Old Film - Chapter Two

I sat on the curb next to Brenda, rubbing her heaving shoulders as a hot summer breeze did nothing to alleviate the drops of sweat trickling down my forehead. A long mint green station wagon revved its engine in the background. Brenda let out one last heavy sigh, stood to her feet, then rubbed the last of her tears from her brown eyes. Josh stared at the screen of his cell phone which said, “Mom,” and in smaller words, “calling…” Shane stood in front of him shaking his head. “Dude. Give it up. Look around. Where we are there are no cell phones. You can’t call your mom, she’s probably getting out of her high-school algebra class or something.”

The mint green car came to a stop in front of Brenda. The driver rolled down her window and leaned out. Cigarette smoke drifted from her car and danced around the multi-colored swirls on her silk shirt. She looked directly at Brenda. “Hey, girl, you okay?

Brenda looked up at her. “What?”

“These guys causing you trouble?”

“No.” She looked back at us and shook her head. “They’re my friends. We just got some terrible news, but we'll be okay.”

The girl sat back in her seat and cocked her head. “You sure?”

Brenda nodded and sniffed one last time. “Thanks.”

The lady in the car drew out the word, “Okay.” With that she placed her car in drive and coasted forward, keeping an eye on us and the road in front of her.

Brenda's head swiveled back and forth in a panic. “Hey, where’s my brother?”

I jumped up. “Wait. Didn’t he come out of the house with us? Do you think the men in that basement caught him?”

Brenda put her head in her hand and shook it back and forth over and over again. “No. No. No. Come on. Seriously?” Her shoulders shivered again like she was going to start crying all over again.

Josh shoved his phone in to his pocket. “Alright, look, we’ll go back to the house and knock on the door. We didn’t do anything wrong, we’ll just explain to them what happened and they’ll let Robby go.”

Shane looked sideways at him and folded his arms over his chest. “Bro, are you an idiot?”

Brenda wiped he sleeve across her nose. “We need to figure out what happened and find a way home.”

Shane belted out a long fake laugh. “Find out what happened?” He threw his palms up. “Are you listening to yourselves? We’ve been sucked into some alternate reality or something. There’s no figuring out or going home?”

Josh shrugged. “Whatever happened to us has to have a logical explanation. Let’s just stick together and figure out what to do. I hate to admit it, but Brenda’s right.”

Shane shook his head and looked up into the sky. “Whatever. It’s not like we have anything else..." He brought his chin to his chest and sighed. "I’ve been freaking out for almost three days and I just need to accept that I’ll never figure it out. I don’t have any energy left to fight it.” His shoulders slumped.

I gripped his shoulder and tried to give him some of my strength, but he shoved my hand off and let out a quiet growl. “Whatever.”

I raised my hands up and spread out my fingers. “Alright. Sorry. Well, we have to go back to the house. Obviously we don’t try to convince them of anything that will get us put into a loony bin. We just explain that we’re lost and need to find her brother.”

Brenda turned before I’d finished talking and walked back in the direction of the house.

I trotted up next to her and placed my hand on her shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

She ignored me and kept walking. I dropped my hand and walked silently by her side. The same mint green car with the lady in the swirl filled shirt drifted past us. Her arm dangled from the door with her puffy sleeves rustling in the breeze. She coasted past while keeping her eyes on us. She let out a long exhale and smoke drifted from the car.

In front of the house, the four of us stopped at the entrance to the yard. The grass was littered with yellow and white dandelions. A small breeze carried a few of the fluffy white seeds past us. Brenda huffed and marched into the yard. Shane, Josh, and I looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders in unison, then followed her. By the time the three of us caught up to her, she had already knocked on the door and waited for them to answer.

The door squeaked on its hinges and revealed a young woman who looked oddly familiar. Her blonde hair was held back with a black strip of cloth and had large exaggerated curls on either side. She held her hands together at her waist. “I’m so sorry our husbands scared you kids so badly. They were more than a little concerned to find a small crowd of children in our basement.”

Brenda cleared her throat. “We’re very sorry about that, but can we have my brother back. We didn’t mean to be in your basement and I swear we weren’t doing anything wrong.”

The lady cocked her head at us and asked. “How does someone accidentally..." She waved her hand in the air. "Never mind, who's your brother?”

I stepped half-way in front of Brenda. “Little guy with black hair, he’s about this tall.” I held my hand at chest level.

The lady in the doorway shook her head. “You four were the only kids in our basement. Well, that’s all I’d seen and our husbands didn’t say they had anyone down there. They’re not fond of having children in their hair during poker night. I guarantee you that they wouldn’t keep anyone down there that wasn’t supposed to be down there.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Do you think we could go down there and look to see if maybe he’s still hiding down there?”

A taller lady with jet black straight hair peeked around the blonde lady’s shoulder and glared at us. “Where are your parents?”

“Nancy, please, will you just look at them? Can’t you tell that they’re already scared enough? The girl’s obviously been crying and none of them look exactly like trouble makers.”

“Oh please Cassandra, give me a break. Just look at their clothes. You can tell they’re rebellious little brats.”

Cassandra raised her elbow into Nancy’s face and pushed her back. “Will you please just let me handle this?”

Nancy huffed. “If I was their parent, I’d want to know why they were sneaking into strangers homes and hiding in the basement doing who knows what.”

“Well, you’re not their mom and I’m glad you aren’t. Please calm down, go back to the kitchen, and let me handle it.”

The black haired lady clicked her tongue, turned around, and mumbled unintelligibly.

The blonde woman turned back toward us. “Ignore her, she’s not usually so rude to people. I’m really sorry.”

Brenda whispered, “It’s okay.” She looked up with tears in her eyes. “We just really want to find my brother. Can you ask your husband if he’s seen him?”

A man’s voice called from inside the house. “Cassandra!”

The blonde woman shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry kids, there’s nothing more we can do for you.” She closed the door and squinted right before it shut and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

Josh kicked the door. “I bet they’ve kidnapped him in there. We should call the cops.”

Shane barked, “No! We can’t go to the police. Can you even imagine what would happen if they tried looking us up or tried tracking down our parents? Once they determine that we’re orphans or whatever, then they’d ship us off to an orphanage.”

Brenda’s eyes dilated and she raised her eyebrows. “Oh my gosh! I didn’t even think about that. What’re we going to do? They have my brother and they’re not going to give him back.”

Josh pulled on Brenda’s shirt and called out louder than necessary. “I guess Robby must have run off in a different direction than us. I bet if we go the opposite direction from earlier that we’ll run into him.”

“But, but, we can’t just leave my brother behind.”

“Shhhh. Seriously.” Josh rolled his eyes, trotted off the porch and nodded his head to the side for us to follow.

At the bottom of the steps, realization settled in. Josh was planning something and wanted the kidnappers to think we’d given up. Josh half jogged in the opposite direction from earlier, just as he said we should do. Once we’d made it out of site of the house he turned around. “It’s obvious that they’re not going to let Robby go. They must think that we’re runaways and didn’t want the neighbors to see us go into their house.”

Shane’s pale freckle filled face shook back and forth. “I don’t believe this. A house full of normal looking adults in some sort of kidnapping ring or something? It’s just beyond ridiculous is what it is. Are you even listening to yourself?”

Josh placed his feet directly in front of Shane’s and looked down at him. “You got a better explanation for why they’re refusing to admit they’d even seen Robby?”

I pushed them apart. “Let’s not fight okay?”

They glared at me and Josh laughed. “Fight? We’re not going to fight over this.”

“You could have fooled me.” I sighed. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. We need to come up with a plan to rescue Robby.”

Josh said, “What if he never made it to wherever we are?”

Brenda’s face brightened. “You mean like he’s still home?”

“Right. Maybe they didn’t see him because he never jumped with us.”

I cocked my head. “Jumped?”

“Through time. Anyway, maybe he’s safe at home freaking out about where we’d gone and we’re here freaking out about where he’d gone.”

Shane said, “We were all on that old film and we jumped. He was on that old film, so he had to have too.”

Brenda shuffled her feet. “We don’t know and there’s only one way to find out. We need to sneak back into that house and search it for ourselves.”

Shane grabbed Brenda’s shoulder. “Alright, that’s what I’m talking about. We sneak into the house after dark and then we search it. If we stay out of sight for the rest of the day, then they should be confident that we believed their story. Then we break in and save your brother.”

I said, “That sounds like a solid plan.”

Josh laughed. “It sounds like a perfect way to get us in to worse trouble, if you ask me. Four of us are going to break into a stranger’s house and somehow they don’t hear us?”

Brenda hummed. “Yeah, you’ve got a point. John, can you go in after dark and look for Robby?”

“Um, well, I guess?”

Brenda hugged me and whispered in my ear. “Thank you so much John, I owe you.”

My cheeks flushed and a small shiver trailed through my body. The feeling of her embrace and her undeserving faith gave me the confidence I needed to believe that I could actually accomplish what she had asked.

Josh punched me in the arm. “Aren’t you two just the cutest?”

Brenda turned on him and balled her fists at him once again. “You better watch it dude, I still haven’t forgotten about your just a girl comment.”

He held up his hands. “Whoa, sorry, all I was saying is…”

She slapped his hands out of the air. “Well, don’t.”

“Okay, okay.”

Shane chuckled, “One of these days dude, she’s going to knock you out.”

***

The sky turned from blue to black and the chirping of crickets filled the night. Darkness had swallowed the neighborhood everywhere except where the streetlights reached down to the street. The house where Robby was being held had a single window with blue flickering light. We stood out of sight of any street lamp, waiting for that last window to go dark. Brenda stood next to me with her shoulder rubbing against mine. She whispered, “I wish they would go to sleep already.”

I brought my mouth close to her ear. “What if they fell asleep watching t.v.? My dad does that all the time.”

“Hey, that’s right. Go over and see if they’re asleep.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

She gently pushed against my shoulder. “Go, look in the window.”

***

The balding man was slumped in the chair and light flickered across his face. His head slumped against the back of the couch and his mouth hung open. I looked back through the darkness to where my friends were standing and waved for them to come to me. After a minute they trotted over. I whispered, “He’s asleep. Now what? How do I get in?”

Shane and Josh shrugged, but Brenda pointed at the side of the house. “Go around the house and see if there’s an open window. Maybe we’ll get lucky?”

“I guess. Okay, I’ll check.”

I tried every window to see if it was unlocked. By the time I’d made it all of the way around the house, I had tried every window and none of them budged. I approached my friends and they were sitting in the grass against the brick wall on the side of the house. “All the windows are locked.”

Brenda looked up at me and wore a large grin. She pointed above her head where there was a window open a crack. “Should’ve started there.”

I slid it open enough to squeeze through and mouthed to my friends. “Wish me luck.”

Josh gave me a thumbs up and Shane gave me an okay sign.

Thankfully, I’d been in the house many times in the future, so I knew where each room was. The furnishings weren’t the exactly the same places, but the basic layout hadn’t changed. I searched every room except his parents’ room, then headed to the basement. The step down creaked and I froze. I struggled to keep my breathing quiet and listened for anyone walking around the house, besides me. The t.v. seemed to be playing a song, although it was too far away to make out what it was.

I crept down the stairs one at a time, pausing every time it creaked. Once I was safely at the bottom of the stairs, I made it quickly through the remaining rooms. The basement was pitch black. Thankfully, Josh had given me his cell phone to use as a flashlight. The light from the screen gave everything I shined it on a soft glow. I knew that I was running out of time and that his battery would be dead at any minute. I hurried from room to room and looked last in the room that Shane used as a dark room in the future.

The hinges of the door squeaked when I opened it and I paused again, listening for footsteps. After I was confident that no one was coming, I turned the phone’s flashlight on to illuminate the room.

It was empty. There was no Robby, no furniture, nothing. It was just an empty unused room. My gut opened into an empty pit almost as a reflection of the room I was staring at. Where was Robby?

The entire basement flooded with light. I froze in terror as the lady in the colorful shirt stared at me with her head cocked to the side. “What are you doing in my house?”

The balding man walked down the step behind her and growled at me. “Again? Why do you keep breaking into my house?”

I stared back at them like an idiot with my mouth agape. I croaked out, on the verge of a whisper, and in terror, “What did you do with Robby?”

The lady looked back at the balding man. “Who’s Bobby?”

“I have no idea what he’s talking about. Him and his friends were hiding in this room earlier today and came barging out while my friends and me were playing poker.”

***

Brenda, Shane, Josh, and I sat around a dining room table that softly reflected the glow of the moon. The bald man had poured us each a cup of milk and made us bologna sandwiches with sides of potato chips. The lady had introduced herself as Lisa and said that her father’s name was Chuck. They had listened to an edited version of our story and didn’t believe a word of it, not that we expected them to. We did not tell them anything about time travel. Lisa looked at her dad. “What're we gonna do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but we should call the police. They’ve obviously ran away from home and I guarantee you that their parents are scared to death.”

Brenda placed her hand on Chuck’s forearm. “I know that it’s too much to believe, but I promise you it’s true. What can we do to get you to trust us?”

Lisa looked at her dad. “How about we let them sleep here tonight, then we’ll talk with Mom about it in the morning over breakfast?”

He squinted at us and spoke slowly. “I guess we can do that.” Then he raised his eyebrows. “What if they run away in middle of the night?”

“They’re trying desperately to find her brother, I don’t think they’ll go anywhere until they find him.”

Chuck scratched his cheek. “Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll talk about it in the morning then.” He stood up, stretched, and yawned. “The girl can sleep in your room and the three boys can stay in the spare bedroom. You boys good with that?”

We shook our heads in unison, but Brenda raised her eyebrow. “What about my brother? Will you help us find him tomorrow?”

Lisa looked directly into Brenda’s eyes. “I promise you. We’ll do everything we can to help you find your brother.”

Brenda let out a soft sigh. “Okay. Thank you.”