Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (56 page)

Where shadows should have been (or rather not, given the strangeness of the Turn) flittered dark traces of what once was. They appeared as wraithlike memories of the past, shifting in their own realm, their own time, like black ghosts looking back at one through a mirror. Then they were gone.

Kain faltered as the Turn ripped through him. The charge ebbed, the pain with it, but when another agonizing surge struck him, their world—their bubble—began to slip out of phase with the now. He felt his soul slip with it. He was coming undone, his very essence shifting to another plane of neither substance nor dream. And yet, God be damned, still he could see. Could see it all.

They did not melt. Like the bird, like the guesthouse, like the barn beyond, they burned from within. They bled from the nose and from the ears. Their blood boiled. What remained of their skin slid from their arms and their legs and their faces as a crimson slime, turning instantly from solid to slop. Their eyes ballooned and popped; flames shot up from the hollows. Their clothes and their flesh were consumed, and there they stood, charred bodies as monuments to the once-living, the air reeking of rank burnt meat and smoldering ruin. This gruesome transformation took but a moment, and he could only pray that Lynn and her father had felt nothing—and that he,
their
Torturer—would not remember them like this. But he would … and so would Lynn.

The current ravaged him. All strength, all will, fled. His body jerked and twisted, a rag doll in a dog’s mouth, and in his next breath, his next thought, they were gone: the world slipped away, the light slipping with it. Only the blackness, the nothingness, remained.

The void swallowed him. He sensed nothing; could feel nothing. After all of this, all their suffering and sacrifice, the Turn
had
forsaken him. He drifted in the darkness, alone, always alone, blind and deaf and unable to speak, swept by madness that threatened to consume him. He would perish, he knew, and hope would perish with him.

Where is it? For God’s sake, WHERE?

He drifted endlessly, arms reaching for the Wheel, his mind on the breach. This hellish chasm would have him, would take him and twist him and turn him to dust.

?

The voice was not his own; the thought from a phantom.

NO.
This was a trick. The final betrayal from God Himself. He had lived the past, had suffered the now; had seen the future. He would not look.

And yet, temptation,
desperation,
took him.

The vision—surely it was nothing more than that, only the substance of madness—stood before him in the blackness, draped in nightgown and cap. Unshaven and unkempt, its eyes were sparkling jewels of mischief, just as they had been in that cavernous pickup so long ago. And he, still that little dreamer, felt his heart reach.

He knew now, after all these years. He was never really alone.

Without a word, the old man offered a seasoned hand, and as nimble as youth, spread the playing cards wide.

Kain drew one from the middle and turned it.

Nine of diamonds.

Slowly, he looked up; fell deeply into the old man’s eyes. They spoke not of lessons to be learned, not of warning, but of a passing, of understanding … and then the old wizard brought a hand to his temple. He tapped it, and then he smiled one last time.

Grampa
—

But the vision faded. Slipped into the abyss.

The card glimmered in his hand, pulsing with energy. It tingled to a tease, fingers numbing, tips glowing. The charge swam down his digits, into his palm, up his arm and into his chest; it swarmed through him. He looked down at his hands. They were young and vibrant, flowing with strength, and when he looked up again, it was there, waiting for him, just as the old man had always told him. It seemed a frail thing, thin and fragile, as if a touch might tear it in two. And yet, it could move worlds.

His palm opened, and the card, now radiant, hovered in the void; his guiding light. He took the string in his hand, and a jolt of energy surged through him. It burned to the touch, yet he would not let go. It felt strangely thick, unwavering in strength, and when he began to draw it, hand over hand, toward him, it came alive, an instrument of power yielding to his will. Faster he pulled, faster his hands moved, faster and farther did Time turn. The charge swelled through his chest and into his brain, driving him to the depths of pain, and when he could take no more, when his hands let go the string and the blinding light came, a light more brilliant than a billion suns, the world—the world that was—began anew.

~ 1

Ben Caldwell turned up a lonely side road that took him past a small cemetery, a hilly deathbed filled with three generations of Stoneman’s, Hill’s, and Brayfield’s (Billy Kingston was buried there, too, that is to say, what the fish hadn’t eaten and the river hadn’t taken), and after driving a stone’s throw past the boneyard, he passed Clara Brayfield’s place. It was a shack if ever there was one, an ancient tomb, what with the tar-black roof caved on the right, the wide windows broken and boarded. The old bird herself had to be a hundred and ninety-eight, give or take, as old as the house for sure, maybe older. She was out on her veranda, rocking the evening away to her Gene Autry on her wood-grained Philco, her snoozing shepherds huddled round her like sheep. She looked like she was snoring up a thunderboomer the way her head was thrown back (her mouth was splayed wide, a good trap for gnats and mosquitoes), and most times, when he passed by at this hour, she was. It occurred to him (and not for the first time) that maybe she was dead, and of course, there was only one way to know. He laid hard and long into the horn, scaring the bejesus out of her and her dogs (just the four now, but it was just as funny), and he had to laugh out loud as the barking beasties did what they always did when he honked on by, serving an honest chase before giving it up.

He rubbed his eyes again. The itchiness was driving him crazy. He drove for a spell, tapping to the radio. He drew a mouthful of cola and instantly spat it out the window. He regarded the bottle with mild interest. It was half full, still fairly cold, and while the soft drink had tasted perfectly refreshing when he had opened it, that last swig had tasted like shit. He sniffed the mouth of the bottle and grimaced. The stuff even smelled bad. Like swamp water. He ditched it.

Cruising at a solid sixty-five, he carried on for a mile or so when he suddenly hit the brakes. He skirted sideways, just enough to whirl up some dust, and managed to stay on the road before coming to a full stop. He idled there a minute, perhaps two, and then lumbered the quarter mile up to the stop sign at the intersection. His heart was racing almost as fast as his thoughts.

He killed the radio. One of his favorites from Del Shannon was playing, but that didn’t matter. Something had been preying on him, something odd, and he hadn’t been able to finger what it was. Until now.

It was dark. Countless stars dotted the sky.

But that couldn’t be.

He didn’t own a wristwatch, but when he’d left the house it wasn’t even nine-thirty; the sky had been blue and bright. He hadn’t been on the road more than twenty minutes. He would have sworn it was sundown just a moment ago.

Checking the mirror, he found his eyes a little bloodshot. Kinda glossy. He blinked hard a few times, but that didn’t help. In the reflection, he saw Old Clara’s place up on the hill. He felt cold and numb, a little disoriented (with a touch of a headache), and now that he thought about it, he’d felt like this since he’d handed her that horn-induced heart attack. Worse still, his arms and legs ached like a bugger. And—

And wasn’t it a bitch to breathe. God knew he had tried to ignore that horrible stink.

But he couldn’t any longer.

He didn’t want to—he had tried to convince himself that vile rot was just his imagination—but he turned to the sandwich on the seat beside him. The one he’d thrown together not a half hour ago. It had a few bites out of it, but he didn’t remember eating it.

Sure as shit he didn’t eat
that.

The bread was green with mold. He peeled it back, barely pinching it between two fingers. The ham was an even darker hue of that sickly green. It stank to High Heaven.

Ben groaned. In one quick motion, he scooped up the mess, wax paper and all, and tossed it outside. An unsettling pang struck his gut, his stomach coming. He barely made it out of the cab before he threw up.

Still queasy, he unzipped his fly and relieved his bladder over the mess. He was carrying a full load already; he usually did whenever things got to him. And right now, things were crawling all over him. He hoped—prayed—that all of it was all in his head.

What the hell?

His eyes widened, and he pinched himself off and zipped up. He straightened his Yankees cap, then took a quick step back. Though his headlamps beamed away from him, the incidental light was enough as he took in a small patch of the cornfield. The dry summer had pretty well screwed everyone over for the fall harvest, but this? He was barely seventeen, but he’d seen his share of crop damage in those years, mostly from drought, a lot from hail and frost and disease. Two years ago it was stink-bugs.
This
was something else; something he was pretty sure nobody had ever seen, at least not in these parts. The stalks were streaked black, had turned brittle and rotten. The leaves were curled and gray and had hideous dark splotches that looked a lot like the worst leaf blight. The silks were all dried out.

He stepped down into the depression beside the road for a closer look. When he bent a stalk, it folded with the gentlest pressure; the part at the break turned a fine brown chalk in his fingers. He splayed open an ear, found the inside brown and rotted and filled with dead earworms, and in a panic threw it down in disgust. He staggered back onto the road. His mind reeled. It was as if something had sucked the last drop of water from the entire crop, from its very roots. A single match would likely send the whole caboodle up in flames in an instant.

It wasn’t like this … not yesterday, anyhow.

His nostrils flared. He sniffed. Even the air stank. Kind of like a dump. It held a thickness, like the stale air in an attic … the deadness of years.

Something had happened. Something awful.

He knew that as sure as—

Ben whirled round, his noodle-legs not liking the idea at all, and he hobbled as fast as he could to the cab. He reached for the radio and turned up the volume, just in time to hear the music fade.

The DJ, Bill Hadden from KWMT 540 in Fort Dodge, started in on his rock-and-roll listeners about how he was feeling kinda jazzed, folks, a little out there, and as the radio man rambled, readying the spin of the next record, Ben realized that what he’d been thinking just had to be downright crazy. Deep dark bullshit. But everything in him told him no. This was all steak, no sizzle.

He didn’t know how, it was crazy, but he knew. Knew what the old 540 was going to play next.

He waited for it, and just when he thought that maybe, please, God help him, he was wrong—of course, he didn’t really believe that, not for a second—there it spun, a sweet one from Phil and Don, the brothers Everly … “All I Have To Do Is Dream.”

Ben silenced them; switched the radio right off. His pulse quickened, and his throat dried up. He swallowed something hard.

It was just like before … when he kept having all those nightmares about Beaks and the drifter … all those crazy things swimming around in his head. Like now. Like—

Like a dream that was real.

He backed up a step, his mind stirring.

Was that shit with the Ghost really true?

All this time he had wanted to believe it. It was easier than fighting it, trying to tell himself that those terrifying dreams—every night now—were nothing more. But when he got down to it, when the real Ben Caldwell had to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and stare into the black eyes of that sleepless zombie staring back at him, it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. Even if it was (and it wasn’t, it
wasn’t
), the guy was miles from here, so how could—

He remembered …
some
thing. It was driving him crazy. Screaming inside his brain. He turned round and limped past the stop to the middle of the intersection, and not knowing what else to do, stared into the darkness, down the east road toward the Hembruff farm.

There. Something happened there. Or—

No. At
Rye’s
place.

He whipped round. Yeah. He’d been heading
that
way. That’s when he saw it in the rear-view.

The
fire.

He passed a truck—

No. Wait.

A car. He was sure of it. Or maybe—

He didn’t know why, but he hobbled round his vehicle, checking the body, checking the paint. He came all the way around to the front again, and then, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, ran his fingers along the grille and the hood.

Not a scratch on his baby.

But … Jeeze-Louise … didn’t he hit a ditch?