The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 27

 

Firefly Night
by Lizna

Chapter 27 – Firefly Night

People assume the opposite of a disaster is relief. Once the rain stops, the fever breaks, or the missing child returns, all is well. But sometimes a disaster doesn't end. It takes on a new look. By Sunday evening, the sun had been setting for nearly three days. When it finally began to move again, no one cheered. We knew better.

The first sign was the shadows that stretched another inch across Arthur McCreary's lawn—the width of two fingers. But after seventy hours of motionless twilight, movement felt violent. Arthur noticed before anyone else. He stood from his porch chair so quickly it tipped backward.

"Silas." He looked across his lawn. I followed his gaze. The shadow of the mailbox had crossed the curb.

Calico came running from the Collins house, still holding a thermometer. Walter emerged from the woods. Tommy abandoned the Firefly Map on the sidewalk. All across Laurel Lane, people turned west where the lower half of the sun had disappeared behind the trees. The upper half continued sinking slowly, steadily. I checked my watch. The second hand twitched, then moved.

The sound of breathing traveled through the neighborhood. Dozens of people realizing they'd been holding the same breath. Mrs. Collins began to cry. Somewhere, someone laughed.

A man near the park shouted, "It's over!"

Walter closed his eyes.

"No," he said. Nobody heard him except me. "No, it isn't."

The streetlights flickered on. For a few seconds they glowed normally. Then every bulb shone a different color. One gave off the pale blue of a television screen. Another burned orange like an old porch light. A third produced the greenish cast of fluorescent school hallways. The lights weren't illuminating the street. They were remembering other rooms.

The neighborhood began to drift. A ranch house replaced a two-story home, then became a vacant field, then returned with different siding. Young trees thickened into mature oaks. Sidewalks cracked, repaired themselves, and disappeared beneath grass. Cars changed shape in driveways. A minivan became a station wagon. The station wagon became a bicycle lying on its side. The bicycle rusted where it fell. Then a child picked it up twenty years earlier.

No one moved. Inside had become a flexible concept. Front doors opened into kitchens that belonged to other families. Bedroom windows looked out on vanished backyards. One garage contained a Fourth of July picnic while another held a funeral reception. The houses no longer remembered in linear fashion.

Calico grabbed my arm. "We're losing sequence."

"Time?" I asked.

"Meaning." She pointed toward the Collins house.

Mrs. Collins stood on the porch watching herself carry a newborn through the front door. Behind that memory, another version of the house stood empty. A FOR SALE sign leaned in the yard. Behind that, firelight flickered through broken windows. Three possible histories occupied the same address. None appeared willing to surrender it.

"Margaret!" Walter walked into the street. His voice carried farther than it should have.

The fireflies brightened. A woman appeared near the park. Her dark hair was a stark contrast to her lemon yellow dress. A little girl stood beside her wearing a purple backpack. Walter took one step toward them. Then stopped. Emily waved.

I'd never seen his daughter before. She looked ordinary. That was the heartbreak of it. Nothing ethereal. Just a six-year-old girl impatient to go somewhere. Margaret placed one hand on her shoulder. Walter raised his own hand. For a moment, the Collector and his collection faced one another across the street.

"They're leaving," he whispered.

I wasn't sure whether he meant Margaret and Emily or all of us.

The sky deepened from amber to copper and then to bruised purple. The fireflies began blinking again. At first, the sight brought another murmur of relief. Then Tommy counted aloud as every firefly lit.

"One. Two. Three."

Thousands of fireflies blinked as one organism. Or one signal.

Tommy looked at me. "They never do that."

"What does it mean?"

"I think they're counting down." His eyes stayed fixed on the lights.

The ground shifted beneath us like the sensation of an elevator beginning its descent. Laurel Lane dropped half an inch out of the present. My stomach knew before my mind did. Every sound became distant. The neighborhood was no longer overlapping memory. It was moving into it.

I pulled the handless watch from my pocket. The device had never told time. That wasn't its purpose. It measured metaphysical direction. The face had always been empty. Now a thin black hand appeared beneath the glass, pointing toward the woods. Then it began turning round and round. There was no longer one direction to the anomaly. The anomaly was everywhere.

Calico watched the spinning hand. "Can you stop it?"

"I don't know what started it."

"Walter,” she said.

"Likely,” I said. “But not alone."

We both looked at him. He still stood facing his wife and daughter. Emily held out her hand. Walter took another step. Calico moved toward him. I caught her wrist.

"Wait."

"For what?"

"That’s helpful.”

Margaret spoke. We were too far away to hear. Walter’s face collapsed in acceptance of whatever she told him. Emily kept her hand extended. Walter pressed both palms against his eyes. When he lowered them, Margaret and Emily were gone. They faded from existence.  Only fireflies remained.

He turned toward us. "I thought I was keeping them here." His voice sounded small.

"What did she say?" Calico asked.

Walter looked at the place where his family had stood.

"She asked why I wouldn't let them go home."

The last edge of the sun touched the horizon. Every memory in Laurel Lane reacted. Harold stopped his bicycle. Murphy dropped the tennis ball. The dancers separated. Children from forgotten summers turned toward the darkening sky. Even the lost residents emerged from the woods. Danny Peterson stood among them. Evelyn beside him. All of them watching night approach with the fear of people witnessing something that had never happened before.

Arthur joined us in the street. His face had gone pale.

"This is where the rule came from," he said.

"Never stay until full dark," I said.

The Firefly Hours had always ended before night. People had vanished. Memories had changed. The lost had remained. But full darkness had never entered the phenomenon until now.

The first star appeared overhead.

The houses along Laurel Lane leaned—not physically, but emotionally—toward the woods. Windows glowed with rooms from other years. Voices called names no one present recognized. The pavement beneath my feet became warm summer grass, then cold concrete, then the wooden boards of a dock. My father stood at the far end. He didn't ask me to stay. He simply watched. Waiting to see what I had chosen.

I closed my hand around the watch. The spinning needle slowed, pausing in the direction of Walter, then Calico. Then me. Then me. Three points. Three anchors. The man who preserved the past. The woman who chose the present. And the detective who had spent his life standing between them.

"We caused this," Walter said.

"No," Calico replied. "Grief caused it."

Walter shook his head.

"Grief doesn't do anything."

"It makes offers," I said. The sky darkened another shade. "And we keep accepting them."

In an instant, every artificial light in Laurel Lane disappeared. Only the fireflies remained, slowly linking together. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Each interval longer than the last. Tommy whispered the final rule.

"Leave before the blinking stops."

No one asked where we were supposed to go. The entire neighborhood had become the Firefly Hours. There was no outside left.

The sun slipped completely behind the trees. For the first time in three days, the western sky stood empty. A thin band of gold remained above the horizon, narrowing and fading. And from the far end of Laurel Lane darkness finally began arriving.

*****

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