Free In the Night Season by Richard Bausch

and slipped deeper in. Beyond the opening, the duct widened a little. He took a breath and pushed back, but there wasn’t anything to use as leverage.
    “Finished yet?”
    “I’m gonna be a little while,” Jason said, realizing that the straining in his voice was precisely what he needed. He was half in and half out of the vent now, and he heard something working at the door. The door was going to open. “I’m sick,” he said and made another gagging sound.
    “Tell you what,” Travis said. “I just put a chair against the door. Let me know when you want out—or if you need anything.”
    “Yes—yes, sir.”
    “I hope you ain’t got some virus. I can’t afford to get no virus.”
    “No, sir.”
    “But then I didn’t kiss you, right?”
    Jason faked a cough, supporting himself on one hand and trying to push backward into the vent.
    “Just bang on the door when you want me. I’m gonna take a look at the house.”
    “Yes, sir.” He waited. And then he began furiously to scramble backward into the vent. He discovered that if he put his legs on top of one another, forcing his ankles together, and kept his body at the angle of the diagonal corners, he could use his outstretched free hand to push off the seams in the top of the duct and make himselfslide along. When he got to the turn, he had enough room to bring that hand down to his side and scoot farther, until he had come into the wider space near the bedroom. Here, he could maneuver, so that he was on his back, and gradually he worked his way to the dim square of gray light, the vent in the guest bedroom, which was an L-connection, the vertical part of it running all the way to the top floor of the house. In that space, he would be able to get himself to a crouch. He inched along, holding his breath like a swimmer, and when the furnace kicked on, he tried to move faster, gulping the air that rushed through from the other side of the building. Here was the vent for the guest bedroom, and he had got himself out of the smaller duct and soundlessly into a crouch.
    And he saw that Travis was there, sitting on the edge of the bed looking at a photograph in a frame. Travis was almost near enough to touch.
    Somehow Jason kept back the gasp that rose in his throat.
    Travis held the photograph to the light from the hall, then put it down on the bed and lay back, sighing. The light fell across the floor, to the bed, and his boots, the scuffed, scraped soles, one with a place wearing thin, showing the paper-thin layer of leather beneath. For a long time nothing moved. The furnace stopped; the house was terribly quiet now. Jason held his breath. A spasm had started in the muscles of his back, as though his body would make a commotion on its own. He suffered the pain along his shoulder blades, the searing strip of it across his hips. The other breathed slow, almost laboring, the first rattle of a nasal something, like snoring. Was he going to sleep? He might stay there an hour, two hours, until Jason’s mother returned. The boy withheld a nearly overwhelming need to cry out, for the pain.
    Everything hurt.
    If Travis was asleep, it might be possible to push out of the vent and sneak away. But the vent would make a noise—some noise, anyhow. There was nothing to do but remain absolutely still, even as the muscles of his back tightened and quivered and sent a stabbing sensation up into his neck. It was dusty here, and when thefurnace came on again, the dust stirred. He had not remembered that it had stirred so much dust before, and he realized dimly that it was his own passage through this metal space that had caused the motes to lift, where they could be pushed and agitated by the currents of warm air. He breathed, carefully, slowly, through his nose, beginning to worry about sneezing. Any second now, he would have to sneeze, or cough. Putting his hands over his mouth, he moved back into the vent, until his foot made a small thud. He froze. The sound seemed to travel