Soul Crafter

Chapter Six: Where Are You?

Bianca quickly dashed out of her mom’s room, checked her brother’s bedroom, and then rushed out and checked her own bedroom. She found nothing out of the ordinary, nothing broken, nothing wrong and nothing out of place.

     “What the hell is going on?” Michelle wondered, looking around Bianca’s simple, beige carpeted bedroom.

     “This is starting to freak me out,” Bianca exclaimed and rushed downstairs, Michelle following close behind.

     Bianca’s mother, Corinna Noble, was for the most part a homemaker who did not venture out much.

     “Maybe you should call your mom?” Michelle suggested.

     “Yeah, yeah I’ll do that. Maybe she just went somewhere— maybe she told me but I forgot?” Bianca said more to calm herself than anything.

     “What’s going on?” Chris asked as they both entered the living room.

     “Bianca is going to call and check up on your mom,” Michelle said.

     “How come?” Chris asked.

     “Cause she’s not here, and I’m hearing things!” Bianca exclaimed, grabbing her phone from her pocket and dialing her mom’s number.

     They all waited impatiently. Michelle thought about what she knew of Bianca’s mother. She knew that she was generally very doting, kindly, and soft spoken. She tended to want to overfeed Michelle whenever she was around.

     Michelle didn’t spend a whole lot of time around Bianca’s mother, so she didn’t know exactly what was considered normal or not.

     The ringing on the other end stopped.

     “Why isn’t she picking up?” Bianca asked, calling her again.

     “Maybe her hands are full, and she couldn’t answer in time?” Michelle suggested soothingly.

     “Did she forget her phone?” Chris wondered. “She’s done that a couple of times.”

     Corinna still wasn’t picking up, and Bianca was all but hyperventilating now. “I’m going to call Dad.”

                “Why would you want to talk to that asshole?” Chris asked cuttingly.

     “I know he’s a jerk but maybe he knows where Mom is.”

     Bianca and Chris were ambivalent at best when it came to their father. He had been caught cheating, which is what precipitated their parents’ split. That, and his attitude became worse; he became more and more snide and rude. Bianca hesitantly dialed his number, and then calmly exhaled— ready to talk him down if he argued with her.

     She waited for him to pick up.

     He didn’t.

     “Well that’s no shocker— he’s not answering me,” Bianca said.

     “That’s probably because last time you spoke with him, you told him to go to hell,” Chris pointed out.

     “Has your dad really become that petty?” Michelle asked, disbelief written on her face.

     “You betcha…” Bianca said.

     “Let me try him,” Chris said, pulling his own phone out of his pocket and searching his contacts. He found his father, Mitch Noble, and pressed dial.

     All he got was the tone, then nothing.

     “He’s not picking up for me, either,” Chris said, looking at his phone in disgust.

     “Yeah, well, it’s not like he’s been father of the year,” Bianca huffed.

     “Wait a minute— let me check something,” Michelle said urgently. She took out her own phone and dialed her house— where she knew, or hoped, Victor would still be.

     “Who are you calling?” Bianca asked.

     “Victor,” Michelle muttered. She intentionally left out the part where he was staying with her, and that she wasn’t calling his number, but her own.

     Chris made a face.

     Bianca looked intrigued. “So, you two are a thing?”

     Michelle didn’t answer. Neither did Victor.

     “He’s not picking up. Why is no one picking up?” Michelle asked.

     “It’s just our parents and Victor,” Chris said, bitterness in his tone when he said the mysterious man’s name.

     “Is something wrong with our phones?” Bianca asked.

     “Try calling someone else— anyone else,” Michelle suggested. She did the same.

     Each one of them went through various contacts on their phone. None of them answered.

     When they were done, they all stared at each other, gobsmacked.

     “What’s going on?” Bianca asked, hysteria rising in her tone.

     “It’s gotta be an issue with our phones, like you said earlier,” Chris added.

     “I’ll be right back, wait here.” Michelle rushed out of the house. She ran across the lawn to the neighbor’s house and pounded on their front door.

     She waited, and then pounded on their door again.

     “Michelle, what are you doing?” Bianca called, crossing the lawn, Chris following behind her.

     “I’m checking something,” Michelle said, pounding on the door again.

     Still, no one answered.

     Michelle twisted the handle and found the door was unlocked, so she went inside.

    “Are you crazy?” Bianca was now standing at the doorway with her brother.

     “There’s no one here,” Michelle said.

     “Uh, yeah, that’s probably cause they all went to work?” Bianca said.

     “This is the Stanleys’, they usually don’t come back until late in the day,” Chris said.

     “Do they usually leave their door unlocked?” Michelle asked.

     Before they could answer, they heard what sounded like a giant boulder falling down on the upper floor. It shook the ceiling above them. They froze on the spot.

     “What the hell made that noise?” Chris asked, shocked.

     “I’ll go check.” Michelle made a dash for the stairs, a shaky hand already on the bannister.

     “Wait, no!” Bianca protested, but it was too late. Michelle was already running up the stairs. Chris and Bianca both waited downstairs, until she finally came back down a couple of minutes later.

     “There’s no one up there,” Michelle said, shuddering.

     Michelle ran past them, and then ran to the next neighbor’s house. This time, she didn’t even bother knocking. She opened the door and yelled, “hello”, to which no one responded.

     Again and again, Michelle did the same, door after door. While Chris and Bianca both looked at her as if she was crazy at first, the realization began to dawn on them: everyone in the neighborhood was gone.

     Michelle had even run home to see if she could find Victor. There was no trace of him or any trace that he had even been there. Her cheeks reddened as panic and dread set in.

     “Okay, so, maybe it’s only our neighborhood— and people we know,” Bianca suggested when they were back at the Nobles’ house. They were seated around the black dining table, sipping tea and coffee.

     Michelle looked forlornly at the contents of her cup. She took a sip and then made a face. “This tastes kinda burnt.”

     “I think it might be a little expired then,” Bianca said in an apologetic tone. Michelle took one more sip to make sure it tasted as bad as she first thought, and when it still tasted awful, she pushed the cup away. “I don’t think it’s just the neighborhood. I think we fell into something, and it took us somewhere,” she said tentatively, scared of her friends’ judgement.

     “Fell into what?” Chris asked in disbelief.

     “Don’t you recall what happened earlier? We woke up in the middle of the road after falling through some kind of shimmery… vortex, I guess,” Michelle said anxiously.

     “I don’t remember there being a vortex. I just remember there being some kind of light below us,” Bianca recalled, furrowing her brows.

     “I don’t remember that,” Chris said. “Why would a vortex even appear below us?” he added in a condescending tone, as if he knew how vortexes worked.

     “Um, I don’t know. Where should they appear?” Michelle retorted defensively.

     Chris had no response for her and went quiet.

     Michelle then stood up and finished off the last of her cup of coffee.

      “Where are you going?” Bianca asked.

     “I’m going home. I’m going to get in my car and see if I can find people,” Michelle said.

     “I’ll go with you,” Chris said.

     “Yeah, me too. We still need to figure out where our mom is,” Bianca said.

     They all followed Michelle back to her house, which was located a ways away from the rest of the houses in Highcroft Village. They all got into her car, pulled out of her driveway and headed for town.