In Memoriam ✔️

4

The door smashed against the wall, then bounced back at Kyle, but he merely swatted it aside. His breath came in heavy gasps and he could feel himself weakening with the strain but he had forced himself to remain standing.

"Christ on a stick, Kyle. Have you lost your mind?" Anita rose from one of the many couches in the therapy room, confronting him. Jonesy yapped from behind her legs. "How'd you even get in?"

Kyle tossed a rock in the air, catching it and tossing it again. "I had a key."

"You're paying for that door."

Kyle snickered, then coughed. Anita stepped forward, but Kyle righted himself quickly.

"No," he said.

"Fine, Mr. Ingham, but if you don't mind me saying," Anita continued, "you don't sound so well."

"I reckon not." Kyle wiped at his brow, then stood straight as he could. "You see, I heard a rumor about a family. A certain family that had lost a daughter."

"That load of horse shit has been dragged across my carpet year after year, but you know what? End of the day, it's still just shit on my carpet."

"Colorful." Kyle kneeled setting down his rock and grabbing a nearby tennis ball. "Here, Jonesy. Here, boy."

The corgi bounded over, the sight of the tennis ball wiping all perception of the animus in the room from its mind.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't." Anita shuffled forward, her composure wavering.

Jonesy grabbed the tennis ball in his muzzle and shook it violently as Kyle kept his grip on the ball.

"I don't mean any harm, ma'am. I just want the truth. See I didn't believe that shit when I heard it either. Not at first. Then I did some digging of my own."

"There's nothing to dig up, Kyle. Christy Newsom came to me looking for a way to turn back time, to bring her daughter back. But that would have been news, Mr. Ingham. Rose Newsom never returned from that grave, no matter the rumors."

"No. No, that's what I thought, too," Kyle said, scratching Jonesy's head while the dog shook the tennis ball in either direction. "Then I noticed that the Newsoms, they disappeared," he continued. "They just up and vanished from Raleigh shortly after they contacted you."

"People move." Anita stepped forward.

"No, Mrs. Shaw." Kyle reached into his pocket sliding out a large Gerber knife and folding open its blade. He continued scratching Jonesy's head. "Don't."

Anita came to an abrupt halt. This wasn't the man that she had come to know. This was a man stretching at the end of his tether, a man who felt that he could suffer no further loss. In that, he didn't know how wrong he was.

"You see, they didn't move," he continued. "They just ceased to exist. The whole family. I find that kind of odd, don't you?"

Anita made to speak, but Kyle interrupted her.

"It's a rhetorical question," he said. He coughed into his sleeve, loosening his grip on Jonesy's tennis ball. The ball flew from the corgi's mouth and bounced under a distant couch. Delighted in the chase, the dog bounded after it. As he did, Kyle eased himself to his feet.

"I didn't know what to make it of it at first," he said, "but a little more digging and I found the record for the name change. The whole family just changed their names and moved. All of 'em. Suddenly the Newsoms were the Mackies. Same ages, same socials, new names. You know what the kicker of it was, though?"