Abandoned (12 page)

“Ow!” she cried and pulled her hands
away. The wire had cut into her fingers, but had barely budged. She
tried the next window and the next, but they were all the same.
Strong. Unmoveable. There could be no escape from the chicken
coop.

Lauren crept to the chicken coop door
and looked out at the darkness that spread before her.

What
next?
she wondered.
The
stalls? Or the other big pen?
Both seemed incredibly
unappealing.
But I’ve got to do one
or the other quick. It’s going to be pitch black in here
soon.

Lauren moved along the line of stalls,
her eyes trying to pierce through the shadows to see if any windows
were against the back wall. But none of the stalls had a square of
lightness at the back of it. When she reached the last stall, she
heard one of kittens meow.

“What’s wrong, buddy. Where are
you?”

The kitten’s mew came again and Lauren
made her way to where she thought her jacket lay. When she drew
near, she dropped to her knees and felt the floor in front of her
with outstretched hands. After a minute, she felt its wet softness.
The kittens were gone.

“Where are you, guys?” she called again.
A mew came from above her head.

The loft! The kittens were back in the
loft.

And there was a huge open door to the
outside in the loft. Excitement made Lauren’s heart race.
I know I could find a way down.
There’s got to be some ropes or boards or something up there I can
use. As a last resort, I can jump. It’s high, but not that high.
And it’s a lot better than spending the night in this horrible
barn.

As fast as she could, she moved to where
she remembered the ladder to the loft being. Within seconds, she
felt the rungs beneath her hands. She lifted her foot and put it on
the first rung, then pulled herself up. The ladder creaked beneath
her, but it held. She reached higher with her foot and hand and
pulled herself up another rung. “I’m coming, kitties,” she said
when she heard the curious mew come from above her.

When she was halfway up, one of the
rungs came loose. Lauren’s feet fell back to the rung below it and
her she gripped the ladder tightly with her hands. She looked down.
The barn below was pitch black now. She could see nothing but
darkness. In her imagination, the animal bones began to stir in
their stalls again. Started to reassemble themselves. Started to
move toward her.

Don’t be
silly!
she commanded herself. With a desperate lunge she
moved her foot up two rungs and pushed upward. Her hands clutched
at a higher rung. She could see the sky now, through the trapdoor
in the ceiling, and the big opening to the outside. The clouds were
almost gone and the fading red of sunset streaked across the sky.
Water dripped from the roof of the barn.

The two kittens looked down at her,
curiously. She was almost there. Just two more rungs. And she could
even see the rungs now. She didn’t just have to feel for them.

The ladder shuddered. A metallic squeak
speared the air. The squeak came again and the ladder fell back an
inch from the wall. Lauren turned horrified eyes to where it was
attached. Her weight was pulling the nails right out of the weak,
rotting wood. She had to hurry!

A long shriek sliced through the air and
the ladder tilted back farther. Without thinking, Lauren pushed
upward and made a wild grab for the edge of the loft.

But she was too late. The ladder came
free with a final wrenching sound and fell backward. There was
nothing she could do.

Lauren sprawled across the barn floor,
gasping for air with the ladder on top of her. She cried out in
pain where the jagged wood stabbed into her arm and raked across
her back. She struggled for a moment, wild and unthinking, the
ladder crushing her into the floor.

Then stars exploded in front of her eyes
and she slipped into darkness.

Lauren wasn’t sure how much time
had passed when she first noticed the light behind her eyes. But
she couldn’t open them to see. Her body wasn’t working. Then the
light disappeared.

When she became conscious again, she
heard murmurs. Far away conversation.
They’ve come to rescue me.
The single thought made
its way through the fog in her mind. Then there was silence.

Darkness again.

An animal sniffed at her.
Growled
. A dog,
she thought,
but she couldn’t see it. Still couldn’t open her eyes.

Dark again.

“But I don’t want to go,” Lauren heard
herself say. Her eyes were shut, but she could tell she was crying.
Her tears were choking her words. “Daddy, please,” she begged.

“You have to,” said her dad. Lauren
could imagine him shaking his head, even though she couldn’t see
him. “It’s for the best,” he continued. “I know you don’t see why
it’s important now, but someday you will.”

“No, I won’t. I belong here. I belong
where you are. Where Mom used to live,” said Lauren’s voice.
Somewhere in her mind, Lauren thought it was strange she couldn’t
feel her lips moving. “She wouldn’t want you to send me away. If
she were alive, she’d stop you,” she concluded.

He sighed. “I’ll come to visit you and
you can come home every Christmas and summer holidays. It won’t be
that bad. I promise. Now go gather the eggs while I finish milking
Bessie. Then we can have breakfast.”

Breakfast? But it’s past suppertime. And gather the
eggs?
I’ve never gathered
eggs in my life. Dad knows that.
Something scraped across
the floor, loud in the silence.
Hey,
how did Dad get here?

“I’m not hungry,” she whispered.

“Mrs. Carter is going to be here in a
few hours to pick you up and you’ve got a long drive ahead of you.
You’re going to get hungry, Lizzie,” warned her dad.

Lauren became even more puzzled.
Who was Mrs. Carter? And who was
Lizzie?
She tried to open her mouth to ask him what he
meant, but her mouth wouldn’t move. She could hear her voice
speaking. “I can’t eat. It makes me sick to think about it.”

But I
didn’t say that,
Lauren finally realized.
Someone else is here.
She tried to move her
head, then her shoulders, but nothing happened. She tried to move
her hands to motion to her dad that she couldn’t speak, but her
hands wouldn’t move either. She was paralysed.

Lauren’s heart beat faster and thudding
filled her ears. Then somewhere behind the thunder of her heart,
Lauren heard someone say, “Please, Daddy. Please let me stay.
You’ve got to let me stay. Mom wouldn’t send me away. And you can’t
either. You just can’t.”

With all her effort, Lauren opened her
eyes a tiny slit. She was lying on a wooden floor. “Where am I?”
she whispered. The floor in front of her moved like ripples on a
pond. She closed her eyes and drew a shuddering breath. “Help,” she
said, but her voice was the softest whisper.

“I’m not going to change my mind,
Lizzie. This is for the best. There are things you don’t know and
that I can’t tell you. Now just gather the eggs and meet me up at
the house.”

Lauren lay still and waited for the
nausea and dizziness to pass. She opened her eyes for a second, saw
a blur of movement and clamped them shut. She heard heavy footfalls
leave the barn and the sound of hooves following.
Well, at least my ears are still working,
she
thought. She could feel the dizziness slowly fading away. When she
opened her eyes a few minutes later, the floor was still.

“Help,” she called again. She waited for
a moment, but there was no response. The voices were gone.

I must
have been dreaming,
she thought.
But what a strange dream. It seemed so real.

Lauren slowly raised her head to look
around. Her vision was still blurred. She could tell she was in a
barn, that was all. Then the images of the old homestead, the
kittens, the storm and the collapsing ladder rushed back into her
mind.

Trooper
brought me here
, she remembered.
I hope he’s okay. I’ve got to find the kittens and
go.
She shut her eyes again. As she gathered strength,
another thought popped into her head.
Where’s the ladder? I thought it landed on top of
me.

Slowly, she pushed herself to a sitting
position and shook her head. The fog was clearing. She could see a
line of stalls in front of her. A buckskin gelding looked back at
her, his ears pricked forward as he watched her.

“Trooper?” said Lauren in amazement.
“How did you get in here? It is you, isn’t it?” Slowly, she climbed
to her feet expecting to feel stiff. Sore. But she felt fine. No.
Better than fine. Now that the dizziness was gone, she felt light
and full of energy.

She walked closer, peering ahead through
the dissipating fog. It was him! There was the crescent shaped star
on his forehead. “Hey buddy,” she whispered and reached for his
head. “I don’t understand. This is too weird.” Her hands froze in
midair when she heard a door open almost behind her. She spun
around to see an eleven or twelve-year-old girl with long,
white-blonde hair walk out of the chicken coop, a basket of eggs in
her hand. The girl closed the door behind her and trudged toward
the main barn door.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Ben,” she
said at the door, throwing a look toward Trooper’s stall. Her voice
was saturated with sadness. “I’m spending all the rest of my time
with you. I don’t care about breakfast.”

Trooper whinnied at her, and with a
flick of her silver-gold hair, she was gone.

“Didn’t she see me, Trooper? And who is
Ben? Does she think I’m a boy or what?” Puzzlement covered Lauren’s
face. “Hey,” she said and her expression suddenly cleared. “The
door’s open now. Let’s get out of here before she comes back. I’ll
see if the yard is clear.”

Lauren hurried to the barn door. Morning
sunlight spilled into the barn and she was careful to stay to the
side of it. She didn’t want the girl to see her until it was too
late for her to stop them. She had to get back to Aunt April’s as
quick as she could. Her dad was going to be there that day.
And my mom,
remembered Lauren
and felt the anger instantly rise up inside her again. She forced
it down with an effort.
I’ll deal
with that when I see her,
she decided and peered around the
edge of the open door.

Lauren’s mouth dropped open. “What?” she
whispered as she looked out into the yard. The bushes and saplings
were gone. The yard was covered with dirt and grass – mown grass.
The house was in perfect repair and painted white. The blue trim
around the windows and doors was cheerful and bright. A red truck
stood in front of the house, shiny and clean. She heard a moo
coming from her right and looked at a small herd of fawn-coloured
milk cows grazing near the gate of one of the pastures. In another
pasture, one fenced with mesh wire, a herd of goats grazed, their
kids jumping and playing in the long grass.

Lauren looked back inside the barn. How
had she not noticed? The machinery that had been rusting next to
the wall was shiny and well oiled. The ladder stretched up to the
loft, strong and firm. There was no dirt or dust.

Or bones?

Lauren ran to the nearest stall, her
heart pounding faster than her feet hit the floor. When she looked
inside she saw clean straw on the floor. A water bucket. Wisps of
hay in the manger. But no bones.

Am I
dreaming?
she wondered and looked wildly at Trooper.
Is all this with Lizzie and her dad
a dream? But it’s way too real to be a dream. I can even smell cow
poo. And I can hear the chickens clucking. And everything looks so
real, not dreamlike at all. Trooper is exactly the same. Or is
he?

Slowly Lauren moved closer to the
gelding. She stopped outside his stall and her eyes danced over his
body. Trooper watched her patiently.
Yes, he’s the same, but he’s different too. What is
it?

Then she knew.
He’s younger, he’s not even full grown
, she realized
and her breath quickened.
And that
means it can’t be a dream. It means…no! But it must. What else
could it be?

Lauren reached to undo the latch to
Trooper’s stall so she could go inside. She needed to look at him
more closely. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. But the latch
beneath her fingers felt strange, as if she was touching it through
thick gloves. Lauren glanced down.

With a racing heart, she held her hand
up in front of her eyes. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Her hand
was colourless. She looked down at the rest of her body and felt
heat rise in her face.

I’m like
a ghost
, she thought with amazement.
All wispy and gray.
She looked around the barn,
though she already knew what she would see.
Everything else is in colour. It’s only me that’s not. It’s
true then. I am a ghost. I’ve died.