The Light on the Horizon

2

Lewis was out shooting hoops again. I sat down on my skateboard to watch. Thock-thock. Thock-thock.

"Dad'll be happy," I said after a while.

The ball hit the roof and bounced down into the grass between our house and the Branigan's house. Lewis stared at the backboard where the ball should have landed.

"Why?" he said.

"Why? Because you've gotten better, that's why." Lewis sometimes asks some really weird questions.

Lewis put a hand to the back of his head, pulled it away after a few seconds and looked at it.

"He's not going to come and watch, is he?"

"He's not here."

"Are you sure?" Suddenly, Lewis' eyes darted to the front door like he expected to see dad standing there peering at him through the screen, ready to say something mean.

"Of course, I am. He wasn't here yesterday and he's not here now. Neither is mom. Cole said he looked for them, remember. Didn't you hear him?"

"Cole's a baby. Maybe he didn't look well enough." Lewis put his hand on the back of his head again.

"He's not a baby, he's almost seven. That's old enough to tell if Dad's here or not. And he's not."

"How do you know? Maybe he's in the basement."

"The basement? If he was in the basement, Lewis, then he would have come up and killed us for staying up all night."

Cole came around the side of the house carrying one of mom's gardening buckets.

"Hi."

"Hi. Did you check the basement to make sure mom and dad aren't down there hiding?"

"Yeah. I looked all over the place and they weren't anywhere. The other people were, though." Cole sat down on the front steps and began shoveling dirt from around the bushes next to the front door into the bucket. "The other people were in the living room and in Lewis' room...I think. But mom and dad aren't anywhere."

"What other people?"

"Dunno. I didn't see them."

"Did he tell you to say that?" Lewis said, his face suddenly angry. He still had his hand glued to the back of his head.

"Who?"

"He means dad."

"Oh. No. Dad's not here. How could he tell me anything if he's not here?"

"What other people, Cole?"

Cole shrugged and kept on filling the bucket. "Dunno. I just heard some voices. That's what woke me up. But Mom and Dad weren't anywhere and I looked all over the place. Didn't the voices wake you up?"

"No."

Lewis picked up the basketball and bounced it a few times. Cole disappeared with a full bucket of dirt around the side of the house. I rocked side-to-side on my skateboard and watched him go.

"Was anybody in your room, Lew?"

"No....of course not. Why would anybody be in my room, except me?"

"I didn't hear anything either."

"Cole doesn't know what he's talking about, alright?!" Lew started to shout. "He's a little baby! He doesn't know ANYTHING! He heard mom and . . . he heard them. Nobody else!"

I watched Lewis shoot his hoops for a while longer. Then I got up, and went skating. Only later did I see what Cole was up to in the back yard.

I went upstairs just as it was starting to get dark and saw him from out of the hallway window. He had dug a row of small, unorderly holes in the yard with some of mom's gardening tools. Under the tree, he'd dumped a pile of his toys; cars, action figures, Indians, dinos, airplanes, plastic building bricks, even his water pistols. As I watched, he took a rubber crocodile from out of the pile, gave it a kiss and laid it carefully into one of the holes. 

Then he spaded in a lump of dirt from the bucket he'd filled in the front yard on top of it and waved the spade around in a complicated pattern over the crocodile and then, laying the spade aside, he filled the hole in with his hands, patting the dirt down into a small hill when he was finished.

I stood and watched Cole bury more of his toys for a while. Then, just as I was about to turn and go, I saw it for the first time.

A dull glow, like a light bulb just coming on. Far off on the horizon.

At least, that's how it started. The longer I watched, the stronger it got until it was really clear. Cole noticed it, too. He abandoned his toys and went to watch it over the back yard fence, standing motionless in the growing darkness. 

I don't know how long he stayed there watching. I wanted to stop him. Tell him to get away from the fence. 

But I didn't. For some reason I knew it would be pointless.