The Fading Read Free Page A

before an attentive mother senses her child is testing the leash, has gotten
     into something he shouldn’t be into? For Becky the answer was usually no more than a minute, but it was morning and the front
     screen door was locked and she would have seen him in the back, so perhaps two or three minutes passed before she noticed
     the stillness that had settled in his absence.
    ‘Noel?’
    He didn’t answer.
    ‘Noel?’ Louder, but with no real edge.
    This time he answered. ‘Hi, Mommy!’
    He sounded far away, in another room or outside. Had she left the back door open? Maybe John had gone out to fetch a tool
     from the small shed this morning and forgot to shut it. She wiped her hands and walked, not hurrying, into the hallway beside
     the kitchen. To the left was the only bathroom, a wide alcove that contained the washing machine and dryer, and then the two
     steps down to the mud room. The door to the backyard was closed.
    Becky hurried to the front door, detouring briefly – Noel wasn’t in his room, his bed was still made, and he wasn’t hiding
     in his closet – and found it shut and locked, too. She leaned against the front window toscan the yard anyway. The mailman, Dave Linderman – who played softball with John and seemed to think hand-delivering a package
     constituted a license to flirt with her – was walking by and two steps later disappeared behind Mrs Ryeberger’s unruly towering
     hedge. Dave would have stopped if he had seen Noel playing alone in the yard, but better safe than sorry.
    Becky stepped out, pacing the lawn, checking the sides of the house, peering north and south along 7th Street. The sun was
     bright on Mr Millward’s parked red Dodge truck a ways down. Directly across the street, the Elkinsons’ bay window was black
     with shade from their massive weeping willow. Noel had left his trike (it was a yellow plastic motorcycle with a six-volt
     battery under the black rubber seat and four wheels as well as manual pedals, but Becky called it his trike) halfway up the
     narrow sidewalk, but he wasn’t sitting on it. He wasn’t out here. Couldn’t be. She’d just heard his voice calling to her from
     inside the house.
    She went back inside, stopped in the living room and turned in a circle, chewing her lower lip.
    ‘Okay, enough!’ she barked, surprising herself. She turned and walked back into the kitchen. A little softer. ‘Where are you,
     hon? Noel? Noel?’
    He didn’t answer this time, but she thought he might have giggled. She heard someone giggle. It came to her faintly, from
     behind a wall. Hide and seek. Great. Why had she taught him this game? What was so fun about it?Her fear lessened somewhat, but its aftertaste left her in no mood to play games.
    ‘I know you’re in here,’ she said, and her voice rang hollow.
    She looked in her closet, but there were no little legs protruding from behind the rows of her dresses, nor were his blue
     and orange rubber-toed shoes standing among her sandals and hiking boots.
    ‘Noel. Come on out, now. Mommy’s not in the mood …’ her voice trailed off as confusion, then mild shock, then outright terror
     blossomed up through her throat. She had wandered back into the hall, to the front of the house, and taken another look through
     the screen door’s upper pane of glass. Noel’s yellow trike was not on the sidewalk. It had been there less than two minutes
     before. Now it was gone.
    From the north side of the house, filling the morning air with a beastly rumble, came the sound of a car engine. A large car
     or truck, revving and shifting through the gears, gaining speed as it moved down 7th, toward her house.
    Becky shoved the screen door and stumbled diagonally across the lawn.
    His body didn’t feel different, but now everything was different. One second he was wiping bubbles from his nose and the next
     he couldn’t see his hand. The smell of syrup was at his fingers, but there was nothing there, here, not even the usual