Free Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke Page A

remembering? Because
what he remembered now was her face that day outside Subway when
she’d looked at him as everyone else had done since the day of the
accident: as if he’d completely lost his mind.
    Sobbing, he looked down at
the child, still alive, but only just. And what if…dear Jesus in
Heaven…what if the child was really his own, if everything the police had told
him was the truth,
and maybe the kid had only ever dressed so strangely at the behest
of his insane father? Had he been so mad that he’d been seeing
everything backwards? Had he been the monster and the poor child his victim?
Had he been the
one forcing his son to eat shitty candy instead of real food? In a
situation in which every rational person is telling you a fact and
you’re the one who denies it, doesn’t that make you the one most likely
wrong?
    He’d been drinking a lot lately,
convinced he was a captive in a supernatural nightmare. How likely
was that to be the case when all was said and done? How much more
reasonable did it seem that something had snapped deep within him
and he’d been living a nightmare of his own creation? But of
course, to realize such a thing at any point before now would have
forced him to accept his own madness, and that itself, as he knew
now, was its own particular form of Hell.
    “ I’m sorry,” he said to the
boy, to Adam, to his son.
    “ Mora’s coming…” the child
said.
    “ Who is Mora?”
    “ You are.”
    Then the child’s eyes glazed over and
with a soft hiss, he breathed his last.
     
     
    11. Mora
     
     
    Unchallenged by the elders, who had
vanished just as quickly as they had come, if indeed they’d ever
existed at all, he carried the boy’s body downstairs and set it
gingerly on the couch, where he sat next to it until the first rays
of the morning sun began to bleed into the house. Then he went to
the bathroom, careful not to look at the man patiently waiting in
the mirror to look back at him, washed the blood from his hands,
and made his way next door to the neighbor’s house. The man he’d
seen mowing the lawn the first time he’d tried to escape his own
madness opened the door and jerked back in shock at the sight of
Phil standing on his stoop.
    “ Jesus Christ, man, what
happened to you?”
    He’d already heard that question a few
times over the past few months. He imagined after today he’d be
hearing it even more. Though maybe not. People tend to distance
themselves from the insane, as if to inquire is to request an
invitation to the same dance.
    “ I’m embarrassed to admit
it,” Phil said, his voice hoarse from a night spent crying, “but
I’ve forgotten your name.”
    “ It’s Jack.”
    Phil nodded slowly. “Jack
Staunton.”
    “ That’s right. What
happened? Do you need help?” He made as if to let Phil into his
house, a gesture of undeserved kindness that was almost too much
for Phil to handle.
    He shook his head.
    “ No, thank you, Jack, but I
do need your help. What I need for you to do is call the police and
ask for a Detective Cortez. Send him to my house.”
    Jack adjusted his glasses, his eyes
deep pools of concern. “Has something happened?”
    “ Yeah, it has,” Phil said.
“I think I’ve killed my son.”
    The old man stared at him
for a long moment before adjusting his glasses again. He cleared
his throat. “But…Phil…you don’t have a son.”
    Phil looked at him.
    The old man composed an
uncertain smile. “I mean…we don’t know each other all that well, but you’ve
never mentioned any kids. I know I’ve never seen any and you’ve
lived next door to me for years. And I’m pretty sure on one of the
few times we have spoken, you said you broke up with your ex-wife
because she wanted kids and you didn’t.”
    Phil would never know how long he
stood there before he was able to find his voice. His mind had
become a chaos of malformed thoughts. “Jack…I’m sorry…” He extended
a trembling hand which the old man regarded as if it