'X' Marks The Spot

• Aaratrika Khanna, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2022

I groaned and turned over as the warm rays of the morning sun wafted through the blinds. Suddenly, I realised that today was the day I cleaned the attic; a chance to move on once and for all. Yesterday, I had finally decided it had been long enough; we were ready. I ran downstairs and found my dad sprawled across the sofa, staring blankly at the TV. His coping strategy involved completely withdrawing from the world. My mother preferred to stay busy, continuously bustling around the house, frantically looking for the next thing to do. Things have been this way ever since my little brother Max disappeared in the woods while playing hide and seek. It has been ten years of a family in limbo, a pathetically heartbreaking sight that I planned to never see again. Once I tackled the attic, they would have to move on and give me the attention I deserved.
I made my way up to the attic, flicking on the light and revealing dozens of boxes littered across the dusty floor. I stepped forward, moving deliberately towards The Box. I gently opened the box, mentally bracing myself for what I was about to find. The small, trivial items were covered by an old piece of paper that I knew had not been there when my parents had banished this box up here. It was a map of the woods behind our house with a spot marked x...
Usually, the police wouldn’t show up for such an improbable clue, but we lived in a small town, and the unsolved disappearance of a child was still big on the town’s psyche. Ten minutes later, accompanied by a small army of policemen, I followed the map to the edge of the old pond, now completely dry. In it lay a hollow log encrusted in mud. Inside they found a skeleton. “It explains why the sniffer dogs couldn’t find him” the police explained later “he was underwater!” For the first time in 10 years my mother smiled properly and whispered quietly “He led us to him! My Max is finally at peace!”
Later I lay in bed, marvelling at the naivety of people. They believed what they wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that the spirit of a dead boy had led them to his body so he could be at peace. They didn’t want to believe that a small girl driven mad by jealously had murdered her little brother to have her parents all to herself and hid him in a log just under the water’s surface. They didn’t want to believe that the girl, now all grown up, was sick of her parents grieving and wanted to crush any hopes that her brother was going to return to them. Hence, the elaborate plan that led them to his body.
And they most certainly didn’t want to believe that they had been utterly outwitted by a 10-year-old murderer who was now never going to get the blame.