Henry Franks(11)

“Damn it.”

The words echoed in the basement as he dropped the flashlight. He took another step, both arms moving to lead the way; the blind leading the blind. His fingers ran into a cobweb, the spider silk sticking to his hand, and he wiped it off on his jeans. Another step and he kicked a stack of boxes. He steadied them with an unsteady hand, continuing to shuffle forward in the darkness.

A hint of light appeared—the sunlight through the windows in the laundry room leaking down the stairs. Another step, a little lighter, until he could actually see the string hanging down a few feet away.

With a sigh, he pulled it, flooding the basement with light. Henry blinked. Again. The brightness and the dust brought on a sneeze.

He walked back to the circuit breaker to pick up the flashlight. It wasn’t there; a trail through the dust showed where it had rolled next to the box he’d kicked. Another inch or so and he would have stepped on it, probably would have tripped and fallen over everything.

As he picked the flashlight up, a feeble beam came out of it and he smiled.

SCRAPBOOK SUPPLIES was written on the bottom box in his father’s nearly impossible-to-read scrawl. Henry thought about the photo album upstairs in his room, now battered and torn with use. The mad flipping of pages in his bed late at night when sleep was slow in coming and the pain of forgetting was lessened, somewhat, by the handful of pictures his father had collected for him.

The box on top was heavy, with nothing written on it. He moved it to the side to get to the supplies. Inside, pages of scrapbook paper and little tape dispensers and archival pens were thrown together. He took a few of each. Beneath, he found scissors and stickers, unopened, which had probably come with the paper and pens. He took those as well.

He tried to pick up the other box with his hands partially full. It seemed even heavier than before. In the poor lighting and worse ventilation, dust kicked up and he almost lost his hold on the box.

He sneezed.

The box slipped, reached its tipping point, and fell to the floor. Henry’s papers, pens, scissors, and tape went flying.

On its side, the heavy box had opened just enough to make it difficult to pick up again. A single photograph fell out of the small opening, landing on its face. On the back, a woman’s hand had written Frank above a yellowed date, March 14, followed by a year that could have been 1968 or 1963.

The little boy in the picture was less than five. If Henry squinted in the dim light, it sort of looked like him.

Like Pandora, he opened the box.

There were hundreds of photos, all black-and-white, dated throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, with the same handwriting. By the time the boy in the photographs was a teen, the resemblance between the stranger and himself was unmistakable.

Frank?

Henry sat in the basement, sneezing, holding the box of snapshots in his lap. One spider had visited to take a look but hadn’t stayed for long. A smaller one, barely visible, had scurried back into the box of pictures and not been seen since.

The photos were taken in front of unknown houses; no addresses could be seen or found. No other names appeared even in the pictures where Frank wasn’t alone. And in the mid-seventies, the pictures stopped altogether.

Henry dumped the box onto the floor and sifted through them all again, but there was nothing more.

He scooped all the pictures back into the box, gathered up his supplies, and walked to the stairs. On the bottom step he turned around to pull the cord. He froze with his hand on the string and, for the first time, really looked at the boxes lining the maze. Each identical, some with labels, most without.

He walked to the first box and peeked inside.

Blank paper.

Next.

Electrical cords.

Again.

Socks.

And again.

Again.

Another.

Behind him, boxes littered the floor.

Nothing.

Halfway through, with dozens of boxes still to search, he heard the garage door open. He stopped and surveyed the damage he’d done.

Henry jumped over the boxes strewn about and took the narrow stairs two at a time, tugging the string as he ran past. Each step threatened to collapse underneath him and he slipped halfway up. He stopped his fall with his palms and walked the rest of the way, then closed the door and pushed the cart back into place. His pants were dust-covered, cobwebs in his hair and on his shirt.

The clothes went into the washer and he ran his fingers through his hair to dislodge the webs. He hurried up the stairs before his father entered the kitchen. In his room, he went to put on clean clothes and noticed a trail of blood running down his left arm. A splinter from the basement steps stuck out of his palm and small red drops had splattered on the floor.

Henry tried to grab the wood, but his mismatched finger didn’t bend far enough. He brought his palm to his mouth and bit down on the splinter. His skin ripped as it tore free. Blood ran over his scar, creating a bracelet of blood on his skin.

A small piece of wood bit into his lip when he spit the splinter out, and he groaned with the sudden pain. He grabbed some tissues to stem the bleeding from his palm. No matter how hard he pressed, his hand didn’t hurt at all.



“Why’s it so hot?” his father asked when Henry walked downstairs.

“Circuit blew, had to reset the breaker a few minutes ago.”

His father looked at the ceiling, where the fan blew warm air around the room. His shoulders slumped and he sighed. He looked at Henry, closed his eyes, and placed the mail on the table unread. Without a word, he walked out of the kitchen.