After The Fall

By Glenn Meganck

Jeff Talbot was an artist. And a husband and a father. He thought he had everything he wanted—and he did. Until the day his second child, a daughter, Christy, was born. His wife, Emily, went into a coma that day and never recovered. He had to raise his son and new daughter alone. He moved to a farm, away from the crowds and tried his best. But his relationship with his oldest child, Ben, grew strained. The day that Christy fell down the stairs to her death was the day that something in Jeff Talbot died, too, on the inside. And it's going to take a long time and a lot of searching before he finds what's missing. Filled with magic realism, After The Fall is the story of a man haunted by the death of his daughter, a man whose pain and suffering lead him to the brink of insanity. And it might take a crazy bird to lead him back…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beachfront Entertainment
• Release date: Oct 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781892339331

Glenn Meganck

Glenn Eric Meganck is a nationally best-selling novelist and musician. In addition to writing novels as Glenn Meganck, he has written under numerous pen names, including JR Ripley, Nick Lucas and Marie Celine and more. As JR Ripley he currently writes the Todd Jones comic capers, A Bird Lover’s Mystery series and the Maggie Miller mysteries. As Marie Celine, he writes the Kitty Karlyle mysteries. Unfit for the real world and unable to hold a real job for long, prior to writing full-time, he worked at a multitude of occupations including archaeologist, cook, factory worker, copywriter, technical writer, editor, musician, entrepreneur, window washer and more – all grist for the writer’s mill. He currently resides in Florida and North Carolina. Visit www.GlennEric.com for more info.

Book preview

1

the little girl

came down the stars

and called my name...

I dug the grave in the morning. The ground was harder than I remembered it to be. It was also more brown. I’d always thought it was more orange, almost red. Blood red, really.

Maybe it was all in my head. The color of the earth, the damp of the gray cloud-framed sky. Maybe it was all in my head.

I wiped my hands on my dungarees and loped toward the house, its hulking frame a silent and unmoving reminder of the solitude of my existence.

Never thought I’d have to bury my own daughter. Never thought I’d live to see the day.

My knees ached twice as much as my hands. A sign of getting old, I suppose. No turning back the clock. No bringing back the dead.

Christy was gone, like yesterday’s sunlight. Something I could only imagine, not touch.

I set the spade against the side of the house and kicked clots of earth from the soles of my boots. It was cold in the house. I could feel it digging into my bones, seeking out any little bit of warmth and scaring it off. I hadn’t turned on the furnace. Hadn’t lit a fire in days. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten, just didn’t want to.

There was a bottle in the cupboard. I pulled it down, twisted off the cap and poured steadily; strong Kentucky bourbon mixing with the remains of this morning’s instant coffee in my mug.

Christy’s mug. That is, the mug she’d made me with her own hands for her eighth birthday. She was always doing things like that. Making something for me on her birthday.

That was her last, her final, birthday. I’d say that wasn’t fair but nothing in this goddamn world is.

So what’s the point?

I fell asleep, my hand cradled in my crooked arm, at the kitchen table. A cold wind whistling under the backdoor led me.

* * *

Despite the cold, I woke in a sweat. I had that dream again. Christy crying. Christy calling. Calling ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Saying ‘Daddy, Daddy, I don’t want to die!’ Her face all puckered up and scared. Her eyes all red from fright and tears. It about tore my heart out to see her like that. Hell, I’d have torn my heart out with a spading fork if it might have saved her.

Slowly I raised my head. My neck was stiff from being stuck in one awkward position so long. My left leg was asleep. That leg had always given me trouble.

I looked out the window over the sink. It was dark. Not a star visible. Too many clouds. And it was quiet. The wind had died.

Like everything else.

I heard a sound coming from the front room. Not much of a sound. So faint I might have missed it. I rose unsteadily. My head throbbed from the bourbon. Everything was all shadows but I didn’t reach for a light switch. I was in no mood for reality. No mood for sharp, vivid images.

I tottered to the other room. It was warmer here. No reason for it. It just was. I stood stock-still and listened. Nothing. Not surprising. I was alone in the house. There wasn’t anything to hear.

Then I heard the rustling behind me. A rustling and a tiny creak, like a tentative footstep at the head of the stairs. I turned, my hands opening like flower petals.

The little girl came down the stairs and called my name. She wore a white dress. She made no other sound. I felt my breath catch in my throat where it joined up with my heart, which was already stuck up in there someplace. She walked steadily, quickly. Soundlessly.

Her mouth opened.

I stared.

She reached out to me. She didn’t come any higher than my chest. Her right hand touched my left hand. I shivered and let out a soundless cry of alarm. I couldn’t help myself.

She stopped at the door, her blue eyes staring through me, locking my soul in their grip. I don’t want to die, Daddy.

Christy?

The little girl dissolved through the door.

My feet came unglued and I ran after her. I pushed open the door. The night was still. The yard was empty. The muted white glow of the moon appeared like a smudge in the dark sky. She was gone.

2

I tried to answer,

shaped my mouth,

words fell

Working the land wasn’t something you thought about. It was just something you did. That’s what the old man at the feed and supply store told me anyway, up on Crooked Tree Road. I never thought I’d be working the land or that the land would be working me. And it seemed to me that the land was working me harder than I was working it. Showed you who was best.

And it hurt every time I stuck a sharp spade in the ground. It felt like I was stabbing right into Christy somehow. I knew it was crazy. But it was how it felt.

One thing I know, I don’t have to make any excuses for how I feel. Now more than ever. Hell, nobody has to.

I stayed out in the fields as long as I could. It was cold and I wasn’t dressed for it. It was windy and I wasn’t dressed right for that either. No matter. Being attacked by the cold and the wind beat going back to the house and being beaten down by all that solitude.

It was too big. Too quiet. I think it was trying to talk to me. And I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve got enough problems with neighbors and relatives trying to talk to me. I don’t need a damn house trying to make conversation.

Just leave me the hell alone. Okay?

It was dark now except for that fuzzy ball of orange dust setting far to the west.

A car was coming. I saw the harsh halogen headlights long before I heard the scrunch of tires on the unpaved and rutted road. The headlights squirted acid yellow light, burning its way through my eyes. It hurt. I squinted and muttered a curse, not loudly, but if the driver could even passably read my lips, they’d know I wasn’t going to be happy to see them.

The car stopped. The driver’s door opened with a squeal. Must’ve been rheumatic. Bothered by the cold. A woman stepped out. Medium height, medium build. Her blonde hair flew, caught up in a gust that could have blown her all the way to the sea for all I cared.

She smiled tentatively. Buttoned up her brown jacket.

I leaned heavily against my shovel. This is a private road.

Oh. She took a half step forward then a half step back. Still maintaining that smile, though it looked a little shaky now.

I’d spooked her. Good. I figured a little shaky ground served her right. She had no business being on a private road in the first place. My private road. Going nowhere other than my private property.

Just because she stuck a damn smile on her face didn’t mean I had to welcome her with open arms after all.

I’m your new neighbor. Christine.

That startled me. I have to admit, that startled me. My eyebrows shot upward. My tired hands squeezed the handle of the shovel. Hard.

She took a half step forward again. Now she was getting somewhere. She held out a soft-looking hand. Her nails were pale pink. I didn’t suppose she worked the land much. Maybe clip a rose or two for her kitchen table. La-dee-da.

I looked at her hand with as much interest as I’d give a water moccasin. I didn’t care much for shaking hands with water moccasins. I clenched and unclenched my teeth, gaining enough hold over my composure to ask, Are you lost?

It was her turn to look startled. She started speaking again, her voice wavering. No, I’m your neighbor. She pointed somewhere off into the dark distance. Christine. Her hand inched forward. I thought I’d introduce myself. I know you haven’t been here long and—

I cut her off. Her hand fell as if I’d cut it off, too. If I was in the mood for babbling, I’d go sit by the brook. I tilted my shovel her way. Then get off my land.

I turned and headed up to the house. What was wrong with people, anyway?

I dropped the shovel halfway up the hill. What the hell, it’d be there in the morning, right where I’d left it. What did it matter?

That was about the time that I heard the car door slam and the engine growl to life and the sound of scrunching tires in reverse.

Some people get the point right away, others it takes half a hill.

* * *

I pulled off my frayed gloves, my cold boots and my misshapen knit cap, in that order.

I tossed the gloves over the heater vent, tossed the shoes in the corner by the door, up against a black umbrella I was pretty sure didn’t work anymore, and wiggled my toes in the warm air. I didn’t pay much attention to where I dropped the hat. Sorry, hat, you’re on your own.

My nerves were pretty frayed, too, now that I thought about it. But I couldn’t think of any particularly good place to dispose of them, so I let them stay. Let them be.

The umbrella, on the other hand, I should have tossed out long ago. What good is an umbrella that doesn’t keep out the rain? No good, that’s what good. Useless.

Oh, well. It probably felt the same way about me. I gave the floppy umbrella my best John Wayne eye. Okay, I said. You can stay. I pointed a finger. But the first sign of trouble and you’re out of here.

The floor of the mudroom was caked with powdered mud and I slid sideways. I had a broom and it was in infinitely better shape than that umbrella. I knew I could sweep the room out. Whoosh-swoosh, out the door. Back to where it all came from. And no more sliding.

But what would be the point?

Besides, without any mud, I could hardly call the tiny square a mudroom. It would have lost its reason for being. Its raison d’être as my clownish philosophy professor used to say. Without any mud, a mudroom would cease to be a mudroom. It’d only be a tiny square. One of millions, billions. Without purpose.

Speaking of which...

There was a bottle of Buffalo Trace bourbon on the kitchen table. I didn’t much like the taste of hard liquor, but it was quick. It got me where I wanted to get to quick.

Quick is good.

And like the great American buffalo who once carved a trail across the Kentucky River, the bourbon traced a hard trail down my throat.

I sat there quietly, sipping. No TV, no radio. No telephone, that’s for sure. Watching the room grow dark and cold. Night was coming. It too was quick. Had it been drinking?

My gnarled fingers gripped the edges of the wood table with a strength built of fear. Apprehension.

Night was coming. And night wasn’t good.

* * *

Footsteps.

I heard them overhead. I heard them in my head. Running up and down the halls of my mind. The sound of bare feet on bare wood. Sounded like they were coming from the front bedroom. Her room.

Christy had picked it herself. I told her, Take any room you like, blue eyes.

She chose the front bedroom. Standing at the big window, looking out, she turned to me and smiled. She said she was picking this room because she could see forever from this room.

My hands tightened. I bet she can see forever from wherever she is now.

The patter of feet spelled out my name like some sort of personalized Morse code. Daddy Daddy Daddy. Save me, Daddy.

I took a breath. The room smelled of alcohol, but that was only me. Christy was close to the edge of the stairs now. I knew this without even checking.

She beckoned.

I had to come. I rose from my chair and dragged myself to the other room. Looked up the stairs. Up the stars.

My voice was hoarse, rough, raw. Hi, Christy. My face sagged under the weight of a sadness that decayed my flesh, my spirit.

She held her arms straight out, took a step and tumbled soundlessly down the hard steps.

She fell into my arms and I cried until some supernatural being called an end to my crying and I fell asleep at the foot of the stairs. The foot of the stars.

3

silently

as dead birds

to the ground

There was a dead bird. Outside, on the ledge of the kitchen window over the sink. I was filling a small glass with ice-cold water when I saw it there. Just lying there. Alone. Dead.

She looked cold.

My hand started shaking. I dropped the glass in the sink. It shouted an anguished goodbye and broke into three large pieces and five times as many small ones. I guess they don’t make glasses like they used to. Or birds.

She looked like a Carolina wren, about five inches long, with a rusty brown crown and a cinnamon underbelly. The cinnamon bun of birds. Not that I’m any kind of bird expert. I’m not.

I reached out and touched the windowpane. It had not broken or even cracked, but that poor bird’s neck likely had.

My stomach grumbled for attention. Tough luck. Breakfast would have to wait. I had a bird to bury. I couldn’t just let death lay there like that. I bundled up and headed outdoors. The shovel was right where I’d dropped it the night before. Hadn’t moved a muscle.

I went around the side of the house to the kitchen. The bird hadn’t moved either.

I picked up the bird gently in my gloved hand and silently said a prayer. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. I looked around a bit and decided that the thick stand of trees on the north side of my property was the proper resting spot for a Carolina wren struck down in what was probably the prime of her little life by a kitchen window.

If there was any justice in this world, I expect that window will be doing 8-10 years for involuntary man, okay, bird-slaughter. No matter. I believed in justice about as much as I believed in time travel...or ghosts.

Man, shovel and bird walked up the hill to the woods. The sun had risen, but not so as you’d know it. Gray was the color of the day.

Good. I like gray. It suits me.

* * *

Trails of smoke rose in the distance. Neighbors’ chimneys chugging away, reminding me they were there. Dead leaves that’d lost their anchors to life flew by. But I ignored them. I couldn’t bury every dead thing, after all. It would take me a lifetime to bury all the dead and what would be the point?

I was out of breath by the time I came to the top of the hill. My lungs hurt. I set the bird on the cold ground, leaned against the shovel for a minute. Watched my shallow breath escape, little clouds of vapor ghosts forming then disappearing without end.

It could have been a minute that I rested. It could have been an hour. Time meant little to me, and nothing to my little cinnamon-colored friend.

I dug a shallow grave and cleared it of stones. Time to go, bird. I laid her inside, shut my eyes a moment, then covered her up.

That’s no way to say goodbye to a bird.

I spun around. Who? But there was no one near. Not a person for miles. Just the way it should be. Losing my mind.

I stuffed my hands back into my gloves and kicked the shovel with my toe. "Come on, get up, lazy