Blackwater Lights (2 page)

Ray’s stomach rumbled, empty and acidic from the lousy coffee. He opened the fridge. Freezer-burned burger patties, buns, and crusty jars of condiments. Some containers of unidentifiable carryout food. A few bottled microbrews from the West Coast. That settled it. Dining out was his only choice.

Time to see what this town was all about.

He ate at Doris’s Diner, a tiny white brick building on Main Street that backed up against Blackwater Municipal Park. The hot smell of frying bacon hit him as soon as he opened the door. He chose an empty booth, the green Formica tabletop worn thin and dotted with a constellation of cigarette burns. The menu was sticky with maple syrup.

A waitress stopped at his table. “Hi,” she said. Her drawl was striking, and Ray realized that he’d crossed the line to a region where
he
would be the funny-talking guy. She was cute, with blond-streaked hair pulled into a not-so-tight bun and spilling out in little fan-like strands,
but looked like she needed more sleep. “Coffee?”

“Sure,” he said.

She filled his cup. Her black nail polish was chipped. “I’m Ellen. I’ll be taking care of you.”

“Thanks,” Ray said. He ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and fries. He handed her the menu and smiled. Her eyes seemed to brighten a bit.

He looked out at the main drag through the window. He sipped his coffee, wishing he had brought a magazine from home to read. Not much was going on in downtown Blackwater. There was very little traffic and only one pedestrian, a thin, elderly man inching forward with his aluminum walker. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. Each step he took gained him six inches or so, and after every few steps he paused, sucked on his cigarette, and blew out a cloud of smoke. With any luck he’d make it where he was going before he exhausted the whole pack. Or keeled over.

“Cigarettes are bad for you,” someone said. A kid’s voice.

Ray turned around. A boy, maybe eight or nine years old, leaned over the back of his booth. He had curly dark hair that sat in a mass on his head and glasses that magnified his eyes. He was alone in the booth, with a spiral notebook and a half-consumed milkshake.

Ray nodded. “Yeah. They sure are.”

“Do you smoke?” the kid asked.

“No,” Ray said.

The kid approved. “My mom does. And she used to be a nurse. She tries to hide it, but I can smell it. And I know where she keeps her cigarettes.”

“Maybe you can help her quit.”

The kid rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.” He sighed. “Do you like books?”

Ray smiled. “Yeah, I like books.”

“I’m a writer.” He said it with practiced nonchalance. “You want to see my book?”

Ellen had returned with his food. “William, leave this nice man alone to eat in peace.”

Ray held up his hand. “It’s okay.”

She put his plate on the table. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no. It’s okay. It’s nice to have some company.” He tilted his head toward the opposite seat. “William, you want to join me while I eat? Let’s check out your book.”

Ellen raised an eyebrow.

William grabbed his notebook and his milkshake and slid into the seat across from Ray.

“Would you like anything else?” Ellen asked. “Dessert? We have fresh-baked cherry pie. And pecan.” She said
peekin
.

“Cherry pie sounds delicious,” Ray said. He would have preferred the pecan, but he didn’t want to sound like he was correcting her.

“Ice cream on top?”

Ray shook his head, but then shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

Ellen turned. “Be right back.”

William opened his notebook. “Do you like stories about robots?”

Ray held out his hands. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“You’d be surprised,” William said. “Not many people do, actually. Most kids in my school are into NASCAR and wrestling. Do you think professional wrestling is stupid?”

Ray nodded. “Yeah. And it’s fixed.”

“Totally.” The kid held out the notebook. He had written
Earth Protection Force 2277
in thick black marker on the front. “This is the beginning of the second book of my trilogy. The first book takes place five hundred years earlier.”

“Let me check it out.”

“I’ll tell you the background first. Since you didn’t read the first book, you’ll be kinda lost if you start with this one.”

By the time Ray finished his pie he’d learned all about the war between the Earthbots and the invading Darkbots, including the Darkbots’ bug cannons and vicious flying-snake pets. The kid was bright and literate beyond his years, but Ray found himself wondering how well he fit in with his non-robot-loving peers. It probably wasn’t easy.

Ellen dropped off the check. “So, you learned all about the Darkbot invasion, I’ll bet.”

Ray nodded. “Their bug cannons are pretty impressive. And those snakes …”

She laughed. William rolled his eyes.

“Are you just passing through?” Ellen asked.

“Sort of,” Ray said. “I’m visiting a friend. For a few days, maybe a week.”

Did her smile fade just a bit? “Well, thank you for keeping William company.”

“My pleasure.”

William closed his notebook. “If you want a copy of my first book, I can get you one. I’m selling them for ten bucks, but I’ll give you a five-dollar discount.”

Ray scratched his chin. “Hmm. I gotta say, I’m really curious about how the bad guys got into the Earth Force headquarters in the first place.”

William pushed his glasses up with a forefinger. “I’ll be here tomorrow night, right, Mom?”

Ellen nodded.

Ray shrugged. “It’s a deal. I’ll stop by for dinner.”

Ellen picked up his check and money. “I’ll get you some change,” she said.

He shook his head. “Keep it. My contribution to the Earthbot Defense Force.”

The kid tried awfully hard not to smile.

It was getting dark, and he was stuffed, but Ray knew he needed to get some groceries or he’d be doomed to Kevin’s freezer full of artery-clogging microwaveable crap for breakfast. He drove past tiny, weathered antique shops with hand-lettered signs and windows full of junk, a bank, a dollar store, and a laundromat. He pulled up to a stoplight and an obese, greasy-haired woman rolled across the intersection on a motorized scooter. Three young children on bicycles and a tired, scraggly dog followed in her wake. The dog yapped at him when the light turned green, and the children stared.

Why in the hell had Kevin decided to live here? It had never made any sense.

It had happened here. That’s why. And somehow he knew it
.

He found a grocery store in a strip mall at the edge of town. He bought some eggs, sandwich fixings, and a bag of oranges, then topped it off with a case of domestic beer. In Baltimore you couldn’t buy beer in grocery stores, which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. Blackwater at least had one thing in its favor. And if he was staying here for a few days or even a week with Kevin, the two of them could easily knock back a case. Like the old days.

The sky clouded up. What the hell. Ray popped open a can and sipped from it. If the number of beer cans he’d seen by the side of the road was any indication, drinking-and-driving laws were not very well enforced.

Kevin still hadn’t returned. After dinner, Ray checked his email. Nothing. He thought about going for a walk around the property, but the clouds had darkened to an ominous shade of purplish gray. It was going to get dark soon, and he didn’t care much for the woods, not even in daytime. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever liked being in nature. Nature was full of bugs that were poisonous and spiderwebs that you didn’t see until you’d walked face-first into them.

Kevin had what seemed like a never-ending number of channels on his satellite TV, but Ray turned the box off when he realized he’d skimmed through all of them twice. He popped open another beer and sat on the porch as the last pink swath of sunlight faded over the mountain ridge. Maybe this visit wasn’t such a bad idea after all, provided he could make a bit of a vacation out of it. He’d been in a funk since his breakup with Lisa, and Baltimore had started feeling claustrophobic. He took a swig of beer and lit a citronella candle. The noises of the insects and frogs were deafening. He could barely hear himself think over the chirping and buzzing and droning. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. There was an undercurrent, like an electrical tower, and overlaying it were call-and-response
click-click-click
noises from different directions. The night talking to itself.

If Kevin was right about Blackwater, something had happened to both of them in this tiny, dreary town almost forty years ago. Now that he was here, he knew somehow that it was true—this
was
the place. The memories felt like they were bulging against the inside of his skull, close to breaking out. But the thought of what Kevin might reveal made him more than a little afraid. Maybe there was a reason what had happened was shoveled under so deep. Maybe his mind had been doing him a favor by hiding it for so long.

It’s happening again
, Kevin had said to him on the phone.

Ray shuddered. No need to think about it now. Not all by himself in the middle of the godforsaken backwoods. He needed a night without another of the dreams.

In the distance, an orange glow appeared against the black void of the forest. It flared up, then brightened against the treetops.

Probably just some drunken hunters illegally spotlighting deer. Or whatever other critters they liked to shoot and eat in these parts.

His arm jerked and he knocked over his beer. It hit the floor of the deck and sprayed on his leg, gushing foam.

The orange light was moving. Fast. Directly toward the house.

Then it split in two—twin blobs of light, zipping through the sky, just above tree level, until they seemed like they’d crash into the house. Ray recoiled, holding up his hands in front of his face. For an instant, the entire yard looked like it was on fire.

Just as quickly, the lights passed overhead.

He jumped to his feet. In the distance, the lights hovered, their glow reflecting off the low-lying clouds and illuminating the tree line below. They wobbled, suspended in the air, and plunged straight down into the darkness of the forest. The woods were again deep black. The afterimage burned in his retinas, painting the night with phantom trails.

He ticked through a list of possibilities, but nothing made sense. They weren’t any kind of aircraft—too fast and too small for that. And they hadn’t made a sound. They had traveled from the far ridge to the house in seconds. And too slow for meteors—plus what kind of meteors flew straight over treetops, hovered momentarily, and dropped straight down to the ground? Maybe it was ball lightning. He’d read about that once—how it could roll in through an open door and out a window without burning anything. Unless it touched you, in which case you were reduced to a pile of greasy ash.

Ball lightning was the only real explanation. The sole other option—the one that seemed, as he stood staring into the night, to be the most obvious—was not even worth considering. It contradicted all he knew to be sane, rational, and real, and to consider it required looking into a deep, bottomless hole. He’d seen people like that on TV, wide-eyed proselytizers talking about how big-headed aliens took them into spaceships and stuck probes where the sun didn’t shine.
Those
people.

He stood, staring into the darkness, until raindrops splattered on the top of his head. The hair on his arms bristled. Definitely time to go inside.

He locked the doors. His mind raced, replaying the light show, and he watched the clock change to 3:00
A.M
. before he fell asleep.

Someone was in the yard.

Ray sat up in bed and looked at the bright green numbers on the digital clock—4:11. The motion detector floodlights had come on.

Then there was laughing. Female laughter.

He got out of bed and opened the curtains of the bedroom window. A naked woman—a girl, really, maybe twenty-two at most—danced in the yard. Her skin, in the bright white light, glowed stark against the dark trees. She spun in circles, long dark hair lifting and twirling around her face. She stopped, wobbled, glanced up at the sky, smiled wide-eyed and ecstatic, and fell on her back in the grass.