Leave the Living by Joe Hart

toolbox. Mick slid it toward him, balancing on top of the ladder. There was a small lock set between two hasps but no key visible upon the shelf. Flipping up the clasps, he waited a beat, listening to the house below. There had been a sound, there and gone, but now nothing but the wind, a distant moan within the confines of the closet. Returning his attention to the box, he raised the lid and looked inside.
    A shining revolver rested atop a layer of aged newspaper articles, its snubbed nose and black grip familiar the moment he saw it. It was his father’s Ruger .357, what the older man had dubbed “the wrist breaker” because it kicked so hard when fired. He’d shot the weapon himself multiple times over the years when they’d gone targeting. Mick drew the gun out of the box and inspected its cylinder. Dark, sunken heads of hollow-point rounds occupied the five holes. He hefted the pistol once and then set it aside on the shelf. Tipping the box forward, he reached in to draw the articles out, their touch dry and brittle between his fingers. As he lifted them free, the closet light sputtered like a candle flame in a breeze, withering then brightening before winking out.
    Darkness flooded the closet. It flowed over everything, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Mick wavered on top of the ladder, blind as a fish at the bottom of a moonless sea. The utter detachment from his surroundings was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and when he reached out to touch the wall for balance, he was certain it wouldn’t be there anymore.
    His hand met the drywall, and he steadied himself, his heart thundering as he clutched the newspapers in his other palm. By touch alone, he climbed down from the ladder without falling and walked forward, waiting to encounter something in the dark, something unyielding that might touch him back. He emerged into the bedroom and welcomed even the sick glow from the windows. It was enough light to make his way into the hall and then down the stairs.
    In the kitchen, he set the papers on the table and sidled down the cupboards, counting the drawers in his head until he came to the correct one. Inside, his fingers found the round barrel of the flashlight his father had always kept there. He flicked it on and sagged with relief as the lens shot a cool white beam of light onto the floor. Returning to the table he saw that he’d set one of the papers in the spilled water of the vase and picked it up, shaking it free of moisture. Only one corner had soaked up any water, and he blotted it the best he could on his shirt.
    Standing at the table, he shone the light around the room. The breaker panel was downstairs behind his father’s chair. There was a possibility that the main had tripped somehow, but likely?
    “Not very,” he said to the empty room. The wind answered in a gust that rattled something against the side of the house before quieting.
    Mick sat in one of the chairs and twisted the adjustable head of the flashlight so that it expanded into a wide beam. He stood it on end and let the light wash the ceiling so that it gave an ambient glow to the room. When he finally looked down at the newspapers, the headline of the uppermost stood out in dark, narrow letters that he read twice before continuing on to the article below.
    A RMORED T RUCK R OBBERY R EMAINS U NSOLVED
    Authorities are still mired waist-deep in the investigation surrounding a shocking robbery that rocked the small town of Felling, Minnesota, two days ago. At approximately 2 p.m. on Thursday, an armored truck owned by Lockheed Security, based out of Minneapolis, was run off the road outside the city limits of Felling by two armed men driving a 1968 Dodge pickup. The two men were able to gain access to the interior of the truck as one of the Lockheed guards attempted to fire his sidearm at the robbers.
    “I climbed out of the truck to engage the assailants and try to scare them off,” Martin Taylor, a ten-year employee