The silence of the house had always been a weight. A decade, an eternity, since he just… vanished. Not a goodbye, not a note. Just a gaping, aching hole where my older brother used to be. Every birthday, every holiday, the empty chair at the table screamed louder than any argument we ever had. Mom cried herself to sleep most nights for years. Dad grew quieter, his shoulders slumped under a burden I couldn’t comprehend. He was gone. We all accepted it eventually, though a part of me always waited for the impossible.
Then the call came. From a hospital, hundreds of miles away. “We think we found him.” My breath hitched. Mom dropped the phone. Dad, for the first time in years, truly looked alive – a terrifying mix of hope and sheer terror. He was alive. After all this time, after all the grief, the memorials, the whispered prayers for his soul, he was alive.
The drive felt endless. Every mile was a thrumming vibration in my chest. What would he look like? Would he remember us? Would he forgive us for giving up hope? My palms were sweating, my throat tight. We pulled up to the house, the one he’d left, the one that had mourned him for so long. The front door was a gaping maw of anticipation. He was coming home. Today.
A close-up shot of a woman holding a glass of champagne | Source: Pexels
He walked through that door like a ghost made flesh. Taller, thinner, his face etched with lines that weren’t there ten years ago. His hair was longer, a little wild. But it was him. It was him. Mom’s sob tore through the air, a raw, primal sound of relief and agony. She lunged, wrapping him in an embrace so fierce it looked like she was trying to pull him back into her own body. Dad stood frozen, tears streaming down his face, a sight I hadn’t witnessed since Grandpa died. I just stood there, watching, a lump forming in my throat so large I thought I might choke. It felt like a dream, one I was terrified to wake from.
The reunion was a whirlwind of tears and hushed voices. He looked around the familiar living room, his gaze lingering on old photographs, on the chipped mantlepiece. He offered small, tired smiles. He said he was okay, just needed time. He said he’d been through a lot. He didn’t elaborate. My heart swelled, a mixture of joy and a fierce protectiveness. We had him back. That’s all that mattered.
A shocked bride | Source: Midjourney
But as the days bled into a week, then two, a subtle unease began to settle in my stomach. He was home, but he wasn’t home. He rarely left his room, often only coming out for meals, and even then, he ate little. He flinched at loud noises, sometimes jumped if you touched him unexpectedly. His eyes, once so bright and full of mischief, were now haunted, distant. They darted around the room constantly, like he was looking for an exit, or perhaps a threat. Was this what ten years of… whatever he’d been through… did to a person?
He never spoke about where he’d been. Not really. When Mom asked, gently, lovingly, he’d just shake his head, his jaw tight. “It’s a blur,” he’d say. “I don’t remember much.” Or, “I just… couldn’t come home.” He’d changed the subject, always, with an almost practiced ease. It felt like a wall, solid and unyielding, stood between him and us. Between him and me.
I missed my brother. Not the man who sat across from me at the dinner table, a stranger wearing his face, but the one who’d taught me how to ride a bike, who’d defended me from bullies, who’d shared all his secrets. I tried to reach him. I brought out old photo albums, talked about our childhood memories. He’d nod, sometimes even manage a weak smile, but his eyes remained empty. And then there was Dad.
An upset bride | Source: Midjourney
Dad was overjoyed, of course. But there was a strange tension between them. My brother wouldn’t meet Dad’s gaze for more than a second. Dad, usually so boisterous, was subdued around him, almost… careful. One evening, I walked into the kitchen to find them standing in strained silence. Dad had a hand on my brother’s shoulder, and my brother was subtly, almost imperceptibly, leaning away. Dad pulled his hand back quickly, as if burned. A chilling shiver ran down my spine. What was that?
The feeling intensified. I started watching. Really watching. My brother never answered his phone. He didn’t seem to own one, or want one. He never went out. He was always in the house, always near a window, staring out. And then I noticed the scars. Faint, thin lines on his wrists, barely visible under his sleeves. They weren’t from a fall. They looked… old. And deliberate.
One night, I couldn’t sleep. I crept out of my room, drawn by a faint sound from the living room. It was Dad. He was on the phone, his voice a low, urgent murmur. I couldn’t make out all the words, but snippets pierced the quiet: “…he can’t know… everything we did… keep him safe… for good this time.” My blood ran cold. What was he talking about? My heart hammered against my ribs. I retreated before he saw me.
Close-up shot of a microphone | Source: Pexels
The next morning, I found it. Tucked deep inside his old guitar case, where he used to hide things from us. A small, crumpled piece of paper. It wasn’t a note he’d left when he disappeared. It was different. A drawing. A crude, child-like sketch of our house. But on the back, scrawled in faded ink, barely legible, were only three words. Three words that shattered my world.
“HE LOCKED ME.”
My stomach dropped to my feet. HE LOCKED ME. Who? Where? A cold, dreadful certainty began to form, tightening its icy grip around my heart. I remembered the strained silence between them, the averted gazes, Dad’s hushed phone call. The way my brother seemed to look for an escape. The flinching. The scars.
It all clicked into place with a horrifying finality. He didn’t run away. He was never ‘lost’. He was hidden. By someone who knew him better than anyone, someone he trusted. Someone who had the means and the motive to keep a terrible secret buried.
A wedding cake | Source: Pexels
I looked at my brother, sitting silently in the living room, staring out the window, a prisoner in his own home even now. Then I looked at Dad, coming in with a cup of tea, a forced smile on his face. My vision blurred. Dad didn’t just miss him. Dad knew. Knew where he was, what he was going through. He was complicit. Or worse.
MY OWN FATHER. The man who had sat at the head of our table, the picture of grief, mourning a son he had, in fact, LOCKED AWAY. The tears streamed down my face, hot and furious, not for my brother’s return, but for the life stolen, for the unbearable lie, for the monster who walked among us. I looked at my brother again, his back to me, and whispered, “WHY, Dad? WHAT DID HE SEE? WHAT DID HE KNOW?”
And then I saw it. A faint mark on the window frame, just above his head. A tiny, almost invisible scratch. I’d seen it before, years ago, when he was just a kid. He’d told me it was a tally mark. He was counting down the days until he could finally tell me his secret. But he never did. He disappeared before he could.
A depressed man sitting alone with a glass of drink | Source: Pexels
And now, as I looked at the scratch, I saw it wasn’t just one mark. There were dozens. Hundreds. A decade of desperate tally marks, etched into the frame of his old bedroom window. Not from some faraway captivity.
He was never gone. HE WAS HELD. Not miles away. Right here. ALL ALONG. In the room next to mine. MY BROTHER WAS HELD CAPTIVE IN OUR OWN HOME FOR TEN YEARS, AND MY FATHER WAS THE JAILER.
