He suppressed a final cough as best he could.
Maddy was staring at him. She pulled an unused tissue from her apron and handed it to him. He blotted the corners of his mouth.
“Your chest hurt? Your arm?”
“I’m okay, Kruges. Tell me one more thing. Who do you think those kids were out in the parking lot?”
Maddy sat back up straight so fast it made Tom jump. “Weren’t they fantastic?”
“Fantastic? I don’t know . . .”
“The way they just . . . blinked-out like that. Like lights.”
Blinked out, Tom thought, like lights.
“It was something I’ve never seen before,” he said.
“Oh my God, they were beautiful. Standing there like that, so serene, I could tell from the window. They were so peaceful. And then, blink, blink, blink, out they went.”
Like lights, Tom thought again. “Just before the hospital power went out,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You think that was a good thing?”
Maddy was silent, considering. “I think it was meant to be.”
Tom thought of the kind of high he had felt among the boys on the front lawn.
“Maddy?”
“Yes, Tom.”
“You think we’re fucked up?”
She responded to this with an abrupt laugh. “Acid flashbacks you mean? I don’t know, honestly. I think some very unexplainable things have happened, but I’ve seen my share of unexplainable things.” She reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, smiling. “That’s why we have you, Tom. To figure this stuff out.” Then she frowned. She looked like she was going to ask something else, but she didn’t. He watched her turn her attention to the onrushing road.
Tom found himself thinking again of Jared Kingston disclosing that the girl and Christopher had lost a child.
His phone buzzed again and he continued to ignore it for the time being.
She patted his hand. “That’s my Tom.” The lights of the ambulance in front of them, filtering through the watery windshield, painted her face in crimson.
They heard sirens coming from behind them. Tom glanced into the rear-view mirror as the first blue-and-red lights came into sight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the back of the ambulance, Elizabeth lay looking up at the ceiling. There was an oxygen mask over her mouth. They had told her it was to keep her calm, to keep her heart rate down.
“What’s wrong with him?” Elizabeth asked.
“He has a problem with his blood. We’re going to give him some of yours. You’re going to help save his life.” The young woman speaking wore a dark blue EMT outfit with a silver name tag that said “Myers” on it. She had long brown hair tied back in a ponytail.
Liz thought of her sister, walking her dogs in Central Park. Her three German Shepherds: Marlowe, Spenser, and Campy. Liz liked Marlowe the best. Marlowe was named for a poet, from around the time of Shakespeare, who was killed in a tavern. He was only twenty-nine years old at the time of his death. He had written plays and essays, and they had been received well, but he had died so young. Liz had often wondered — what if he had lived? It was possible, she thought, that instead of Hamlet and Macbeth that Marlowe’s works would be the ones taught today, the plays people regarded as some of the finest work ever crafted. His first name had been Christopher.
“Are you taking any medications?” It was the third time she’d been asked the question. She told her what she’d told the others: “Wellbutrin and Ambien PRN.”
The girl, Myers, looked at her in a way Liz didn’t like, and Liz felt like telling her to fuck off.
It was a world divided; those who felt that depression was legitimate, a disease, and required medication, and those who felt that depression was nothing more than a self-pitying funk, something you had to “snap out of” and “get over.” Something for the self-absorbed to suffer, encouraged by pharmaceutical companies.
The ambulance jounced over bumps in the road, and bottles and serums clattered together on the bolted-in shelves on either side of the carriage. The IV tube swung in the air. It smelled like Clorox and bandages in the small, moving space. Liz felt claustrophobic, but it was a mild version of the sensation, somewhat removed. She imagined that she might be a little high, a bit sedated from the oxygen, after all.
She thought of her loon, free in the inky black of the pond. Liz understood the freedom of nature. It was not something intellectual. It was a kind of sense you could touch, but only a little bit. You could stand near it quietly, not look at it too directly, only hear it by turning your head away and shutting your eyes and really listening. There were cold, wet mornings at the end of this winter when she had watched the loon sit in the boggy area of the pond, the outlet near the beaver dam, where the lily pads and bottleflies had been in the summer. This was before the ice was out, and she had taken out the old set of binoculars from their worn leather case (they had been Jared’s grandfather’s, an avid birdwatcher and armchair ornithologist). She would watch her guy-loon sitting there, over by where the shallow water moved slowly beneath the ice and snow. There was a tuft of cattails and some long, ice-crinkled onion grass where her loon had sat, his feathers ragged, nuzzling at them with his beak. It was cold, yes, and the snow coming down had been falling in large, wet flakes, discus-sized blurs through the focus of the binoculars, and for half an hour she had watched her loon sit. Cold and wet and alone, her loon had been in bliss.
“Do you have any children?”
The question startled Liz, and she realized she’d been dozing. Myers was still sitting next to Liz, fiddling with something; Liz couldn’t tell what.
“No. Do you?” Liz felt exposed, raw.
Myers nodded. “Two girls. A three-year-old and a one-year-old.”
How lovely, thought Liz. And I bet the dog is named “Spot.” Nice, comfy, two-ply Charmin in the bathroom, Crest toothpaste, accountant husband. Green vegetables on the table each night for dinner. No one farts in front of anyone else.
There was a crackle as a radio came to life in the front of the ambulance. “Roland,” said a voice, surrounded by a burst of static. “You hear that?”
Liz guessed it was the other driver calling, the one who was conveying the little boy. She strained to hear something herself. She thought she heard sirens.
“We getting an escort?” asked the voice on the radio.
Their driver, a man with hairy nostrils and flannel shirt on, Roland, coughed and blew his noise with a loud honk. Liz thought it rather unsanitary, given the circumstances, as she could see him stuff the hanky back into his shirt pocket.
“Don’t think so,” he said.
They hit another bump, or pothole, in the road, and Myers grabbed the handlebar above her, hooked into the roof. From the front of the ambulance, they heard: “What the hell?”
Myers called to the driver, “What is it?”
“Jesus,” Liz heard him say. “There are people in the road.”
“People?”
The ambulance swerved.
“Christ!” shouted Roland.
Myers got up and clambered up to the front, out of Liz’s sight. Liz craned her neck to see better into the front of the vehicle.
“Maybe it’s a parade,” Roland said, and pulled out his hanky again to wipe at his nose.
* * *
“He’s coming back around,” Jim Cruickshand said quietly into his portable radio.
“Copy that,” said a voice.
The Kingston kid was indeed circling back. He was, to Jim’s deduction, headed back for the pond. Jim thumbed the transmit button on his radio. “Fall back to the Kingston house.”
“Roger.”
Jim had been wondering what the Kingston boy, Jared, was doing out in the forest. It was possible he was dragging one of the female bodies out here to dispose of it; maybe his plan was to get rid of them one at a time in this manner, but there were no detectable signs. There were only Jared’s footpr
ints, signs of his passing in the brush and frost-stiffened weeds. He could be carrying the body, but that would be a long haul. Still, he was headed back now, to the pond, likely to his home. He might have deposited something. Jim pressed the transmit button again.
“Bob, on second thought, let’s keep someone out here to look for a DB Kingston might have stashed. What’s the word on the shed so far? Coroner here yet? Over.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Jim heard Bob telling two of the troopers to continue on into the woods to look for a body.
Then: “Nothing, Jim. A lawnmower, snowshoes, a snowmobile. Tools. That’s about it.”
Jim stopped moving. He put the radio to his lips. “What?” His mind seemed to draw a blank. He trawled for the fresh memory there; it couldn’t have been an hour ago he’d been standing looking into the shed, but the recollection felt empty. Branch had been there too, hadn’t she? No, he’d sent her away, told her to keep tabs on the girl.
Verrega.
Don’t let her go.
“Check around the area. They have to be there.”
“Copy that.”
Jim squatted. He waited. The Kingston boy wasn’t far from him.
“Okay, Jim, we got something.”
“What?”
“The pond. There’s something going on in the pond. Do you have eyes on the suspect?”
“Negative. He’s not far, though.”
“Copy that.” Silence. Then, Jim thought he heard shouting echoing through the woods. It was coming from the direction of the Kingston house.
“Bob,” Jim whispered into the radio. “What’s in the pond?” He held the radio to his ear.
“Jim,” Bob’s voice sounded faint. “Jim . . .”
“What? Bob? What’s happening?”
“. . . dumped,” was what he heard. They were stepping on each other’s transmission. Jim had lost half of the communication. “Bob, say again, say again.”
“We think he dumped something into the pond. Jim, we’re moving on him.”
No, Jim thought to say, he’s mine, but he could hear the shouts now, louder, and gunfire.
Trooper Jim Cruickshand stood up and started to run.
* * *
“My God,” said Tom. Maddy reached over and gripped his forearm.
Along Route 33, there in the road, more of them were standing. Most of them were in the opposite lane, but some stood along the double yellow.
Ahead, the ambulances slowed. Tom glanced at the Chevy’s speedometer. They were down to thirty miles an hour. Behind them, a caravan of police cars were closing the gap, riding up quickly.
As they passed the figures in the road, Tom slammed on the brakes. He thought he recognized one of them.
Tom put the Chevy into reverse.
“What are you doing?” Maddy didn’t sound as giddy as she had back at the hospital. She sounded scared.
“Hold on.”
He backed up the Blazer until he was alongside of the kid that looked familiar. Behind them, they heard the screech of brakes as the pursuing cops abruptly slowed down.
Tom rolled down the window.
The kid stood there, just like the rest of them had, in front of Tom’s home and on the lawn in front of the hospital. Even though this kid was wearing a hooded parka, he wasn’t the one who’d been looking in Tom’s front window the night before. Similar, but not the same. They could have been brothers.
“Hey,” he said, “what the hell are you doing in the road?”
“Tom . . .”
Tom diverted his attention to the road in front of him. The ambulances were overlapping red eyes in the night, getting smaller. The bright lights of the police in back of them glared into the Blazer. Then, above them, in the sky, Tom thought he saw something.
“What is that?” Maddy’s voice rose, like she was getting close to hysteria or ecstasy.
Tom rolled the window back up and got moving. He’d tried talking to the kids before. It didn’t work. No reason to believe anything would be different now. He got up to speed, catching up to the ambulances. He had to swerve to avoid one kid who was just over the yellow by a foot or two. Two of the police cars weaved through the figures and followed. The others stopped there.
“This is a miracle,” said Maddy, regaining the wistful quality in her voice.
“This is insane,” said Tom.
The figures on the road seemed not to end. There were many more than twelve of them this time; they’d driven past more than that already. Above, the sky was lightening, turning a pinkish hue.
Tom looked at the digital clock on the Chevy’s dash. It was 9 PM. The sky was brightening as though it were dawn. As he caught up to the ambulances, he found that they were only going thirty miles per hour. A quick glance behind him revealed that the cops on their tail were going even slower. And now one of them was dropping back.
Maddy watched the sky. She was leaning forward, the seatbelt pressed into her breasts, her fingers gripping the dashboard. Her expression reminded Tom of a small child’s.
“Maddy. You alright?”
“Yes,” she said. “Tommy . . .”
He looked from the figures in the road to the sky above the ambulances. It was beginning to shimmer, like a faint version of the Northern Lights, or noctilucent clouds — clouds so high at night they were lit by the sun around the curve of the Earth. Tom had seen the Northern Lights once as a kid. He and his brother Charlie had climbed onto the roof to watch. That had been in the late sixties. There weren’t supposed to be any such phenomena going on now, at least, none that he’d heard of.
“How do you feel?”
Tom wasn’t quite sure he’d heard her question. “What?”
“How do you feel?” Maddy turned her head from the windshield and looked over at him. Her face was illuminated pink. In her eyes, Tom saw something, and he had another memory. It was the same something that he’d seen the summer night that he, Maddy, and Jim Cruickshand spent together at Macmaster Pond. He and Maddy had sat watching each other for a long time after Jim had run off into the woods. Tom had found the universe in Maddy’s eyes, corny and clichéd as it sounded now, so many years later. There had just been connection there, undeniable, unselfconscious and complete, and everything else had melted away, but everything else had also been present. And it had been alright. As they said in AA, I’m not okay, and you’re not okay — but that’s okay.
Tom saw it in Maddy’s eyes now. Her fear had vanished. She was engulfed in that childlike fascination, and Tom started to feel it too, conveyed as if by conduction. An infectious, full-bodied, childish sense of wonder, and yet, there was some kind of maturity there, too, something that made him feel as old as time. He was both the oldest and the youngest living thing that had ever been on Earth, something glacial and something burgeoning, something ancient and newborn, all wrapped together, all impossible to touch but at the same time replete and consuming.
Like bliss.
Maddy had just asked him how it all made him feel.
“I feel okay.”
“Me too,” said Maddy, and she turned back to look out the windshield.
Then the figures on the road finally did something. They started to move. Tom tried to watch them carefully, but could not help but be drawn to the lustrous sky, the sky that seemed to ripple, to flow like water. He kept the Blazer on the road as best he could. Now they were driving fifteen miles per hour. The sky grew lighter still, and then it seemed to reach its climax. It was by no means as light as day, nor was it even the same kind of light — the closest thing Tom could compare it to was twilight, where things were visible, but altogether different.
For a moment, Tom felt that flash of fear again, suddenly certain that the fabric of reality was unraveling, and that the illusion of the world was being dispelled and, in such a case, it was only natural for a person to lose their mind.
But it passed. Instead of any feeling of fear, dread, or incomprehension, Tom felt something different from
anything he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t exactly knowing, but a feeling akin to memory, a feeling that had little to do with being human, with thinking, with rational deduction. It was something that was not subject to investigation.
The figures were extending their arms. As Tom drove slowly along in the preternatural dawn, they all stood holding their arms straight out, palms down, fingers together.
And then they started to lift into the air.
In concert, they rose into the brightening sky. Each was individual, moving at their own speed. They didn’t go all the way up and disappear, but stopped at varying heights of what Tom figured as about fifty to a hundred feet, and there they stayed.
Tom’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and this time, he answered. It was the lead ambulance driver.
“What do I do?”
“Keep going,” said Tom.
Next to him, Maddy was crying. She was crying, and she was laughing.
Behind them, all of the cop cars had stopped. No one was following them any longer.
The ambulances picked up speed again, and Tom did as well. They drove along beneath the rolling, baleful sky, the young men floating above them, going on as far as either of them could see.
PART IV
CALEB
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
At Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington, there were hundreds of people standing out in front of the four stories of tinted glass, between and around the cars parked along the access road, on top of the underground parking garage, standing amongst more cars on the surface level, and along the thin sheaf of lawn on the side of the hospital. More were disposed in and around a kiosk where the smokers gathered, yet others perched on top of the rocks poking from the scant grass, and in the darkened windows, silhouettes by the dozen — some windows crowded with four or five figures — they stood and looked.
They were ordinary people. Visitors, patients, doctors, nurses, orderlies, receptionists, and security; members of the Fletcher Allen “family,” and they were watching the sky, and they were watching the twin ambulances as they came down the access road, and gawking at the Chevy Blazer, with Tom and Maddy inside of it.
HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down Page 16