Blackwater Lights (12 page)

Denny stared.

“The turn is up there.”

Denny turned down the driveway and the automatic lights outside Kevin’s house came on. He pulled up and put the car in park. “Nice house,” he said. His voice quavered. “Yeah. Hey, thanks. I mean it.”

Denny nodded without looking at him. “No problem.”

Ray held his friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. It’s just that I think I’m getting too deep into something dangerous. Crawford and Lily and the rest of them are not ordinary people. And just because I’ve gotten involved with them doesn’t mean you should get dragged into it.” He squeezed Denny’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something happened to you. You’re a nice guy. And a friend. Just … Let me handle this from now on.”

“Okay,” Denny said.

Ray opened the door and stepped out.

“You gonna be okay?” Denny asked. “You want me to come in for a few minutes?”

Ray shook his head. “Thanks. But I need to get some sleep.”

“Sure, sure.” He turned away and wiped at his eyes. “But can we stay in touch? I’d like to see you before you leave town. Maybe have dinner. My treat.”

“Of course.”

“You want to get a drink tomorrow? I’ll buy. Just in case my friend calls with anything new.”

Be gentle. He’s done nothing but help you
. “Sure. Tomorrow night, same place as last time?”

Denny nodded. “See you then. Take care, Ray.” He waited until Ray had reached the door to the house before he drove away.

Ray felt a pang of remorse. He should have been more tactful. But the likes of Crawford and Lily would eat the librarian alive. No. Denny wasn’t part of this. He needed to be pushed away before he found himself staring into Lily’s dreadfully deep and bewitching eyes.

But Denny had found answers. Answers that had opened up even more questions.

Ray
.

Ray, can you hear me?

He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t move his mouth, couldn’t move anything. A man’s face hung over his, blurry and indistinct, like he was underwater looking up through the surface.

It’s working
, the man said to someone else. His face moved back into view, growing larger. His breath smelled awful, but Ray couldn’t turn his head.

Ray, listen to me. I need you to go into your special place. Your secret place. Can you go there for me?

Yes
, he tried to say, but it came out
ssssssss
.

Good
, the man said.
I’m going to count to three, and when I get to three, you’ll be there, safe and happy. One … two …

He was flying, like being sucked up into a giant vacuum cleaner. He hated that feeling. It was like being thrown off a spinning carnival ride.

Three …

And everything changed. He was outside his grandma’s house, near the pond where he liked to catch tadpoles. It was warm and shady beneath the gnarled willow, and he was on his back in the grass looking up into the sky. No clouds, just empty, vast blue as far as he could see. No stars. No stars.

Ray
.

That voice again. God, he hated that voice. It buzzed in his ears like an annoying mosquito.

Ray, we’re going to try again
.

He felt his fingers curl into fists. All he wanted to do was lie here in the cool grass, and
they wanted him to play their stupid games. The games made his head hurt, and made him feel sick to his stomach.

You’re going to reach out again. You’re going to ask them to come to you
.

“I don’t want to.” His voice sounded like it was coming from far away.

Reach out to them. Call out. The way we showed you. You can do it
.

And then the sky wasn’t blue anymore. It was black. And full of stars. Burning brighter than any he’d ever seen.

You’re doing it, Ray. You’re doing it
.

But he didn’t want to be
doing it
. It was night and he wanted to be back at Grandma’s, instead of this horrible place with these nasty old men playing games that he didn’t understand, and which scared him so much he’d go to the bathroom in his pants.

Yes, yes, that’s it. Here they come. Here they—

The cat sat on his chest. It licked his face, the raspy tongue slipping into the corner of his mouth.

Ray sat up, and the cat leapt onto the floor. His head was scrambled. What was it doing in the house? It must have slipped in when Denny had dropped him off. He’d been out of it, buzzed and headachy from what Lily had done to him and the long walk, so it made sense that the sneaky little thing could have taken the opportunity and bolted through his legs without him noticing.

After showering, he sat at the computer as the cat watched him from its perch on the leather couch, acting as if it belonged there.

There was another message from Kevin. He was terribly sorry he wasn’t back yet, but was lining up a flight. Ray frowned and moved on to the next email. Denny had sent it at 9:48
A.M
.

NSA—the National Security Agency. But what could the NSA have wanted with a bunch of preadolescent kids?

And then it hit him: his uncle Bill, who had persuaded Ray’s mother to let him go on the camping trip, had worked for “the government.” And that’s all he ever said—that he worked for the government. Never any details. And the NSA was headquartered in Fort Meade, not too far from Baltimore.

It was too bad Uncle Bill had long ago rotted away and died in a run-down nursing home. No answers there.

The cat meowed, a thin and plaintive whine. It sat in front of the kitchen closet, looking at him with its pathetic eyes.

“All right,” Ray said. He opened the door. Stacks of canned tuna lined the bottom shelf.

“I see. Hungry, are we?”

The cat looked into his eyes and cried.

Ray reached in and grabbed a can. The cat weaved against his legs as he opened the tuna, rubbing the side of its head against his ankles, pirouetting and crying. It attacked the food as soon as he put it down, gobbling the shreds of fish in seconds. Ray filled a bowl of water and set it next to the food. It lapped up the water—
slap slap slap
—until nothing was left but a thin puddle.

He called Ellen at the diner. She had worked an early morning shift and was getting off after lunch, and she wanted to take him to see the Hand.

William sat in the backseat of Ellen’s truck. “Why are we going all the way out here for a picnic?” he asked.

“I want to show Mr. Ray something cool,” she said.

Ray leaned back. “Ray—you can just call me Ray.”

William smiled. “Okay, Ray.”

Ellen turned. He wasn’t used to seeing her outside of the fluorescent lights of the diner, and in the sunlight she seemed to glow. She’d let her hair down, too, and it blew about in the wind. “It’s such a nice day. We can park at the reservoir and hike to the Hand.”

“I heard it’s scary,” William said. “Kids at school say teenagers go there and light fires and do drugs and stuff.”

“It’s not scary. It’s kind of nice.”

William shrugged.

They pulled off at a gravel parking lot next to a spillway. The water rushed loudly over concrete and down into a concrete-lined culvert. Ray grabbed a soft cooler out of the backseat and William jumped out of the car.

The anxiety began building the minute they walked through the opening in the trees. At first Ray dismissed it. His breakfast wasn’t sitting well, and he was sweating. Ellen didn’t seem to notice, and William was having too much fun running ahead of them along the trail. But after about fifteen minutes, he noticed his entire body shaking. Ellen reached out and took his hand. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

She frowned. “Your hands are clammy. Do you want to go back?”

He shook his head. “No. How far are we?”

“About ten minutes or so. It’s right over the ridge up there.”

“You guys are too slow,” William yelled. He was far down the trail and waving.

“Let’s go,” Ray said.

His anxiety mounted as they approached the ridge. Ellen kept glancing at him. It felt as if
he was approaching something terrible, like a horrific car accident or a gruesome murder scene. He wished he hadn’t eaten such a greasy breakfast because it seemed like it might come back up. And his lungs felt like they weren’t getting enough air.

William reached the ridge before they did. “Wow,” he shouted. “Mom, this is cool.” He disappeared over the hill.

“Wait for us,” Ellen yelled after him, but it was too late.

Each step toward the top of the hill was torture. Ray had once run a marathon, a few years after he’d graduated from college, and he’d been fine until the eighteenth mile, when his body began to rebel, his legs cramping up, his feet going numb, and his breath catching in his throat. He’d bailed out and vomited along the roadside next to a flower vendor, who promptly grabbed his bucket of roses and moved elsewhere. His body was rebelling similarly now, and his intuition was screaming for him to stop, just stop, turn around, and run in the other direction.

He reached the top of the hill.

“Are you okay?”

He wasn’t okay. Not at all.

“Ray?”

He’d been there before. Five angular, jutting pillars of rock, in a rough circle, like a giant hand pushing out of a shallow grave. The hand of a stone monster, or a rocky skeleton, bone gray and spotted with green moss. William stood in the center of the stones, and it looked as if the fingers would close around him, crushing him.

Ray’s knees buckled and the cooler dropped from his hand. He felt a rushing sensation, as if the hand were pulling him, drawing him into its cold grasp.

He’d been in that circle, with the other children, under the stars. They’d been chanting something, strange words, over and over, holding each other’s hands tightly. The memory was so vivid and electric and terrifying it was almost as if he were there again.

And then came the light—blinding, painful light.

Ellen’s face materialized above him. She was saying something, but he didn’t understand her words. Then William’s face, pale with wide eyes, moved into his vision. He tried to sit up, but
Ellen held him down.

“Is he gonna be okay, Mom?”

He closed his eyes. They still burned from the light.

After a minute he opened his eyes. Ellen was wiping his forehead with a wet paper towel. “I think I can sit up,” he said.

She helped him right himself. He immediately crawled to the edge of the trail and vomited. After the heaving stopped he pulled himself away from the steaming mess and put his head against Ellen’s leg. “I think I’m all right now,” he said. Ellen gave him a travel bottle of mouthwash from her purse, and he washed out his mouth and spat into the dirt.

“Can you walk back?” she asked.

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

William was quiet in the car. Ellen held Ray’s hand as she drove, squeezing it reassuringly and watching him with a nurse’s eye.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

“Don’t worry. Are you feeling better?”

He nodded. “I think maybe I ate something bad for breakfast. Food poisoning.”