by Ryan Dalton
Valentine sat cross-legged on her bed, facing the window with watery eyes. Hugging the book to her chest, she struggled to push away the bitter grief twisting her insides.
High up in the clouds, lightning flashed.
A faint knock sounded on the open door. She didn’t answer. Soft footsteps came close and John settled next to her. The hat and dark glasses were gone, and his eyes radiated concern.
“My mother . . .” Valentine began.
He nodded, as if he already knew. She opened her mouth and words came tumbling out. “I feel like I’m starting to forget her. Sometimes when I think about her now, I can’t remember her face.” She looked at him in desperation. “What does that mean?”
John thought for a moment. “Perhaps it means you’re beginning to heal.” His deep voice caressed her. “Which would please her, I’m certain. A mother would want you to have a life beyond the memories.”
Valentine choked back tears. “I’ve tried so hard to move on. But every step I take away from her, it feels like she’s dying again.” She stared at the book. “I can’t talk to my dad. The truth—we moved here because he couldn’t handle it. After she died, he just shut down. Like he’s not even there anymore.”
She covered her eyes. “The worst part is . . . I’m scared that I’m like him. That I might just keep hurting and keep closing up, and I won’t know how to stop. Sometimes I feel like it’s already happening.”
Tears broke free and streamed down her cheeks. She struggled to breathe through the sobbing. John leaned close and wrapped a warm, comforting arm around her shoulders. She pressed into him, burying her face in his shoulder.
“I feel so broken. It’s like . . . I don’t know, like . . .”
“Like, how are you supposed to heal when your heart is in two places?” John whispered. “In two times?”
She nodded into his shoulder.
“Like you were meant to have this whole other life,” he continued. “You had a future. Then something took that future away, and a part of you is suddenly gone. But inside, it still feels real. Like in some other world, that life still exists.” She felt him take a deep breath. “So you find yourself living in two worlds—the one that’s real, and the one that feels real. You can’t bear to let one go, so you drift between them, never really living one whole life. And before you know it, both lives have passed you by. You wake up one day and realize you’re living in a world you don’t recognize, in a body that doesn’t feel like yours.”
John fell silent and Valentine peered up at him. He stared out the window with heavy, sad eyes. Then she realized he hadn’t only been speaking about her—he had confessed something about himself, too. He knew her pain deep inside. Even drowning in sorrow, her heart reached out to him.
John brushed a thumb across her cheek, wiping away the tears. “I’m sorry for your pain.”
Valentine intertwined her fingers with his. She nestled against him, savoring the comfort of his warmth.
“I miss her so much. I’d give anything to talk to her one more time.”
John leaned his head against hers. “Tell me about her.”
She fought to ignore the anguish. Right now, in John’s arms, she wanted to remember.
“She was so beautiful. A dancer, an artist, so earthy and bright to be around, it was like she glowed. Everywhere she went, her spirit lit up the room. Everyone wanted to be near her.” She wiped away more tears. “Even when she got sick, it was her comforting us. To the last day, right when the cancer took her, she was making sure we were okay. She . . .”
Valentine tried to say more, but the words choked in her throat. She clung to John, exhausted.
“She sounds like a special person,” he said.
“She is.”
Any chance of salvaging the evening was gone. Fred—the big dumb oaf—had been apologetic and eager to leave, and Winter had thought it best to go with him. Only John remained.
Back in his room, Malcolm glanced out the window. The night was growing angry. Wind whipped at the house and howled through the trees as lightning pierced the clouds. The first rumbles of thunder rolled.
The watch seemed to call to him, but he stifled the urge to retrieve it from deep inside his desk. It needed to stay out of sight until he could figure out what to do with it.
Sneaking into the hallway, he stopped to check on Valentine. She and John sat at the window, wrapped around each other, conversing softly. Malcolm smiled and made his way down the stairs and out the front door.
Gusting winds tore at his clothes. Booming thunder shook the ground, and crackling lightning strafed across the sky. He fought the urge to run for cover, pushing aside the memories of his last encounter with the lightning.
Now outside, his attention crept across the street. Tall and foreboding, the house glared down at him with cold menace. Bright beams of light pulsed from the windows, matching rhythm with the storm. He stood mesmerized by the beautiful, dangerous light.
The storm’s intensity surged, multiplying in the blink of an eye. Bolts of energy seared the air. Thunder threatened to shatter the sky and rain it down in pieces. Malcolm covered his ears and ducked away from it all. His instincts screamed to hide until—
The light in the windows sputtered and quit.
The storm dispersed.
Just like before, when they nearly died. Panicking, he sprinted to the closest cover—Mr. Crane’s porch—and crouched against the door. Silence stretched on while he waited for the inevitable onslaught. None came.
Malcolm stared into the sky, brow furrowed. What happened? The storm had been growing and then suddenly stopped, like someone had pulled a plug. He reminded himself that he was done with it. Anything else would get him nowhere but dead.
Then why haven’t you thrown the watch back at that house? To his chagrin, he had no answer for that. Still sure that you’re done with all this? He mentally shoved the questions away. Of course he was done—he had to be. Anything else was asking for trouble.
As he leaned back against Walter’s door, it clicked and swung open to reveal a dark interior. Alarms rang in Malcolm’s head. Walter would never leave his door unlocked and half-latched. He peered inside, his senses on high alert.
No movement, no sound, no lights. He pushed the door open and slipped inside, his foot bumping a half-broken bottle on the floor.
Could the shadowed man have returned to seek revenge? Heart pounding, Malcolm crept down the medal-adorned hallway to the back of the house. At the end, he turned into the study. Sounds of breathing echoed in the dark.
“Walter?”
He grasped for the nearby lamp and twisted the switch. Dim yellow light bathed the room and his friend, slumped in one of his leather chairs. The small table next to him held a tall glass and a half-empty bottle of bourbon. His right hand clutched something small.
Walter’s eyes traveled sluggishly up to Malcolm’s face. “I let you in?” His words ran together.
“Your door was open.” Malcolm sat across from him. “Walter, what’s going on?”
“Anniversary.”
“Oh. I never knew you were married.”
“No.” Walter shook his head. “Different anniversary.”
“What do you mean?”
Walter swallowed hard. His words came sluggishly. “We caught ‘em by surprise. Key position, had to be taken. We’re good at that. Surrounded the camp, caught ‘em in their beds.”
He grew restless and reached for the bottle. “Thought one tent was empty. I’m running by it, and . . . soldier comes out. Something in his hand. I know it’s a grenade. His last resort. I shoot him square in the chest.”
Walter took a long swig and leaned back in the chair. “Went close to make sure . . . make sure he’s dead. No grenade. Just . . .” He opened his hand. “Just a picture of his family. I really look, and he’s just a kid. No more ‘n
sixteen.”
In Walter’s hand rested an old, faded family photo. On top of it sat a Silver Star, the medal he wouldn’t talk about. “I looked in his face as he died. Broke my heart. I just sat down right there and cried, hoping to God someone would come . . . finish me off, too.”
Malcolm covered his mouth. To carry this horror inside for all these years—he couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Sadness filled him. Sadness for his friend.
Walter grimaced. “They think if they give you a medal, somehow you’ll believe it had honor. They gave me a medal for killing kids.” He dropped the picture and the medal on the table. “Happened today . . . forever ago.”
“God, Walter,” Malcolm gasped. “I . . .”
Walter waved his words away. “No one’s burden but mine, kid.” He pushed against the chair and stumbled to his feet. “Old man needs his rest now.”
He took a step forward and nearly toppled. Malcolm rushed to his side and slid a shoulder under his arm.
“Come on, I’ll help you.”
“Don’t need to be tucked in, boy,” Walter grumbled.
“Yeah, but I need my ‘Help a Drunk Old Man’ merit badge.”
Walter chuckled and his lined, worn face lifted just a little. They stumbled through the doorway to the bedroom. Malcolm held the tall man up just long enough for him to topple into bed, eyes closed.
Malcolm grinned down at him. “Do you want some juice and a story before you go to sleep?”
Walter opened one eye. “Come closer and I’ll put you to sleep.”
Malcolm reached for the light switch. “No, thanks.”
“Malcolm.”
He turned back toward the bed. Walter’s other eye opened.
“No one knows that story. Please.”
Malcolm got the message. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Good night, Walter.”
He switched the light off and let himself out.
Thirty miles north of town, Rayner Nuclear Power Plant sat next to a winding river, its twin stacks ascending from a deep basin between rocky foothills. Barry Oliver, senior reactor operator for the skeleton night crew, strolled alongside the massive steam turbines.
“I got nothing’ here, Sal,” he said into his radio. “Sure you’re readin’ the right numbers?”
“We been watchin’ these dials for ten years, Barry,” a gravelly voice replied. “I’m tellin’ you we’re losin’ juice. Past couple months, we’ve been puttin’ out a little less power each week, and tonight the losses spiked.”
“And you’re sure the problem’s here?”
“I ain’t sure o’ nothin’. Yer the senior on this crew, remember? Figure it out.”
He rolled his eyes. Everything looked as it had for a decade—nothing out of place, everything humming along like clockwork.
“All checks out on this side. S’pose it could be the generators.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
“You wanna come help me look?”
“Now, why would I do that?”
Barry meandered toward the electrical generators linked to the turbines. “You don’t get off that fat butt, I’ll stop bringin’ in my wife’s cherry pie.”
“She’ll give me some anyway,” Sal retorted. “Annie loves me.”
“Annie hates you, and she thinks you smell.”
“That ain’t what she said last night.”
Barry snorted. “Fine, sit there and get fatter. I’ll check it out.”
He clipped the radio to his belt and ducked under a cluster of pipes, hunting for anything out of place. The sounds of his footsteps were drowned under the whirring of the massive machines.
He rounded a corner and stopped in his tracks. The first generator stood ten yards away, and the cover to its primary access panel lay on the ground. A dark-haired man knelt in front of the open panel, his back to Barry. A large duffel bag sat beside him, unfamiliar tools and varieties of wire protruding from the unzipped top.
A surprise inspection? Couldn’t be—he wasn’t wearing the green uniform of a Rayner tech, or the business suit of a shareholder. Just a long black coat with a hood, and sleeves rolled up so he could reach inside the panel.
The man pulled an exotic-looking silver tool from the bag, along with a short length of copper wire. He held them in the air and examined them. Barry winced at the man’s left forearm, crisscrossed by two deep, angry red cuts.
Pulses of energy arced from the tool and bore into the panel, burning a focused hole in the delicate instrumentation. Barry shook himself from stunned silence and broke into a sprint.
“Hey stop, you can’t do that!”
The dark man whirled. His scarred arm smacked against something metallic on his chest, and shadows twisted and stretched toward him. In an instant, a mass of darkness enveloped him.
A cloak made of shadow.
Barry’s eyes bulged and his feet ground to a halt. A thousand angry roars exploded into his mind. Crying out, he clutched his ears and dropped to his knees.
The shadow charged. In a blink, Barry flew from the ground and clanged against a metal support beam. He struggled to keep his composure, but panic clouded his thoughts.
“Wha—wha—” He stared into the shadow, laboring to catch his breath. “What do you want?”
The shadow roared and flung him into the air. He skipped like a stone across the concrete and skidded to a stop against the open access panel. The shadow stalked toward him.
“MMMOOORRREEE PPPOOOWWWEEERRR!!!”
Barry pulled up to his knees and clasped his hands together. “I can get you more power! I will!”
Steps away, the shadow stretched toward him. The tapered end of that exotic-looking tool protruded from the black and pointed straight at him.
“No, please!” He tried to scramble away, but smacked into the generator. “Please, I can help you. I said I can help you!”
The tool crackled and glowed, ionized air shimmering around it. Barry yanked the radio from his belt and put it to his lips.
“SAL!”
A blazing beam pierced the air. The radio clattered to the ground.
Chapter 13
Early Sunday morning, Valentine bounded into the kitchen. She finished pulling her wavy hair into a ponytail, then sat at the table to tie her shoes.
“Morning.”
Oma Grace stared at her over a crossword puzzle. “Good morning, dear. You do know it’s Sunday? I thought you kids turned to dust if the sun hit you before ten.”
Valentine grinned. “I’d like to go into town, if you have time.”
“What for, may I ask?”
“Oh, just, uh, some stuff for this history project. I’d like to see some old places in town and try to interview people. Plus, it’d be good driving practice for my permit. Is that okay?”
“Next time, more notice would be appreciated, but yes.”
“Thanks! I’m going for a run first.”
Valentine hopped toward the front door in short bursts to warm up her legs. Exiting the house, she paused on the front steps to check her resting pulse. The crisp morning air smelled like autumn.
A black limousine sat in the driveway. Fred had just climbed out from the backseat and closed his door, and he blinked at her in surprise.
“Hey, Val.”
Valentine stiffened and approached warily, glancing at what he held in his arms. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Oh, um.” Fred shifted the massive bouquet of roses clutched awkwardly between his casts. “These are for you.” They faced each other uneasily, then he rushed forward and pushed them into her arms.
“I know you’re into silver.” He glanced at her pendant. “So, sterling roses. They’re rare—I ordered them from the city.”
She accepted them numbly. The roses were unlike anything she’d ever seen—instead of red or pink or w
hite, these were a soft, silvery gray with thornless stems.
“You brought these in all the way from Chicago?”
Fred dipped his head low. “Thought if I brought you something pretty, you might forget what a jerk I was.” He shuffled his feet. “I got a mouth, we all know that. I say dumb stuff. But I never woulda read from that book if I knew.” He glanced up at her. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Valentine’s heart melted into a puddle. Fred Marshall, the loud-mouthed buffoon, was actually being sincere with her. He seemed subdued and embarrassed and genuinely worried about her feelings. Maybe there’s a real person in there, after all. She smiled at him. Her real smile.
“True friends are hard to come by. I’d hate to lose one over this.” She sniffed the roses. “They’re beautiful.”
His expression brightened. “You and Mal are awesome, and you’re part of us now. Group wouldn’t feel the same without you.” He paused to gather himself. For some reason, he still seemed nervous. “I know the timing’s horrible, but maybe you’ll let me do more to make it up to you. Dinner tomorrow night? There’s a café on the north side. You can see the hills, and it’s the best at sunset.”
“Oh.” Valentine’s brow furrowed. Why would he—OOOOH! I’m such an idiot.
She grasped for her pendant. Fred had proven to be better than she’d thought, but nothing inside her felt romantic toward him. How could she explain her feelings without hurting him? Her thoughts flashed to John—his deep, quiet voice and those eyes that reached out to consume her. She tried to speak.
“Look,” Fred interrupted. “I know what people think of me. Yeah, I throw parties and I’m popular, whatever that means. But to most people I’m just this rich wannabe player. A clown. Sometimes they’re right I guess.” He gazed earnestly into her eyes. “I wish you could see past all that. Because when I’m around you, Val, I don’t want to be that guy anymore. I want to be better.”
The words tugged on Valentine’s heart again. “Fred, I—thank you so much. You have no idea how that makes me feel.”
Fred raised his eyebrows. “But?”