by Dan Alatorre
In blue overalls and a red shirt, with shiny blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, he sprinted across the basement on a sunny day. Hide and seek. His brother upstairs, counting. Fifty-nine. Sixty. Ready or not, here I come.
He glanced over his shoulder, smiling as he yanked the latch down and opened the little door. With a quick foot on the nearby wooden shelf, he thrust himself up and into the bin, pulling the door shut behind him.
“Come find me, Caleb!”
His laughs echoed off the hard walls as he crawled over the dusty coal, the bin nearly empty, as it always was in springtime. Caleb would never find him here. He doubted his older brother would even hear his laughter; too much noise from the street, and besides, the bin walls were concrete but were separate from the house.
All but the one wall with the little steel door.
He stepped back, panting and smiling, enjoying his trick—the first good chuckle he’d had since their mother had disappeared a few months earlier.
“In the cold of winter, walking out on two small children.” The neighbor, Mrs. Kessler, shook her head. “Leaving those young boys to fend off their tyrant father all alone.”
He’d catch it, too, if he came out of the bin all black and dusty, but he hadn’t thought of that at the time. He glanced at his black hands. That would wash off. Nothing had gotten on his pants, really, and not too much on his shoes. Balancing on the coal pile would be the key to staying unbruised from papa. Otherwise, he’d wear welts to school tomorrow, and be unable to sit—if he was lucky.
As he crawled backwards from the door, the coals shifted under his feet and buried him up to his knees. Frantic, he didn’t hear the calls from his brother on the wooden stairs, or the truck as it pulled to a stop in front of the house.
He was frozen in place by the sight of the hand that emerged from the coal. The dusty, black rocks rolled away, exposing a long, thin wrist—wearing the ribbon he’d given his mother for Christmas.
When the bin doors opened up, the light was blinding. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, only to have his mouth filled with the rain of coal dust as it dropped.
The vision faded, replaced by the white face and drawn mouth.
“I am here,” the pale, white boy said to me. “We both are.”
My heart in my throat, I was unable to speak. I forced my head up and down.
His hand released mine, and the cold grip of death faded away.
Rearing his head back again, he howled, sending a chill through me that clutched my insides.
“I am here!”
The rest of the vision came in glimpses. A man taken away in handcuffs, a brother in foster care.
“What are you doing?” My uncle’s voice boomed through the basement. Behind him, the bare, 60-watt bulb ceiling bulb cast a long shadow onto the floor as he towered over me. I sat there on the concrete, trembling. He lifted me up and handed me the soda bottle, wrapping my hands around it as if it were a baby. “Take this upstairs.” Then, softer: “Dry your eyes first, Den.”
I went, almost certain I heard more from the ghost boy as I reached the linoleum at the top of the stairs, but I pretended not to hear it. Glancing back down the steps, the shadow of Uncle Jim’s big frame crossed back into his office. A puff of smoke soon emerged, telling me the next Camel had been lit.
He went back to his work, and I went back to mine.
The soda got delivered.
The New Year was welcomed between hands of cards.
“Tradition and remembrance.” Grandma stood in front of the mantle, raising her glass of Pepsi. My mom and the others gathered behind her. A salute to loved ones now gone. Grandma sniffled, her glass shaking as she smiled at each frame on the mantle—her father and mother, her grandparents, her cousin Fred who died in the war. She couldn’t look at the last frame, though.
My mom raised her glass, a tear rolling down her cheek “And to my little brother.” Mom put her arm around Grandma. “I miss you, Jimmy,” Mom whispered, staring at the last frame. “We all do.”
Dad patted mom’s shoulder. The other adults in the room voiced their agreement, then everyone took sips of their sodas while Auld Lang Syne played on the living room TV and Dick Clark got covered in confetti.
I watched for a while, then went back to the basement door, gazing down the stairs. Spider webs gently wafted back and forth over Uncle Jim’s office door. Dust-covered chairs leaned against it, next to a snow tire that had seen better days.
“C’mon.” Chris nudged my arm. “My mom says we aren’t leaving for another hour. Let’s finish our game of Battleship.”
“Okay.” I nodded, turning away from the basement and following my cousin to the living room.
THE END
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Thrillers By Dan Alatorre
The Gamma Sequence, book 1: a medical thriller Click HERE to BUY NOW!
The Gamma Sequence, book 2: ROGUE ELEMENTS, a medical thriller Click HERE to BUY NOW!
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Double Blind, an intense murder mystery thriller
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DAN ALATORRE DARK PASSAGES
A COLLECTION OF SHORT HORROR STORIES AND DARK TALES
Dark Passages Book 1 © 2020 Dan Alatorre.
© This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2020 Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
DAN ALATORRE DARK VOODOO
A COLLECTION OF SHORT HORROR STORIES AND DARK TALES
Dark Passages Book 2 © 2020 Dan Alatorre.
© This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2020 Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
DAN ALATORRE DARK INTENT
A COLLECTION OF SHORT HORROR STORIES AND DARK TALES
Dark Passages Book 3 © 2020 Dan Alatorre.
© This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2020 Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, a
nd incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
DAN ALATORRE DARK THOUGHTS
A COLLECTION OF SHORT HORROR STORIES AND DARK TALES
Dark Passages Book 4 © 2020 Dan Alatorre.
© This eBook is licensed for your personal use only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. © No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Copyright © 2020 Dan Alatorre. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
