A Cold Tomorrow

by Mae Clair

  “It still doesn’t explain what they mean.” Katie had been mostly quiet, letting Caden and Ryan carry the conversation, but the word “noise” seemed to hold special significance for her.

  Jerome looked up. “Broken down it translates to October thirty-first, at 11:41:56 PM.”

  Halloween.

  Caden was speechless. He could see it now, military time stamped with the month and day. Damn, if the stupid thing didn’t make sense. He didn’t buy some make-believe alien named Cold would pop into existence at that hour, but the code was clever. A little too clever for Parker Kline, if the kid was as feeble-minded as he’d been led to believe.

  Ryan exhaled loudly and slumped into a chair against the wall. Caden could read the expression on his face: This bullshit is over my head.

  If it weren’t for his connection to the Mothman and what had just happened in the igloo, Caden might feel the same way. But it was hard to discount a visitor from another world while bonded to a creature with no face and red eyes. Thank God, Jerome didn’t share his room with another patient or they might all end up in West Central.

  “The thirty-first is a little over a week from now,” Katie pointed out.

  Jerome glanced between them. “Look, I know you probably think I’m whacked, and maybe I am a bit gone on the conspiracy stuff and UFOs, but this is for real.” He slapped the paper emphatically. “I don’t remember what happened after I left Parker, but I think someone followed me. Someone who wanted this information.” Another tap to the paper. “I think maybe I was scared and driving too fast. That’s why I went off the road. And that Deputy Brown guy?” He rubbed a bony hand over the back of his neck, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I think he was one of them. When he realized I didn’t have what he wanted, he let me go.”

  “But you ended up here. In a coma,” Katie protested.

  “I think they messed with my head, then dumped me somewhere nearby.”

  “They?” The story was sounding crazier by the minute, but Caden couldn’t let it go.

  As if sensing he’d reeled them in, Jerome continued fervently. “You don’t think there aren’t guys out there monitoring the skies and airwaves, wanting to make sure all this UFO stuff is kept hush-hush? Not just government types, but others too. Shadow organizations. They’ve got the resources and know-how to pose as law enforcement or military. A lot of them are even connected to the military, working under the radar. Think of the panic that would set in if people knew aliens could breach our air space. Can’t have that, can we? What do you think the Mothman is?”

  “Jerome, enough.” Caden held up a hand to stop the torrent of information. Jerome was breathing heavily even with the plastic hose supplying a steady stream of oxygen. All they needed was to get kicked out of the hospital for agitating a patient or causing him to have a setback. “Take it easy. Getting uptight can’t be good for your condition.”

  “But I don’t have a condition.” Jerome’s eyes bulged as he tried to stress the point. “I’m telling you, those guys did something to my head. Maybe they gave me a drug you can’t trace. Then they dumped me here because they didn’t need me anymore. Parker’s going to be a lot harder to get, but they’ll go after him next.”

  “Parker’s not in West Central.” Caden hated admitting the truth. “He escaped.”

  Jerome’s face drained of color. His mouth opened and closed like a fish gulping air. Then with a great bark of laughter, he collapsed against his pillows. “And you don’t believe in Indrid Cold? How the hell do you think he got out of there? Cold took him away.”

  “We’re done here.” Ryan stood up.

  “Wait.” Caden motioned for his brother to stay where he was. Jerome looked immensely pleased with himself. The scrawny man’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. Caden didn’t believe Cold had zapped to Earth and snatched Parker from his hospital room, but Jerome clearly had an inside track to Parker’s mindset. It was possible he knew even more that could prove beneficial. “Do you know someone named Lach Evening?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever hear Parker mention that name?”

  “No.”

  “Jerome.” Katie coiled her fingers around his arm where it rested on the rollaway table. While Caden was frustrated, and Ryan appeared ready to write the whole thing off as lunacy, she seemed willing to give Jerome the benefit of the doubt. “Even if we believe you about the message, it’s incomplete.” She indicated the slip of paper. “It gives a date and a time, but not a place.”

  “I know.” He seemed to deflate with the words. “Cold did something to Parker that made him the way he is now. Parker believed he was coming back to set things right. He created an opening for him with those blocks of paper he was always drawing—kind of like a beacon so Cold could find him.”

  “So you want us to believe he stepped through a drawing into Parker’s room and took the kid with him to Lanulos?” Ryan’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Jerome’s face turned red. “Mock if you will, but Parker opened a bridge. Cold can only manifest in physical form when alignments between dimensions are precise. Parker found a way to reach him outside of that boundary using the noise in his head.”

  “Then what you’re saying is that Parker is no longer on Earth?” Unlike Ryan, Katie did not appear judgmental.

  Jerome nodded.

  “Then why the code?” Caden asked. “Why the date Cold is supposed to return?”

  “Because that’s when he can materialize. It has something to do with ley lines and the folds between worlds. Cold gave the message to Parker over his radio.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes.

  “Parker’s radio doesn’t work,” Caden said bluntly.

  “It doesn’t have to. Not for someone like Cold. He can manipulate frequencies. Most UFOnauts can. People like Parker call it chatter.”

  Caden hated getting caught up in Jerome’s delusions, but there was no logical explanation for how Parker had vanished from his room at West Central. He rubbed his temple. “Why would Indrid Cold come back on October thirty-first? If his goal was to reach Parker, and Parker is gone….”

  Jerome squirmed. “Yeah, I know. But there’s some kind of obligation Cold has to fulfill. Parker said it had to do with his past and something he left unfinished. Because I believed Parker and wanted to see Cold for myself, Parker gave me the message. I think other people have been watching Parker too.”

  “The Deputy Browns of the world?” Ryan challenged. “The shadow organizations?”

  Jerome shrugged. “I wasn’t the only one who saw Brown.” He looked at Katie.

  “All right.” Caden wanted to wrap things up. His head was pounding, and the nonsense Jerome dumped on them did nothing to mute the ache. “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”

  “I want to get out of here. I want to track down Cold on Halloween.”

  “Where would you look?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know. The TNT maybe, or on the road to my place. That’s where Parker saw Cold the first time.”

  “You’re going to have to talk to your doctors about getting out of here.” It was the perfect chance for Caden to bow out of the conversation.

  “Yeah. Here.” Jerome extended the slip of paper on which he’d scribbled the date and time of Cold’s arrival. “Maybe you don’t believe me, but hang on to this, anyway. You’ve still got time to make up your mind.”

  Caden hesitated. He took the sheet, folded it in half, and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Ryan, I need to talk to you.” He motioned for his brother to follow and walked out the door.

  * * * *

  “So you want me to believe some invisible oracle tossed you around in a windstorm?” Ryan took a long pull from his beer. The talk Caden had wanted to have with him didn’t occur until that night when they were both off duty. In the end, Katie and Eve joined them too, all four of them settled in a booth at the River Café.

  Th
e place was fairly busy for a Thursday night, over half the seats at the bar taken, several of the tables filled. Eve had reserved a booth for them in the back corner, the perks of owning the place. Away from the crowd, they could talk quietly without worrying about overeager ears that might zone in on their conversation.

  “You must have upset the thing somehow.” Seated beside Caden, Eve looked worried, her brows creased in concern. “It wasn’t hostile when Katie and I talked to it.”

  “Leave it to my brother to piss off the bogeyman.” Ryan’s lips quirked upward in a good-natured smirk.

  “Caden, I’m worried.” Eve gripped his arm, her diamond engagement ring glinting in the glow of the brass wall lanterns. “It might have hurt you.”

  “I think I pushed too hard.” Caden placed his hand over hers. “It turned violent when I pressed about Parker. But it answered with something besides ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

  “Oh?” Seated across from him, Ryan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. Everything he’d ever heard about the entity indicated it only spoke two words, a negative or a positive affirmation.

  “It said ‘Parker is my mistake to fix,’” Caden explained.

  “Back to Parker again.” Ryan had to admit the kid’s name was on everyone’s tongue these days. Between his escape from West Central, worry about what he might do, and Floyd damning the whole system anytime someone got near him, it was hard not to have an opinion about Point Pleasant’s tragic murderer. Ryan had even been stopped by a belligerent Shawn Preech when he’d entered the café. Seated at the bar, several empties of Rolling Rock at his elbow, Preech had demanded to know why he and Caden weren’t out looking for “that lunatic kid.”

  “Maybe we could talk about something else.” Sounding tired, Katie massaged the back of her neck.

  Earlier that day, Ryan had told her about Lach Evening and Lyle, suggesting she stay at the hotel for a while, or with her mom. He’d thought it a reasonable request, but she’d stubbornly refused. At least she’d conceded to having Sam stay with Doreen Sue until they were able to get a track on Lyle.

  “I agree with Katie.” No surprise that Eve sided with her friend. “You guys need to give all this stuff a rest. Let’s have a toast before our food gets here.” She smiled broadly. “I’m getting married.”

  It was the perfect opening for the girls to start gushing, sharing ideas about wedding gowns, dinner menus, and flowers. Caden rolled his eyes, but there was no disguising his pleasure at being engaged. After a while, Ryan lowered his voice and spoke solely to Caden.

  “You remember that star shit stuff I told you about?”

  His brother nodded.

  “I sent some off for analysis and got the report back today.”

  Caden took a swig from his bottle of Michelob. “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “They couldn’t determine what it was?”

  “There was nothing there to determine. By the time the lab got the container, everything inside had disappeared. Not a trace of residue left. It’s like the stuff evaporated or vanished into thin air.”

  “Chester Wilson seems to think it came from a UFO.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that.” Ryan glanced across the café. Someone opened the front door, allowing a draft of cold air inside. It wasn’t quite seven o’clock, but twilight had already claimed the sky, coating the windows overlooking the street with a chrome-like sheen. At the bar someone laughed loudly, and Shawn Preech added his guffaws to the hilarity. Ryan wondered how he and Suzanne were coping after losing Duke. Apparently, the dog’s death hadn’t stopped Shawn from downing his usual six-pack before staggering home. “If there really was a UFO, maybe it was responsible for moving that cow and dropping it in the other pasture. It could have gotten caught up in a beam or something, and that’s what made its brain explode.”

  Caden grinned into his bottle. “It sounds like you’ve been reading spaceman comics.”

  Ryan gave him a swift kick under the table. “You got a better idea, wise ass?”

  “What are you two going on about now?” Eve had apparently picked up that their conversation switched back to the taboo subject of UFOs. Before either could answer, she refocused, her gaze flicking across the room. “Uh-oh. Look who just came in.”

  Ryan glanced over his shoulder. Seated across from him, Eve and Caden had a view of the connecting hallway to the hotel. Patrons of the café entered from the street through the front door, or meandered down from their rooms and crossed the lobby. One of them, an obvious guest of the hotel, had chosen the latter.

  “Guy likes black, doesn’t he?” Caden observed.

  Ryan grunted.

  Dressed in his customary dark suit, this time with a black button-down shirt and tie, Evening took a table near the hallway. While looking around the room, he set a folded newspaper beside his plate. In the subdued light of the wall lanterns, his whitish-blond hair reflected threads of gold. Nancy Arnold, Eve’s part-time waitress, rushed to wait on him before he even had time to open a menu.

  “He certainly knows how to dress,” Eve commented.

  Caden scowled. “He looks like an undertaker.”

  “Jealous?”

  A snort. “Hardly.”

  “He’s…different.” Katie’s voice was thin, barely a whisper. “It’s like I know him from somewhere. A long time ago.”

  Ryan looked at her sharply. “You’ve seen that guy before?”

  “I don’t know.” Katie turned her attention to the glass of ginger ale in her hand. She was the only one who hadn’t selected an alcoholic beverage when Nancy took their order. “I think he was outside the hospital the night we found Jerome. And there’s something about him that reminds me of—” She stopped abruptly, sucking down a sharp breath. “I remember now. The night the bridge fell.”

  “What are you talking about?” Caden’s eyes narrowed.

  Ryan tensed involuntarily. The collapse of the Silver Bridge was a tragic subject for everyone in Point Pleasant, but not everyone had suffered the death of a loved one. He and Caden had lost their younger sister, Maggie, and Eve had lost her father.

  “I was outside of my mom’s hair salon.” Katie kept her gaze lowered as if watching the memory unfold in her glass. “I remember there were a lot of birds in the air, like something upset them. Eve and Sarah were walking across the street toward the Crowne Theater. It made me think how nice it would be to have a close friend like that.”

  Eve reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  Katie smiled faintly, looking at her friend. “A man asked where he could find my mom. I thought he was there about Wendy, because he looked so official, dressed all in black. And he had, he had…” She drew in a shaky breath.

  Ryan slid his arm around her shoulder. “Katie, what’s wrong?”

  “He had weird fingers.” She looked at each of them in turn. “Slender, but kind of fat at the end.”

  “Just like Evening.” Caden’s expression was grim.

  “He told me his name was Lach. He had blond hair.”

  “Bingo.” Ryan glanced over his shoulder to find Evening staring directly at him. “I need to have a talk with our man over there.”

  He started to stand, but Katie gripped his hand. Her eyes were wide when she gazed up at him. “Ryan, don’t. There’s something else.”

  He eased back into his seat. “What?”

  “He hasn’t aged. He looks exactly the same.”

  “But that was fifteen years ago,” Eve protested. “How is that possible?”

  “Dinners should be up in ten.” Nancy appeared at their table with a cheerful smile. Energy rolled off her in waves and bubbled over in social charm. “Would you like another round of drinks while you’re waiting?”

  Seemingly flustered by the interruption, Katie lowered her head. “I’m good.”

  “Me too,” Eve said.

  Caden motioned to his bottle. “I’ll t
ake another Michelob.”

  “Same here.” Ryan slid his empty to the end of the table where Nancy scooped it up. “Hey, uh, the guy you just waited on…there behind us with the blond hair.”

  “Oh, him.” Nancy’s voice escaped in a breathy rush, her gaze darting momentarily to Evening. “Yes?” To Ryan she looked like a love-struck schoolgirl.

  Had to be the clothes. Either that or the accent, if he could ever place the damn thing.

  “Did he say anything odd to you?” He didn’t know why he asked, only that the guy was starting to give him the creeps. He’d never bought the whole expert-on-supernatural-creatures story, or whatever Evening had termed his pseudo-science. But with every moment that passed, he grew convinced everything Evening said was a lie.

  “Weird you should ask.” Nancy tucked a pencil behind her ear. “He wanted to know if you and Katie were a couple.”

  “Shit.” Ryan bolted to his feet.

  “Ryan, please.” Katie grabbed his hand. “He might remember me. Maybe he’s worried what I’ve told you about him.”

  “Hey, if you know something, spill the beans.” Nancy’s voice was bouncy. “I’m too embarrassed to ask him about his accent, but I’d love to know where he’s from. He’s gorgeous.”

  “Nancy.” Eve’s glance and tone carried the censure of a boss. “Drinks, please.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.” The girl bobbed her head. “And food in ten, like I said.”

  She’d no sooner hustled away then the door to the street burst open with an explosive bang. Donnie Bradley rushed inside, followed closely by a breathless Duncan.

  “Hey, listen up!” Donnie thrust his fist into the air, his face a ruddy mask of excitement. “Break out the booze. We nailed that bastard.”

  “What are you squawking about?” Shawn Preech swung around on his bar stool. “What bastard?”

  “The only one that matters.” Duncan pushed past his brother. “I shot the Mothman. I think I damn near killed the fucking thing.”

  Chapter 11

  Caden waited only long enough for Duncan and Donnie to tell their tale before heading to Eve’s office and grabbing the phone. He called Weston at home, catching the sheriff in the middle of his dinner. “We’re going to need patrols in the TNT.”