Ray and Manny are cemetery workers, digging graves by hand today. The aftermath of yet another school shooting.
A short, short story that helps me deal with the horrors we inflict on one another in our country. I hope it speaks to you too.
Too Small for the Backhoe
Bob Gillen
Ray tossed a couple of shovels in the back of the dark green pickup while Manny lit up a smoke.
They both leaned back against the truck.
“We shouldn’t have to do this,” Ray said.
Manny inhaled deeply. “Someone should burn in hell for what they did.”
The two men gazed at their work. Four small grave sites lined up alongside the cemetery road. Small, not the usual three feet by eight feet. At each site lay panels of plywood. Some held neat stacks of sod. Others were piled high with loose dirt.
The graves were cut precisely, clean rectangular lines on all sides.
Ray turned to walk away. “Would you mind taking the truck back to the maintenance shed? I need to get out of here.”
“You got it. See you tomorrow, man.”
Ray came in the back door of his home, unlaced his dirt-caked work boots, left them at the door. His wife Rosa was setting out a couple of pizzas. She looked at his dirty clothes, his grim face. “You don’t look good.”
“Manny and I dug four graves today…by hand.”
“Oh. Too small for the backhoe.”
Ray nodded. He pulled up a chair at the table.
“Want coffee?”
“Stronger.”
Rosa reached up to a tall cabinet, pulled down a bottle of scotch. She poured him two fingers and handed him the glass.
She sat. “Children’s graves.”
Ray dipped his head, gazed into his glass.
“The ones from the school shooting?”
His eyes came up, held hers for a long moment.
“That was the next county over. Why your cemetery?”
Ray sipped his drink. “The guy who owns our cemetery donated the four plots…and the coffins.”
Their fourth grader, Gracie, stepped into the room. She kissed her dad. “You look tired, daddy.”
She reached for a slice of mushroom pizza.
“Your dad had to dig graves by hand today.”
“That means kids’ graves, right?”
Ray nodded, grabbed a pizza slice. “How was your day?”
Gracie shrugged. “Pretty boring. We had a sub today, and he repeated everything we did yesterday.”
After supper Gracie went to her room to do homework. Ray skipped his usual after-dinner shower, nestled next to Rosa on the sofa. They both stared at the TV, saw nothing. An hour later, Gracie came downstairs in her pajamas, her hair brushed back in a tight ponytail.
“Did you brush your teeth?” her mom asked.
“Yup.”
“Okay. Sleep well.”
Gracie opened her hand, offered Ray four lengths of red ribbon.
“What’s this?”
“Would you put one ribbon in each grave, please, daddy? Tomorrow, before the people get there for the services.”
Ray squinted. “I don’t know…”
“A ribbon for each kid. They can tie it around their arm when they get up to heaven. That way everybody up there will know, these kids were shot in their classroom. They’ll get treated special.”
A tear crawled down Ray’s cheek. “I can do that. I’ll carve a little groove in each hole and hide the ribbon there.”
Her mom said, “Gracie, that’s beautiful.”
Gracie turned to leave the room. She hesitated, turned back. She opened her palm to reveal another piece of red ribbon, crushed in her fist. She handed it to her dad.
This story marks #6 in the Jack and Diane series. The two met on a 50+ dating app a few months before this story occurs. I did not set out to create a series for these two characters, but they continue to live in my writing mind. Enjoy!
Jack Marin parked his Ford F-150 at the curb in front of Diane Somer’s house. The double garage door was open. Her Prius sedan sat in one bay. As Jack walked up, he realized the second car was an old dark blue Volvo, its hood open.
“Hello?” he called.
Diane’s head appeared from under the hood.
“Hi. Right on time.”
Jack nodded. “A very old Volvo.”
“A 142-S. Frank kept it for all these years.”
On the wall facing the Volvo was a faded wooden sign. Mi Volvo es muy mal.
Jack pointed to the sign.
“Frank got it from an abandoned garage somewhere up north, years back,” Diane said. “The old girl is fading, though. I only use it three times a year.”
“Why three?”
“Visits to the cemetery. His birthday, my birthday…and today, Margaret’s birthday.”
Diane ran a pair of battery cables from the Volvo to her Toyota.
“Can I help?” Jack asked.
“I got this.” She started the Toyota, hopped out and got in the Volvo. In a minute or so the Volvo kicked over. It coughed and sputtered, then smoothed out. She disconnected the cables and turned off her Toyota.
Ten minutes later Diane was driving them to the cemetery in the Volvo. She pulled up under a large tree. Opening the trunk, she took out two faded aluminum beach chairs and placed them at Frank’s grave. Then she set out a small cooler.
“Have a seat,” she said. “There’s water and soda in the cooler, and a few snacks.”
“I’ll wait,” Jack said. He sat.
“I usually stay for an hour or two,” Diane said. “If you get restless, feel free to walk around. And there’s a restroom in the office near the front gate.”
“Good to know.”
“Jack, I appreciate your being here with me.”
“Sure.”
“I sometimes sit in silence. Once in a while I will talk quietly to Frank. Today I’ll introduce you.”
Jack shifted in his chair.
Diane sat upright. She closed her eyes, arms resting in her lap. Jack leaned back, tried to relax. His own wife had been gone for two years now, but he had never once visited her cemetery.
Diane whispered. “Frank, I drove over in the Volvo today. She’s still running.” She gestured to Jack. “I brought a friend with me today. His name is Jack. You’d like him. We met on a fifty-plus dating app a couple of months ago. Not really dating. More like hanging out together. Developing a friendship.”
Diane drifted back to silence.
Jack looked around the cemetery. Many of the graves had flowers or flags. Several other visitors stood around graves, or sat in the grass. He got up quietly and walked to the road. He walked the perimeter of the cemetery. Near the top was a section for cremated remains, graced by a small fountain. He circled and walked down near the office building.
A white BMW SUV sat in the office parking lot. Jack walked past without a glance. As he went by, a woman’s voice called out. “Sir?”
Jack turned. A woman slipped out of the BMW. “May I ask you a question?”
Jack pointed to himself. “Me?”
The woman nodded. “I’ve been sitting here for a while. Are you with that woman up the road, the one with the old Volvo?”
Jack hesitated.
“Her name is Diane?”
Jack took a step back. Held his palms out. “I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t. But I was watching you sitting with her.” The woman pointed up the road. “That’s my mother.”
“Oh.”
A hawk screed in the distance. Jack looked up. A half dozen crows were chasing the hawk away from a stand of trees at the edge of the cemetery. The hawk flew calmly away while the crows squawked after it.
He turned his attention back to the woman.
“You must be Margaret.”
The woman leaned back against her car. “I’m guessing my mother told you about me.”
Jack shook his head. “I only know she’s troubled the two of you are not communicating.”
“Today is my birthday.”
“That’s why she’s here.”
Silence hung between them for a few moments.
“She didn’t tell me how sick my dad was…till he was gone.”
Jack nodded.
Margaret took a step toward Jack. “What has she told you about me?”
Jack held his palms up. “Please…don’t put me in the middle. I like your mother. I don’t want to be carrying a secret around. Reach out to her, but don’t pull me in. It’s none of my business.”
A tear slid down Margaret’s cheek. She looked out at Diane up in front of her dad’s grave. “I don’t know how to do this.”
Jack turned to walk away. Margaret slipped back into her car, fired up the engine, and drove off.
Damn! Don’t do this to me.
Jack walked back up to the grave site. Sat down again without a word.
Diane looked up at Jack. “You were talking to Margaret.”
Shit!
“Yeah. You saw her?”
“I know her car. I spotted it as soon as we got here.”
“This is awkward.”
“What did she say?”
Jack shook his head. “I told her I didn’t want to get in the middle of this.”
Diane stood. “We should get back.” She folded her chair and packed up the cooler.
Jack remained seated. “I don’t belong in the middle of this.”
“Jack, we’ve been seeing each other for several months now. Like it or not, you are in the middle of it. My estrangement from Margaret is part of my life. Jump in the pool, or walk away.”
“Ouch.”
She stood over him. “Your ouch is nothing compared to my pain. You can help me with this, or I will go back to dealing with it alone. Your choice.”
Jack stood, folded his chair, put it in the Volvo.
They drove back to the house in silence.
Diane nudged the Volvo back into the garage. “Want to come in for coffee?”
Jack shrugged. “This is getting complicated.”
“You’re in or you’re out…in, I hope.”
Jack smiled. “Got any cookies to go with the coffee?”
I find Edward Hopper’s paintings thought- provoking. This week I used Morning Sun as inspiration for a short story. Lori Hines finds freedom in the warmth of a morning sun.
Back in May of 2021, I had used another Hopper painting, A Day on the Cape, for inspiration. Here’s the link.
Please enjoy my stories. And comments are always welcome.
Morning Sun
Bob Gillen
The phone woke Lori Hines at just shy of two on a Sunday morning, the incoming number an Arizona area code she knew too well. “Ms. Hines, I regret to say that your mother passed a short time ago. She left us in her sleep. I’m so very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Lori replied.
The caller hesitated. “We will comply with your final wishes. An undertaker will cremate her remains…and dispose of the ashes as they deem appropriate.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And we will donate her belongings to a local thrift shop.”
Lori’s nod went unseen.
“Is there anything else you wish us to do? If not, I am again very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Lori cut off the call.
She opened the window curtains, staring out at the city’s dark. Only a month before, in their last phone call, her mother had told Lori, ‘If you can’t find it in your heart to visit me, don’t bother coming to my funeral.’
Well, mom, you got your wish.
Lori sat on her bed, her legs drawn up, the sounds of the nighttime city drifting in the window. Voices rose from the street as drinkers spilled out of a bar at closing time.
Several hours later the dawn’s faint light illuminated blocks-long brownstone buildings, facades punctuated by rows and rows of windows.
The dawn offered light, a promise of warmth.
Lori continued to sit on the bed as the warm morning sun inched over her feet, her legs, her arms. Her face. Lori felt her body ease with the heat. The blond hairs on her arms stood out in the sun. She picked at her bare fingernails. Licked her lips, dry without lipstick or balm. Rubbed her unshaven legs. Specks of blue toenail polish glinted in the sun.
The stink of her own sweat wafted up in the flood of sunlight.
Lori closed her eyes. A memory rose, like a sea monster rising out of the water, dripping menace and slime. She saw herself sitting on a wooden dock, drenched in sunlight reflected up from a still lake. Her feet dangled in the cool water. A canoe sat tied to the dock. In the canoe a picnic basket and two paddles. Tied to the front of the canoe a silver balloon. Happy 10th Birthday, it read.
In the memory Lori’s mother padded up behind her. “Your father will not be coming up from the city for your picnic…today…or ever. When we return from our vacation he will be gone.”
Lori had continued to face out over the lake. Her mother reached for the picnic basket. “Let me put this back in the cottage. Come up when you’re hungry.”
Lori had sat on the dock till her legs, her arms, her face were sunburned. At the cottage her mother rubbed lotion on the burned skin…and never again mentioned her father.
Ever.
For twenty years Lori and her mother had gone about their lives. Her father had not died. He simply had ceased to exist. Lori did not know if her parents had divorced. She had had no word about him. Living or dead, who knew?
And now, twenty years after her mother’s lakeside announcement, Lori sat again in the bright sun. Basked in it like a house cat that had prowled for hours seeking the one spot of sunlight on the carpet.
Outside, the city braced for another hot day. Noise slashed at her senses. Sirens, honking, yelling, grinding gears.
Come up when you’re hungry. Lori shifted off the bed, pulled on yesterday’s clothes, stepped into the kitchen. Her faithful French press charged her with fresh coffee.
At least a rut leads somewhere
Lori sipped the coffee, grabbed a Mason jar from the kitchen counter. Paper strips filled the jar, strips saved from fortune cookies after years of eating Chinese take-out. Every morning she pulled one to start her day. Today’s message, Only difference between a rut and a grave is depth.
She shrugged. At least a rut leads somewhere. The strip fluttered into the trash.
She went to the bedroom, returned with a bottle of red nail polish. She tugged her foot up onto the edge of the chair, began painting her toenails.
Her phone chirped with a spam call. She ignored it, then thumbed in a number.
“Hey, Maya. Just wanted to let you know my mother died last night…”
Lori listened to Maya’s response.
“Yeah, you’re right. It is a relief…Hey, are you up for a late lunch? My treat.”
Jack and Diane are back. Jack reaches out, tries his humor on a distraught Diane. This is the pair’s fifth appearance on shortfiction24. The characters continue to talk to me.
The Goat Movie
Bob Gillen
Tears ran down Diane Somers’s face as she sipped the last of her breakfast coffee. A single photo lay unframed on the kitchen table. A picture of her late husband, Frank, a huge grin spread across his face, poised to blow out birthday candles. Their daughter Margaret sat at his side. A memorable occasion, only six weeks before Frank’s deadly heart attack.
Diane pushed the photo aside. Three years gone. Frank…and Margaret. Frank dead, Margaret estranged from her mother.
Her phone chirped. A text from Jack Marin. Want to see a movie tonight?
Diane hesitated, then replied, What’s playing?
A text came back. A star-studded feature: Billy Idol, Billie Eilish, Billie Holiday, Billy Elliot and Billy Porter starring in the barnyard classic ‘What’s Got Your Goat’?
Diane stared at the phone. What the hell? She dialed Jack, rather than deal with typing on the phone.
“Hi,” Jack said. “The goat movie sound interesting?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Goats? Billy goats?”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Okay. Sorry, you caught me at a bad time.”
“Should I call later?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Did you stay up all night thinking of that?”
“Nope. I have a notebook filled with these. Been writing them for years. Did you ever watch the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson?”
“Some. He was not a favorite of mine.”
“Yeah…well I always loved his character Art Fern. Remember? Art Fern and the Tea Time Movie?”
“Vaguely.”
“Girl, your education has sadly been lacking.”
“A matter of opinion…boy.”
Jack snorted. “Okay, I’ll drop it for now…but you may hear more where that came from.”
“Save it, Jack.”
“Listen, if you’re not up to a movie, we could spend a few hours at the zoo. I have a friend who works there. I can get free tickets.”
“Probably not…not today, Jack.” Diane reached for a paper napkin as tears began to flow again.
Jack pushed on. “Yeah, okay. My friend’s a vet. Does a lot of work with the LA Zoo.”
A pause while Diane hesitated to react.
“He treats mostly the elephants. They seem prone to some kind of skin condition.”
“Jack, don’t.”
“Honest. His business card reads, Pachydermatologist.”
Diane moaned. “I see what you did there…and it hurt.”
“Hey, you throw enough on the wall, some of it will stick.”
Diane took a deep breath, dabbed at stray tears. “Was there a real reason you texted?”
“Actually…yeah. Thinking of you and reaching out.”
“Thanks, Jack. That’s nice.”
“How about dinner tonight? I’d offer to cook for you, but I know you’re skittish about moving too fast.”
“Dinner would be great. How about something light? Maybe a sandwich and salad somewhere.”
“Done. Can I pick you up…or would you rather meet there?”
“Let’s meet there. Wherever ‘there’ is.”
“How about that bistro place at the promenade? They make a good sandwich. Lots of outdoor seating too.”
“See you there at six.”
Diane put her phone down. Her gaze returned to Frank’s photo. You’ve been gone for three years now…please help me understand why Margaret refuses to talk to me. She won’t take any calls from me. It’s killing me, Frank. She’s all I have left.
She reached for a Post-It pad from the counter, pulled off a tab and stuck it over Margaret’s face on the photo. This comes off when you call me.
Jared Clark is a teacher, a man of his word. He promised a student he would drop off a gift she handed him for her long-distance boyfriend while Jared attended an out-of-town conference in New York City. It cost him.
Our Last Downhill Run
Bob Gillen
Jared Clark high-fived his buddy Larry. “It’s over!”
The two men huddled in a corner of the hotel lobby as conference participants streamed out of the ballroom.
“Yup. Continuing ed credits done, and on the school district’s dime.” Larry stuffed his course notes into his briefcase. “And now, a night out in New York before we fly home.”
Jared fumbled in his own briefcase.
Larry said, “A guy in my discussion group told me about a cool jazz club. Only a few blocks from here. We can walk it easy.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s called Reedy’s. All kinds of musicians jam there. This guy swears he saw Sonny Rollins sit in on one set last week.”
“Food?”
“Yeah. Steaks and burgers.”
“I’m in.” Jared cocked his head. “But I have to meet you there later.”
“The conference is over.” Larry brushed his hands together. “We’re free.”
“I have to drop something off. It’s about 20 minutes from here.”
Larry grinned. “Jared, get real. You can’t afford a New York hooker.”
Jared grew red in the face. “No, no. Seriously.”
“Spill,” Larry said.
“Okay. One of my students asked me to drop off a gift for some guy she met while skiing last winter break.” He pulled a small package out of his briefcase.
“You can’t be serious. Winter break was three months ago. We’re a thousand miles away from our school.”
Jared shrugged. “I said I would try.”
“They couldn’t mail it?”
“Personal touch…I guess.”
Larry lifted his chin. “Who asked you to do this?”
“Ashley Peters.”
“Yeah, she can be persistent.”
Jared repeated, “I said I’d try.”
“Does the guy know you’re coming?”
“Nope. I don’t have a number. Just an address.”
“You’re crazy, you know that, right?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want to let her down.”
Larry shrugged on his jacket. “I don’t want to go to Reedy’s alone. Come on, let’s hail a cab.”
“You don’t have to do this, Larry.”
“No worries. Let’s double-team this guy, then go party.”
They hustled out of the hotel lobby and grabbed a cab.
“Friday night, mister. Traffic will be bad.”
An hour later, the cab pulled up in front of a modest home on a quiet street. Larry pointed to the meter. “I said I’d ride with you, but the fare is on you.”
Jared nodded. He told the cab driver to wait. “I’ll only be a minute.”
A young man in jeans and a black hoodie answered the bell.
“Hi. I’m a teacher. My name is Jared. I’m looking for Wayne.”
The young man stared at Jared.
“Ashley Peters is a student of mine. She asked me to drop off a package for Wayne while I was in New York.”
Jared held out the package.
The young man didn’t move. “I’m Wayne.”
“Oh good. Then this is for you, and I’ll be on my way.”
Wayne did not extend his hand. “She broke up with me.”
“Wait, what?”
“She broke up with me, man. Yesterday. I got a text. She’s seeing another guy.”
Jared stood frozen, hand holding the package out.
The cab driver honked the horn.
You got played.
“I gotta go,” Jared said. “Do you want this?”
Wayne shook his head again. “No way. You got played…we both got played.”
He closed the door.
The horn honked again.
Jared climbed back in the cab. “Back to the hotel, please.”
“How did it go?” Larry asked.
Jared held out the package. “He didn’t want it. She broke up with him.”
“No way. You got played.”
“No shit. That’s what he just said.”
Larry grabbed the package, tore the tissue wrapping off to reveal a book. Magic on the Lifts. Inside, the inscription: I’ll never forget our last downhill run.
Larry laughed. “Okay, you tried. Let’s go party.”
Back at the hotel, Jared paid the driver.
“You need to send Ashley a delivery bill for the cab.”
“Right? Come on. The club is my treat!”
“Now you’re talking!”
Jared crumbled the tissue wrapping into a tight ball and tossed it in a trash can on the sidewalk.
“Should I return the book?” Jared asked. Larry shrugged.
Jared said, “I tried.” He flipped the book sideways under a passing crosstown bus.
A frustrated writer takes a night walk on the beach to make sense of his own story. Having fun with a mix of memory and imagination.
Skeletons in a Snowbank
Bob Gillen
Alden pushed his chair away from the table. The screen on his laptop read, Working Title: My Memoir.
On top of a manila folder next to the laptop sat a faded black and white photo, a picture of himself as a toddler standing on an icy sidewalk surrounded by towering snowbanks. Alden flipped the photo over. Written on the back in neat penmanship, “Young Alden, the Great Blizzard of 1947.”
His family had called him Young Alden, to distinguish him from his grandfather. And no one in the family dared call him or his grandfather Al.
Alden tossed the photo down, slammed the laptop closed, turned off the desk lamp.
“Shit,” he said to an empty room. “This manuscript is garbage.”
He grabbed a cold beer from the kitchen, pulled on an oversized hoodie and stepped out from his bungalow into the blackness of a damp night.
The sound of crashing surf drew him to the beach, where he turned into the wind and walked west. Mid May. No summer people yet. Another two weeks and the town would be crawling with them. He now prided himself on being a year-round resident, a retired would-be writer.
The chill wind prickled his face. Alden took a few steps away from the damp sand at the water’s edge and sat. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around his legs. The first swig of beer went down cold. He shivered.
Clouds obscured the moon and stars. The white crests of the breaking waves flashed out of the dark sea, only to disappear, one after another. The wind carried the rank smell of seaweed, the sweetness of seagrass, a hint of chimney smoke.
Alden’s mind drifted to the photo. He had a vivid memory of being dwarfed by the snowbanks on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, snowbanks no doubt monstrous because people had shoveled it in piles to clear the sidewalks.
A gust of wind sprayed sand over his shoes. Sand stuck to the neck of his beer bottle. He stood, dumped the remaining beer into the sand, hurled the bottle into the sea beyond the surf. Still got my arm, he thought.
“Sorry there’s no message in the bottle,” he said to the sea. “Only an empty container.” Empty, like my memoir.
No emotion
For the past three weeks Alden had sat at his laptop, six hours a day, seven days a week. If volume was any indicator, he had half a book on paper. No, he thought. Forty thousand words, but not a book. Only a jumble of isolated memories. There was no story there. No adventure. No journey. No lifetime of struggle and victory. No emotion.
Alden walked again, leaning into the wind. Jeez, I can’t make sense of the memoir. How will any reader give a shit?
Paris Catacombs
The darkness brought his mind back to a novel he had read last month. A story set in and around the catacombs of Paris. Miles of tunnels under Paris, walls lined with thousands of skeletons, many thousands of skulls and bones. He laughed aloud. I wonder if there were any skeletons in the snowbanks back in New York. Bodies buried in the snow, appearing after the thaw. A hand sticking out of the melting snow.
Alden stopped, turned his back to the wind. His mind raced. Snowbanks in my memory…skeletons in my imagination. Fuck the memoir. I’ll write stories triggered by my memories. Maybe readers would actually care about that.
He let the wind propel him back to the cottage. Back to the laptop. Back to create something a reader might actually read.
Haillie’s dreams of becoming a fearless firefighter take an early turn when she discovers the secret behind a hidden trap door.
What I’m Writing
This week I followed a writing exercise from Ray Bradbury. He calls it Nouns and Titles. He suggests making a list of words, then using those words to trigger a story idea. I started with “trap door” and here’s the story that resulted. I hope you enjoy it.
The Trap Door
Bob Gillen
The trap door lay flush with the wide-plank floor boards, hidden under an enormous oriental rug. Furniture anchored the rug around the perimeter of the room. The trap door would be almost impossible to find. Almost.
Haillie ran her toy firetruck back and forth in the center of the room. “Vroom, vroom.” She dreamed of the day she would be a firefighter, driving a powerful truck to an emergency, roaring down the streets with siren screaming and horn blaring. “Vroom, vroom.” I’m a brave firefighter, she imagined, climbing a ladder to save a child from a burning building.
“Haillie, can you keep the noise down? Please?” her mother pleaded from the kitchen. “I’m on an important call.”
Haillie cut the volume on her voice, continued pushing the firetruck across the rug. The toy truck hiccuped over a slight depression, a tiny blip under the plastic tires. She rolled the truck back and forth over the indentation. Weird, she thought. Never felt this before. She probed the tiny ridge with her finger, pressing hard to feel it. A few feet along the ridge, the indentation made a right angle. Haillie followed it, meeting two more right angles till she came back to the original spot.
She peered into the kitchen. Her mother was blabbing away on her phone.
Haillie lifted the front two legs of an easy chair from one edge of the rug, pulled the rug away, and peeled it back to where she had felt the indentation. She came upon a brass ring, set flush into what looked like a door or lid of some sort. It was the same wood as the floor, with two edges lined up along the floorboard seams. Only the other two sides intersected the floor seams.
Again, Haillie peered toward the kitchen. Her mom had retreated to the back porch to continue her conversation.
Haillie lifted the ring on the trap door. It came up easily, without a squeak. She tugged at the ring. The trap door rose a few inches above the floor. A chill rush of air puffed out from the opening. A dark smell, musty, old. Haillie pried the door up further. She spied a ladder leading down into a dark void.
I am a firefighter, she told herself. I go where I need to go, to rescue people in danger. Setting her feet on the ladder, Haillie lowered the trap door a few inches above her head, and shoved at the rug to push it away from the opening, enough to hide the door. She let the door close.
Credit: Pixy.org
Total darkness. Oh no. I need a flashlight. She peered down into the void. There was a sliver of light far down into the void. She thought to go back for a flashlight, but she heard footsteps above her.
“Haillie? Where are you?” Her mother’s voice. “I almost tripped on your toy truck…Oh dear, you moved the rug. Why do you always make it harder for me?”
Haillie heard the rug dragged, the chair lifted and set down again. Only one way to go now. Down.
Haillie descended into the dark, one rung at a time. Dust coated her hands as she grabbed each rung. She rubbed them on her jeans, one hand at a time. She looked up and could see nothing. The trap door was invisible in the dark.
“Someone is in trouble,” she said in a whisper. “I need to reach them.” She moved down and down.
Her left foot hit bottom. Hard bottom. Cement? Dirt? There was a faint glow of light here at the bottom. Coming from somewhere away from the ladder.
She wiped the last of the dust from her hands. Her nose wrinkled at the musty odor. She turned towards the light. The fire! They need me.
Haillie walked slowly, feeling her way with her feet, touching her fingertips to walls on either side of her. Must be a tunnel, she thought.
A tiny voice. You found me.
Haillie froze. Listened.
You found me.
She peered into the darkness. No one visible. No shape, no silhouette. Only a voice. She moved ahead a few steps.
Her right hand felt a break in the wall. An alcove of some sort.
Here I am.
Haillie jumped back. She could make out a dark shape in the alcove, lying prone. Not moving. She took a step toward it.
I’m here. Don’t be afraid.
Did I find someone in need? Now what?
Haillie extended her hand toward the shape. She touched something round, hard, dry.
That’s my head.
Haillie jumped back again.
Don’t be afraid. You came.
Haillie shook her head. What?
I’ve been waiting a long time. I kept count. More than twenty years.
Wait, what? A voice is talking to me but there’s no one there.
I’m here. Reach out your hand. Move it around.
Haillie hesitated, groped with her fingers. Two holes on top of the round object. Teeth lower down. Teeth?
Keep going, the voice said.
Haillie took a step forward, ran her hand further along, felt ribs, arm bones.
Are you a skeleton?
“Are you a skeleton?” she asked aloud.
I am now. I didn’t start out that way.
“You’ve been here twenty years? How did you get here?” Her voice echoed in the dark tunnel.
I was eight years old. I died from a fall. Off the old oak tree in the yard.
“But why are you in here?”
My father was afraid everyone would blame him. He always left me alone while he went to work.
“That’s crazy.”
He was scared. He put me in here, and told everyone I ran away. I don’t know if they believed him.
“Where is he now?”
No idea…He never came back.
“My mom bought the house a year ago. It’s just me and her. I don’t know who she bought it from.”
What’s your name?
“Haillie.”
I’m Molly. Hi.
“Hi, Molly.” Haillie looked up and down the tunnel. “What do we do now?”
I think you can go now. Tell people I’m here. Then I can move on.
“How do I get out of here?”
Follow the tunnel to the end. It opens into the woods behind a big rock, at the edge of the property.
“My mother is going to be so pissed at me for coming in here…She won’t like what I tell her.”
It’s the only way, Haillie. I can’t move on till they find me.
Haillie detected a quiver to Molly’s faint voice.
“I found you. Isn’t that enough?”
No. People need to know my story. The truth. I didn’t run away. My dad didn’t hurt me.
Haillie reached out, probing for Molly’s hand. She gripped the bones. Shuddered. “I’m afraid.”
If a skeleton could cry, Molly was weeping. Haillie felt it. Felt the sadness, the desperation.
Take my ring. On my right hand.
Haillie probed in the near darkness till she felt a plain band. She tugged at it.
“It’s stuck.”
Pull harder.
The ring came loose, along with a finger bone. Haillie shivered.
Take the bone, too. People will believe you.
“Molly, this is so weird.” Haillie rubbed the ring, slipped it on her own finger.
Keep the ring. It will be our secret. Show everyone the bone.
“I’ll try, Molly.” She touched Molly’s skull, stroked it for a moment.
I hear you when you run your firetruck on the floor above.
“You do?”
Sure. I hear you pretend you’re a brave firefighter. You’re saving me now.
Haillie stood tall. “Okay, Molly. I’ll do it for you.” She squeezed the bone tightly in her fist.
Thanks. When you come back, I won’t be here… I won’t forget you.
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