It’s a simple process.
I reach out with my left hand and press my palm to the shingles. The day’s heat is still radiating from the gray surface. Tiny pebbles roll away from my hand as I pretend that I have a grip. Lifting myself slightly, I try to slide my hips to the left without losing any height. I manage to arrest my fall after only slipping a couple of inches. Then, I slide my left foot over.
Meanwhile, I’m calculating. If I slip two inches for every inch of leftward progress, will I make it? Or will my foot soon slip over the edge, over open air. Once that happens, it’s all over. Losing one toe of grip is going to doom me to a quick fall.
Uncle Walt would be horrified by all this. He and I installed some of these very shingles. Well, technically he installed them. I just cut the custom sizes he needed and handed them to him from the ladder. We built up the rows on the left side and then worked our way to the right, trying desperately to never put a foot down on a shingle once it was laid. According to him, every footstep took a month off of a shingle’s life.
I manage to move three inches with my next effort.
I refuse to look up.
Yes, I hear that sound.
It’s moving quite deliberately. I hear what must be fingernails or claws, gripping into the shingles as it climbs. The peak is the only safe place to traverse the roof. Up there, one can straddle both sides and make fast progress. That’s where it must be headed.
I lay my face against the shingles as I attempt my next micro-shift to the left. Every tiny bit helps, I suppose.
In the past few years, I’ve been trying to learn to control my impulses. Patience was never my strongest quality. Putting together a jigsaw puzzle, I would find a piece that I was sure should fit. When it didn’t, I would gather my fist and pound. That technique almost never leads to success.
I blame Fonzie.
There was this syndicated TV show when I was a kid. It was called Happy Days. The strongest, coolest character had the ability to punch his way to success. If he wanted the lights on, he would punch the wall. If he wanted to listen to music, punch the jukebox. With role models like that, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I equate success with rash decisions.
I would like to make one now.
Creeping to the left is only prolonging my agony. I could simply slide down the roof, drop to the ground below, and hope for the best. What’s the worst that could happen?
This is the kind of thinking that I’m trying to move away from.
(It seems like the sun should have come up.)
It seems like the sun should have come up.
I feel like I’ve been creeping for hours and hours. Up at the peak of the roof, I can hear it tapping the shingles as it tracks my progress. I’m wondering if it’s some kind of echolocation. Maybe it taps and knocks so it can hear the sound reflected off of me. I’m making a racket though—scraping my way across the shingles, trying not to slip. If it tracks by sound, I’m painting a picture with each inch that I move.
The tapping is unnerving, but at least I know where it is. I’m afraid to look.
I keep thinking about Mr. Engel. The heat is a perfect explanation for why he had collapsed on his kitchen floor and then later died. But what did Amber say? I believe it was something like aplastic anemia or a vitamin deficiency. Which was it? Did he fail to eat his vegetables, or was his blood thinned artificially?
Obviously, I can’t help but focus on the sinister option. Whatever was down in his freezer—he deemed it a vampire—brought him to the brink of death. The heat simply pushed him over the edge. That’s not exactly right though, is it? He didn’t say that there was a vampire down in his cellar. He said vampires. Plural. That simple S on the end of the word is what I keep coming back to. I only saw one pair of eyes looking back at me when I opened the freezer and I was instantly entranced. What if there were other sets in there? The figure that I saw slip through the trapdoor of the barn’s deck didn’t look big enough to fill a freezer, that’s for sure. At most, it was the slim shape of a young woman. How many more were in there?
My left hand finds a spot where the shingles are at a lower temperature. Going for broke, I reach farther and my hand finds the edge of the roof. I grip it tight. It’s the first solid hold that I’ve had on anything since I tumbled from the railing. I exhale in relief.
The tapping stops.
I steal a glance upwards and I see a black silhouette start to maneuver away from the edge of the roof. It’s returning to the right, back towards the deck. Am I being manipulated?
I look back down to the roof before the head can turn and it can catch me in its glare again.
I test my grip on the edge, pulling so I can climb up. The barn sticks out from the shed by, what, ten feet? How far do I have to ascend before I can swing over the edge and drop to the shed roof? I can’t believe that I’m seriously considering that option. The shed roof isn’t steep, but it’s still going to be difficult to catch myself before I tumble. People fracture their skulls just
