Misgivings: Day 17

Word Count: 102,010

Summary of Events:

Greyson was able to get out of the woods without being detected, but worried that someone might come to his door and confront him about suspicions he'd been in the woods at the very least, and so was somewhat surprised when no one came. Late the following afternoon a thunderstorm was approaching, and Greyson had to fight to close all the windows, which caused him to accidentally slam his hand again a couple times before he succeeded and settled down to watch the rain bucket down while lightning flashed. Once the worst of the storm had passed, Greyson started to doze, but was roused by the sound of a horn, which he discovered belonged to a minivan pulled up to the long, low building, which Mr. Fransbergen, Ayers, and Andy had left before the storm broke…

Excerpt of the Day:

He heard the noise that had jolted him out of his doze again, a honk that also proved someone was within the minivan, which Greyson observed critically. It was one of the most common makes and models of minivans in existence, and neither the newest nor oldest model still out on the roads. Greyson guessed it was probably between five and ten years old, but closer to five than ten.

It was a darker colour not all that far off from the colour of Greyson’s SUV, and looked to be a well-maintained vehicle, as it wasn’t terribly dirty, there were no dints, scratches, or scuffs on its bodywork. Overall, it was probably a decent van; if it were being sold as it was, it would probably be a good used vehicle, reliable, something a family that couldn’t necessarily afford a new vehicle would consider a worthwhile buy.

The van honked again twice after a short pause, and a couple more times after that before Greyson noticed three hunched figures hurrying toward the long, low building.

Mr. Fransbergen was in a long, green coat that looked like a proper raincoat, with a wide-brimmed hat on his head, while Ayers and Andy were both wearing smaller windbreaker types. Ayers had a hood over his head, Andy was just holding his arms up over his head.

They disappeared behind the van and the building for a few moments before the door started sliding open from the inside, soon revealing Andy to, as usual, be the one pushing it open.

Mr. Fransbergen appeared in the doorway and made a beckoning gesture toward the van, prompting it to reverse slightly before turning to drive inside.

Greyson didn’t recognise the license plate number, not that he had many license plate numbers memorised these days, unlike when he was a kid, back then he’d memorised quite a few, almost none of which were in use any longer, thus the fact that he could still remember them was really rather a useless bit of information.

Its license plate wasn’t the only thing the van had on the back end that was noteworthy, however. It also boasted a bumper sticker on the left-hand side of the bumper that struck Greyson as vaguely familiar, not that he was altogether sure exactly why.

There was, to the left end of the bumper sticker, a picture, and to the right end some sort of symbol that was predominantly red, but Greyson couldn’t make it out very well because of the fact that the background it was on was also red, as was the remainder of the sticker. White text in the middle looked to spell out a name, but Greyson couldn’t tell what it was.

Worse yet, before he could take up his cell phone and snap a picture that he could zoom in on and at least get a grainier idea of what the text said, Andy appeared and started drawing the door shut, which blocked the bumper sticker from Greyson’s view almost immediately, as well as hiding the rest of the van and all but a 30cm by the height of the door rectangle of darkness, leaving Greyson to wonder why that bumper sticker struck him as familiar without the ability to find some way to examine it more closely than he could examine a brief snapshot of an image in his mind.