Desert Places: A Novel of Terror by Blake Crouch

Mocking your own mother.”
    “I’m not mocking you, Mom. I think you’re hilarious.”
    She frowned again and looked back at the television. Though strong-willed and feisty, my mother was excruciatingly sensitive beneath her fussy exterior.
    “Have you been to Dad’s grave yet?” she asked after a moment.
    “No. I wanted to go with you.”
    “There were flowers by the headstone this morning. A beautiful arrangement. It looked fresh. You sure you didn’t—”
    “Mom, I think I’d know if I laid flowers on Dad’s grave this morning.”
    Her short-term memory was wilting. She’d probably taken the flowers there yesterday.
    “Well, I was there this morning,” she said. “Before it clouded up. Sat there for about an hour, talking to him. He’s got a nice spot under that magnolia.”
    “Yes, he does.”
    Staring into the olive shag carpet beneath my feet, at the sloped dining room table next to the kitchen, and that first door in the hallway leading down into the basement, I sensed the four of us moving through this dead space, this antiquated haunt—felt my father and Orson as strongly as I did my mother, sitting in the flesh before me. Strangely enough, it was the smell of burned toast that moved me. My mother loved scorched bread, and though the scent of her singed breakfast was now a few hours old, it made this deteriorating house my home, and me her little boy again, for three inexorable seconds.
    “Mom,” I began, and I almost said his name. Orson was on the tip of my tongue. I wanted her to remind me that we’d been carefree children once, kids who’d played.
    She looked up from the muted television.
    But I didn’t ask. She’d driven him from her mind. When I’d made the mistake of talking about him before, she had instantly shut down. It crushed her that he’d left, that thirteen years ago Orson had severed all ties from our family. Initially, she dealt with that pain by denying he’d ever been her son. Now, years later, that he’d ever been born.
    “Never mind,” I said, and she turned back to the game show. So I found a memory for myself. Orson and I are eleven, alone in the woods. It’s summertime, the trees laden with leaves. We find a tattered canvas tent, damp and mildewed, but we love it. Brushing out the leaves from inside, we transform it into our secret fort, playing there every day, even in the rain. Since we never tell any of the neighborhood kids, it’s ours alone, and we sneak out of the house at night on several occasions and camp there with our flashlights and sleeping bags, hunting fireflies until dawn. Then, running home, we climb into bed before Mom or Dad wakes up. They never catch us, and by summer’s end, we have a jelly jar full of prisoners—a luciferin night-light on the toy chest between our beds.
    Mom and I sat watching the greedy contestants until noon. I kept the memory to myself.
    “Andrew,” she said when the show had ended, “is it still cold outside?”
    “It’s cool,” I said, “and a little breezy.”
    “Would you take a walk with me? The leaves are just beautiful.”
    “I’d love to.”
    While she went to her bedroom for an overcoat, I stood and walked through the dining room to the back door. I opened it and stepped onto the back porch, its green paint flaking off everywhere, the boards slick with paint chips.
    My eyes wandered through the overgrown yard, alighting on the fallen swing we’d helped my father build. He would not be proud of how I’d cared for his wife. But she’s stubborn as hell, and you knew it. You knew it better than anyone. Leaning against the railing, I looked thirty yards beyond, staring into the woods, which started abruptly where the grass ended.
    Something inside of me twitched. It was as though I were seeing the world as a negative of a photograph—in black and gray, two boys rambling through the trees toward something I could not see. A fleeting image struck me—a cigarette ember glowing in a tunnel. There was