Memory Lane: A Short Story (The Cassandra Quinn Series Book 0) by Kealan Patrick Burke

Author:Kealan Patrick Burke [Burke, Kealan Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

Like the old man’s memory, the sun had disappeared behind dirty clouds by the time Glenn angled his car back out onto the still-deserted street. He was shaken by the experience with Jack Potter, and resolved to call Doctor Kline as soon as he got home. Kline would probably already know all about Jack’s issue and tell him there was, sadly, nothing to be done, but it didn’t feel right just ignoring it. Maybe they’d never been friends and never would be, but Glenn had never directly witnessed the loss of someone’s faculties, and it rattled him badly. He knew that Wendy’s mother had died of Alzheimer’s, and he had always thought it a terrible way to go. Now, the experience combined with thoughts of his own high blood pressure and the headache that continued to plague him made him intimately aware of his age and poor shape. He was not yet forty, but he’d lived an unhealthy life. He had been, and on occasion continued to be, a smoker and a drinker. He ate greasy foods. People died from such things at his age, and younger. It made him think of the children and them waking up one morning to find him—

As if his morbid preoccupation had created it, sudden darkness fluttered into the edges of his vision. Panicked, he jammed a foot on the brake. He hadn’t been going fast, no more than forty, just fast enough to elicit a shriek from the rear wheels and sent wisps of oily smoke curling up and over the car. With a quick check of the mirrors for traffic, for anything abnormal about his widened eyes, and for a presence in the back seat, he released the brake and let the car continue to move.

His heart pounded in his chest and intensified the pain at his temple.

It was nothing, he told himself, and everything he had seen of himself in the rearview mirror suggested this was the case. And yet…for a moment it was as if someone sitting behind his seat had looped their arms around the headrest with the intention of putting their hands over his eyes. For the briefest second, he was sure he had seen the dark blurs of fingers edging into his field of vision, only to withdraw the instant he became aware of them. It had tempted him to look right, then left, much as Jack had done at the store, to see if the irrational fear had a basis. Fearing he’d lose control of the car, he’d jammed on the brakes, and now there was nothing untoward to be seen at all. No mischievous stowaway, or—the most likely culprit—critical health issue conspiring to kill him before he made it home.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, a hand over his heart, perspiration prickling his brow in time with the first drops of rain on the windshield. Ten minutes later he entered Grand Row, parked the car, and got out, armed with the groceries. His fingers were shaking, his headache raging.

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