Forever Lost Read online

  I nodded, sighing. “But they’ve got him sedated,” I said with a frown. “His doctor thinks he needs his rest or something. We’re so close to cracking this case wide open, and the only person who could give us some clues can’t talk to us.”

  Detective Cole nodded, looking thoughtful. Then his expression suddenly brightened, and his eyes seemed to dance in his head. “Well,” he said, standing up, “not the only person.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  He smiled. “Follow me, son.”

  I stood, and he led me out of the little conference room and down the hall. I realized that we were heading into the jail section of the police station, the few cells where criminals were held before being transferred to a state facility. We walked by a cell filled with biker types who glared at us as we passed. In the next cell, a small body sat huddled on a cement bench. When we paused in front of the bars, a messy head of black hair raised itself, and we were suddenly looking into a pair of dark, piercing—and slightly familiar—eyes.

  “That’s Stanley, the kid who ran into the hospital with the knife a couple of days ago,” I realized, looking at him. He was a little older than Frank and me, college-age maybe, with a wild, slightly unhinged look. He’d run into the hospital cafeteria with a butcher knife, demanding to see Justin. Of course, that was when Justin was still in the hospital, before he’d disappeared—maybe to the same underground bunker where my brother had been held. Stanley had refused to tell us anything about who he was or why he needed to see Justin, so Cole had arrested him.

  “Correction,” said Detective Cole, looking at the kid with satisfaction. “Let me introduce you to Stanley Stapleton.”

  I blinked. “Stapleton?” I asked. “Why does that sound familiar?”

  Detective Cole turned to me and smiled. “From all your research into the Misty Falls Lost, I reckon,” he replied. “Remember one of the most recent victims—Alice?”

  I gasped. Of course! Alice—the girl my brother had been babbling about seeing in the bunker when he’d crawled back into the rubble and gotten himself beaned in the head.

  Detective Cole nodded, seeing the recognition in my eyes. “This is Stanley,” he told me, “her brother.”

  Happyland

  “Pass the cotton candy, please.” I smiled and looked up from a plate piled high with ice cream, chocolate kisses, and cupcakes. Alice was sitting next to me at a huge dining room table, smiling in her princess outfit and revealing two missing front teeth. At the end of the table, three different televisions were tuned to three different cartoons, and the other kids around the table paused every so often in their loud chewing to watch.

  “The pink or the blue?” I asked, gesturing to two different serving dishes, each filled to the brim with fluffy sugar.

  Alice snickered. “The pink, of course,” she replied. “It matches my outfit.”

  That made perfect sense. I passed her the cotton candy, then reached into a bowl of circus peanuts and took a big handful for myself. “It’s strange,” I said, “but I feel like we’ve been eating candy for hours, and I don’t feel at all sick to my stomach.”

  A teenage boy next to me snorted. I turned to look at him and realized that it was Justin, licking a huge, swirly lollipop. “Nobody gets sick in Happyland,” he explained. “Here, we’re kids forever, and we don’t have to worry about stupid adult things like nutrition.”

  “That’s right,” a female voice chimed in from across the table. I turned toward its source and jumped—a small, child-size skeleton was sitting there, popping Cracker Jacks into its mouth! “Here in Happyland, we get to have an eternal childhood!”

  A boy of about ten years old who sat next to the skeleton shook his head. “Well, except for you, Sarah,” he said, looking at the skeleton with affection. “Ever since that bear got you, you’ve been looking a little . . . bony!”

  The skeleton groaned and threw popcorn at the boy. “You keep your jokes to yourself!” she chided. “It’s not my fault—”

  But before she could continue, something changed in the room. A shadow seemed to fall over it, like a cloud had passed over the sun. The joyful mood around the table drained abruptly, and soon I realized that everyone was staring at a door to the left, where two full-grown men stood. Two strangely familiar full-grown men . . .

  “Baby Doc,” Alice whispered, fear thickening her voice. “It’s time for our hurty medicine.”

  Just then, Baby Doc pulled a syringe from behind his back and held it up, pushing the plunger so a purplish drop of liquid medicine squirted from the top. “Who’s first for forgetting?” he asked, looking around the table. Behind him, the other guard—who I heard the other kids call “Scar”—pulled five or six syringes from his lab coat pocket, cackling cruelly.

  “Step right up, kids!” he called, fanning the syringes out in his hand. “Good little children don’t remember their families. . . .”

  None of the kids moved. It seemed to me we were all feeling too scared. But Baby Doc and Scar didn’t let that stop them as they charged into the room, grabbing the kids out of their seats and jabbing needles into their arms.

  “Take your medicine!” Scar screamed, as he grabbed the young boy who’d been sitting next to the skeleton and shot him up with the purplish medicine. The boy howled in pain, but the sound had barely escaped his lips when he crumpled to the floor at Scar’s feet, fast asleep.

  One by one, Scar and Baby Doc made their way around the table, shooting each kid in the arm and putting them to sleep. Even Sarah the skeleton somehow got a shot and promptly fell to the floor. I backed away, panicked, searching the room for any place to hide, but there was nowhere. Baby Doc grabbed Alice as she shrieked. Then suddenly Scar appeared before me, grabbing my arm and holding the syringe high.

  “Say good night,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

  “Nooooo!” I screamed. . . .

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. I blinked against the bright sunlight, suddenly coming to in the same hospital bed I’d been in before. Was it all a dream? From the angle of the sun streaming through the window, it looked to be early afternoon.

  I rubbed my eyes and glanced around, my eyes pausing on the IV still hooked to my right arm. A tiny amount of purple liquid remained in the bag, slowly dripping into my IV. Barely giving myself enough time to think it through, I grabbed the needle in my injured hand and yanked it from my right arm. A sharp, stinging pain immediately spread from the inside of my elbow outward, and I pushed a wad of bedsheet against the wound to stop the bleeding. Yeowch! It hurt a lot, but the pain was better than whatever “forgetting” medicine Dr. Carrini had been pumping into me. I’d spent too much time wasting away in this hospital bed. It was time for me to find my brother and get back on the case.

  I glanced around the room, pleased to find it empty except for me. The radio that Chloe must have brought in still sat on the bedside table, playing staticky oldies, and a magazine—Popular Science—was open on a plastic chair, where I imagined Chloe had been reading it to me. But she was gone now—maybe taking a break, or maybe she’d been called to some other candy-striper duty. Either way, it meant the same thing.

  This was my chance. I had to get out of this hospital without anybody noticing.

  Slowly I sat up. The room spun, and my arm ached in the bulky cast, but I stopped and blinked and tried to pull it together. I was still weak, clearly, from either the accident or the drugs I’d been given—who knew which? But all I had to do was make it out of the hospital. After that, I could find Joe and Detective Cole and get medical care somewhere else—from someone else. It was clear to me that Dr. Carrini wasn’t going to help me. He was too obsessed with my so-called “false memories”—just like he’d accused Justin of having. Except my memories were anything but false. Which implied to me that Justin had been telling the truth about his parents and what he remembered from the night he’d disappeared as well.

  Carefully I swung my legs over the side of the bed and put my feet on th
e floor. The room spun again, but I quickly regained my bearings. Working as hastily as I could with one bum arm, I ripped a small strip of sheet from the bed and tied it around my arm where the wound from the IV remained. It was still bleeding, but it seemed to have slowed. Hopefully it wouldn’t draw attention to me.

  I looked around for my clothes but couldn’t find them. It looked like I’d be making my escape in this oh-so-fashionable hospital gown. Oh, well. I stood slowly, waiting for the room to realign, and then tiptoed over to the door. Careful to avoid being seen, I peered out into the hallway, and when I saw no one, I leaned my head out and looked up and down the hall. The coast was clear. This was my shot.

  I darted into the hall, moving as quietly as I could, and slipped through the door to an emergency stairwell. Pausing to catch my breath, I tried to remember the layout of the hospital from when Joe and I had come to see Justin. On the ground floor was a huge cafeteria; beyond that, the emergency room and exit to the parking lot. I didn’t have far to go. I took a deep breath and ran down the stairs, peering out onto the ground floor.

  The cafeteria was busy—filled with doctors, visitors, nurses, and volunteers. It had to be right around lunchtime. Even a few patients like myself, dressed in hospital gowns or pajamas, milled around with their families. Good, I thought. I won’t attract too much attention.

  The hallway led straight by the cafeteria, down past the admitting desk of the emergency room, and out the door. It was bright and wide. If I could move fast enough, I could easily get out without anyone blocking me. I took another deep breath. This is it, I told myself. Time to get out of here, find Joe, and find out what’s really going on.

  Swinging the door open, I ran. My legs pumped like pistons, rocketing me forward as fast as I could possibly go.

  “Hey!” I heard behind me, a few surprised voices in the cafeteria probably wondering why this crazy, half-naked person in a cast was zooming by. “What the—?”

  “Is he okay?”

  I kept running, keeping my focus on the exit. I was almost past the cafeteria now. Just a few more yards . . .

  “Frank?” Footsteps ran up beside me, and suddenly a hand clamped down on my right arm, digging into the area where the IV had been with tiny, sharp fingernails. “Frank?”

  The sharp pain of fingernails near my wound nearly threw me off balance, but it held firm. I stumbled to a stop and turned. “Chloe?” Oh, man. I was so close. How do I get out of here now?

  “Where are you going? Are you okay? Let me page Dr. Carrini.” She moved toward the wall, to a nearby phone, but now I grabbed her arm to stop her. Part of me wondered if I should just push her aside and book it to the door. But—no. She wasn’t Dr. Carrini, and she didn’t have the strength to hold me here by herself. And I still needed answers from her. I still needed to know what had really happened to me.

  “Chloe,” I said, looking her in the eye. “Listen to me. I need you to be honest with me. What happened to us in that bunker? What’s going on down there? What happened to all those kids?”

  Chloe looked down, refusing to meet my eye. “Frank, you’re—you’re talking nonsense.”

  “I’m not,” I insisted. “You were there with me, Chloe. You said I would be a ‘permanent resident.’ If I had stayed, I would have been your ‘special responsibility.’ What does that mean?”

  Chloe still wouldn’t look at me. “These—these must be the false memories Dr. Carrini was talking about,” she said in a small voice.

  “Stop lying,” I hissed, getting impatient now. Why wouldn’t she tell me the truth? “What are you hiding, Chloe? Who are you working for? What happened to all those kids—the Misty Falls Lost? You know, don’t you?”

  Chloe met my eyes finally, looking conflicted. She was obviously struggling with whether to answer my questions. Finally she opened her mouth—and my heart quickened. Would she tell me the truth? Could I possibly win her over to my side? Would she help me find those kids again?

  But then, suddenly, Chloe let out an ear-splitting scream. “HELP! HELP ME! This patient is threatening me, trying to escape! HELP!”

  I was stunned. She’s betraying me! But still, I waited only a second before springing into action. I had to get out of there. Security guards ran up to me from both sides, but I managed to dart around one and ran as fast as my legs would carry me to the exit. All my dizziness subsided as pure adrenaline took over. I heard shouts all around me, and I had to dodge a few confused-looking nurses, but I made it to the doors and pushed them open, tumbling into the bright sunlight.

  The security guards were still trailing me, but I had a good lead now. I booked it across the hospital lawn toward the woods, not letting myself think about anything except getting one foot in front of the other and moving, moving, moving. After what Chloe had done, there could be no mistake.

  My only chance of getting to the bottom of this case—and maybe ever getting my freedom again—was to escape this hospital.

  Stanley

  “So you’re Alice’s brother?” I asked, sitting down across from Stanley in the cell. He recoiled, looking almost stricken at his sister’s name. I glanced at Detective Cole, who gently put a hand on Stanley’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Stanley,” he told the boy. “Joe is a friend. You can trust him.”

  Stanley turned to me, his eyes piercing in their intensity. “You know where Alice is?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” answered Detective Cole, “but we’ve been trying to find her. That’s who you’ve been asking for?”

  Stanley looked at him, then quickly down at the floor, hugging himself. “I have to find her, I have to find her, I have to . . .”

  I glanced at Detective Cole; clearly Stanley was struggling with something. The detective nodded and gestured for me to walk a few feet away with him. When I did, he turned to me and explained, too quietly for Stanley to hear, “He’s struggled, mentally, since Alice disappeared. His parents think he held himself responsible for what happened to her. He has a history of extreme anxiety, hearing voices. Been in and out of mental hospitals for the last ten years.”

  I sucked in a breath through my teeth. Poor Stanley. This case just seemed to provide more and more victims, from the kidnapped kids themselves, to their devastated parents and grandparents, to their shattered siblings. It was hard to understand who might be responsible for causing so much heartache.

  “Okay,” I said softly, nodding at Detective Cole. “Let’s be as gentle as we can in our questioning, then.”

  We walked back to Stanley and sat down facing him. He was still babbling to himself, “I have to, I have to, I have to . . .,” while fidgeting in his lap.

  “Stanley,” said Detective Cole, “we’re very close to finding your sister. I really believe that. But we need your help. Can you tell me, why did you decide to come here, looking for Alice now? Is it because you saw Justin on the news?”

  Stanley shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t even watch the news. It was because Alice finally contacted me, after all these years.”

  Detective Cole met my eye, and we exchanged surprised glances.

  “How?” Detective Cole asked. “In your mind? Did you see her in a dream?”

  Stanley shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I know the difference between Alice in my head and real Alice. She wrote me a letter that came in the mail.”

  Detective Cole frowned, clearly surprised. “What letter?” he asked. “Stanley, we’ve been holding you for days now, and we’ve searched through your things. There was no letter from Alice. Did you leave it at home?”

  Stanley shook his head again. “It’s safe now,” he replied. “I had to hide it from the bad people. Alice says the bad people won’t let her leave.”

  I glanced at the detective; that sure sounded accurate, if the little Frank had told us was to be believed. Alice was being held in the underground bunker by—well, we didn’t know. But if she really had written to Stanley, maybe she had mentioned these “bad people.”


  Detective Cole furrowed his brows. “Where did you hide it, Stanley? You can tell us. It will help us find Alice.”

  Stanley looked skeptical. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m going to find Alice. I don’t know if I can trust you. Alice needs me, her brother, not you.”

  The detective sighed. “She needs both of us, Stanley. I’m the police. When we find her, we need to punish the bad people who did this to her, and I can make that happen. Do you understand?”

  Stanley frowned. He looked nervous, like he was not inclined to trust either one of us at all. I could tell he didn’t understand what was going on here; he really thought he’d be walking out of the police station soon, able to resume his search for his sister.

  “Can you tell us what the letter said?” I asked, wondering how a young girl imprisoned in an underground bunker had managed to stamp and mail a letter to her brother. Was Stanley lying to us? Or had Alice passed it to someone else? Did she have an ally in one of the bunker’s staff members?

  “It was very confusing,” he replied. “She said she missed me, and I had to come get her. Then she gave me some directions for finding where she is.”

  “Directions?” asked Detective Cole, eyebrows raised.

  “That’s right,” said Stanley, nodding. “But I was having some trouble following them. So I buried the letter in the woods and went to try to find Justin.”

  “How did you know about Justin?” I asked quickly, though I could see Detective Cole was dying to get more information about where the letter was buried. “You said you don’t watch the news. How did you know he was out, and could tell you where your sister was?”

  Stanley chuckled, like the answer to my question was embarrassingly obvious. “Because he mailed the letter for her, silly,” he replied. “She said he was going to escape, so she was giving him this message for me.”

  I looked at Detective Cole. So that was it: It sounded like the letter was real. From what Frank had told me, it seemed that Alice knew how to escape the bunker, probably because she’d seen Justin do it. And if she knew he was leaving, it made sense she would give him a message for her family. Within a couple of days of Justin’s reappearance, Stanley had shown up at the hospital, looking for him.