The Brandywine Prophet

6.3 Batten Clamps

Hyde called again but his plea was sent to voicemail.

Kay’s phone was off.

His feet scuttled, back pedaled, and tripped in a rapid display of downhill footwork, but he never lost his balance. The hill was still bathed in the evening’s glow but Brandywine Drive was already lost in the deep shadows of houses and trees. He saw the illuminated living room of his own home from his racing position beside Will’s shed. Though Hyde couldn’t make out the details of their faces, he saw two figures sitting on the sofa. 

Almost there. 

He picked up the pace. 

William screamed?

Hyde thought he heard his name descending cleanly from the distant stage, but when the echo faded, it seemed imaginary. He couldn’t turn back anyway. He had to stop Kayla.

“Hyyyde!” The terror in that second scream froze him in the middle of the street. Something was very wrong.

Hyde momentarily lost himself in the glowing yellow square of his living-room window; it became a television and the scene came to life in crystal clear, 1080p high definition. It was a soap opera. Two characters named Kayla and Sarah sat on a couch. Kayla was twenty-seven. Today was her birthday, but her husband was distant after long hours of work, so no party was planned. She spoke with stilted dialogue and large hand gestures about some deceptive affair. Her friend was named Sarah. She was forty something. She didn’t move, but listened to the drama with--

“Help me!” Will was hurt.

He had to go back. He knew in his heart that he had to help his friend, but he couldn’t pull himself away from the show. 

He wanted to yell at the soap characters. He wanted to tell them not to do what they were about to do. He wanted to scream with horror-movie embellishment, “Don’t go into the basement alone!” but he was frozen.

Will’s final cry left him with no other choice. He flicked off the soap opera, spun a one-eighty, kicked his feet against the pebbled concrete, and ran like hell back to the stage.

*  *  *

“Kay. Spit it out, hon. What’s up?”

The last twelve months were spent with variations of this conversation on an endless loop in Kayla’s mind. It started with showers, solitary car rides, mornings in bed without Hyde--those turning questions and answers--what would she say and what should she say and around-and-around and inside-and-out like a pitchfork in a compost pile. Then it infested her yoga time. Her dreams. It wiggled it’s way into her dance class and found her on Sunday cooking nights with her hubby and she could only stare at boiling water, answering Sarah’s hypothetical questions about how and why and how-could-you and why-would-you and Hyde would scream to snap her out of her daze and again she would cry.

But now it was here. It was time. And those rehearsals were for nothing. Sarah was a person. She was a flesh-and-blood friend. Kayla had to explain herself with actual words. They weren’t just thoughts anymore; they were physical. She had to speak them. “I don’t know where to start.”

“At the beginning.”

Kayla nodded. “Okay.” She spoke deliberately, but each word had to be forced out as if an egg was caught in her throat. “This is what happened. Hyde has this computer. It’s just a normal, everyday computer. It’s the laptop that he uses at work. He brings it home every night. I use it for eBay sometimes... and YouTube. It’s just a completely normal--”