885 Days [A Vikklan/Sidemen/Pack Story]

Day 2: Vikk

24 March 2015

I didn't go home and neither did Tobi. Simon was sober enough to get the others back to the Sidemen house and not let them kill anyone or themselves but not quite sober enough to realise what was going on, so we didn't tell him. We trusted him enough to get them home and we did exactly that, dumping them into two Ubers while the waiter checked security footage.

He didn't even show us what he had seen before phoning the police to report a missing- not just missing, kidnapped- person. Tobi sat with his arm around me as the police shut the bar down, took the footage, questioned anyone who might have seen him and then took us down to the station. They didn't give us any information though- someone showed us to a room, told us to sit and wait and then left Tobi and I there alone with nothing to do and no information about where Lachlan was or what had happened to him.

I couldn't help the panic attack I had after about half an hour, sobbing brokenly, terrified, into Tobi's chest. Where was he!? How could I have let this happen? I was supposed to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn't drink too much and didn't get creeped on by weirdos, but we had wandered in separate directions. He had gone to talk to other people and I had done the same. I hadn't watched him, I hadn't taken care of him. If only I had.

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Go home, they said, go home, there's nothing you can do. With no information, no idea what was going on, they sent both Tobi and I home with a vague promise to contact us in the morning. They said they were taking it seriously, they said they understood that he was missing and they needed to look for him, but they couldn't deal with us at the same time. We weren't family, they said, therefore we didn't matter.

"Vikk, please." Tobi whispered, arms tight around my waist. "Try and sleep, please, there's nothing we can do tonight."

It had been a sleepless night, sat up on the couch staring into nothing while my brain tried to imagine every scenario that meant we wouldn't have ended up here. If we hadn't gone out, if he had decided to stay home, if I had stuck by his side. My fault, this was all my fault. Everyone else was asleep, oblivious to our plight, while I sat on the couch and sobbed.

It took 12 hours for them to finally contact us. 12 hours of sobbing and pleading with myself, 12 hours of staring blankly across the room. It was past noon the next day when we got that call, a solemn voice asking us to come down to the police station because they needed more information. Tobi went with me.

That was the first time I saw the security footage, grainy and in black and white, but it was still obvious who it was focus on. They followed him throughout the night as he hopped from group to group, talking and laughing and seeming to have a good time, at least until he began mixing with one group. There was a man, unknown and unidentified, who began talking to him. He bought Lachlan drinks. I stared and began sobbing as he put his hands on my friend, resting lightly on his waist and guiding him from the club. That was their only suspect.

"As far as we know, he went willingly." An officer said, and that was the first time I screamed at them. I screamed and cried, begging them to see that he was a 19 year old boy, drinking a little more than he meant to after having arrived only the day before. There was no way he would have left the club willingly with a middle aged man, not after what he had said to me, after what we had promised. I had broken that promise.

All they said was that they would look into it. They made no promises, they said nothing about if they knew anything more.

I went home that day more distraught that the night before because now I knew he wasn't just missing. I knew someone had lead him away, taken him to god knows where and still had him. Or maybe they didn't still have him. I didn't want to think about that possibility, that that man had done so much more than just lead him from the bar. That Lachlan's heart could no longer be beating out there.

By this time the other Sidemen knew something was wrong and Tobi had to explain it to them. That sweet Lachlan was missing, presumed kidnapped, and the police couldn't do much about it until more leads came through. They cried as well, turning to social media to plead for the return of our friend. Please, they begged, posting photos of Lachlan, bring him home.

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I thought the first 48 hours were going to be the worst. The sobbing and the pleading for his return, the uncertainty, the fear. But as time ticked on, it got worse. Because after the first two days there was a certain feeling that we were no longer searching for a missing person. We were searching for a body.

We had to go through the painful process of informing everything, his family, his friends, my friends. The Pack. I wasn't even sure how I got the words out- that one of our own was no longer with us and even thought he might still have been out there, somewhere, 48 hours already made it seem like the hope was gone.

If he really was out there, I don't think anyone other than myself truly believed he was still alive.

1: Lachlan

The room was silent, and cold, and dark. Damp too. I hadn't moved since I had woken up there, curled up in what I thought to be the corner, scared out of my mind. I didn't know where I was, what was going on. There were no signs of life, no noises, no lights, no smell aside from the sickening damp.

The damp set into my bones fast, sending aches and chills through with every slight movement. It was hard to even breathe without feeling the wet of the air, the pain that ran through my chest. But it remained silent.

It didn't take long for the sleep deprivation to take over either. With no sun, no idea of the time, my body didn't know when it was time to sleep and thus it never really happened. I sat, staring into absolute darkness, wishing I could fall asleep on the cold concrete, but I couldn't.

There was no telling exactly when the hallucinations set it, my mind conjuring images of things that didn't exist in the dark where nothing moved. I heard things, whispered voices, wind, cars rushing past where I thought a window should be, I smelled things like cooking bacon or freshly cut grass, I felt hands on me. But none of it was real. Because before long I was sitting alone in the damp and the dark, throat sore from screaming for help, and no one came.

Sitting alone in the freezing cold was far better than what was to come.