I pull a sheet off what I know is the Rembrandt, and then I strip off my wet clothes down to my underwear and curl up in the sheet. Exhaustion is settling into my bones. I can’t string thoughts together to even form coherent questions anymore. I hope I’ll be safe here. I don’t know if I’m safe anywhere.
But I do sleep.
And then I wake.
I’m alone in the barn, and sunlight is seeping through the gaps in the boards. I toss off the sheet and put my still-damp clothes back on. My mouth feels gummy, and I miss my toothpaste. I think of Claire and I miss her.
I wonder where Peter is. He should have returned from the void by now. He should have checked the house and seen the intruders. He should have, unless something happened to him. Feral dogs, the townspeople, the void, the Missing Man...
I don’t want to think anymore. Leaving the sheets on the ground, I inch open the door to the barn and climb into the nearest house through a kitchen window. I use the bathroom, though the toilet doesn’t flush. There isn’t any toothpaste, but I find a stray mint tucked into a crevasse between couch cushions. I eat it. I then investigate the junk pile in the backyard for breakfast. I find a bicycle tire, half a cookie, a juice box, and an uncooked steak. Sadly, I leave the steak—I can’t do anything with it right now. I also find a collection of tiny teddy bears with keychain hooks on the tops of their heads. Claire would have liked them. I take them and the food with me back to the barn.
In the barn, I arrange the tiny bears in a circle. Alone in the center of the vast barn, they look sad and lonely. I dart outside again to fetch the bicycle tire that I saw, as well as a post from a picket fence. I also find a fedora hat, a brilliant blue tail feather, a spool of ribbon, and a welcome mat. I carry them all back to the barn.
I arrange the tiny bears on the spokes of the bike wheel, and I tie them on with the ribbon. I stick the feather into the hat, but it’s not enough. It still feels sad and lonely and small. I scurry outside again, each time returning with more oddball treasures. I add to my sculpture almost frenetically. More height. More color. More movement. I don’t think about what I’m doing. I just...do. Finding some tools, I affix the bike wheel with the bears to the picket fence post so that it can rotate. I position the feather in the hat so that the bears kick the feather as they spin by. I decide I like it. Moreover, Claire would like it.
I stop.
What the hell am I doing?
I lower my face into my hands.
“You’re glowing.” Peter, behind me.
I raise my head and look at my arms. Soft white light dances between my arm hairs like static electricity. My breath catches in my throat, and I nearly laugh. Irony or bad timing? I choke back the laugh, afraid it will morph into a sob. “I lost...art?”
“You lost yourself,” Peter corrects me. “You lost your dreams, your future, your way when your mother fell sick. Your art is symbolic of all that.”
“Oh.” I stare at my sculpture and want to feel happy, whole, complete. But I can’t. “Claire’s gone.”
All the blood drains out of his face. “Claire?”
“She’s okay. I think. I think I...sent her home.” I explain what happened, how I’d accidentally mimicked what the Missing Man had done with Colin, how she’d faded and then disappeared. She’d tried to cling to me. I remember her fingers grasping at me and slipping through my sleeve, and the look on her face as if I’d shredded her world into pieces. I look at my hands. “You need to find the Missing Man again. Please. I can go home now. I can make sure she’s okay. I have to.”
He approaches my sculpture, and he spins the bike wheel. The bears revolve. I begin to feel silly making a sculpture of bears and bike parts when there are masterpieces around me.
“It’s called ‘found art,’” I say.
“Appropriate.”
“Will you do it? Will you find the Missing Man again? For me? For Claire?”
“I already found him.”
“Again, I mean. I need you to find him again.”
He looks at me as if I’m dense, and he holds up one finger. “You find what will heal the lost.” He holds up a second finger. “You send the found home. One plus one equals... ‘“She can’t do addition. Can you do subtraction? Take a bone from a dog: what remains?” Alice considered. “The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain.”’”
“I’m not the Missing Man,” I say.
“‘“Wrong as usual,” said the Red Queen, “the dog’s temper would remain.”’”
I spin the bike wheel, and then I look up at the Rembrandt,Storm on the Sea of Galilee.I love the light on the clouds and on the water. And I understand. I have the same power as the Missing Man. “So all I have to do is click my heels three times and say ‘There’s no place like home’? I can send myself home?”
“No!” He shoots toward me but stops short of touching me. “You can’t! I mean, yes, you can, but you can’t. Lost needs you. The people here need you. You’re what stands between Lost and the void.Weare, you and me, Finder and Missing Man. If you leave... You can’t leave.” There’s panic in his voice, fear, real fear.
“I have to. My mother is dying. She needs me. Claire needs me.”
He shakes his head. “You have lives here that depend on you.”
