Insomniacs (#1)

69. silence

I'd never imagined silence could be so painful.

Silence, from the other side of the cabin door, hurt me more than a lot of things have.

Silence, the entire car ride through these woods until we parked up outside this lodge. Silence from the two of them as I slammed my fist against the door. At first, I was yelling out for him. Angry and resilient to reach him but soon, I was slumping against the wood door. My words but a desperate, yearning whisper when realisation dawned.

My forehead against the barrier, my fist now ceasing it's relentless pounding. And even through my cries, there was silence from the other side.

Silence that lurked into every manifesting thought. Silence that buried itself inside my mind, filling the gaps between all the dark that was beginning to flourish.

A deathly, deafening quiet, filled by nobody. Not a rustle of a curtain in one of the rooms up above and not a single light of the cabin awake.

He wasn't here. He could be anywhere or he could be nowhere, gone for me to never set my sights upon again.

But I tried. He can't be gone. Me, Hudson and Ev - for hours, we tried. Sat on the porch of that cabin, we rang Amelia. He wasn't at his house nor had her or Micah seen him at all. Everest had started ringing local hospitals, looking for him.

Every single one of those calls made us hold our breath. But nothing. No Ezekiel Luca Hernandez, in any hospital nearby. I could see the way Everest and Hudson's shoulders had slumped, their faces grave and I knew it was expected.

But I couldn't fathom the thought of having to accept and stand still so I willed them to get up. We drove around Kilned for the better part of another hour. I made them pass the ice rink, made them scour the graveyard with me. I implored the two of them to keep looking, the entire day, even when they had both realised it was pointless.

But alone, when I went up to that small hill besides the graveyard, with every step I begged for him to be sitting there.

Nothing. And after hours of endless searching, of me urging us to keep going, I gave in to the pain that had begun to rip through me. Exhaustion echoed through my every bone.

Silence as Everest wrenched me away and into the backseat of Hudson's car. He pulled his hoodie over my trembling body and pulled me in close so I was tucked up against him.

Silence, once more as the stars flickered in the night above.

We drove through the dark. I sought comfort against Everest's side, curled up with no care of how empty I was beginning to feel. Anger was distant; I missed it.

Silence when I'd pulled out my phone and with Ev's arm hung around me, my head against the spot where his shoulder meets his chest, I mindlessly pressed Luca's phone number. Again. And again, like I'd been doing all day. Knowing I'd get the same result each time but allowing my heart to break with every ruinous dead-end call.

Everest had eventually closed his fingers around my hand, gently taking the phone from me. I didn't fight it, didn't protest nor did I even bat an eye as he held my head where he was brushing back my hair, his cheek resting atop my head. Tending to me so gently. Even as I felt a tear slip from one of his eyes, I did not utter a word. I couldn't. Not when everything had become so numb.

When Hudson pulled up outside of my house, I didn't look back to either of them as I promptly slipped out of the car and walked inside my house. I didn't spare a glance to the journal, the cigarettes, his camera as I trudged lifelessly up the stairs and into my room, past Benji's, past mum's.