The Eighth Day

Chapter 29

Shawn Jaffe took I-75 North at Dayton. The sun broke free of the horizon and lit the sky in shades of orange and gold. The miles blurred together. He yawned and opened the windows.

But when the compact's navigation system told him to take the next exit and began guiding him through the torturous twists and turns of state highways and county roads leading to Moore City, anticipation swept exhaustion aside. Fields of corn and soybeans crowded either side of the crumbling road, endless uniform rows stretching in every direction, an undulating ocean of green. Farmland gave way to suburbia by degrees. Graceful acreages became expansive lawns became cramped yards bumping shoulders with one another, and without pomp and circumstance, he rolled into the small town where he'd been born and raised.

The businesses at the center of town were the old-fashioned brick and mortar type found in black-and-white movies—strong, sturdy, and confident. Yet beneath the veneer of small-town amiability, an impression of atrophy and decay flittered at the edges. The cracks in the sidewalks crowded with weeds, the layers of dust, the flecking paint and rust—Moore City's era had ended long ago.

Something else bothered him as well. The dimensions, angles, and spacing were off. Subtle deviations from his memory of the town, like the distorted reflections of a funhouse mirror—a fire hydrant on the wrong side of the street, an alley between the grocery store and thrift shop that he didn't remember, an underlying flaw in the town's hues and shades of colors.

Disorientation brought on waves of dizziness and nausea. He pulled the compact to the curb, closed his eyes, and concentrated on deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth. Traffic was light, most of the vehicles just passing through, although several lined Main Street, parked at an angle curbside. A big man in blue-jean overalls recharged a dusty red pickup at the corner shop. A rickety old woman with white hair pulled back in a bun wobbled down the sidewalk wearing high heels and a gray bathrobe, cradling a canvas bag filled with groceries.

At last, the spinning sensation stopped, and Shawn pulled away from the curb. Birds twittered in the trees. The whooping of children at play carried from an unseen yard. He turned off Main Street. Here, timeworn houses huddled on either side of the road. It was all so familiar, and yet at the same time, a sense of wrongness nagged at the back of his mind.

Three blocks down on the right, his childhood home came into view, and he jammed his foot on the brake, eyes wide and jaw agape. His heart stopped, stuttered, like a man who's fallen into ice water, and then it restarted with a wild and frantic beat. He stared through the windshield, cold and numb.

The house he grew up in had been tall, three stories with a peaked roof and a half-circle window peeking out from beneath the eaves. Its front door had welcomed him home from atop a concrete porch and stairs bordered by a black wrought-iron railing. An unattached two-car garage had stood at the end of the driveway.

But it was as if someone had excised this truth, lifted it out and stitched a lie in its place, a Frankensteinian reconstruction of the neighborhood.

The house number was spray-painted on the curb, 521, black numbers stenciled on a white background. It was his address. But it wasn't his house.

Had the new owners torn down his home and rebuilt? No, it looked weathered and dated compared to modern designs. No way it was a new construction.

So what had happened to his home?

Shawn got out of the compact and slogged with leaden feet along the driveway toward the house. The world acquired a blurred and dreamlike quality. The sounds and smells of summer became muted. Wooden planks groaned beneath his weight as he mounted the steps and crossed the porch. The front door loomed before him. He raised a hand, hesitated, and knocked, the rap of his knuckles solid and blunted.