Velvet Rain - A Dark Thriller (8 page)

Kain found it strange to call Al
big
in front of his wife, but she seemed to pay it no mind. He tried to imagine
her
calling him that and couldn’t, not even in private. Especially in private.

Georgia toyed with her eggs. Salted them. Peppered them. Stirred them. Big Al handed her a
Don’t you dare, Georgia Hembruff,
look, a subtle sharpening of the eyes that husbands and wives know only too well. She pretended not to notice, and as she casually forked some of her eggs into her mouth, said: “So what are they, really?”

“
Georgia Hembruff
… cripes, don’t you ever stop?”

“He said he didn’t mind. You don’t, do you?”

“No,” Kain said. “Not at all.”

“See? I told you, Allan.” She straightened in her chair and gave him her complete attention, as if expecting him to deliver the secret of the universe. Maybe a better recipe for apple pie.

Kain took some coffee, and this honest delay seemed to put the woman on pins and needles. Big Al just shook his head as he bit down on a crunchy slice of dark toast.

Truthfully, Kain wanted to lean forward and whisper,
They’re the scars the aliens left,
in her ear, just to see her expression. But of course, he did no such thing.

“They’re really just birthmarks.”

Poof.
He didn’t think he had ever seen a face fall so flat. Like a balloon losing all of its air. Georgia’s mouth fell, the bottom lip sort of wavering there. Her eyes seemed to slip back in their sockets.

“Cripes, just pass the pepper,” Big Al sighed. He waited for Georgia to hand it to him, but when she didn’t, he reached forward and grabbed it himself. He peppered his eggs and bacon, shaking his head while he did so. The man seemed to do that a lot.

“I think she’s in total shock,” he said, and then, with a laugh, added, “You want one of my pills, darlin’?”

Georgia Hembruff didn’t look like she needed one of her husband’s nitro tablets—Big Al had angina, his coronary arteries starved for blood whenever he overexerted himself—but she did look crestfallen, if not in shock. Kain wished he’d given her the aliens line after all.

“Birthmarks,” she said after a moment, her voice falling off. It was evident she didn’t believe it. Kain wondered if Big Al did.

“He might as well have told you he was from outer space. They’re
birthmarks,
for Christ’s sake.”

“Allan Jef—”

“Don’t Allan Jefferson
me.
Kain’s been good enough to put up with your nosiness without sayin’ boo. Now—” Georgia started to say something, but Big Al raised a silencing hand. “Enough now.”

“I don’t like that language, Allan. You know I don’t. If you have to swear, I mean really.”

“For
cripes
sake. Better?” Big Al had a mouthful of toast now. The last word came out
Bedderr?

“Hmph.”

Georgia slunk in her chair, stewing. She stirred her eggs again. She glanced up more than once, at the scars, and Kain nearly came unglued. There were times, like now, when he just wanted to scream it out loud, shriek the bloody truth and be done with it. But to tell these good people the truth (wasn’t
that
a laugh, the
truth,
the aliens line would have been more believable) would be akin to making the rains come. Small wonder he packed light.

“My mother has them, too,” he said, and couldn’t believe he’d said it. His father had been a salesman all his life, and he could remember him telling him that when you were trying to sell ice cubes to Eskimos, you had to
make
the sale. And so he pitched.

Even Big Al raised a brow. “No kiddin’.”

“It’s true,” he said, the hole he’d dug now a chasm.

Georgia’s eyes brightened. “The same? Exactly?”

“Cripes.”

“It’s all right. Really.” Kain looked at Georgia again, with the straightest face he could summon. “Exactly.”

Ice cubes to Eskimos.

The woman sat very still, contemplating this juicy tidbit. And then: “Do you have a picture of her?”

He had one, of course, tucked inside the diary he kept, the one buried inside the bottom of his knapsack, the one in the hidden compartment. It was old and worn, partly from his travels, more so from his touch, from losing himself in it. There was a further blemish on it, a yellowed stain from a single tear, and he could see it now as clearly as if he were holding it. He saw his mother in his mind then, brimming with life, smiling into the lens of his father’s old Brownie, and his heart sank as quickly as it had risen. His eyes faded; for a moment that seemed to last an age, he thought he heard the rains.

“Kain? You all right?”

He saw the man across from him—saw his lips moving, saw him staring—but didn’t hear him. He succumbed to that velvety rhythm, the rains like distant voices, driving him numb.

“Kain?”

“No … no picture,” he muttered, coming back. “I’m sorry. I just haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“I’ll bet she misses her son, too,” Georgia said, in that stilted manner people use to move on in a conversation that has suddenly grown awkward. Kain was glad she did, but he could see in her eyes she had questions burning.

“Just one more thing,” she said, sipping her coffee, not making eye contact. She pretended to be looking out at the gorgeous sunrise that was spreading the new day across the fields like an artist’s strokes. “Do you mind?”

Big Al sighed and threw his hands up. “I give up.”

“Stop it! You’re making me out to be some kind of biddy, you old coot! I’m just curious, is all.”

“I’m just sayin’ that maybe he doesn’t wanna talk about this stuff. Didja ever think that? Pass the jam, wouldja.”

She took the jar of home-made jam and plunked it down in front of his plate. “I’ll just shut up then.”

“It’s fine,” Kain said. “It’s fine.”

Another lie, a small white one, but what choice had he now? He only prayed he could seal this can of worms before it spilled over, and they slithered in every direction.

“Well … you heard him,” Big Al said. “Go ahead, get it outta your system. Ask him what it’s like on Mars.”

Georgia cast him a look that said,
Keep it up,
if he wanted to spend a week on the sofa. Big Al spread some jam on his toast, took a bite, and chewed quietly.

“Ask away,” Kain said. “I’m pretty well an open book.”

The woman set her cup down as she turned to him, her color brightening. “You’re sure? I know sometimes I can come off as … well, I don’t mean to pry. It’s just that I’ve never—”

“Just ask.”

She nodded, then placed a weathered hand over his. It was warm, surprisingly soft. She had the same baby blues as his mother, and they glistened just as brightly.

“Is it as nice as they say in Florida?”

~

A bullet dodged, he finished breakfast and worked well into the evening, thanking Big Al twice for letting him borrow the flatbed. He hadn’t asked to borrow it, and
letting
was definitely the wrong word; Big Al had insisted after Kain had insisted he couldn’t impose another night. It was a complete sign of trust, something he wasn’t used to, and he promised to be in the next morning with the other hands. The farmer had joked that he’d darn well better, because how hard could it be to find a drifter with long hair and birthmarks like that.

He came to a crossroad and waited for a car to pass. As the dust began to settle, he gripped the wheel a little tighter. He’d been anxious all day.

He shouldn’t be so troubled; the road had hardened him. But the truth was, he liked it here. The air and the fields. The work and the Hembruff’s.

But now—like the life that Brikker had taken from him—he could feel
this
slipping away.

And—
no.

NO.

He shut his eyes in a panic. His muscles compressed into hard wire; his skin went hot.

He tried to fight it, tried to stop himself from slipping. But will was not with him. Not on this day.

He was there again, in that dark and hellish hole, swallowed by shadows. Strapped in the chair like the animal he’d become.

And there, beyond his screams, beyond the rapid
fffft-fffft fffft-fffft
of the machine, that mind-killing
machine,
he could hear it, that black and shapeless voice, and it scared the hell out of him.

~ 7

Kain swallowed a
real
scream. His breathing came hard and aching. He couldn’t get his window down fast enough, in lust of a breeze that never came. The horn came again, rude and insane, and when he looked up in the rear-view, saw a dusty red pickup. Two had the cab, one the back, and it took a moment for him to recognize who they were. Part of the Tribe. The driver, Pete Ferguson, sat next to Nate Russell, but he couldn’t tell who was riding in back. It was either Keith Miller or Mike Bedard.

He struggled to gather himself. Now they were hollering in laughter, one of them asking if the old geezer knew his way home. He crossed slowly, and as they raced past him, he saw it was Mike Bedard in back after all. The kid had his hands cupped in a makeshift bullhorn, shouting at him to get a horse. They left him in their dust.

He had to pull over. His hands trembled. He slipped forward, pressing up against the wheel.

Kain shut his eyes again.

And prayed.

~

He drove to the hotel without further incident. Famished as he was, sleep was a deeper hunger, and he had planned to skip dinner and slip right into dream. But his plans had gone awry. Henry Roberts had rented his flat. There were no vacancies at all, Henry told him, not until next week at the earliest, and he wasn’t renting out Five until he rode up to Milton’s Hardware for a new door. Henry thought he might have gotten away with a replacement lock, but he’d blown a hole in the door that was simply too big to repair. The man started on about the screamer again, his stick-thin legs poking out of those ridiculously baggy shorts he always seemed to wear, about how he was gonna fix that screamin’ whore, fix her good. The man was
still
rambling when Kain thanked him and headed out the door.

It was getting on in the evening, just before eight, and he decided to head to Rosa’s in the north end of town. He had a sandwich, ham and cheddar on rye, and some vegetable soup. Though still hungry from the day’s exertions, he passed on dessert, and as he sat thinking about where he might bed for the night, suffered a nasty craving for a cigarette. He almost always wanted one after a meal, but tonight it was strangely unsettling. He hadn’t had a puff in nearly five years (and wasn’t about to, thank the Project for small miracles), yet here he was still wanting one, longing for that soothing kick—and thinking of Brikker. The man smoked Gold Armor (“
Seriously smooth—like a coat for the throat!
” their ads brazenly boasted), they both did (a shared trait Brikker had once told him made them more alike than Number Three dared admit), but in the end, it was Brikker alone, sucking them back like the vampire he was. With Kain, the smokes had never agreed with the drugs. He always threw up.

At the counter, two crusty sods perched on stools yakked, although it was really an argument in disguise, in that time-honored manner old men seemed to favor: opinions flying, spirits rising, a hint of anger lurking behind strained civility. One of them was going on about how that idiot Kennedy was going to get our boys killed over nothing in Vietnam. The other countered that something had to be done to stop the Red Spread, as he called it, and if that meant a little American blood, so be it. Despite some poignant
harrumphs
and some spirited
Awww-you-don’t-know-what-you’re-talkin’-about’s
, they seemed to be going nowhere fast.

The waitress who had served him emerged from the swing doors at the far reach of the diner. She asked one of the men—the guy who had no trouble spilling blood, so long as it wasn’t his—George, she called him—to settle down. He huffed a bit, then sipped his coffee. His friend apologized.

The woman was pretty, with blonde hair tied back. She moved gracefully, a slight bounce in her step, but she held a silent seriousness that seemed to betray her bright eyes. Still, she possessed a classy look, like a Varga Girl in
Esquire,
and once she had caught him looking.

She set down two plates at the booth next to the jukebox, stopping to chat with the cute couple huddled there on the one side. The three of them laughed at a joke. The young man dug into his pocket and slipped her a coin, drew her close with a motion of his finger, whispered something in her ear, and then she nodded, mouthing
Sure
with a wonderfully delicate smile. At the jukebox, she popped in the coin and scanned the selections, and then fingered a couple of buttons. She looked back at the booth, and the girl gushed as Elvis crooned “Love Me Tender.” It was a classic to be sure, one of Kain’s favorites, and the waitress winked at the boy when the girl was looking up at him and not at her, as if to say,
Great choice, kid, she’s putty, now.

She faded into the kitchen when the cook (
Rosa,
Kain thought,
it had to be Rosa
) called out
Fries!
in a voice as prickly as cactus. At that, a man entered the diner and made a beeline for the counter. He brushed up against one of the old-timers, the one who thought JFK an idiot. The patron looked up and started to say something, but his face stiffened. His chum looked no less anxious, suddenly. Clearly they knew him.

The interloper was lanky and unshaven. His jacket and jeans were stained in black grease. He held an unmistakable anger.

The waitress returned with a plate of fries. She didn’t look up, but as she slid the plate onto the counter in front of the man she called George, she froze.

“Ray … what are you doing here? You—” She lowered her voice. “I want you to leave right now.”

“Just wanna talk, baby.”

The man stepped back from the counter, but this gesture did nothing to settle her. His pasted grin did even less.