Diary of the Gone by Ivan Amberlake

of
the articles was circled. Another one about a mysterious
disappearance, but the name of the one gone missing made me go into
a cold sweat.
    “ Aiden Blackwell reported
missing for a week,” I mumbled. “It’s true then. He’s not dead. And
he’s back.”
    I looked through the article, but
there was nothing except the mention of Cynthia being found dead a
few months previously.
    At first I thought I imagined it—a
faint sound in the distance—but then it grew stronger, more
intense. By the look on the guys’ faces I knew they heard it as
well.
    “ School,” Wayne said and
bolted up the steps. Vivian, me, and the others sprang up the
stairs.
    I didn’t feel cold anymore, just
scared that this nightmare would never end. I tripped a few times,
but managed to keep my balance and kept moving. When Vivian started
to lose pace I grabbed her by the hand, something I’d never done.
Still it felt right when she gripped my hand.
    A black pillar of
smoke swirled upwards into the dead skies. Soon we could see the
flames engorging the wooden structure, roaring through the windows.
Teachers and students poured out of the poisonous blackness,
clutching their necks and coughing. And then he stepped out.
    Unshaven, his hair disheveled and
reaching his shoulders. I could barely recognize the boy from
Cynthia’s memory in him. Dressed in washed-out jeans and a long
black coat with a cowl, Aiden looked right at me, the black of his
eyes boring into me from under his curved eyebrows. He had a
baseball bat in his right hand, stained with what looked like
blood.
    As students were running through the
entrance doors, he swung it and struck a boy my age right into the
solar plexus. I shuddered when the boy crumbled to the ground like
a lifeless puppet and didn’t move again.
    “ No!” I screamed, and ran
at him. “No!”
    Aiden waited for me with a smile on
his face.
    I just ran towards him, not really
sure what to do next. In one swift motion he took a step aside and
struck me with his bat like I were a baseball. The end of the bat
grazed my hand and shoulder as I ducked, shielding my face. The
sound of bones breaking was followed by lightning pain shooting
through me. Vision blackened as I crumpled on the ground beside the
boy who was still lying unconscious.
    More screams followed, the
never-ending nightmare getting only worse. The heat of the roiling
flames reached me where I lay on my back.
    Clutching the
burning hand, I forced myself to stay conscious as I watched
everything like a movie turned upside down. Wayne and Terry Haubert
attacked Aiden from different sides, but the ferocity of his
counterattack was hard to compete with. Aiden— Father? No, I couldn’t call him that —took the bat in his left hand and punched Wayne real hard. I
closed my eyes to let some of the pain go away, but it lingered. In
the dark I heard Terry screaming. I was scared to open my eyes and
see what Aiden had done to Bev’s boyfriend. When I did, Aiden
gripped him by the hair as a grimace of intolerable pain distorted
Terry’s face.
    “ I’m coming for you next,”
Aiden said, pointing his bat at me.
    It was the first time I’d heard my
father’s voice. He sounded so smug I wanted to make him suffer, to
cause him as much pain as he’d inflicted on others.
    He dropped the bat aside; it landed
with a hollow sound beside me. Then he gripped Wayne by the hair as
well, pulling both boys towards the forest.
    As I tried to stand up, another bolt
of lightning shot through me, stars flecking my vision. I gave up,
and darkness took me away.
     

Chapter 11
     
    Previously I’d thought darkness was
supposed to give people oblivion and relief. It didn’t give me
either.
    As I was floating through the dark,
people screamed around me, their cries saturating my body with
fear. Though they were there, on the other side, I could hear them
too well.
    Aiden stepped out of the dark, looking
at me with grim satisfaction. Blood was dripping down his