Fireflies by David Morrell Read Free Book Online Page A

than anything else he owned. That precious guitar (polished frequently, with reverence) stayed in Matthew’s room, almost like a holy object, supported upright on a stand, and each day, mustering a face to meet the faces that he met, David entered Matthew’s room and stroked that guitar. For luck and strength.
    “Help me make it through the day, son. And especially the night.”

15

    Time is the greatest healer—so David had been told. Untrue. Parents who lose a valued child never get over the dear one’s absence. As David aged, he, his wife, and his daughter continued to cherish one another (a blessing, for too often the death of a child produces a split within a family: arguments, recriminations, and divorce). Except for terrifying anxiety attacks that imitated coronaries and eventually required psychiatric therapy, David’s health was perversely good. His career as a writer prospered. The famous character he’d created (sometimes reviled, sometimes revered, but never ignored) took second place to other of his characters, who because of the sorrow David had suffered from Matthew’s death spoke to readers who suffered their own sorrows.
    He prospered. He persisted. But he did not flourish.
    Maybe that was the final irony. David’s unwanted success could have been a boon to Matthew, could have eased Matthew’s way, through David’s contacts, into the world of influence.

16

    So David thought as he lay in a stupor, dwindling toward his own death, his faithful loving daughter beside him holding his weakening hand in the shadowy raspy confines of an isolation room in Intensive Care. His exceptional wife had died five years before him, and he’d grieved for her, how much so, but never the spirit-burdening grief he’d felt for Matthew. His wife, he knew, would understand. When Matthew had died, the world had shrunk. Everything afterward had been like climbing an endless flight of stairs.
    God?
    Heaven?
    Reincarnation?
    Who knew?
    But now he was near the top of that wearying flight of stairs, and he’d discover the answer or he wouldn’t, depending on whether there was an answer or merely oblivion.
    “I love you,” Sarie said.
    Weak, struggling against the oxygen tube in his throat, David nodded. He knew she understood that he loved her as well. He was proud to have been not just her father, but her friend.
    You were a gift to me, David thought about Sarie. Just as Matthew was a gift, and it’s too bad we’re not all here together. Years ago I almost killed myself. Now I’m glad I didn’t. Because of you, dear.
    But now you’ll have to go on without me. The main thing is, my death isn’t a tragedy. My dissolution is part of the natural scheme. Grieve for me, because you love me, but don’t let my death hold you back. Persist. And maybe one day, we’ll meet in rapturous reunion.
    Who knows? Good-bye, sweetheart. I pray I’m about to meet Matthew. I’ve missed him so much. If death is oblivion, it won’t matter because I won’t have the consciousness to know.
    But if …!
    Sinking ever deeper into the ultimate sleep, David’s dwindling consciousness managed a final burst of strength. As if it were yesterday and not half a lifetime ago, he remembered another poem that Matthew had written, one that David had memorized with a persistence close to mania and could never have forgotten even on the verge of death.
    The poem had been written when Matthew was fourteen. Imagine. So young. And it represented everything that Matt’s young heart had wanted.
    To be a musician. To be in tune with the spheres.

LOWDER
  VOLUME
    CO.

    The guitar. Rubbing the gentle polish
On every smooth contour.
On the lap. Knowing every curve
As the light shines from it.

(Silently strumming)
On stage a planned metamorphosis
Takes places as the hours go by and the
Space is transformed to a concert hall.
The energetic nemesis has struck.

The risers are transformed into a stage
And black boxes turn into powerful
Pieces of