by Lawrence Buentello
Powell studied the white frame house from the dirt road.
The old man sitting in a chair on the porch, tall, willowy and weathered by a life in the Texas heat, occasionally glanced at him over his newspaper, but made no effort to investigate the stranger watching him. The car and the road were silent; so silent that the only sounds Powell heard were his own breathing, the whispering of the newspaper as the old man turned its pages, and the faint noise of laughter from within the house. Youthful laughter, children’s laughter.
Something seemed incongruous between the old man and his home.
He’d expected to see a nice white frame house down the road from the one belonging to his great uncle, occupied by a genial octogenarian.
But the house was in shambles—windows were cracked, the white paint was peeled and fluttering, boards were broken and missing, and the roof was spotted with the empty spaces where shingles had long since vanished. And the old man sitting on the porch seemed anything but genial.
Powell pulled his hands through the perspiration in his hair and wondered what, if anything, he should do.
He waited another few minutes before stepping out of the car.
***
After Ray Powell’s mother and father died he lived for a few months with his great aunt and uncle in their house in the country. He didn’t remember much about that time—he was only four years-old, and his perceptions were clouded by the loss of his parents—but he did remember that there was an old man who lived in the house down the road. His great aunt Myra told him to never go to the old man’s house because he wasn’t a good man. Powell accepted this wisdom as a warning that the man didn’t like children and might punish them if they wandered onto his property. From time to time his great uncle Alex sat on the front porch of the house and stared down the road, as if expecting some apparition.
But Myra and Alex were too old to care for a young boy. He recognized their limitations in the way they moved around the house, as if time had slowed for them and every motion required excessive effort. He remembered them fondly, though: Myra would fry chicken for Sunday dinner, and Alex would let him whittle on a piece of oak with a small carving knife. But they were older people, and sent him away to live with a foster family. After that, he never saw his great aunt and uncle again.
A few days after his twenty-fifth birthday he received a letter from an attorney explaining that Alex and Myra had recently died, and that Ray Powell was the only person named in their will. If Powell so chose, he could claim any property within the house and keep the house if he maintained payment of the county taxes. If he didn’t want the house he could arrange to sell it or deed it to the county.
He felt more than guilty about the inheritance. He never kept in touch with the old couple. He’d had no living grandparents, and for that brief time they were as loving as any grandparents could be. He wanted to reach out to them now, to thank them for their kindness and judgment in sending him to live with a younger family. At the time he only hated them for sending him away, but now he was thankful.
After requesting a few days of leave from his job, Powell drove down to the country to examine a house he could barely remember, and possibly find some link to a past he knew only through incomplete memories.
***
“Hello, sir.”
The old man folded his paper and stared at Powell. The shade of the verandah provided little relief from the heat. Powell tried his best to be polite, but something in the man’s expression disturbed him. A severity lay in the brown landscape of wrinkles that crossed the man’s face; his lips were an emotionless crescent. He studied Powell with the surety of a hog farmer studying swine for market.
The man made no response, so Powell cleared his throat and continued.
“I’m Ray Powell,” he said, trying his best to maintain a smile. “I used to live in the house down the road with Myra and Alex Jensen. They were my great aunt and uncle.”
The old man folded his hands and laid them on the paper in his lap.
Then, after what seemed like an interminable length of time, he said, “I knew them.”
Despite the old man’s voice being as deep and rough as a mountain grave, Powell was relieved he’d finally spoken.
“They died recently,” he said, “Or maybe you already knew that. They left their house to me. That’s why I’m here.”
“Sometimes dying is a mercy.”
Powell didn’t know how to interpret the remark. He began to wonder if the old man wasn’t a bit senile—living in so dilapidated a house didn’t say much for his mental state. Still, Powell heard an occasional voice, an infrequent laugh echoing from within the house and suspected the man was living with his family.
“They died a month ago last Saturday. In an accident, according to the letter I received from their lawyer.”
“Everybody dies eventually,” the man said. “You’ll die, too, one day.”
“Did you know them?”
“They were good people, some say. I’ve never seen any good people, really good people. Understanding people. They’re all afraid to die.”
The old man leaned forward slightly, though close enough to cause the muscles to tighten across Powell’s back.
“You don’t want to die, either, do you?”
“I don’t really think about it much,” Powell said. He realized he wasn’t going to get much information from the old man, but still, he was the nearest neighbor for miles. Surely he knew something about them, despite his great aunt and uncle’s misgivings.
He asked, “Do you have family?”
“Family?”
“The people living with you. Your family.”
The old man snorted, exposing a row of decayed upper teeth. “I don’t have any family.”
“What about the people in the house?”
“There’s no one in the house.”
“I heard voices—”
“I live alone,” the man said. “No one else lives here.”
Powell listened carefully, but now he couldn’t hear any voices, or laughter.
“I thought I heard children.”
“There are no children here.”
“But—”
The old man freed his hands and unfolded his paper. He said, from behind the headlines facing Powell, “Go about your business, son. There’s nothing here for you.”
Powell stared bewilderedly at the newspaper for a moment. The man was through talking to him, that much was certain. But what about the laughter? A television, perhaps?
Powell walked down the steps and back to his car.
The old man had to be senile or just plain crazy. In either case, he felt the warning given by his great aunt hadn’t been without merit.
***
The place was as he remembered; a white country frame house, white pillars supporting the slanted porch roof above a modest deck adorned with a weathered porch swing. The grass was overgrown, but the house itself was in good condition, as if someone still lived behind the door, swept the leaves from the steps and washed the dust from the windows.
Powell entered the stifling heat of the living room. The electricity had been cut off, so he opened as many windows as possible. Any illusion of someone living in the house was immediately destroyed. He cursed himself for being so short-sighted—he hadn’t even brought a flashlight. The gas and water were still working, so at least he wouldn’t have to find a motel. That is, if he could stand the heat. He couldn’t remember it bothering him when he was living there as a child, though children always seemed immune to such things. He waited on the porch swing until the air circulated well enough through the house, then he slowly went from room to room, opening the curtains for light, and took an accounting of his great aunt and uncle’s property.
Everything was perfectly in place. Clothes were hung in the closets, shoes lined up carefully below. The beds were made neatly, and the dishes and pots were settled in their cabinets. He had no use for these domestic items, but he was certain Myra and Alex wouldn’t mind if he gave them to charity. Powell was searching for something personal, something to explain their lives as a good biography might explain a life that was briefly touched but never embraced. He found an empty box in the kitchen and slowly collected any interesting items, a stray photograph, a scrapbook left in the china cabinet, letters bundled and balanced on a closet shelf. After he examined every drawer and shelf, his chin dripping sweat and his clothes clinging to his skin, he carried the box to the porch swing and began sifting through the objects as the breeze slowly dried his face and made his clothes more bearable.
He found a photograph of his great uncle sitting on the porch with a little boy sitting on the step below him. The photograph was taken by his great aunt; he remembered that they had a terrible time keeping him still long enough to capture the image. His great uncle was balding and thin, his gingham shirt hanging from his shoulders like the sail of a ship hanging from a mast. The little boy was staring brightly, as if for one brief moment he’d discovered some simple, happy truth of life.
He remembered more and more of the past as he looked through the photographs, and he even found a picture of his mother and father. He cried when he found it, and felt foolish that a picture taken so long ago could still make him feel a sense of loss. He placed these two pictures in his shirt pocket. The other photographs were of nameless people, men, women and children unknown to him. He had little knowledge of his own family. Who were they? There were no legends on the front or back. Would he ever know their names?
The letters were written to Myra, mostly from friends. He read for an hour before finding the copy of the letter she’d written to the county—the one asking for a case worker to come and speak to them about finding a home for their great nephew. Later, he found an unposted letter written to Powell’s mother—a letter written after she’d died, asking her forgiveness for sending her son to a foster family. Powell had difficulty reading his great aunt’s apology, her grieving, her sorrow that they could never raise him the way he should be raised. Though one line of the letter seemed a little curious: You know we would keep him if it was safe to do so, but we’re just too old to protect him. From what? he thought. The heat? The boredom? The stigma of being an orphan? He folded the letter and slid that, too, into his pocket. He thought, It’s all right, Aunt Myra, the people you sent me to were good people, and I think of them as my mother and father, too. You didn’t have to grieve. I’m just sorry we never got the chance to say these things to each other.
At twilight, Powell put everything back into the box and placed it on the coffee table in the living room. He closed all the screens and washed his face before he lost the light. Then he lay down on the bed he used to sleep in when he was four years-old and waited for the cool night breeze to lull him to sleep.
***
During the night he woke to the sound of creaking in the house.
After a few minutes he rose in the darkness and groped through the house like a blind man in a maze. He couldn’t see anything in the flashes of moonlight that caught the glass and metal in the rooms. He stumbled onto the porch and stared down the road. His car was unmolested. The trees beyond the road rustled softly.
He stood for a moment looking down the road toward the old man’s house. He’s not a good man, he remembered his great aunt saying.
Then, certain he was frightening himself without good reason, he felt his way to his room and fell back asleep.
***
In the morning he decided to visit their graves.
But he couldn’t find any record of their burial in their papers, no burial insurance, no provisions, so he shut the windows and locked the house before driving into town.
Powell spent a long, hot day arguing with the people at the county courthouse and the people at the mortuary and the priest at the church and anyone else he could think of to ask—yes, everyone knew that Myra and Alex Jensen were dead but didn’t know where they were buried. The people at the mortuary could only tell him that they were interred on private property, but only the director was at liberty to tell him the location, and he wasn’t available. The people at the courthouse produced a death certificate, but the doctor who signed it wasn’t in town—he covered three counties and no one could raise him on the telephone, which wasn’t unusual, given the lack of cell phone reception in the area. And none of the local cemeteries had them listed.
Powell called the lawyer who’d sent him the letter. The lawyer said, yes, they were dead, the doctor sent over the papers. No, he hadn’t actually seen the bodies. No, he didn’t go to the funeral. No, he didn’t know the doctor personally but all the proper papers had been filed at the courthouse.
Powell went back to the courthouse and asked for a copy of the death certificate. He looked at the doctor’s illegible signature and then at the witness’s signature. Who is Joe Bonner? Powell asked. He was told that Bonner was the man who lived down the road from Alex and Myra. At first this seemed odd, but after thinking a moment he decided it was really logical. The old man was their closest neighbor. He asked, almost as an after-thought, does anyone else live with him? As far as anyone knew, he lived alone.
The clerk suggested he wait until they located the doctor, but Powell was tired and more than a little frustrated. He left his cell phone number with the clerk and left to buy some supplies, a flashlight, some bottled water and dry food, before driving back to the country. Since the deed still hadn’t been assigned to him yet, he saw no reason to try to convince the utility people to turn the electricity back on. He told himself to remain patient, though, that in time he would find the answers.
***
On the drive back from town Powell stopped in front of Bonner’s house.
He didn’t see the old man on the porch or around the property, so he walked up to the front door and knocked. No one answered. He waited and listened, and thought he heard someone moving around inside, but couldn’t be certain.
He knocked on the door repeatedly until he was convinced no one was home.
He stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house. The windows on the first story were a good six feet above the ground, making it impossible to see anything through them. Around the back of the house a set of cracked concrete steps rose up to the bottom of a closed kitchen door. He walked up the steps and knocked, but again no one answered. He finished circumnavigating the house and climbed the porch again.
Windows were set on either side of the door, but they were locked down and heavy curtains blocked out the sunlight. He bent in front of one of them and tried to peer through, but saw nothing. He sighed and stood facing the road.
Then he heard the laughter again.
He spun around as if to catch the sound hovering in the air before him, but all he saw was the screen door. He definitely heard laughter, children’s laughter—high and sweet and rumbling from under-developed vocal cords. One voice, he thought, then two—perhaps more. But it was so faint, like the sounds in a dream.
“Hello?” he said. “Is anyone inside?”
He knocked heavily on the side of the door.
“Hello? I need to speak to you.”
He heard laughter for another minute, and then silence.
He continued knocking, but got no response.
Powell wanted to wait in the old man’s chair until someone came, or until someone from inside decided to finally open the door. But it was getting late, and he was suddenly afraid; not just of being alone in the country or hearing laughter from children who enjoyed playing games with him—he felt a silly, supernatural fear that made him curse his own susceptibility.
He left the porch and drove down the road.
***
When he arrived at his great uncle’s house he found that all the windows had been opened.
He pulled a crow bar from the trunk of his car before walking up the steps. The door was locked. He searched every room with the metal bar angled over his shoulder just in case he had to swing it down on someone’s head. But the house was empty. The back door was locked and none of the screens had their latches removed. He reasoned that if no one was in the house, then someone had unlocked the front door, opened all the windows and then locked the door again as they left. But who else had a key?
He searched the house one more time, making a careful circuit so no one could double back behind him. He was alone.
Powell sat on the sofa, breathing heavily in the heat.
He stared at the box sitting on the coffee table. He thought some distant neighbor, someone from town they knew, must have come over. Why? Were they keeping the place clean? Did they know Powell was visiting? Why did they open the windows?
He pulled the box onto his lap to see if anything was missing.
That’s when he found the small piece of wood sitting on top of the photographs and letters, a piece of oak about six inches long rolled in white paper and tied with string.
Powell pulled off the string and unrolled the paper. The wood was smooth and worn with the oil rubbed from sweaty palms. He flattened the paper and read the writing on the reverse side: Whittled by Raymond Powell, age four.
***
He lay awake most of the night listening to the owls and the crickets, the underbrush rustling in the wind, the swaying trees. He listened and he waited, but he knew he wasn’t going to hear what he was waiting to hear—the laughter of children from an old, dead house, and the footsteps of a specter opening windows and placing objects into boxes for him to discover. Eventually he grew drowsy and fell asleep—
His dream seemed all too real—he saw himself moving through the tall grass of the fields, the freshly whittled piece of wood in his hand, toward an old house with white walls and high windows. He’d walked down the road by himself, even though his great aunt had told him to stay off of it. He’d heard the children’s voices, laughing, playing, singing to one another, and he wanted to know where they came from. He lived with his great aunt and uncle, but they were grown people, and he was lonely for other children to play with. He walked through the grass and onto the porch of the house and stood before the screen door. The front door was opened behind it, but he couldn’t see inside the house through the shadows. He heard the children’s laughter and smiled, because he knew he would finally find someone to play with. But then he heard a voice, a deep, resonating voice from inside the room. Do you want to come inside, Ray? Do you want to come inside and play with the children? He wanted that very much, but something about the voice frightened him. He didn’t move. Then he saw the silhouette of a tall man moving toward the door, and the voice asked him over and over if he wanted to come inside. He began to cry, dropped the piece of wood and ran down the steps. Come back, Ray, the voice said, come back and play with the others. But he was running as fast as he could down the road, back to his uncle’s house, where he would tell him about the man and the children, and about how frightened he was of the voice behind the door—
Powell woke from the dream.
The darkness fell over him like a shroud, smothering him, overwhelming him. He got up out of bed and stood with his back pressed against the wall, trying to find something solid to lean against, trying to find something real to grasp. He wanted to hold his great aunt and uncle, he wanted to smell the sweat of his uncle’s shirt, the perfume of his aunt’s dress. He wanted to sit with his uncle on the steps of the porch while his aunt patiently waited with the camera to take their picture. He wanted to know where they had gone into death, into a process of aging that broke them down bone by bone until the only thing left was a faded memory.
He eventually lay back down. The images seemed so real to him, as if he’d pulled them from long suppressed memories. But surely it was only a dream, influenced by the circumstances of the previous two days. Still, the feeling he remembered as the man approached the door was the unforgettable sensation of approaching death—
He closed his eyes again, but slept fitfully.
***
The next morning, he drove to the old man’s house.
Powell found him sitting in the chair on the porch reading his paper, a cigarette in his lips.
Powell waited in the car, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
By the time he finally walked up the steps most of the fear he’d felt the previous night had melted into an unexplainable sorrow, a child-like emptiness.
“Mr. Bonner?”
The old man folded his paper.
“You know my name,” Bonner said. He puffed at his cigarette before clamping it in his fingers. “That’s no matter. What do you want now?”
“I saw your signature on the death certificate.”
The old man exhaled a plume of smoke.
“Whose?”
“You know who I’m talking about. First, I’d like to know how they died. And then I’d like to know where they’re buried.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes, I do.” Powell felt a heaviness in his stomach. “You knew them for years. I’d like you to tell me about them.”
“Their business was none of my business. Just like my business is none of yours.”
Powell wanted to reach out and shake the truth from him, but he was still uneasy. The feeling was uncomfortable, as if something powerful was standing behind him watching.
He said, “I guess they were right about you. They said you weren’t a good man, and I can see why. You’d rather play games with me than give me a straight answer. I’m a blood relative and I deserve some answers.”
The old man stared at him coldly. He wished he’d never looked into the man’s face; it was the face of someone pulled by chains every day into fire and every night released into the air. It was the face of a man who had no need to answer every frivolous question asked of him in the relentless Texas heat. It was the face of a man who had left his humanity long ago and was only passing the years in a body that refused to succumb to decay.
Powell said, “I need to know where they’re buried, and who opened the windows to the house, and who left this piece of wood in the box.”
He pulled the piece of oak from his hip pocket and held it in front of the old man. Bonner eyed it briefly, then stared at Powell again.
“You’re lying to yourself,” the old man said. “You don’t want to know how they died or where they’re buried. You don’t want to know anything about them. You don’t want to know the truth.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the living, boy. I’m talking about all the things a man puts in his head and claims to be real when they’re really only his own thoughts. A man starts to believe all the ghosts in his head are real and he can touch them. That’s what was wrong with your great aunt and uncle.”
“I’m not imagining these things. Someone opened windows that I closed before I left for town. Someone also left this piece of wood for me to find.”
Powell felt his cheeks flush, his forehead dripping sweat. He was angry, and almost certain something terrible was going to happen. The old man calmly pulled on his cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke and stared at him.
“I buried them,” Bonner said. “In the field behind my house.”
Powell shook his head.
“You’re lying.”
“That’s what they asked me to do.”
“I don’t believe you. They were pious people, they’d never have wanted to be buried that way.”
“You knew what they wanted?” The old man spat onto the porch. Then he stabbed out his cigarette on the wooden arm of the chair. “You don’t know anything. You lived here for only a few months when you were a boy. You don’t remember a damned thing. I knew them for fifty years.”
Powell didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“The windows and the wood with the note—”
“I opened the windows. I left the wood.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hot,” the old man said. “Because it’s hot and you’re a fool for leaving the windows shut.”
Powell wiped absently at the perspiration on his face.
“Where did you get a key to their house?”
“They gave it to me. They were old and they wanted someone to check on them now and then.”
“And the wood?”
“You gave it to me all those years ago. I thought you’d like it back.”
Powell didn’t say a word when the old man handed him the key to his great uncle’s house. He couldn’t argue with the logic of a man who so clearly knew the shape of reality better than him. He stood on the porch not knowing whether to laugh, cry or apologize. Something terrible had happened. Reality had settled on the earth before him and left no doubt that he was a stranger in these people’s lives.
He was going to leave; he was going to drive back, close the house and arrange for a real estate agent to sell it for him—he was going to gather his keepsakes, drive back to the city and forget about the country and his great aunt and uncle. But there were still some questions he wanted answered.
“How did they die?” he asked.
“They gassed themselves to death.”
Powell almost laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Did you read the death certificate? It was an accidental death. They left the gas on and asphyxiated. Sometimes old people make mistakes.”
“But why are they buried on your land?”
“You want to love them in your memories, don’t you? Don’t ask questions you really don’t want answered.”
“I want to know.”
The old man smiled with rotten teeth. Powell almost regretted pressing him. The sense of foreboding he felt while holding the man’s gaze challenged every nerve in his body.
“Because of their children.”
“Their children? They never had any children.”
“Yes, they did. A boy and a girl. But they disappeared a long time ago. They weren’t right after that. They had wild fantasies about what happened to them. They were crazy with grief, but they started accusing people. They accused me, too. The sheriff investigated their children’s disappearance, of course, he came to my house, searched every room, he searched the fields, he searched everywhere. They probably just wandered off into the wilderness and died. This country is not a good place to get lost in. But your great aunt and uncle thought it was something else. So they made me promise to bury them in the field behind my house when they died so they could be close to their son and daughter.”
The story unnerved Powell; he didn’t know how to react to it, whether as a lie or some frightening truth.
“I don’t believe you.”
The old man lost his smile. “Believe what you please. Believe the way they died was an accident. Believe they weren’t crazy. Or maybe you should believe you were damn lucky to get away from them before you disappeared, too.”
“They were good people, they weren’t crazy.”
“Believe what you please, it makes no difference to me.”
It was too much for Powell to believe. Still, what memories did he really have of his great aunt and uncle except those of a very young child? Could the old man’s story be true? But the letters he’d read were so cogent—and there was no mention of their own children. Why was there no evidence of their existence? Unless it was removed—
And then Powell thought of something else—
“What about the other children?” he asked.
The old man shook his head.
“What other children?”
“The ones I heard inside this house. And don’t tell me I was only imagining things. I know what I heard.”
“You hear only what you want to hear. I’m the only one who’s ever lived in this house.”
“Then show me.”
The old man did show him; he showed him the interior of a house that was itself barely hanging onto existence. The furniture was ancient, dusty, the floorboards warped, the walls faint with aged wallpaper. The air was laced with the scent of old age. It was an old house, a broken house, a house that would surrender its hold on the ground as soon as the old man was dead. But Powell didn’t see any children. He searched every room. He searched for signs, for books or shoes or toys, but found nothing. Once, and perhaps it was only his imagination playing games with the rising fear he felt, he thought he heard voices in another room, young voices or old, he couldn’t be sure, but when he moved between rooms he found nothing again. There were no children—there was only the pervasive feeling of something reaching out for him, something not quite strong enough to pull him into its influence. But that, too, was probably only his imagination.
When they were standing on the porch again Powell said, “Mr. Bonner, why did I give you the piece of wood?”
The old man sat in his chair and reached for his paper.
“That was a long time ago,” he said without looking up, “and I really don’t remember.”
“I’d still like to see their graves.”
“No.”
“I think I have a right—”
The old man stared at him coldly. “You’ve intruded on my time long enough.”
Powell didn’t have the nerve to press the issue. He didn’t even know what good it would serve visiting their graves—he only felt an ambiguous need to do so. But now Bonner was reading his newspaper again, ignoring him completely. He stood silently a moment before walking back to his car.
***
Powell should have been satisfied with the old man’s answers; he should have been, but he wasn’t.
He sat on the porch late into the evening staring at the trees and occasionally glancing up at the stars. He fought against his own dissatisfaction, but finally decided that he had to see their graves. Seeing their markers would be an act of finality, and he needed to feel as if his time there was done. He rose from his chair, retrieved his flashlight and walked to his car.
He was careful to turn off the headlights before nearing the place, and parked far enough away to prevent anyone from hearing the engine. He walked down the road toward the lightless house, measuring his steps in the darkness. He kept the flashlight off to keep anyone from seeing him, which made the journey into the field behind the house slow and unnerving. The grass whispered beneath his feet as he passed, and the wind called unintelligibly through the branches of the trees. When he was far enough from the house he switched on the flashlight, sweeping the beam across the field. This is lunacy, he thought, I’ll never be able to find their markers in the dark. But he continued traversing the field, moving the beam over one likely shadow or another, until he finally caught sight of something near the tree line.
He moved forward, focusing the beam on the objects, until he was certain they were headstones.
He knelt in front of the first one and shone the light across the chiseled inscription: Alexander Jenson—loving husband and father.
He swept the beam over the stone next to it: Myra June Jenson—loving wife and mother.
So it was true; they had been parents. But was the old man’s story about their children’s disappearance true as well?
A noise woke his senses. He turned, still on his knees, and saw a light in the kitchen window of the house. Had Bonner seen the light? Would the old man level a rifle at him if he found him trespassing on his land? He cut the beam and listened. At first he couldn’t tell if the sound was just the wind, or some bird calling from the trees. But then the sound changed into high, sweet laughter, and he realized he was hearing the laughter of children again. This is impossible, he told himself as he rose from the ground. He studied the glow from the window like a mariner appraising a faraway lighthouse. Then he began walking toward the light.
The laughter intensified as he approached, and a terrible fear rose in his body and trembled through his muscles. He’d searched the house himself, he’d seen the empty rooms. Where was the sound coming from? When he was standing by the steps leading to the kitchen door he raised the flashlight and turned on the beam. The back door was ajar. The laughter echoed through the crack, vibrating in his ears. He’s not a good man, his aunt had told him. Powell put one foot on the first step. I want to know, he thought, I want to see—
And then he heard another voice, as if his uncle were whispering in his ear—we’ll lose you, too—
He pulled his foot off the step and backed away. The door’s hinges creaked as it opened a little more—
He thought he heard a voice, a deep, rough voice whispering unintelligibly—no, no, I won’t go with you, I won’t—
He turned abruptly and began walking toward the road, then running through the darkness, as he had as a child in his dream. He dropped the flashlight in the grass but kept running until he fell inside his car. For a moment the laughter echoed in his thoughts, children’s laughter joined by a deeper voice, a different laughter, a darker laughter. Then the drone of the engine drowned out every other sound.
When he entered his great uncle’s house he locked all the doors and windows.
***
He laid the box into the trunk of his car.
Then he slipped into the driver’s seat and drove down the road.
He stopped, though, when he reached Bonner’s house, and sat staring at the vacant porch for a long time.
His dream still haunted him. The voice at the door, children’s laughter, dropping the piece of oak on the porch—were these part of a dream, or part of his memories? You hear only what you want to hear, the old man had said. Perhaps, too, he only remembered what he wanted to remember. Or sensing things—like those he imagined while walking through the old man’s house, that somewhere behind an ethereal curtain small faces were hiding, holding their breath, waiting to laugh when he left.
The events of the previous night were certainly just an illusion, created by anxiety and suggestibility. The laughter was probably only some distant memory, the cry of some strange bird he’d converted into laughter, certainly not human. For that, he had superstitious beliefs to blame. Bonner was just an old man, an unlikable old man who had, for personal reasons, complied with his great aunt and uncle’s strange request. Perhaps even an unlikable man can have sympathy for people he’s known for fifty years. It seemed to make sense.
Or perhaps he was no nearer the truth than when he first arrived.
He started the engine.
But as he was pulling away from the house Powell thought he saw, for just an instant, the small oval face of a child in one of the windows by the door. He turned away for just a second, and then looked quickly back, but the image was gone. He almost stopped the car, but then gripped the wheel and steadied himself. It must have been a trick of the sun, or his imagination.
The only memories of the place he now wanted were in the box in the trunk of his car.
The laughter of lost children was best left in the past.
About the Author
Lawrence Buentello lives in San Antonio, Texas, and is the author of several published short stories and poems. He is also the co-author of the short story collection Binary Tales and the novel Reproduction Rights.
©2009 Lawrence Buentello
