Friday April 30th 1976

He hadn't planned it. The first time. It was just that the boy tried to run away, and he hadn't wanted to let go. The boy struggled, fought fiercely for such a small child, and he enjoyed the frantic energy of the helpless wriggling and squirming in his arms. He encouraged it: shook the boy, tugged him about. His family kept chickens, and his father had shown him how to wring their necks. It had always fascinated him: the frenzied fluttering and squawking, the sudden stillness and silence, and the crunch that made the difference. It was like that with the boy. The transition from killing poultry to taking a human life was surprisingly easy and natural, and the crack of the neck breaking was far more satisfying. He felt the child go limp in his arms, heard its last gasp of air – in, then out, out, out – felt its madly beating heart slow and stop. He would have liked to hold the body until the heat went out of it and it stiffened, but there were practical considerations. Next time he would plan ahead, give himself more time.

Disposing of the evidence was unexpectedly simple, too. He simply wrapped and tied the body in a tarp weighted with rocks and dropped it into the lake. He kept one souvenir: the boy's St Christopher. He'd ripped it from the neck while the body was still fresh enough for the chain to leave a red mark as it scraped flesh. He slipped it into his pocket and later he fixed the broken link and wore it for his own. He still had it.

A search was conducted for the boy, of course, but no evidence was ever found. The body was never found. Nobody ever knew what happened to Donald Helfer.

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It wasn't the first time Donny had been bullied and pushed around by boys older or bigger than he was. He didn't expect it to be the last. It began typically enough with being grabbed and pulled around, and he fought back as best he could, arms and legs flailing ineffectually in the air. A couple of times he got in a kick and he was thrown to the ground, but before he could find his feet and run he was grabbed and his face was thrust into the damp, shitty smelling earth, grit burning grazes over the flesh of his cheeks and nose. He realized something was different when it didn't stop, when there was no laughing or jeering, just grunting and heavy breathing and the cruel pinching grip of fists and fingers that showed no intention of ever letting go. Then Donny found a new level of fear beyond anything he'd known before. He fought harder, not caring about the pain as his limbs twisted in their sockets, the sharp metallic rasp in his chest as he panted for breath, or how he bloodied his hands and knees against the ground when he was thrown down.

Then something snapped. He heard a loud crack and suddenly he was free and running. He ran as fast and as hard as he could, and his chest wasn't even hurting any more. He barely noticed the road, or the woods around him, or the streets when he reached them, and he didn't think to question why everything around him seemed harsh and bright yet somehow indistinct at the same time, or why he couldn't hear the sound of his feet as he ran.

He ran home first but there was nobody there. And then they were there but faintly, like bright shadows, and they couldn't hear him when he spoke, called, screamed. But then he realized he was dreaming and it all made sense to him and he wasn't afraid any more, even when he found himself back by the lake watching the other boy wrap him up and push him into the water; even when he was in the water and sinking with the package, seeing it drift and bob along the bottom of the lake, pushed along by eddies in the water until it caught and settled and finally wedged itself in a deep channel there; he was just waiting to wake up.

He watched as men in police uniforms drifted through his home, and the men with notebooks who didn't wear uniforms. He watched as his father became frustrated and then angry with them, he watched his mother fearful and then crying, and his grandmother trying to comfort her but she was weeping, too. He tried to tell them all not to worry, that it was just a dream, but they couldn't hear him. Other people came and went. Some were sad and concerned, a few were just nosey, most were awkward, but eventually they all faded away and the empty space they left behind was filled with silence, and waiting, and not knowing.

In the hours his mother spent staring into thin air Donny knelt in front of her. "I'm right here, Mommy," he'd tell her softly, but she didn't see him, couldn't feel his fingers on her face or his hand on her knee. He'd quickly learned not to try to hug her.

Suzy was sad. Donny would find her sometimes out in her garden, staring over the wall at the tree and the place underneath it where they'd buried the time capsule. She didn't cry but sometimes her big blue eyes shone too brightly, and reminded him of the sun glittering on the surface of the lake as he watched himself slipping into it. "It's all right, Suzy. This is all just a dream," he'd whisper and, just one time, he thought maybe she heard him when she looked round and frowned a little, but she looked straight through him. "Everything's gonna be fine," he assured her, just the same. "I'll wake up soon." But he didn't wake up.

Sometimes he was back by the lake, or in it. Other times he was in different places, in towns he didn't know, watching the older boy digging a hole or pushing another package into a ditch or down a gully, or into a quarry, and each time it happened Donny saw that he was older. He wore the St. Christopher he'd stolen and that made Donny angry. He tried to snatch it back but his fingers closed over it as it swung in the air and came back empty.

The other children ran, too, as soon as they were free but Donny never found out where they ran to, and he didn't think any of them ever saw him. Not everyone runs. Grandma didn't. She just went to sleep one day and when she woke up she was gone. Old Mrs Jenkins across the road had a bad fall, but she didn't run either. Donny's father woke up after complaining of chest pains one day. Donny thought that he saw him, just for a moment. There was a brief spark of recognition in his eyes and he started to smile, but then he was gone. It seemed like everyone was waking up except for Donny, and he didn't know what he was waiting for.

After that a big board appeared outside his house with the words "FOR SALE" on it, and his mom started packing everything in boxes. He yelled at the men on the day they came to put everything in the van. And he screamed at her when she got into the car, but she drove away anyway. One by one the people Donny knew or cared about went away, one way or another. Eventually, he realized, everyone does.

Two strange families came and went from the house Donny grew up in. Then a woman moved in with her daughter. He knew her vaguely because she'd helped out in an old book store he used to visit, but she'd been younger then, just a girl. Now she had a daughter almost the same age. She had fudge colour hair and blue eyes like Suzy, though she wasn't as pretty, never as pretty, even if Suzy's hair did have some grey in it now, and she rarely looked over the wall any more.

One day a board went up outside Suzy's house. When she drove away Donny ran all the way down the street after her car, screaming and crying, but she didn't hear him, and she didn't look back. When he'd run as far as he could he stood still, watching the car disappear into the distance, and feeling thin and stretched and wispy like a bubble about to burst. Then he was outside his home once more. He turned to take one last look at the house Suzy had abandoned, and he found the new girl standing behind him, staring right at him.

He stared back at her, blinking, afraid to believe, but eventually he screwed up his courage to ask. "Can you see me?"

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