Ed Krieger's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Tommy ran for his mother. She came with his grandparents close behind. They knelt around the old chest in the living room and lifted the lid again. The hooks rattled. The chain shifted on its own. Tommy's grandfather went pale before anyone spoke. A faded square slid out from under the rotted netting. It was a Polaroid, edges curled, a brown coffee stain across one corner. Tommy's mother picked it up with shaking fingers. Three faces stared back: his grandparents, young and smiling, and a small boy between them in a striped shirt. The boy was Tommy's father, dead now for years, alive in the picture and watching the camera. "He was a child when I marked him," the whisper said. It curled out of the chest and into every ear at once. Tommy's grandmother dropped to her knees. His grandfather covered his mouth. They had buried that name long ago, under stones beneath an old vine-covered arch on family land. They thought silence was enough. "You tied the knots," the voice said to the grandparents. "You weighted me down. I waited for your boy. I took him. Now I will take his." The hooks inside the chest lifted and clicked together like teeth counting. Tommy's mother pulled him against her chest. She finally understood why her husband had drowned so young, and so alone. The lid would not close. Tommy's grandfather tried, and the chain held it open an inch. Through that gap, the whisper kept speaking, soft and patient, naming each of them by name. The family was no longer a target the thing had to find. They were a room it had already entered.