Thomas Kilik leaned back against the frame of the metal-and-plastic chair he sat on. Sitting facing the house, he could see the lights coming out of the windows, the brightness of their beams piercing the darkness that lay outside. Through the glass of the back door he could see his eight year old cousin, Kate, come into the kitchen and leave a minute later. He did not particularly want to be on babysitting duty at the moment. After all, she was a smart kid. What could possibly go wrong? It wasn’t as if she would burn the house down or anything. But he promised his aunt and uncle that he would stay at home, to keep an eye on Kate while they attended some sort of social function. Its purpose was not important to Thomas, neither does it matter.

Of course, staying at home did not mean that he had to actually be inside of the house. If anything went wrong, he was right outside on the deck. She knew where to find him.

He leaned to the side and picked up his can of soda from the wood floor of the deck. He lifted it to his lips and took a sip. As he was about to rest the can back down to the floor, everything suddenly went dark. From inside the house he heard a faint cry of surprise coming from Kate. He took a quick look around him. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the sudden cessation of light, but from the faint light coming from the moon, it seemed as if the power had gone in the entire neighbourhood. Everywhere seemed to be dark except for the sky. The three-quarters moon shone in all its glory overhead, free of its competition with the harsh electric glare of the suburban night.

He sighed loudly as he got up and entered the house. His eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness, but he knew the house well enough from memory that he could navigate freely. He called out to Kate and told her to stay where she is. He grabbed the flashlight stored in a cupboard just off to the side of the kitchen, but did not turn it on. He felt his way to the staircase and started going up the steps. At the top, he felt for the attachment of the rail to the wall and then followed the wall down the corridor, past the first doorway and turning into the second.

“Katie?” His soft but firm voice sounded unnatural in the stillness of the night.

Her tiny voice came from the direction of her bed. “I’m on my bed, Tommy. How come you don’t have a flashlight with you? I thought that it would be –“

He cut her off by switching the flashlight on and pointing it right at her. The light caused her to cringe away a little as she put her hand up to block off the part of the beam shining into her eyes. She blinked a few times to get her eyes used to the sudden appearance of this new and harsh light.

“You staying up here or you coming outside? Because I’m going back outside, with or without you.” His manner of speaking denoted that those were her only two options.

She took a moment to consider her choice before she spoke. “I think I wanna stay here. I’m sleepy…”

Thomas handed her the flashlight and turned to leave. Just before he walked out of the room, he turned back to her. “Don’t keep the flashlight on all the time,” he said, pointing to the metallic device that lay in her grip, “I’m bringing a candle up for you. Don’t go playing around with the flame, either.”

He left the room and returned a few minutes later with a candle. Kate admired the dancing flame, flickering as he walked with it. He set it down on her dresser, clearing a space for it away from anything flammable. He nodded, smiled, and left the room again. There was no source of light for him to find his way by, but he was comfortable in the darkness.

He went back down the staircase and out through the back door onto the deck. Sitting in the chair he had previously occupied was the figure of a man. Thomas stopped and frowned. The figure got up and spoke. “I knew you’d be out here. How’s Katie?” It turned out to be the voice of Sean Cupid, his best friend and next door neighbour. Sean had probably made the walk across from his house, entering their yard through the side gate.

“She’s fine. She wanted to sleep so I lit a candle for her and left her with the flashlight, just in case she needs to leave the room for some reason. What’s up?”

Sean pulled another chair away from the side of the house and turned it to face the woods beyond the chain link fence bordering the back of the property before sitting down. Thomas swung his chair around to face the same direction and took a seat as well. Both men looked at the darkness of the woods in silence for a while before Sean finally speaks again. “You know, it’s nights like tonight that I really end up missing him.” He spoke with a distant tone in his voice, as if his mind was detached from his body. To Thomas, he definitely seemed to be very far away and not at all like the man who sat next to him.

Thomas sighed and nodded at Sean. He could do nothing else. His eyes were used to the moonlight now, and it amazed him that he could see quite clearly. He normally associated the moon with a dim bluish light, but when it was the only light source around, it really showed how bright it truly was. And it wasn’t even a full moon, either.

He looked at Sean for some time. The story was one he has heard several times, but he never knew what to say each time. Sean was always left to talk out the entire thing, if for nothing else than the fact that nobody seemed to know another way to respond to it. This was a touchy subject. It wasn’t too easy to have to lose your twin brother, and Thomas knew nothing about what that was like. It was almost impossible for his to give advice about a topic which he was ignorant of.

“We were so close,” Sean’s voice became shaky and Thomas could tell that he was fighting back tears, “I couldn’t imagine that we’d ever be separated forever. I…I…” Sean’s voice faded away and Thomas looked at him, half in surprise. Normally Sean would rant on and on and not stop until maybe thirty minutes later. Tonight he just stopped, as if something inside of his brain had hit a pause button. He was staring blankly into the darkness of the woods and was seemingly focusing on something. Thomas shook him slightly but he did not seem to notice that Thomas was next to him. He seemed oblivious to the world around him. Only his eyes showed a spark of the fire that burned inside of him and proved to Thomas that his friend had not died.

Thomas shrugged slightly as he leaned back and looked up at the sky. His mind wandered onto what had happened. Maybe he could find something to tell Sean if he thought long enough about the topic.

Sean once had a twin brother, Greg. The two were the stereotypical can’t-tell-the-two-apart identical twins. Even their personalities were similar. Their parents were forced to dress them differently as babies lest they accidentally be confused with each other. Thomas had first met them a long time ago, and would keep meeting them when his mother took him to spend the summer vacations and Christmases with her side of the family in Raleigh, North Carolina. They lived next door to his aunt and uncle. They were pretty much the only constant friends that Thomas ever had, and it was no surprise that he quickly became best friends with the two. When he got out of jail, he went right back to North Carolina with whatever little money he had and ended up living there for some time with his family. Sean and Greg treated him like another brother during that time, and he felt very close to them.

He eventually had to move to England to follow a job opportunity that promised a hefty payday, but that failed horribly and he moved back to North Carolina and found a job there. It was not quite what he wanted to do with his life, but it was something to keep him occupied during the day and he made enough money with which to cover his expenses. By the time he had come back to Raleigh, both Sean and Greg had gotten their degrees from college, and had started working. Greg was a schoolteacher while Sean had gotten a job with a computer software development company. Greg had also joined the Army Reserve, and he was called up to go to the Middle East. It was an emotional send-off for everyone who had been close to Greg, but he promised them that he would try to keep in touch and that he would be back before they knew it.

That was the last they saw of him. He never came back from active duty. He would send his mother letters constantly, but one week they just stopped abruptly. In its place the following week was an official letter from the United States Army Department, saying that Greg was a passenger in a Jeep that had been blown up by a suicide bomber. The Jeep had been blown up badly and pieces of the wreckage had been scattered over a wide radius. Eyewitnesses confirmed that nobody escaped the burning wreckage. Greg, along with the rest of the crew that day, was presumed to be Killed In Action. Physical remains of the bodies were few, unrecognizable and not recoverable. The United States was truly sorry for the family’s loss but he died proudly serving his country, and if the family would kindly contact the number given they would like to discuss holding a military memorial service in his honour.

Everyone took it badly. The twins’ mother fainted before she could finish reading the letter. His father had not said anything, but he generally had a very quiet personality and said little of what he felt. You could tell he was very distraught at having lost a son, however. Sean did not take it the worst, but he took a much longer time than everyone did for him to let go of everything. Greg had been his twin, and like other sets of twins, he shared a special bond with Sean that you simply could not replicate with anyone else. It took Thomas and some other close friends to help Sean through the ordeal, and Thomas was still trying to help as much as he could. He had very few true friends, and he refused to let Sean handle his grief on his own. Thomas knew how important having somebody there for you could be. When his own mother had died of cancer a couple of years ago, he needed others to help him in his time of grief, and he would always be around to return the favour with Sean.

The thoughts kept going at a steady pace in his mind when something snapped him out of them and back to the real world. He glanced over at Sean, who had gotten to his feet. Sean was still staring into the woods, but this time he had something of a smile on his face.

He turned to Thomas and grabbed the seated man’s shoulder with one hand, squeezing it tightly. Thomas looked at him a little more closely this time. Despite the moonlight not being the brightest, he could see that Sean was a little pale and that spark in his eyes had become an inferno that seemed to flicker constantly, much like the candle in Kate’s room.

Sean turned to him, almost shaking, with a strange smile on his face. It was uncomfortable for Thomas to see his friend looking like this. Almost psychotic, this expression was. Sean’s voice completed Thomas’ characterization of a madman.

“Thomas! I’ve felt him! He’s out there, Thomas…Greg’s out there!”

(Coming soon: Chapter two - Gone)

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