Twinkle Twinkle, Silver Star PART 1

There is a house.

There is always a house with a monster locked in its basement or an old witch with a patch over one eye who can show you how you’ll die. The house is always old and rotting with a wooden porch that creaks beneath the feet of children foolish enough to get too close, a tire swing with no tire, cracks in the windows, and a lawn so unkempt that the smallest of those children could get lost inside stalks of tall, reedy grass.

There is a house.

But this one is different.

This one sits along the edge of the Allegheny river in a tiny town called Foxburg, Pennsylvania, a place some would compare to those found in old storybooks filled with fairy godmothers and wishes come true. The house does not have a basement full of old antiques tainted by dark magic or an attic that’s floorboards creak even when nothing lurks overhead but the spiders spinning their sticky webs.

In fact, there is no basement.

In fact, thirteen year old Violet Hinkle sleeps in the attic and gets to watch the stars come out each night through the tiny window Mr. Hinkle constructed in the ceiling when they found out Mrs. Hinkle was pregnant again and Violet would have to switch rooms. Violet likes the privacy and never minded the move (especially not after the skylight was finished) and ten year old Danny is kind of jealous of his big sister’s set up, even though Danny’s room has a window that’s way better if you’re planning on sneaking out of the house. He only did it once, and he didn’t get caught (because Violet came with), but Danny doesn’t like secrets so he won’t do it again.

One hundred and eighty three people live in Foxburg, Pennsylvania.

If you’re getting married, you do it at Riverstone Farm, just one street back from the Hinkle’s house. If you’re getting cold feet, you walk the half mile down the road to Memorial Church of Our Father for some guidance, and if you’re getting really cold feet, you walk the mile and a half back the opposite direction to drink it off at the Allegheny Grille. If said cold feet still persist after that, you head east to St. Petersburg. You do not cross west over Foxburg bridge.

So there is a house and there is a lovely family of four and there is a small town where new faces are seldom seen but always met with kindness, and that is where the story should end instead of begin.

It does not happen on Halloween night. It does not happen in the wake of a thunderstorm that sweeps over the Hinkle’s rooftop and floods its floorboards with horned demons and bloodsoaked chaos.

Violet Hinkles turns fourteen years old, and nine days later, Mr. Hinkle wakes up with a crick in his neck.

It’s nothing to worry about, he assures his wife as he kisses her and the children goodbye. Perhaps this would simply be an expression in other homes, but George Hinkle makes sure to leave a soft whisper of his presence on the cheeks of the three people sitting around the breakfast table before he walks out the door each morning. Today is no different, except for that crick.

By the fourth day, Mrs. Hinkle insists he go see the doctor, so he does. Dr. Kane, too, says it’s nothing to worry about-- just a product of poor sleep. He asks Mr. Hinkle about his sleeping positions, his recent dreams; prescribes a little something for the pain and provides a little piece of paper about spine curvature and proper pillow placement. Mr. Hinkle doesn’t remember much of his dreams, vague outlines of soft, purple shadows and thin lines of silver thread that unwind to spool around his feet. He laughs at the alliteration of the Proper Pillow Placement sheet and follows the advice.

Four days after that, he wakes up unable to lift his left cheek from the top of his shoulder. There are perhaps two inches of space in between, a number not nearly high enough in Mrs. Hinkle’s distraught opinion. She sends the children off for the beginning of their final week of school before summer begins and then stands at her husband’s shoulders, rubbing soothing hands down along his neck and back while he props his cell phone up against his right ear and calls in sick to work for the third time in twenty-six years.

The next day, the fingers of George Hinkle’s left hand do not work. They curl in on themselves like the talon of a red-tailed hawk, and Mrs. Hinkle barely waits for the bus to pick up Violet and Danny before driving her husband directly to the hospital.

Dr. Grumsfield doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Symptoms of Lou Gehrig's with the progression time of a marathon runner on Speed and with no signs of signature neurological damage. After school, Mrs. Hinkle asks their neighbor, Alan, to pick the kids up and bring them to the hospital. Once there, Violet is overly talkative, ignores the wires coming out of her Daddy’s arms and elects to tell him about the boy in class who pulled her hair three times during social studies class but won’t dare do it again because she swears she glared at him so hard, he peed his pants. Danny is quiet. He curls up on the bed next to his father and burrows into him, doesn’t move until Mrs. Hinkle says they have to go, but they’ll come back to visit after school the next day. The kids protest, but they have their final tests of the year, and they can’t be missed.

That night, Violet glances up through the skylight her father made for her and sees nothing but a deep, purple sky and tiny threads of silver light that barely count as stars.

At school the next day, the boy who pulled her hair sits on the opposite side of the room from Violet and immediately stops clicking his pen when he notices her looking at him. She finishes her test early, excuses herself to use the bathroom, and instead sits in the hall against a row of lockers and runs her thumbnail along the length of her wrist until the bell rings.

Back at the hospital, Mr. Hinkle’s left eye will not open and his left pinky toe sticks straight up into the air, seemingly petrified. The nurse who changes his IV lines coughs violently into her arm and quickly excuses herself. An hour later, Dr. Grumsfield meanders unsteadily into the room, his skin sickly pale. Mrs. Hinkle, who has been sitting diligently beside her husband’s bed since seeing the kids off to school, immediately rushes to his side to keep him from collapsing onto the floor. As she is helping him to the seat she’d only just vacated, her neighbor Alan walks into the room with Violet and Danny in tow. Violet runs to find a different doctor to take care of the first, and Danny grabs the cup of water meant for his father and tilts it so that the liquid trickle past Dr. Grumsfield’s suddenly cracked lips.

It all happens very fast after that.

To be continued...