation Singapore, Hong Kong. She turned to her mother, who was standing next to her looking as exuberant as Leah had ever seen her. Ever since Leah's father had died in a work incident, (his work was unknown to Leah, she only knew that it was confedential), the position of "Man on the House" was given to Leah's brother. This did not sit well with Leah's mum, who mourned for over 8 years for her husband; he had died the year Leah had been born. It seemed that Jon alone knew the reason for his father's death, and although he was asked every day by his mother, he would never tell.
8 years had passed since Jon had left for Singapore, every once in a while sending letters, always addressed to Leah and never her mother, saying where he was going next. They were all stacked in an ever-growing pile under her bed. Now it wasn't the letters that caused the pile to never cease in expanding, but Leah's research. Everytime Jon sent Leah a letter, she would always get on the Internet, go to the library, print out maps, and everything she could to find out all the information possible about the current place her brother was staying. The most recent letter had arrived just this morning, saying that Jon had recently landed in New Zealand, reason for travel: unknown. Unknown to Leah that is. She knew perfectly well that her brother had a good reason for traveling all the way from Norway to New Zealand. The distance between them was immense; this was not a pleasure trip her brother was taking. But it seemed every time Leah interrogated her brother about it, her brother simply said what he always said. "Oh I'm just trying to see the globe", or "Just a business trip honey, don't you fret about it", or some other cock and bull story along the same lines. Now these excuses worked for her mother, who didn't really give a damn about where her only son was. She had never gotten over her childish antics of blaming Jon for her husbands death, or at least never got over blaming him for withholding information. But I mean, who could blame her, Jon was withholding information. But it seemed that as Leah aged, and the years her brother was abroad lenghtened, more and more information came to his attention, and the more critical the need to share this information became, for the situation was dire.
Chapter 1
The alarm clock next to Leah's bed read five minutes after 3 in the morning. The faint ringing of the phone in the hall was not enough to rouse Leah from her sleep. However, eventually Leah did come to hear the noise, and awakened herself enough to trudge down the hall and lift the phone off the receiver.
"Leah? Leah is that you?" A hushed voice wound it's way into Leah's ear; it was the voice was of someone whom she had not talked to in seven years.
"Yes it's me." She answered grogily. "But might I inquire who this is? It is only three in the morning and most people are in bed at this hour."
"Listen Leah, you must listen to me. What happened to your father, may happen to me. I need your help." Leah gasped, finally dechipering the farmilarity of the voice; Jon. "Are you listening to me?" He said harshly.
"Jon, is that you? Where are you? Why haven't you called before? What are you doing? What's wrong?" The words tumbled out of her mouth, trying to say everything that had been denied to her through her letters."Listen I've been recording all the places you've been going to, and I think I've made a connection. It's..."
Jon cut her off, his voice sharp and serious. "Hush Leah. I don't have much time. Now listen to me, and do exactly as I say. I need you to check your mail."
"Check my mail?" She said confused. "But I don't get it, what does the mail have to do with anything? Besides, the mail doesn't come for at least another four hours, maybe five. It is Sunday."
"Leah I don't have five hours. Every second counts."
"Well what do you presume I do?" said Leah, now getting aggravated. "Lisen up, Jon." She snarled. "I do not get what's going on and I do not know what you're talking about. You have a lot of nerve calling up after seven years and telling me that I need to walk down to the Post Office to check my mailbox. Why won't you just tell me what's going on?"
"Leah," She could hear his voice pleading with her "I need your help. And i'm sorry I haven't been in touch, but this is not the time for apologies; I need your help." He spoke with such urgency that Leah forgot all her anger. She finally realized that something was wrong.
"All right Jon, I understand. What can I do?"
"Well considering that your mail won't be arriving for a while, you can listen. And do not disrupt me Leah."
"I won't." She rambled on, still in a state of disbelief and confusion over what her brother was tyring to tell her.
"Ok. Do you remember when I left for Singapore?"
"Jon I was 8 I don't really remember much about that..."
"Leah I told you! DO NOT interrupt me!"
"You asked me a question!" She retorted.
"It was a rhetorical question and I..."
"Well I didn't know that!" She interrupted yet again.
"Leah I do not have time to argue with you. Just shut up and let me continue!"
Leah had nothing to say to this; She remembered the urgency of what her brother was trying to tell her and pledged to stay silent.
"Now, I want you to remember how you learned about the death of my father."
"Dad? How did I learn about dad's death?" She answered, confused.
"That's Mr. Borown to you." He said softly with sympathy in his voice. Leah did not hear it though, she was to perplexed.
"Mr. Borown...? No Jon, he's my father."
"Leah, he's not your father." He said this yet again, Leah still not understanding.
"Are you kidding, of course he's my father. And he always was. I mean I know I didn't spend any time with him, but he did die a couple months before I was born... But he was still my father."
"Leah it's time for you to learn the truth. David Borown was not your father. You were given to our family when you were but a baby. It was meant for us to watch over you until you came of age. But when they gave you to us, the Government realized they had made a mistake. So they murdered him. They mudered your adoptive father."
"They what? No they didn't Jon, you're crazy." exclaimed Leah, disbelief ringing through her ears. It wasn't true; he was her father and he died in a work related incident. He wasn't Murdered. That was preposterous. Jon was losing his mind that's all. "Jon. Jon listen to yourself. This is the Government we're talking about. You know the President, the White House, the CIA. Those are the kind of people who run the Governement. They don't send out bills saying they want a man murdered because he adopted a child."
"Leah you're more than a child. You're a witness. An heir to a witness. They needed to stop you from knowing at all costs. So they killed your parents, and sent you to us. But there was something they didn't know; I was also a witness. And I told dad. It was after this they realized that I did know, and that I would tell. So they killed dad. And they came after me. So i did what I could: I fled."
"Jon," Said Leah once again. "You're... You're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about." Leah was shaking as she tried to understand.
Chapter 2
But Jon did know what he was talking about.
He had been 12; Leah had been born barely 3 weeks ago. He was playing hide-and-go-seek, and was in a dusty and rarely ever used closet in his home in Maryland. He could hear his friend Alex searching for him, and he tried to hide his laughter as Alex walked right by him. 10 minutes went by, then 15, 20... Jon was growing tired of hiding in the closet, and started to shift around, about ready to get out. Suddenly something happened, something he did not expect. He froze; the gunshot ringing through the air. He heard his dad crash through the door of the room. Jon looked out. There was his dad: lying on the floor, covered in blood. Jon bounded out of the closet, down the hall, gasping for breath, trying to organize everything in his head. He could see the phone at the end of the hall. He ran closer; he could almost feel it on his fingertips.
Before he realized what was going on, the barrel of the gun was at his head. He tried to jerk away, not realizing the danger of what he just did. The safety of the gun went off in a loud 'Click', and Jon froze. A menacing voice sneered from behind the gun, and Jon dared a look. His face... it looked, familiar, to say the least. A face Jon had seen before... Only once before, yet it's memory was so vivid and strong, it took him barely a few moments to place it.
Jon had been 6, and he was in the car with his dad. He was sick, which was the reason he was not in school on that rainy Thursday afternoon. He was going to work with his dad, something he had long since wanted to do. However him accompanying his dad was not something he would ever do again, for it was strictly forbidden. Jon was with his dad merely because David Borown had to pick up some paperwork; but never would he have imagined the sight he witnessed that day.
They got out of the car, and, after some hesitation from the man at the Front desk, Jon donned a visitor's badge as he walked into his father's office. It was a large office, with mounds and mounds of paper littering the floor and desk. His dad left the room to make copies of something, while Jon searched around for tissues. After finding none, he decided to try the bathroom. However, Jon did not know where the bathroom was, and instead of turning right, and taking a brisk 20 second walk down the hall where he would most inodorously find a bathroom awaiting him, he turned left, and set out down the corridor.
After walking for a ways, Jon finally saw a sign that said 'bathrooms', with an arrow pointing right. He smiled and turned into a room where he thought the sign had been pointing too. However once he emerged from a large, padlocked entranceway, he realized that this room was anything but a bathroom. He walked past large security precautions, but, strangely, no one was around. Jon figured that if he were in a high security room then there would at least be security men around.
As he walked into yet another room, he found he was on a grated walkway, surrounding a large hole that looked down at least 2 floors. But it wasn’t offices that filled these floors; it seemed to be some sort of factory. Jon didn’t know what it was he was looking at, but now, 17 years later, he knew and feared what he saw.
Chapter 3
“Jon? Jon are you there?” asked Leah warily
“Yes,” He answered slowly. “I just… It’s nothing. You’ll find out in four to five hours.”
“What does that mean?” She asked, confused.
“Well you said it yourself,” He answered, “That’s how long it will take for you…” A loud, echoing silence now reached Leah’s ears.
“Jon… Jon?” Leah breathed into the receiver. Jon had been cut off. “Jon!” She screamed.
But Jon wasn’t there. About 7,500 miles away, Jon had been knocked over the head with a crow bar, the very same crow bar that had been used to break into his hotel room. Jon laid sprawled on the floor, not to get up for a very long time.
“Jon,” Sobbed Leah, “Please, pick up the phone. Answer me; say anything. Please.” But, deep inside, she knew he wasn’t going to. She knew that Jon wasn’t going to be picking up the phone ever again.
Shaking, Leah hung up the phone. She walked back into her room, and curled up in her blankets, fully prepared to wait five hours for the mail to arrive.
~*~
Muttering reached Leah’s ears as she awoke. Despite her desire to stay awake, she had fallen back asleep from fear and tiredness. Also she had forgotten to close the door to her room, which had caused her to hear her mother as she crashed around in the kitchen.
“Not that damn boy again,” muttered the widow Mrs. Borown. “If he really had something to say, he’d come here and say it!”
Leah shot out of her bed and raced down the hall. “Is it a letter from Jon!?” She shouted, “Give it to me!” Mrs. Borown cringed as she watched her daughter bolt into the room very unsophisticatedly. She scowled as she handed over the letter, watching Leah open it with the utmost disliking.
Leah ripped open the letter without even worrying about the loathsome looks her mother was giving her. Leah blinked in surprise. She turned the envelope over, and even upside down, but nothing was there. The envelope was empty. She couldn’t believe it… there must have been a mistake. She expected a letter, a note, a something! But not an empty envelope. Not that, no.
“But, but… there has to be something, something!” Leah said to no one in particular.
“You’ve dropped it honey,” Leah’s mother’s voice became sweet. Leah looked up in startled surprise.
“What?” she practically screamed. She looked again in the envelope: still empty.
“It’s on the floor,” Mrs. Borown’s back became arched as she bent down to pick something gold up off the floor. “Let me just,” her hand reached closer to it, “Pick that up for you.” Her hand balled as she stood up straight again. She had an eager look on her face as she looked down at her outstretched hand. But it wasn’t there; she looked around confused. Her eyes turned to Leah, who was looking excited.
Her hand recoiled with a livid look on her face. “I would expect some more manners out of you child! You better watch yourself or you’ll end up like your… brother.” She said this last word with a disgusted tone in her voice as she stormed out of the kitchen.
Leah looked down at what was in her hand. She raised her eyebrows in surprise as she started leafing through each of the keys. It was a king ring, with five keys on it. One of them was small and silver, as if for one of those cheap diaries you would buy. She was confused, no instructions, nothing to tell her what to do with the keys. Still, it was better than nothing, and she regarded this as she walked out the room barely noticing where she was going. She was ascending the stairs, and, before she knew it, she had reached the end of the hallway.
She stood in front of her brother’s room, staring at the blank door in front of her. As if in instinct, she reached down and tried the knob. Locked, as always. Leah sighed and turned to the right, into her room. She didn’t know why she thought this time might be different. She had tried that door plenty of times, and never had it opened. Sighing again, she laid down on her bed, trying to think.
Chapter four
Thomas Harris was breathing heavily. He was standing in room 623 in the Quest Wellington Inn. The door was swinging open; the marks the crowbar made had chipped the paint and broken off a small chunk of the door. He stepped over Jon’s body and walked into the bathroom.
He stared at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror. He whipped his stringy brown hair out of his face and splashed water on it, trying to cool himself off. He frowned as he looked over all the stuff on the bathroom counter. Aftershave, razors, soap, business cards… He picked up one of the cards and looked at it. It read some post office in Wellington.
Thomas took out his disposable camera and started taking pictures. He walked out and looked again at Jon, lying on the floor, before proceeding into the bedroom. It was a large room, complete with Jacuzzi and balcony. After snapping some pictures of the bed and wall, Thomas walked over to the dresser and pulled open some of the drawers.
In the first drawer: clothes. Same in the second, and third. Getting frustrated, he started angrily throwing the clothes on the floor, desperate to find something. He wrenched open the fourth drawer: empty.
Kicking the dresser in frustration, he whipped around and spotted some luggage in the floor. Still frowning, he walked over and wrenched them open. More clothes. Angry with himself for his inability to find anything, he chucked the suitcase across the room, causing a loud, booming crash to fill the empty silence.
Thomas stood still. He strained to hear if the noise had caused any commotion in to rooms below. Loud voices reached his ears, and he quickly fell to the ground. Shimmying across the floor, he stopped only to take more pictures, before getting to his feet and bolting out.
Chapter five
The cab driver looked down at her watch. She rolled down her window and glanced down the street. Seeing nothing, she rolled up the window and locked the doors.
Sarah was a taxi driver in New Zealand. She was 23 and strikingly beautiful. She often got tips from corrupt men who were coming home from the bars. She had no boyfriend however. Men were filth to her; she was independent from the day she broke up with her first boyfriend, and, according to her morals, until the day she died.
Sarah took one last look around before climbing into the backseat. She had just driven one of the strangest men and under the strangest instructions. She had been told, ‘Drive me to the Quest Wellington Inn, where I want you to drop me off, drive twice around the block, and then come back and pick me up’.
Sarah did what she was told, but decided to take matters into her own hands. She wasn’t about to be blamed or sent to court for driving around a burglar. If that’s what he was even… She didn’t know, which was why she was going to search through his belongings. She figured she was at a greater risk being sent to court than being caught nosing through people’s things.
Sarah picked up the man’s briefcase and unzipped it. She didn’t know what she had expected to find, but she supposed she thought she’d find something pointing to her to his identity. But when she opened the briefcase, she found it laden with maps and graphs. When she unrolled one of the longer ones, it showed a town in Atlanta. It was covered with handwritten arrows and x’s, and little notes he must have written to himself. She looked at one of the notes written closest to the large ‘X’ in the center. It was written in sloppy cursive, and she couldn’t fully understand what it said, but she got the gist of it.
“Night of the 24th, kitchen window is broken, bring crowbar.”
Sarah was trying to regain her breath as she finished reading the rest of the notes. All were along the same lines as the first one. It appeared that this man was trying to break into someone’s house and obtain some kind of papers… She didn’t really understand the details of it, but she knew she had to help this girl named ‘Leah’.
Suddenly Sarah became frightened again. What was this man doing up in the hotel? She knew it was none of her business, but, then again, she felt partly responsible for being stupid enough to follow these man’s instructions. She knew it wasn’t her fault, but she always had the habit of blaming herself. Cursing herself quietly for being so vulnerable, she continued to shift through the papers.
A loud crash outside reminded Sarah of the situation she was in. Starting to panic, she began shoving all the papers back in the briefcase. Flinging the bag back under the seat, Sarah scrambled into the front seat.
It was then she remembered that, were she actually going to help Leah, then she’d need to know more than just the town where she lived. Fighting the impulse to stay in her seat and avoid getting caught, she hurled herself, once again, into the back.
Sarah yanked open the briefcase and flipped through the maps, trying to find the one she had seen earlier. Finally finding it near the bottom of the pile, she threw it into the driver’s seat, where it floated to the floor by the foot pedals. She began cramming all the papers into the briefcase, snapping it shut as she finished.
When she started stuffing the briefcase back under the seat, she noticed that she hadn’t done a very good job of closing it. Papers were sticking out from all sides, and, in her haste, she had closed part of the seatbelt in it also. Cursing and looking around, she threw open the briefcase and attempted to straighten the papers. While she worked, she tried hard to ignore the ever-nearing footsteps that she knew were her clients.
Cramming the last of the papers back in, she clasped it shut. Breathing again, she shot up so hard she hit her head on the top of her car. It wasn’t the first time she had done it; the roofs of these taxis were quite low. Sitting up and rubbing her head, she noticed that she couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. Sighing and thinking that maybe it hadn’t been him at all she turned to get back in her seat. It was then she noticed a face looking down on her from the cab windows.
Hidden Perception
Prolouge
Leah watched as her brother flew away on the Delta Airplane #456 deprating from gate 28, destintation Singapore, Hong Kong. She turned to her mother, who was standing next to her looking as exuberant as Leah had ever seen her. Ever since Leah's father had died in a work incident, (his work was unknown to Leah, she only knew that it was confedential), the position of "Man on the House" was given to Leah's brother. This did not sit well with Leah's mum, who mourned for over 8 years for her husband; he had died the year Leah had been born. It seemed that Jon alone knew the reason for his father's death, and although he was asked every day by his mother, he would never tell.
8 years had passed since Jon had left for Singapore, every once in a while sending letters, always addressed to Leah and never her mother, saying where he was going next. They were all stacked in an ever-growing pile under her bed. Now it wasn't the letters that caused the pile to never cease in expanding, but Leah's research. Everytime Jon sent Leah a letter, she would always get on the Internet, go to the library, print out maps, and everything she could to find out all the information possible about the current place her brother was staying. The most recent letter had arrived just this morning, saying that Jon had recently landed in New Zealand, reason for travel: unknown. Unknown to Leah that is. She knew perfectly well that her brother had a good reason for traveling all the way from Norway to New Zealand. The distance between them was immense; this was not a pleasure trip her brother was taking. But it seemed every time Leah interrogated her brother about it, her brother simply said what he always said. "Oh I'm just trying to see the globe", or "Just a business trip honey, don't you fret about it", or some other cock and bull story along the same lines. Now these excuses worked for her mother, who didn't really give a damn about where her only son was. She had never gotten over her childish antics of blaming Jon for her husbands death, or at least never got over blaming him for withholding information. But I mean, who could blame her, Jon was withholding information. But it seemed that as Leah aged, and the years her brother was abroad lenghtened, more and more information came to his attention, and the more critical the need to share this information became, for the situation was dire.
Chapter 1
The alarm clock next to Leah's bed read five minutes after 3 in the morning. The faint ringing of the phone in the hall was not enough to rouse Leah from her sleep. However, eventually Leah did come to hear the noise, and awakened herself enough to trudge down the hall and lift the phone off the receiver.
"Leah? Leah is that you?" A hushed voice wound it's way into Leah's ear; it was the voice was of someone whom she had not talked to in seven years.
"Yes it's me." She answered grogily. "But might I inquire who this is? It is only three in the morning and most people are in bed at this hour."
"Listen Leah, you must listen to me. What happened to your father, may happen to me. I need your help." Leah gasped, finally dechipering the farmilarity of the voice; Jon. "Are you listening to me?" He said harshly.
"Jon, is that you? Where are you? Why haven't you called before? What are you doing? What's wrong?" The words tumbled out of her mouth, trying to say everything that had been denied to her through her letters."Listen I've been recording all the places you've been going to, and I think I've made a connection. It's..."
Jon cut her off, his voice sharp and serious. "Hush Leah. I don't have much time. Now listen to me, and do exactly as I say. I need you to check your mail."
"Check my mail?" She said confused. "But I don't get it, what does the mail have to do with anything? Besides, the mail doesn't come for at least another four hours, maybe five. It is Sunday."
"Leah I don't have five hours. Every second counts."
"Well what do you presume I do?" said Leah, now getting aggravated. "Lisen up, Jon." She snarled. "I do not get what's going on and I do not know what you're talking about. You have a lot of nerve calling up after seven years and telling me that I need to walk down to the Post Office to check my mailbox. Why won't you just tell me what's going on?"
"Leah," She could hear his voice pleading with her "I need your help. And i'm sorry I haven't been in touch, but this is not the time for apologies; I need your help." He spoke with such urgency that Leah forgot all her anger. She finally realized that something was wrong.
"All right Jon, I understand. What can I do?"
"Well considering that your mail won't be arriving for a while, you can listen. And do not disrupt me Leah."
"I won't." She rambled on, still in a state of disbelief and confusion over what her brother was tyring to tell her.
"Ok. Do you remember when I left for Singapore?"
"Jon I was 8 I don't really remember much about that..."
"Leah I told you! DO NOT interrupt me!"
"You asked me a question!" She retorted.
"It was a rhetorical question and I..."
"Well I didn't know that!" She interrupted yet again.
"Leah I do not have time to argue with you. Just shut up and let me continue!"
Leah had nothing to say to this; She remembered the urgency of what her brother was trying to tell her and pledged to stay silent.
"Now, I want you to remember how you learned about the death of my father."
"Dad? How did I learn about dad's death?" She answered, confused.
"That's Mr. Borown to you." He said softly with sympathy in his voice. Leah did not hear it though, she was to perplexed.
"Mr. Borown...? No Jon, he's my father."
"Leah, he's not your father." He said this yet again, Leah still not understanding.
"Are you kidding, of course he's my father. And he always was. I mean I know I didn't spend any time with him, but he did die a couple months before I was born... But he was still my father."
"Leah it's time for you to learn the truth. David Borown was not your father. You were given to our family when you were but a baby. It was meant for us to watch over you until you came of age. But when they gave you to us, the Government realized they had made a mistake. So they murdered him. They mudered your adoptive father."
"They what? No they didn't Jon, you're crazy." exclaimed Leah, disbelief ringing through her ears. It wasn't true; he was her father and he died in a work related incident. He wasn't Murdered. That was preposterous. Jon was losing his mind that's all. "Jon. Jon listen to yourself. This is the Government we're talking about. You know the President, the White House, the CIA. Those are the kind of people who run the Governement. They don't send out bills saying they want a man murdered because he adopted a child."
"Leah you're more than a child. You're a witness. An heir to a witness. They needed to stop you from knowing at all costs. So they killed your parents, and sent you to us. But there was something they didn't know; I was also a witness. And I told dad. It was after this they realized that I did know, and that I would tell. So they killed dad. And they came after me. So i did what I could: I fled."
"Jon," Said Leah once again. "You're... You're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about." Leah was shaking as she tried to understand.
Chapter 2
But Jon did know what he was talking about.
He had been 12; Leah had been born barely 3 weeks ago. He was playing hide-and-go-seek, and was in a dusty and rarely ever used closet in his home in Maryland. He could hear his friend Alex searching for him, and he tried to hide his laughter as Alex walked right by him. 10 minutes went by, then 15, 20... Jon was growing tired of hiding in the closet, and started to shift around, about ready to get out. Suddenly something happened, something he did not expect. He froze; the gunshot ringing through the air. He heard his dad crash through the door of the room. Jon looked out. There was his dad: lying on the floor, covered in blood. Jon bounded out of the closet, down the hall, gasping for breath, trying to organize everything in his head. He could see the phone at the end of the hall. He ran closer; he could almost feel it on his fingertips.
Before he realized what was going on, the barrel of the gun was at his head. He tried to jerk away, not realizing the danger of what he just did. The safety of the gun went off in a loud 'Click', and Jon froze. A menacing voice sneered from behind the gun, and Jon dared a look. His face... it looked, familiar, to say the least. A face Jon had seen before... Only once before, yet it's memory was so vivid and strong, it took him barely a few moments to place it.
Jon had been 6, and he was in the car with his dad. He was sick, which was the reason he was not in school on that rainy Thursday afternoon. He was going to work with his dad, something he had long since wanted to do. However him accompanying his dad was not something he would ever do again, for it was strictly forbidden. Jon was with his dad merely because David Borown had to pick up some paperwork; but never would he have imagined the sight he witnessed that day.
They got out of the car, and, after some hesitation from the man at the Front desk, Jon donned a visitor's badge as he walked into his father's office. It was a large office, with mounds and mounds of paper littering the floor and desk. His dad left the room to make copies of something, while Jon searched around for tissues. After finding none, he decided to try the bathroom. However, Jon did not know where the bathroom was, and instead of turning right, and taking a brisk 20 second walk down the hall where he would most inodorously find a bathroom awaiting him, he turned left, and set out down the corridor.
After walking for a ways, Jon finally saw a sign that said 'bathrooms', with an arrow pointing right. He smiled and turned into a room where he thought the sign had been pointing too. However once he emerged from a large, padlocked entranceway, he realized that this room was anything but a bathroom. He walked past large security precautions, but, strangely, no one was around. Jon figured that if he were in a high security room then there would at least be security men around.
As he walked into yet another room, he found he was on a grated walkway, surrounding a large hole that looked down at least 2 floors. But it wasn’t offices that filled these floors; it seemed to be some sort of factory. Jon didn’t know what it was he was looking at, but now, 17 years later, he knew and feared what he saw.
Chapter 3
“Jon? Jon are you there?” asked Leah warily
“Yes,” He answered slowly. “I just… It’s nothing. You’ll find out in four to five hours.”
“What does that mean?” She asked, confused.
“Well you said it yourself,” He answered, “That’s how long it will take for you…” A loud, echoing silence now reached Leah’s ears.
“Jon… Jon?” Leah breathed into the receiver. Jon had been cut off. “Jon!” She screamed.
But Jon wasn’t there. About 7,500 miles away, Jon had been knocked over the head with a crow bar, the very same crow bar that had been used to break into his hotel room. Jon laid sprawled on the floor, not to get up for a very long time.
“Jon,” Sobbed Leah, “Please, pick up the phone. Answer me; say anything. Please.” But, deep inside, she knew he wasn’t going to. She knew that Jon wasn’t going to be picking up the phone ever again.
Shaking, Leah hung up the phone. She walked back into her room, and curled up in her blankets, fully prepared to wait five hours for the mail to arrive.
~*~
Muttering reached Leah’s ears as she awoke. Despite her desire to stay awake, she had fallen back asleep from fear and tiredness. Also she had forgotten to close the door to her room, which had caused her to hear her mother as she crashed around in the kitchen.
“Not that damn boy again,” muttered the widow Mrs. Borown. “If he really had something to say, he’d come here and say it!”
Leah shot out of her bed and raced down the hall. “Is it a letter from Jon!?” She shouted, “Give it to me!” Mrs. Borown cringed as she watched her daughter bolt into the room very unsophisticatedly. She scowled as she handed over the letter, watching Leah open it with the utmost disliking.
Leah ripped open the letter without even worrying about the loathsome looks her mother was giving her. Leah blinked in surprise. She turned the envelope over, and even upside down, but nothing was there. The envelope was empty. She couldn’t believe it… there must have been a mistake. She expected a letter, a note, a something! But not an empty envelope. Not that, no.
“But, but… there has to be something, something!” Leah said to no one in particular.
“You’ve dropped it honey,” Leah’s mother’s voice became sweet. Leah looked up in startled surprise.
“What?” she practically screamed. She looked again in the envelope: still empty.
“It’s on the floor,” Mrs. Borown’s back became arched as she bent down to pick something gold up off the floor. “Let me just,” her hand reached closer to it, “Pick that up for you.” Her hand balled as she stood up straight again. She had an eager look on her face as she looked down at her outstretched hand. But it wasn’t there; she looked around confused. Her eyes turned to Leah, who was looking excited.
Her hand recoiled with a livid look on her face. “I would expect some more manners out of you child! You better watch yourself or you’ll end up like your… brother.” She said this last word with a disgusted tone in her voice as she stormed out of the kitchen.
Leah looked down at what was in her hand. She raised her eyebrows in surprise as she started leafing through each of the keys. It was a king ring, with five keys on it. One of them was small and silver, as if for one of those cheap diaries you would buy. She was confused, no instructions, nothing to tell her what to do with the keys. Still, it was better than nothing, and she regarded this as she walked out the room barely noticing where she was going. She was ascending the stairs, and, before she knew it, she had reached the end of the hallway.
She stood in front of her brother’s room, staring at the blank door in front of her. As if in instinct, she reached down and tried the knob. Locked, as always. Leah sighed and turned to the right, into her room. She didn’t know why she thought this time might be different. She had tried that door plenty of times, and never had it opened. Sighing again, she laid down on her bed, trying to think.
Chapter four
Thomas Harris was breathing heavily. He was standing in room 623 in the Quest Wellington Inn. The door was swinging open; the marks the crowbar made had chipped the paint and broken off a small chunk of the door. He stepped over Jon’s body and walked into the bathroom.
He stared at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror. He whipped his stringy brown hair out of his face and splashed water on it, trying to cool himself off. He frowned as he looked over all the stuff on the bathroom counter. Aftershave, razors, soap, business cards… He picked up one of the cards and looked at it. It read some post office in Wellington.
Thomas took out his disposable camera and started taking pictures. He walked out and looked again at Jon, lying on the floor, before proceeding into the bedroom. It was a large room, complete with Jacuzzi and balcony. After snapping some pictures of the bed and wall, Thomas walked over to the dresser and pulled open some of the drawers.
In the first drawer: clothes. Same in the second, and third. Getting frustrated, he started angrily throwing the clothes on the floor, desperate to find something. He wrenched open the fourth drawer: empty.
Kicking the dresser in frustration, he whipped around and spotted some luggage in the floor. Still frowning, he walked over and wrenched them open. More clothes. Angry with himself for his inability to find anything, he chucked the suitcase across the room, causing a loud, booming crash to fill the empty silence.
Thomas stood still. He strained to hear if the noise had caused any commotion in to rooms below. Loud voices reached his ears, and he quickly fell to the ground. Shimmying across the floor, he stopped only to take more pictures, before getting to his feet and bolting out.
Chapter five
The cab driver looked down at her watch. She rolled down her window and glanced down the street. Seeing nothing, she rolled up the window and locked the doors.
Sarah was a taxi driver in New Zealand. She was 23 and strikingly beautiful. She often got tips from corrupt men who were coming home from the bars. She had no boyfriend however. Men were filth to her; she was independent from the day she broke up with her first boyfriend, and, according to her morals, until the day she died.
Sarah took one last look around before climbing into the backseat. She had just driven one of the strangest men and under the strangest instructions. She had been told, ‘Drive me to the Quest Wellington Inn, where I want you to drop me off, drive twice around the block, and then come back and pick me up’.
Sarah did what she was told, but decided to take matters into her own hands. She wasn’t about to be blamed or sent to court for driving around a burglar. If that’s what he was even… She didn’t know, which was why she was going to search through his belongings. She figured she was at a greater risk being sent to court than being caught nosing through people’s things.
Sarah picked up the man’s briefcase and unzipped it. She didn’t know what she had expected to find, but she supposed she thought she’d find something pointing to her to his identity. But when she opened the briefcase, she found it laden with maps and graphs. When she unrolled one of the longer ones, it showed a town in Atlanta. It was covered with handwritten arrows and x’s, and little notes he must have written to himself. She looked at one of the notes written closest to the large ‘X’ in the center. It was written in sloppy cursive, and she couldn’t fully understand what it said, but she got the gist of it.
“Night of the 24th, kitchen window is broken, bring crowbar.”
Sarah was trying to regain her breath as she finished reading the rest of the notes. All were along the same lines as the first one. It appeared that this man was trying to break into someone’s house and obtain some kind of papers… She didn’t really understand the details of it, but she knew she had to help this girl named ‘Leah’.
Suddenly Sarah became frightened again. What was this man doing up in the hotel? She knew it was none of her business, but, then again, she felt partly responsible for being stupid enough to follow these man’s instructions. She knew it wasn’t her fault, but she always had the habit of blaming herself. Cursing herself quietly for being so vulnerable, she continued to shift through the papers.
A loud crash outside reminded Sarah of the situation she was in. Starting to panic, she began shoving all the papers back in the briefcase. Flinging the bag back under the seat, Sarah scrambled into the front seat.
It was then she remembered that, were she actually going to help Leah, then she’d need to know more than just the town where she lived. Fighting the impulse to stay in her seat and avoid getting caught, she hurled herself, once again, into the back.
Sarah yanked open the briefcase and flipped through the maps, trying to find the one she had seen earlier. Finally finding it near the bottom of the pile, she threw it into the driver’s seat, where it floated to the floor by the foot pedals. She began cramming all the papers into the briefcase, snapping it shut as she finished.
When she started stuffing the briefcase back under the seat, she noticed that she hadn’t done a very good job of closing it. Papers were sticking out from all sides, and, in her haste, she had closed part of the seatbelt in it also. Cursing and looking around, she threw open the briefcase and attempted to straighten the papers. While she worked, she tried hard to ignore the ever-nearing footsteps that she knew were her clients.
Cramming the last of the papers back in, she clasped it shut. Breathing again, she shot up so hard she hit her head on the top of her car. It wasn’t the first time she had done it; the roofs of these taxis were quite low. Sitting up and rubbing her head, she noticed that she couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore. Sighing and thinking that maybe it hadn’t been him at all she turned to get back in her seat. It was then she noticed a face looking down on her from the cab windows.