Don, my best friend, and neighbor, was a detective who was somewhat successful. It has been two weeks since anyone has seen him. He was best at working on the smaller, nonviolent, crimes, as well as thefts. This made him quite a few enemies, perhaps that is why he went missing. That is what everyone else believes, at least publicly. Yet I, like other natives of this city, always have a gnawing in the back of my mind when someone disappears in winter, constantly reminding me of the Eye.
He was never a superstitious person, always believing in a rational reason for any unknowns. Any rumor had its explanation, and all magic was an illusion. Don wasn’t always that way, though. I remember when we were still boys, and he would cower at passing shadows, thinking that they might have been some strange creature. When walking, he would make sure to never step on a crack. This changed when his parents divorced, and he left Gullnain, with his dad, for Kansafornia. Yet, he would always come back in the summer.
I remember when we first met again, a year after the divorce. My older sister, Phel, told me that Don was coming back for the summer. She had overheard one of our mom’s conversations with Don’s mom, Nora. The next day I waited at the window for him. Finally, at about noon, I saw Nora walking with him. When I saw Don that day, the first thing that I noticed was how he no longer stared at the ground when walking. At that moment, I thought, ‘I didn’t know Don had an older brother.’ He was almost an entirely different person.
