The Void Left Behind by Alex J. Knudsen

Dear Kyle,

I know you said never to write you unless it was an emergency but I guess it is. Don’t worry though, I’ll keep it hidden safe away and wait until my pa sends me into town and drop it in the mailbox by Harold’s. Remember the time we snuck up there for lunch? We were so nervous we were gonna get caught. Oh and I won’t write a return address on the envelope neither. I wish I had the courage to have left with you when you did. It feels like a lifetime ago but I guess its only been 7 years. Is that right? I remember I was 14 then. July of 84 right? Anyhow I guess I should tell you why I’m finally writing you. I haven’t gotten a call from you for a long time now. Its OK, I don’t mean it that way. I’m just sayin things have gotten worse since last time we did talk so I couldn’t have told you then. I’m so nervous writing this right now. I can see Pa out there bailing hay but I still feel like he can see me. I told you about the moonshine he’s been making me make for him but I guess that’s still not enough money. I don’t even know how to say this Kyle but he’s been makin me ‘meet’ with his guy friends. For money. And I can’t do anything. When he first told me I yelled that I would never. But he hit me so hard Kyle. I feel so trapped, more than ever before. I know I should have left with you back then. I was so afraid he would hunt us down and kill us for sure but I don’t think he would have ever found us. I know that now. When I was younger I was just so scared. I don’t have any right to ask for your help Kyle. You’ve always been so good to me and I know you’ve had other girls and maybe have one now. But I don’t have anywhere else to go and I just can’t do this any longer. Ever since ma died its just got worse and worse. I know you know all this but I think I finally got to the point you did when Big John almost killed you. Sorry, I know you don’t like talkin about your pa even now he’s gone but I’m just tryin to say I know why you had to leave. I don’t know what to do Kyle. Maybe you can try to call when pa’s out in the field and can give me your advice. I miss hearin your voice and of course miss you.

Yours always

Kat

Kyle crumpled up the letter in his trembling hand as his stomach started to convulse. He pushed open the bent, rusted door of his beat up 76’ Dodge Aspen coupe; the same car he bought used with his hoarded away cash the day before he escaped from his drunk, abusive father, fresh with a broken collar bone and fractured jaw. He leaned out and opened his mouth, the cigarette falling to the ground just before he wretched on top of it. He spit, coughed and then opened his mouth to hurl again, but managed to quell the convulsions, keeping his bile at bay. He wasn’t sure if it was the endless cigarettes that had caused him to throw up, or if it was reading the letter for the umpteenth time. “Goddammit,” he muttered, and then registered the cold night air dancing across his cheeks. He had forgotten how cold it could get at night in wintertime in West Virginia.

Kyle leaned back into his car and went to slam the door shut in anger, but as usual, the door refused to shut all the way until he pulled with both hands, enraging him all the more. He finally got the Godforsaken door shut and pounded the steering wheel for the hundredth time since he started his cross-country trek to rescue the only friend he had that truly knew him and understood what it was like to have the life force beaten out of you before getting to adulthood. He would have done anything to take her with him that late summer night seven years ago, but the possibilities of such an escape were razor thin at best, and Katherine was too young and too terrified of her own father to take the risk.

Kyle had run and never looked back on that fateful night, making his way first to Fort Worth, Texas, and then onto New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, anywhere he could find work, manual labor for cash, somewhere he could give a fake name without anyone asking questions. He couldn’t risk that his father had filed a missing persons report on him, though he couldn’t imagine he would have been smart enough to even know how to do it, but he was just sixteen and knew they would haul his ass back home if he were caught. Even when “Big John” Richardson finally had a heart attack and died, Kyle didn’t dare come back. He certainly wasn’t about to return to pay any respects to the man who took out his anger on his nine year old son for his wife dying, and then forcing him into hard labor by the age of eleven.

Leaving Katherine behind was his only regret. He knew if he stayed, he would have ended up dead before the year was out. He had seen the look in Big John’s eyes as he hovered over his fallen body; hammer held high in hand. Whatever was left of his father’s conscious that forced him to throw the hammer against the wall instead of into his son’s head was like a bright, flashing sign from God telling Kyle to run for the hills if he wanted to live to see another day. Even in saving his own life, he was still rattled with guilt at leaving his friend behind, knowing full well that she lived under the same roof of abuse that he had just fled from.

Kyle had first met Katherine at her father’s farm, Big John having sent him over there to help out his fellow widowed friend, Ronny Hoagland, by bailing hay. Kyle was just twelve at the time, so when little ten-year old Katherine came to ask him endless questions in the barn he was annoyed with her. But after a while he started to see in her young eyes the same thing he had felt his whole life; she was lonely, trapped, and beaten down by her father yelling at her all the time. He started looking out for her, telling her how to survive, and eventually told her she should start saving up like he was to get out in case things ever got too rough. As they both started growing into their bodies, a real friendship began, followed by a crush and finally young love.

Kyle grabbed the pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, pulled out yet another and lit it. He had quit smoking by the time he moved to Utah three years ago, which is where he still lived and worked as a car mechanic, but the moment he stopped at the gas station before setting off on his cross-country journey, he purchased a whole box. He had received the letter from Katherine the day before and after reading it was left with his heart shattered, tears on his cheeks and his clammy hands desperate for the empty relief of a cigarette. When he looked back in the envelope, wondering why his address had been taped on the front, he found the small note from his last roommate that read, ‘Sorry dude. Forgot this letter showed up here. Just found it looking for a check I realized I didn’t cash yet. Ha!’ His eyes shot up to the date over the postage stamp and his heart plummeted to the bottom of his stomach. It had been sitting at his idiot ex-roommates apartment for over a month. He called his boss that very moment and fed him a lie that his grandfather had just died and he had to get back home right away. After a restless night of absolutely no sleep, Kyle got on the road first thing that next morning and hadn’t stopped driving ever since.

Kyle took down a third of the cigarette in one deep, intensely forceful drag and slowly blew the smoke out. Staring ahead at the stop sign illuminated by his headlights, everything else fell into an abyss of darkness. He looked back over his shoulder, out the back window, narrowing his gaze, barely able to make out the twin silos in the distance. He was certain he should have passed Katherine’s street by now, but his memory of the town he grew up in was a ghost of what he thought it was. The only other street between the silos and him was way too close to have been hers. He looked back at the stop sign and then to his right, trying to see if there was a farm within eyesight, remembering that their farm was close to the intersection. “But, there wasn’t a damn stop sign,” he mumbled to himself, unable to make out any shadowed structures of a farm.

He stared back at the crimson metallic sign and shook his head. He couldn’t fathom a new stop sign being put up anywhere in their small town, much less where she lived. Was his memory really that far off? The next road wouldn’t be for another mile at best. Could she actually have always been that far away from the silos? Kyle looked down at the gas gauge and sneered, “Fuck!” The needle was hovering directly over the empty line. He threw his head back against the stiff headrest and growled in frustration. He knew he should have filled it at the last station he passed, but he had thought he was much closer than he actually was.

Kyle glanced out the back window one last time, and then down the road to his right. “It’s gotta be the next one then.” He threw the Aspen into drive and slowly rolled past the stop sign, peering down the road he was passing, still not seeing any silhouette of a farm in sight. He looked back ahead and stepped on the gas, which he would most certainly be running out of at any moment now. He would have to bother one of Katherine’s distant neighbors for gas after rescuing her.

“Rescue,” he muttered, and then looked to the backseat, laying eyes upon the baseball bat and heavy-duty wrench he had brought along. They were the only weapons as such he had drummed up, outside of a steak knife, which felt more like a murder weapon than a threat, which was all he hoped it would come down to. He was fully prepared to start swinging if it came down to it though. He was small and wiry, always had been, but he was tougher now than the scrawny boy who escaped seven years ago, and nothing was going to get in his way of getting Katherine out of there. “I’m so sorry, Kat,” he said, with a lilt to his voice, the tears rising again, his stomach twisting in knots.

The next road finally came into view and Kyle blew out a sigh of relief. “No stop sign.” As the road came upon him, he spun the wheel to the right and turned down his best friend’s dirt road. “It better be,” he said under his breath. He slowed to a crawl and shut the headlights off, not wanting to alert her father as he approached. But the further down the street he drove there was not a farm to be found. “What the hell, man,” he whined. His head spun on a swivel, left, right, backwards, forwards, in search of what had to be there. He had already driven too far; he might have misjudged the distance from the silos, but he was positive her farm was close to the intersection. “And where’s the hay?” he exclaimed, realizing there wasn’t even any hay fields, which he should have caught right off the bat.

Kyle turned back on the lights, now completely perplexed and starting to get nervous. The gas needle was now bouncing just below the empty line. “Shit!” He thought about pulling over and sleeping in his car until daylight broke, but it was too damn cold. He had to at least get gas. That way he could keep the car running in short spells. He continued moving further down the road he was on, no use in turning around now. If there was a road, there was a house.

Just when Kyle felt the first sputter from the bowels of his car, he spotted house lights ahead on the left, no more than a couple hundred yards away. “Thank God,” he said, and took in a deep breath of relief. He pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition. Kyle’s head dropped to the steering wheel, and he blew out a weighted sigh and quietly prayed, “Please God, I have to find her.”

Kyle pushed himself back up, mustered his will and got out of the car. He looked ahead at the two-story white farmhouse and saw a man looking through the window to the right of the front door. Kyle gave a friendly wave as he approached the house. The man disappeared from the window and then pushed open the screen door and stepped out. “Can I help you?” The man was tall and thick, wearing a fur-lined jacket over his overalls and had on a baseball cap. He looked like a true grownup, corn-fed farm boy, sporting a thick brown beard with long brown hair coming out the back of his hat.

“Hey, sorry to bother you, sir,” Kyle said, as he stepped up to greet him, “but my car is damn near outta gas and well…I guess I’m sorta’ lost.”

The man huffed. “Well, you got yourself in a pickle there, boy. Whereabouts were you headed to?”

Kyle let out a stunted laugh and shook his head. “Well, that’s the funny part. Here. I mean, not here at your place, but this town. I grew up here. But I, uh, I left a long time ago, and I guess my memory wasn’t as good as I thought it was.”

“You don’t remember where you lived?” the man asked incredulously, narrowing his eyes.

“No, no. Yeah, I guess that would seem kinda’ funny. No, sir, I meant to be goin’ to my friend’s house.”

“Huh,” the man said, nodding his head, then grabbing the lapels of his jacket. “Maybe I know ‘em. Who you lookin’ for then?”

Kyle nodded and itched the side of his head. “Yeah, I thought maybe I’d get lucky. Uh, the Hoaglands? Her dad, Ronny, has a hay farm. I used to help him actually.”

“You don’t say,” he said, his lip curling up into a wicked smile.

“Um…” Kyle trailed off. The way the words rolled off the man’s tongue sent chills down his spine. The creak of the screen door caused Kyle to jump, having become instantly nervous. Then his eyes grew wide in horror, as Ronnie Hoagland stepped up behind the man of the house, a shotgun resting on his shoulder and a severe scowl plastered across his face. Kyle hesitantly took a step back.

“Well if it isn’t the rat bastard, Kyle Richardson.” Ronnie’s voice boomed, “Left town, and his daddy here to die. Didn’t even bother to come to his goddamn funeral.”

Kyle was cemented to the ground, his mouth hanging slack, frozen in pure, white fear.

“Let me guess, that little jezebel of mine go callin’ on her old boyfriend?”

Kyle’s bottom lip quivered, not a breath coming out.

“Yea’, I can see that she did. It’s lookin’ like your plans just got fucked there, huh hero?”

Kyle’s couldn’t overcome his fear to turn and run back to his car and hightail it.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t try it, boy,” Ronnie said, stepping past his friend, then bringing the shotgun down, catching the barrel with his other hand.

“Please…” was all Kyle could push out.

“How we lookin’ on the basement, Carl?” Ronnie asked, tapping his finger against the trigger.

Carl’s eyebrows rose. “Well, I don’t rightly know if it’s fully ready yet, Ronny, but I reckon it’ll do for a test run.”

Kyle didn’t know what the hell that meant, but it was enough to light a fire under his feet. He turned on his heel and darted for his car, and right as he was reaching out for the still open driver’s side door, he felt a violent thud on the back of his head, like the baseball bat he left sitting in the backseat had just clipped his skull. By the time his head hit the ground he was out cold.

Kyle’s consciousness woke to a searing pain in his head that seemed to be pushing his eyes out of their sockets. His eyelids were heavy, but it was the foreign sound reverberating in his eardrums that invoked an unholy fear. It was like an empty, unnaturally violent sucking wind that made no sound. Forcing his eyes open, he stared down at his legs, splayed out in front of him on a cold, concrete floor. He made to grab his forehead and realized that his hands were tied behind him, around a large metal contraption. He looked up, his eyes instantly springing open, and gasped in sheer terror. “Oh my God, what is that!? Help! Someone help me!”

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