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

This isn’t how it happened. Someone’s rewriting the past, revising the way I remember it. I can’t get my bearings. A searing pain slices through my neck when I turn to the back seat.

There I am.

I see Sean next to the gray boy. They’re clinging to each other, kicking their feet at the rising water. They’re screaming. The water laps at their feet. They can’t kick it away. Can’t stop the rising tide. The blackness fills their laps, swallowing their legs. They won’t let go of each other. Sean embraces the gray boy as the hungry river closes in. It’s going to swallow them whole if they don’t escape.

I try to fast-forward the VHS tape a bit in my mind. Try to remember what happens next.

How does this end? I can’t recall. It’s all black to me. My skull is throbbing. Cracked open. I feel my memories bleeding out and pouring into my eyes, stinging me. Blinding me.

I can’t remember how this story ends. It’s my story—I should know, but I can’t trace it.

“Dad,” Sean cries. “Daddy, please!”

But it’s not Sean.

Not me.

Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.

My brain clicks in just in time. It’s Eli.

Eli is in the back seat. I struggle to unbuckle my seatbelt and climb into the back. I fall into a lopsided bathtub. The cold water cuts through the fog, helping me focus.

“Hold on to me,” I manage to say as I try to unbuckle their belts. The gray boy—no, not a boy—Sandy, it’s Sandy—immediately levitates from her seat as soon as she’s free. Her arms flail about, unsure how to stay afloat. She never learned to swim. Didn’t her mother teach her?

There’s no handle for the window. Last time this happened, there was a handle. It’s gone. This window is controlled by a button. I press down and—

Nothing happens. I reach over to the other door and try that window.

Nothing.

The windshield. I have to slither back to the front seat. I can’t tell if the vehicle is leaning forward or backward. There’s nothing to orient my sense of direction. There’s no light. It’s all black outside the windows and now it’s seeping in, ready to swallow us all.

Mom’s head—

Jenna.

That’s Mom, isn’t it?

No, it’s Jenna.

Jenna’s head made impact with the windshield, fracturing the glass into a cobweb. I have to embed myself into the seat next to her, inches away from her limp body. Her arms are tangled in the steering wheel, neck bent.

I bring my legs up until my feet press against the cracked windshield and push as hard as I can. The windshield bulges, fracturing further under my heels, but it doesn’t break.

I have to kick. Each time my heels strike the glass, I feel a pang ring up the bones in my legs, like a tuning fork striking a hard surface. The pain reverberates through the rest of my body.

I have to keep kicking.

Harder.

Water finally begins to dribble through the cracks.

Harder.

I kick again.

And again.

Again.

The windshield folds open under my heels and swallows my feet. Glass digs into my ankles, sinking its fangs in. This fresh sensation sends a surge of pain through my body.

The car is alive. It’s going to eat me. Devour us all.

The river forces its way in. The sheer pressure of water forces open the glass until it shatters completely. A flood smashes against my chest, rushing inside and swallowing us.

“Breathe,” I shout through the surging water. “Breathe now—”

But it’s too late. There’s no air anymore. It’s all gone. Any trapped oxygen drifts off in these tiny pockets along the car’s ceiling, rolling toward the windshield and escaping.

Whatever breath is left in our lungs is all we have.

I spin around, trying to find Elijah and Sandy in the dark. Their bodies have been forced back by the rush of water, pushing them deeper into the car. I falter through the water, grabbing them both. I hold on to them, each tucked under an arm and pressed to my side, as I kick up—or down—through the windshield. Jagged teeth slice at my back. The glass rakes across my skin, opening fresh channels along my flesh, but I push harder.

I have to pull us from the mouth of this leviathan. All I want to do is scream from the stinging pain, but I know the water is waiting to come in, just like it had waited for my mother. It wants me to part my lips and give in.

Elijah and Sandy writhe about in my arms. I pray they have more air than I do.

Once we’re free from the car, I can’t figure which way is up. There’s a burning in my chest, the oxygen already dissolving from my lungs. There’s no more air. Nothing to breathe.

All I can do is kick…

Kick…

Kick…

The water darkens. Not from the lack of sunlight, but within my head. Shadows percolate in the corner of my eyes, eclipsing everything, until there’s nothing else to see.

It’s all going black.

I keep kicking. The surface has to be close. Has to be just on the other side of one last kick. Just one more…But I can’t see. Can’t feel anything other than the singe in my lungs. My throat. Everything within my chest feels like it’s on fire, while my skin is now pleasantly numb.

Where is the surface? Where is the air?

Where is…

I’m sorry, Eli. I brought this darkness with me, inside our home. I brought it straight to you. It’s always been in me, hiding. I never would have entered your life if I’d known. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, I swear. Believe me. Everything else is lies. Most of them mine.

There’s no hiding from this. Who I am. These shadows have always been behind me. No—not following me, but inside. I’ve always been the gray boy. An indefinable shape. An absence of light, hollow and featureless. I have nothing to call my own. I am nothing. No one.

I lied. I lied to you. Your mother. I lied even when I didn’t realize