How Dark The World: A Shadows May Fall Story

December 1919

Harold Murphy lived at the end of a narrow snow-packed road. Robbie gripped the steering wheel and drove at a crawl towards the red saltbox house overlooking the Northumberland Strait. Even if the roads were clear, he still would have been wound tight. When he left Port Williams the previous evening, he'd been hopeful that this wasn't another futile errand but resigned to inevitable disappointment. He'd stayed the night in Truro, cursing himself for chasing after what might as well be a ghost after two years.

Then he'd stopped to put gas in his tank and asked the gentleman running the small store whether he'd heard of a farmer named Murray.

"I don't know no Murray, but there's a Harold Murphy a couple of miles up the road."

"You don't know if he took in a couple of young people from Halifax a couple of years back, do you?" he next asked, expecting nothing at all.

"He had a young fellow with him a few times that his sister brought up with her after the explosion. There may have been a girl, but I didn't see much of her. There was another boy there for a time as well."

A far-off ringing began in Robbie's ears as the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up. "Do you remember the boy's name."

"Harold called the boy Chucky, but I think that was to torment him. His name might have been Charles. The other boy's name was John. He was from Halifax as well."

Holding back his sudden excitement, Robbie gently probed for direction to Harold Murphy's place, which was just a straight shot west and clearly marked with a plank of wood at the end of the drive and MURPHY painted across it.

It was the smaller board beneath it that made Robbie stop the car as he began to shake.

Painted a deep red in thinner, slanted letters: GASTON.

The short span from the road seemed to stretch onward. At the very end a figure wielded a shovel against a snowbank, digging it into the ground and leaning on the handle as Robbie eased his car into the last few feet.

"Is there something I can do for you?" the man asked, gruff and gravelly. He was a big man padded in layers of winter clothing, a stocking cap rolled down his round head, and a wiry black beard concealing a face made scarlet by the cold wind.

"Are you Harold Murphy?"

The man narrowed his eyes. "You best not be the tax man."

Robbie laughed and shook his head. "I'm not the tax man. My name's Robert Monroe. I was told down the road that you lived here, and that your sister brought up two young people from Halifax. There's a sign at the end of the road with the name of Gaston. That's their name. I think they're the two people I've been looking for."

"Do you now?  And what are they to you?"

"I knew them both before the explosion. I was actually on my way home from their place that morning. I've been looking for them both since I came out of the hospital." Under Harold's unflinching scrutiny, Robbie couldn't figure out how much or how little he should give away. He didn't know this man or his sister, though Dorothy's mentioned of her step-mother were less than kind. But every part of him at that moment told him that this was when he'd find out whether she was still within reach or lost to him forever.

"What did you say your name was?" Harold asked after the silence ended.

"Robert Monroe. Robbie, or Rob—Charlie called me Rob."

The wind whipped up, making spirals of snow in the open fields that surrounded them. Harold stared hard a moment longer, then yanked his shovel from the snow and turned his back.