“Good to know,” I murmured. “But still. Let’s hurry up.”
I swept the beam back and forth on the ground at my feet, kicking leaves and rocks out of my path as I went. The rushing noise came and went, close and far depending on how I turned my head. It was as if I were trying to tune into a radio station whose signal was too weak to come through clearly.
“This is ridiculous.” I pushed my feet through another foot or two of undergrowth and stopped. “Everything is too small and twiggy or too damn big. Maybe we can pull something down off a tree or something.”
“I don’t think we should do that.”
“Why?”
“I really don’t think we should disturb anything out here. Eden, are you sure we have to do this? Your car didn’t look too bad. Can’t we just—”
“No, we can’t. We’ll blow out a tire before we even get back on the road. And what did I say about keeping quiet?”
He sucked his breath in, and I thought he was jokingly complying with my request until I took another step and he caught me by the shirttail. “What are you doing? Let go or keep up.”
He only tightened his hold on my poor T-shirt and tugged me back towards him.
I turned around and smacked his hand. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I growled, pretending not to know a loaded question when I asked one.
“I saw him,” he said, more quietly than I’d ever heard him speak before. If I’d been another six inches away, I couldn’t have heard him.
I brought the light up until it aimed its halogen beam at his chest. “Who? Where?”
He lifted one long, skinny hand and waggled it as if he were trying to shake something off it. “Over there. I saw his eyes. He’s going that way. Wow, he moves so fast.”
Malachi dropped the end of my shirt and took a half-step back.
“Malachi,” I said with a warning.
I didn’t disbelieve him, exactly, but I didn’t want him to hightail it from fright. “Malachi, calm down.”
I wanted to say more, but I stopped and shook my head like I was dislodging water from my ears. The low, insistent static sound hummed stronger now. By now I was all but certain that the white noise was no river rush. It was too hard to think when I heard it. It was too hard to concentrate on anything else.
“I have to go. We have to go.”
“Malachi. Malachi, don’t run.”
“We have to go.”
“Malachi, calm down. Stay here for just a minute—”
“No,” he gasped, and he turned to run.
I caught his arm and whipped him back; and because I couldn’t think of anything else that would slow him down, I hit him as hard as I could. My knuckles caught him in the temple, or maybe on his brow-bone; I couldn’t tell. Either way, down he went. He sort of caught himself on his knees and elbows, and crumpled down to lie on his shoulder.
“Shit.” I rubbed the back of my hand against my stomach and knelt down beside Malachi.
“What’d you do that for?” he slurred, holding his palms against his eye.
“I didn’t mean to,” I answered, and it was almost true.
A small spark flashed over to my left and was gone. I swung my light around to catch its source. Between the trees something moved away from us, or past us, and was gone.
“Did you see that?” I asked my prone companion.
“I see stars, like in a cartoon, only they’re smaller. Brighter,” he answered dreamily. At least he didn’t sound afraid anymore.
“Good. Good then. You stay here and look at the stars. I’ll be right back.”
I underwent a moment of crisis trying to decide whether to bring the light or leave it with him, then took it and put it into his hand by prying his fingers apart and wrapping them around the barrel. “Hold this,” I told him.
“What?”
“Hold it, until I get back. Wave it around so I can find you again. Okay?”
“’Kay.”
“And don’t turn it off.”
“Turn it off.”
“Don’t turn it—oh hell. Never mind. Give it here. Give it back.” I wrested it out of his hand and set it down a few feet away, aimed at the sky. “Lie here and stay out of trouble. I’ll be back in a minute. I’m leaving this here so I can find my way back to you. Don’t touch it.”
“’Kay.”
I turned my back on my prostrate brother and gazed between the trees, looking to catch that flash of motion again. It was more like a fast burst of light, so I thought I might have better luck seeing it without the flashlight—and besides, if I took the thing with me I’d never find Malachi again.
I didn’t plan to wander far, anyway. If I didn’t find anything soon, I’d give up and go.
But I wanted to know what the watery white noise meant, and I wanted to see what moved in the trees. No person walked so fast, or so quiet; and it’d had ample opportunity to jump us if that was its intent. Instead it ignored us—brushed past us towards the river. If it saw us at all, it did not care that we were there.
I swiveled my head left and right, focusing, trying to pinpoint the inconsistent sound. Over to the left, maybe. It was stronger in that direction. I took a step or two that way, and I grew more certain.
Enough glow remained behind me to cast deep shadows in pillars around the trees, but even with the haphazard optical effect I spotted the gleam again.
I stumbled towards it, tripping over anything bigger than a quarter and scuffing my palms on every trunk that caught me. But the rush had reached a roar and compelled me forwards, even as the last of the light I’d left with Malachi faded dim enough to be useless behind me.
Before me a form came together on the riverbank, or it might have been only that I saw it better as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I thought it must be tall—a good head and a half taller than me, so at least seven feet or better—and I thought it was wearing a cloak or something else that flowed long around its back. Its shoulders were hunched, and its arms were wrapped around them.
It was rocking back and forth and mumbling, but I couldn’t understand what it was saying. The words didn’t make any sense from my distant position, and something about the cadence suggested I might not sort them out even if I drew closer.
I did move closer, forward from the trees and nearer to the river’s edge.
I couldn’t hear what the tall thing was saying, but I could understand it all the same. There were words in the swirling ambient noise, or if not words then something else very close to words—the chunks of ideas that inspire that which is spoken or written.
It’s not a cloak he’s wearing, I thought as I circled away from the trees and down to the water. It’s hair. It fell long and thick down to waist-level, and it swayed like a curtain.
“I can hear you,” I said.
It ignored me. He ignored me, I decided—assigning a more personal pronoun. He seated himself and wrapped his arms around his knees; he was still nodding back and forth as he sighed his monologue.
A deal is a deal. The last was dead, and I gave my word.
I couldn’t tell if he said it aloud or if I only heard it that way, but I understood him well enough regardless. “What deal?” I asked, but he didn’t turn around.
But was it the right thing to do?
“Was—was what right?”
Still he did not respond. I didn’t expect him to; he was not talking to me, and if he heard me address him, he didn’t deign to acknowledge it. But I wished he would turn around. I wanted to know what he was, and what he looked like.
He did turn, a three-quarters shift that showed me an indistinct profile and one warm-bright eye. It made me think of a cat’s eye, the way his socket pulled all the dim light together and concentrated it into a dull, certain gleam the color of a cut lime.
He almost seemed to address me then, or it might have been only that he spoke to himself while facing my direction.
No. The dead are my children. I owe them more than this.
Louder and louder the buzzing, roaring, humming sound that accompanied him. My eyes watered, and I pulled my hands up to rub them hard. The vibration became something that knocked my teeth together and made my cheeks numb, and when it stopped I let my hands fall to my sides from pure surprise.
Whoever he was, whatever he was, he was gone.
And I was in the dark—alone, except for the odd slapping of a fish against the water’s surface a few yards away. I yawned to stretch my jaws, and my ears popped.
“Eden?”
Malachi’s voice sounded closer than I expected. I felt like I’d moved a mile or more away from him, but a wobbly column of light wiggled through the trees and pointed at the sky.
“Eden, where did you go? Did he get you? Eden?”
“No one got me.”
“What?”
“Hang on, I’m coming back. Keep holding that up.”
I caught my foot on something heavy, and I crouched on one knee. I’d found a half-buried branch that might or might not suit my car-fixing purposes, so I kicked at it until I dislodged it.
“You hit me,” Malachi accused when I returned to him. He aimed the flashlight directly into my face.
“Yes. Get that thing out of my eyes.”
He lowered the light and ducked his head. “Sorry. Hey, you found a stick.”
“Yes, I found a stick. Come on. Let’s get back to the car. We need to get out of here.” I took the light away from him and used my stick to push him in front of me. “Move it. If we’re lucky, no one’s seen it yet. If we’re even luckier, this thing won’t fall apart when I shove it up under the tire rim.”
“Did you see him? Did you?”
I nodded, aiming with the stick. “This way. Yeah. I saw him.”
He went back to that low-pitched whisper he’d used on me before. “He’s awful, isn’t he? Is that what all the ghosts are like?”
“Awful?” I thought about it for a minute, but chose to disagree. “No. He’s very different, though. He’s no ghost; he’s something else. I don’t know what.”