Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

HAYLEIGH’S DAD Julia Keller

Hayleigh and Sharon were forbidden to play in the basement. Hayleigh’s dad, Ed Westin, had been uncharacteristically severe on that point. “Never, never, never,” he said, inserting a sudden dark barb of seriousness into his otherwise mild voice, to indicate that he meant business, “play in the basement, girls. Got it?” He could be a teaser, a clown; he was definitely one of those “fun dads” whom Sharon deeply, silently admired—her own father, Larry Leinart, being a sour, dreary, disapproving man who seemed to nurse a secret grudge throughout his day, touching it constantly with his thoughts the way you bump a sore finger against everything you reach for—but on the subject of the basement, Hayleigh’s dad was not fun at all. He was firm. Borderline scary.

“Are we totally clear on that, kids?”

They nodded. Not in unison: Hayleigh nodded first, because this was, after all, her house and her dad, and then Sharon joined in.

“So we’re clear,” Ed Westin reconfirmed. His face was blank. No smile crossed it, which was unusual; he had a permanent wrinkle on each side of his mouth, just from smiling so much. At this moment Hayleigh’s dad reminded Sharon of her own father—hard and mean—although Sharon could tell that Mr. Westin’s mood was prompted by concern for their safety, so she forgave him. And anyway, most of the time Hayleigh’s dad was nothing like her dad, in all kinds of ways. Ed Westin was short and kind of pudgy. The girls had discussed this clinically, neutrally, not cruelly. Larry Leinart was tall and slender, with a narrow waist and wide shoulders. His dark suits fit him perfectly, like animal skin.

In a way, Sharon had often thought, it was the reverse of how things ought to be. Ed Westin was the one you’d think would be sleek and solid, because he worked outside with his hands. He was an electrician for Cozad Brothers Construction. Larry Leinart sat behind a desk all day; he was a lawyer with a big law firm downtown. However, as Sharon had been quick to point out to Hayleigh, her father didn’t handle interesting cases involving murders or kidnappings. Instead he focused on things such as corporate mergers and property transfers. No wonder he was so glum all the time. His work was boring and he had to dress up for it. Suit, tie, stiff white shirt, loafers. Whereas Hayleigh’s dad got to wear jeans and a flannel shirt and boots and a baseball cap.

Sharon and Hayleigh had both turned eight years old that fall. They had not been best friends very long. Friendship was a serious thing, with clear, grimly implacable rules. Everybody had one and only one best friend, and that person had to be chosen as your companion every single time, on the playground at recess, or eating lunch in the cafeteria, or whatever.

Sharon had always wanted to be friends with Hayleigh Westin, but until recently, it just hadn’t been possible. Hayleigh’s original best friend was a thin, quiet girl named Samantha Bollinger, and Sharon’s original best friend was actually a boy: Greg Pugh. Normally the gender rule for best friends was absolute—girls with girls, boys with boys—but Greg’s family had lived next door to Sharon’s family since before either Sharon or Greg was born, and he and Sharon had been playing together since they were toddlers, so they got a pass. They were best friends through the first and second grades and the first part of the third.

Then Samantha Bollinger’s parents split up and she and her mother left town. It was very sudden, and to Sharon’s delight, it left Hayleigh without a best friend. Sharon was happy to fill the void. Greg Pugh was on his own now.

A few times that fall, when Hayleigh and Sharon were bored, they would ride their bikes slowly past Samantha’s old house—it was two streets over from Hayleigh’s house—and let their eyes slide over in that direction. Samantha’s dad still lived there, all by himself. If he happened to be getting into his car at the time and spotted them, he would glare. Once, he started to raise his fist, as if he wanted to shout something, but then seemed to get hold of himself. He lowered his fist. He was a mean dad, Sharon instantly realized, not a fun dad.

Samantha’s house didn’t look the same anymore. No bike lay on its side on the front lawn, its tires still spinning because it had been flung away moments ago by Samantha when she raced inside for a juice box. The curtains in the window of what had been Samantha’s bedroom weren’t pink anymore. Her dad must’ve changed the curtains. The house seemed to breathe sour air in and out too slowly, like an old person with respiratory problems.

Samantha had been a runner, the best runner in school, with long legs that moved with such natural grace that she didn’t even seem to be trying; it looked as if running was a normal state for her, like walking is for other people. Yet once Samantha was gone, she was gone, almost as if she’d been running somewhere at dusk one evening and had just kept right on going, her long, thin body merging with the purplish pink twilight, folding herself into it, like somebody leaving the stage of the school auditorium and slipping between the heavy pleats of the curtain, and after a slight stir in the fabric—poof, that’s it. Gone.

Sharon was not a good runner. She was chunky. Borderline fat. Increasingly, that had begun to irritate her father—he had started commenting on her food intake, turning the family dinner table into a very tense place—but Sharon’s size didn’t seem to bother Hayleigh at all. Sharon, in fact, was the opposite of Samantha Bollinger in lots of ways. Samantha was quiet, and Sharon was talkative. Samantha had been a “poor-to-average” student—that was a phrase Sharon had overheard when two teachers were chatting about Samantha one day, and she loved its suggestion of shabbiness, of hopeless mediocrity—while Sharon excelled in her classes. Sharon was “bright,” a word that several of her teachers had used when referring to her. She liked English and math and science. She was fascinated by rockets and space travel. Also atomic energy.

Maybe, Sharon thought, Hayleigh appreciated the contrast. Maybe she’d been secretly tired of Samantha Bollinger and her perfect stride and the way she’d sit in class, the knees of her long legs bumping up against the bottom of the desk, her face glazed with incomprehension, not even bothering to pretend she understood what the teacher was saying. Sharon always pretended, even if she was lost. She wasn’t lost often, but when it happened, she still leaned forward, still looked bright and earnest and eager. Her theory was that if you looked like you got it, sooner or later, you’d get it.

When Sharon told Hayleigh’s dad about that theory, Ed Westin had laughed and said, “Fake it till you make it, sweetie, fake it till you make it!” He seemed proud of her, as if for the moment she was actually his daughter, his flesh and blood, which gave Sharon a funny little flutter in her stomach. It wasn’t a bad feeling at all. She worried at first about the disloyalty to her own family, but then she just let go and enjoyed the feeling. It was like riding your bike barefoot on a summer day: You knew you weren’t supposed to do it, because it was dangerous—if you caught a toe in the spokes, there’d be a bloody mess—but it felt so good and so free that you did it anyway.

Hayleigh’s dad had to leave. He was supposed to stay there Saturday morning while Sharon and Hayleigh played—that was the deal, that was the arrangement, that was what Sharon had told her mom before she left her house—Hayleigh’s dad is gonna be there the whole time, geez, it’s fine—but now he had to go.

Sharon could tell he didn’t want to, but he had no choice.

He had called his boss to check on a job. That’s when he got the bad news. It was about the wiring. Somebody else had done something wrong, another electrician had “screwed up royally,” according to what Hayleigh’s dad was saying into his cell phone. His voice was crisp and businesslike, even though he had just described himself to his boss as “really, really pissed off.” Hayleigh and Sharon listened avidly to his end of the call.

“Okay,” Hayleigh’s dad was saying. He was pacing, holding the cell with one hand, scratching the back of his head with the other. “Okay. Okay, Roy. Yeah. I think I can get it done. But you tell everybody else to back off, okay? Don’t mess with it. I’m on my way.”

He flipped his cell shut and looked down at Hayleigh and Sharon. They were stretched out on the floor of the living room. They were just hanging out, which was typical for a Saturday.

Hayleigh had assured Sharon—so that Sharon in turn could assure her mom—that her dad would stick around, would keep an eye on them. It was silly, really; they were plenty old enough to stay by themselves. And sometimes, for short periods of time, they were allowed to. When Hayleigh came over to her house, for instance, Sharon’s mom would sometimes leave for a little while to pick up stuff at the dry cleaners, and that was okay. Sharon wasn’t sure the Westins ever left stuff at the dry cleaners, the way the Leinarts did every single week, because, Sharon knew, her dad’s shirts and suits had to be dry-cleaned perfectly and he could be “a real prick about it,” which was the phrase Sharon had heard her mom use once, when she didn’t know Sharon was listening.

“It’s just for a little while,” Hayleigh’s dad was saying to them. “An hour, maybe. Hour and a half, tops. We’ve got this big project out by the mall—you’ve seen it, right? The office park? Well, some friggin’ idiot put the breakers in wrong, and the whole thing’s arcing and sparking.”

Sharon was impressed. Her father would never have said “friggin” in front of her. Nor would he expose the sort of passion that Ed Westin was showing. Ed Westin cared about his job, about things being done the right way. Sharon could tell. He had once worked for NASA, Hayleigh had told Sharon, and she said it casually, but they both knew how cool that was. He’d been in the U.S. Navy at the time, and he and his crew had been called in to do some electrical work on one of the space shuttles. He didn’t talk about it, but when Sharon looked at his hands, she could imagine it: Hayleigh’s dad, twisting wires, checking connections, then nodding at somebody and giving the thumbs-up sign. He made sure everything would work perfectly in outer space.

“So it won’t take me very long,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it. Way before lunchtime. I promise.”

He was looming over them, frowning, like he wasn’t quite sure. Hayleigh and Sharon were lying on their stomachs on the living room carpet, their chins propped up on their palms. They’d been watching TV—it was a rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which Sharon was not allowed to watch at home, a fact that added a special bit of deliciousness to the show—when Hayleigh’s dad came into the room, talking on his cell. Hayleigh had politely turned down the volume on the set during her father’s call.

“You girls’ll be okay, right?” he said. He looked dubious. Sharon could see how torn he was, torn between two kinds of duty.

“Sure, Dad,” Hayleigh said. She didn’t elaborate, didn’t ridicule his concerns. Sharon took note: Hayleigh didn’t overplay her hand. Too much reassurance was always a red flag for a parent. Hayleigh, Sharon had to concede, was pretty smart. Not book-smart—that was Sharon’s specialty—but smart when it came to dealing with parents.

“Okay,” he said.

Then came the warning. “But no playing in the basement, you two,” Hayleigh’s dad added. “Absolutely, positively not. Okay?”

Bored nods from both of them. Hayleigh didn’t even take her eyes from the TV screen, which Sharon thought was another nice touch. On the screen, Buffy had just karate-kicked a bad vampire.

“Never, never, never play in the basement. Got it?” Hayleigh’s dad went on. “Are we clear on that, girls?”

Sharon nodded again, but Hayleigh—unexpectedly clever Hayleigh!—looked up at her father as if she’d forgotten he was even there, so absorbed was she in the plot of the Buffy episode. They were so wrapped up in the drama that, chances were, Hayleigh’s dad would leave and return without either girl having moved an inch from her spot right here on the living room floor. Frankly, Hayleigh’s expression implied, there was zero chance that they would even think about the basement, much less venture down there. They were far too preoccupied to remember that the basement even existed.

The girls continued to stare at the TV screen while Hayleigh’s dad foraged for his truck keys and his dark blue windbreaker and his red baseball cap with COZAD BROS woven in cursive white letters across the crown. As he pulled open the front door, still looking a bit worried, he said, “See you later, girls. If you need me, I’ve got my cell,” and they grunted back at him, which, here in Hayleigh’s house, constituted an acceptable reply but in her own house, Sharon knew, would not have been tolerated. And then he was gone.

At first they didn’t move. They watched the TV screen, their chins still perched in their palms. Then each girl’s eyes slid over to meet her friend’s eyes. They heard the truck starting up in the driveway, the dull, dusty roar. The roar slacked off as Hayleigh’s dad backed his truck out of the driveway.

The noise diminished again and then disappeared completely.

They were alone. Unsupervised.

They didn’t say a word, but each girl knew exactly what the other one was going to do, as surely as if it had been planned, plotted, carefully choreographed days ago.

It was a race to see which girl could scramble to her feet faster—although it really wasn’t much of a race at all, because Sharon was slow and clumsy on account of her weight, so Hayleigh won easily—and then to see who could be the first to make it to the kitchen in order to lunge for the black knob on the white basement door.

Hayleigh got there first, but before she could turn the knob, Sharon had arrived, too, right beside her, and she put her hand on top of Hayleigh’s hand. So, in effect, they opened it together.

And likewise, once they’d opened the door and bolted across the threshold, and even though Sharon was large, they were able to head down the stairs side by side, breaking the rule at exactly the same moment, so that it could never be said that one girl was more responsible, that one girl was more to blame for what happened than the other girl. You could not say that.

Which one of them turned on the light over the basement stairs?

Sharon couldn’t remember whose fingers had actually scrabbled at the wall switch just inside the basement door, dousing the staircase with light. It didn’t matter. All she knew was that they were hurrying down those stairs, elbows bumping, feet shuffling in that tumbling rhythm induced by a succession of downward steps, and there was an overhead light to show them the way, to keep them from tripping. They were giggling, too, but the giggles popped up in between their panting breaths, so the giggles sounded like hiccoughs. The steps creaked a little bit, especially right at the top.

Why were they rushing? Sharon wasn’t sure. Hayleigh’s dad would be gone for at least an hour. It took about twenty minutes to drive out to the mall; it might take even longer on a Saturday, when the traffic stacked up because everybody was crazy to get to The Limited and Forever 21 and Sears. Even if Hayleigh’s dad finished his job right away, which wasn’t likely, given the seriousness of his voice when he talked to his boss—it seemed, Sharon thought, like a big, complex task, a real mess—they’d still have way over an hour to explore.

So why did they fly down the basement stairs, bumping and laughing?

She didn’t know. Hayleigh probably didn’t know either, Sharon guessed. Hayleigh had only been down here a few times herself, she’d told Sharon, even though she lived here; this was her dad’s special place.

It just seemed natural for them to go down the steps quickly, headlong, not tentatively. Maybe it was because, if they chickened out on the way, their scrambling momentum would carry them forward. Somehow they both had known, without talking about it, that the moment Hayleigh’s dad told them not to go down into the basement—“Never, never, never”—they’d come here. Right away. When you’re best friends with someone, Sharon reflected, that’s what happens: You start to know what the other person is thinking. It’s automatic.

They reached the bottom of the staircase. And then Sharon understood. She immediately realized why Hayleigh’s dad had declared the basement off-limits. This was Ed Westin’s workshop, and it was gorgeous. The kind of space you don’t want a couple of kids messing up.

It was the coolest workshop Sharon had ever seen. Everything gleamed. There were high wooden workbenches along three walls. Rising from the backs of the benches were square sheets of dark brown particleboard perforated by dozens of small, elegant holes. Tiny silver hooks jutted from the holes. From the hooks dangled a stunning variety of tools—hammers, chisels, drills, clamps, levels—in graduated sizes. It was all neatly organized.

Sharon didn’t know the names of a lot of the tools. She knew hammers, of course, and screwdrivers and drills, things like that, but some of the more specialized tools looked complicated. They looked densely compacted with a single-minded purpose. You could, Sharon thought with deep satisfaction, build anything down here. Anything you wanted to build.

A cabinet, a bookcase, a table, a boat. Anything.

Even a rocket.

“It’s the tools,” Hayleigh said. “That’s why he doesn’t like us coming down here. Messing with his stuff.”

Sharon did not require the explanation. She’d never have even touched anything in this room. It was all too beautiful. Too perfect. She wouldn’t consider putting a finger on one of the workbenches, because the wood had been stained a deep honey color, shiny and rich, a color that looked as if a dozen years of sunlight had been trapped in the lacquer. She’d never pick up one of the drills. She had too much respect for Hayleigh’s dad to do that.

“It’s amazing,” Sharon said.

“Yeah.”

They were still standing at the bottom of the stairs. They hadn’t moved forward since arriving there, arms hanging at their sides, heads turning.

Sharon wasn’t sure how she knew, but she did: Hayleigh’s dad was building something very special in this basement. That was why he didn’t want people coming down here. Sure, he was worried about them possibly bothering his tools—but there was more to it than that.

A lot more.

The realization gave Sharon a tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers and her toes. She knew what Hayleigh’s dad was building down here.

She couldn’t tell Hayleigh that she’d figured it out. Because the thing was, Hayleigh might not know herself yet, and it would be embarrassing for Hayleigh if Sharon—who wasn’t even related—knew before his own daughter knew. Sharon loved puzzles; she loved thinking hard about something until the answer came to her, clearly and vividly. She was good at doing that. Good at crossword puzzles, and sudoku and Scrabble and chess. Anything that required furious concentration, with some imagination sprinkled in, too. Hayleigh seemed to appreciate Sharon’s mind—she didn’t resent it, she wasn’t the least bit jealous of it—which made Sharon wonder why Hayleigh had wasted all that time with Samantha Bollinger, who, after all, wasn’t very bright. Borderline stupid.

“Your dad worked for the space shuttle, right?” Sharon said. She knew the answer, of course, because they’d discussed it many times, but she wanted to lead Hayleigh toward the truth about her dad’s project. Hayleigh would think she’d gotten there all by herself, and would be proud and pleased with herself. Sharon would never reveal that she’d helped her solve it, helped her with a series of hints. It would be enough for Sharon to know, deep in her heart, that she had made her friend feel smart.

“Yeah,” Hayleigh said. She shrugged. “When he was in the navy.”

“So he likes space stuff, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I bet he could build anything.” Sharon swept her chubby arm around the room, indicating the vast bounty of tools. “With all this stuff, I mean. I bet he could build whatever he wanted to.”

“Yeah. So.” Another shrug.

Hayleigh started to walk toward one of the benches. Sharon pinched a piece of Hayleigh’s T-shirt when her friend went by; the fabric stretched out behind her as she kept on going.

“Wait,” Sharon said. “You can’t touch anything. Your dad’ll know we were here.”

“Let go.” Hayleigh pulled her T-shirt out of Sharon’s grasp. Then she shrugged. Sharon had once counted how many times Hayleigh shrugged in the course of just one hour: The astonishing total was seventeen.

“I’m not gonna do anything,” Hayleigh went on. “I’m just looking around.”

“Well, be careful.”

Sharon wished Hayleigh would pay attention and concentrate. She was close. So close. Close to figuring out what Sharon had figured out about what Hayleigh’s dad was building down here.

As she watched Hayleigh touch the tools, one by one, just a brief tap with two fingers and then on to the next tool, all around the room, Sharon let a picture of her own father rise up in her mind. Dressed in a suit and tie, he was holding a slim black leather briefcase, frowning. You could not fit any of these tools in that stupid briefcase, Sharon thought. Not a single one. Her father didn’t know how to build anything. He always called people to do work on their house: plumbers, carpenters, electricians. He’d called somebody to put a brick patio in the back. And if something broke—the stove or the refrigerator, the TV—he called somebody to handle that, too. Her father was always mad about something. Something was always “the height of absurdity.” That was the phrase he used. Her dad didn’t like things that were illogical or pointless or wasteful. He didn’t like half-finished projects or unmade beds or dirty dishes left in the sink. Or fat daughters.

But Hayleigh’s dad was different. He smiled a lot more than Sharon’s dad did, and made jokes, and teased her and Hayleigh—but that wasn’t the most different thing about him, Sharon now understood.

When they had first reached the bottom of the basement staircase, Sharon noticed it in the corner. That was her first clue. A piece of gray metal, shiny, cupped like a giant palm, running from the floor to the ceiling, resembling the side of an airplane or…

A rocket.

That was it. That was the secret.

Hayleigh’s dad, Sharon realized, was building a rocket in this basement. He couldn’t discuss it, because it was probably illegal. You were probably supposed to get a government permit or something. But Hayleigh’s dad was not the kind of person who filled out forms and waited around for government permits—unlike her own dad, Sharon thought, who always did things the right way, followed all the rules, just so he could complain when things didn’t work out after I did everything they told me to do, he’d say bitterly—no, Hayleigh’s dad wasn’t like that. He was a rebel. He’d do it his own way. If he got into trouble—well, fine. He’d accept the consequences. Pay the price.

Sharon didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. It was a rocket. Hayleigh’s dad had the skills, and he had the tools, and naturally he didn’t want kids fooling around with his stuff. He was building a rocket down here, and one night, one night very soon, Sharon quickly theorized, he would move it outside, maybe load it into the back of his truck and take it out to the park—no, Sharon scolded herself, not the park, that’s a dumb idea, way too public—take it out to the country, out to a big field with no houses in sight. There he’d kneel down and set up his rocket and light the fuse and run away and then squat down behind a tree, a finger stuck in each ear, and watch as the rocket rose with a great whoooooosh into the night sky, shedding sparks and smoke and one long, trailing, beautiful yellow-blue flame, as vivid and pure as the respect Sharon felt for Hayleigh’s dad, respect for his dream, and for the fact that he had worked so hard to make it come true. Respect and awe.

Had Hayleigh figured it out yet? Sharon couldn’t tell. Her friend was still strolling around the basement, grazing the tools with her fingertips, and Sharon began to get an odd sense that Hayleigh had been in this basement more often than she’d said she had. She seemed way too familiar with the layout, Sharon noticed. When she touched a tool, it wasn’t with any degree of surprise at how it felt; she’d sneaked down here many times, Sharon suspected. It made her think slightly less of her friend.

Surely, though, if Hayleigh came down here with any regularity, then she’d figured it out by now. She must know her dad is building a rocket, Sharon thought. And maybe she’d told Samantha Bollinger.

Sharon felt a flicker of jealousy. She decided that she had to ask Hayleigh about it.

“Did you ever,” Sharon said, “bring Samantha down here?” She had tried to sound casual, but her voice betrayed her. It was shaky, too high-pitched. There was also a hint of belligerence in it.

“Huh?”

“Before she moved away, I mean,” Sharon said. “Did you and Samantha ever come down here, too?”

Hayleigh shrugged. She’d positioned her palm along the front of one of the tall workbenches. She followed the smooth beveled edge all the way to the end of it. Then she looked back at Sharon. Her eyes were blank.

“Samantha,” Hayleigh said, “didn’t move away.”

“What?”

“Samantha disappeared. They never found her. She rode off on her bike one day, and she never came home. She’d told her mom she was coming over here, but that wasn’t true. We never saw her.” Hayleigh’s voice was flat. Calmly informational. “It drove her mom crazy and she killed herself. Remember? She locked herself in that garage and turned on the car engine, and that’s how she died. Don’t you remember that, Sharon? I don’t know why you always want to go past their house. Just her dad lives there now, all by himself. He’s gotten sort of crazy. Crazy from being so sad. And from thinking all these weird things about me and my dad.”

It was true. Sharon had to admit it. She had blocked out the real story of Samantha Bollinger, told herself another story she liked better, changed Samantha’s fate, so that it suited what Sharon wanted to feel.

“Anyway,” Sharon said. “You get it now, right? You’ve figured out what your dad does down here, right?”

“Yeah,” Hayleigh said. She shrugged. “I guess I’m sorta surprised that you figured it out, though. So soon, I mean.”

So soon? Sharon wanted to laugh. I’m smart, she thought. I may be fat and ugly, but I’m smart, okay? I’m a smart girl.

That’s what her father had said to her once: At least you’ve got brains. She could fill in the first part of the sentence, the part he didn’t say but clearly meant: You may be fat but at least you’ve got brains.

“Your dad’s building a rocket down here,” Sharon said, blurting it out. She wanted to giggle, too, just from how thrilling it all was. A rocket! Think of it!

“But listen,” Sharon added quickly. “I can keep a secret. Really. I won’t tell anybody.”

Hayleigh looked at her.

There was a noise at the top of the basement stairs. The board creaked sharply when the weight hit it, the concentrated mass of a booted foot. Hayleigh’s dad can fix that was the thought, lightning-quick, that came to Sharon. He can fix that squeak. Bet it’s already on his to-do list. She didn’t take her eyes away from Hayleigh’s eyes. The next noise was a heavy clumping transit down the stairs. With an extraordinarily fluid motion Hayleigh’s dad hooked his hand around Sharon’s neck, while with his other hand he covered her mouth, cutting off her scream.

He was dragging her toward the shiny metal in the corner, pulling her by her neck as if she were a large, lumpy sack, her fat legs useless and churning, and Sharon had a realization—extra-bright, extra-sharp, an explosion of insight illuminating her mind’s sky—that he had only pretended to be talking to his boss, that there hadn’t been any emergency at any job site. Then Sharon had another vision, just as bright, just as sharp, a vision of flying over rooftops and passing over her very own house, and down below were her mom and her dad and her sisters, Elizabeth and Meagan, and her dog, Oliver, and her chemistry set, the beakers and flasks lined up in a tidy row across the top of her bookshelf, just the way she’d left them. She imagined the sound of Hayleigh’s voice on the phone, earnest and concerned: I don’t know Mrs. Leinart she left my house a while ago to walk home and she didn’t say she was stopping anywhere I don’t know we’ll call if we hear from her oh yes.

Then Sharon heard the shriek of the metal as it scraped against the basement floor, she saw the shiny flap of that metal as Hayleigh wrenched it back with experienced fingers, and she smelled a dirty, earthen smell, dark and wet and cold and final. Something pushed hard at her back and something smashed against the side of her head and Sharon was falling, falling bluntly and heavily, like a rocket from the sky.