Free Finding 52 by Len Norman

against Clifford’s beautiful face. When Harley placed the pillow where he had found it, Clifford looked like a sleeping angel.
    A few months after the funeral, Richard boxed up all of Clifford’s toys and clothes to give to charity. There were a few books as well; books that Richard and Meredith had read to him. Inside one of those books was a playing card. It was the Two of Clubs. That card wouldn’t mean a thing to the lucky family that received Clifford’s worldly possessions, but it meant everything to Harley. The Two of Clubs was from his father’s favorite deck of playing cards. They were the same cards that had two baseball players on the back of each playing card as well as two large circles with baseballs inside of each circle.
    Harley wasn’t even four and he’d already found one of the REAL people that could harm him. He’d taken his first human life and was jubilant; getting rid of Clifford was a lot more fun than dispatching Brewster. At night Harley dreamed and wondered about the other REAL people, fifty-one more of them! The best part was two of them lived under his roof, and they were next. Harley slept with a smile on his face.
    Audrey stayed on with the Ames family for the remainder of 1954. She was terrified of Harley and believed he might have been involved in Clifford’s death. When she went to check on Clifford he appeared to be sleeping. When it was apparent he was dead she was devastated.
    After the funeral it became evident the Ames family would never be the same. It was assumed Clifford died of “crib death,” which was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era it wasn’t even mentioned in statistics. Crib death started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccinations. It wasn’t Audrey’s place to mention the possibility of an autopsy. Meredith was already half out of her mind with grief and the thought of Clifford having an autopsy was simply out of the question. This was clearly a crib death and nothing more.
    If an autopsy had been performed would anyone have suspected three-year-old Harley? That would’ve been highly doubtful and Harley would’ve been in a position to do some blame shifting of his own. Hadn’t he seen Audrey tuck Clifford in his crib for a nap? Hadn’t he seen her holding Clifford’s pillow and looking down at his baby brother? In many ways the lack of an autopsy was a lifesaver for her.
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    By the end of 1955, Richard threw all of his energy into the banking business and Meredith was deeply depressed. She didn’t respond to normal therapy and medication. Eventually Richard insisted on electroshock therapy or shock treatments. H undreds of thousands of patients of all ages received electroshock treatments for every type of “disorder,” including depression, mania, schizophrenia, and even homosexuality and truancy. Richard was assured Meredith would be as good as new. Patients in the 1950s sometimes received more than a hundred treatments. Anesthetics and muscle relaxants weren’t used; patients were shackled to the gurney but there were still broken bones and vertebra.
    When Meredith was released from the hospital she was a vacant-eyed soul who had trouble distinguishing friends and family.
    Harley was five and his mother refused to look at him. He could have cared less. One day he walked up to his mother and said, “Mommy, I think for you hope is the thing with wings that is never meant to be. When I look at you, I see the card.” Harley took the Three of Clubs out from behind his back and showed it to Meredith.
    “Do you like it Mommy? Do you? Very soon it’ll be over.”
    Meredith never blinked but Harley couldn’t help but notice she was drooling and there was a dark stain on the fabric of the chair that she was sitting in. The odor of urine disgusted Harley almost as much as his mother sickened him.
    “A playing card for you and a playing card for daddy. He’ll get the Four of Clubs and after that I’ll move on.”
    Richard had