Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (4 page)

The Miami Herald,
July 18, 1960

SHARK? WHAT SHARK?

Crazed Woman Starts Wave Of Panic At Public Beach

Todd Boldt of Carol Springs, Florida, had been swimming in Biscayne Bay when he began to scream. The eight-year-old had been less than twenty yards from shore when a six-foot blacktip devoured his right arm. Bea Boldt had hit the water screaming
Shark,
only to find herself, in the next breath, lying under her umbrella reading her book. Fearing the worst but not knowing why, she had run in again and had led her child to safety, his arm fully attached and quite fine. She had asked several others if they had seen a shark—not a soul had—and her agitation had sent scores screeching from the water. A reporter who had been covering a waterskiing event had interviewed her. The woman insisted she had felt a “wall of electricity” around her, and also insisted she wasn’t crazy, as some of the gathered had called her. Lifeguards at the scene agreed they had neither seen, nor received reports of, any sharks in the area.

~

Miami.

He had been
that
close.

The Doctor finished his cigarette. The clippings had stirred him, had reignited his fire for the chase. But the last article had tempered his passion. It had angered him, had made him guarded and fearful.

And yet—there was
this.

He slid the package before him. Inside was a newspaper from four weeks ago to the day. Most of these leads were months cold, but this held the promise of gold. And when he took one of those sharpened nails to the envelope and splayed it open as easily as he had the Australian’s throat, it did not take him long to mine its precious secrets.

~

West Plains Daily Quill,
October 29, 1961

WILLOW SPRINGS MAN MEETS FATHER TIME

Claims Pool-Playing Drifter “
Turned back the clock
”

He read the article twice, the words driving him. Ronald Jacobsen, a self-employed truck driver out of Willow Springs, Missouri, had called police after an incident in a local tavern. According to Jacobsen, the man he described as a “long-haired freak” had hustled him at pool, but how the man had done it was nothing short of astonishing:
he had turned back time.
Turned it—
rewound
it, like a recording tape, according to Jacobsen—so he could make the shots he had missed the first time. Others present could not substantiate this laughable but extraordinary claim, but all had agreed they had seen Jacobsen playing pool with the man he had accused. Strangely, a good number had reported an unusual smell that seemed to come and go during the evening, a pungent odor that brought tears to their eyes. One woman claimed she had seen a thick, glowing mist at various times, but others had dismissed her, saying she had been drinking excessively and had fallen violently ill. The good Mr. Jacobsen insisted it wasn’t about the money, it was only twenty dollars, what had upset him so much—what had frightened him so deeply he had felt compelled to call authorities—was the drifter who could do magic.

~

Brikker turned up the lamp. It was dying now.

The drifter who could do magic.

Oh yes, magic … the darkest kind, to be sure.

He eased back with a grin. Let the magic of nicotine soothe him.

So Richards was getting sloppy.

It was so unlike the man. The Richards he knew was determined and sharp.
Focused.

Had he tired of the chase? Slipped to a false sense of security? Perhaps. But it would be unwise to underestimate him, most unwise. One did not take lightly the power the man could wield. It was the stuff of earthquakes and
tsunamis, blitzkrieg
and atom bombs, the stuff of legend—ha—the stuff that drove men mad with want.

With four fine slits of his nail, the physician cut out the article with surgical precision and secured it in the scrapbook with adhesive tape. He read it again, knowing he would read it again tomorrow, then closed the book and returned it to the drawer.

Brikker righted the hourglass. He sat pensively, fixed on the steady flow of sand as each grain slipped from now to past. How easy it was to simply watch; how simple to suffer the mercy of Time’s ceaseless wrath. And yet, he could grab hold of the instrument of its measure and upset it, slow it, speed it, and dare say stop it, with all the ease in the world.

He took the timepiece in hand. He tilted it slightly, allowing but a few grains to fall. Faster. Still faster. Stop. He reversed it, the sand becoming whole again, as if forging a bold new now. How simple it was. How magic.

How elusive, indeed.

Distant thunder rumbled in the desert. The Doctor swiveled to the window and felt a cold turn of his heart. Rain had begun to fall. Barely enough to make a difference, a mere splatter on the bulletproof glass.

Do you hear the rains, Richards? Do you hear them?

You’re not in Willow Springs. Not now … not still. Louisiana, perhaps. But no further west. I doubt you’d return to Texas, my friend.

North, then?

Do you hear the rains?

He didn’t feel his grip tighten round the timepiece; hear the glass shatter as he crushed it. Blood seeped through his fingers. He cast a gaze that spilled across the wastelands and stretched beyond that boundless horizon. The rain had stopped as quickly as it had come, as if a great hand had swept it away … as if it had never rained at all.

I had you once, Richards,
he thought, that nagging doubt rising in him again.
I will have you again.

The Doctor closed that singular eye, and with a dream, willed his future. He saw his hand reaching, grasping Time’s Wheel and turning it. Commanding it. And then, as his body trembled into that black abyss, he drifted into the mist, that glorious mist, dreaming of the drifter who could do magic. He would have Richards, oh yes, of that he was certain.

It was just a matter of time.

~ 3

Six months passed, and on a bright Thursday morning—the sixth morning of an extended stay in the back of a decrepit Buick Roadmaster, on a forgotten farm just outside of Linn—Kain soon found himself riding shotgun into Jefferson City. The girlish woman, a no-nonsense Missourian not a breath past twenty by his guess, made a point he keep his hands to himself should he feel the need for any funny business. He offered to pay for gas, and she flat-out refused. They crossed the Missouri River and rode into Columbia, the fine weather the pinnacle of their stilted conversation. She dropped him off at a roadside restaurant. She had said her name was Joan, just Joan, thank you, and that was that. The step-side pickup headed off.

It was going on half-past five, the sky a delicious blue. Inside the restaurant, two men on counter stools served him a disapproving glance. One of them was plump and balding, the other thin, his head buried under a straw hat. A family of three sat in one of the booths near the window, a small boy refusing to eat his carrots with all the shriek of fingernails on a blackboard. His mother kept shushing him, and his father spilled his coffee when he reached over to give the child a curt slap. A teenaged couple sat at the back, staring into each other’s eyes. When the coffee cup struck the floor, neither lover blinked.

A waitress hurried over to clean up the mess, an attractive brunette with her hair tied back. She might have been twenty-five, thirty at most. Nice legs.

“Be right with you,” she said, looking up, and Kain took the first booth next to the window. He slipped his pack on the floor beneath the table. He watched her work, and she caught him looking. When she finished, she came over with a friendly smile he was certain wasn’t job-related courtesy.

“Just a burger,” he said. “Just ketchup. And a Coke.” She took his order and passed it on to the cook. A half hour later, as he came out of the restroom, she was standing in the lobby waiting for him.

“… Can I help you?” He didn’t know what else to say.

“You look like you need a ride,” she said. “Saw you get dropped off.”

“Where you headed?”

“Rocheport.”

“When do you get off?”

She held up her keys and smiled.

~

They took the interstate to Rocheport and stopped for a beer at Barry’s B&G. The barkeep drew them two drafts. He had arms like tree trunks and narrow eyes of cinnamon that studied the drifter closely.

“You from around here?”

Caught mid-sip, Kain stumbled. “East,” he said. “Miami.” Not a total lie. He had been there two years ago. They’d been close, too close, and it had been the last time he’d ventured anywhere within fifty miles of where the population outnumbered the livestock.

The barkeep smiled at the woman. “How you been, S-J?”

“Still makin’ a livin’, darlin’.”

“I hear ya,” he said. “Danny-boy quit on me last week. Been busy as hell.” He looked at Kain and measured him up. “Interested?”

Kain was about to say,
Just passing through,
then considered the good woman beside him. She’d been eyeing him playfully, as if she wanted him. He wanted her, too, she was a real looker, but he had no intention of staying long—whatever
long
meant to other people—and he didn’t want to upset her. Still, right here and now, her company, just a warm voice to talk to, was something he needed. Something real.

“Thanks,” he said, as genuinely as he could. “I’ll think about it.”

“You okay, buddy?”

Kain had twinged a bit, as if stuck with a pin. Static. From the barkeep, suddenly. It had been dormant for months, rearing its ugly head about five weeks ago. Some kid in a corner store. He’d been feeling it on and off ever since. He could put no finger to its rhyme, nor reason. But he had some ideas. He only prayed he was wrong.

The waitress asked if he was all right.

“Just a little headache.” If only.

“You know, you remind me of somebody,” the barkeep said.

The drifter put on a grin. “Cousin, maybe?”

The big man chuckled in a half-assed sort of way. He gave a short shake of his head, then went about his business.

“Miami?” the waitress asked. “What’s it like?”

“Almost as hot as Missouri.”

“Isn’t it awful?” She stroked his arm. “It’s usually pretty cool this time of year. They say it’s gonna break soon, though. More rain’ll help.”

They talked casually for a time, the place growing half full by nine, that inexplicable static growing with it. By nine-thirty, four brews each into the evening, they were back at her apartment building. She asked him up, and he accepted. She had wanted sex, he had wanted it too, more than ever, and of course he kept his distance. He slept on her sofa, his headache finally breaking, but as he started from a nightmare around one, he heard the rains. Not outside, but in his head.

~

He stayed a week in Rocheport and found it one of the most engaging places in the Midwest. Standing on the rising limestone cliffs of the Manitou Bluffs, gazing out over the Missouri, a gentle breeze kissed him. The colors of spring, deep green and deeper blue, exploded. The hot weather had yet to break, the humidity choked, but today he felt happy. The sight was inspiring, and he tried to imagine the thrill for Lewis and Clark on discovering this place. They must have felt free.
Alive.
Something he hadn’t felt for a long time. How it must have been for them, traversing the river, not knowing what lay round the next bend. Every turn an exploration of the soul.

Sarah-Jane was fun, a little folksy, a whole lot horny, and each night he had taken matters into his own hand, so to speak, before she got home. She had taken his lack of erections as well as a woman could, but the hurt had been there, lurking beneath that playful exterior. He hated himself for it, but he wasn’t using her for her flat; his feelings were genuine. Even so—

He would tell her tonight.

She took it well, better than he expected. She understood
passing through
meant just that, and the next day he was riding the back of a flatbed, north, to Kirksville. Still, he had this gnawing desire to stop moving, to find a place to hang his hat for more than a couple of days. The road—the running—wore like a terminal disease.

He thanked the driver for the lift and walked into town. He took a room in a hotel for the night, and as he lay on the bed found his mind turning to Sarah-Jane. She had asked about his life on the road, going on about how exciting it must be, about how someday soon she was going to hit the road too, finally free herself of her dead-end job, of dead-end Rocheport. She had also gone on about his scars, how he had identical ones on each temple, how they couldn’t possibly be birthmarks. He’d finally convinced her otherwise, or at least, had gotten her to change the subject. He wondered if he should have stayed longer, and decided he’d made the right choice.

He had liked her too much.

~

Iowa beckoned, and by the third week in May he had crossed the state border, stopping over in Bloomfield. He thought he might detour east, for he had relatives (distant, in all sense of the word) in Davenport, and it had come to him that a surprise visit with ties, however loose, might stem the melancholy that had plagued him since Rocheport. More rain hadn’t helped, despite what Sarah-Jane had said. It had come last night in a downpour, eventually giving to that disheartening drizzle. It had been merciless.

Keep north,
he told himself as he stuck out his thumb at the edge of town, and a minute later he was sitting in the cool confines of a soft-top ’58 Sunliner and heading northwest toward Des Moines. He sat in the back, two college boys in front, a girl on his left. The driver wore black-rimmed sunglasses, sporting a who-gives-a-shit grin that he had once sported. The other wore the same sunglasses. The girl didn’t have a pair and kept squinting the whole time. The radio blared a Chuck Berry tune.

“Wisconsin? You’re goin’ the wrong way, mister,” the boy on the passenger side said with a laugh. He was all turned around, his arm slung up over the seat.