Allison and Merilee

From Omnictionary

Dec. 1, 9:30 pm

Stars shone brightly in the sky, as did the full moon making it fairly bright for that time of night. Allison Maddon's green-haired head was stuck out of the window of Merilee's old Chevy, staring up at the stars.

"Get your goddamn head back in the car!" Merilee yelped. "Jesus!"

Allison did as she asked, but dangled her wrist and hand outside the open window. "Are you sure this is the right way?"

"Unless Mapquest is suddenly under new management." Merilee muttered, staring out at the road.

"You know that's not what I meant."

Merilee sighed. "I know. I know." She reached up one hand to run her fingers though her short black hair. "Sometimes . . . sometimes I think I'm going crazy, with the whole clairvoyance thing. But I . . . I know it, and I care too much about Margo not to do anything about it. I mean, she could be anywhere now, and I have to help in any way I can, especially if the police won't."

She stopped and glanced back over at Allison. "Does that make . . . some kind of sense?"

Allison looked back at her and nodded.

They didn't talk much through the rest of the ride, and Allison managed to spend most of it staring out the window, strands of her hair flying over her face in the wind. Finally, Merilee stopped the car and turned the key in the ignition.

"Here we are."

They both clambered out of the car and stared at the monumental structure in front of them.

Allison muttered a word that was not appropriate for children.

It was a bombed-out house, that much was clear. The windows were empty frames, the walls half-blasted off. The front door was hanging by one rusted hinge. The paint was peeling off. Allison thought it might have been green once.

Allison looked toward the full moon through the leaves of the huge oak shading the house. "The only question was" she whispered under her breath, "as Margo would say, "What in the name of Isaac Asimov am I doing here?"

Merilee was already picking her way through the rubble, her red-high tops standing out against the grays and browns. "Forrest Torrent said that Margo used to come here when she was upset. I wish I knew why he didn't want to come with us, though . . ."

Allison didn't follow Merilee into the house immediately, she walked into the side yard, all the while watching Merilee through the gaping wounds in the exterior of what was once a house, carefully stepping through the remains strewn in every direction. Allison didn't want to go inside but as she watched Merilee's disappearing back turn into another room, she quickly but daintily tip-toed up the slope of an overturned side wall and into the house.

Merilee's eyes were closed, and she was standing still, just beneath what was left of the main staircase. "I can't . . . I can't figure it out, though. She's not here, I'm pretty sure of that, but I don't know anything else." She frowned and reached up one hand as if to touch her forehead. Then she dropped her hand again, opened her eyes, and gave Allison a lopsided grin. "Guess I'm not much of a psychic, huh?"

Allison didn't grin back, even when Merilee gently tugged on her shirt sleeve. "C'mon. May as well not waste any more time here." She stepped over the detritus of the ravaged house and back towards the car.

Allison followed her with her eyes, then sighed and started to make her own way back out of the destroyed house.

Floorboards rattled as a figure ran into the ruins from what was once the rear of the house. It was Sam.

"Glad you could make it," scolded Merilee with just the right hint of sarcasm as she continued to wend her way through the debris strewn floor towards the broken front doorway.

"You could have given me a lift," replied Sam half-apologetically, looking around, "Why would Margo come to a place like this?"

"We are leaving" was Merilee's reply. As they made their way out each peered, heads swiveling, into the darkened corners of the blackened structure to see if they might catch a glimpse of a hiding Margo. All three spotted the name, in huge letters on the one of the few relatively graffiti free walls was "Didier". But only Merilee SAW it, "Who is Didier?"

It wasn't that weird to see a name written on a wall in big letters but this was not merely big it covered almost the whole wall. "Look what's written underneath!" Merilee pointed and read out loud "and Margo forever".

This meant that Didier, could have been Margo's boyfriend, at the very least there was some connection. He could be a big help in finding where Margo had vanished to. Now if only they knew who the heck Didier was.

They all decided that with this new information the object now, barring another Margo sighting, was to try to locate Didier and find out if he knows anything of value.

As Sam was exiting behind the two girls he glanced over his shoulder back into the old house and saw a figure in the shadows by the staircase, it was Margo! Sam spun around so fast he felt a little woozy, he steadied himself until the fireflys cleared from his vision and stepped toward Margo, this time slower than before as he had frightened her away last time, "Margo?" He called out in a soft voice as he neared the girl. Her voice, even softer, nearly a whisper, called back to Sam "You have to find him. Go to Arnold Palmer Hospital, ask for Didier Bosmans."

He looked confused. "Margo come with us please." Margo, with a very sad look on her face, said, "I'm sorry I can't I have to go." She turned and began to walk further into the darkness of the house.

Sam wasn't about to let her disappear again. He hurried to follow after her, but he turned his ankle slightly even as he rounded the first corner and before he regained his balance, she had gone. He began to shout her name. "MARGO!" "MARGOOooo!" The girls came running back into the house.

"What happened Sam?" Merilee asked him. "Second Goram time tonight I've found & lost that girl!" Sam sighed heavily and walked out of the house ahead of the girls "Screw it, I'm going to bed."

Some time later Sam found himself waking up in cold sweat, jolted from an often recurring nightmare he'd been having for some time. Darkly colored images of a boy dying, in his arms. Everything was so clear and vivid that in that nightmare realm, while there, he simply was unable to distinguish it from reality. It's sky was populated with immense gray clouds, the sun barely risen cast a forlorn sort of glow and the familiar call of songbirds filled the air but muted, or muffled.

His last words were always a croaking, "LOOK BEHIND YOU!" and as the boy's last syllable faded and his ragged breathing stilled, he knew his arms were cradling death.

It would always end the same, with a blurred figure entering his field of vision, and then everything going black. He would always wake up at that precise point in the nightmare and he could remember every part of it as he had lived it so many times.

The nightmare didn't come to him every night, but he could not even begin to tally the nights that HAD been disturbed because of it. So much so, that he often feared going to bed at night. He would stay up till exhaustion overtook him sometimes 3am came and went before his eyes fell of their own accord and he drifted into a deep (but usually not very restful) sleep. He considered talking to a shrink, but scared him a lot, Would the shrink think he was completely out of his gourd insane and have him committed? He wasn't taking that chance!