Page 110 of Devil Inside

His mother and father had reached out to anyone they could think of contacting. His friends. Their parents. The school. His soccer coach. His swim coach. His manager at Ukrops. His ex-girlfriend, Lacey, even though they didn’t think the two of them had spoken since he broke up with her. Still. They were desperate, exhausting all their options. Asking the same questions over and over again, such a grim litany. They tried so hard to keep the panic out of their voices, alternating calls, first him, then her, then him again, back and forth like that for hours, reaching out, but the further down the phone tree they went, exhausting all of their contacts, it became impossible not to crack every time they asked the same question, over and over:Have you seen Josh? Do you know where he may be? When was the last time you saw him? Did he seem okay? Was he sick? Sad? Where do you think he could be? What’s happening to him?

Two days. Two agonizingly long days.

Sleep wouldn’t suffice, what little she got. Every second out of every minute out of every waking hour provides a proliferation of worst possible scenarios for their son.Kidnapping. Car accident. Suicide. Just when there couldn’t possibly be another nightmare alternative to what his mother had already imagined happening to her baby boy, up popped another.Amnesia. Coma. Running away. A cult.On and on and on.

Two days. Forty-eight hours. Two thousand eight hundredand eighty minutes. One hundred seventy-two thousand eight hundred possible options for absolute heartbreak.

Josh wasn’t answering his phone. Forever hopping straight to voicemail. When his father finally checked the location app, they realized Josh had left his cell phone at school.

That’s when his mother really began to worry.

They called the police, but the officer they spoke to suggested it wasn’ttechnicallya missing persons case until Monday morning. The officer even went so far as to suggest that maybe Joshua had run away. The questions were now turned toward them:Has anything happened at home that might lead Josh to want to leave? Anything with a family member?

Why were they being interrogated? Their son was missing! They were the ones who had called the police to file the report, not the other way around. Why the third degree?

His mother stewed. Marinated in her agony. Every time her cell phone rang, she held her breath—her heart suspending itself mid-beat—hoping against hope that it was him, her baby, her baby boy, calling from some pay phone somewhere, out there, in this terrifying world. It didn’t matter where he was or why he’d left, she would drop everything and find him. Pick him up. Bring him home. But it was never him. Nothing but robocalls. Salespeople. Pre-scripted spiels from elected officials. Surveys. Unlisted numbers. Strangers.

Never him. Never their son.

Where was her baby boy?

Josh had never done anything like this before. Never ran away. He was very open with his parents. He had a good life. Didn’t he? He was happy. Wasn’t he? Not a care in this world. His parents provided for their child. He’d been on the principal’s list for three years in a row. Colleges had invited him to apply for early admission. Why on earth would he want to run away from all that?

Now that he was back, it was almost worse. The child wandering around their house, not meeting his parents’ eyes, nor answering their questions... Who in the hell was this?

A cuckoo boy. A replacement child.

Not their son.

“Where in the hell were you?” his father asked, unable to maintain any sense of patience. His temper was throbbing hot now, no longer relieved. “Answer us, Josh.”

Still nothing. The boy was impenetrable. His eyes held onto some distant spot, content with this emotional absence even with his physical presence, here but not.

“Who were you with?”

Josh was still wearing the clothes he’d had on the day he disappeared. His hair was a bit unkempt, that auburn mop of curls. He needed a haircut. Soon. Needed a shower.

Dad’s panic ebbed into anger so fast, it caused his wife to wince. “Don’t you have anything to say? Your mother was beside herself. We didn’t know if you were alive or—”

“Bill,” Mom tries to cut in, but Dad’s on a roll now. There’s no holding him back.

“Why won’t you tell us anything? Why won’t you talk to us?”

Josh is wandering down the hall. Is he heading to his bedroom?

“Answer me!” His father’s voice echoes, bellows in the emptiness. The dark of the night absorbs it, thickening almost, as if the tension is so palpable, nobody can breathe.

Josh turns to his father. His eyes lock on to Dad’s.

The house is so quiet.

“I was looking for the lighthouse,” is all that Josh says.

“The... what?”

“The beacon. The beam. It burns so bright... Don’t you see it? It draws us in.”

“That’s it,” Dad says. “I’ve heard enough. Go to your room. We’ll deal with this—”