Black Lightning

CHAPTER 60

The river was fairly shallow as it made its way around the wide bend, deepening only on the far side, where the force of the current had cut the bottom deep into the granite bed. The fly rod, just as it had in his dream the day before yesterday, felt familiar in Glen’s hand. On his very first cast, he flicked the fly nearly halfway across the river, then whipped it back and forth a couple of times before letting it settle onto the surface of the water while he reeled the line back in.

“Wow,” Kevin breathed. “How’d you do that?”

“It’s simple,” Glen explained, covering his own amazement at the skill with which he’d cast the fly. “It’s all in the wrist.”

Laying his own rod on the rocky beach, he went over to Kevin and stood behind him, guiding his son’s hands with his own. As soon as he touched Kevin, something happened.

He felt a rush of energy stream into him, as if some kind of electricity were pouring out of his son’s body and into his. And something happened inside him, too: The voice began whispering to him again. You feel it, don’t you, Glen? You feel the life inside him. And you want to know where it comes from, don’t you? He jerked his hands away from Kevin as if he’d touched a hot iron, and his son looked up at him, frowning.

“You okay, Dad? You look kinda funny.”

“I’m all right,” Glen replied, but even to himself his voice sounded strained. And the voice was talking to him again, whispering to him: We could do it. We could do it right now. It’s an experiment, the voice whispered. It’s just an experiment. We won’t hurt him. He’ll be fine. You’ll see. The gray fog was drifting around the edge of his consciousness again, and once again fear rose inside of Glen, the same terrible fear he experienced when he’d been afraid he might fall asleep at the wheel. What if he couldn’t fight it off again? What if it closed in on him this time? “T-Tell you what,” he stammered, the words almost strangling in his throat as he struggled against the softness of the fog and the seductive sound of the words. “Why don’t you go downstream a ways, and I’ll go up. That way our lines won’t get tangled. Okay?”

Kevin, who’d been watching his father out of the corner of his eye, nodded quickly, reeled in his line, and began working his way downriver, jumping from one rock to another. A couple of times he looked back, but his father was going in the other direction, and even when Kevin called out to him, Glen didn’t turn around. Kevin felt a twinge of fear. What if his father was sick? What if he had another heart attack? What would he do? “Dad?” he called again, but again his father didn’t seem to hear him. Kevin paused. Should he go after his father, in case something really was wrong? Or should he do as his father had told him? Then he remembered the funny look he’d seen in his father’s eyes just now. It had been kind of scary.

Kevin made up his mind. For a while, at least, he’d poke around farther downstream. Maybe see if he could catch a frog, or even a turtle. Because right now, for some reason he didn’t understand, he just didn’t want to be around his dad.

Right now his father just didn’t seem like his father.

He seemed like someone else.

Someone Kevin decided he really didn’t like.

As Glen moved farther upstream, the strange sense of déjà vu that he’d experienced on the road upriver came over him again, even stronger than before. Though he was certain he’d never been here — except in the dream, which meant he’d never been here at all — there was still something very familiar about the place. The river curved again farther upstream, but between the two bends there was a straight stretch of perhaps a quarter of a mile where the water ran wide and shallow. The beach was a little narrower across the river, and beyond the rocky strip bordering the stream the bank rose steeply. Perhaps ten feet up above the beach, on what looked like a shelf of the bank, there was a pile of rocks.

A pile that looked familiar to Glen, though he was absolutely sure he hadn’t seen it before, even in the dream.

Now that he thought about it, the familiarity it triggered in his mind didn’t seem recent, but rather like something he remembered from long ago.

He searched his memory, trying to recall when he might have been here before, but found nothing. He’d been to the falls, a few miles upriver by the power plant, plenty of times. Once, years ago, he and Anne had even climbed down the steep trail to the beach below the falls. And they’d probably driven down the road to Fall City a couple of times, too. But they’d never stopped here, he was sure of it.

Standing on the bank, he cast the fly — the one that looked as though it had been made from a scrap of Hector’s feathers and a tuft of Kumquat’s fur — out over the river. Instantly, a trout struck, snatching the fly out of the air so quickly Glen almost missed it. The line started to play out from the reel, and Glen, uncertain what to do next, watched it go. Then, inside his head, he heard the voice:

Reel in!

He twisted the crank on the reel. On the first revolution the bail flipped into place and the line began to rewind onto the spool. Abruptly, it went taut and the rod bent. Then there was a buzzing sound as the force on the line exceeded the tension on the reel and the fine began to pay out again. The voice in his head directing him, Glen began playing the fish.

The game went on for fifteen minutes, and by the time Glen had finally brought the fish close enough to scoop it out of the water and drop it into the canvas creel he’d slung across his chest, he was halfway across the river. Only a few yards away was the cairn he’d seen from the beach just before the fish had struck. His eyes fixing on it, he waded across the river and the narrow beach that fronted it and climbed the bank until he came to the cairn.

Nothing more than a pile of rocks.

But the sense of familiarity was stronger than ever.

One by one he began removing the rocks.

Finally, when he’d pulled several away, the structure lost its stability; half of the mound fell away, the rounded river cobbles tumbling around Glen’s feet.

Something caught his eye. He bent down and picked up a worn pocketknife. Its handle was made from tarnished silver, inlaid with turquoise. Its blade was somewhat rusted, but not so badly that Glen couldn’t open it. Its edge, well-protected by the handle, was still wickedly sharp. Glen gazed at the blade for a long moment, then closed it and dropped the knife into his pocket.

Squatting down, he moved another of the rocks.

Now he could see something else.

A bone.

A long bone. Like the leg bone of a deer.

Except that the moment he saw it, Glen knew it wasn’t the bone of a deer at all. It was a human bone.

He reached out and moved more rocks, exposing more bones.

What should he do? Call the police?

But how would he explain what he’d found? It wasn’t as if he’d simply stumbled across it — he’d had to cross the river, climb the bank, then pull the cairn apart stone by stone.

He stood up, still uncertain. Then, from across the river, he heard Kevin calling him. “Dad! Hey, Dad!”

The boy was still close to the bank, but he was wading into the stream. “Don’t!” Glen yelled. “Stay there!”

Kevin kept coming, wading deeper into the swiftly moving water. “What is it? What did you find?” he called.

Even on Glen the water had come up almost to his waist. On Kevin it would be nearly neck deep. “Don’t come any farther!” Glen yelled. “It isn’t anything! Just a bunch of rocks!” Looking down at the skeleton again, he hesitated for just one more moment, then kicked enough of the stones over it so that it was no longer visible. “Just stay there,” he called to Kevin once more. “I’m on my way back.” Moving quickly, he scrambled back down the bank, crossed the beach and started back across the river. When he came back to the bank where Kevin was now waiting for him, he opened the creel to show him the fish he’d caught. “What do you say?” he asked. “Shall we have it for lunch?”

Kevin eyed the fish warily. “Can’t we just have a hamburger?” he asked.

Glen’s eyes shifted back to the stone cairn on the other side of the river, and suddenly he wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere that didn’t look familiar, that didn’t make strange things happen in his mind. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “Let’s go.”

But as they started back toward the car, Glen felt the strange fog closing around him once more, and heard the voice whispering to him yet again.

An experiment, it said. It will only be an experiment. Use the knife.…