The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metphysical Mystery): Chapter 14

 

Enchanted Forest With Fireflies
by Art Majeur

Chapter 14 – Danny Boy

Every town has one story it tells quietly. The story isn’t a secret, per se. It’s just that nobody has ever found an ending that sounds satisfying. Maybe it’s a murder or a mysterious fire. Sometimes it's the old bridge where someone swears they still hear a train that hasn't run in fifty years. The details change but the conversation keeps going, passed down like lore.  By Tuesday morning, I'd learned that Laurel Lane had one of those stories. His name was Daniel Peterson. Most people called him Danny.

Arthur McCreary invited me over before breakfast.

"I've got something to show you." He was waiting on his porch with a dented metal coffee pot and two mugs old enough to qualify as family heirlooms. He poured without asking.

"I don't usually drink coffee this early,” I said.

"You do now."

I accepted the mug. It tasted like every small-town diner I'd ever visited. Strong enough to remove rust.

"You've been asking about Danny,” Arthur asked, staring toward the tree line over the brim of his mug.

"I have."

"I knew his father."

"What was he like?"

"Too patient for one thing. And his mother was too hopeful.” He sighed. “They balanced each other out."

Arthur wasn't a man who wasted words. If he paused, it was because the next sentence mattered.

"Danny was fourteen,” he said after one such pause.

"You said he liked the Firefly Hours."

"He loved them." Arthur smiled despite himself. "He'd catch lightning bugs in mayonnaise jars. Knew every shortcut through these woods. Could tell you which trees the owls liked better."

"Sounds like a good kid.”

"The kind adults trusted," Arthur said. That answer somehow told me more than a list of hobbies ever could.

I'd already searched newspaper archives. The town rag devoted nearly three weeks to Danny's disappearance:

LOCAL BOY STILL MISSING

VOLUNTEERS CONTINUE SEARCH

AUTHORITIES ASK HUNTERS TO REMAIN ALERT

The articles all ended the same way. No evidence. No suspects. No body. The official conclusion eventually became what most unsolved disappearances become. Danny was missing and presumed dead. The case went cold. Buth while the paperwork had found an ending, the boy’s parents never had.

"Walk with me." Arthur stood and led me toward the narrow strip of woods beyond the last houses on Willow Lane. The morning sun filtered through the branches, turning spiderwebs into strands of silver thread.

"This trail used to be wider," he said, pointing at what was once a well-trod path

"It doesn't look like many people use it."

"They don't."

"Why not?"

Arthur shrugged. "Neighborhoods forget." He said it matter-of-factly. As though forgetting was something sidewalks simply did over time.

The trail ended at a small, unremarkable clearing. A quaint circle of grass surrounded by cottonwoods. Except the grass grew differently here. The blades were thicker, greener. As if fed by something invisible. Arthur stopped walking.

"This is where they stopped searching," he said.

"They?"

"The volunteers."

"Why here?"

"They said there weren't any footprints."

I looked around. "And?"

"There weren't." He met my eyes. "Except Danny's."

I crouched. The ground was dry now, but I could imagine search teams moving through the clearing.

"They never found another set?" I asked.

Arthur shook his head.

I followed with other possibilities. “No adult prints? No animal tracks? What about bike tracks? Signs of a struggle.?”

"Nothing,” Arthur said. "Only Danny’s."

I looked toward the trees. "Leading where?"

Arthur's expression tightened. "In."

"And out?" I asked, leading with a little hope.

He slowly shook his head. "There wasn't an out."

That afternoon I visited the county sheriff's office. The evidence room clerk disappeared into the archives while I waited beneath a humming fluorescent light that seemed personally offended by silence. She returned carrying a cardboard box.

"Danny Peterson." She brushed dust from the lid. "Nobody's asked for this in years. You a P.I. or something?”

“Something,” I said and left it that.

Inside were the ordinary remains of an extraordinary investigation. Typed reports. Hand-drawn maps. Volunteer sign-in sheets. Weather forecasts. A broken flashlight. A compass sealed in an evidence bag. A cassette tape labeled SEARCH LOG - DAY 4.

Lives eventually become paperwork. It seemed unfair.

Near the bottom of the box sat a manila envelope.

PERSONAL EFFECTS

I opened it carefully. Inside was a time capsule dedicated solely to Danny: A wristwatch. Three marbles. A pocketknife. A library card. A small family photo. Danny stood between his parents on the front porch of a modest house. He looked about fourteen years old. His big tooth grin stood out along with his freckles and shaggy brown hair. One arm draped awkwardly around his mother's shoulder because fourteen-year-old boys instinctively resist appearing affectionate.

Behind them was a butter-yellow front door. I froze. The house wasn't on Laurel Lane. It couldn't have been. The subdivision hadn't existed yet. But I knew that porch. I knew those flower boxes. I'd stood there watching a woman water them during the Firefly Hours.

I turned the photograph over. Written in faded blue ink were four words: Our first summer here. The date beneath them made my stomach tighten. July 1987.

I looked again at the house that country records insisted had never existed. The house the Firefly Hours insisted still did. I slipped the photograph back into the envelope. Then took it out again. I had the unsettling feeling that I hadn't found Danny Peterson's photograph.

The photograph had been waiting for me to find it.

*****

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