-I-

It wasn’t just the train that he was afraid of. No, the inevitable helplessness that comes packaged with the uncertainty of the outside world is what drove Orville Peterson to avoid it. This house was a domain of full control, a domain free of fatal variables. This house was a domain all his own. It had been years since his wife’s untimely death by locomotive, and the same can be said about Orville’s leaving said domain. That said, before his dearest Nora had put her Camry in park perpendicular to an oncoming train, Orville was rarely home at all. Although once spoken frequently throughout the New Haven Falls community, Orville’s name had fallen into obscurity among the town’s residents following his sworn devotion to isolation and the years that followed. In fact, due to his disappearance from the public eye, he was assumed to have moved elsewhere or fallen ill due to the grief endemic to the sudden loss of a loved one. Now, his once bustling property was thought to be long-abandoned by the community that had once embraced its owner. Still, although all but forgotten, Orville Peterson was a name that two local siblings would come to know all too well.

Indeed, Orville Peterson was a name that, as hard as they tried, Randy and Lorraine would never forget.

Waking up on some unknown morning, Orville flipped his feather-filled pillow in an effort to gain access to its cool side and, although no longer tired, forced himself back into the fragile sanctuary of sleep. While drifting back toward forced-Nirvana, Orville considered the possibilities of the day and frowned at the concept of yesterday’s tomorrow. The only calendar in the two-bedroom home remained unremoved from the fridge since it had been placed there via magnet, the last X-containing-block remaining a product of his wife’s hand and marking the date of her final trip to the train tracks located uptown adjacent to the old ice cream parlor. Whether it was a Tuesday in February or a Sunday in July, it made no difference to Orville.

As far as Orville was concerned, the calendar had ended the day that Nora died.

Meanwhile, Randy and Lorraine enjoyed their weekend cereal. Their mother had forbidden the consumption of cereals with more than 8 grams of sugar per serving on the weekdays, so Lucky Charms had become a rare commodity to the siblings and one they looked forward to enjoying throughout their doldrum weekday schedule. Whilst savoring each bite of the mosaic of colorful marshmallows and repurposed sawdust, the duo exhausted their limited television privileges on hyperviolent morning cartoons. A sudden televised explosion reminder their mother to check the stopwatch she kept on hand. “That’s two hours,” she called from the other room, thereby marking the end of their viewing session. After clearing the table and placing their respectively embroidered cereal bowls in the dishwasher, they were faced with the dilemma of how to best take advantage of their allotted time away from the monotony of middle school algebra and grammar lessons. Randy hesitantly turned off the television while trying to absorb a few more precious moments of mindless amusement and led his sister to the garage. There, they mounted their respective bicycles: Randy’s blue 12-speed and Lorraine’s pink Barbie bike, the lack of gears compensated for by the extravagant rose-golden streamers dangling from the handlebars. “Don’t forget your helmets!” their mother called from the from the front door.

“Make sure you’re home in time for supper!”

The sibling dyad, finally free from the restraints of paranoid parental supervision, now faced the daunting task of independently synthesizing a Saturday agenda. After spending a significant portion of their allowance at the old ice cream parlor, the sticky-handed pair discussed their strategy on how to best make use of their day off over melting strawberry custard through cold, dairy-encrusted lips. Both listened intently to the passing locomotives and scrunched their faces in a futile effort to facilitate concentration in spite of the roaring line of boxcars to their immediate left. After the roaring faded to a dull and regretful moan, the two bounced the fruits of their mental efforts off of one another. With each of their suggestions sounding duller than the last, Randy resorted to proposing that which any twelve-year-old may consider when confronted with the discomfort of weekend idleness: mischief. He recommended making use of the long-abandoned house in New Haven Falls to satiate their desperate hunger for entertainment. Without any better ideas to offer for rebuttal, Lorraine hesitantly agreed to her brother’s proposition between deliberate bites of soggy waffle cone. Now refreshed with the certainty of a tangible destination, Randy and Lorraine polished off their frozen treats, mounted their sun-scorched bicycle seats, and began the short journey to the nearby town of New Haven Falls.

Meanwhile, a forgotten man unknowingly awaited the siblings’ arrival to a house they thought to be abandoned.

Although short in distance, the journey held no shortage of discussion between the siblings. The pair discussed the injustice of their mother’s iron grip on the household following their father’s death after a long, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful battle against lung cancer. Since then, despite their subtle 10 month age gap, Randy now fully accepted the responsibilities of the older sibling in his father’s chronic absence. Further, Randy had taken on the role of what his mother labeled as the “man of the house” and had undergone an almost unnatural level of maturation over the past 8 months. “Just be sure not to grow up too fast,” his father would say between drags of his cigarette, not knowing that he was inhaling the very reason for the antithesis. Sure, some of the rules his mother had since set in place seemed a bit unfair, but Randy reminded Lorraine that following them for their mother’s sake may help to grant her some peace of mind in her newfound role as a single mother.

The two agreed that they would stay out of trouble as they unknowingly approached it head on.