Whisper Down the Lane, Clay Chapman [best short books to read txt] 📗

name. Quietly at first. I try again, but there’s no tearing Tamara’s attention away from the fire. The flames have her undivided attention. She won’t let them go.

I grip her arms. The fireman releases his hold and her legs buckle. She’s free-falling through her own nightmare now. Nothing will ever be the same.

“Tamara,” I say again, louder. Squeezing her arms. Her eyes break away from the fire. She doesn’t recognize me. I’m just another stranger standing between her and her son.

“They won’t let me.” Her voice crumbles. “Won’t let me…”

“Tamara, please…”

“He’s in there. I have to…have to get him back.”

All at once, her muscles snap taut. She pulls out from my grip, suddenly seeing me for the first time. “What did you do?”

“Tamara, I didn’t. This wasn’t—”

“Get away from me.” Tamara turns and marches toward the embers of her house.

“Tamara!” I race after her, catching her before she walks into the fire. She would have climbed those melting steps if she could.

“I have to get him back.”

“Tamara, stop—”

As soon as I get my hands around her, pulling her away from the fire, she screams and starts digging her fingernails into my skin, clawing at me.

It takes two firefighters to pull her back. She nearly overpowers us all, her sheer determination to save her son filling her with adrenaline. But it’s too late.

“He’s still in there! He’s still in there! Please, someone, save my son my boy please…”

I let her go, watching as the firefighters drag Tamara away from the flames. Her voice carries. There’s no escaping it.

A group of onlookers stands at a safe distance. They gather together to watch the fire devour our house. These are our neighbors. But I don’t recognize them. Not anymore.

They want this. This is what they want to see.

What if…? The gnawing thoughts whisper. What if they had wanted Elijah all along?

In order to make mothers and fathers despair, they need a child. Someone innocent. To make the world weep.

This is all my fault. If I hadn’t come into their lives, if I hadn’t led them right to Elijah, none of this would have happened. He would still be alive.

Look at them, I think. The flames reflect in their obsidian eyes, like marbles. Doll’s eyes. They’re basking in the flames. Rejoicing. It won’t be long before they’ll be dancing, all of them locking arms and circling the blaze, their voices lifting higher, higher as they all sing. They’ll rip their clothes off and dance around the inferno, naked, their wrinkled bodies writhing.

The world is burning. The devil has won.

“Is this what you want?” I shout.

Everyone’s attention turns to me, snapping away from the fire.

“Is this what you’re after?” My legs give out and I find myself on the ground. My mouth opens to sob, but there’s nothing there. No sound. I’m empty. Completely empty.

Eli’s gone. The thought echoes through my head. Eli’s gone.

The devil has won.

My eyes settle upon a hand in front of me. A woman’s hand, palm facing the sky.

I look up to see Sandy’s mother reaching for me. She smiles warmly, like Mom once did.

“Time for a road trip.”

DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

 RICHARD: 2013

Elijah is fast asleep in the back seat of Miss Levin’s Honda Accord, completely lost to the world and all the chaos conjured up by his absence. He knows he’s not supposed to talk to strangers. Then again, Miss Levin isn’t exactly a stranger—is she? Not with Sandy at her side. There she is, too, fast asleep in the back seat, buckled in right beside him.

The car is parked a few blocks away, hidden within the shade of a paper birch. How long have they been asleep? How could the sirens not wake them? How could Elijah not hear his mother shrieking?

“Get in,” Miss Levin says.

“Fuck you,” I say, summoning my last iota of defiance.

“Get in, Sean.” She slides into the driver’s seat. The engine turns, humming to life. Her hands rest on the wheel, glaring at me through the passenger window.

I’m not letting her drive away with Elijah. I open the passenger door and climb in beside her.

Miss Levin pulls out a thermos from the footwell. There’s a chipped picture of Papa Smurf on its side. Most of the paint has faded, leaving behind a blue phantom. I had a thermos just like it when I was a kid. “Hi-C,” she answers before I ask. “Hope you like cherry. I couldn’t find orange.”

I turn to the back seat, taking in Eli, I notice his lips are stained a deep pink. So are Sandy’s. “No.”

“We’re not leaving until you drink,” Miss Levin says.

“I won’t.”

“If you don’t, you’ll never know what happened to your mother.”

“I know what happened.”

“Do you? I’m sure you’ve told yourself all kinds of things so you can sleep at night. No matter who it hurts…Everyone around you is nothing but collateral damage to your lies.”

She’s relying on my sense of curiosity to see this through. To understand.

Of course she’s right. I’ve come this far. Can’t stop now. I have to know. Have to see this through to the bitter end. She doesn’t need to put a gun to my head. She knows I’ll follow her.

We’re playing a game.

Simon says…drink.

I take a deep pull directly from the thermos. A flood of artificial flavoring spreads through my empty stomach, much too sweet. I haven’t had Hi-C since I was a kid.

“That’s not so bad, is it? Drink it up.” She’s treating me like a child. I notice a chalky undertaste on my tongue, a hidden bitterness lingering in the juice.

“Why burn down our house?”

“You think I did that?” She almost laughs. “Talk to your neighbors, not me.”

“I didn’t do anything. None of this—none of this is true. This—this isn’t—”

Isn’t me.

“Sounds familiar,” she says. “People will believe anything when they’re afraid. Especially when it’s their own children at risk. And when you put a face to their fear? Give it a name of someone they know? Someone from their own community, maybe? Well…that