Free Multiples of Six by Andy Rane

thin summer robe. Despite the month, and despite the weather, he just couldn’t be bothered to get his winter robe down from the attic. Besides, he only ever wore it to get the paper in the morning. It usually took him all of a minute to complete the task. The driveway just wasn’t that long. Today, however, he had stopped at the end of the driveway long enough to feel the chill. Something had caught his eye.
    The light on in the neighbor’s kitchen should not have bothered him as much as it did now. The neighborhood had been a quiet place to live for the past forty some odd years. You couldn’t change your cologne without someone knowing about it, but at the same time, they were all good people. They had all stopped by to give their condolences when his wife had passed three years earlier. Some of them even left food. One of the young couples had even added him to their Christmas card list, and he’d never had the heart to tell them their mistake. They were good people, and you just couldn’t take that for granted. The Masterson’s were good people too and living next to them had never been cause for excitement. That is, it hadn’t been, until the other night.
    The previous morning, there had been a knock on Samuel’s door as soon as it was light. The officers were polite, if not a little brusque. Yes, he had heard the sirens, but only briefly. No, he hadn’t looked out the window, despite the flashing lights. He takes medicine to sleep at night and anything less than eight hours and he’s a zombie. Yes, he knew the boy lived alone. His mother was a wonderful woman and his father had always been there when Samuel needed something fixed around the house. He missed their presence, but he was sure they were with God. No, he didn’t know the boy well. He was a polite, respectful boy who had offered to shovel his driveway every time it snowed, but they hadn’t actually spoken much. Samuel felt bad for him, having lost both parents at such a young age. No, he didn’t know where the boy might be. As far as Samuel knew, the boy had a job. He had an uncle who lived somewhere in the Midwest. He had been down for the funeral a few weeks before, but that was all he really knew of that. No, he really didn’t know where James might be, or why he would have left his car, or why he might have dialed 911 in the middle of the morning and then disappeared. Yes, if he saw James, he would be sure to contact the police.
    “Is the boy in trouble?” Samuel had asked.
    “No, we’d just like to ask him some questions,” was the response they gave him.
    Of course, Samuel thought.
    So, now, as he stood looking at the light coming from James’ kitchen, that had not been on first thing this morning, it occurred to him what the officer had said. Samuel should call the police. Not because he had said he would, but because of the chill that had run through him upon seeing the light on. It hadn’t been from the cold after all. It was something else.
    He gripped the paper and found himself moving through the snow, across the space between his driveway and James’ back porch. He paused when a figure moved quickly past the window. He cursed his forgetfulness, remembering his glasses were on his kitchen table. But, who the hell needs glasses to fetch the paper? He moved forward again, squinting in a vain attempt to gain some focus. His eyes remained on the window. He was almost to the back of the house when the kitchen light went off. The leather of his slippers seemed to be frozen to the snow, as he found it difficult to move. The thumping of his heart was deafening in his own ear and for a moment he imagined that the person in the house had heard this and run.
    Samuel stepped up onto the back porch. With the light no longer on, the kitchen was obscured in the darkness. He looked at the back door. The handle looked damaged, though maybe he was just imagining it to be worse than it really was. Over-reactive fool, Samuel thought. But, when