Page 12 of A River Red With Blood
I tried to say it lightly, though I could have given him the day, the hour, the minute.
“Last night,” said Angel.“It was like a dream, but I wasn’t sleeping.Does that make sense?I was on the cusp, so just about awake.”
“That’s how it happens,” I said.“When it happens.”
They were known as hypnagogic and hypnopompic apparitions,images glimpsed on the cusp of sleeping or waking, and were more common than many people realized.
“I couldn’t see her face,” said Angel.“It was hidden by her hair.I was glad of that.”
Jennifer’s face was a ruin.When she crossed over, she appeared as she was at the end of her life, after the Traveling Man had had his way with her.On the other side, by the water, she was different, unmarked.
“Why did she come to you?”
“Because she says you’re in danger, but not from anyone on this side.The threat is coming from where she waits, or beyond it.She said you’ve been forgotten, but because of her, it may be that you’ll be remembered again.She didn’t think that would be positive for any of us.”
“Us?”
“You and her, but also Louis and me.We’re at risk too.”
And this she had shared with Angel, even as—again—she held back more than she revealed.Why wouldn’t she just disclose all of it?The secrecy was maddening, and might even have been mistaken for a child’s game, except I thought I was beginning to understand: For the man in the water, the difference between a flow and a flood is the difference between swimming and drowning.The torrent of information had to be controlled.
“When last I saw her,” I said, “she wasn’t alone.Something was watching for her.”
A phrase came to me:full of eyes within.It might have been from Revelation, but it was as apt a description as any for the being by the water.It was all eyes.
“When you say ‘something’—?”
“I mean something not human,” I continued, “and it meant Jennifer no good.It was trying to draw her from hiding.I saw the Traveling Man in it.I saw myself.I think it was ransacking Jennifer’s memories and reflecting them back at her.She did her best to hide them, but even the fact that she felt the need for concealment would have disturbed it.”
“Which means it’ll return,” said Angel.He touched a finger to the passenger-side window, as though seeking to reestablishcontact with the world beyond only to find his way blocked by the unseen.
“Yes,” I said, “in time.”
“What is this?”Angel asked.“What are we part of?”
“I don’t know, but Jennifer does.”
“And she won’t say.”
“No.”
“What could be so terrible that she can’t bring herself to speak of it?”
I glimpsed a dam about to burst, the wall cracking, then exploding.I saw a man not only washed away by the resulting deluge but torn apart by the force of the water, and he was not alone.Two others were sinking with him.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Angel.“I’m sorry that I’ve put you in danger again, even if this time, I can’t be sure from what.”
“Don’t be.We made the choice.And—”
A truck rolled by, loaded with logs, but the trunks were mature, not young.Perhaps they’d become infected and needed to be cut down; old creatures, their antiquity to be revealed only in death, counted in rings.
“Go on.”
“I think,” said Angel, “that it’s one we’ve made before.”
Chapter 11
In New York, Louis was sitting on a stool in PubKey on Washington Place.He was sipping an old-fashioned and taking in the décor, which reminded him ofThe Shining, though not necessarily in a bad way.The walls were painted black, the ceiling was made of pressed tin, and the floors, tiled in blue and white, were overlaid with rubber-backed red mats.Tinsel hung both behind the bar and on the wall opposite, which, combined with strings of fairy lights, gave the place an all-year festive atmosphere at odds with the interior, like Santa’s grotto after the old man had died.The drinks list included a lot of beers in cans, and the available snacks ran to nuts, Ruffles, and fried Oreos.
