The Valley and the Flood

by Rebecca Mahoney

  She moves away from me then, leans over the tape deck with both palms on the surface of the desk. Her hair is hiding her face, but as she listens to the loop, she’s gone very still.

  Rose, are you there? Rose—

  The words start mangling, like the tape’s caught on something, and Gaby’s voice distorts until the words are meaningless pops and gasps. I jerk back and away, my body moving quicker than my brain. And then I see it painted on the opposite wall.

  I think it’s another poster, at first. But this isn’t a message from our friends at Lotus Valley Community Radio. This is painted right into the concrete: thick, fresh capital letters from floor to ceiling. And those towering words pop in and out of view with the flickering overhead light.

  HERE COMES THE FLOOD.

  MAY 30, SEVEN MONTHS AGO

  NOTE TO SELF: Sammy doesn’t know what insomnia means. He repeats it because he heard you say it once. But for Sammy, insomnia means that his big sister is binge-watching Korean dramas again.

  It’s a thick, humid night, hotter still with your brother’s weight against your side. You move the laptop off your legs to catch every bit of breeze from the ceiling fan, and you spot little scrapes across your kneecaps. You’ve got a few on your palms, too, right where they caught the pavement.

  It hasn’t happened again since the party. Maybe if you don’t think about it, it won’t happen again. But that doesn’t stop the sour, sick feeling that’s curled into your stomach since.

  Sammy watches, rapt, as the therapist leans forward onto his elbows. When you remember the earthquake, he intones, do you feel as if you’re reliving it?

  Jae-hyun flashes a wide, fake grin. Not at all, he says.

  There’s a musical cue like a person leaning their entire weight on a piano. Sammy laughs. Your laugh comes slower.

  You lean forward and tap the spacebar to pause. At Sammy’s little noise of protest, you say, “Water. I’ll be right back.”

  All the windows are still open: in the living room, the kitchen, the hallway. It doesn’t help with the heat. It just leaves you feeling like the walls aren’t walls, like the apartment is bleeding into the outside world. You leave the lights off as you walk. You can see everything going on out there. They can’t see you.

  You love that show. You love watching it with Sammy even more. So you should feel better than you do now. You shouldn’t feel the heat and Sammy’s fidgeting and every snatch of a voice outside ricocheting off the insides of your chest.

  Do you feel as if you’re reliving it?

  Note to self: Don’t think about Marin’s party. Even if you can’t stop thinking about it. How it feels whenever you think of that voicemail. What you’re feeling right now. Like the air in your lungs is damp and cold. Like the floor is gone, and you’re just tumbling through negative space.

  What you’re feeling has a name. Or, to be more precise, four letters.

  “Oh,” you whisper through your fingers. “Oh, shit.”

  So. Now that we’re all on the same page. Let’s begin.

  Ten

  THE FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

  THE GUTS OF the cassette are tangled in the belly of the tape player somewhere. It’s not torn, but it will be if we try to take it out. We leave it where it is.

  We do, however, find the little circular goldenrod sticker on the bottom left of the tape player. As identifying features go, it’s not very specific. Unless, of course, you do odd jobs for a small town sheriff’s department on afternoons and weekends. Alex takes one look at it and identifies it as a price marker from Paul’s Pawn and Loan.

  Alex has one more thing, too. The phone number for a respected member of the community who can imitate the voice of any lost loved one you desire.

  Or, more precisely, for her booking agent.

  Mockingbird Productions, chirps a distant voice through the phone. What do you yearn for?

  Paul’s Pawn and Loan is a quiet storefront in an empty strip mall, with a collection so mismatched it has to be deliberate. Paul himself is a short, owlish man who moves slowly and blinks even slower. “I haven’t seen you before,” he says to me, leaning in a little as he squints.

  I’m from that one cataclysmic prophecy, maybe you’ve heard of me seems like a longer conversation than we’d like to have right now. “I’m visiting,” I say, cradling the tape player in my arms.

  He turns creakily. “And you two work for the sheriff?”

  “Felix Sohrabi,” Felix says. “And this is Alli—”

  “Alex Harper,” Alex says quickly, dipping the phone just below his ear. He’s on hold. He’s been on hold for the past five minutes. “I know this is a strange request, but if you could tell us anything about the person who bought this—”

  “It’s no trouble,” Paul says with a serene smile. “Anything for Christie Jones. Could you hand that here, miss?”

  I keep it steady as I place it into his hands. “There’s a cassette caught inside,” I mumble to the counter. “Please be careful with it.” With a slow nod, he disappears behind the back curtain, leaving the four of us standing on the shop floor.

  Well, three. Cassie waits outside, her back to the window, perfectly still as she watches the strip mall parking lot.

  “I’m telling you,” Felix says. It sounds halfhearted. “People aren’t going to take us seriously if our names rhyme.”

  “I was here first,” Alex says mildly. “Change your own name.”

  “I don’t have any good nicknames,” Felix says.

  Alex doesn’t hesitate. “The Sohrabinator.”

  Felix stares in silence for a good twenty seconds. “Holy shit,” he says softly.

  Alex turns his attention back to his phone, currently spitting out a tinny, staticky sound.

  “This is ridiculous,” Felix suddenly blurts out. “You don’t have to talk to her.”

  “Would you like to, then?” Alex snaps back. I notice then that his knuckles are white around the edges of his phone. “I’m still on hold.”

  Felix falters. And slowly, he turns his attention back to the shelves.

  Faintly, I hear a voice with a questioning lilt, and Alex jerks up straight. “Yes, I’m still here. Did you—”

  The woman’s voice cuts him off. Even without hearing the words, I pick up on the perky chirp in her tone. “Three tomorrow,” Alex mumbles. “That’s the earliest you could—I think you know what the situa—”

  The voice interrupts again. Whatever explanation she gives, Alex looks less than impressed. “Yes, I understand,” he says. “Yes, I know where. Thank you.”

  “She can’t take us until tomorrow?” Felix says, before Alex can completely hang up.

  “Her staff would like us to remember that this is a busy time of year,” Alex says wearily.

  “She’s messing with us,” Felix says.

  “She is,” Alex says. “But there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  It goes quiet after that. It leaves me without much to do but stare at the counter and try to ignore the rustling behind me as Felix sifts through one of the shelves of merchandise. His fidgeting is, at least, preferable to the echo of that tape still ringing in my ears.

  I glance over my shoulder to the window. Cassie told me there was no way we could have heard the same thing on that tape. But she never did tell me what it was she heard.

  Suddenly, there’s a loud crackle behind me, and a grainy mechanical voice bellows, YOU’RE BREAKIN’ MY NECK.

  I whip around so fast, I have to catch myself on the counter. Felix rocks back on his heels, sheepishly holding out a plastic, grimacing waiter figurine.

  “It’s a pepper grinder,” he says, giving the head another half twist.

  Alex crosses the store, stony-faced, and places it back on the shelf.

  Through the window, Cassie winds one of her curls around her in
dex finger, catching my attention. Back to Alex and Felix, I ask, “Is she okay?”

  “I . . . um. Couldn’t say,” Alex mumbles. “We don’t really . . .”

  “Know her that well,” Felix finishes.

  “She doesn’t work with you?” I say.

  Alex blinks. “They didn’t tell you?”

  “Are you surprised?” Felix says. To me, he adds, “Cassie’s, um. The boss’s foster kid, sort of.”

  “Ms. Jones took Cassie in when she was thirteen,” Alex says. “We don’t know the circumstances, but . . .”

  “It’s complicated,” Felix says.

  “Sounds about right,” I mumble. Asking your intern to chaperone the harbinger of destruction is one thing, but asking your sort-of kid?

  “But who knows.” Felix shrugs. “Ms. Jones is the queen of need-to-know.”

  “Because most of the time we don’t need to know,” Alex says mildly.

  Felix throws his head back and groans. “Don’t start.”

  “I just don’t think we should criticize her for—”

  “I’m not criticizing her!” Felix says. “I’m allowed to ask questions.”

  “So ask her,” Alex says.

  “Really.” Felix snorts. “Here’s just a few questions I’m still waiting for answers on. Can Rudy really stage-manage an evacuation? What do I tell my family? When do I tell my family? Why three days?”

  “Believe me,” Alex mutters, “that last one makes sense up close.”

  I glance at Alex. And I remember how he looked at me when I met him yesterday. Or more precisely, how he looked past me.

  “Can you see all of them?” I say. “The neighbors.”

  “Depends. Some don’t try to hide,” he says. “Or care if you see them. Others do. And some of them are just too big or too strange for comprehension. And for things like that, I see more than most people can. I still don’t know whether it’s just something I can do, or if they’re just . . . more inclined to show themselves to me.”

  “Oh.” My voice wavers a little. “And, um, you can see this one right now?”

  “I have to try. And right now I’m not exactly trying,” Alex admits. “But even the biggest one I’ve seen before, it was still recognizable as a thing. What’s behind you is just . . . total darkness. Like the world ends right where you’re standing. And if what I’m seeing is just the tip of the storm, then I can believe it’d take three days to get here.”

  We go quiet for a second, and I remember what Christie Jones said: If you were to ask Alex, he might have a less rosy view than I do.

  “What did yours look like?” I ask softly.

  Alex’s eyes widen a little. He doesn’t ask whether or not the sheriff told me. But he looks a bit surprised that she did.

  “Seeing them . . . it’s not something I was born with,” he says slowly. “And I never saw that one, either. I thought I was sick, just like everyone else did. I mean, I’d been sick since I was little, so everyone always assumed it’d get worse someday. At least, that’s what they said when they thought I wasn’t listening.”

  He paused. “My dad heard about Lotus Valley from someone in my pulmonologist’s waiting room. Said the dry air would be good for my lungs and that we’d be happy here. I still have no idea why he took life advice from a stranger. Maybe he was just relieved to hear someone say it would get better, instead of talking to him like my life was already over.”

  His shoulders jerk upward, like he’s suppressing a shiver. “Ms. Jones came to our house that first night. She wasn’t sheriff yet, and she’d only recently come back to town herself. She just kind of saw us and knew. I don’t know what she said to my father. But she came down the hall, into my room, and she shut the door. And then she looked up about eight feet, smiled, and said ‘Let’s get this off you, shall we?’

  “And . . . I don’t remember anything after that. I know Rudy must have killed it, in the end, Ms. Jones has never told me the details. But I didn’t start seeing them until months after that. I think being so close to one for so long kind of—opened something.”

  His pale lips twitch. “I wasn’t the only person attacked that year. Or even that month. But I think it’s different when it’s a kid. And this wasn’t just an attack. It clung to me, fed off me, for months. But on the other hand, Rudy saved me. It wasn’t the first time a neighbor had intervened for a human. But it was the first time a lot of people realized that neighbors can be killed.

  “It brought a lot of things to the surface,” Alex says. “Things that had been simmering a long time. And the town was of two minds. They were scared of what the neighbors were capable of, but they couldn’t reject them completely, knowing that one of them had the power to protect us. That’s how you end up with a town where Maggie Williams is mayor and Ms. Jones is sheriff. They can’t decide, even now.”

  He smiles. But it’s bitter. “Ms. Jones kept reaching out to me after that. Maggie Williams thinks that’s when she ‘got in my head.’ But she never told me how to feel. She just knew, even before I told her what I’d started to see, that my world was going to be different now. And she knew I’d need to hear that different doesn’t mean dangerous.”

  “Oh.” It’s a full second before I realize that’s inadequate. “Sorry.”

  He shakes his head quickly. “I’m telling you this so you know where I’m coming from. You didn’t invite this in. No one ever does.”

  “Except me,” Felix says.

  “Felix’s time with the sheriff isn’t so much an internship as a Scared Straight program,” Alex says dryly.

  “But in my defense,” Felix says, ignoring the warning groan from Alex, “my parents are scientists! I was raised to ask questions! If you’re going to plunk me in the middle of nowhere and tell me my neighbors are ageless eldritch beings, you can’t expect me not to go see for myself!”

  “You yelled that you didn’t believe in them,” Alex says.

  “I was trying to get them to show themselves!” Felix says. Back to me, he adds, “But on the bright side, when one of them followed me to Natalie Meyer’s sweet sixteen, Alex literally broke in to rescue me. So, worth it.”

  “And if you’d listened to me when I asked you to come to the sheriff’s office,” Alex says, “I wouldn’t have had to.”

  “I didn’t know you yet!” Felix says. “I thought you were hitting on me!”

  “I told you there was something attached to your back,” Alex says.

  “I don’t know how y’all flirt here!” Felix says.

  I smile and duck my head. It’s kind of Alex to say I didn’t ask for this. But he doesn’t know that.

  “So sorry to keep you waiting.” Paul emerges, as if in slow motion, from behind the curtains. “Quite a few records to sift through. Got some receipts here, if you’d like them.”

  “Did you find anything?” I ask as Alex takes the bundle of receipts from Paul’s hands.

  “It’s certainly from my stock,” he says with a nod. “And it was in my inventory until about two weeks ago.”

  “Do you remember who bought it?” I say.

  “No one did, young lady,” Paul says. “I have no record of selling this.”

  “Someone . . .” I stop, uncurl my fists. Not now. Breathe normally.

  “I’m afraid shoplifting happens,” Paul says with a slow, unconcerned smile. “I must have been in the back.”

  “Then let’s look at the security tapes,” Felix says.

  “Felix,” Alex mutters. “Do you see any cameras in here?”

  “Good heavens,” Paul says. “Why would I need such a thing?”

  “I mean,” Felix says, “I don’t mean to tell you how to run your business, but—”

  I wave him off. “And the cassette?”

  Paul turns to me. His expression stays neutral, but the movement is deliberate. If I had
to guess, he’s starting to think about who I might be. “It wasn’t sold with the tape deck, if that’s what you’re asking. I check all such merchandise for any personal items that might have been . . . left behind.”

  Breathe normally, I remind myself again. But I think we’re past that point.

  Alex bundles up the tape deck and cassette into his bag. “Thank you, sir. Sorry we have to take this again.”

  “Not to worry, young man.” Paul waves a hand lazily. “If I didn’t miss it the first time, I won’t miss it now.”

  Alex heads for the door first, nudging Felix in the same direction. I turn to follow, but a hand lands on my shoulder from behind.

  “It’s you. Isn’t it?” Paul smiles, slow and grave. “I should have known.”

  “I—” I have to swallow hard to wet the back of my throat. In the late afternoon sun, the glass windows of Paul’s Pawn and Loan look transparent, wide open to the rest of Lotus Valley. And anything else that’s watching.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out. And I turn and leave as fast as I can without running.

  The light outside glints hard off the pavement, and I duck my head, rummaging through my backpack for my sunglasses. But by the time I raise it, the sunlight isn’t there.

  Neither is the pavement. The parking lot is gone, replaced by the long, dark hallway of my apartment. All the windows stand open, hot sticky air and distant noise bleeding in from the outside, the city open and watching. And distantly, I hear that same dull, shivery roar.

  It could be any night ever. Except I know exactly what night it is.

  I scramble back, and my foot hits something behind me, throwing off my balance. My heel is backed into the edge of the sidewalk where it meets the blazing bright pavement. And when I look up again, Felix is about two feet away, staring.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I manage a laugh. “I tripped.”

  I want to say I don’t know where that came from. But faintly, I do. Just for a moment, I felt the same as I did then, right? Like walls weren’t enough to protect me.