THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: A KINDNESS

The house was as dark as the sky when I finally arrived, so I went around the back and sat down. The darkened house spoke the first rule of empty-nesters: old people go to bed early.

The neighbor, Mr. Kandusky poked his head at the window on the alley to the side and after a moment said:

"Oh, Graham. Hiya."

"Hey Mr. Kandusky."

"Home for a visit?"

"Yep."

He waved.

The Uber had gotten lost, twice, coming from the train station to my childhood home. But here I was. The old place. Mom and dad, upstairs, asleep. Pixie, unconscious on a bannister somewhere, dreaming cat dreams. The ceramic owls and the stupid flowers and the horrific aquamarine rug which somehow had persisted since Reagan was President.

Here I was. Hooray.

Down the back yard, I sat at the fire pit and lit a fire. It was like going back in time.

I was twenty-seven when I found out the big secret. Still, my life before that was vibrant. Digging around the world for the leavings of man as it stumbled down the track of time. But sometimes...Sometimes...

We call them erratics. Things that turn up in sediment they should never be in. A human footprint in stone 3.4 billion years old, aluminum arrowheads in 1169 AD, more, worse things. It's how I got involved, really. One of those erratics woke up on one of my digs one night—a night like this—and began eating people. Then the group showed up.

From there, my life left the usual spectrum of light. It became ultraviolet. I saw the invisible. Everywhere.  

For two years I helped the group. I saw things. I read more things. People began waggling a finger at their heads when I left conversations at the University. I didn't mind. I had a ticket to the real show. I knew what was going on. Even if I couldn't talk about it, I was in it.  

When I quit last year, there was little ceremony, but all in all a decent imitation of regret. I sold my book and settled in to study the Manual. That's when it really began.

Now, at first glance it seems like just another of the throwaway grimoires of the 15th century, but if you had access to my...sources, you'd know one true thing is hidden inside it. A way to see the future.

I brought it with me, though more for sentiment than anything else. The mirror cost me a fortune to make. Engraved by a man who was certain I was a rich, lazy, layabout with endless funds "worshipping the devil."

Last year, I watched that mirror in a darkened room, lit only by a small candle, and I wrote down what I saw. I wrote down a lot of things. First, I made some money with it. Well, quite a lot of money, actually. Then I started asking questions about my future. Then when I saw what happened to me, I began asking questions about my family's future.

When you look in the mirror, you see it all. But it has the consistency of a dream. It drifts and fades after the ritual. All you have are notes. But like a dream you have too many times, or a nightmare, eventually what the mirror showed me stopped fading away. I saw it all. Over and over again. It never changes.

A year from now, just after Christmas, my father would find a lump on his shoulder. They would discover the stage 4 cancer throughout his body far too late—hell, it was already there when I first saw the vision. He would fight and linger for four and a half years, wasting away until he was a shambling, yellowed skeleton towing an IV behind him. Throughout this, my mother would slowly lose what little of her mind she had maintained since Annie's death.

Then, a year after my father was in the ground, my mother would descend into dementia. This would track on for an ungodly amount of time, into some blue-white future where unimaginable things would come to pass. But all I could see was my mother, an ancient crone leaning in a chair, mouth sprung open like a trap, hair like dried straw, staring into space.

Me? Jail.

I unlock the door and take off my shoes and shuffle around the house. It's like 2005 all over again. Home late from a party, feeling the buzz still in me. Tall and gangly and strangely proportioned for the tiny house, but still somehow; home.

Pixie—old and battered—comes to see me, and I pat her head and scratch her ears and she twirls around my legs.

I leave her in the kitchen and creep up the stairs. There, at the end of the hall past the rooms which were once filled by my sister and myself, is the master bedroom.

My parents are asleep, lit by the moon through the sheer curtains. My father snores and my mother lays on her side. Together, they sleep oblivious to the countdown that they live in.

I check the shotgun again, silently. I cocked it outside, so I wouldn't wake them, and here, in the night, it glows electric blue at the edges.

I will have to be quick, but I need to remember: it's a kindness, really.