10

IN THE NIGHT COLBURN walked the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. Trying to figure out which house it was but they all looked the same. Wanting to see it and not wanting to see it. Every house and every workshop in every town his mother had moved them to in the aftermath of Red Bluff, a rambling existence from one little place to the next during his teenage years as she searched for a place to forget, it had all melted into one generic setting for suicide. But the house was here. Somewhere. And he walked through the night looking and listening. As if his mother’s screams would resurrect and pierce the dark and lead him to his haunted home.