that ever yt hing was safe, he motioned for Nicole to join him, and when she had, he took her hand and helped her up.
The sweet smell of hay lingered in the air and Daniel realized he knew that smell, that and the dry, gritty taste of hay dust, from the days when he was a kid and he would jump from the loft into the bales that’d been stacked up beneath it.
Yes, he was sure of it: he’d been here more than once, but onl y now that he was here again did it come back to him.
Memories crowded in on the moment.
Memories of landing.
Tumbling.
Rolling.
Here, here in this place.
Yes. Up until that last day. And then he’d been afraid to come here, even to his grandma’s house. Afraid that—
But if yo u spent that much time here as a kid, wh y didn’t yo u remember it before now? Wh y did yo u block that out of yo ur memor y?
Yes, maybe the memories of being here were blocked, or maybe, like with so many things, he just needed a spark to bring the past back to him.
Really, memories were weird things. Sometimes the harder you tried to forget something, the more you remembered it. And then there were those things that you wanted to remember, but the harder you tried to, the less you were able to. It was all backward.
“Anything?” Nicole asked him.
“I used to come up here to play in the loft.”
“With your friends?”
“B y m ys elf. It was a secret place. I’d sometimes sneak over when we visited Grandma. She was depressed a lot and it was kind of hard being around her. But I’m not sure what an y of it means. It’s like I can tell there’s more, I just can’t quite remember it.”
Looking around, he took note of the birds’ nests high in the rafters. The thick, braided rope that he would sometimes use to swing from the hayloft hung from one of the ceiling beams and dangled nearby.
The rope.
The ha y baler.
Fuzzy memories. Nothing clear.
But something happened.
And it was not something good.
Over the years people had carved words and phrases into the side of the barn. There were names and initials of couples with plus signs between them and cupid hearts and dates, all scratched into the wood. Some people had written their name followed by “was here,” and sometimes the year.
Some of the dates were from before Daniel had been born. He examined the carvings to see if an y of them brought back an yt hing specific and found himself calculating how man y da ys ago those people had been here at the barn.
Seven of the names, even though they were different, looked like they’d been carved by the same person, like some guy had gotten carried away and done a bunch of them himself.
While Daniel looked them over, Nicole started working her wa y across the loft, brushing ha y aside with her boot, looking for an yt hing that might have been buried beneath it.
The longer Daniel was up here, the more memories came to the surface.
Summers.
Swinging down the rope.
But wh y did yo u stop coming here, Daniel?
Wh y woul d—
“Over here, Daniel.”
Nicole was tapping a loose board on top of a small enclosed bench at the far end of the hayloft.
While he was on his way toward her, he saw that demon again, the one she’d drawn in her sketchbook.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The demon lurked just to her left, and even though sunlight from the collapsed portion of the roof was landing on it, the light seemed to be swallowed in the taut coil of darkness that encircled it.
The creature grinned hungrily at him, its mouth widening like a snake’s mouth, unhinging and opening larger than it ever should have been able to.
Then it swept forward, flying straight at him.
He instinctively ducked, but felt the rush of air as it passed. One of its wings scratched the back of his neck as it soared across the loft.
He turned to see where the demon would go from there, but it disappeared through the wall of the barn, through one of the phrases carved into the wood: Grady Planisek was here.
Wait . . . He
The sweet smell of hay lingered in the air and Daniel realized he knew that smell, that and the dry, gritty taste of hay dust, from the days when he was a kid and he would jump from the loft into the bales that’d been stacked up beneath it.
Yes, he was sure of it: he’d been here more than once, but onl y now that he was here again did it come back to him.
Memories crowded in on the moment.
Memories of landing.
Tumbling.
Rolling.
Here, here in this place.
Yes. Up until that last day. And then he’d been afraid to come here, even to his grandma’s house. Afraid that—
But if yo u spent that much time here as a kid, wh y didn’t yo u remember it before now? Wh y did yo u block that out of yo ur memor y?
Yes, maybe the memories of being here were blocked, or maybe, like with so many things, he just needed a spark to bring the past back to him.
Really, memories were weird things. Sometimes the harder you tried to forget something, the more you remembered it. And then there were those things that you wanted to remember, but the harder you tried to, the less you were able to. It was all backward.
“Anything?” Nicole asked him.
“I used to come up here to play in the loft.”
“With your friends?”
“B y m ys elf. It was a secret place. I’d sometimes sneak over when we visited Grandma. She was depressed a lot and it was kind of hard being around her. But I’m not sure what an y of it means. It’s like I can tell there’s more, I just can’t quite remember it.”
Looking around, he took note of the birds’ nests high in the rafters. The thick, braided rope that he would sometimes use to swing from the hayloft hung from one of the ceiling beams and dangled nearby.
The rope.
The ha y baler.
Fuzzy memories. Nothing clear.
But something happened.
And it was not something good.
Over the years people had carved words and phrases into the side of the barn. There were names and initials of couples with plus signs between them and cupid hearts and dates, all scratched into the wood. Some people had written their name followed by “was here,” and sometimes the year.
Some of the dates were from before Daniel had been born. He examined the carvings to see if an y of them brought back an yt hing specific and found himself calculating how man y da ys ago those people had been here at the barn.
Seven of the names, even though they were different, looked like they’d been carved by the same person, like some guy had gotten carried away and done a bunch of them himself.
While Daniel looked them over, Nicole started working her wa y across the loft, brushing ha y aside with her boot, looking for an yt hing that might have been buried beneath it.
The longer Daniel was up here, the more memories came to the surface.
Summers.
Swinging down the rope.
But wh y did yo u stop coming here, Daniel?
Wh y woul d—
“Over here, Daniel.”
Nicole was tapping a loose board on top of a small enclosed bench at the far end of the hayloft.
While he was on his way toward her, he saw that demon again, the one she’d drawn in her sketchbook.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
The demon lurked just to her left, and even though sunlight from the collapsed portion of the roof was landing on it, the light seemed to be swallowed in the taut coil of darkness that encircled it.
The creature grinned hungrily at him, its mouth widening like a snake’s mouth, unhinging and opening larger than it ever should have been able to.
Then it swept forward, flying straight at him.
He instinctively ducked, but felt the rush of air as it passed. One of its wings scratched the back of his neck as it soared across the loft.
He turned to see where the demon would go from there, but it disappeared through the wall of the barn, through one of the phrases carved into the wood: Grady Planisek was here.
Wait . . . He
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