Excerpt from Order of the Seers
When Liam pulled his father’s green 2002 Saab in front of their small
brick house, everything seemed as it always did—quiet and predictable in
their modest yet comfortable home. They had lived in a much bigger house
before his father died, but Liam never minded sharing a bathroom with his
mother and sister. All the toys and trinkets that had mattered to him when
he was a child were rendered insignificant the moment his mother told him
that his father would never come home again. As he began to take the front
steps two at a time, he noticed that Lilli had stopped at the tree stump his
mother had cut down the week before. Sitting down, her eyes remained on
the ground. Just as his mouth formed the question, she spoke.
“No, you go. I can’t see it again.”
Liam didn’t stop to ask what she meant. He tried to hold back the swell
of fear in his chest as he ran to the front door, but his emotions spun out of
control the moment he tested the front door knob and found it opened—
easily. They never left the front door unlocked.
When he stepped into the house, he actually felt the life, the person he
had been, rush past him and out the door as his eyes took in the overturned,
splintered remains of their living room. It was a feeling he’d felt only
once before, when his father died. But what made it worse, what made it
permanent, was lying in the middle of the floor, with its contents thrown
everywhere. It was his mother’s purse, which had not been there when he
left that morning.
“Mom!” he shouted as he raced up the stairs to her room. “Mom. Please!”
he shouted again, but no one answered. In every room he looked, it was the
same: scattered clothes, broken mirrors, and silence—a deafening silence
that rang louder than the sound of his own shallow breathing.
If he took the stairs at lightning speed to make it to the second floor, an
age could have passed during his descent. The entire house consisted of
three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and
a small open dining area that you could see clearly from the front door. As
he walked down the steps, he knew there was only one room left to check.
His mind was frozen on what to hope for as his hand reached the end of
the banister. If she wasn’t in the kitchen, she might have been taken, but at
least there was a chance she was still alive. If she was in the kitchen, it was
unthinkable.