Free Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke Page B

were a
scorpion. “Do…do you have a cell phone I could borrow? I’ll pay you
for the calls if you like…I just need to check something…to…I just
need to make some calls.”
    “ Sure, sure,” the old man
said and fished a hopelessly outdated Nokia from his pants pocket.
He handed it over. “Say, are you sure you don’t need an ambulance
or something? You look like hell.”
    “ No, I’m fine, thanks,” Phil
said and cursed his trembling fingers as he tried to dial the
number.
    After a few rings, his ex-wife
answered, sounding annoyed at having been woken so
early.
    After that, he called Detective
Marsh.
    And finally Lori.
    None of them had ever heard of a boy
named Adam Pendleton.
    And Lori couldn’t wait to see him
again.
     
    * * *
     
    At home, he found the couch bare but
for a few traces of blood he was able to blame on the nasty cut on
his right palm he’d probably sustained when he’d broken the chair,
which still lay in pieces on the floor of the living room. He paced
like a maddened animal, afraid to believe it could be true and
still reeling from the hammering his mind at taken, not just
overnight, but in the months preceding it.
    He went to the kitchen and could not
restrain the laughter upon discovering his cupboards and fridge
once more stocked with food. And while all the meat had spoiled,
which went some way toward explaining the smell, it was infinitely
better than finding the shelves crammed with gjøk.
    In the bathroom, it took him five
minutes to bring his gaze up to the mirror, and when finally he met
his own gaze, he burst out laughing. He looked thin, gaunt, and
haunted, but his teeth were all present and accounted for, his hair
thick, if more than a little filthy.
    Next he hurried upstairs,
Lori’s voice still ringing beautifully in his ears: You were weird as hell after that car accident,
honey. You mean to tell me you don’t remember me coming to get you
at the hospital? And why the hell haven’t you been answering your
phone? Whose phone are you calling me from now?
    All the pictures on the walls upstairs
were normal. No boy to be seen anywhere, only people he knew and
had always known. He took a moment to run his fingers over the
black and white shot of he and Lori at the cabin in Hocking Hills,
both of them near-freezing to death, but laughing like
fools.
    His ex-wife’s aggravated tone arose in
his mind as he stood at the foot of the ladder to the
attic.
    Accident? You mean yours?
Yeah, I heard and I’m glad you’re okay, but no, I’m fine. Crippled?
Jesus, I don’t know what kind of misfortune you’ve been wishing on
me in your sleep but let’s hope it stays there.
    The attic was bare. No bodies, no
monsters, no blood. Only junk and Christmas decorations. He sat
down in the corner where he may or may not have killed a boy who
was not a boy and took the old man’s cell phone from his pocket.
He’d promised to return it within the hour, and he would. And no,
he’d explained to the old man, there was no need to call the
police. He simply wanted to call Lori again and couldn’t while his
own phone was downstairs charging. Even once it was charged it
wouldn’t be of any immediate use to him, considering it had only
stopped getting service in the first place because he’d ignored
Verizon’s demands that he pay his overdue bill.
    He dialed Lori’s number, a hum of
excitement in his chest, put the phone to his ear, and closed his
eyes. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but didn’t even know
where to start. So he started as if there was nothing to tell her
at all, because that was the safest place.
    “ Hey you.”
    “ Hey sexy,” she said, and an
involuntary sob escaped him, which he excused as laughter, even
though she knew him better than anyone and as such was not so easy
to fool.
    “ What’s up with you lately,
honey? I’m worried. You haven’t been yourself.”
    “ I know I haven’t. I’ve had
a lot on my mind, but all that’s about to change,