“Chasing the Moon” • by Karin Terebessy

On long winter evenings, the Nelsons went off chasing the moon.

Sarah was old enough to buckle herself in—though it was a bit tricky while wearing those dollar-bin knit gloves that slipped and slid on most surfaces like a skater on ice. Then she’d help Jonathon with his buckle. Sometimes, she’d have to clean the sticky off the clasp. Sometimes, she’d even have to remove her gloves, fingers stiffening quickly in the cold, and use her thumbnail to scrape away all the old dried drips of doctor-office-lollipops or apple juice, because the buckle wouldn’t fit otherwise.

“Is everyone buckled in back there?” Their mother would ask, her disembodied eyes peering into the rear view mirror; her breath curling like smoke.

“We’re all buckled, Mom.”

The car was so cold their teeth and bones would rattle like the cold windows in the frames. The brakes of the old car squeaked and sometimes there was this metal-scraping-against-some-other-metal sound and this was their musical soundtrack for chasing the moon.

Their mother drove the car up and over the dark winding hills. Past the small rural houses and copses of trees. With each turn of the road, the moon might disappear from sight. Sarah and Jonathon would hold their breath, and then the road would curve—

“There! Past that chimney! It’s back, Jonathon, look!”

Jonathon would let out a sigh at the sight of the moon. With each dip of the road the moon would hide; with each rise, make its face known again. Through the long skeletal branches of birch trees, milky fog, or heavy clouds, the moon would tease, almost as if saying “Aha, so you’ve long made peace with object permanence. Then why so fearful?”

Nothing so big could ever disappear.

As their mother drove and heat finally warmed the car, Jonathon would ask,“Can we get McDonald’s?”

“No money for McDonald’s,” Sarah would answer for their mother.

Jonathon would grimace at his sister’s maternal tone. “There’d be money if Dad were here,” he’d say. Just to be hurtful.

“Hush,” their mother would say. “You’ll scare away the moon.”

§

Each month, when the moon shrank to barely a sliver, Jonathon harbored a secret panic that it might disappear. That he’d been thinking about his Dad too much and this was scaring away the moon. He tried as hard as he could to unthink about his Dad. But trying to not think about something still left him thinking about that something. Even more sometimes. So he’d imagine his father’s face on a baseball card that he could tear up and sprinkle out his window so the wind could carry each piece in a different direction, not letting them come together to form his face again. Only, tearing up his father’s face made him think that that would be the reason he never came back again.

Jonathon took to biting the skin around his fingernails until the pink raw underskin shone through. This distracted him until the day the moon would start to grow fat again.

From his bedroom window, he’d whisper, “Don’t be afraid moon. Please don’t go away again.”

§

The long Spring evenings could be just as hard to fill as the Winter ones. But the Nelsons would sit out late, for a long time after dinner, waiting to spot the first sign of moonrise.

Or they might drive, if gas was cheap enough. The car hot now but the buckles still sticky.

Jonathon was getting older and could buckle himself in these days.  Sarah and he would get mad at each other about this, because she liked to do this for him. Until one day, Jonathon pinched the back of her hand so hard she yelped.

“Hush now,” their mother said, “Do you want to scare away the moon?”

§

Sometime in June, a few weeks before summer vacation, all the kids in Jonathon’s class had to make cards for Father’s Day. Jonathon worked carefully. He took a piece of red construction paper and folded it in half, because red was the color of love, and cards always opened from the middle. It was hard to see the crayons on the red paper, but he had drawn a big circle. Then he used dots of glue and the silver glitter, and made a sky full of stars.

Maybe it was the long summer nights, or the joyfulness of glitter, but Jonathon felt hopeful and forgot to not think about certain things. Inside the card he wrote, “Dad, come back soon.” And when he brought it home, he put it on his window sill, so the moon could see it.

§

When Sarah was helping her mother clean, she came across the card.

She shook it in Jonathon’s face. “What is this?” She hissed. “You better get rid of this. You’re going to make mom cry and if you make mom cry I’m going to hit you really hard.”

But Jonathon didn’t want to throw it out. So he folded the card up. He folded it and folded it until it was a stiff, lopsided square with a yawning mouth that wouldn’t close and he hid it under his mattress.

When the moon got small in September, he would slide his hand beneath his pillow, pressing his palm to the mattress. He could sense the hidden card, buried beneath the mattress. Buried and so far away, it couldn’t be that bad. There enough to still exist, but not there enough, to not be a crime.

Then on September 13, 1999 the moon left and didn’t come back.

Jonathan tore off his bedsheets, flipped his mattress and seized the card.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” he said as he ripped the card up into tiny shreds. He dug holes in the yard and buried the shreds in all different places. He tried to even close his eyes so he wouldn’t remember where he buried some pieces. And the ones he did remember, he went back and put rocks on, so that the rocks would weigh them down in case the power of their longing would cause them to tremble up from the earth and reunite.

But the moon still didn’t come back.

Grownups walked around frightened now, wringing their hands, asking why why why.

Guilt swelled inside him until he felt full and round with it. Until it seeped from his pores and radiated from him like an ominous light.

Shame shone from him in the darkness. Like it was saying, “Look here everyone! This is the boy who scared away the moon. Look look, let me shine a light on him so you can see him better.”

He was certain that when the grownups looked at him they could see that it was all his fault. It was so big and obvious.

Jonathon wanted to fix this but he didn’t know how. Because the way you fix things when you’ve done something wrong is you say sorry. But how could he say sorry to the moon, when it wasn’t even there anymore And how could he say sorry when his voice seemed to have escaped Earth’s gravity and fled with the moon?

How would this terrible feeling ever go away?

Everyone knows that nothing so big could ever disappear.

         

---

Karin Terebessy likes to write speculative flash fiction stories. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Stupefying Stories, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sci-Phi Journal, and other ‘zines. She is currently attempting to write a novel based on her short story “Mood Skin” which appeared in Stupefying Stories in 2016. You can follow Karin on TikTok @karinbendsreality or find her on Instagram at karinterebessy.

Her most recent appearance in SHOWCASE was one of the most powerful and disturbing stories we’ve ever published, “Broken.” Before that she gave us “Bandages” in Stupefying Stories 26, but she’s been with us since “The Memory of Worms,” in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories 16. In addition she’s given us many SHOWCASE stories, including, “Robin’s Egg,” “Not Quite Ready for Armageddon,” “The Finder of Lost Things,” “Mood Skin,”  “The Real Reason Why Mrs. Sprague Came by Her House So Cheaply.”

If you liked this story, check them all out. It will be time well spent.