The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 21

 

"Firefly" by Jojo Collins

Chapter 21 – The Lost Residents

 

Every missing person eventually becomes two people. The first is the one everyone searches for. The second is the one everyone slowly invents afterward. The child who would have graduated. The husband who would have retired. The woman who would have become a grandmother. We build imaginary futures because reality refused to provide one. The file gets closed and a person becomes a question.

By Monday evening, I had begun to suspect Laurel Lane contained more questions than houses. Night still refused to arrive. The sun remained pinned to the horizon, suspended in an endless twilight that had long since stopped feeling beautiful. No clocks moved. The fireflies still burned without blinking. People spoke more quietly now. As though loud voices might remind reality that something had gone terribly wrong.

Walter Ashcroft hadn't left the street in nearly an hour. Arthur paced. Calico filled pages in a notebook despite openly admitting there was no meaningful way to describe any of this.

"If we're trapped," She looked up. “I'd rather leave good notes."

Tommy tugged at my sleeve. "I know where they are."

"The memories?"

He shook his head. "The people."

Arthur stopped pacing. "What people?"

"The ones who stayed," Tommy said.

Walter quietly said, "I didn't think children could still find them."

“We always could,” Tommy said, puzzled. He led us beyond the edge of the subdivision. Past the moving place on the Firefly Map. Past the clearing where Danny Peterson's footprints had ended.

The woods seemed deeper somehow. Trees stood where I didn't remember trees. Trails folded into one another. Every direction felt equally familiar. And equally wrong. Eventually the forest opened into a neighborhood that was not Laurel Lane but something older. It looked not abandoned. Simply unremembered.

The houses looked as though they'd been assembled from pieces from different decades. A 1950s porch attached to a 1980s ranch house. Victorian windows beside aluminum siding. One driveway held both a Model A Ford and a minivan. Nothing belonged together yet somehow everything belonged here.

Smoke drifted from chimneys. Children rode bicycles. Someone watered tomatoes. A man swept his porch. It looked normal. Except every person occasionally faded around the edges before becoming solid again like photographs struggling to remain in focus. A little girl waved at Tommy.

"You're early," she said.

"I brought visitors." Tommy pointed at us.

Nobody seemed alarmed. There was no screaming. No impossible questions were asked. One elderly woman simply smiled. "Oh."

She nodded politely. "More outsiders."

Calico whispered, "They're alive."

“I think that’s the wrong word,” Walter answered.

An older man approached us carrying a fishing pole. He couldn't have been much older than Arthur.

"You stayed," he said.

Arthur recognized him immediately. "George?"

The man's face brightened. "Arthur."

They shook hands as though they'd seen each other last week instead of forty years ago.

"I heard you'd finally retired." Arthur stared. "You've been gone since 1989."

"Has it been?" George frowned thoughtfully as he looked around the little neighborhood. "I suppose time works differently here."

Calico stepped closer.

"Where exactly is 'here'?" she asked George.

"We've been debating that for years." George offered an apologetic smile.  

"No conclusions?"  I asked.

"Oh, plenty." He laughed. "They simply contradict one another."

Walter wandered slowly through the street. Looking at faces. Some familiar. Some not.

"How many?" he asked.

George considered. "Depends who you count as residents."

There were dozens by my count. A teenager reading on a porch swing. A woman hanging laundry that never quite dried. An elderly couple perpetually tending roses. A mechanic rebuilding the same truck with infinite patience. Most behaved as though this strange neighborhood had become simply  home.

"What do you do all day?" I asked.

George looked honestly surprised. "We live."

"But," I searched for words. "Don't you want to leave?"

"We did." He looked toward the woods, his smile becoming unexpectedly sad. "For a very long time."

"What changed?" I asked.

"Eventually you stop trying to wake up."

Tommy wandered toward a basketball court. Three boys tossed a ball back and forth. One looked vaguely familiar. Freckles. Shaggy brown hair. Fourteen. It was Danny Peterson. He laughed after missing an easy shot, completely unconcerned. Arthur quietly began to cry.

Danny noticed us, smiling politely. He raised one hand in greeting. Then returned to his game. A simple, neighborly gesture. I turned away. That's when I felt someone watching me. Across the street stood a woman in her thirties. Dark hair cascades down her shoulders. She tugged at the sleeve of her gray cardigan sweater. A paperback tucked beneath the other arm. She stared directly at me. She crossed the street with calm, deliberate steps. Stopped a few feet away. Tilted her head. Then smiled.

"I wondered when you'd get here,” she said.

Every instinct I possessed tightened.

"I’m sorry." I looked at Calico and back to the woman. “Have me met?”

"Not yet." She said it as though the sentence were perfectly ordinary.

Behind me, Calico called my name. I barely heard her. The woman extended her hand.

"My name is Evelyn." She looked into my eyes with unmistakable recognition. "I know who you are, Silas."

I frowned. "I've never seen you before."

"No." Her smile widened just enough to become unsettling. "But..." She glanced toward the motionless fireflies hanging above the trees. "...I've been remembering you for quite some time."

*****

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