HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down (30 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

She was dreaming of an olive-green blanket, the wool itchy on her legs, a sensation that didn’t bother her the way it might other people but was something she welcomed. Maybe it made her feel like she was a part of things.

Birds flew low over the pond. She didn’t recognize their shapes. Jared often pointed out the birds, and then afterward there would be a look on his face, almost of shame. He didn’t point them out because he was any sort of armchair ornithologist, but because his grandfather was, and because his grandfather had taught him the names when Jared was a little boy.

Elizabeth looked over at her hand, but the glass she was holding was not her wineglass from before, it was heavier, banded with a prism.

Then she was at the edge of the pond. She didn’t recall navigating down the steep slope. She stood on the wet, packed sand. She saw that she was wearing Finna’s nightgown, the one she’d always admired and had once stolen (until Finna discovered it was missing and yanked it back, thank you very much). Liz didn’t care for much of her sister’s wardrobe, it was too earthy, too drab, but Liz coveted some of the blouses and sweaters, especially this creamy nightgown.

As she squatted, she gathered the garment up from her ankles so that the rough, dark-brown sand with its dead-fish smell wouldn’t soil it. She pulled it over her knees and swept her hair back, the wavy blonde fans of it smelling of the rosemary-mint shampoo she’d also pilfered from Finna.

With one hand holding her hair, and the other the folds of the cream nightgown, she dug her naked toes into the flat wet beach. Water filled the impressions her toes made in the sand.

Liz let go of her hair, leaned forward, and used one hand to scoop the crystal wineglass through the water, drawing up roils of dark mud and sediment below the glassy surface. She heard flapping above, and looked up to see three of the rust-colored birds flying over the pond. Their wings seemed heavy. She’d never seen anything like them; they looked prehistoric.

She looked back at what she was doing. She held the crystal glass up in front of her. That dark brown sediment from the pond swirled in the chalice, and then settled. The water above it was fine, as if it were a thinner kind of water.

She wondered where the light around her was coming from. She knew that west was behind her, since from her Adirondack chair along the fieldstone path, the sun always set to her right. Yet there was no light emanating from that direction, no sun setting over the jagged line of trees, not a hint of its trawling color. Across from her, to the east, there was no trace of the sun’s rays. It was neither morning nor evening, but perpetual dusk, with the sky calmly iridescent.

She heard voices and drew the glass to her quickly and stood up. Her feet were sinking deeper into the sand. She pulled them out and backpedaled a few steps from the water — the voices had come from somewhere out over its surface.

Macmaster pond was like a bowl most of the way around. The water was lower than usual. She remembered hearing about a high water table this year, though she couldn’t say where she’d heard. She remembered, too, sitting out, looking over the pond, thinking it was high. Here, though, the water, wide across as a couple of city blocks —someone standing on the bank on the other side would be about a fingernail tall — seemed to be lower. As if draining.

She wondered whose voices she had heard. Sometimes Jared and his friends’ voices would float across to her, from where they were drinking and fishing in the rowboat. Their voices carried so easily and flawlessly that the sound was surreal, as if they were beside her as they talked, but with the volume turned down. This voice, now, was like that.

A whisper in her ear, it said, “
Vacie
”.

Liz stayed where she was. She looked up towards the dark house. She thought she’d left the porch light on, and the kitchen light inside as well, but they’d been doused.

“
Como esta, mujere
,” the voice continued, and Liz froze. She’d forgotten her blanket, and the night was getting chilly. Almost cold enough to snow.

Liz looked at the pond. She directed her attention towards its black center. She could see nothing there, but, then, she thought she could hear something. Like someone treading water, out there in the middle, beyond where the light would go, past where she could see.

The voice was calm and distinct, cut like a jewel with clean edges.

“
No puedo vivir otro dia sin ti, mujere. Mi
vacie
.”

And the jewel was on display in a glass box in a room full of stagnant air.

Liz recognized the language easily enough — it was Spanish, though maybe not the last word. It wasn’t the Spanish she’d learned at Jessiai Preparatory. This was different. An accent she couldn’t quite place.

Then: “
It was very cricky, Liz. Very cricky robians
.”

The sound of her name caused her heart to quicken. The same voice, with the same accent, now speaking English. Again she looked up at the house and felt she should get back to it, but she couldn’t move. She looked down and saw that she’d sunk into the sand up to her ankles.

She tried to pull her feet free, but they wouldn’t come. She held the crystal glass with both hands.

“
Robians, Liz
,” said the voice, now without the accent. It was a flat voice, uttering empty sounds that somehow contained words, but this was all they contained. What was behind the words, producing them, was something Liz didn’t want to think about.

She felt that she might know something about those words because she’d heard them before.

Are you happy, Serafina
?

“
Cricky, mobius robians, Liz
,” said the voice. It was warning her, it was flirting with her, it was conversational, it was weird, and something else. The strange birds, which had settled into the tall pines behind her, made scratching noises, ripping noises, like paper dragged over grit, tearing as it went.

“Escuchame
,
mujere. La vacie. Those cricky Robians. The mer-machine. The merming machine of Mobius
.” And then there was that sound of water displaced, like someone swimming, out there in the middle.

Liz looked down. She was now up to her knees.

Then came the sound of the disrupted water, someone or something treading there in the pond, black skin in black water. It drew nearer.

Liz pulled the glass of water to her chest. She closed her eyes.

I’m dreaming, Finna. Just dreaming. If I really fucking thought about it, I’m only dreaming, and I could wake up
.

She heard the papery, slow-tearing noise of the birds in the trees; the sound of their breathing, the friction of their fitful wings. The voice was still right there, hovering like a speaking mist around her head, and the thing in the water continued toward the beach.

She could not wake up.

She thought of cricky robians. She thought she knew what that was too, but couldn’t get her mind fully around it, couldn’t shine the light of her memory on it directly; it stayed hidden, like the thing in the pond, talking to her.

Christopher
, she thought.
Help me.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Jared stared, wide-eyed, out of the back of the Caprice. Around him, the dock was in chaos.

Police lights twirled, but the cops in those vehicles weren’t worried about keeping Jim Cruickshand from venturing onto dry land. There was a queue of cars in front of him, but Cruickshand was making his way around. Metal squealed as he pressed the Caprice through the traffic. Jared noticed the trooper grimacing, even heard him over the racket saying “baby, baby,” in a kind of moan, but Jared kept his attention on the bedlam outside.

A levee had been only recently built, but already it had been overtaken by the water. The furious water slashed the shore, toppling a telephone pole. The pole hit the water, sparks flying, and a second later, Jared saw flames. The water was on fire.

“Gas! Gas!” the police shouted, working frantically in the downpour. It was a mind-bending sight, fire on water. Jared stared out the window, his mouth open, his heart thumping against his rib cage.

After Cruickshand had plowed past the last vehicle in his way, a pick-up truck whose owner was nowhere to be seen, the trooper lit another cigarette.

“See?” he said. “Told you.”

Like a kid himself, like a teenager feeling invincible, the state trooper tramped on the accelerator. They raced south towards Burlington, now impeded only by the water sluicing off the dark tarmac where it lay in great pools.

They were almost there.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Tom woke up. He heard sirens. There was a commotion on the floor — someone was shaking him.

He opened his eyes and saw Maddy standing over him.

His hands went to his face, where his fingertips felt around his eyelids. He wasn’t sure why he was worried about his eyes — maybe something the Goldfine girl had said. Tom’s head was fuzzy. He vaguely remembered that his glasses were still in his vehicle.

His phone was buzzing in his pocket. He looked at Maddy.

“Milliner,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“He’s over here. Jimmy is on our side of the lake.”

“How long?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe more.”

“Jesus,” said Tom. It was roughly twenty minutes from the ferry port at South Hero to Burlington.

He stood, and the world swam. There were tubes coming out of him.

“Easy,” Maddy said. She put her arms around him.

He blinked at her, not certain she was real.

“Where have you been? Where did you go?” He looked down at his arm and yanked out the IV.

Maddy watched him warily. “I went downstairs, doll, to the security desk. To tell them about something hitting the window. They asked me some questions, then, about Jim. I talked to Mahoney, too. He’s outside, right now, he’s got a whole team of cops, they’re gonna shoot Jim if he shows up acting hostile.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. Jim would likely act hostile.

“When I came back upstairs,” Maddy went on, “
you
were gone, and then I found you in here. You were talking in your sleep. About birds.”

Birds
, thought Tom.

He thought of the inkblots on hotel room walls. Psychic stains, if you wanted to get kooky. But what was kooky anymore? Those inkblots, those protean shapes, like the floaters in your eyes. Like clouds floating overhead; you’re a boy, you and Charlie are boys looking up with your fingers folded behind your heads. Those clouds, those inkblots, can be anything to anyone. Maybe they weren’t birds to Elizabeth Goldfine or Jim Cruickshand, or even Jared Kingston. Maybe they were something else.

Coyotes.

Deformed creatures.

Dead prostitutes.

He grabbed Maddy’s hand.

They ran to Caleb and Liz’s room. The girl was asleep. There was a translucent film covering her eyes. Tom thought of the way she’d been on the car ride to the police station. She wasn’t merely asleep. She’d been put out.

The child sat serenely next to his mother, if that was who she really was.

Tom looked at Caleb and the boy looked right back. Caleb pulled his pacifier out.

“Robians,” the boy babbled. “Cricky robians.”

“The transplant, the transfusion, all a success,” a doctor was saying in a disheartened tone. It was the same doctor from the night before, the one that looked like he belonged on
Grey’s Anatomy
.

The doctor shook his head, looking at the young woman’s limp body. “We don’t know what this is.”

They stood there, Tom, two nurses, the doctor, and another resident. Caleb was sitting up in the bed, smiling at him. Liz was motionless. One of the nurses was checking her vitals.

“Is it from the anesthesia?” Tom asked.

“She didn’t have any.”

There was a muffled noise from outside, like a car backfiring.

“Maddy,” said Tom.

“I’ll stay with them,” she said. She squeezed past Tom and headed over to the child, smiling.

Tom left the room and towards the elevator, past the nurses station. People were calling for him.

He heard more bangs, like fireworks going off, coming from outside the building. Suddenly, there were screams.

Tom went into a defensive crouch. There were two more reports from outside the hospital, now he was sure it was gunfire. Then things fell silent, except for the murmuring of voices around him.

“Quiet!” he called. He listened intently, and after a moment, heard one more shot. This one was even more muffled. It sounded like it came from the direction of the elevator shaft. How could Cruickshand get in past a dozen or more cops? Mahoney had the downstairs well-guarded. He’d pulled the cops from outside of Caleb’s room — but maybe indicated he was short on bodies. Maybe most of Mahoney’s men were off by the lake. Maybe things had gotten worse while Tom was out for the count.

Oh the irony, he thought, of an insomniac sleeping during the craziest time of his life. Well, he wasn’t going to sleep anymore; now he was as awake as he’d ever been.

The elevator chimed. Tom saw the ground-floor icon light up. Then it blinked out, and the “2” lit up. Pediatrics was the fifth floor. A car was ascending. Jim Cruickshand was on his way up. Tom’s heart hammered in his chest.

Easy
, he thought.
Steady
.

The moment drew out like a blade. The entire floor fell silent. The doctors stood not far behind him, just outside of the door to Caleb’s room.

The “3” then the “4” of the elevator glowed.

It reached pediatrics. Tom, still crouched, took aim. The doors slid open.

Jim Cruickshand stepped out, his firearm, held in his free hand, was smoking. In his other hand he had the Kingston boy, Jared, held by the neck. On the floor of the elevator was a security guard, crumpled and unmoving.

“Hey Tommy,” said Trooper Jim. He paid no attention to Tom’s position or the fact that Tom had a bead on him. He causally pointed the gun at Jared Kingston’s head, and then he looked past Tom.

He looked at Caleb’s room.

“Is Cruder in there?”

She must have been standing there behind Tom, with the doctors, because Jim broke into a grin.

“Hi Maddy,” he said.

Then his smile faded.

“Better bring your friends out of there and give them to me.”