Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (38 page)

“You up for another?” All of a sudden Lynn held this impish smile, and with barely enough time to turn, she veered off the main road. She headed up a rather bumpy stretch about a half mile and turned into a clearing. She killed the lights and the engine and sat without a word, staring out over the meadow. In the distance, you could still see the soft sheen of the river shimmering beneath the curve of a saffron moon. The soothing rhythm of crickets broke the silence. When he asked, she shushed him, shushed him again about thirty seconds later, and then, after the first wild burst of red lit up the sky, they sat silently, watching the light show. When it was all over about twenty minutes later, they both turned and smiled.

“That was fantastic,” he said. “I haven’t seen fireworks like that since I was a kid. Thank you.”

Lynn regarded him mildly, her expression diminished.

He sat up. He knew. He could see it in her eyes.

“Another dream.”

She nodded. “I had this one before.”

“The one about Ryan?”

“The one with Ben Caldwell.”

“I remember.”

“Kain, I—” She paused, clearly frightened. “After last night … I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“… About me.”

“About everything. Wait. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s okay. Just start at the beginning.”

Lynn looked at him gravely.

“The storm,” she said. “It was all about that storm.”

~ 11

It begins with a whisper, the breeze from the plain warm and seductive. She cannot recall such a tender touch, although her first time with Ray, the old Ray, young and strong and handsome, would be close. Teasing like a sweet dream, it caresses her arms and her shoulders just so, her fair skin coming alive with gooseflesh. It kisses her gently on the cheek, and she turns from her watering to look up. She smiles. The barn is old, but it has a bold new face, a beautiful blue smile of fresh paint. The guesthouse, once an eyesore she had wanted to raze not for its ugliness but for the women, brims with color and warmth, a nice little house on the prairie. The grass is rich and green and trimmed neatly around it, a welcome mat waits at the door. The window is shiny and new. There are fine white curtains in it, and she sees him as he draws them back. He is handsome and mysterious, and her heart quickens. It has not raced so achingly, for so long, she has nearly forgotten what it feels like; what it is to be belly full of butterflies in flight. She stirs, breathless, but as she goes to wave in the want that he sees her, he draws back, fading to the shadows like a ghost … as if he had never been there at all.

She makes love to her flowers. They are glorious, filled with life, reds and whites in bloom. She moves from one to the next without a care in the world, talks to them gently, tells them they are beautiful and pretty, and in that seductively tender breeze they nudge against her hands, as if telling her the same. They make her happy.

She turns to her children, grown now, oh so fast. They smile from the swing chair. He has his father’s eyes; she, her youthful innocence. They remind her of what she and Ray used to be, a snapshot of what was. They make her happy, too.

It is all so perfect. The sky is deep and full, a glorious ocean. Wildflower abounds, bright and inviting, its teasing scent milky and sweet. An oak lumbers; a crow caws and soars free.

So, so perfect.

A dog barks. She looks down at the shepherd, the Nervous Nellie old in the body but young in the eyes, and he barks again, as if to assure that he’s there; that he’ll always be there. She rubs him behind the ears. He has been cowering at her side for God knows how long, even before that brutal winter of ’46, the year she found Pepper nearly frozen to death at her door. She strokes his thick fur. It feels right. It all feels right. Except for that sound, that strange buzz-saw sound. It seems distant, almost unreal. And yet, somehow, it seems to grow as if it is nearing.

The dog growls, and she shushes it. The sound
—
it
is
real, she’s as sure of that as the rising thrum in her heart
—
brings her children to their feet. They look to each other, their young faces spilling with dread, and when the cats, all seven, all crazed, dart from below the veranda and veer off in seven directions, they rush to her side.

They all hear it. They all fear it.

One of the cats, pitch black with the cutest white patch on its right hind leg, stops dead in its tracks. It stops to listen, and when its fur puffs out and it hisses at that troubling sound the way it does, not with a cat hiss, but with a monstrous screech, she screams, screams, screams for it to run from harm’s way. Only, it does not run; it does not flee. It turns to her, writhing and groaning, as if its little kitty bones are broken. It is no longer a cat, not puffy and cute, no longer that adorable feline who used to love having her back scratched with a big wooden spoon. It’s a hideous cat-thing, with eggs for eyes and a shrunken head. Its body is slick with oil, skin and bones, really, and just before it scampers off to this odd little forest on her perfect little farm, it tasks her with a crazed look in those eyes … and then vomits some slick green goo that reminds her of her mother’s pea soup.

She goes back to her watering, but stops to wonder why; it seems an odd thing to do. The sound is growing, that awful buzz-saw, and when she looks up again, a gasp escapes her. The ocean that was the sky is now a dark black pool, the sun but a floating eye. A gust of wind rushes past her, startling her, and a planter, whisked from the railing, crashes to her feet. Sad and uncertain, she stares at the tangled arrangement for a harrowing moment, and when she waters it, thinking how crazy it is to do such a foolish thing, the flowers wilt and die, as if she has peppered them with poison. Her heart sinks.

Still, she has her home. It is new in that same wonderful blue, the veranda too, and except for the mess, it all looks so beautiful, so perfect. She kneels to scoop up the dark earth from the broken planter, and as she grasps a handful she sees them. She has painted them over and over and over, four thick coats, but still she can see them, those ghostly footprints that have no business being there. She will have to paint them again.

There. The din is almost on top of them, drowning them. But now, it comes with a new sound, music, of all things, something stirring from Buddy Holly. She rises, afraid, and the watering can slips from her trembling hand. Another planter crashes. Another. The wind howls. Somewhere, lost in that strange wind, a cat with dark, lifeless eyes cries out, and she fears for its life … for all of their lives.

The hair on her arms tingles. The air is electric, a thing alive, thick and deadly. It is hard to breathe. The wind gusts again, rabid and fierce, and she wonders when that black pool will swallow the sun. When it will swallow
them.

Her son points, her daughter cries out … but it is too late. The sound, that unstoppable buzz-saw, is coming like a freight train, coming like a pickup truck. She reaches for her furry friend
—
she knows her old baby, knows he’s afraid
—
but now he’s not there. She turns to the din, and when she does, when that canine skull explodes in a burst of blood with a sickening pop, she lets loose a scream. It is a silent one, choked off at the throat, and as her daughter slips into her arms in tears and her son stands taut and cold, Buddy Holly keeps a-singin’ and the truck keeps a-rollin’, and she turns away in horror.

But the horror has only begun.

He
is there, the drifter, the one from the guesthouse; the man behind the curtain. He stands where those odd footprints are, precisely there, as if placed by magic. A vein writhes in his forehead like a fat worm, is as horrid as the scar on her husband’s face. His eyes are black, as black as that menacing sky, shining like hardened glass; they are an abyss. His right arm is raised, two fingers to his temple, yet the tips barely touch that adorable birthmark, the one that, somehow, she knows, isn’t really a birthmark, and she finds herself wondering not of its origin, not of its curious double, but rather, how isn’t it strange that in spite of the gusting wind, his long and lovely hair stands neatly in place.

It
is
strange, she thinks, because
her
hair is rising. Not from the wind, but from that crazy electricity. It’s as if a storm is raging all around them, as if they are caught in the eerie stir of the eye of a hurricane.

The air grows thicker and thicker. She is breathing soup. Her daughter asks if she smelled that, her tiny voice oddly and suddenly deep and run down. She does smell it, God yes, but her
Yes
sounds entirely absurd, as if she has no idea how to speak in the least.

The air
—
it reeks of spent matches. Her son smells it, too, he tells her, sounding like one of her father’s ancient 78’s played at 45. His voice is sluggish and slurred, slurred as if he’s been drinking, and the thought of that, much more than that overpowering phosphorous, dismays her.

She turns. At the very limit of her reach, she hears a kind of chatter, odd clicking sounds that remind her of those hilarious joke teeth she used to bring to school as a foolish girl. A foolish girl who married a monster.

Monsters
—

Her mind starts; surely none of this is happening. None of this is real. Her children
—
monstrous now
—
look like melting wax figures.

Her little girl falters, and she holds her close; she’s as fragile as a wilting rose. Tears are streaming slowly, so slowly, down her sagging skin. She turns to her son, that thick river of goo, and wonders what on Earth she can do.

Her eyes roll; she very nearly doubles from the wave of heat that strikes them. She could swear she hears a voice crying out, but she can’t be sure, for like the hideous droop of her daughter’s face, everything is turning and churning, growing liquid and thick … even sound. Her very thoughts seem to be coming like so much blur.

She hears crickets
—
not the six-legged crooners that would finally soothe her to sleep in tears when she waited up, rather the backup voices of Buddy Holly’s band
—
but they sound like scary things, things that lurk in the dark. The music itself has become a throttled throat of drum and guitar, and Buddy, well, Buddy sounds like the groans of the dying after a plane crash.

Her son
—
she can scarcely discern those roiling eyes behind that molten mask
—
reaches out to the air, as if he can touch it; as if he can feel it. His hand seems to linger there, sensing something but nothing, and then it snaps back, snaps back as if something has bitten it. Still, the boy moves so laboriously, so stiffly, like a man submerged in a tank of water.

The current rages, striking like the claws of a beast. It is all around her, having its way; it seems to slither through her like a snake. It is taking them, taking them all, and as she clings to her daughter for dear life, her heart bleeds. They are melting. Melting into each other. But incredibly, it is not that, not the electricity, not the searing heat
—
not even the knowing that death is at hand
—
that makes her scream and scream inside her head.

It is the mist.

Her son points
—
cheesy skin drips from his finger
—
and so she whirls, slow as a sloth, to the drifter, to the man behind the curtain. The heat is hungry, and her skin, once soft and supple, is the perfect meal. It boils and bubbles. Her eyes burn, seemingly searing from the inside, and when she finally sees it, that impossibly fragile fog, her slack jaw sinks and sags in her disbelief. She is a circus freak.

She cannot trust what she sees. She cannot. It looks like an egg, a floating egg of thick purple fog, hovering like a ghost about those weathered boots, boots riding those odd footprints she cannot get rid of. It is too much, far too much, to fathom, and as she clutches ever tighter round that thickening paste that is her child, she trembles at that silent scream lodged so deep in her brain.

The heat soars, so high she can barely breathe. Her daughter gasps for air and she helps her, but they are two who are one and it does no good. The air is crushing, crushing, crushing, and her ears pop; her son brings his hands to his to stem the pain, and nearly tumbles down the steps in his stupor. Her knees are buckling, her body growing thick and thin at the same time. She can feel her child swimming inside of her, and can only watch in horror as this beautiful flower wilts before her time.

It is
all
wilting … it is all
melting.

She looks to her son and again her mind reels. Fine flecks of dust, perhaps the whitest talcum she has ever seen, coat his head and his shoulders like freshly fallen snow. It clings to him, clings to her, clings to everything in its path. It keeps coming and coming
—
from somewhere
—
but nowhere.

She chokes; they all choke. She tries to clear her throat, but the stuff has its way; like the charging current, it holds a will all its own. It comes and it comes and it comes, an unstoppable storm, and doesn’t it sting when it gets in her eyes. It is all she can do just to breathe, and she knows that the end is near.

The music dies. The music dies, as if Holly had been killed in that crash a few years back; it’s as if the song had never existed. Ben Caldwell’s truck, as much of a truck it still is, for it looks more like a giant blob with blobs for wheels, has stopped idling, sputtering to a quick death. The powder
—
so brilliant, so choking
—
is so thick on the windshield she can hardly see the little shit. And that angers her, it really does, for boy oh boy she has a lot to say to him, and she fears she will never get the chance.