The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 16

 

grave of fireflies

by Masuk Nourin

Day 16 – The Window

Doors exist because someone intends to go somewhere. Windows exist because someone hopes to see something worth looking at. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they simply reflect whoever happens to be standing on the wrong side of the glass.

By Thursday afternoon and after too many sleepless nights over this case, I'd stopped thinking of Laurel Lane as a neighborhood. It behaved more like an archive. Something—what, I wasn’t sure—was being stored here. Memory, maybe? But what memory? And whose?

Somewhere beneath its sidewalks and freshly poured driveways, fifteen years of ordinary life had settled into the ground like rainwater. During the Firefly Hours, some of it rose back to the surface. The trick, I was beginning to suspect, wasn't finding the memories.

It was avoiding the temptation to step inside them.

Dr. Calico Verde arrived carrying a camera a battered 35mm Nikon that had clearly lived a full life before either of us had borrowed it from history.

"I thought we'd established your distrust of modern technology," I teased.

"I don't distrust it,” she said, feigning offense. "I merely think some phenomena deserve witnesses instead of algorithms."

"You say that like it makes sense."

"It does to me." She smiled. "Besides, film has a wonderful habit of recording what we think we saw."

I looked toward the neighborhood. The halcyon façade of Laurel Lane could barely contain the eerie otherworld that pushed against its maple-lined streets and manicured lawns.

"I wonder what we’re about to see,” I said. “And will that camera do it justice?”

Arthur met us at the entrance to Laurel Lane just before sunset. Tommy walked ahead of us, following the map the way sailors once followed stars. Eventually he stopped in front of an ordinary two-story brick house.Nothing distinguished it from the others except for one upstairs window facing the street.

Tommy pointed. "That one."

"What about it?"

He looked surprised I'd asked.

"Don't stand in front of it."

Naturally, I stood in front of it. Nothing happened. The window reflected the street behind me. Trees. Mailboxes. Calico. Arthur. Tommy sighed the long-suffering sigh of a child watching an adult ignore perfectly sensible advice.

"Not yet."

The first fireflies appeared. The air softened. The familiar hush settled over Laurel  Lane. One by one, porch lights blinked on. The upstairs window of the house shimmered enough that I questioned whether it had always been old glass.

The reflection disappeared. The room beyond became visible. A bedroom with bright blue walls. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling by fishing line. A desk sat against a wall cluttered with comic books and cassette tapes. A poster of a space shuttle launch was taped above the headboard of the bed. It was the sort of room assembled one birthday and one Christmas at a time.

It wasn't empty. A boy sat cross-legged on the floor building something out of plastic bricks. He looked to be eight years old. Maybe nine. He hummed quietly to himself, completely absorbed in his little project. He never looked up.

Calico stepped beside me.

"What are you looking at?” she asked.

"A bedroom."

"I don't see anything except my reflection.”

I looked at her. Arthur spoke without approaching the window.

"You only ever see one."

"One what?" I asked.

"Memory."

The boy suddenly stood. Someone downstairs called his name.

"I'll be right there!"

He hurried toward the bedroom door. Then stopped and walked back to the window.

He looked directly outside. Past me, as if I wasn’t there at all. He waved and disappeared from the room. The bedroom around where he had stood faded. The reflection returned.

 

"Did he see me?" I asked.

Arthur shook his head. "No."

"But he waved.”

"Not at you."

"Who?"

Arthur looked toward the neighboring houses.

"I imagine whoever he remembered standing there," he said.

We continued down the block. Tommy pointed toward another house.

"This one's different."

The front window overlooked a small porch swing. I approached carefully this time. The glass clouded, then cleared. An elderly couple danced slowly through the living room without music. The man counted softly under his breath. The woman rested her head against his shoulder. When the dance ended, she kissed his cheek. The room vanished.

Another window appeared. This time a teenage girl sat at a kitchen table opening a college acceptance letter. She screamed. Her father rushed in. Picked her up. Spun her around the room. Gone.

And another. A young mother asleep in a rocking chair with a newborn across her chest.

Gone.

Each window held one moment, one memory. Never longer than a minute. Never repeated exactly. Calico finally spoke.

"I think the houses choose."

"Choose what?” I asked.

"What to remember."

Arthur nodded. "They always have."

We reached the final house on the block just as the fireflies slowed their rhythm. Tommy hesitated.

"I've never looked in this one,” he said in a thick, solemn voice.

"Why not?"

"It isn't for kids."

It was a less an answer and more a warning.

The front window was unusually large. Almost the entire living room faced the street. I stepped closer. The glass darkened then slowly brightened as a scene from a film was dissolving onto the screen. At first I thought I was looking at an empty room. I saw a plain couch and two wooden bookshelves with a matching coffee table.

Then someone tall in a rumpled sport coat walked into view carrying a mug. Notebook tucked beneath one arm. He crossed to the bookshelf. Stopped. Looked thoughtfully out the window. Toward me. My pulse stumbled and skipped.

The man in the room was me.

Not younger a version from the past. Not a glimpse of my older, future self.  Present me. Exactly as I stood. Same jacket. Same notebook. Same coffee mug I'd left in my office that morning.

The me in the window frowned as though trying to remember something. He raised one hand as if giving a silent warning. Behind me, Calico said my name. I didn't answer.I couldn't. Because I was too busy watching myself silently mouth two words through the glass.

Don't stay.

The room vanished. The window became ordinary again. I stared at my own slack-jawed reflection. For the first time since arriving on Laurel Lane, I wasn't entirely certain which side of the glass I belonged on.