The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 4

 

Catching Fireflies
by Karen Wolfe

Day 4 – Dr. Calico Verde Has A Theory

Folklore gets a bad reputation.

People tend to sort it into one of two boxes. Either it's dismissed as childish superstition or embraced with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for podcasts who obsess over why such stories survive or conspiracy theorists who believe the tales are gospel truths.

Dr. Calico Verde collected folklore the way ornithologists collected birds—not to prove every species mythical, but to understand what kept returning to the same patch of sky. Her office reflected that philosophy. Most psychologists decorated with framed diplomas and soothing watercolor paintings. Calico preferred shelves crowded with jars not of preserved specimens like a mad scientist. She collected smells, aromas, scents. Every glass jar bore a neatly handwritten label.

FIRST LAWN AFTER RAIN.

CHLORINATED POOL.

FIREWORKS SMOKE.

FRESH ASPHALT.

TOMATO VINES.

LIBRARY AIR CONDITIONING.

CITRONELLA CANDLE.

WATERMELON RIND.

There was even one labeled simply JULY.

"How exactly does one jar library air conditioning," I asked, studying what appeared to be an empty canister.

She looked up from arranging a stack of note cards and replied, "Oh, that one's surprisingly easy."

"I was afraid you'd say that."

She smiled and offered me some coffee. I happily accepted and she disappeared into the adjoining kitchenette while I wandered the office.

"You've started bottling seasons now?" I asked.

"They're memories."

"They're smells."

"The difference is smaller than most people think,” she said with the kind of lilt she reserved for comments that suggested she was onto something mere mortal brains couldn’t comprehend.

She returned with the coffee and handed me a mug.

"Memory cheats," she said. "Smell doesn't."

That sounded like something she'd been waiting months for someone to insert into a conversation, no matter how awkward it might be.

"I've got a case," I said, steering clear of the ‘memory cheats’ comment.

"You usually do."

"This one involves children."

"Children are almost always either much easier or much harder than adults,” she said. “Which is it with your case?"

"I haven't decided."

She settled into the chair opposite mine.

"Start at the beginning."

I told her about Lily. The missing hour. The frantic parents. The banal neighborhood on Laurel Lane. The park and the enigmatic children speaking about rules like unhelpful life coaches who only know how to communicate in empty platitudes. I handed over my notebook when I finished Calico didn't interrupt once. She simply read. Every so often she'd make a small mark in the margin with a mechanical pencil. I could have sat there and watched her read that notebook for hours. Just soaking up her beauty. Our flirtations lately have escalated but we still keep an arm’s length for reasons neither of us have articulated.

When she reached the last page, she looked up.

"Did every child use these exact words?" she asked, eyebrow cocked.

"As best as I could tell."

"'Don't follow the laughing.'" She tapped the notebook as she read aloud.  "'Don't answer people twice. Leave before the blinking stops.'"

"I know."

"I don’t think you do." She frowned thoughtfully, flipping back several pages. "Children rarely repeat folklore verbatim."

"They don't?"

"Not unless they're quoting a movie." She slid the notebook toward me. "They embellish. They exaggerate. They change names, places, monsters, endings. Every generation edits the story a little."

I looked down at my notes. "But these kids didn't."

"Exactly." She leaned back. "Every child you've interviewed is describing the same phenomenon with almost identical language."

"So?"

"So that's unusual."

"How unusual?"

She considered that. "Imagine interviewing six people who all claim to have seen a bear."

"Okay,” I said, knowing I was about to go on a journey that would either make this all crystal clear or confuse me even more.

"One says it was enormous. Another says it wasn't very big. Someone insists it was black. Another swears it was brown."

"Makes sense."

"Now imagine all six independently describing the same scar over its left eye. Down to its exact length.”

"So what's your theory?" I readied my pencil to capture her thoughts but I was more captivated by the thoughtfulness in her brown eyes as she spoke in a sultry voice that was educated in all the expensive places but had somehow graduated with a minor in temptation. Low, smoky, and articulate enough to make a grocery list sound like an unpublished Russian novel. I suspected she could read appliance warranties aloud and still have someone's full attention.

"My first theory?"

"You have more than one?"

"I always have more than one." She smiled over the rim of her coffee mug. "My first theory is that this is neighborhood folklore. "The kind children invent."

"Like Bloody Mary?" I asked.

She nodded. "Or the Hookman."

“My friends and I talked about Bigfoot.”

She laughed. "Are you a Bigfoot believer?”

“I’ve seen way too much in my line of work to be naysayer.”

She leaned forward and folded her slender, delicate hands on her antique wooden desk.

"Children create rules because rules make uncertainty manageable,” she said. "Don't walk under ladders. Don't say Bloody Mary’s name three times. Don't step on cracks."

"Don't stay out after the fireflies,” I added.

“Exactly.”

"So we're done?"

"No." Her smile disappeared as she tapped my notebook again. "Because folklore changes. This hasn't."

Silence settled over the room. Outside, somewhere beyond the office window, a lawn mower started up.

"What would stop folklore from changing?" I asked.

Calico looked toward the shelves.

"Something that keeps reminding people how the story goes," she said. The sentence lingered between us. Neither of us seemed eager to unpack it.

I opened the manila folder I'd brought with me.

"There is one thing," I said. She looked up. "The police photographed everything."

"Standard procedure,” she added.

"I almost ignored this, though." I slid an eight-by-ten photograph across the desk. It showed the backyard of an unoccupied house near the edge of Laurel Lane. Fresh sod. New privacy fence. No patio furniture or swing set yet. No toys.

Just an untouched lawn except for a single muddy footprint near the center. Nothing before it or after it.

Calico picked up the picture and studied it for nearly a minute.

"Interesting,” she said. "Folklore usually doesn't leave footprints."

That evening I left her office with more questions than answers, which, if I'm being honest, was how most of my meetings with Dr. Verde ended. I needed some more information­—the kind you don’t get from a human being. I drove to The Perpetual Egg Diner on the other side of town, grabbed my corner booth and asked for a Cup o’ Joe. The waitress, Sally, sat the cup in front of me. The steam rose off it, forming a familiar face of sentience. It spoke in a baritone.

“I know you’re here about the fireflies,” it said.

“Have any info about it?”

“I’ll tell you what I do have,” the Cup o’ Joe said. "We found another one."

"Another what?"

"Footprint."

I sat back in the booth. "Where?"

"In the middle of the neighborhood swimming pool."

"The pool's empty?"

"No."

"Then I'm missing something."

"The concrete deck."

"So?"

"It hasn't rained in four days," Cup o’ Joe said. “And before you ask, there's only one."

One footprint. Again. Exactly where no one should have been.

*****

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