Space Rock

 

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is to write a story or poem that features a ghost, either literal or metaphorical. This week’s tale comes to us from Val Muller, author of the kidlit mystery series Corgi Capers.

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Space Rock

by Val Muller

James parked in the driveway and didn’t pause before getting out of the car. If he stopped to think about it, he would be on the highway headed home before he could do the thing. His feet sounded loudly on the driveway, the footsteps of an intruder. He didn’t belong. This was no longer his driveway: it had been paved over at least once. The speckled concrete riddled with cracks was gone. The house, too, had been renovated beyond recognition. If not for those two reflective numbers on the mailbox, 37, he doubted he would even recognize his childhood home.

Not with the color change and the front addition. Even the overgrown bushes he used to play hide-and-seek in were replaced by well-manicured pines.

He rang the bell. It was a new bell, a fancy new door with glass panels on the sides.

No one was home. This was so stupid.

He thought about the eight-hour drive ahead of him. He should go. It would be dark soon. His girlfriend was waiting.

Both sets of neighbors had moved away, too. He knew that from Christmas cards. It was an eerie feeling, to be such a stranger in a place that used to be home, that in his mind would always be home. Maybe Home was a different dimension than reality.

He hurried to his car just as quickly as he had come, driving down the street he used to speed through on his bike, on rollerblades. But even as he tried to drive away, he knew he would stop himself, parking in the only obscure spot he could think of, the dilapidated forest of weeds where his blue newspaper box used to be when he was paperboy. In the twilight, no one would notice the car. He could do the thing and then hurry away.

In the twilight, he walked back toward Home.

Some things just linger in the subconscious, shackling us to memory. For James, it was the meteorite. True, he wasn’t sure it was a meteorite, but Dad always called it that, and repetition makes the kind of truth that clings to the soul.

The idea came to him as soon as he saw his friend’s wedding invitation. You’ll be five minutes away, the voice told him. Go to it.

Thinking back on his childhood, there wasn’t a week that passed—maybe only in the winter, when it was covered under snow—that he didn’t go behind the small oak tree to inspect the strange rock. Fitting in an outstretched palm, it was strangely smooth, despite its divots, a dark gray, almost black, with large orange spots. He didn’t know where it came from, but it lived in the rock collection behind the tree with a beautiful white quartz, a geode, and several other less-impressive specimens.

He never knew why the rock collection had to stay outside. As a child, he never asked. He supposed it would have been clutter. When he came home to pack up the house for his parents’ move, he was in college, and everything was transient. Packing up a lifetime of toys, books, cookware, nothing seems important. It’s a race to the dump. He lived out of a bag in a dorm room. The rock was not a blip on his mind.

But since he graduated, he’d come to appreciate more of the things his parents had provided him. Things he never thought about like water bills, heating, food. And an oak tree with a stellar rock collection. His parents hadn’t thought about packing the rocks either, shrugging it off upon mention one Thanksgiving.

But in the back of his mind, he knew an absurd truth. He hadn’t been able to find good work since graduating. He lived from one job to the next, and it never felt like life had quite started. He knew, deep down, if he only possessed that rock, things would change.

Absurd, but true.

At least to him.

He glanced from house to house. Few seemed occupied—all likely commuting back from weekend trips, or maybe doing Sunday grocery shopping. A few upstairs lights on down the street. No one would see him.

He walked back to the gate, opening it slowly so it wouldn’t squeak. He knew just how, having had much practice sneaking out as a teen.

The backyard was largely untouched, except that they tore down the above-ground pool. It would have been ancient now, anyway. They replaced it with a firepit and a circle of Adirondack chairs. But the oak tree was still there, and he jumped into the pachysandras to search for his stash.

His heart caught.

They were gone.

The rocks.

All of them.

He panicked. He was here, breaking and entering (was it called that, if you were only in a back yard?). He had crossed the line into crime, and yet where was his reward?

He stuck his hands into the ground cover, his fingers squishing through all manner of mud and worms and who knows what else. But there were no rocks. A light came on in the backyard next door. The seven-foot fence was still standing, and maybe he wouldn’t be seen, but with the pool gone, there was nowhere to hide. He hurried to the firepit and crouched in an Adirondack chair with its back to the threat.

He froze as the smell of a cigar wafted through the air.

Come on, hurry.  

“Jim, that you?” a voice called out in his direction.

Just freeze.

Cigar-man paused a moment, then seemed to accept the silence. James wondered if the echo of his racing heart would give him away. What were the chances, that the new owner would share James’ name? When James finally felt brave enough to open his eyes again, he saw stars, he had been squeezing his eyelids so tightly. He unclenched his fists, too, noting the crescent-shaped indentations his nails left in his palms.

As the world came into focus, the neighbor’s light went off, the smell of cigar vanishing with the closing of a door. But just before the light went out, James saw it. Around the firepit. All his rocks. The white quartz, the geode, and all the rest. And there, in the corner, his meteorite. Decorations for a fire pit.

He sprung into action, stashing the rock in his pocket.

Get out, you moron! You could still be arrested.

But he knew he couldn’t. He removed his coat and spread it on the ground, hoping there were no Ring cams recording his misdeed. Then he placed each rock on his coat, examining each the way he had in childhood. Each rock had a name, one that sounded in his mind and transcended words. He named them with his soul as he placed them in their Chariot.

Then, like the Grinch slinking away from the Whos on Christmas, he slung his rock-laden jacket over his back, leapt over the fence on the far side—away from Cigar Man’s house—and hurried down the street. A car passed him on its was down the street, and James glanced back just long enough to see it pull into his former home.

It was his cue to run. He sprinted the rest of the way to his car, just as fast as he had in childhood games of cops and robbers. He placed the rocks on the passenger seat, next to his dress shoes and the wedding favor candle he was bringing back to Joanie, who’d had to work. A calm settled over the car as he threw it into gear and drove with his rocks toward the highway, feeling that satisfying fullness of a mother knowing that all her kids are home.

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/