Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (18 page)

He sat up, squinting. “What is it, man?”

Ben bobbed his line.

“Ben?”

“… Promise you won’t think I’m stupid or anything?”

“Too late for that.”

“Hmph.”

“All right. Sorry. What’s the question.”

“Forget it.”

“Come on. I won’t think your stupid.”

Ryan had always considered Ben a whiz-kid. The guy never aced math or science (all his marks hovered at a solid D), but the fact was, he could have if he wanted to. Ben had his bullshit side and his jerk-you-around side, but he had a serious side. A sharp side. If something was bugging him, something like this, which was driving Ryan like a swarm of horseflies, you knew it was anything but stupid. Anything but bullshit.

“Back at your place,” Ben Caldwell said, clearly reluctant, “did you notice anything strange?”

“Like what?”

“It’s gonna
sound
stupid, okay?”

“Okay, Ben.”

“It’s like a dream,” Ben said. “Only … it’s like a dream that was real. I can’t explain it, but I saw somethin’. Somethin’ near that guy.”

“What?”

“It looked like … fog, or … or mist.”

“Mist?”

“Yeah. Did you—?”

Ryan shook his head.

“I saw it near his boots, Rye. This thick fog. A thick purple fog. Not like any I ever saw. Thicker than that stuff off the Sioux you see sometimes.”

Ryan could see there was something more. “Ben?”

“It was floatin’ around his boots, okay? Told you it was stupid.”

“No, it’s not,” Ryan told him, and this seemed to reassure Ben Caldwell. “Whenja see this?”

“That’s the thing,” Ben said, his expression now sullen and dark. He was struggling in his mind, trying to force a square peg into a round hole three times too small. “I remember seein’ it, but not
when.
”

“But he was inside the whole time. The bottom half of the door, it’s wood. You couldn’ta seen his boots.”

“Yeah, I know. I know.” Ben’s line dipped again, just the once, and he missed his chance. “Stupid fish.”

Ryan considered the possibility this was all in Ben’s head. It might be in his as well, but the more he thought about it, thought about how his friend looked right now, he was sure that it wasn’t. How did Ben put it?

Like a dream that was real.

Yes. Exactly. Drifter two, Tigers no score.

“Anything else you remember?”

Ben shook his head subtly, as if not quite sure. “I remember the mist kinda glowin’. He was standin’ … shit, I can’t remember where. He was … he was doin’ somethin’ with his hand. And there were other people there, too. God. It’s like my brain isn’t screwed in right. Like it’s showin’ me one thing, but tellin’ me it’s all wrong.”

“Who else was there?”

“I dunno. Maybe there wasn’t. It’s all messed up.”

“What was he doin’ with his hand?”

“I can’t remember that, either. Tell me this was just a dream, buddy.”

Ryan took a long swig of the whiskey. Let the warm liquor work its magic. He looked away from his friend, past his dog, and simply gazed out over Angler’s Bay. Although he’d been to this very spot at least a hundred times, it looked eerily unfamiliar now. It seemed to stretch on forever, the water a sparkling ocean with neither end nor beginning, and suddenly, as if he had slipped into a deep slumber that had whisked him away to another realm, the entire world looked different.
Felt
different.

Like a dream.

A scary one.

“Like a dream that was real,” he said in a whisper, and Ben Caldwell looked to him with unease. “Like a dream that was real.”

~ 18

The drifter spent the afternoon alone. He had hoped to distract himself with a walk along the trail that led to the river, but his thoughts kept turning to Lynn and her family. Each time he tried to lose himself in the surroundings, on some peaceful woods or some lovely meadow, his mind betrayed him. Where he went, she followed; where he looked, she looked back. In every petal of every flower, in every cloud in the sky, he saw those eyes. Not those beautiful gems of blue, but those roiling globes of terror, begging him for answers. The good woman was so innocent, yet he had hurt her in ways she could never imagine. And now, suddenly, she was so unwittingly dangerous.

As he walked, he heard the old man.

It’s not our place … it’s not our world.

Was it so wrong?

He didn’t know when he saved those kids on the bridge; that boy in Miami. And he didn’t know now.

What gives you the right? You’re not God.

At times like this … he was no better than Brikker.

~

He had no idea what to expect or what he might say when he returned. It was late, just past seven, and surely, by now, Lynn had noticed the telltale signs on the veranda and would be asking more pointed questions. More troubling, she might have
remembered.
Sometimes, if the memories came at all, they came back a piece at a time, like some possessed puzzle constructing itself right before your eyes. The problem was, if enough of those pieces fit into the Big Picture, one was bound to figure it out—no matter how crazy it seemed.

She was sitting on the steps as he came up the drive. She didn’t see the hissing tabby behind the guesthouse, its fur puffed out, its back arched. Its tiny eyes still held a trace of the Turn.

“The breeze is nice,” she said, calling out to him, and he was relieved she started with that. He passed briskly by the cat, and when he reached the steps, handed her the crowfoot violets he’d plucked along the trail.

“Something to brighten your day.”

She lit up as she took the colorful bouquet. “They’re beautiful! Thank you.”

There was a good dozen in the bunch. She drew one loose and placed the stem playfully between her teeth.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “It’s you.”

She smiled coyly, and then slipped the wildflower in her hair. She was utterly sexy as she did it, lithe and gentle in her movement, as delicate as the flower itself. The petals were big, but they looked amazing on her.

“Now
that’s
you. Perfect.”

“Hardly,” she said, blushing. “But thank you. Feeling better?”

He nodded; a silent lie. He had hoped the walk might clear his head, even a little, but as the months wore on the headaches had grown stronger, clinging like coming death. His head throbbed.

“Me too,” she said, and there was something in the way she said it that made him think she was surprised her headache had passed. “And look at this.”

She held out her hands. Her delicate skin had lightened to a hint of redness, and her face had taken to its natural hue. Unlike her son, her eyes were bold and blue, perfectly fine. The Turn affected different people in different ways, of course, and under other circumstances she might have been afflicted as such; didn’t those endless experiments prove
that.

“I can’t for the life of me figure out what it was,” she said, turning her hands over and back.

He was about to ask about her daughter, but she read his mind.

“Lee’s cleared up, too,” she said. “But she’s still a bit queasy.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“She’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

“And the dog?”

“Wish I knew,” she said with a sigh, her gaze carrying far along the road. “Ryan’s late for supper.
Again.
Speaking of which, you hungry, cowboy?”

~

Inside the kitchen, he sat across from Lee-Anne. The girl had already finished, her plate barely touched. She was quite subdued. All trace of her sunburn had vanished, but now she was somewhat pallid.

“Tummy still acting up?” Lynn said.

“A little better, I guess.” The girl looked at Kain. “I don’t think I’m up for driving today.”

“How about next week? Saturday?”

“I’d like that.”

“It’s a date then,” he said, turning a playful wink that brought the girl to blush.

Lynn fixed him a plate of her famous Sweet Potato Casserole (actually, it was Georgia Hembruff who had made it famous, famous at the Clay County Fall Fair every September, at least, but that didn’t mean Lynn’s wasn’t just as delicious), and she sat down with her own. She was about to say something—Kain feared a probing question about the veranda—when she turned to the kitchen window, to the unmistakable revving of Ben Caldwell’s engine. All she could do was shake her head in dismay.

His attention lingered on the sound, and she saw his unease.

“Lee, can you—”

“I know, Ma.”

“Take him for a walk, okay?”

The girl left them and slipped out front. Moments later they heard her shout for the shepherd, and then the unintelligible ramblings of doggy talk.

“I should go, Lynn.” He started to rise.

“Nonsense.” She looked to him tenderly. “Please.”

He sat down reluctantly. After the Turn, her son had cast him the teenage equivalent of the Evil Eye, deservedly so, and now here he was, about to get right back in the young man’s face. Still, what worried him more was the growing knot in his gut. He was certain the boy held the Sense.

The pickup sped off as if there were a fire under the driver’s ass, and just seconds later the screen door creaked open and slipped shut. Ryan lumbered down the corridor quietly and started up the stairs. He was halfway up when his mother called to him.

There was a second or two of silence. “Ma?”

“Come down here, please.”

“In a minute.”

“Right now.”

The teenager turned with some hesitation, then came back down. His slack expression turned to cold granite when he saw the drifter.

“You’re late,” Lynn said. “Again.”

“Sorry.”

“Wash up first.”

“I’ll eat later.”

“You’ll eat now, young man. With us.”

The boy relented and moved to the sink. He took his time washing up, and as he glanced blankly out the window and across the plain, it occurred to Kain that Ryan Bishop wanted to be anywhere in the world save where he was at this particular instant in time. Didn’t they both.

Ryan spooned a plate of casserole, took a seat between the two, and without so much as a breath or a word, started eating, wolfing down his dinner. Lynn told him to slow down, but her words fell to deaf ears.

“And Ben better learn to slow down, too,” she told him, pouring him a glass of milk. “That boy’s crazy behind the wheel. Do you hear me?”

“Yes! Jeeze. He’s just havin’ some fun.”

“You tell him I won’t be so forgiving next time. Next time I’ll let George Caldwell deal with it.”

Ryan’s face soured even more than it already had.

Lynn forked some casserole into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “So what were you two up to today?”

“Same old stuff.”

“Same old stuff.”

Ryan took another mouthful and drowned it with a solid gulp of milk. “Fishin’. Up at Spirit.”

“Any luck?” Kain asked.

Ryan ignored him.

“Ryan Bishop.”

The boy grimaced. “Some largemouth. Threw a couple small ones back.”

“Anything else?” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like an apology to our guest?”

“… Sorry.”

Kain nodded politely.

Lynn spied her son quizzically. “Look at me, Ryan.”

“Huh?”

“Look at me.”

“I know, Ma.”

“This is so strange,” she said, scrutinizing the muted bloodshot in her son’s eyes. She lingered there a moment, and then she turned his head gently from side to side.

“What …”

“Nothing,” she said. “Is Beaks all right?”

Ryan shrugged. “Guess so.”

Lynn Bishop eased back in her seat. Clearly she was trying to piece it all together, but it was obvious she couldn’t do it. Kain didn’t know if that was a good sign or not, but he knew what she’d been looking for on her son’s well-tanned face. Sunburn. But
not
sunburn.

She gave Ryan’s eyes another due. “At least it’s clearing up. Whatever it is.”

“Why don’t you ask
him?
”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” Lynn said.

“I suppose I have to apologize again?”

“What’s gotten in to you?”

Lynn looked at Kain in complete embarrassment. And before she could utter her own apology, he shook his head dimly, and she didn’t.

“I’d better go,” he told her.

“Sounds good to me.”

“
Ryan!
”

“What do you want from me?”

The boy pushed himself from the table and stood up. He was ice. Lynn started to speak, but he turned from her mutely, passing the drifter with a scowl as he headed for the stairs. Lynn got up quickly and went after him. She snatched him by the arm.

“I’ve had just about enough. You can’t—” Her expression turned rigid and disbelieving. “You’ve been drinking again.”

The teenager stood silent and defiant.

“Where’d you get the liquor?”

Kain saw the boiling in the boy’s eyes. Eyes that looked as if they could hate the entire world. For a moment, he had a disturbing flashback to the diner. Sometimes, time travel of the mind was scarier than the real thing.

“It was Ben, wasn’t it? Took it from his father, didn’t he?”

“Leave him out of it, Ma.”

“Well, if it wasn’t him, then who?” She gave no chance for a reply. “Tell me it wasn’t your father, Ryan.”

“What’re
you
lookin’ at?”

“How
dare
you talk to him like that? Kain is a guest in our home.”

“
Your
guest. Not mine.”

“
Ryan
—”

“It’s all right, Lynn. I’ll be gone tonight.”

“You most certainly will
not.
” She turned back to her son. “Did your father give it to you? Answer me, Ryan.”

“No.”

“So I suppose it just fell from the sky.”

“We bought it.”

“With what?
Corn?
”

“Ben had some money saved up, okay?”

“Ben Caldwell? That’s a laugh. I want the truth.”

“I told you. I can’t make you believe me.”

“I suppose I’ll have to, won’t I? But I still don’t know who sold you—” Lynn’s eyes narrowed. “It was that slimeball Henry Roberts, wasn’t it?”