The Presence

CHAPTER 14

Smoke and steam were billowing up from a great tear in the surface of the mountainside, and a curtain of fire hung against the black night sky. It was as if the entire mountain were ready to explode. Katharine shuddered as she stared at the image on the screen.

Rob Silver, sitting next to her on the sofa, picked up on her fears instantly. “Take it easy,” he said. “It looks a lot worse than it is.”

For half an hour they’d been watching the live coverage of the new eruption on the Big Island, and although it was the third time Rob had reassured her, Katharine still sat staring, nearly frozen in horror, at the hellish images being broadcast from the next island — an island that suddenly seemed much closer than it had only an hour earlier.

“I know that’s what you keep telling me,” she replied. “And I understand that these aren’t the kind of volcanoes that explode. But you have to admit, it’s very, very scary-looking.”

Josh Malani, sprawled out on the floor next to Michael, gazed at the fiery scene as if mesmerized. “Wouldn’t it be neat to be there? You can go right out onto the lava flows and look down into the crevices where it’s still red hot.”

“Maybe we can fly over there,” Michael suggested. “Maybe—”

“Maybe Josh can go home, and you can go to bed,” Katharine interrupted, shutting off the television with the remote. “You both have school tomorrow, remember?”

“Come on, Mom, turn it back on,” Michael pleaded. “It’s only a little after ten, and—”

“And it’s ‘educational’?” Katharine interrupted, reading her son’s mind. “I don’t think we need to go through that one, do you?”

Josh Malani, hearing the slight edge that had come into Katharine’s voice, scrambled to his feet. “I think I better get out of here,” he said.

A couple of minutes later, as he and Michael were going out to his truck, he said, “I like your mom.”

“Yeah, right,” Michael groaned. “She just kicked you out, and sent me to bed.”

“So what?” Josh countered. “She let me come up here for dinner, and no one got drunk and started yelling.”

Michael studied his friend. “Is that what happens at your house?”

“Not every night,” Josh said a little too quickly, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. “I guess it happens to everyone, though, doesn’t it?”

“Sure,” Michael replied, though certainly nothing like that had ever happened to him. Then: “Hey, if you want, you can stay here tonight.”

Josh hesitated, then shook his head. “I better go. Don’t want your mom thinking I’m moving in.” His smile flashed. “Besides, I’m not sleepy. I think I might just drive around for a while. Wanta come?”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Like my mom’d let me.”

Josh shrugged, gunning the engine. “Okay. See you tomorrow.” Shoving the transmission into reverse, he whipped the pickup around, shifted into low, and shot away, laughing as he watched Michael try to duck away from the plume of dirt his spinning tires kicked up. But as he turned down Olinda Road, his laughter died away, and the strange restlessness that had been creeping up on him all evening came over him once again.

Except it wasn’t exactly that he felt restless.

It was something else — something he couldn’t quite get a grip on.

Part of it was his chest, which felt kind of funny. It didn’t hurt, exactly, and didn’t feel congested, like he was getting a cold.

It just felt — weird!

Coming out onto Olinda Road, he turned up the hill. Though the night was getting chilly, he left the windows wide open. Finally, near the top, he turned left and began winding back down toward Makawao. As he came around a curve, his headlights swept across a familiar figure.

Jeff Kina, his huge frame hunched over, his head down, was walking along the side of the road. Josh slowed the truck as he came abreast of Jeff. “Hey! Whatcha doin’?”

Jeff, startled, squinted in the darkness, then recognized Josh’s truck. “Just walkin’,” he said. “Didn’t feel like going to bed, and — I don’t know — I just felt sort of weird. Like if I couldn’t get out of the house I was gonna go nuts or something.” He fell silent for a moment, then: “I don’t know. Maybe it’s what happened to Kioki, you know?”

“Nobody knows what happened to Kioki,” Josh reminded him. “Hey, want to go do something?”

Jeff shrugged. “Might as well,” he agreed. Pulling open the passenger door, he climbed into the truck and Josh continued down the hill toward Makawao.

Neither of them paid any attention to the car that was pulled off the road just below the next curve.

The driver, though, noticed them, and as soon as Josh’s truck passed him, he turned his car around. In accordance with the orders he’d been given a few hours earlier, he continued following Jeff Kina.

The driver of the pickup — whoever he was — was somebody else’s problem.

Josh turned onto the Haleakala Highway, utterly unaware of the car that was following his truck. In the distance he could see the glow of a burning cane field. The smoke roiling into the night sky brought an image of the volcano on the Big Island into his mind. At the same time, a thrill of anticipation raced through his body.

“Ever been close to a cane fire?” he asked Jeff. When the other boy made no reply, Josh glanced over at him. Jeff’s eyes — like his own a moment ago — seemed to be fixed on the distant flames. “Jeff?” he said more loudly, and finally Jeff turned to look at him, though for a moment Josh wasn’t sure his friend was actually seeing him. “You okay?”

Jeff nodded. “You ever been close to a cane fire?” he asked, his words exactly echoing the question Josh himself had asked only a moment before.

Josh, deciding not to question his friend’s odd behavior, shook his head. “Want to go see it?”

Again Jeff nodded, but he said nothing and his eyes went back to the cane fire that was quickly spreading in the distance. Josh pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the truck lunged forward, picking up speed as it tore down the nearly deserted highway.

The driver watched the truck surge ahead, then punched one of the two memory buttons on his cell phone. He waited impatiently until the phone was answered at the other end. “My guy may have spotted me,” he said. “Anyway, something just spooked him, and the guy he’s with took off like a jackrabbit with a firecracker up its ass. Do we have anybody in Kahului?”

“You’re covered,” the man at the other end replied. “Just give me the description.”

“It’s a pickup truck, real old, real rusted, and beat-up. Two kids in the cab.”

“Got a license?”

“Couldn’t get close enough.” Cutting off the connection, the man pressed on the gas pedal, speeding up just enough to keep the taillights of the racing truck visible.

Josh swerved the truck into a narrow lane that headed through the fields toward the spot where the blaze was still growing.

“Jesus,” Jeff whispered in the seat next to him. “Did you ever see anything like that?”

“We’ve seen it a million times,” Josh replied. But even as he spoke the words, he knew that tonight it was different.

Always before he’d done his best to avoid cane fires, closing the windows tightly against the smoke and soot, even shutting the air vents to keep the acrid fumes out of the car.

Once — only a couple of months ago — he’d had to drive past a burning field on his way down from Pukalani. For a minute he’d considered turning around, although detouring meant going nearly twenty miles out of his way. And when he was about halfway past the burning field, he’d wished he’d done it. The heat on his face had felt like it was searing his skin, and the roar of the fire had scared him almost as much as the crackling flames.

But tonight the blazing inferno of the field fascinated him even more than the images of the erupting craters on the Big Island.

He pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the truck shot forward.

“Yee-hah!” Jeff Kina whooped in the seat next to him. “Let’s go!”

The truck surged ahead, the dust from the road mixing with the black ash that was raining from the sky to swirl in through the open windows. The air was thick with smoke now, and Jeff, still howling next to him, was sucking it deep into his lungs.

Josh drove on. The truck roared into the burn area. Now the fields on both sides of them were ablaze, the stalks of cane charred black, the smoldering foliage glowing an angry red. Josh brought the truck to a halt and sat gazing, awestruck, at the inferno around him.

The strange, constricted feeling that had been growing in him all evening was suddenly gone.

Jeff Kina stared at the whirlwind of fire racing through the fields around him. Everywhere he looked there were flames, and as he sucked the smoky air deep into his lungs, he felt a wave of exultation break over him, setting every nerve in his body on edge and heightening every one of his senses. His skin thrilled to the heat of the fire, and he could taste the sweetness of the burning cane in his mouth. The flames danced around him, and as smoke streamed up from the charred cane of the field, he nearly imagined he could see strange, wraithlike forms dancing above the inferno. It was almost like being stoned, and a great feeling of well-being spread through him, pushing out the peculiar restlessness that had driven him from the house an hour ago. Then, as the fiery tempest swirled higher and hotter around him, he heard another sound — the seductively whispering song of a siren.

It was as if the siren was speaking to him, urging him to leave the truck and join in the dance the flames were performing in the fields.

The smoke itself seemed to beckon to him. Jeff Kina opened the door of the truck and slid out.…

The screaming sirens interrupted the reverie Josh Malani had slipped into, and the truck door slamming drove the last vestiges of it away. “What are you doing?” he yelled as Jeff stood by the truck, staring at the flames as if he’d been hypnotized. Sliding across the front seat, he reached out and grabbed Jeff’s arm as the warning siren grew louder and the flashing lights of an approaching truck became visible through the miasma of smoke. Jeff was trying to pull away from him now, but he tightened his grip on the other boy’s arm. “Jesus, Jeff! Get back in the truck! The fire crew’s coming! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

The yellow truck slammed to a stop directly ahead of the pickup, and while one man jumped out of the passenger seat, two more leaped from its bed. As two of the men grabbed Jeff’s arm and began pulling him toward the yellow truck, the third one yelled at Josh.

“Are you kids crazy? Get this damned truck out of here before it blows up!”

Sliding back into the driver’s seat, Josh slammed the truck into reverse and began backing down the road. An ember flew through the window and seared his forehead, and as he momentarily lost his grip on the steering wheel, the pickup swerved sharply to the right. For a split second Josh tried to regain control, then he let the wheel spin. The truck slewed around, its rear end leaving the dirt road and skidding into the burning field, but even before it came to a stop, Josh had shoved the transmission into gear and smashed his foot against the gas pedal. The rear tires spun, then caught, and Josh shot forward, not slowing down until he reached the paved highway.

Jeff!

Where was Jeff!

Should he go back and try to find him?

A set of headlights flashed on in front of him, and for the first time Josh realized that there was a car parked across the road. Then, as the car’s engine roared to life and it shot down the road Josh had just emerged from, he saw another car racing toward him, this one coming from Kahului.

Blue lights were flashing on its roof.

Cops!

Shit! What was he supposed to do?

What could he do?

Taking a last look down the road, but seeing no trace of Jeff Kina, or the truck the two men had been dragging him toward, or the car that had been parked on the other side of the highway, Josh made up his mind.

Jeff would be all right. Those guys must have been a fire crew. They’d get Jeff out of there.

But it was time for him to get out of here. Slamming the truck into gear, he started down the highway. A few seconds later he passed the speeding car with the flashing blue lights, never noticing that it wasn’t a police car.

As soon as it passed, he looked in the rearview mirror, certain that the cops would turn around to chase him. But the car turned off the highway into the burning cane field.