Julie stood at the closed door that led into Brian’s room. It was the only room she hadn’t looked in yet, and she knew that she had to go in, but she just couldn’t bring herself to open the door.
She didn’t know what would be worse, finding the room empty, stripped of her younger brother’s memory, or finding it exactly has he had left it the day he died.
She turned the handle, slowly, and heard the bolt click. She stopped, her body tensing, and closed her eyes, then pushed the door open. She turned on the light and opened her eyes.
Everything was just as she remembered it. His bed, his dresser, there were even dirty clothes thrown on the floor. The only difference now was that everything was covered in a fine layer of dust.
She stepped in, covering her mouth. She could feel her nose twitching from inhaling the dusty air.
It looked like no one had stepped foot in the room for years.
She walked over to the bed and sat down, looking at the artifacts chronicling Brian’s short life. The trophies he had won for swimming and basketball lined his dresser, and faded posters of bands who had long stopped performing lined his walls.
Gently she took the blanket off of the unmade bed and brushed some dust off of it. She held it to her nose. Brian’s smell was gone. It all looked the same, but it lacked the life, the essence of her brother.
She started opening drawers, fishing under his bed, under the mattress, in his night stand. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she was pretty sure that what she was finding wasn’t it.
Other than a few dirty magazines and notes from friends, there was nothing.
She felt guilty disrupting the room, but she needed answers, and this place, this shrine to her dead brother, was the last place to look, at least as far as she knew.
She sat down at his small desk in the far corner of the room. His computer was still plugged in, but she was almost scared to turn it on. Who knew what kind of shape that thing was in.
She hit the power button, half expecting smoke and sparks to burst from the monitor, but instead she was greeted by a welcome screen, and a little bar telling her that the system was loaded.
After about five minutes the computer finally booted up. She grabbed the mouse and started clicking. At first she found nothing unusual. There was more porn, a few old term papers, and some music.
It wasn’t until she started going through some random files saved in his document folder that she found what she was looking for. It was a video file.
She double clicked on the little icon, and waited for the player to load. The video started playing, and she almost wished it hadn’t.
Brian was looking right in the camera, setting it up so that it was angled right on his bed. Then he got in, turned off the lights, and the screen switched to night vision. She started to fast forward.
At first Brian just looked into the camera, the filter making his eyes glow green, then finally he fell asleep.
Around the five minute mark she saw the bedroom door opening, and at first she couldn’t tell who it was, but when the figure sat down on the bed, she recognized the familiar face of her father.
He looked down at Brian, his hand stroking his son’s hair. Then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small syringe. He gently pushed up the sleeve of Brian’s T-shirt, and stuck the needle into his son’s arm.
Julie’s hand went to her mouth. Her father had been steeling his own son’s blood.
When Charles was done he leaned down, kissed his son’s forehead, and left the room.
There was nothing else of interest after that, just Brian sleeping. Still, she couldn’t look away. It was one thing to see a picture of her brother, but it was another thing to see him moving, breathing, living.
She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes. Right at that moment she missed her little brother.
Her fingers reached out, touching the screen, wishing the cold glass would be replaced by her brother’s skin. She wished she could reach out, hug him, tell him how much she missed him.
The video ended.
Julie stood, taking one last look around the room.
She suddenly felt her chest burning with anger. Her father, the respectable Charles Kramer, was even more of a monster than she had thought.
He hadn’t been upset because Brian died. He had been upset because he had lost his own personal blood bank.
She stormed out of the room, not bothering to close the door. She raced down the stairs, nearly falling twice, and out the front door.
She couldn’t get out of that house fast enough. Once she was in her car she felt lost. She didn’t know where to go.
Where did everyone else go in Spirit Lake?
The Hub.
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