Free The Thread by Ellyn Sanna

terrible, filthy man.”
    She shook her head and gave another tiny dry laugh that held no humor. “You were the only person I know who was sorry when they killed Osama bin Laden. You probably would have invited bin Laden to dinner too if you’d ever run into him.”
    “I always thought I saw something in that man’s eyes too, something gentle.” Nani’s face puckered. “I know he did terrible things, evil things. But he was once innocent. There is something of God in everyone.”
    Kirin couldn’t help but grin, imagining Nani serving Osama bin Laden her vegetable curry.
    Nani sighed and pushed her chair. “Well, now,” she said. “Speaking of dinner . . .”
    • • •
    Now, his stomach still full of Nani’s food, he lay in bed, listening to the child’s cries—and he found himself wondering if he might truly be going crazy.
    Because he kept thinking that the child he heard crying was his brother Amir.
    But if Amir hadn’t died twenty-one years ago, if he were somehow still alive—as he knew his mother hoped—he was a full-grown man, not a baby crying in the darkness. You couldn’t have it both ways.
    Finally, still hearing the quavering sobs, Kirin drifted into a shallow sleep—
    And then jerked awake.
    He’d been dreaming that he was a baby again, standing in a crib, his hands curled around the bars, crying for his mother. But she couldn’t hear him, and he’d been crying so long that he was exhausted and shaking.
    He shook his head, pushing the dream away. The child’s cries seemed fainter and shakier too. He rolled over, trying to ignore them, trying to go back to sleep. But he couldn’t.
    Finally, with a sigh, he threw back his covers. “Enough!” He pulled on a pair of blue jeans and picked up the flashlight he kept on his desk. “I can’t take this anymore.”

8
    Callie
    I tumble inside the window.
    I’m standing at the end of a long, dark hallway that smells like dust and mildew. I can see the halo of light faraway in front of me, and between it and me, the dark rectangles of doorways along the corridor. Now that I’m inside, the halo looks more like a coin, a glowing three-dimensional something that seems to be hanging a couple of feet above the floor. I take another deep breath and grab hold of my curiosity. I try to ignore how scared I am.
    When I step forward, the thread brushes against my face, and its touch is somehow reassuring. I slide my fingers along it as I creep down the hallway, the floor creaking beneath my feet, past the doorways that loom darker against the darkness. I don’t really need the thread anymore to tell me where to go, but I still clutch it in my fist, feeling it thrum and hum against my palm. The light grows steadily brighter, and now I can see that it’s spinning in the air, like a wheel.
    The closer I get, the less sense it makes. It’s definitely a wheel, or maybe a tiller, like on an old-fashioned ship, with spokes that are visible when the spinning slows. It’s not the flat disc I thought it was, though, but more like a wheel within a wheel, like one of those old-fashioned toys Dad gave me when I was younger—a gyroscope—except that it’s spinning on its side above the floor.
    The light spilling out from the room at the end of the hall is so bright now that it dazzles my eyes, and then, as I go closer, I can see nothing but the blur of spinning gold, while my ears fill up with a humming sound that makes me think of bees and sunshine. When I finally reach the end of the corridor and step inside the room, my wet, chilly body is suddenly warm, as though I were standing in the sun. I stand there dazed, barely thinking. It comes to me slowly, dimly, that I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life. And that makes absolutely no sense.
    “Merry Christmas, child.”
    I blink . . . blink again, and then I see her in the midst of all the spinning light: an old woman with a round, wrinkled face and silvery hair wrapped around her head in a fat bun. The