Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (28 page)

She looked so tired … tired of life. It was as if someone had reached into her heart with the coldest fingers and had stopped it from beating.

“I’m disturbing you … I should go.”

“No,” he said. “It’s all right. Really.”

She seemed to hesitate. He knew why she was here.

They both spoke at the same time.

“You first,” she said.

“No … you.”

She nodded reticently. “I guess I’m here to apologize. Again. I just don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

It was his turn to waver.

“Yes,” she said, as if reading his mind. “He was drinking again.” She looked at him squarely. “What can I do? I can’t reach him. He’s like a stranger to me.”

“I could talk with him,” he said, and couldn’t believe he had uttered such five brainless words. By sunup, weather permitting or not, he figured he’d be a good five miles north of Spencer. Still, he had to admit—and the real reason he couldn’t sleep, rains be damned—he didn’t like skipping out on people. Not
good
people. Not Big Al Hembruff, and certainly not Lynn.

Not Lynn.

He would stay another day; he would tell them tomorrow. He owed them that. Whether he could live with that was another matter.

“Thank you,” she said, and for a moment, he figured she had accepted his offer. “But I can’t ask you to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do, considering.”

“… I don’t know, Kain.”

“Just ask him. It’s up to him.”

“This is crazy. I can’t imagine what he’d say.”

She meant
do.
He could see it in her eyes.

“
I’ll
ask, Lynn. You won’t have to get involved.”

Lightning. The rains grew heavier suddenly, pounding the small roof, then quickly subsided to that punishing drizzle. The lamp flickered.

“He scared me, Kain.”

She sniffled, forcing back the tears that had been forming there since he opened the door. She was looking past him now, watching the storm.

“He’s never hit me,” she said blankly. “Ray has.”

He started to say something. Only started.

“Weren’t they the next questions?” she said. “Of course they were. Now you know.”

“Lynn, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said. “Lee won’t talk to him. She won’t go near him.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Longer than I care to remember,” she sighed, her gaze drifting. “Since I—since his father left. Two years now.”

“The drinking?”

She shrugged. It was the feeble gesture of one who has finally said,
To hell with it, what’s the difference.
“Maybe six months. Maybe longer.”

“You can’t give up on him.”

She looked up solemnly. The soft glow of the lamp could not warm the harsh cold he saw there. He settled across from her, reached over, and gently stole a tear from her eye with his finger.

“You can’t,” he said. “You understand?”

She smiled a little. Nodded a little.

“Do you think he’ll talk to you? Really?”

“All I can do is try.”

“… Kain … I need to ask—”

“I know. It wasn’t the storm that kept you up.”

“Was I that obvious? I guess I was.” She paused, looking utterly confused. “What happened out there today? I mean, first Costello, and … and those things Ryan was saying—”

Five hours. He could have been clear.

~

“I don’t know,” he said finally, and feared he had taken too long to say so.

She straightened. Fidgeted. “I … God … oh God.”

“Hey … it’s okay. I understand.”

Lynn didn’t reply; all she could muster was an expression of something fragile, between utter embarrassment and shame. Her eyes fell to the table and took root there, as if nothing could draw them free.

He took her hands in his and clasped them gently.

“I need you to look me in the eye, Lynn.
You
need to.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t.” But she did.

“I’m Kain Richards.”

He saw the doubt lurking there like a beast.

“I want to believe you,” she said. “I do believe you
.
It’s just that Ryan keeps saying these awful things about you. I don’t understand it. Any of it.”

“Either do I.”

“Why? Why does he mistrust you?” But before he could respond: “I wasn’t asking. Just thinking out loud.”

“Oh.”

“I trust you,” she said. “I do. I just wish I knew what was going on in my son’s head.”

“And yours? What’s going on in
Lynn
Bishop’s head?”

“Nothing,” she replied, and sighed. “Everything.”

She was throwing off so much static it was screeching.

“You’re right,” she said, carrying right on. “It wasn’t the storm that kept me up. It wasn’t Ryan, either. And it wasn’t what happened in those woods.”

“Did something happen?”

“I had another dream.”

“Go on.”

“I was on the veranda,” she said. “Watering the plants. It was horribly hot. The sky was clear, but a storm was coming. The wind was howling. There was something else, like … I don’t know … like electricity in the air. I felt numb. You know, like when your foot goes to sleep. But I felt it all over. It’s the only way I can describe it.”

She went on. “Yes. Electricity. I remember the hair on my arms rising. The hair on my head, too. The storm kept getting worse. The flowers were blowing all over. One of the planters blew off the railing and shattered. All I could hear was the wind, but I kept on watering—you know how you do stupid things in dreams. Anyway, I kept hearing this noise. It sounded like a power saw or something. It kept growing and growing. By the time I realized what it was, it was too late.”

“Too late …”

“It was that Ben Caldwell,” she said. “His truck just came out of nowhere. And so did Costello.”

~

“It’s not the dream,” she said, after some reflection. “I mean, it was horrible. But that’s not what upset me.”

“Then what is it?”

“I woke up on fire,” she said, and he looked at her quizzically. “I
felt
like I was on fire. That dream, it … it wasn’t like any dream I’ve ever had. Do you remember what I told you about the first one? The one about Ryan?”

“You said it didn’t feel right.”

“Yes,” she said, excitedly. “Kain … I wasn’t just burning up. My
eyes
hurt. The wind was blowing so hard I remember dust whipping into them. I know how crazy this might sound, but it was almost as if I hadn’t dreamt it at all. If I hadn’t woken up where I was, I would swear on the Bible it really happened.”

“But you know that it didn’t.”

“I know. But I can’t explain how I feel. When I think about Costello … I
saw
her get run down. It
happened.
”

“We’ve all had dreams like that,” he said. “One time I woke up and swore I was President.”

She grinned mildly; looked at him oddly.

“What.”

“Just trying to picture you in the Oval Office,” she said. “Long hair and Levis.”

She laughed, despite herself, but he could hear the strain in her laughter. In another time, the old Kain Richards would have held her close and told her everything was going to be all right. But of course he couldn’t, for the damage—
contamination
came to mind, another Brikker favorite—had already been done.

There was another flash of lightning, chased by a roll of thunder. The rains kept on.

“You don’t like it,” she said. “The rain.”

~

He was going to say something utterly stupid like,
Who, me?,
but she didn’t give him that chance.

“You seemed so sad today,” she said. “In the woods.”

He didn’t answer. God thrust down another thunderbolt, and the lamp flickered again.

“I don’t mind it,” she said, anxiously. “I like to go for walks when it’s drizzling. I used to, anyway.”

“I don’t,” he said, and that’s all he said.

~

Later, around five, the hour he had hoped to be on his way north, he bolted upright from a nightmare. His heart thrummed so hard he feared it would break. His body and sheets were soaked. He ran with gooseflesh. The room was pitch dark and suffocating, and for a terrifying moment, he could smell Brikker’s cigarette lingering in the dead air, could taste its rancid filth as it slithered through his throat and into his lungs. Somewhere, deep inside his brain, he heard that voice, that
voice
—

Every muscle in his body screamed. He cried out.

The rains.

The rains had stopped, but he could still hear the whispers. Still hear the call of the road.

And he could hear—still, beyond the madman’s voice, beyond that jagged
fffft-fffft fffft-fffft
of Brikker’s machine—his screams.

~ 30

Kain looked out into the dawn. He slid the window open in hope of cool air to comfort him, yet could only grimace at that stifling Midwest heat.

Lynn had said nothing about the knapsack by the door, but she had seen it, oh yes; she had. He reasoned she had always assumed his stay would be short, a month at best, but she could not conceal her disappointment. He had offered nothing in explanation, and seeing that solemn expression sweep over her (the very same that had swept over Sarah-Jane back in Rocheport), he had wanted to curl up and die. She deserved so much better.

He sat up in his bed and felt a dull ache in his back. He rubbed his eyes.

Oh … right.

He drew the envelope from beneath the pillow. He had almost forgotten it. He read the letter. All four words.

Thank you. For everything.

Jesus. This wasn’t a letter … this was a
note.

He hadn’t even signed it.

He stuffed the envelope in his pack and glanced outside. The reddened sun had grown fat as it crested the horizon, bathing this newest of morns in a luscious orange the color of bursting autumn pumpkins. That crow (
Same one, had to be
) arced high and wide with its powerful wings, dipping and darting across the landscape as if nothing could cage it and knowing it, and then it suddenly turned and took perch upon a leafless branch on that old man of an oak napping down in the gully.

He sighed; felt a vexing rise in his chest. The open road seemed a world away. And barely a step.

He tossed the knapsack in the corner, and waited.

~

He waited for Ryan. When Lynn had left, it had been long past one in the morning, the rain still coming steadily, and she had taken but a single step toward the farmhouse when she had turned about and told him that
she
would talk to him first.
It would be better,
she had said, and had said it again, as if to convince herself. He had only nodded, and she had simply walked away in the drizzle.

Around eight, Ryan emerged. Looking ragged in a wrinkled white T and worn jeans (he scratched his crotch repeatedly during a painfully long yawn)—and packing the grimace of one pissed-off teenager—the boy kept one hand on the railing as he eyed the guesthouse. He raised the other to shield the glare of the sun, and Kain, caught entirely off guard, backed away from the window.

You should be halfway to the state border by now. What the hell were you thinking?

He stood to the side and leaned forward to peer out. Ryan was sitting on the top step now, looking as thrilled with this as he was. For the last few hours, he’d sat here, dumb as a stump, wondering what he might say to the boy. He could not believe what he had finally come up with.

He put on an armless white shirt and a fresh pair of jeans, slipped on his boots, tied his hair back in a ponytail, had second thoughts, had third and even fourth thoughts, and then finally went outside. The day was thick and hot and choking, one of those sweltering Iowa mornings he would never get used to. Not that he’d planned to.

He disappeared inside the barn, emerging with a bucket of baseballs in his right hand. A solid hickory bat he had slung over his left shoulder, a baseball glove slipped halfway up the handle. He dropped off the bucket behind the guesthouse. One of the balls rolled off the top of the heap, onto a small patch of browned grass.

With bat and glove still resting on his shoulder, he walked straight up. The boy hadn’t seen him yet. Ryan was gazing off to the east, where some thick white clouds had gathered in playful forms of shadow and light.

Kain set the gear in the grass. He held out his hand, but the boy never took it.

Ryan simply eyeballed the bat and the glove before turning back to the horizon.

“Save it,” he said. “Want an apology? I’m sorry.”

“We don’t have to be friends,” Kain said. “But we could try, couldn’t we?”

“You said so yourself … we don’t have to be.”

Static. Fiercer than yesterday. It was buzzing from the boy like a dozen crossed stations. Maybe his anger was fueling it. Who knew.

“You’re right about me, you know. I’m no good. Just a no-good drifter.”

The boy stirred.

“Isn’t that what you want to hear, Ryan?”

“What?”

“Nothing I say or do would convince you otherwise,” Kain said. “Isn’t that true?”

“Try me. Tell me something I can believe.”

“I don’t have a lock on the world’s secrets, Ryan. Everybody’s got something in their past. Everybody.”

The boy gave him a look. Then he rose and put a hand on the rail.

“I don’t,” he snapped. “Are we done?”

Kain looked at him dimly. He picked up the bat and slipped the pitcher’s glove free. He thrust the glove outward without warning, and it slapped hard against the boy’s abdomen. Ryan snagged it, barely, and that smugness evaporated into a full-blown scowl.

“What’s
with
you?”

“No more,” Kain said. “No more screwing around.”

The teenager’s eyes narrowed.

“You a betting man, Ryan?”

“What?”

“Three strikes,” Kain said. “Get three strikes on me, and the Little Ghost will vanish into thin air.
Poof.
”

“You’re crazy. You’re
crazy.
”

“Don’t think you can do it?”