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The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 19

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  Fireflies by Erte Chapter 19 – The Collector I collected baseball cards when I was a kid. Every time I got my allowance for doing my weekly chores, I would rush to the store to buy a pack. When I got them home, I spread them out and studied them they way a scholar might obsess over a recently unearthed manuscript by Shakespeare. Each new set of cards brought the possibility of finding a gem. Those baseball cards are in a box in a storage unit. I kept them because, like all collectors, they connect me to something I love, a passion. That’s how collections work. Each one seems to say: This mattered. Please don't let it disappear. By Sunday afternoon, I had become convinced someone in Laurel Lane understood the Firefly Hours better than the rest of us. Call it hunch. Call it intuition. Call it remembering something Arthur said to me almost in passing. But it gnawed at me the way some lady behind me at the coffee shop that morning was chewing her gum. Loud. Smacking. Annoying. An...
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The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 18

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  Fireflies by Daniel Hughes Chapter 18 – Calico Crosses Over Every investigator eventually commits the same mistake. You begin by studying the mystery. Eventually, you forget the mystery has been studying you. By Saturday evening, Dr. Calico Verde had accumulated three notebooks, eleven rolls of exposed film, two cassette tapes, and enough observations to make a university psychology department very happy. None of it explained the Firefly Hours. She had merely documented them. The Hours, meanwhile, appeared increasingly uninterested in remaining documented. "We've been asking the wrong questions." Calico stood at the hood of my car, flipping through one of her notebooks. "I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said. "We keep asking what this place is." She looked toward Laurel Lane. "We should ask who it's for." Arthur overheard us. "I wouldn't." "You disagree?" "No." He slipped both ...
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The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 17

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  Firefly Night  by Stephanie Analah Chapter 17 – The Rule Nobody Explains The oldest rules are usually the ones nobody can explain. Don't whistle in a theater. Throw spilled salt over your shoulder. Never open an umbrella indoors. And don’t get me started on the “unwritten rules” of baseball. Ask people why they follow those rules and they’ll tell they that’s just how it is. Ask them how many still follow them anyway and you'll understand something important about being human. By Friday afternoon I'd interviewed children, parents, retirees, and one psychologist who kept jars of summer smells on her bookshelf.Every one of them knew the same rule. Never stay until full dark. Not one of them could tell me why. I found Arthur McCreary sitting beneath the same old maple tree outside his house. He was repairing a fishing reel with the kind of patience usually reserved for watches and marriages. "I've got another question,” I told him before even sitting do...
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