The Long Journey Home - Chapter 3 - Lost and Found (Drop Dead Fred)
“So let it start, my friend, let it start,
Let the tears come rolling from your heart,
And when you need a light in the lonely night,
Carry me like a fire in your heart...”
-Chris DeBurgh
It was dusk - the sun sitting gently in the west, the last golden light reflecting off the grass and touching the branches as their leaves rustled in the breeze. Lizzie sat up and looked around.
“What the...”
Why was she laying in her mother’s yard? Her head swam as she tried to remember how she had come to be there. The park. She remembered the park and eating lunch. Had she walked from there? She didn’t see her car. Maybe she had left it at the park - she remembered she had wanted to check on her mother while she was here. The mailbox stood over her ominously, casting a strange shadow in the failing daylight. Had she walked into the mailbox and knocked herself out?
“Geez, Lizzie, sounds like something you’d do.”
She picked herself up and brushed the remnants of freshly cut grass from her pants. She wondered how long she’d been lying there for no one to notice her. Looking up at the house, she sighed and turned away, choosing instead the house next door. She rang Mickey’s doorbell and waited. The door opened and Mickey’s sister looked out. Great, his freakish sister instead - just what she needed right now.
“Hi Shelly,” Lizzy started. “Is Mickey ho...” Shelly gave a weird look around and shut the door.
“Um, okay, never mind...” Lizzie turned away and went back over to her mom’s house. She knocked on the door and waited. She looked at her watch. It was 7:45 pm...kind of late for her mom to be out. Maybe she was trying to get a life thought Lizzie with little conviction. The door stood slightly ajar which in itself was an odd occurrence. Ever since she and Fred's little 'cops and robbers' escapade when she was five, her mom had been terrified of being burglarized. She nudged open the door and it shut loudly behind her, making her jump and reminding her just a little too much of the vision she had had with Fred. After making sure her mom wasn’t there after all - and that there were no robbers - Lizzie went upstairs to her old room and lay down on the bed. In minutes, she was asleep.
Her dreams were filled with flashing lights, sirens, and the smell of burning plastic. She awoke with a start, head pounding, palms sweating, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears. Everything was still and dark and she was alone.
Alone- during the day it didn’t seem bad at all. During the day, being alone felt empowering, as if she had her whole life before her - an empty slate, waiting to be filled with life and love, a future without the interference of her mother, or Charles’ domination, or even Fred’s, well his ‘Fred-ness’ (although she suspected she would miss the latter long before she would the former two). Now, in the dark, her heart racing from her nightmare, ‘alone’ took on a new meaning. She fought an irrational urge to climb out the window onto the branch of the tree which grew past the second story of Mickey’s house, knock on Natalie’s window and ask if Fred was there.
She got up, turned on the light and looked around. The room had been fastidiously cleaned by her mother after Lizzie had moved back to her own apartment. She got down on her hands and knees, searching along the baseboard and under the bed until finally, stuck in the hinge of her closet door, she found what she had been looking for. It was silly really, but she was halfway afraid as she held the tiny feather that it might suddenly break into a million grains of dust and blow away. A feather- the last physical remnant she had to prove, if to no one else but herself, that she wasn’t crazy.
The raucous memory of Fred tearing apart 'Mr. Poo' streaked across her mind, and she smiled fondly. She looked around for a safe place to keep the feather. She’d once had a small jewelry box in her old toy stash, but she found her mom had cleared out the rest of her things in defiance of her leaving that last time. Finally she took the chain from around her neck and opened the simple heart shaped locket that she had put on that morning. She put the feather inside, carefully closed it, and slipped it back around her neck. Not feeling so alone anymore, she slipped back under the covers, turned of the lamp, and went back to sleep.
The sun streaming through her window woke her in the morning. She got up and went downstairs to find her mom. She found her sitting in the parlor, deep in conversation with someone on the other end of the phone. She waved to her mom when she glanced up, but her mother was apparently choosing to ignore her this morning - which was nothing new, although she thought she might have been surprised to find that her daughter had stayed the night. She looked like she hadn’t slept well either and seemed somehow older since Lizzie had seen her the previous week.
“Thank you, doctor, “ she said into the phone, “I’ll make the arrangements.”
Lizzie went over to stand in front of her. “Hey,” she whispered. “who are you talking to?”
Why was she talking to a doctor? She was probably sick or something and just too stubborn to tell Lizzie anything about it. She certainly looked worse for wear. Lizzie was still trying to make out the gist of the conversation when she glanced at the mirror behind her mom. As she stared at the mirror, her mind went numb and time seemed to stand still. The phone call forgotten, she stepped around her mom’s chair to stand before the mirror.
It was a full length mirror, about 4 feet wide, extending all the way from the floor to the ceiling. She had always loved that huge mirror- had loved watching herself in it as she spun around in her pretty dresses as a child. She remembered the time Fred smeared “POOP!” on it, with dog poop no less, when she was little. It was one of the few pranks he had pulled that had actually upset her. She had cleaned it off herself, before her mother had even seen it, and Fred had never touched the mirror again.
Now, her hands shook as she placed them against the cool glass. She stood only a moment before her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. She shut her eyes, willing herself to wake up from whatever crazy dream this was.
*************************************
As Fred played “sand-box demons” with Natalie that morning, he wondered what was going on in the Bunce household. Mickey had called his horrid sister, Smelly or something like that, to come over and watch Natalie, then he had disappeared and never come home. Fred knew something was wrong, Mickey was actually a great father to Natalie and now that her awful babysitter was gone, he really doubted that he would be needed there very long much longer. And why the heck had Snot-face stayed the night over at the Mega-beast’s house for? Surely she’d had enough of that old hag to last a lifetime- he knew he had. He wouldn’t have known she was over there, but he had woken with a start sometime in the middle of the night with the feeling that something was wrong. He checked on Natalie, but she was sleeping peacefully. Then he saw the light click on in the window next door. Fully awake, he recognized the gentle tug of emotions as Lizzie’s. He had noticed twice before during the weeks he had spent with Natalie that even though he had a new charge now, he could still sense her emotions to some extent. It wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been when she had been his charge, more like a ribbon of smoke now instead of the iron chain it once was, but now he felt her fear and knew she must have had a nightmare. He wished he could go and comfort her, but since she could no longer see him he knew it would be in vain. Now, as he played with Natalie, he worried that something might be dreadfully wrong.
“Snaggle-tooth, would it be okay if I ran off for a bit?”
“Sure, Fred,” answered Natalie. “I’m going to finish the war here and then put some red food coloring in Aunt Shelly’s contact lens container.”
Fred gave her a bright smile and a high five. “Good thinking, Snaggle-tooth!” Then he disappeared into a flurry of green sparks. He materialized in Lizzie’s old room but not seeing her he ran down the stairs. He checked in the kitchen but not finding her there either, he went on to the parlor.
“Snot-face?” he called rounding the corner at a run and nearly barreling into her mother sitting on her chair. He saw no sign of Lizzie and was about to leave the room when movement caught his eye on the other side of the room. “Snot-face? Snot-face!” He ran over to where she knelt, white as a sheet, shaking visibly. “Lizzie! Hey, what’s wrong??” He had no hope for her to answer, he was silent and invisible to her now. To his surprise she turned towards him.
“Fred? Fred!!” She ran to him and threw her arms around him, sobbing into his shoulder and holding on to him for dear life.
Stunned, he hesitated only a moment before wrapping his arms around her tightly. When her tears had subsided, he took her by the shoulders and held her back enough for him to see her face. So many questions buzzed through his brain, but he settled on the first thing that came to mind.
“Lizzie, how... you’re not supposed to be able to see me!”
She buried her face back into his chest. “I don’t know, Fred. Look in the mirror,” came the muffled reply.
Fred turned to the mirror. It took him a second to realize what he was looking at - or rather not looking at. He had never made a reflection, but where was Lizzie’s?
“What’s going on, Fred? Everyone’s acting crazy - I don’t think anyone can see me but you!”
To emphasize the point, she went to where her mother was now standing, looking out the window. “Mom! Mom!” She tried vainly to get her mom’s attention by shaking her shoulder, but her fingers seemed unable to grasp anything properly and the best she managed was a gentle push. Her mom turned towards her, looked though her, and walked away.
It was Fred’s turn to be shell-shocked - not an emotion that graced him often. He shook himself mentally and tried not to get caught up in Lizzie’s panic. That wouldn’t help anyone right now. Lizzie was still following her mother through the room, shouting, screaming trying to make an impression on the obviously oblivious woman that she was chasing. Fred caught her arm as she passed by him.
“Wait Lizzie, just wait. Calm down for a minute, and let’s think this through.” Being around small children for what seemed like an eternity made his mind feel like it was full of mud when he was faced with something more serious than how to plan the next prank. He struggled to plow through it. “What happened? When did all this start?”
Lizzie told him about the day before, about the mailbox she must have walked into and how she found herself lying in her mom’s front yard. About Shelly slamming the door in her face and then her letting herself into her mom’s house.
“Fred, what if Shelly couldn’t see me? It's the only thing that makes sense! It was so weird, how she looked around like she didn’t hear anything I said and then just slammed the door. What am I going to do, Fred...” she asked. “I’ve got to get home!” she said suddenly and moved to go to the door. She stopped, confused, “I ...I don’t know where my car is though. I think I might have left it at the park.”
“Well, come on then, “ said Fred taking her hand, “Let’s go look.”