Nightmare Magazine, Issue 39 (December 2015) by John Jospeph Adams

Author:John Jospeph Adams [John Joseph Adams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Joseph Adams
Published: 2015-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

©2015 by Caspian Gray.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caspian Gray is a used car salesman who has previously worked as a funeral director’s apprentice, a pet nutritionist, an English teacher in Japan, a Japanese teacher in America, and a crystal healing “expert” in a head shop. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, where he shares a home with a tall man and a small dachshund.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Honey in the Wound

Nancy Etchemendy | 6632 words

For the better part of my life, I have borne the circumstances of Avery Channing’s death in silence, at first because I wished to forget them, later because I doubted anyone would believe the truth, and later still because I feared I might suffer eternal damnation for my part in the whole terrible business. But time has worked a certain alchemy. I have no greater wish than to die with a clear conscience, and the prospect of confessing seems less awful now than it once did. I was only a child. When that is considered, what I did seems easier to forgive.

I was ten years old when, on the afternoon of November 13, 1925, we heard a shuffling on the porch followed by a scream and whimpers. I was in the kitchen at the time, arguing with my mother about Lon Chaney’s new movie, The Phantom of the Opera, which was showing at the cinema down the street. Mother said it was hideous trash, and no, I could not go see it. The house was warm and smelled of apple pie. There was a window over the sink, and the reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves outside were so vibrant that they flowed into the room, permeating it with surreal color.

“What on Earth was that?” said Mother, and hurried toward the parlor, drying her hands on her apron. She threw the front door open, never pausing to look through the glass. The things we feared—wars, and sickness, and grief—could not be kept out by doors or locks anyway.

Before us stood a clump of sweaty boys. There were four at the bottom of the steps and three on the porch—Charlie Boynton, Will Lowder, and between them their friend, my brother Avery. All of them were scratched and streaked with mud. That wasn’t so unusual. They were twelve and thirteen years old, and boys play rough. The unusual thing was the silence. No jostling, no laughter. Just the whisper of frantic breath.

“We . . . we were only playing,” said Charlie. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault.” His face was tight with the effort it took not to cry.

Only then did I notice that Charlie and Will had their arms under Avery in a fireman’s carry. His hair hung over his eyes in dark, wet strings. His skin looked pale as bone. He was shivering, and grunting with pain. Blood soaked his right pant leg, drip drip dripping onto the gray painted boards in a crimson pool the size of a dinner plate.

Mother, it must now be said, knew what it was like to lose a child.

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