Asher Conroy stared intently into the eyes of the policeman who, two hours prior, found his father dead. He eyed their navy uniforms, their badges reflecting the light from the dimly lit lamp into Asher's watering eyes. He twitched his foot, doing his absolute best to distract himself from sobbing. His father, who he loved more than anything, dead with no explanation. The moment made no sense to ten year old Asher as he did his best to look tough in front of the policemen. One of the men had a graying mustache atop his thinning upper lip. He sipped coffee out of a ceramic mug, wiping his mustache with his sleeve. The other man was a young gentleman, no older than thirty. Asher looked at both men, awaiting what they would tell him next.
"Do these numbers mean anything to you?" Mr. Mustache slipped him a piece of paper with 23-17-56 scribbled in magenta sharpie. Asher shook his head. "No." His father was dead, and this is what they were asking him? Mr. Mustache squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. The other man jotted some things down on his notepad. "Are you sure?" Mr. Mustache spoke in a gentler voice, trying to get Asher to admit to something. "Yes, I'm sure." The dark room swallowed Asher and the policemen, except for a single dimly lit light above the table they were sitting at. "I've never seen those numbers before." The younger man winced and motioned for Mr. Mustache to exit. He pulled up a chair and winced as he put his hand on Asher's. "Your father was found dead outside of the boarded-up warehouse down on Jackson. Those numbers were tattooed into his arm." Asher bit his lip, trying to hold back his tears. He tugged at his shirt sleeve, the one his father had bought him at the mall. Asher began to scream. His screams were really a mix of shrill crying and shrieking. He didn't want to imagine what his father looked like. He didn't want to see his lifeless body at a funeral, his deceased eyes staring into a nothing. He wanted to see his father holding his hand, playing with him. Tucking him into bed before he slept. Driving him to school every morning. But now all Asher could think of was his body, cold and dead. How he would never be able to speak to his father again, or share more memories with him. Because he was gone.
YOU ARE READING
The Warehouse on Jackson Street
TerrorWhen Asher Conroy's sister Paisley goes missing he can only suspect she got herself into some trouble at a party. But when others start going missing he begins to realize all these disappearances may be connected to one person, or one thing. The boa...
