Wyatt went missing exactly one year ago today. The news reports weren't updated. They stayed the same this whole time. “An unsolved disappearance,” they say. It makes me wonder if they actually even looked. This town isn't that big. A lot of people would've gladly joined a search party, but none were ever organized. Couldn't even give him the courtesy of getting off their fat asses and looking around a bit.
My buddy Mason and I did some searching for ourselves, but it didn't amount to much. He was just gone. We had a theory that he ditched this place once he got done with school. New number, new home, new life. It's the most comforting answer, but it still leaves me thinking something along the lines of “what an asshole, he can't even call me?”
So he's either dead and no one will ever find him, or he left us and didn't even say goodbye. I don't quite know how to accept either of those. If I'm honest I don't think I can.
Mason and I replaced our Wyatt searching hobby with exploring abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the town. He usually gets the locations from classmates that use them as venues for their bands. The bands are pretty shitty, but the spots are good for a show.
The first place we went to wasn't much of a building anymore. Mostly collapsed except a few planks of wood at what used to be the corner of a wall. Near it was a stone building with writing on the wall that neither of us could make out, though I did see the word “cows”.
The other ones were what you'd expect from an abandoned building. Most were factories or something of the sort scarcely littered throughout the areas between my town and the city. Though one was different. It seemed newer. Equipment was still in it, in all honesty I was nervous about there being security. It didn't seem run down at all, aside from a throwie on the east entrance hall that read “Boron”.
A few months later, Mason calls me up in the middle of a robotrip telling me we need to go back there. This was only maybe 2 months at the most. Anyway, I packed some tablets for him and picked up a 40oz of Olde English from Kaelyn and headed to his place. When I get there he gets in the car and reminds me the directions of the place, and I tell him that I'd rather not drive for 40 minutes while I'm that high, so we switch.
“There's some rumor going around about that place,” he says to me, “I don't know what exactly it is, but there's something different about it.”
I didn't care to respond.
“Look man,” he began, keeping his voice low as if someone was there, “honestly I didn't want to say it, but someone said it had to do with Wyatt.”
My eyes widened a bit I think, because he glanced at me in a way that made me think he said that just for my reaction. If so, what a dick. But he seemed just as spooked. This was real.
“Did someone find him?” I asked, anxious to get an answer.
“No, no,” he said, “nothing like that. There's just something there that belongs to him or something. I don't know.”
“You don't know?' I asked in a tone that now I think is kind of rude.
“You know how Marlin is. Bitch never gives straight answers.”
“Oh, so you heard it from Marlin. And your sorry ass believed him?”
“I don't know Stevie, he seemed all weird about it.”
“I would be weird too, making up shit like that.”
“We don't know shit about what's there yet, dude, we'll see for ourselves first and figure out what's next if he's fucking with us.”
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“He's gonna be eating his own ass, that's what's next. I don't fuck around with Wyatt.”
If anything was said during the rest of the drive, I don't remember it. Fucking Marlin. Marlin is the kind of person you never want to meet. The kind of person in school that doesn't mature at all. Even in his senior year he's doing backflips for the freshman girls in his class. This guy ruined lives for fun. Once in elementary school he stole some kids rubiks cube and told him it was in the girls bathroom, and when the kid went in there he told a teacher he was trying to look at girls in the bathroom and that kid got fucked up. He's still like that, just worse now because he's a legal adult and even more of a dick. There were no doubts in my mind that he would make some shit up about Wyatt just to fuck with us.
Anyway, eventually we got to the building. Mason was right, it was different this time. The whole place was destroyed. Chunks of concrete from the walls strewn about on the ground. It didn't even look fun to go in. I was scared it would collapse on us. But Mason tossed me a flashlight and we went in anyway. Down the east hall, where the throwie used to be, but had some how disappeared. Not been painted over, it was just gone. Only the grey of the concrete remained.
We reached the entrance and continued into the building. All the equipment we saw before was gone now too. The walls were darker. Flat concrete that stretched and wrapped around us in the biggest room in the building.
“This way,” Mason said, guiding me to a specific room, though for what reason I had no idea. I remember I was scared though. I was high out of my mind, and something about those walls just made me sad, and afraid over how much control a literal wall had over my emotions. Mostly I just wanted to sleep. Yet down the hall I went.
I followed Mason to a doorway that should not have been as well lit as it was. There was no light source whatsoever, yet even without a flashlight pointed at it, I could still see everything clearly. Like the building wanted me there. Every instinct in me was screaming fuck that, but my inebriation allowed me to continue on. I entered the room, Mason followed shortly behind. I didn't like that he made me go first.
The room was bare. Boring. Dark. Cold.
In the middle of the room, at the center of a perfect circle free of dust and debris, there lay a tome. Hand sewn and bound, with a crimson leather cover left entirely blank aside from gold textura script pressed into it reading “Be Careful What You Wish For, As It May Come True.”
I approached it. The view ahead of me was perfectly clear, as if illuminated by a spotlight.
I turned to Mason, asked “Is this is?”
“It's gotta be,” he said, “I don't wanna go over there, what is it?”
Dick.
I knelt down, my shadow now obscuring the books cover.
“It's a book,” I said.
“What kind of book?” he asked.
“The kind with paper? Give me a second, man.”
When I opened it, the pivoting cover revealed dozens of rows of handwritten words varying in color, size and request.
“I wish for money,” one read, “I wish for happiness, I wish for a new pen.”
“This is fucking weird,” I said. I think.
One line stuck out to me. I recognized something about it. “I wish for it to end,” it said.
It was Wyatt's handwriting.
Just like that, full body goosebumps. Every inch of my skin bubbling up, hairs like quills pushing out against my sleeves and back into my arms like millions of little needles pressed against them. Could the news reports have been wrong?
That is if in fact this thing actually worked. It was wrong to jump to conclusions, but part of me knew. I called bullshit anyway, and added my own note. An action which surprised Mason enough for to ask me if I was really doing it. I paid no mind to him. I liked how money sounded, but I made it a bit more specific. I took out my pen and scribbled onto the page “I wish for $153.83 in my wallet,” then closed the book, Stood up, and walked away.
“What was it?” Mason asked.
“I think Wyatt's dead,” I said to him. I explained the rest of it on the way home.
I was rather beat after that. I drove Mason home, then myself. I packed a bowl and sparked it and slept like a baby. That exhaustion failed to leave me even after hours of being awake the next day, although my classes were quite dull. My wallet stayed empty. Then, in my second period my back pocket felt more full. At that point I reached into it, and sure as shit, $153 dollars in cash was just sitting there. The coins I found in another pocket of the wallet. I almost shit myself. I actually had to check my pants to make sure I didn't.
This confirmed 3 things. I have better bodily control than I thought, this book thing worked, and Wyatt wasn't living it up in Miami night clubs like I'd hoped. He killed himself. And he didn't write how. For all I know, he really did just disappear. In his bed one night, gone in the morning. Faded to nothing. I left school early and finished off the tablets I forgot to give Mason and went to sleep.