Yesterday's Promise. 2nd install

When my eyes finally opened, I’d realized I was shaking. The water had turned cold. My head turned to the clock on the wall. 6 O’clock. It’s a wonder icicles weren’t hanging from my nose. According to the time, I’d been in the water an hour.

I stood up and grabbed the over fluffed towel, thankful for the warmth it provided. It was at this time while rubbing a corner of the towel on my head I noticed the candle was out. I stepped out of the tub and slipped into my robe and stood there in the bathroom, watching, listening, for something did not seem right. There was absolute silence. Not even the tick tock of the clock.

I reached up and pulled the thing from the wall to see if it was still working. I gently tapped the back of it to check for a loose battery and I saw the second hand jump back into action. Mission accomplished. So that was it. Somehow the battery had worked itself loose.

Turning around to hang the towel up, I noticed a magazine on the floor. It was opened with one side rolled under as if to keep the page opened. The page was an ad reminding everyone to change the batteries in their smoke detectors and to change the clocks back an hour. That time of year again. Not thinking much about the magazine and it’s placement on the floor by the tub, I walked with a head full of what I needed to do next. I took the one step it took to get to my bedroom and walked right into a world of darkness….what the devil!

The candle on the night stand was extinguished and a glance at the digital display on the clock radio blinked 7:10. I’d been in the tub two hours! I pulled the shade from the edge of a window and watched as the head lights of an approaching car came barreling down towards my house. The boom-boom of the sonic bass in the trunk shook my walls and rattled the glass, distorting the sounds coming from the car. From what I could tell, it was some heavy metal music with a screaming loud vocal “I…WON’T…
BE DENIED…YOUR…PROM…” silence once more descending as the car sped out of earshot.

I dropped the corner of the shade and wondered what had happened to the time. There was no way I’d fallen asleep. I remember thinking about the time my brother and I stole into the basement of my Grandmother’s house and everything about that day. Recalling everything I saw…And wish I hadn’t…


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“Kenneth O’Brien, I wanna go back upstairs now!”

“Oh, would you stop your bawling! You’re such a baby! Blah, Blah, Blah…Honestly when are you gonna grow up. Just five more minutes! Hey, come here, look at this stuff. What do you suppose it is?”

I remember walking with some trepidation, moving slowly to the sound of his voice. My sight had been taken over by the intense grip of fear that was engulfing me.

“Hurry,” he said “Come look at this!”

“I can’t. I’m scared. Kenny, I can’t breath right!”

“What?”. He rushed over to my side. I could feel him grab my arms and spin me around. I lost my balance and fell to the floor. Beside me lay the book I’d dropped. And placed there in the seam of the old book, was a postcard. My brother picked it up and started reading it aloud to me.

“Dear Lillian,

Thank you so much for the wooden nickel. It has always been a dream of mine to own one. Where did you ever find it? Well, no matter. I shall ever be indebted to you and shall be even more determined to help you with your problem.

Sincerely your friend and confidante,
Dr. Ba…..”

“Dr who?” I said.

“I don’t know, I can’t make out the rest of it. It’s written in this jibber jabberish. Hey, mom-mom had wooden nickels?”

“Mom-mom has problems?” I said. With my mind temporarily off my fears, I reached for the post card and started to read it to myself.

“Hey Ken, look at the date. 1934. What do you suppose her problem
Was?”

“Come on Sue, You know Mom-mom. What do you think her problem is!”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” Between us, we shared this knowing look and just laughed. “Hey what did you want to show me?”

Just then the door to the cellar slammed shut and was locked from the outside. We ran as fast as our trained legs could carry us to the top of the steps and started banging away.

“Help…Let us out. Mom, are you out there? Hello….anyone??”
Ken took out the deck of plastic coated playing cards he always kept in the back pockets of his wranglers and said “Watch this…(removing the joker from the deck, he slid the card in an upward fashion between the door and the jam and wiggled the card until he felt it catch, and in one smooth thrust upwards, he threw the weight of his body and gave the door a shove.).”

“It worked.” I said. “who taught you that?”.

“Never you mind, I got my sources. Now what I wanna’ know is who locked us in!” He turned to shut the door just as my mom and grandmother were coming in the back door.

“Hey, what are you kids up too?”

“Nuttin’ mom-mom, we thought we heard a noise down there an was gonna check it out!”

“How much are you paying for these kids to get a Private Education?” My grandmother said. “Do you hear that Grammer?”

I looked over at my brother and just shook my head. He knew exactly what he was doing. If he could get my grandmother to forget about the fact that we were so close to going down the steps, she wouldn’t be questioning us on it. Knowing the aversion she had for good grammer, he had successfully steered the conversation away from the basement. Or so we thought.

Just as I was making my way past her to go back outside. She reached out and snatched my hands! Holding them palm up she looked from there and then back into my eyes and under her breath said “My dear child…What have you done!”


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It was barely audible. Besides, the look she gave me scared me even more that the implications. How had she known anyway? I looked down at my hands. There was nothing on them to show I’d done anything. No scratch. No mark of any sort. Nothing. Although I could still feel the effects I received when I picked up the one book. The book was empty though. All blank pages. Not even the little blue lines used to keep your writing straight. But my fingers tingled and my palms felt hot. Itchy. Like they do if you lay on them throughout the night and they fall asleep. And they twitched a little.

“What’s wrong mom?” My Mother was making her way back into the kitchen with a basket full of fresh snap peas. “Nothing’s wrong. I thought Suzie Q rolled over on another bee again. Are you O.K. sweetie?”

“Yes Mom-mom. Thanks for looking at that for me.” I pulled my hands out from her grasp and bounded out the back door. She told my mom everything was O.K. But that’s not what her look said. Not at all.

I raced to the end of the property and stood looking for my brother. I could here him yelling and knew that the sound came from the playground just over the other side of the fence. There in lay a full size baseball field and my brother had already forgotten about the basement and was in the middle of a pick up game. Will wonders never cease.

He was only a year and 5 months older than me, but I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to run as fast as him. I wanted to jump just as high. But most of all…I wanted to be able to put my worries aside. Just like him. But he hadn’t heard what mom-mom said. Hadn’t seen the look in her eyes. Hadn’t felt the damp coldness of her hands in mine. And he never would. This was something I felt like I wasn’t supposed to share. And I wasn’t going too.

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