Life Was Known - 5. Chapter Five: Autophagy

Eight o’clock at night, Ashe was passed out drunk in the kitchen and James had fallen asleep watching the kid show, because it was less than exciting. Liam was about to pass out, too, until Noah started talking to him.

“I saw the grave,” he said. Liam looked at the boy.

“What grave?” the man asked, although he knew which one. David’s. He’d seen how long Noah had stared at it, like it were some foreign thing from another life. It technically was. Noah knew he knew, too, because he didn’t say which one. Liam let out a breath. “What about it?”

“What happened to him?”

Liam shrugged. Diabetes. David had taken to overeating to cope with his grief when Miranda left him. It was okay, Liam didn’t blame him. But he couldn’t forget how it looked, seeing David eat, sleep, and waste away in his recliner. As he threw back the food, he gained another pound that made him confined to the chair. And then one day, when Liam was seventeen, David had just… died. Like an octopus in the most utter stress, eating itself away to cope- David tried to cope.

“He got sick,” Liam said. Then he looked at the boy. “...How are you… here?” he asked, for a change of subject.

Noah pressed his lips together and turned on the couch to face his brother. “When I walked home,” he said, “I didn’t know who you were.”

“...A long time’s passed.”

Noah shook his head and played with a coat sleeve. “I didn’t remember anything. ...I’m remembering now.”

Liam furrowed his eyebrows. “Then how’d you know my name? And where the house was?”

“I just walked and came home. I didn’t know know that was our house at first. And then I started remembering.”

“...What all do you remember?”

“Stuff. ...You don’t look the same.”

“...I know.” Liam stood up a little too urgently, like he were escaping the situation, because he really was, and he walked to Ashe’s bedroom, where he snagged up his friend’s pillow and blanket. Bringing them back to Noah, he put the pillow on the couch and covered him up, the boy laying down. “Go ahead and sleep, we’ll figure something out tomorrow.” Simple words that people always told children. Just a little “go to sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow”, because children were foreign things that no one knew how to talk to. Especially a dead one.

Noah watched Liam for a moment before speaking up. “This pillow stinks.”

Liam chuckled a little. “Sorry. It’s probably just hair product or something,” he replied. His brother scrunched his nose at the man before shutting his eyes. His older brother made sure that he was actually falling asleep before getting on his phone and searching up Carter suicide. A result came up that made Liam shift in his seat.

It was Joseph Carter’s father. But, the article was short and mentioned “His son had run away the day before”.

So no one believed the boy had actually been kidnapped. They thought he’d run away because his dad was a drunk with a history of depression. At least he’d bothered to put out a few MISSING posters before outing himself.

That still just meant one thing.

Joseph Carter had been kidnapped and no one was looking for him.

l.l

The bruising on Noah’s face was gone by morning, under some strange circumstance. They all ate scrambled eggs for breakfast, Ashe looking like he’d died five times over as he drank some water.

“Uggh, my head,” he whined. No one responded, eating their own breakfast. James started his second cigarette of the morning.

“I’m gonna go and open shop,” he said. Ashe looked at him, his cheek red from sleeping on the kitchen table all night.

“Me too?” he asked like a sick child. James eyed his brother before shaking his head. Ashe sighed in relief.

“I’m gonna take Noah home,” Liam said. Ashe lay his head back on the table, and Noah looked at Liam.

“What are we gonna do there?”

Liam gave an honest shrug. “Look at some stuff.”

“I’d go with you,” Ashe spoke up, “But I think I’m still a little drunk.”

Liam shrugged a shoulder. “It’s okay. Come on, Noah,” he said. Noah finished his food before standing up from the table.

“Thank you for breakfast,” the boy said to James, who gave him a look like it was weird hearing thanks, because it was. Especially from a stranger kid. He and Ashe met Liam after Noah’s death, but it was the scandal of the town, so they knew about his brother without needing to ask.

Liam waved goodbye to Ashe and his brother and led Noah to the door, where he walked the child down the hallway and stairs to leave the apartment building.

“Does Ashe drink a lot?” Noah asked, looking up at Liam while they walked to the truck. Liam twisted his lips.

“...Kind of.”

“Do you?”

Liam shrugged.

“You’re stupid.” Noah climbed into the truck and Liam followed, so that he could drive the kid home with him. He didn’t say anything, because he knew that Noah had seen all of the beer bottles in his house, so there was no point in arguing. He couldn’t say that he wasn’t killing himself like an octi, either. He was killing himself like his father. Like Joseph Carter’s father had.

Other than that, Noah was quiet for the drive to the house. It was enough for Liam to come somewhat to terms with what was going on and his head to clear from the fog that was starting to take it. All of this, it wasn’t something someone should be subjected to. A dead relative coming back to life and then being thrust on the hunt for a serial killer- it was a little too much for Liam and his drunken mind. He was a fan of drinking to sleep and trying to write a last best seller. Not being someone from a crazy book.

At the house, Liam helped Noah out of the tall truck and took him inside. Other than that, he really didn’t know what to do. There was no other information he could uncover. The dead children, they were cold cases. So details of their murders wouldn’t be accessible to the public. For Liam. He could go down the police department and ask for his brother’s case file, but that was all. Only because he was family. Only because it was still unsolved. If they would allow him the traumatizing luxury.

“Is Ashe your only friend?” Noah asked Liam, his younger but older twin brother walking off to his office; their old bedroom. Liam glanced back at the dead boy that sat on the couch, hanging over the back of it to look at the man. He shrugged and nodded.

“Kind of, I guess.”

“Well, why?”

Liam gave the boy a look. “Because it’s hard to make friends.”

“What about his brother?”

“James?”

“Yeah.”

“Um,” Liam shrugged, “I guess. I have some other friends, too, though. Sam and Carlos. I just don’t see them that much.”

“But why not?”

“Seriously, why are you asking so many questions?” Liam asked in annoyance. Noah seemed to look a little confused. Then the boy gave a single shrug.

“Because I’m a kid.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “It’s annoying, though.”

Noah shrugged again, watching his brother with his special eyes. It made Liam sigh and look away, and then bring up a hand to rub his eyes in agitation. “Noah,” he said, “What do you remember about your death? Honestly, I just… Just help me out. This thing about not remembering is pretty shitty.”

Noah turned from facing Liam to look at the black TV. “...I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit, Noah! Argh, do you know how frustrating this is? I don’t know what to do! I’m not a cop, I can’t look at whatever I want to! Why am I supposed to find this kid?” Noah listened to Liam’s ranting but didn’t look at him. “You came back just to tell me to help some kid, but you’re not helping me find him! He’s going to die, Noah, just-”

“Like me, I know,” Noah said, crossing his arms over his chest while facing his back to his brother. “...I don’t want to remember what happened.”

“Well, you need to, Noah. Because now you’ve got me stuck on this- I don’t want this kid to die, alright?” Liam’s voice didn’t exactly help him mask his emotions. Noah glanced back at the man and he looked away from the sofa, because he didn’t want to look at Noah. Or Noah look at him.

He had let Noah die. Not just die, but be tortured. Relentlessly. Starved, and beaten, and burned, and- He didn’t want it to happen again. Not knowing that another boy had died before he knew about the killer. Noah, 1992. Allen, 1999. And now this new boy, Joseph.

...What had Allen experienced? Was the killer still being as ruthless as with Noah? What about the first victim, Brent? Was his murder the most brutal? Or the lightest?

He just didn’t like the thought that Joseph Carter was being hurt, and probably scared out of his mind; unknowing that his single father had killed himself. Unknowing that no one was looking for him. Was the killer giving him false hope? Or drilling it into his mind that no one wanted him? That that’s why he was kidnapped?

It all just came back to Noah, and what he had felt. Did this man make him feel like he was nothing?

“...He hurt me,” Noah spoke up finally. Liam turned away so that the boy couldn’t see the hurt on his face towards his own thoughts. “I don’t want to remember anything. ...He punched me a lot in the face, but it hurt for a long time,” the child said slowly, like his mind was trying to halt his words, but his mouth kept speaking them. “I remember how bad it all hurted when he did it. When I’m with you, it feels like he’s hurting me again, but then it goes away really fast. It stops hurting really fast.”

“...What are you talking about?” Liam asked honestly and glanced at the child. He really didn’t know what he was talking about.

Noah got up from the couch and suddenly started to pull off his shirt. Liam shook his head. “What are you doing?” he asked, but his brother didn’t answer him. Instead, the boy pulled his shirt off and turned around, so that his back was to Liam. And then Liam saw all of the bruises that lined his it. They looked very bad, and severe. The child’s pale skin was marked with giant bruises that were a dark purple with yellow, and a few even had red mixed into the wounds’ array. Liam couldn’t say what had caused the wounds, but they filled Noah’s back almost completely. Some were swollen.

A baseball bat, maybe.

“What… God, what happened?” Liam asked with full concern, walking over to the boy to look at the bruising. Noah looked back at him.

“They don’t hurt,” the child said. Liam looked at his face.

“What do you mean? Don’t pretend that it’s okay, okay? I’ll have to-”

“I’m telling the truth; it doesn’t hurt,” Noah repeated. Then he reached an arm back to feel his back, his small fingers pressing down behind his shoulder, on a bruise. It looked like it hurt, but the boy’s face never looked pained. Liam knit his eyebrows together.

“...What?”

“When I went to the bathroom earlier, it hurt really really bad. But it doesn’t hurt anymore.” When he had gone to the bathroom before breakfast. He had taken a while inside, Liam remembered, but he let him because he wanted to catch up on some lacking sleep. “...When he hurted me, it didn’t ever stop hurting,” Noah said like earlier, “But these stop hurting really fast.”

Liam shook his head, trying to register what was happening at the moment. “So, what- I don’t-” He still didn’t understand. Noah started pulling his shirt back on, because the house was chilly from their night out.

“...I think he’s hurting the other boy,” the boy said, “I think this is what he’s doing to him. And, when I go to sleep, I have these bad dreams, but it’s not me in them. It’s another boy’s face.”

Liam watched Noah for a moment before getting his phone out of his pocket to look up a photo of Joseph Carter. “...You think that the wounds showing up on your body are the kidnapped boy’s wounds?” he asked. Noah nodded. It didn’t make sense as to why the boy’s wounds had disappeared during his sleep, but… if they weren’t his own wounds to begin with, then, it… sort of made sense? So these bruises on his back would disappear, too. Maybe. If Liam was thinking right.

He held his phone out to Noah after finding Joseph's MISSING flier, and Noah took it to look at it. Then he nodded and pointed.

“That’s him,” he said. Liam ran a hand through his hair.

“...So you’re having dreams about him?”

Noah nodded again. Then he pressed his lips together at a thought. “...In my dreams, I don’t remember some things. A lot of it’s the same, but some things aren’t.”

“Like what?”

Noah continued looking apprehensive before shrugging. Liam sighed.

“Noah, if you want me to find this kid, you have to help me.”

“I did.”

“No, what else do you remember? What changed?”

Noah didn’t speak for a long moment. “...That’s all I remember.” His words made Liam upset again, and the man turned away from the boy with an angry groan.

“Noah, why are you being so stubborn?” he asked, voice loud in anger. Noah didn’t say anything. The child’s silence and Liam’s frustration led the man to leave to his bedroom, where he slammed the door shut.

“I’m not stubborn, Liam,” Noah said, stubbornly. Liam gave him a look while twisting the bread bag shut.

“Yeah you are. Why didn’t you just tell Mom about the vase?”

“Um, because I didn’t break it.”

“No, you did, you just didn’t mean to.” Liam put the bread up and walked to the dishwasher. Because neither of the two had fessed up about who had broken Miranda’s vase, they were both stuck doing things around the house to make up for it. It was Liam’s idea to throw the ball in the house, but Noah had broken the vase. On accident. He could have apologized like their mother wanted, but Noah hated being in trouble, and didn’t want to take the blame. Even though it would actually stop the punishments.

The way child minds worked.

“Help me put the dishes up, Noah!” Liam said frustratingly. Noah crossed his arms.

“No.”

When Liam looked at his brother, Noah stuck his nose up. “If I do the stuff, then it looks like I’m actually guilty.”

“No,” Liam said breathily, “It doesn’t!”

Two hours passed of Liam sitting in his room away from Noah. He was trying to think of a way to find Joseph.

He couldn’t go to the police, and he had no clues whatsoever to go off of. There was nothing. He was taken just after school, and gone without a trace. Things he already knew from Noah’s case.

Then, two papers were slid through the undercrack of the bedroom door, the rustling of them getting Liam’s attention. He glanced over from where he sat on the bed, head in his hands.

Two sheets of paper, but he couldn’t tell if they were blank or not from where he sat.

The man sighed and stood up, where he walked over to kneel beside the sheets. Picking them up, he looked at them. It was a child’s scribbles, with a dull pencil that broke at one point, because then the writing was replaced by a pen of blue ink. Noah had written on the back of some bills, which pissed Liam off even more, but as he looked at the papers, he realized what exactly had been drawn.

The first was a bedroom. There were no windows, and there was a single lightbulb with a chain in the center of the room. In a corner, a dog cage, with something over it that Liam assumed was a blanket, because Noah wasn’t a good artist. There was a single bed in the room, which looked like a small child’s, but it could have just been drawn that size. Liam decided that it was a child’s bed, though.

It was bare, with ink scribbles over the mattress, probably to show filth or blood. Or both. There was a mouse running across in a corner, but that was the least of Liam’s concern as he looked at the walls of the room.

They held planks nailed to them, with handcuffs that hung down, empty. Noah had drawn dripping blood from one. On another wall was a shelf, that held whips and things that went undistinguished because of Noah’s bad hand at art.

There was a closet in the room, with gaps in the wooden blinds, where Liam could see a pair of eyes peeking through.

It looked like a torture room, with a child hiding in the closet. It made Liam’s heart flutter with anxiety and he looked at the second drawing.

It was the same room, but slight things were changed. There was a stick drawing laying on the bed, with their arms tied over their head to a hook stuck on the wall, and their legs pinned open by a bar at the ankles. The bed had no frame, so their feet couldn’t be tied to the posts, and that was probably the reasoning for the bar. Or it was just something to appeal to the psychopath that held the child hostage. The walls held the same hanging cuffs, but there was now a meat hook hanging from the ceiling, with a pair of handcuffs dangling from it.

The dog cage was still there, but there were large spikes drawn inside of it. Liam didn’t know what they could be, but his mind told him that they were bear traps. Bear traps, lining the floor of a cage the size of a child. He grit his teeth. What sort of monster was this? What sort of man could do this to a child? ...He knew exactly who. He was a true crime writer. He knew that monsters existed. He just wished they didn’t. Especially this one. This one, who had taken his brother from him. Had ruined his life. Killed his father.

Liam’s eyes glazed over and he wiped his cheek when a tear broke. He breathed deeply and looked at the haunting drawings- the child eyes in the closet, drawn wide with haunting terror.

In the second drawing, there was no closet. It had probably been sealed over. There was an even more significant change in the rooms, though. In the second, there was a pile of VHS tapes on the floor, while in the first, there weren’t. And the lightbulb was colored in black in the second. What that meant, Liam wasn’t sure. He didn’t need to know, though. He knew that there was a child being tortured in a room of devices that they were never meant to see.

He wiped his eyes again and shook his head, a tear dropping down onto the first drawing. At the bottom, it read “Me”, in terribly scribbled handwriting. Noah, hiding in a closet to try and preserve his life. So it was safe to assume that the boy in the second drawing, was Joseph Carter.

Liam started wishing that he had already killed himself by now. Noah was gone, his dad was gone, their mom- why wasn’t he allowed to leave yet?

“Liam,” Noah said from the other side of the door. Liam shook his head again and sat on the floor, dropping the papers to put his face in his hands again. There was a light knock against the door, but he didn’t open it. He was crying. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were filled with tears that spilled over, rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t want to cry, though, so he grit his teeth and closed his eyes tightly.

The door opened and Liam expected Noah to come inside, or to say something, but instead, it was someone else.

“Liam, what are you doing?” Carlos asked, his voice completely catching Liam off guard. The man shook his head and laughed, but it didn’t come out as a laugh. He felt Carlos put a hand on his shoulder. “I… knocked, but you didn’t answer. What’s going on?”

“Why are you here?” Liam asked, wiping his eyes and cheeks of the tears; bowing his head so that his friend couldn’t look at him.

“Ashe, he called me about the body you guys found. It… sounded pretty crazy, so I just wanted to come by. ...Come on off of the floor.” Carlos grabbed Liam’s arm, but the other man pulled away.

Liam sighed deeply and asked, “Is there anyone else here?”

Carlos shook his head. “Not that I saw. Is there supposed to be? Hey, what are...” Liam could hear paper rustling, so he looked at Carlos and took the drawings from his honey fingers. His friend gave him a look. “...What? What’s going on with you? You lied about the money, Ashe told me you used it to go to that town. What’s happening?”

Liam stood up and walked to his bed, where he shoved the papers underneath his pillow, hearing one of them crumple. “Nothing,” he said and turned back to Carlos, who still knelt beside the door. In his bedroom closet, Liam could see the door cracked open, with Noah peeking out at him, watching him with his haunting eyes. Like in the drawing. Hiding in a closet and peering out.

“Liam,” Carlos stood up, “Come here. Come outside and talk to me,” he said and beckoned Liam over. The noirette shook his head and dragged a hand down his face.

“Why?”

“Because I’m worried about you. Now come on, you need some fresh air.” Carlos almost went to get Liam, but the other man reluctantly obeyed and walked over, leaving his brother to hide in the closet. Carlos put a hand on Liam’s shoulder and walked him out of the house, passed the TV that was still turned off.

Outside, the two sat on the porch. Carlos looked at Liam, who’s gaze was on the ground. “...I know that I haven’t been around as long as Ashe, but you can talk to me, too. I worry about you, too.” Liam didn’t reply, so Carlos peered around at him, but he turned his head to the side. Carlos sighed. “Why don’t you-”

“I don’t call you because you can’t be seen here,” Liam uttered. His friend gave him a look.

“What?”

“You’re all high and mighty; you get paid every week, and you have a nice house, and you get to go out and drink wine with clients-”

“Liam, what are you talking about?” Carlos scoffed. “I may work a lot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t see you. What the hell is with the “high and mighty”? That’s so rude. And I don't drink with clients, either.”

“You are high. Sam’s a junkie slut, Ashe is an idiot, and I’m here,” Liam motioned around at the yard. Carlos gave him a look and grabbed him, forcing his friend to look at him.

“What the hell are you going on about, Liam? If you think that I’m stuck up just because I have a good job, that’s on you, but I’m not. I’m sorry if me not coming by a lot makes you think I don’t care, but I care just as much as Ashe does about you. I just don’t like watching you do… this.” Carlos looked over Liam’s face with his dark eyes of hurt. He shook his head. “Tell me what’s going on, what’s happening now?”

Liam scoffed and looked away. “Now? I’m just… in a stupor.”

“Yeah, I see that. ...Come on, come over to my house.”

“I can’t.”

“Stop fucking lying, Liam, you’re always making excuses around me.”

Liam looked at Carlos with narrowed eyes. “Maybe because you’re better than me.” His words made Carlos laugh, but it lacked humor.

“Why are you always downing yourself with me? Seriously, Liam, stop bringing up our social statuses and just be my friend. I’m yours.” The man got up and grabbed Liam, pulling him up to his feet. “Now come on, you don’t look good.” He started pulling the man to his car and unlocked it to get in. It looked relatively new.

Liam opened the door to get in and looked back at the house, where he saw Noah standing at one of the living room windows. The boy rose a hand up and waved.