Remains

©2001 Ben Sizemore
All rights reserved.

A dank smell floated from inside the apartment above Sexton's Shoes, the scent of dust on yellowed pages.

To their left, an open door gaped on old hinges. A bathroom and the sound of a small but audible trickle of water. The tile had begun to reach up from the water-soaked floor. Jason Mere stepped gingerly on the soggy, blue and white tile.

"It's a mess, all right. What do you think? Half hour? Tell him it took us two?" He chuckled. "Terry?" No answer. The silence grew until it was broken by the sound of Terry Marshall's voice, further away, calling to him from down the hall.

Jason stepped in front of the medicine cabinet, looked into the mirror, and opened the door. His reflection swung away in a gray flash, and he peered at the telltale signs of people in their most private moments.

A double-edged razor caught his eye. He picked it up and turned it around in his hand like a parasol. The blade looked fresh; not a sign of rust. He placed it back in the cabinet, a nagging feeling in the back of his mind. A fresh blade? Maybe Mr. Sexton came up from the store here to crash sometime, and that's why the water still worked. Perfectly feasible. Except that it didn't ring. Like the sound of a guitar string when it's in tune. The ringing that comes not with flat or sharp, but a string in tune. That ring, his Uncle John said, was truth.

Jason brought his mind back to the moment and started out into the hall, wondering where Terry had gotten off to. He kicked a lonely soda bottle that lay on the floor. It clattered across the hall and bounced off the baseboard before coming to rest near his feet again. He reached down, picked up the bottle, walked it to the window, and set it on the edge.

"Terry?" he called.

"You gotta come down here and look at this stuff, man," Terry finally replied.

They had disturbed the dust in the short time they had been here, and it rose in the air like a dry mist. Jason wanted to sneeze, but it wouldn't come. Phantom tickle. He grabbed his nose and squeezed.

"What you got?" No answer. "Terry?" Still no answer, and then, faintly, so soft that he was unsure of his ears, music. Old music, like peace love and harmony music. Terry was really into that shit, and Terry couldn't sing.

Softly; and it's one, two, three, four, what're we fighting for? Oh, I don't know and I don't give a damn, next stop is Viet-nam.

Jason stopped, the toe of his boot touching another soda bottle. It turned in a sluggish half-circle until it touched the other side of his boot. He reached down and, keeping his eyes on the space down the hall where Terry had disappeared, righted the bottle on the floor. It fell and lay still. He stared down at the bottle, looking for a reflection of something, someone.

Still the music. The kind of music you could hear and place but not translate. Hum the tune even, but not grasp the words. The ghost of a song, he thought.

"Terry? What are you doing, man? Come on."

He stared down the hallway. On both sides were stacked shoeboxes. God knew how many. At least two hundred shoeboxes neatly stacked against the wall like silent sentries. They were arranged by size. Must be Sexton's version of a back room, he thought. Only this was an up-room. Jason wondered if Sexton carried his favorite brand of shoe and lifted the nearest lid to a box marked Men's 9 1/2. There were shoes there all right, but not sneakers.

An old, weather-beaten pair of penny-loafers. The bottoms were scuffed and the outside toes were nearly worn through. And photographs. Polaroid's, snapshots, folded 8x10s. A chill ran through his body and he shivered involuntarily. Jason set the lid down gently and shook his head. He reached for another box and lifted the lid. The same. More photographs, a rattle, a pacifier, and a frilly bonnet.

Jason let the lid drop. Were they all filled with this stuff? Could it all belong to the Sextons? May be they were a big family and this is the way they kept all their family mementos. After all, Mr. Sexton was bound to have plenty of shoeboxes to spare. That would be the obvious answer to storage.

Yes, all but for the creeping feeling that had been scaling its way up his spine ever since they had climbed in through that yellowing window. Jason's ears pricked, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He hated that. Sometimes it happened at the goofiest times. In movie theaters and churches as the congregation moved out. Almost as if something was moving back in, or rather like some envious green mask was being removed, revealing what had always been there.

Still the music. Jason walked down the hall, eyeing the boxes and thinking about opening more of them. A part of him wanted to dump all this strangeness out in the floor. Pore through it all. He wanted to know these people who once were and were now gone. It felt morbid in a way, to want to get to know dead people, but he also knew that one day he would be one of the dead, and he wondered what people would think of him. Or would they? Maybe that's what death was. To be forgotten. No, that would be hell.

Halfway down the hall he put his hand out. Jason lifted another lid. Ladies 6. Something lurched out of the darkness of the box. He jumped and dropped the lid, backing in a two-footed shuffle that sent him sprawling to the ground. His heart pounded and he shook his hand back and forth like a lunatic. An old photograph had leaped out and attached itself to the back of his hand.

He snatched the picture away from his hand. It came away with a filmy goop and an audible sucking sound, as if the emulsion had been heated to some strange consistency.

He scrambled to his feet and looked around. He frowned, wiped his hand on the leg of his jeans, and looked at the picture.

It was a picture of a little girl. Her blond hair shone bright in the sunshine and she clung gleefully to a man's hand. The church in the background glared bone-white. He stared at it until he felt the sensation of poking around where he didn't belong. He turned around. No one, just Terry's faint laughter from down the hall.

Jason closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. Imagination's running away with me. Place gives me the willies, he thought. He held the picture by the edges and tossed it on top of the boxes, left the lid on the floor, and walked on down the hall. A strange numbness of fascination kept creeping over him. He wished he had a camera. Just to prove to people that this place was really as he would describe.

Before the end of the hallway stood a portable closet, the kind made from PVC frames and nylon walls, its zippered door pinned open. A few suits hung in dusted plastic, among them what appeared to be a military uniform. He reached forward and brushed the dust from the shoulder. A bright blue shield and three stars floating within. Under the uniform and the suits rested three pairs of black dress shoes, gray under the weight of time. And stacks of newspapers. One on each side, two, three feet high. Jason leaned down and lifted a moldy page to read. The Honolulu Gazette. He stood up, wrinkled his nose at the newspapers, and stepped back.

They shouldn't be here. Doing this. This was somebody else's private stock. Just get Terry and go, he thought, and started for the door. Inside he could hear sounds of shuffling paper—Terry. When he crossed over the threshold, he was taken aback.

The girl looked up. She had long, strawberry-blond hair that fell over one shoulder, and spilled down her back. A blue bandanna was tied around her forehead, and her halter-top and cut-off jeans looked like someone had snuck into the wardrobe of an ex-hippie. She bounced on the bed gleefully, her halter-top concealing little. A thought flashed through his mind and he smiled. Free love, baby.

"Jason!" she squealed. "Terry has told me sooo much about you. I feel like I have known you forever! Come and sit next to me and we'll talk about the things we have known in the past." She held out her hand. He couldn't remember taking the steps, but suddenly he was standing next to her.

A poster of Arlo Guthrie was tacked to the wall over the bed. His mouth hung open in mid-song. The lyrics came back. A flying, singing, writing, weirdo-freak! Jason shook his head. His thoughts seemed over-loud to him, as though they were being amplified, and now he was hearing them from outside his own head. He felt dizzy.

The girl giggled and kicked her legs against the side of the single bed, already crowded with her and Terry.

"You'll get used to it," she said playfully. "There's room for everybody right, Terry?" Terry smiled at Jason. His eyes were glazed. His hair was wild and stuck out. His face was pale and sweaty.

"Come on, man. Sit with me and let's talk about it ALL." He emphasized the ALL by slapping the bed.

The girl trapped his hand and yelled "Blackjack!" and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

"Isn't she great?" Terry spouted, jubilant. A thin rivulet of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth and down his chin. Jason looked away, trying to clear the subtle fog that had wrapped itself around his mind.

On the dresser, there was a scrapbook. Its open pages were rumpled and uneven. Pressed flowers and Polaroid pictures were arranged haphazardly across the pages. He turned them slowly. A name was written on every page in block letters. Laura.

"That's me!" she tittered. Jason looked over his shoulder. Terry and ... Laura, were coiled together on the bed now, laughing between kisses. Had she said something? That's Laura, he thought. He turned another page and saw a picture of three young girls hugging a man in a three-piece suit. It was in front of a grocery store somewhere. The man smiled broadly.

The girl closest to the man in the picture was now saying something soft and quiet to Terry.

Another picture showed a blurry image of someone in a field of flowers off the side of the road. To the left of the picture he could see the blade of a bulldozer and freshly turned earth. Her again, he supposed.

Her arms were held out at her sides and her head was thrown back in euphoria, or maybe anger? No, more like.... He shook his head again and felt as though his brain were wrestling in some strange mire. Pain. Grief. That's what it was. Pain and grief. His pulse began to thump in his ears as his eyes roamed to the opposing page. A newspaper clipping. He turned the page up to avoid the glare on the plastic covering and read the headline. 'Local Girl Dies.'

Jason's head rocked for a moment. It felt as though someone had hit him. This was Laura. Laura.... He looked at the clipping again. Sexton. This couldn't be Laura Sexton. Laura Sexton had died over twenty years ago. His head reeled again from the blow of realization. And then she hit him again.

Jason tried to back away. He bumped into the dresser, sending the scrapbook to the floor.

"No!" she cried, diving for the book. She missed. It struck the floor, bounced and flopped open to another page. Laura Sexton cried like a wounded animal and curled up in a trembling ball on the floor. With her left hand she reached feebly for the scrapbook. She turned the pages back until they rested on the page with the clipping and the photographs. Jason watched in disbelief. She relaxed and began to breathe easier. She uncurled from the floor and kicked at Jason's legs as she stood. It was a childish kick. The kick accompanied by 'I hate you' in small children. She glared at Jason and stuck out her tongue. She carried the scrapbook tucked against her breasts like a schoolgirl.

"I have something for you!" she said, turning and pawing at Terry. Terry blushed and looked at the floor. Jason's tongue finally released with a surge.

"Terry!" He protested, but Terry held his hand up for silence. He smiled benignly at Jason. Jason's tongue tied up again and he was silent. He shifted from foot to foot, not sure what to do. Hesitation is a killer.

He watched as Laura Sexton produced a tab of acid, which she offered to Terry. It bubbled on her open palm. It worked from a dark gray to a sticky black, and Terry leaned down to kiss her palm.

Jason struggled to shout, but his vocal chords would not obey. He looked around the room wildly, clutching his traitorous throat. Laura Sexton looked over her shoulder at him and smiled.

"It's all free, Jason. And you're my next love-bug, honey. It's gonna put you in places you've never been. It'll tear you wide open." She giggled. Jason's stomach did a flip-flop and he thought for a moment that if he could manage to puke that he might be able to speak again.

Terry closed his eyes and slid to the floor. His head lolled from one side to the other and his brow had broken out in sweat. He shook from time to time, as though he was cold.

Jason knew somehow that this was more than a case of bad acid. This was something that worked from the inside. Worked on who you were—until you weren't.

Laura Sexton began to sing.

"I see a bad moon a risin'. I see trouble on the way."

Trouble was not on the way, Jason thought. It was here, and he didn't have the slightest clue what to do about it. He began to panic. This is not real, he thought. This is not happening. But if it is....

His gaze came to rest on the scrapbook. Immediately he felt her eyes on him. They were pale and milky now, but still sentient. She's real. The thought barreled into him, and for a moment, he thought it might overwhelm him. And she was dead.

Terry was shuddering. He had somehow crawled his way toward the door. Jason knew he had to do something. Terry's eyes had gone milk-white now, and he was drenched in sweat.

For a brief flashing moment, Jason felt his mind clear. Dead Laura Sexton's head had fallen over on one shoulder and her strawberry-blond hair had begun to gray on the ends. Her eyes were closed and she murmured to herself.

"I love you, Daddy. I'm sorry I went and didn't come back. Daddy, I'm sorry I went and didn't come back. Sorry I went and didn't come back. I went and didn't come back. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry," she chanted.

Jason lunged toward the bed. She continued to chant. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

She's not real anymore, he thought. She's been dead for twenty years. He aimed for the scrapbook with his left hand. He cocked his right fist just south of Texas.

Dead Laura's sightless eyes turned on him. She smiled just before he struck her across the mouth. He nearly dropped the book as pain climbed his arm like electricity. Jason felt his teeth rattle inside his head and saw a flash of light in his mind that lingered a moment in his eyesight.

His left hand closed around the scrapbook's binding. Dead Laura's head snapped to one side and righted itself. Her eyes focused on him again as he backed away from the bed. She smiled, coyly tipping her head to one side.

"Gently now," she said mockingly.

Jason had been scared plenty of times in his life, but never like this. Those other fears had all been unfounded in some way. Monster under the bed. Monster in the basement, in the woods. Boogeyman in dark hallways. Something worse in after-hours churches. But this, this was different. This had teeth.

"Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, let's love one another right now," she sang, her voice half little girl and half brimming with menace. Jason knew now that whatever this was, it was not Laura Sexton. Laura Sexton was dead.

Terry was wet with sweat. He lay still on the hardwood floor. Jason acted on impulse and opened the scrapbook to its first page and ripped. Terry twitched and moaned as if in a feverish sleep. He rolled over.

Laura Sexton threw her head back and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. It was as if he had reached inside of her and pulled something vital out. Some of her hair fell out. She reached up, grabbed two bony handfuls, and pulled. The hair came loose from its roots with a shredding sound. She began to wail and leaned forward over the end of the bed. When she quieted, her head turned from one side to the other. Her nose worked like an animal scenting for something in the brush. She stopped in the direction of Terry and smiled.

"That's it, baby. Let it expand your horizons!" Dead Laura tittered again and Terry doubled up as if he'd been kicked in the ribs. Jason reached for another page and pulled. The spiral binding gave, bending in crazy directions but not tearing. It was then that she leaped.

Jason moved, fear rushing through him. He was vaguely aware of shards of glass combing through the air and finding place in his hair. The mirror had shattered beside his head.

On the dresser, amid the old hairbrushes and yellow papers, crouched Dead Laura, her fists full of plaster from the wall beyond the mirror.

"I see a bad moon a risin'," she began again, as Jason edged cautiously toward Terry. He set the book down on the floor, put a boot on one page, and pulled. She launched from the dresser again, but she stopped in mid-air as the page came free. She looked as if a great hand had grasped her out of the air and flung her like a doll against the wall. Bad Dolly. Jason nudged Terry with his foot, pulling pages as fast as he possibly could. Terry began to stir.

"Sick." he said.

"I know, Terry. I know. Get up. We gotta get out of here."

"What are you doing, Jason?" Terry mumbled as he staggered to his feet.

"Making sure we get home again." Jason choked, fighting the tears that came to his eyes. Terry didn't look so good. He took hold of Jason's arm and clutched.

"Just let me lie down on the bed for a little."

"No!" Jason said, trying to pull Terry in the other direction. Dead Laura had begun to move again, slinking in a half-crouch toward the bed.

"What is she?" Terry asked.

"She's a bitch, Terry. A dead bitch at that."

Jason stole a glance over at Dead Laura. She had climbed back into the bed and was lying under the covers like a corpse in a casket. She drew back the covers and patted the bed.

Terry turned and bolted drunkenly for the door, shoving Jason and sending him careening into the hall. The scrapbook flew from his hands and fluttered into the hall like a wounded bird.

Jason rolled onto his back as the door slammed shut. He lay frozen on the floor as his ears fed him second-hand information. Dead Laura and Terry Marshall. An agonized scream. And Dead Laura laughed.

Jason scrambled backward, his heels slipping on the hardwood, and scrambled to his feet. Run! Run! No! Got to help Terry! He caught sight of the scrapbook and pounced. Was it moving on its own? No. But it seemed to be getting further away even as he looked at it. Not in motion ... but still moving further away.

Jason landed with a resounding thud. He felt his heart try to find its way out as the book moved beneath his chest. The spiral binding curled and jabbed him through his shirt. He rose to his knees and pulled on the last three pages. Dead Laura screamed behind the closed door. Faintly he heard Terry calling his name. The last page would not give, and Terry began to shriek. The sound turned Jason's guts over. It was the sound made when fear is the only sense left, when everything else has burned away.

Jason struggled to his feet. He stood on the scrapbook and yanked. Lift with your legs, he thought. All your anger. All your want. All your everything. The page groaned and the binding wobbled. It gave with a guttering snap. The spiral binding whipped around, catching him across the cheek and lashing back to etch a bloody line over his throat.

He shoved himself backward, trying desperately to put some distance between himself and this thing that had come to some twisted life of its own. He watched as the spiral binding rolled and curled like a snake with its head cut off. It moved over itself and coiled before pushing out toward him. Jason looked at the last page in his hands.

'Local Girl Dies; Drugs suspected in the untimely death of Franklin's Laura Sexton. Police say Laura Sexton was headed for a music festival in New York. Her body was found in an abandoned campsite in southern New Jersey. Services will be held at the Brown-Harding Funeral home tomorrow at 10 a.m.'

Jason looked to the door where Terry surely lay with his head thrown back and his mouth full of bad acid. Silence. He was soaked with sweat. He stood unsteadily to his feet and walked to the door. He tested the doorknob and found it locked. A groan from the other side.

"Jason?" A tentative voice called. Terry was alive.

"Terry, open the door!"

"I can't. It won't open." A moment's pause, and Jason could hear Terry weeping more loudly. He began to claw at the door, banging on the old wood hysterically.

Silence, followed by a high-pitched whine that made Jason's hair stand up all over his body. Is this how you went crazy? Seeing something like this?

A shuffling sound caught his attention and he spun, catching sight of the last page skittering across the floor in little circles. How had it escaped his grasp? Jason stared down at his empty hands and felt his chest constrict.

"Jason?" Terry cried out and began to beat again on the door. There was a crashing sound like someone throwing something against a wall. Jason lurched down the hall in pursuit of the page. It flitted here and there, dodging his efforts. He finally caught it as it flew past his face. For a moment, he couldn't see anything and was afraid it would smother him. When he pulled the page away from his face it was traced with the blood from his cheek and throat. He turned the page sideways and pulled, trying to rip the page in two, but the plastic coating only warped and bent. Still the sounds of a scuffle in the room down the hall. He tightened his grip around it.

Jason ran to the door and turned the knob. He pulled on the door once, twice, and on the third time it finally gave with a shudder, expelling Terry, who was so white that Jason suddenly thought he looked like a scared mime. That was a good thought, and he almost laughed. Terry stumbled into Jason's arms and they tumbled toward the floor, tangled together. They managed to get away from one another but not before sending each other careening in different directions. Terry fell, hands splayed out in front of him, into the stand-up closet, sending newspaper and shoes scattering.

Jason pushed himself to his feet, kicking a shoe away from him and down the hall. It skittered into a soda bottle, the bottle bumping into other bottles and off the dusty baseboards. He blinked hard. For every bottle it bounced into there seemed to be another one in waiting. The gray-black shoe spun to a lazy stop.

Jason's head stilled for a moment and he looked around, shocked. Nothing made sense. Terry was leaning against the wall opposite the stand-up closet and slowly slid to the floor. Faint strands of music drifted through Jason's head, and as they did, he could feel his stomach knotting.

It's been a looong tiiime coming'. Jason opened his eyes and focused on a small spot on the wall, trying to force the music out of his mind. The music and the pain persisted for a moment and then faded. Somewhere in the back of his head he heard, no, felt, the laughter of Dead Laura.

He choked back a sob and shook his head. He felt like he had been drinking all night and into the next afternoon. Coleslaw and beer. Bad medicine, brother. Bad, bad ... acid. The strange experience he had just endured suddenly caved in on him, and the tears began to come in force. He let them come. He had no choice. Jason didn't believe in ghosts. He didn't like going to church, and he wasn't superstitious, but he was a believer now, and Jason Mere was terrified of what he believed.

He hid his face in the crook of his arm and leaned against the wall to cry. How would they ever come out of this? And more importantly, how do you ever forget something like this? Knowing that all those years of hearing bumps in the night, that Mommy and Daddy had lied. Or worse yet, not known. There was something under the bed and in those closets. And now that he had held that information, he felt it wiggling its way toward the dark parts of his brain. It would carve out a spot and feed quietly there, enlarging its domain in his thoughts until he went mad. It would always be there now.

"Jaaason." A voice called. It seemed to be a distance off. At the end of the hall, sitting on the radiator, was Dead Laura. She looked beautiful. She held a sign that said 'MAKE LOVE, NOT WARR' in her clawed hand. She smiled to show her perfect, long teeth. She winked as the other hand disappeared into the top of her jean shorts. Her head tilted back against the window and her eyes closed into slits ... slits that Jason knew were watching him intently, but still he felt an undeniable urge to go to her.

The lids from the shoeboxes freed themselves. Their dusty yellow contents whipped around the room in a windstorm. The boxes flopped to the ground like lame, living things and spilled their faded contents into the winded hallway. Some of the photographs struck him in the face and arms, leaving small cuts to which they adhered.

Dead Laura's eyes had grown glassy as if seeing the entire room all at once.

"Some people are like magnets," she said. Her arms were raised out as if she were a small child playing airplane. "You just get drawn to us. Energy will take whatever form is acceptable. A gun, a wand, a person, even." She turned her unfocused eyes on Jason and lashed out. She struck him in the face. Light, and immediate numbness followed. He felt himself going to sleep.

The last page of Dead Laura's scrapbook was moving in his hand. He knew now. His mind bent backwards, and what seemed to make no sense at all, now suddenly was clear. He understood it all. For a brief moment, he saw it all very clearly, madly even, and he laughed. He saw everything that had happened so far with clarity, and a brief flash of what was to come, before it faded.

Jason laughed. "Got you figured now, bitch."

He took the page firmly in one hand. He shoved the other into his pocket and hurriedly fished out a lighter. He spun the wheel. The flints sparked and then caught, blue and yellow with flame. The page twisted away as he tried to put it in the fire. The plastic crinkled and shrunk back on itself and Jason heard the girl yelling at the top of what was left of her lungs. Terry's own cries were mixed with hers—and then the page surrendered and caught violently. The flames leaped up and singed his hands. He dropped it and stifled the impulse to step on it and extinguish the flame. It curled on the floor and waned a sickly yellow before charring to black. Jason stared at the page as it smoked like a piece of green wood.

A silent wash of energy flowed from the last page. It woke him up, and he saw the silently screeching Dead Laura as the light flared down the hallway. It rolled like fast-moving water over dry ground, without competition.

Jason looked over at Terry but he was out. Good for him. The light pushed against his chest and he couldn't breathe.

Dead Laura's body whipped and thrashed on the floor. She tried to get up, but the waves picked her up and smashed her back down. Steadily she wound down. She turned grayish. Her mouth opened and closed no more. She looked like an old-time photograph. All but the snake-like tongue that lolled out of her mouth. It rested on her left shoulder and twitched.

The light moved back and forth over the length of the hall. It pressed against the window, and the wall began to bow. The whole wall started to give with the pressure. Jason felt voices. Panic in some, and then a joint screaming, and silence.

He looked up. The last curl of energy wafted down the hall. He dragged himself back to his senses and over to Terry. He took a fistful of Terry's shirt. Terry moaned and Jason reached up into the light.

Asbestos. Sharp grate and scrape of shingles. He was on a rooftop, and sliding. His body went tense, clinging like ivy to the walls. He was on the back roof to the store. Jason looked down at the gravel and glass of the parking area. Too far to drop.

Terry! Where was—but Terry Marshall was there, conscious, and white as snow on Christmas.

"Is she gone?" he rasped.

"Yeah, I think so," Jason whispered. There was glass on the shingles, and Jason knew they would be slivered before they managed to put their feet on the ground again.

Thick, syrupy smoke ladled out of the window above them. An occasional burst of heated air rolled out over the pane.

The two scrabbled their way back to the railing and tumbled over onto the wooden landing. Terry shook so badly that Jason had to help him down. The stairs were narrow, which made even this perilous. As they reached the bottom, an immense pressure rose up and heated the air again, bigger this time, and rolled out of the buildings small window. The booming sound was replaced with the sounds of fire, as part of the wall blew out around the window and fell to the rooftop.

"Run!" Jason yelled. And they did, narrowly avoiding a Camaro. They looked back at the building engulfed in flame. The boy in the Camaro flipped them off and turned up his radio as he sped away.

The flames reached for the roof of Sexton's Shoes, reaching an insane burn before pulling back on itself like a vacuum.

Gone. No damage to the building. No glass on the shingles. As if it had never happened. Terry began to bob up and down on the balls of his feet. He cried like a baby. Jason felt like doing the same. Terry looked at him for a long moment, and Jason thought for a second he might come out of it. But he never did.

Terry set out up the alley, screaming about Othello being right about women, and how the '60s was a bunch of shit. He grabbed a passerby and tried to talk to him until he shook Terry off into the street. Terry was almost hit by a car.

Jason looked at the building before him. It was pokerfaced. Not about to reveal anything.

Looking around, he saw that Terry was long gone. Jason headed to the store in search of cigarettes.

On his way out of the store, he picked up the paper from that day.

'Local storeowner dies in automobile accident. James Sexton, proprietor of Sexton's Shoes, died yesterday in a one-car crash when his vehicle careened out of control into a utility pole. Sexton's Shoes was established in 1947.'

He set the paper back on the rack. He left the store, walked around the block, and opened his smokes. His head ached. He looked over the city of Franklin, and lit a cigarette. He drew heavily on it; the way smokers do, and turned for home.

He passed by Sexton's Shoes without looking at the storefront, or its emblazoned slogan.

SEXTON'S SHOES: WE'VE GOT YOUR SOLES.

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