Eventually, Flash got up, and opened the curtains. Light poured into the room, through the colored gemstones of which the wall was made. He looked back toward the bed to see the holographic image the light projected.
It was no longer a forest scene with fish swimming in the branches like the last time. Instead, he saw a house, whose lawn reached to the edges of the bed. It was a two story house with white siding, and a one story addition off the back. Flash recognized the home immediately. It had a stoop on the side leading into a covered entrance door. There was another door on the front of the house, with a small cement porch and a walkway leading out to the sidewalk. Above the front door, in black script, were the words “four sixteen.”
“We lived in that house when I was a little boy,” Flash said to Lem and Poikani. I can’t tell you exactly what they saw, because they were still on the bed, and it looked to Flash like they were inside the house. He could see them, and the other side of the room through the image.
He just looked at it, and remembered that it had been gray before the siding was added. A tall tree had grown by the side of the house, before the back was added on.
Bucket, who had been hovering in the room, moved toward Flash. When he glided into the beams of light, the image of the house moved. Sunlight reflected off the windows, and yellow light danced across the white exterior, and across the grass. He heard a peal of laughter, and saw a child enter the scene from the right, walking along the sidewalk. Under his arm, the little boy clutched a stuffed dog, and Flash whispered “Hush Puppy.”
The boy went into the house through the side door, which closed behind him.
“That was me,” Flash said in a soft voice.