Bloodstone (31 page)
Authors: Nate Kenyon
She was never sure later exactly how the end went. She remembered a gentle, warm fog dropping over her mind again. Harry was there. Somehow he guided her gently across the room as the roaring reached a thunderous pitch and a huge and blinding flash of lightning split the sky above their heads. Then they were climbing down into the earth. She felt something give deep inside, and then a warm, heavy flow of blood was running down her leg. She thought;
I’ve
lost the baby
. Strangely, the thought did not depress her. The baby was never hers, not in the way it should have been. That much she understood.
Then the darkness descended as Stowe pulled the trapdoor shut, and they began to fumble their way forward in the dim beam of the flashlight, away from the nightmare, away from the man she loved.
Above them, the flood shook the earth.
It thundered through the steep, narrow passage where the dam had been, carrying sticks and sludge and rocks and pieces of concrete, slabs of earth and sod, uprooting everything in its path. When it reached the upper bridge, the structure groaned under the sudden pressure, girders snapping like guitar strings. The water roared on, shooting out over
the falls as if expelled from a gaping mouth, erasing and overflowing the churning pool below. Three houses that had been built too close to the river, houses that had seen their basements flooded many times and their foundations weakened by the moist air, were swept away as the wave passed. Boards, pieces of furniture, and other things too shattered to be recognizable joined the deluge. The great wave carved the deep banks of the river even deeper as it rumbled along its path of destruction.
At Billy Smith’s side, the creature had become silent. It, too, was listening, as if aware of its own fate. The hellish light in its eyes slowly died, and it seemed for a moment as if Jeb had returned. He seemed bewildered, as if waking up from a long, dreamless sleep.
The water reached the clearing and seemed to rear up a moment, like a huge dark stallion pawing the air. Then it fell. The corpses, still standing in a circle around the broken shack, were swept away and torn apart by the flood. The rope of the old tire swing snapped, and then the tree it had been tied to swayed and came crashing down.
The wave lifted the shack, but even before that Billy Smith had felt himself begin to drift. The light overhead faded away. Tears still flowed unchecked down his pale cheeks. But he had been washed clean, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, he was free.
Something was calling him. The place that opened up before his eyes was not empty at all, it was not dark and cold and lifeless. There were people there he recognized, whole and happy to see him, and as he moved closer and the water swept him away, he knew that this was the way it was supposed to be.
Finally, and for the first time in his life, he was going home.
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”
—
John 11:25
From the May second edition of the
Portland Press
Herald:
BIZARRE STORM ROCKS SMALL TOWN
WHITE
FALLS—The strange weather patterns
that had plagued the small Maine town of White
Falls for over two weeks came to a tragic end yesterday,
the day the town was to hold its traditional May
festival
.
Experts are at a loss to explain the powerful storm
front that developed over the course of several hours,
caused extensive damage and claimed the lives of
over 50 residents. In a prepared statement, a representative
from the weather observatory claimed that
the storm had raised a type of tornado, caused by the
extreme variations in the temperature of several
storm fronts in the area
.
During the course of the storm the mill dam, a fixture
in town for over 100 years, gave way under the
tremendous water pressure, spilling what amounted
to a small tidal wave down a mile of riverfront property.
Both town bridges were damaged, and three
houses were lost to the flood
.
“There was no warning,” claimed a survivor. “One
day we’re told the sky’s going to clear, and the next
thing we know all hell breaks loose.”
The bizarre story does not end there, claim those
who have witnessed the tragedy. For reasons yet to be
brought to light, the town cemetery was vandalized
during the storm. Many remains are now missing and
presumed stolen. Several survivors reported seeing
things that “defy description.” One unidentified man,
after barricading himself inside his house during the
storm, took pot shots at state police from a second
floor window, screaming incoherently and holding
them at bay for over three hours. Psychiatrists called
in to assist on the case referred to these incidents as
stress related, and declined to go into any further detail
as to what witnesses claimed to have seen
…
From the diary of Gloria Johnson:
It’s been two days since it happened, and Harry has
left me alone in this ugly little hospital room for the
first time. I have settled down with a pen and a pad of
paper in my lap because I feel that I have to write it all
down or go crazy. But nothing comes. So I sit here,
holding this pen in my hand like an idiot who doesn’t
have a clue what it’s for, and I cry like a baby. All I
feel is emptiness, as if a part of me has been taken
away, a part that I don’t know how to live without.
How can I write anything down when such a vital part
of me is gone? I don’t know where to begin. There’s
too much unfinished business
.
So I guess maybe I should try to finish it first, and
go on from there. I’m going to make this a letter, because
that’s what I need it to be. We have some unfinished
business, Billy Smith. Are you out there
somewhere, watching me? Are you taking this down?
Ever since we met I felt like you were a part of my
destiny. Even during those first few days, when I was
scared and angry, I knew that you had come to me for a
reason. There were the dreams, of course, but what I
felt went deeper than that. I had the feeling you had
come to save me. Isn’t that funny? I mean, we didn’t exactly
meet under the best of circumstances, did we? But
my life was a mess. Anyone could have seen that. I had
gotten myself in over my head in Miami, and I didn’t
know how to get out before I drowned. You saved me
from that, even if you did have your own reasons
.
I’m in some pain. Harry says I had a spontaneous
miscarriage, caused by the stress of what happened.
He says there will be no lingering effects, and I should
be able to have children again when I’m ready. I told
him I was glad, because I didn’t want him to worry
too much about me
.
But inside I’m dying, Billy. I try to make sense of
your death and I can’t do it—not because I don’t know
what you did for me, what you did for all of us, but because
it seems so damned unfair. I’m selfish, and I
don’t care. I need you with me
.
On the third night following the flood, Gloria Johnson had a dream. She was standing on the edge of a beach, and the surf was washing softly against a stretch of white sand. The sun was shining brightly, but the light did not seem to warm her, and as she watched the unbroken line of blue water against the lighter blue horizon she felt something familiar suddenly touch her face. She shivered and turned, but saw nothing, and yet the touch was still there, inside her mind.
When she turned back toward the water, her brother Michael was standing at the edge of the surf, looking back at her. He was whole and healthy, and smiling in that teasing way he did when she had done something especially crazy or silly, and she felt a sudden gentle twist of her heart.
As she watched him, the touch inside her mind changed. Michael changed. One moment it was her big brother, smiling at her, and the next she found herself staring into the pale, shadowy face of Billy Smith. Her heart twisted itself tighter in her chest. Billy wore Michael’s same teasing, lopsided grin. He raised a single white hand and waved.
I’ll always be here
,
Angel
, he said.
Remember. I’m a part
of you, a special part, and that can never be taken away.
We’re the same, you and I
.
She raised a hand in return, and watched in silence as he slowly made his way into the surf and disappeared. But she felt him there still, and it was as if something missing had finally been returned to her.
When she woke up her pillow was wet, but the tears seemed to have lost some of their bitterness, and when she slept again, she slept peacefully.
From the diary of Gloria Johnson:
Yesterday morning, three days after I left the hospital,
I drove back to town. It was a beautiful day. Reminded
me of the first morning after Billy and I came
here, the day we met Annie and Harry Stowe
…
She crossed the bridge into town, seeing the damage for the first time since that day, seeing it in the bright and hopeful spring sunlight of mid-May. Harry had told her some of what was going on, but until now she hadn’t been back. She hadn’t known if she would ever come back.
On her right the river now flowed unbroken, swelling slightly through what was left of the mill lake. The Old Mill Inn leaned dangerously toward the water, and she knew that they were going to just let it go. Bob Rosenberg had been one of the people who had disappeared that hateful day, and no one had come forward to run the inn in his absence. Worse than that, nobody seemed to care.
On her left after she crossed the bridge, uprooted trees stuck up here and there like hands coming up out of the earth. Giants buried in the barren soil, unable to free themselves. Most of the debris from the flood still spread itself across the open stretch of road leading down to the scenic turnout. A telephone pole had gone down, and it had been propped up but not yet replaced. The clinic was still open, although Harry hadn’t gone back to work and swore that he never would. Not there, he said. The town had gone sour for him, as she supposed it had for many of them.
She turned and drove past Johnny’s and the grocery, and beyond them, the cemetery. That, at least, had been cleaned up, the graves filled in, though many of them probably contained nothing more than dirt and empty coffins now. The Portland paper had carried a single follow-up story about what they called a “senseless act of vandalism”; they claimed that most of the bodies had been dug up by a still unidentified person or persons and then left for the river to sweep away. The bog below Black Pond was reputed to be a gruesome display of partially decomposed body parts, some of which had been disposed of, some which would never be recovered. Billy’s and Jeb’s bodies had not yet been found, as far as she knew. Maybe they never would be.
Someone stood out near the gazebo on the square, which had been one of the few things left whole by the storm. The figure held a big green trash bag and slowly bent to pick things up and stuff them inside. Beyond that was the Thomas mansion, and though she couldn’t see much more than an occasional glimpse through the trees, she knew it was still there, as it had stood for over two hundred years, empty and cold and silent.
Have they found the passage yet?
she wondered. And if so, had they found Sheriff Pepper and Barbara Trask? That would surely raise some interesting questions. There were bullet holes in them, after all.
They won’t find a thing
, she thought suddenly.
Because
somehow those bodies disappeared too. I don’t know how,
but they did
.
The thought brought a chill to her, though it had been warm enough to drive with the windows down most of the way from Portland.
She kept going past the town office, turned onto Indian Road, but it wasn’t until she was almost there that she realized where she was going.
Yellow police tape had been stretched across the beginning of the narrow dirt track that led down to the old Taylor property. She pulled over to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and got out to walk. She had her own demons to face.
The track was much as I remembered it, tree
branches hanging down on all sides, mud under my
feet, only a lot of trucks had been down here since it
happened, and the ground was even more rutted than
before. And it was cold in there out of the sun. I
started getting a little scared, which is natural I guess,
after what we went through. Except I began to get that
funny feeling again, and this is what really made me
nervous, that feeling of being watched, as if something
big and ugly was hunched down in the bushes. I felt it
coming up through my feet, too, as if the ground itself
was crying out at a high pitch I couldn’t quite hear
.
That’s when I began to wonder if it was really over,
if it ever could be over. Maybe the land is spoiled, and
maybe this is the most rotten spot, like the dark bruise
in an apple that’s been sitting around awhile. I
thought about what Annie said, about certain places
calling out the sick, the weak, and making them fester.
I almost turned back, but I forced myself to keep going
because I knew that if I didn’t face it now, I never
would, and it would keep haunting me for the rest of
my life
.
When I reached the clearing I knew that something
was there. It shouldn’t have been anything but a bare
patch of ground by an ugly little pond, but it was more
than that
.
The clearing was empty, the shack and the old shed
washed away, just a sunken hole in the ground left to
mark where they had stood. I could see a few boards
sticking up out of the brush at the far end, but that
was all
.
Then I heard something calling to me, and I knew.
It didn’t speak, exactly, not in the way people do, but it
called just the same
.
I walked across the clearing to the spot where those
boards were sticking up, and there it was, lying in the
dirt like the world’s biggest jewel. I say that because it
was sparkling, as if it had caught the sunlight and held
it inside
.
I picked it up before I knew what I was doing. It
seemed much heavier than it should be. The carvings
were fascinating. The two serpents with their tails in
their mouths, and the red eye in the center, which was
the part that seemed to sparkle, almost as if it were a
real eye, watching you, letting you know it was awake
and knew exactly what was happening. Clever. It felt
nice in my hand, a little warmed by the sun
.
And then it jumped. My God, it wriggled against my
skin like it was alive and trying to burrow inside me. I
grabbed one of the boards and laid it flat on the
ground, and then I put the amulet down on it. There
was a good-sized rock nearby, and I picked that up
and brought it down with everything I had. I swung
that rock again and again, until my shoulder started to
ache, and it felt like Billy was there with me, watching.
Maybe he took a few swings himself
.
Then when I was done, I took the pieces in my hand
and I threw them as far as I could into the pond. When
they hit the water they didn’t make a sound or even a
splash. They just disappeared
.
I think I found that window you told me about, Annie.
The one between the worlds. And I think maybe I
closed it, once and for all
.
Two weeks later, Gloria Johnson made the drive up from Portland again, where she had taken a motel room. She parked on the square and hiked into the hills, above what remained of White Falls. There, by the big slab of rock overlooking the valley, she found a good spot. The ground here was dry and soft and full of pine needles and rich soil.
She did what she had been wanting to do for a while now. She built a marker for Billy Smith.
It took her an hour to collect the rocks, and close to another hour to get them the way she wanted. Then she knelt in the good, soft ground. She did not speak and did not pray, only waited, and remembered.
