My Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

my parents’ room.
    It was a few minutes before four in the morning.
    I had been gone for hours.
    *
    Some question how Mary Katherine could have delayed telling our parents that I had been taken. What could she have been thinking! It was the obvious thing to do!
    And yes, it might be obvious … if you are an adult and have the benefit of understanding the situation. And yes, it might be obvious if, at this moment, you don’t feel overwhelming fear.
    But Mary Katherine was a child who had just had the most traumatic experience of her life. She thought that her own bedroom, inside her house, with her parents and brothers sleeping all around her, her older sister at her side, was the safest place in the world that she could be. She knew that her father always locked the doors and windows before he went to bed. She knew they had a security system. Yet a stranger had overcome all of these safety measures and gotten into their house. Then he had found his way into their bedroom. How did he even know where they slept? Once inside their room, he had pulled her older sister from her bed! He had threatened to kill her. Threatened to kill their entire family. He was holding a long and terrifying knife! Her older sister had gone without fighting!
    How could any of this be?
    Was someone with him? Were other killers inside the house?
    It didn’t make any sense!
    The only thing she knew was that she feared for her life.
    And we have to keep in mind that she was just a little girl !
    Adults think differently. We are rational. And we now have the benefit of hindsight, knowing what really happened on that night. We know that Brian David Mitchell had already taken me from the house, that he could no longer threaten my little sister. We know my parents had not been killed or injured, that they were sleeping in their bed.
    But these things Mary Katherine didn’t know.
    Lying underneath her covers, she had to wonder: Was the bad man still in the house? Was he lurking in the hall? He had said that he would kill our entire family. Were they dead already? If she ran into our parents’ bedroom, what horrible thing might she find there? Had he killed other members of our family? Was she alone inside a house where everyone else was dead?
    It is impossible for us to appreciate the terrible fear she must have felt.
    We also should remember that she was hardly the first one to go into shock after having experienced an overwhelming crisis. It is common. There are even examples of men in combat who have frozen up in fear, unable to do the task that they were trained to do. Sometimes they shut down, losing their ability to function in almost every way; mentally, emotionally, physically. Which is why their training is so important. Chaos leads to panic. Panic leads to fear. Fear can be debilitating to the point where the mind and body may shut down. During these times of gut-wrenching panic, a soldier’s training and preparation is supposed to kick in to protect them.
    But Mary Katherine had not been prepared for such a life-and-death situation.
    She was just a little girl.
    *
    Having gathered her wits about her, Mary Katherine finally raced into our parents’ bedroom, running to my father’s side of the bed. She spoke but didn’t manage to wake him, so she moved to my mother’s side.
    “Elizabeth is gone,” she said in a quiet voice, her baby blanket still draped over her head. My mother opened her eyes. Mary Katherine had said it so softly, so matter-of-factly, that my mother didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t unusual for me to move into another room to sleep. Sometimes I would sleep downstairs on the couch or maybe on the floor in one of my brothers’ rooms. Surely they would find me there.
    Hearing their voices, my dad sat up on his side of the bed.
    “Elizabeth is gone,” Mary Katherine said again.
    Mother sat up now, her face growing concerned.
    “You won’t find her. A man came and took her.” She hesitated. “He had a gun,”