Behind the Screen

 

“Wake up, Alex,” I said as I opened my son’s bedroom door, but he wasn’t inside.

I looked in the bathroom; he wasn’t there either. I rushed into the living room when my husband, Elliot, stopped me.

“Julie, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t find Alex.”

“Let me check,” he replied, leaving the room. Elliot came back three minutes later to tell me what I feared: Alex was missing. I called Alex’s phone, but it didn’t ring. I called his friends, but none of them had seen him. Elliot called the cops right away. They arrived an hour later and swept through the house, but found nothing useful: there were no signs of a break-in, nor any notes left behind saying he was running away.

Days passed, and there were still no clues as to where my son was. It was not long before I started seeing nightmares—it was a recurring one of Alex calling out to me, begging me to break him out of a cage. I could’ve sworn that every time I woke up from it, I heard his voice from his room.

I got out of bed without waking Elliot and headed to Alex’s room. Upon opening the door, I found his laptop open. I wondered whether Elliot had checked it again. I sat at the desk and clicked the mouse; a blank, grey screen lit up.

“Mom, can you hear me?” Alex’s voice came from the laptop.

“Alex, is that you? Where are you?”

“I’m stuck inside the system, mom.”

“How do I get you out?”

“Finish the story.”

As Alex said those words, the laptop screen changed. A document opened; it was one of his stories. The story was about a boy who had found a treasure, but was trapped inside a prison realm because it was forbidden to be gazed upon. I tried to think straight as my hands trembled, but I mustered the strength to continue the story.

I wrote that he figured out the runes to undo the seal of the prison realm and found his way back home. The second I finished, I got off the chair and looked at the laptop. I wasn’t sure if he would come out of it, given what I had witnessed. But nothing happened. I ran to the front door and opened it, but there was nothing or no one to be seen in the vicinity.

“Give me back my son!” I screamed as I fell to my knees, only to be woken up by Elliot a second later. I was in bed, and it was already morning.

“Julie, you were having a nightmare.”

“What? Where’s Alex?”

“He’s in his room.”

I sprung out of bed and rushed into Alex’s room; he almost jumped out of his skin when I barged in. Tears welled my eyes as I ran to his side and hugged him tightly.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

“You’re finally back!”

“But I was never gone.”

I moved back and cupped his face. “You were missing for days, hon.”

Elliot rushed into the room the next second. “Julie, that was just a nightmare.”

“But… Your story—the one with the forbidden treasure.”

“That story idea came to me only yesterday; I haven’t even told anyone about it yet.”

Alex was dumbfounded, and so was I. I couldn’t explain how I knew what I knew, but Elliot brushed it off as a weird coincidence. Still unable to accept it as the truth, I called the cops. They said they had no record of Alex going missing. I didn’t know what to think anymore; I could only stay vigilant for my son. Alex never got around to writing that story because of what happened that day; and fortunately, he never went missing either.