The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) (16 page)

“Why?” Marty asked. “What kind of
floating things?”

“I don’t know,” Ida said. “But he
said if you touch one, the vorghost would take it as a threatening move and
never work with you on what you want. Just thought I’d pass it along. Who
knows, you may never see it. Like I said, I didn’t see anything like that when
I was in the house.”

Marty turned to Winn. “What do you
think? Flagstaff is four hours away. It would be a full day up there and back.”

“I have a big game on Friday, and
our coach is working us hard until then,” Winn said. “If I took a day off, he’d
probably kill me.”

“You’re a basket case as it is,”
Marty said. “You might play better if we get this taken care of.”

“I won’t be playing at all if
coach is pissed at me,” Winn said. “We’d better go Saturday. No school or work.
I don’t think my ratty car would make it, though. Can you go with me?”

“Of course,” Marty said, smiling.
“My Caddy has been in need of a road trip for quite a while now.”

“Anything else I should know?”
Winn said, turning back to Ida.

“Nope, not really,” she said.
“I’ve already told you about the risks. I didn’t even have to trance when I was
in the house – the vorghost already knew I was gifted. Seemed to know why I was
there. I expect it’ll be the same with you. Just don’t freak out with all the
weird shit the vortex causes.”

“Weird shit?” Winn asked.

Ida nodded. “You’ll see.”

“We lost, twenty-one to ten,” Winn
said.

“Well, at least it wasn’t a blow out,”
Marty replied, steering the Caddy northward up I-17. It was early Saturday
morning, and Marty had just picked up Winn from his trailer.

“I have an ice chest in the back
seat,” Marty said. “Loaded up.”

“Looks like it might come in
handy, too,” Winn said. “Supposed to be hot again today.”

Tucson receded and flat, open
desert began to fill all views, with Picacho Peak in the distance. Winn was
tired and a little beaten up from the game, but he was more exhausted from
overnight torment.

“He was there again last night,”
Winn said.

“Oh?” Marty asked.

“I felt something wet and warm in
the bed, and I thought, ‘god, I hope I haven’t pissed myself!’ I woke up and
saw something under the sheet, something big, down by my legs. At first I
thought the Z-flies might have come back, but it was different. Larger. I threw
off the sheet, and there was blood everywhere. And he was there, his face right
at my calves. He would bite into me and rip off a piece of my flesh, then spit
it out and bite another. His face was covered in blood. He looked crazy.
Insane.”

“Jesus Christ! What a horrible
image! I can’t imagine it!”

“I forced myself into the River
and tried to talk to him, but he was just babbling as he chewed away at me. Couldn’t
get him to speak coherently. When I came out of the flow, he was gone. No
blood.”

“That must have shaken you up!”

“It was around four a.m. I
couldn’t get back to sleep after that.”

“No, I don’t expect so!”

They rode silently in the car for
a while. “Do you want to try and sleep now?” Marty asked. “This is going to be
a rather long and boring drive.”

“I can’t sleep in cars,” Winn
said. “Maybe I’ll try. We’ll see.”

“After today, I expect you’ll be
able to sleep just fine,” Marty said. “We’ll get you squared away, and Brent
will be gone.”

“I hope so,” Winn said, still
feeling a pang of guilt at the idea of forcing Brent the rest of the way out of
his life – the ultimate ditch. If this didn’t work, Brent was going to be even angrier.
Winn shuddered at the thought.

“So, Ida,” Winn said, trying to
get Brent off his mind. “You two were a thing?”

“Depends on what you mean by a
thing,” Marty replied.

“You know, a couple.”

“Well, we worked together for
years. When my wife died, she started making overtures like she was interested
in being more than just work partners. I resisted it for a while, but you saw
how persistent she can be. Things heated up for a couple of months, then this
thing with her emotions and her nose started, and I just couldn’t do it anymore,
so I broke it off.”

“The nose thing was weird, wasn’t
it?” Winn said.

“It wasn’t just that,” Marty
replied. “Whatever the vorghost took from her used to keep her balanced. Her
emotions would run wild after that. She had been pretty normal before, but after,
she could go from calm to a jealous rage in five seconds. And of course her
nose would balloon up. I learned early on not to laugh or snicker when it
happened, it would just make her angrier. But, come on, what was I supposed to
do? You saw it. It’s funny. Someone getting angry and their nose swelling up?
It’s comic.”

Winn snickered. “I was too
surprised when I saw it to laugh,” he said. “But hearing you talk about it,
yeah, it’s funny.”

“Maybe I should have stuck it out
with her, but it was just too weird. I think I could have gotten used to the
nose thing, but the wild mood swings – nah. I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t
respond well to drama. So I dumped her pretty hard, and you saw she was still
bitter about it.”

“But she still helped us.”

“Because she stepped in her own
shit and felt guilty for it,” Marty replied. “Up until then I wasn’t sure she
would. What about you? You’re sixteen now, you got a girlfriend?”

 “Two,” Winn said. “And a
boyfriend.”

“Oh!” Marty said, a little taken
back. “So, wait, you have two girlfriends? Isn’t that a little dangerous?”

“So far so good,” Winn said. “I’ve
been completely up front with them. No promises. They keep coming back for
more, and I don’t say no.”

Marty looked like he didn’t know
how to respond.

“Same with the guy,” Winn added.

“With the guy?” Marty asked.

“Yeah, with the guy I’m seeing,”
Winn said. “Same arrangement. No promises. Seems to work.”

“Wait,” Marty said, looking
confused. “This is a guy who’s a friend of yours?”

“Well, I thought we were talking
about people we were seeing? Like dating?”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant,” Marty
said, still confused. “You mean, you’re seeing three different people, two of
which are girls, and one who’s a guy?”

“Yeah.”

Marty looked flabbergasted.

“What?” Winn asked.

“I just…” Marty stammered. “Well,
I don’t know. I just wasn’t expecting that answer, that’s all.”

“You look a little shocked,
Marty,” Winn said, smiling. “You didn’t think I would be dating so many
people?”

“Well, if I’m being honest, yes, I
expected you to tell me you were dating some cute little girl from school, and
that things were going well, something along those lines.”

“And I’d given her my letterman
jacket and we were talking about going to the same college together?” Winn
said.

“I guess I’m old fashioned. I was
kinda expecting that, yes.”

“So 1980s, Marty,” Winn said.

“Well, at least you’re a kid who
gets dates. I didn’t do any real dating until I was out of school. Was too
focused on my studies. I was always kind of jealous of the kids who seemed to
have such an easy time meeting people and going out. Wasn’t really my thing.”

“When did you meet Rita?” Winn
asked.

“Senior year of college. She was
an undergraduate in a microbiology class I had. She was alarmingly beautiful.
We had thirty good years together, before her cancer. I hope you meet someone
as perfect for you as she was for me. And you have a long time together.”

“I don’t know,” Winn replied
wistfully. “I mean, I know it was good for you and Rita, but I’m not sure about
that for me. I don’t like feeling committed or boxed in. Like with Brent. I
want to be free of him.”

“Brent is a whole different
thing,” Marty replied. “When you meet someone you want to spend the rest of
your life with, someone you care deeply about, then you’ll know what I mean.
Brent’s not someone like that. You weren’t in love with him. He’s just someone
you feel guilty about, who’s become a monster.”

“Maybe,” Winn said, no sense of
conviction coming through. He thought of Ida, and how Marty had ditched her
when she became a monster, too.

“Maybe.”

▪
▪
▪

Marty pulled his car off the side
of the road, onto a short and bumpy driveway that looked like it hadn’t been
used in years. They stepped out of the Caddy and looked around.

“There’s a house way down there,”
Marty said, pointing. “But other than that, this place is pretty isolated.”
They looked around in all directions, seeing nothing but flat land. Then they
turned to the house. Ida had been right; it looked as though it might fall down
at a moment’s notice. It was big for an old house. It was three stories tall,
with an attic above. All of the windows had been boarded over with planks, not
plywood. Paint had long ago peeled and blown away. A set of steps leading to
the front door had collapsed, leaving no easy access to the porch, which had
large holes in its floorboards.

The sun was directly overhead, and
Winn could smell the old wood of the house as it baked. A slight breeze came
by, and while he enjoyed the relief it brought from the heat, he was chilled by
the creaking sound it made the house produce.

“Do you think it’s safe to go in
there? Really?” Winn asked.

“If Ida’s right, it’s safe,” Marty
replied. “The ghost is making it look dangerous to keep people away.”

“Do you think we’re in the vortex
right now?” Winn asked. “Or do we have to go inside to be in it?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea how
vortexes work. Let’s walk around back and see if we can find the entrance she
spoke of.”

They walked through sagebrush
toward the back, observing the structure as they went. Winn could feel the
house looming over him, making him feel small. Even in its dilapidated state it
was impressive in size.

“I’m surprised it hasn’t been
vandalized,” Marty said. “You’d expect graffiti at least.”

They turned the corner of the
house and saw a black spray-painted message scrawled along the back of the
house, over a basement window. It said, “Don’t go in.”

“Spoke too soon,” Marty said.

“If it was the owners, they’d just
put up ‘No Trespassing’ signs, right?” Winn asked. “This is more of a warning
from someone like us.”

“We don’t know that for sure,”
Marty said.

Winn walked up to the basement
window just under the spray paint. It was covered by four long planks. He
reached for one of them and pulled – it came off easily. Behind, the window had
no pane of glass. It was a straight shot into the basement.

Winn stopped for a moment and
dropped into the River, the board he’d just pried loose still in his hands.
Once he was in the flow, he looked around and at the house, letting himself
drift up from the window and to the roof. Nothing looked different or odd, but
he felt something, coming from the board in his hands. He tried to enter the
house by slipping through the roof, but found that he was stopped at the wooden
shingles, just as if he was physically trying to walk through a wall.
Obviously
protected,
he thought, and lowered himself back down to his body. Before he
left the flow, he felt the board again – there was something there, a vibration
coming from it that he’d never felt before. He dropped out.

He tossed the board aside and
reached for the next one, which came free as easily as the first. Once he had
all four boards removed, he turned to Marty. “You coming?” he asked.

“Sure, if you want,” Marty said.
“This first, though.” He reached into his back pocket and produced a flask. He
handed it to Winn. “Two mouthfuls.”

Winn took it from him and removed
the cap. He raised it to his lips and swallowed twice, wincing.

“I think you just contributed to
the delinquency of a minor,” he said, handing the flask back to Marty.

“I guess technically I did,” Marty
said, raising it to his mouth and drinking. “But Ida said to take protection,
so we’d better follow her guidance.” He slipped the flask back into his back
pocket, and as Winn made his way into the window, Marty pulled out a mini mag
flashlight and handed it to him.

Winn looked at it, wondering if it
was the same one Marty loaned him when he and Brent explored the cave years
ago. It looked the same. He bent down and slipped through the opening and into
the basement. Marty followed.

It was dusty. Although sunlight
was streaming through the open window and through cracks between the boards
covering other windows, it wasn’t enough light to make Winn comfortable, and he
turned on his flashlight. He began shining it around the open room, looking for
the stairwell.

Movement, everywhere.

“Jesus Christ!” Marty exclaimed.
“There’s people down here!” He turned on his light and aimed it at the walls
and walkways. He could see people shuffling out of the beam of light, just fast
enough that he couldn’t land the light directly on them.

Winn felt his heart rate increase
and panic set in. He hadn’t expected other people to be in the house, and he
wasn’t sure how they’d take to him and Marty barging in. He walked to Marty,
who had his back up against a wooden support post.

“Turn off your light,” Winn said,
turning off his own.

The room went dark again. They
strained their eyes, but everything looked still.

Winn dropped into the River,
expecting to see a room full of ghosts, just like the cave. But there was
nothing – just dust floating in the little streams of light that passed through
the cracks in the windows.

He turned his light back on, and
Marty grabbed his arm when he saw the people, just outside of the light’s
radius. They were zombie-like, wandering aimlessly, seemingly unfocused.

“It’s the vortex,” Marty whispered
to Winn. “We’re inside it now.”

“I thought the protection we drank
was supposed to help!” Winn whispered back.

“It probably is working. It might
be the reason they’re not attacking us right now. They don’t even seem to know
– or care – that we’re here.”

“Are they even real?” Winn asked,
disturbed that he could see through them to other people and the walls of the
basement.

“Might not be,” Marty said. “Might
be an illusion. Part of the vorghost’s defenses perhaps.”

Winn was terrified to see all of
the figures turn toward them simultaneously. “Not an illusion,” they all spoke
in unison, but it sounded like one voice, echoing. “We are the people whose
souls are trapped here because we came without a purpose.”

“Winn!” Marty cried, and Winn
turned to look at Marty, who was now several feet away from him, sliding
backward on the floor of the basement away from him. Marty reached up to grab
at Winn, and Winn reached out, making contact with Marty’s hands. He tried to
stop Marty’s movement, but couldn’t.

Winn tugged on Marty, but Marty
kept sliding away. When he reached a wall of the basement, Marty’s back pressed
up against it, and then he began to disappear into the ground. Winn saw his
feet drop into the flooring, then his ankles, and eventually his lower legs.
Winn tugged, trying to pull Marty free from the floor, but it was as though
Marty was in quicksand, and the more he struggled the more he sank.