THE RUNNER

What was and what wasn't.

April 2nd, 1963

Westville, MI

—

Johnny heard the sirens late in the night.

His two brothers in the room with him—Randall on the top bunk and Steven passed out on the floor with his smuggled comic book half over his face—were dead asleep.

Johnny didn’t think much of it at first. He heard sirens sometimes. They wailed like he imagined the banshee might sound in the stories their dad told the Boy Scout troop. He’d never say so on account of his cousin Mike probably making fun of him, but the stories scared him enough that he often didn’t sleep a wink when they camped out behind the troop cabin.

A faint pressure tingled at his temples, like static on their old Zenith television when it lost reception. Johnny rubbed absently at his forehead, wondering if Sandra, his older sister who was still up studying as she often did, had heard the sirens. He figured his little sister Debbie hadn’t, since she went to bed earlier than any of them most nights, and anyway if she did hear a bump in the night or any noise that woke her—even their father coming home late from the Moose Lodge and the metal screen door slamming shut with its unavoidable shrieking clank—she’d shoot out of bed and pad rapidly down the stairs like a frightened rodent toward their parents’ bedroom.

That, Johnny always heard.

Tonight, though, there was something else—something underneath the fading sound of the sirens. A low humming vibration, barely noticeable, pulsed softly beneath his bed. It reminded him of the strange buzz around the power lines up near Reservoir Hill, the one he and Randall had dared each other to touch their bikes to one time last fall. The air had felt heavy and charged, like it was holding its breath.

This felt like that.

Maybe the sirens were for a car accident, and someone had knocked a pole down. Maybe that was why the wires were humming.

He glanced out the window and then back at the wall, feeling again that quiet throb behind his eyes. A dull pressure. Not quite a headache.

He’d like to think he’d wake up if there ever was a fire in their house, and as he imagined where one might start and how he’d get everyone out in time, that strange pressure returned—like déjà vu. A slow, creeping certainty that he’d lived through this exact moment before.

He shook it off, figuring it was probably just his imagination working overtime again, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

—

A stark thud jolted him awake.

He thought maybe it was Debbie’s door opening. But when he didn’t hear the telltale pitter-patter of feet descending the steps, he pushed himself up off his stomach. His brothers were still mostly in the same positions—Randall’s arm now hanging limp off the edge of the bunk, and the comic book splayed out like a fallen bat on the orange shag carpeting of their second-story bedroom.

Then he heard it. A sputtering growl. It made him jump.