In the Walls and Other Stories by Daniel Powell

Author:Daniel Powell [Powell, Daniel W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, horror, short stories, fantasy, daniel powell
Publisher: Distillations Press via Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HOMECOMING

It will be eight months this Saturday, and I’ve finally decided to write it all down.

My therapist is going to call this a breakthrough. He’s been pushing me in this direction for months.

“You’ll want to make a record, Alan. There will come a time, and I know this sounds impossible right now, when the details of what happened to you on that afternoon become fuzzy. When the time that you spent with them drifts off into…well, into the fog of memory. But if you capture it now, while everything’s still fresh in your mind, then you won’t have to worry about that. You won’t have to suffer through losing them twice.”

I often wonder, does Dr. Pemberton actually believe me?

Part of me thinks he must. Why else would I go back to that cramped little office?

Aside from my parents and a few close friends (and even the friends, I’m not so sure about), he might be the only one that does.

None of that matters, though. Dr. Pemberton is right. I have to do this, because the fear of losing them all over again is more than I can bear.

My story begins like this—it was just another regular day. That’s one hell of an introduction, right?

It was just another regular day.

“Daddy, please!” Jennie had begged. “Just come and play with us for an hour! We can build a sand fort!”

“Don’t pester him, Jen,” Laura said, a wry grin on her face. She knew my feelings about the beach. I’d agreed to purchase the house on the water for their sake, but I seldom dipped a toe in the Atlantic myself. There was something I’d never liked about the ocean. All those miles of sand—eons’ worth of coral and stone ground down into a fine powder—felt unnatural to me. Nothing grew there. The beach has always struck me as a barren, final place.

And don’t get me started on the ocean. I once saw four fully grown men resort to using a Toyota pickup truck to wench an 800-pound hammerhead off the tip of the Jacksonville Pier. They’d caught the damned thing in fourteen feet of water—a depth my wife and little girl spent hours in every week.

No sir, the beach was not for me. I enjoyed swimming—don’t get me wrong—but give me a pool filled with clean blue water any day of the week.

But they loved it, and so I was thankful when the Gormans accepted our offer. We’d been in the house for almost two years and, despite the ubiquitous skirls of sand on the hardwoods and the ever-present pile of damp beach towels on the back patio, I was the happiest I’d been in all my life in that house.

“I’m sorry, Jen. I have to work,” I said, leaning down to peer into those startling green eyes. They were such a vibrant shade that they made her appear older than her four years. But when she smiled—which she did often—you understood that she was simply a beautiful and trusting child, in love with the world and thankful for her life.

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