Almost There, William
by Jeffrey Greene
There was no denying that I’d lost ground since the divorce. Housebound, curtains drawn, sunk in apathy and slowly going to pieces like a corpse in stagnant water, the room as filthy as I was. Sprawled on a couch along with empty bottles and ripe fast-food containers, staring at a moldy slice of pizza on the coffee table, I noticed that a fly had landed on my hand and stayed there. I didn’t know houseflies could bite until it bit me. I made a feeble swipe at it, which it blithely evaded, then landed back in the same spot.
A trickle of anger welled up, and I roused myself enough to realize that something had to be done: see a doctor, get put on some pill, whatever. But for now, a walk, yes, a walk. Surely a task more easily accomplished than cultivating bedsores. It was summer, and I was wearing the same pair of shorts and t-shirt I’d had on for my last trip outdoors, days — or was it weeks? — ago.
Somehow I got my shoes on, opened the front door and lurched into the steamy afternoon. Weak in the legs, I forced myself to keep moving, hoping to drive out the stinking fog in my head.
Halfway down the hill, there was this kid blocking my path, a little thing — three, maybe four, looking up at me with a grin that somehow wasn’t innocent. “There you are,” he said, looking up at me.
I regarded him warily. He sounded verbally precocious, suspiciously so. Was he real?
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Where have I been? How do you even know me?” I asked. “You were probably in diapers the last time I was outside.”
“You’re unhappy. I can see that.”
“Oh, really?” He looked solid enough, but I still had doubts.
“Will you play with me?” he asked.
“Play?”
“Ball.” His dinky hands held a blue rubber ball that I hadn’t noticed before, which he abruptly tossed at me. A weak throw that I had to squat down to catch, but I caught it, which made me feel microscopically less posthumous. I gently tossed it back to him, and he caught it, rather deftly for a toddler.
Then he threw it in what I assumed was his yard. “That’s enough ball. Let’s go play at your house.”
“What’s wrong with right here?”
“Something there you need to see.”
“Where are your parents, kid?”
“Don’t worry about them.”
“As an adult, I’m required to worry about them.”
“I won’t stay long. Just need to show you something.”
“And what might that be?”
“It’s a secret something. I’ll have to show you where it is.”
“Your parents wouldn’t like it.”
“In and out in a jiffy.”
“I don’t know...”
“I do. Come on.” He started running up the street, waving for me to join him. I followed reluctantly.
He was waiting on my front porch and, when I grudgingly opened the door, he darted inside. Picking his way through the mess, he said, “What I want to show you is in the basement. Follow me.”
He went downstairs like he knew the house well and, feeling increasingly concerned for my mental health, I followed him. He was waiting with an encouraging smile on his face. “Almost there, William,” he said and, without bothering to tell me how he knew my name, he led me to a spot between two bookshelves. The basement walls were paneled in a cheap pasteboard dating from the sixties, that my ex-wife and I had never gotten around to updating.
“Look behind that panel,” he said, pointing to one that appeared to be loose. “It’ll take a claw hammer and two minutes of your time.”
I had enough functioning brain cells left to know that this little episode had all the earmarks of a fugue state, and this kid was the fugue-iest part of it. But he’d made me curious. He nodded approvingly as I went up to the garage and came back with a hammer. He was right: the nails holding the panel were flimsy, and it came away in one piece. There were two horizontal studs between vertical two-by-fours, covered with a piece of fiberglass insulation.
The kid made a ripping motion with his hands, and I pulled it off. Tucked into the space behind it was a dusty metal box, duct-taped to the brick wall. I got it on the floor and knocked off the pathetic lock. Inside was a sealed plastic bag of baby-sized human bones, the skull broken into several pieces.
All this time, I thought, staring at the sad little pile of remains. I knew that at least three other families had lived here before me and Ingrid, going back to 1960. It couldn’t have been one of my ex-wife’s little surprises, could it? No, the bones were too old. And what did the kid have to do with this?
Turning to ask him, I found myself alone. I searched the whole house, went outside and looked up and down the street, but he was gone. If he’d ever been here in the first place. I closed the door, went back to my couch and, feeling weak in the knees, sat down, thinking about the box and the boy. I supposed this meant I’d have to call the police.
And I did, after first attending to some personal hygiene and household clean-up. The investigation is ongoing, I hear. I didn’t tell them about the kid. Why would I?
Copyright © 2026 by Jeffrey Greene
