Page 1 of Hiding In the Dark (The Righteous 4)
Twenty-two years ago.
Kes hated the stupid plaid tie he had to wear for school. He yanked on the knot that felt like it was choking him and undid the top button of his dress shirt. Why did he have to wear a stupid uniform?
He looked out the window as the large town car made a turn, and he groaned.
“Did you say something, Kestrel?” the driver asked.
He pulled his Spiderman backpack up on his lap and dug around until he found his sketch pad and pencil. “No. Why are you taking me to my dad’s office? I thought I was going home,” he sulked as he worked on his latest masterpiece. He was really proud of this one. It had taken days to get the shading right, but the tall skyscrapers looked amazing, and so did the shocked looks on the people below as Spiderman sailed from one web to the next above them.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t ask. You know the drill.”
“I know, I know. Dad wouldn’t tell you why he does anything. I just kinda hoped. I hate going to his work. It’s boring, and all he does is talk on the phone.”
The large shiny building came into view, and a few minutes later, Kes was hopping out the back and being escorted inside. His dad’s driver handed him off to the security guard like a bag of lunch, who took him to the private elevator that only went to the top floor.
The security guard pressed the button to take him up and then stepped out and waited for the doors to fully close. Like he was going to run anywhere, what good would that do?
His stomach lurched as the fast-moving elevator came to a stop, and he stepped out onto the silent top floor. You’d think that a big, fancy place like this would have people running all over the place, and maybe it was like that on the other floors, but he never went to see those. It was always the same on the top floor.
He passed two executive offices that had titles he didn’t really understand, but no one was inside. At the end of the hallway was his dad’s office, but the girl who normally sat there waiting for him wasn’t around either.
Annoyed, he pushed his way through the door to the outer area of his dad’s office and stopped as the sound of a scream reached his ears. His heart beat faster as he neared the mostly closed door to his dad’s office. More screams, softer this time. There were more sounds as he got closer—grunting like an animal, and moans that ended with really bad swear words.
Kes peeked through the crack in the door, and his eyes went wide as he saw his dad doing something the other boys talked about and passed around pictures of from dirty magazines. He might only be eight, but some of the older boys loved to show off their collections, and he was curious, so he’d looked. His dad’s naked butt flexed as he was screwing the secretary, at least that’s what his friends called it. His hand was wrapped in her hair, yanking her head back. That was all he could see of her other than her legs, which were spread around his Dad’s, but it was enough to know that his dad was cheating on his mom.
“Oh fuck, Mr. Reynolds! Yes!”
Tears of anger welled up in his eyes as he backed away from the door and went to sit out in the waiting area. He was livid. He pressed the pencil hard into the next picture he started to draw and broke off the lead of his pencil. Kes dug around in his backpack until he found the sharpener. He angrily twisted the pencil around the little whole trying to drown out the moans with the grinding noise. The pencil sharp once more, he worked on the image of Venom. The thought of his dad and what he was doing and the stupid noises faded away. That’s how he saw his dad—a villain just like Venom in Spiderman, someone he couldn’t trust. His dad lied to his mom. Lied to him. Their whole family was alie.
The door opened, and the secretary and his dad stopped talking as they saw him sitting in the waiting room. He glared at them, wanting to say something, but kept his mouth shut.
“Oh, Kestrel. I’m sorry I wasn’t out here to greet you. Your father and I were finishing up a meeting,” the secretary said, smiling as she continued to smooth down her skirt.
He didn’t say anything—he just continued to glare until his dad spoke. “It’s not polite to ignore people, Son.”
His stare fixed on his dad, who he wassomad with.
He hated him.
He wanted to yell and scream and pick up the stupid decorative statues and toss them at his dad’s head. Instead, he bit his tongue and looked down to finish his drawing.
His dad marched over and snatched the doodle pad from his hands. “Hey, that’s mine!”
He jumped up from the seat and grabbed for the book, but his dad held it up so he couldn’t reach it. “Oh, so you can speak and haven’t suddenly gone mute?”
Kes jumped, trying to reach his precious book, but his dad walked away with it in his hands. “Give it back! Those are mine!”
“They are garbage and a waste of time. I’ve told you to stop scribbling down that crap, and you chose not to listen, but now….” His dad walked over to the shredder, and panic gripped Kes’s chest. “As punishment for your impolite behavior, the garbage is exactly where they are going.”
“No, Dad!” he yelled as his dad put his entire sketch pad into the shredder. Tears streamed down his face as he reached for the pad that was being eaten by the mechanical beast. His dad grabbed him around the waist and dragged him away from the shredder and into his office.
“Remember, Son. I control everything you do. Don’t make me destroy anything else.”
He hated him. He hated him. He hated him.
Ashley stared at the circular glowing buttons as she made the agonizingly slow descent to the ground floor of the medical building. “Ashley, you must understand that you will only ever get worse. We can do our best to keep the symptoms from progressing any further, but there is no cure,” the doctor had said. Those words were now running on a continuous loop through her head like a broken record. She was purposely taking slow deep breaths to try and control the emotional breakdown that was threatening to consume her.
Was she in shock? She didn’t know. How could she? She’d never been in shock before to know.
