Across the Threshold

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Across the Threshold

By

James Barnes

Chapter One

It Begins

Reader I am about to take you on a journey that will wipe names like King, Koontz and Straub from your mind forever. You will forget all the storytellers of today and lose interest in any that came before. Everyone thinks their tale is the one to top all others, but the single fact that sets this story apart is that it happened and it might happen to you as well. Many of you won't believe me. You will think I am spinning a yarn at your expense. You can believe as you will, but be warned not all whispers in the dark are just the wind.

It was the summer of 1987 and Mid-Texas was at the mercy of a crippling heatwave. Even the asphalt bubbled black sores in protest of the thermometers mercury level. I was just a boy at the time and the heat was of little concern to me. Like all boys that lacked cable television I would have braved a hurricanes winds just to be out of the house. I saw it as a welcome adventure and I often imagined I was stranded in a strange hostile desert. The other, much larger, perk was that most of the adults were indoors nursing tall glasses of iced tea. This was a different time than it is now and back then all adults really were the enemy. If the next door neighbor caught you when you were up to no good he would tan your hide just as fast as your own parents. This led children to be wary of prying eyes and we tried to always be alert when our intentions were impure.

We were poor as church mice without a pew to perch under, but I did not know it at the time. I had my Big Wheel trike and that was good enough for me. I thought I was the king of the block every time my bare feet caressed its waiting petals. Now, with the weather man as my friend, I cruised the yard unmolested by any unwanted adult attention. It was just me and the wind as it kissed my darkly tanned shirtless torso with refreshing bursts of respite from the onslaught of heat. I was in heaven on earth. I heard my father stir through the thin walls of our single wide and I figured the safest course of action would be to haul butt toward the backyard. I saw no reason to let a perfectly good thing get ruined quite so soon.

My dad was running a one man electrical business and I could never tell when he might head outside the house in search of a misplaced tool or some other tidbit. I had heard him in the other room talking to someone on the phone earlier and that usually meant a new customer. His job put him home at odd hours of the day and I just assumed he was stirring around in an attempt to get all his tools in order. My mother was at work, as usual, at one of the third rate nursing homes that people hope they never end up in. The administration treated the patients badly and the staff even worse. I was still too young to understand the misery a horrible job could put on a person, but what I did know was the boredom of going on jobs with my dad. There were no family members close by to watch me so like many working families of the day I got toted along when both parents had to work.

I guess it was not all that bad after all. Sometimes the customers my dad worked for made a fuss over me and occasionally that even meant candy. Now I was definitely alright with candy any day of the week. I am really off in left field now, but I believe I know why my mind piloted me in this direction. My story begins, and in a way ends, on a day that my father was sporting me off to a job with him. The thought still makes a cold chill skip down my spine when I recall it and I am sure this plays a part in my mind wanting to avoid that particular day.