Neverland Lost

Their parents had locked the windows that night and insisted that the two boys sleep in Jane’s room. Jane and Joseph, being twelve and ten years old respectively, had protested profusely, but four-year-old Barry thought it was a great adventure to have a sleepover with his older sister. Their parents had told them it was happening, and that was that. Lady, their pit bull, was allowed to sleep with them as well.

“I don’t get why we can’t sleep in our own rooms tonight,” Joseph grumbled as he slipped into his sleeping bag. “This is so embarrassing!”

“Why?” Barry asked. He curled up with his back pressed against Lady’s belly.

“It just is, OK?” Joseph turned to Jane, who got to sleep in her own bed. “Why are Mom and Dad acting so weird tonight?”

Jane bit her bottom lip, contemplating whether she should share what she knew. She had heard overheard her parents watching the news that night before dinner. Apparently, some maniac had been breaking into people’s houses across the state and taking people’s kids. Five boys missing so far. Their house could be next.

“I’m sure they have their reasons,” she said instead. “Now, go to sleep.”

With a clap of her hands, the lights turned off, effectively silencing any of Joseph’s protests.

Hours passed in silence. Then a tapping at the window woke Jane. She opened her eyes but stayed still and quiet. A few moments passed, and she was about to brush it off as her imagination when another tapping came. And another. And another…

Lady leaped to her feet and growled as a crash signaled that something had broken the glass of the window nearest Jane. All three children screamed.

Through the broken glass, a scrawny hand crept and unlatched the window. The window soon slid open, and in crawled three grotesque figures. The leader was an impossibly skinny man, and behind him were two men in barely better shape. All three carry burlap sacks big enough for a teenager.

Just as the door to Jane’s room burst open, revealing her father with a gun, the three men scooped the children up into their sacks.

At the sound of the children’s distressed cries, Lady charged. She dug her teeth into the leg of the leader, and Jane’s father got a shot off at the shoulder of one of the minions.

The leader screamed in pain but ordered his cohorts not to drop their sacks. He retrieved a switchblade from his pocket and dragged it along Lady’s spine, forcing her to release him as she collapsed in a pool of her own blood.

“Hurry!” the leader shouted, straining to carry his sack as Jane struggled within it.

Jane’s father continued to shoot, but he could not land another shot without risking hitting his children. Tears streamed down her mother’s cheeks as she tried to dial 9-1-1, but it was too late.

The Peter Pan kidnapper was gone.

***

Jane kicked and punched at her sack all the way to her kidnapper’s hideout. Even when he finally set her down, she did not give up the fight. Only when the sack was untied and pulled down did she stop.

“Hello, Wendy,” the leader said in an unusually high-pitched voice.

“Wendy?” She shook her head. “My name is Jane.”

“No, you’re my Wendy.”

Jane eyed the man. He was so skinny, so skinny that she should have been able to knock him over with a feather, and yet she couldn’t overpower him while in the burlap sack. He smiled broadly, showing several missing teeth, and his eyes shined too brightly.

Jane searched her surroundings. They were surrounded by a dilapidated house, bound to fall apart at any moment. Just a few feet from her sat her brothers, scared but safe, and in front of them stood the other two kidnappers. When her eyes landed on the far shadows of what was once the living room, Jane noticed four boys huddled in a corner, staring at her with wide eyes.

Didn’t the news say that there five boys missing?

Jane’s gaze returned to the leader.

“What do you want with us?” she asked.

The leader clapped his calloused hands and laughed.

“You’re going to be our mother, of course!” he exclaimed. “While we play, you’ll take care of us.”

“And my brothers?”

“They’ll get to play—” his eyes grew dark “—so long as they don’t grow up.”

Jane followed his gaze to the nearest doorframe, where she could just barely make out markings, as if someone had been measuring people’s height. None of them reached higher than 4’6”. A circle of dried blood on the floor in front of the doorframe caused Jane’s heart to race. Joseph was almost 4’6”.

“That reminds me…”

The leader walked over to his minions.

“Yo, you gonna pay us?” one asked.

The leader nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “I have no more need for adults like you.”

He pulled out his switchblade and plunged it into the man’s heart. When the other man tried to run, he threw it at his back and hit the area between his left ribs with perfect aim. The leader yanked his blade out of the man’s back and looked back at Jane and her brothers.

“Who wants to play?”

***

Days passed. At least, Jane assumed days passed. She could only measure the passing of time by the light leaking through the broken shades on the windows.

Each morning at what Jane associated with sunrise, the leader would come into the house with groceries and have Jane make them all breakfast. Then the boys would all play whatever games the leader wanted—and let him win—while Jane pretended to clean and keep house. Whenever the leader decided it was lunch, Jane would make lunch and serve them while the leader told made-up stories of his exploits that day. More play and cleaning would follow, along with a nap for Barry, who was the youngest. Then, as the sun set in the windows, Jane would cook dinner and put them all to bed—all except the leader. He would leave each night, not telling her where he was going, and he would lock all the doors and windows behind him. Jane was certain that she could find a way out of the house, but the very thought of not knowing where to go or who to trust and whether the leader would come after them frightened her enough to stay.

This continued for more days than Jane could count, than she bothered to count. She wasn’t sure if it would ever end or if this would be her new life. She even started to miss school.

Then came Measuring Day.

“Line up!” the leader told the boys in his usual high-pitched voice.

“W-what’s going on?” Jane asked as all the boys lined up next to the dreaded marked doorframe, pulling Barry and Joseph along.

“Time to see if the boys have grown up,” the leader said simply. He pulled out his switchblade and approached the doorframe. “John, you first.”

John, a bespectacled eight-year-old who looked as though he hadn’t seen the sun in years, approached. He stood with his back against the wood.

The leader took his switchblade and in one swift move marked John’s height. 4’2”.

“Nope. You have not grown up,” the leader declared.

The other boys and Jane breathed a sigh of relief.

“Next!”

Boy after boy took their turn, each passing until it was finally Joseph’s time. He paled as he slowly walked up to the doorframe, his entire body trembling. He and Jane both knew what was coming.

Reluctantly, Joseph turned his back to the doorframe. The leader frowned and lifted his switchblade, stopping it not at the top of Joseph’s head but near his heart. Before Jane could react, a knock at the door startled the leader into dropping his blade.

“Peter Smith, open up! We know you’re in there!” a man’s voice called.

The leader’s eyes widened.

“It’s Captain Hook!” he whispered. “He finally found me! Quick, hide in the hallway. I’ll fight off that old codfish!”

The leader shoved everyone into the hallway, not noticing as Jane bent over to pick up his switchblade and hide it behind her back.

As the leader closed the door to the hallway, he raised his finger to his lips.

“Keep quiet,” he hissed.

Through the door, Jane could still hear what was going on at the front door as the leader—Peter—answered it.

“Ah, Captain Hook!” he exclaimed. “Who gave away my hideout?”

“Peter Smith, I am Detective Bongiorno, and this is Detective Johnson. We have a subpoena to search your lovely…abode in connection with eight recent kidnappings and two murders.”

“No law has effect in Neverland!”

“Yeah, yeah, are you going to let us in or not?”

“As if I would let Captain Hook and Mr. Smee into my hideout…”

“Enough already!” another, gruffer voice interrupted. “Can’t we just arrest him already? He’s obviously guilty.”

“We can’t just arrest him because his sanity is in question. We have to find evidence first.”

Evidence that I have, Jane thought as she looked down at the bloodstained switchblade.

Slowly, carefully, she opened the door to the hallway, despite the protests of her brothers and the other boys behind her. She crept through the creaky house, hoping to not draw Peter’s attention before she could catch the eye of the detectives.

Then she saw him. Peter, from behind. He looked so frail, this man that had taken her from her home and nearly killed her younger brother. Anger rose within her. The police wouldn’t do anything about it. Not with just a blade. Not even seeing all of them there. No, this would never end. She had to…

She didn’t know what took her over. The switchblade was between Peter’s shoulder blades before she knew what she was doing. He fell forward into the detectives’ arms, gasping. The detectives looked up at her, as if to ask who she was. Jane turned around to see that the boys had followed her out there. She glanced back at the detectives.

“He kidnapped us,” she said quickly. “He…oh my God…what did I do…I’m so sorry…”

She fell to her knees and cried, innocence lost.