American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,60

like there’s a big tangle of them down in the lake.

A minnow, no more than a dart of black in the water, comes swimming by one of the fleshy reeds. The flow of the reed changes—from sine to cosine, thinks Joseph, who’s a bit of a math geek—as if it’s resisting the current of the water, which a reed definitely should not do. But then the reed snaps out, silent and snakelike, and he sees a flash of tiny, shining needle teeth, and the minnow is gone…

“Wh-what’s that?” Joseph stammers. “What’s down there?”

“It’s why there’s no one near the lake,” says Gracie. “But it won’t bother us. I’ve talked to Miss Tucker about it.” She bows her head. “I listened to them speak, Mr. Macey and Mr. First. They talked like old friends. Which I guess they are. But Mr. Macey… he was terrified. I’d never seen that before.”

“Everyone seems nervous, after Mr. Weringer died,” says Joseph.

“And that’s what’s strange. No one’s ever said it—no one ever says anything, of course—but they can’t die, can they? It’s not… allowed. There are rules.”

Joseph nods.

“You’re afraid of them, aren’t you?” Gracie says.

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Some, maybe. They’re not bad. They’re just lost. But for the longest time, I thought they weren’t afraid of anything.” She looks back at him. “But I was wrong, Joseph. They are afraid of someone. And they’re afraid of that person just as much as we’re afraid of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mr. Macey came back to Mr. First again,” she says. “He said he’d learned who killed Weringer. Or he thought he’d learned who. He said a word then—I couldn’t understand it—and Mr. First went all quiet. And after that, Mr. First was so dismayed he could barely talk, to me or Mr. Macey. I didn’t know who it was they were talking about, but it’s someone new, and the… I guess the rules don’t apply to them. Whoever this person is, they’re allowed to hurt things, to kill them. I don’t know why they haven’t before now, but that’s what they’re doing. Or what they did, to Mr. Weringer.”

Joseph huddles close to Gracie on the stone shelf. His intentions are far from amorous: he is terrified, terrified of the thing in the water and those strange glens in the woods, and now she’s telling him about someone even worse, someone that inspires fear in things he thought couldn’t even understand fear. Yet Gracie is still and calm, a stable rock on this dark, swirling mountain, so he clings to her.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

“Because I don’t want to see you hurt,” she says. “Things are changing in Wink. Things never change in Wink, but that’s what’s happening now. I want to make sure you’ll be safe.”

“Would you run away with me, Gracie?”

“Run away?” She is quiet. “I’ve never thought about it… I don’t know if… I don’t know if I’ll be able to get away.”

“But I’d want you to come with me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Joseph, are you listening? This is much, much more important than you or me.”

Joseph draws back a little, stung.

“You don’t understand how bad this is,” says Gracie. “I might be one of the only people who knows what’s going on, thanks to Mr. First. He’s given me certain… authorities, though I’m not sure he knows it.”

Joseph looks at her out of the side of his eye. She is staring into the dark waters with queerly lifeless eyes. “Is that why you seem so different?” he asks.

She shuts her eyes. “It gets worse at night. In the day I feel all right, but at night… things change.” She swallows. “I’m in one place… and then, if I’m not looking, I’m suddenly someplace very different. Somewhere with red stars, and many mountains…”

There is a ripple in the water, then another. At first Joseph is nervous, eyes searching for those fleshy tendrils in the water, but then he realizes Gracie is crying, her tears falling into the pond. It is a disturbing sight, for she cries without moving her face at all: her eyes are wide and calm, with tears simply welling up at the rims to leak down her face.

Joseph embraces her and holds her close. “It’s all right,” he says.

“It’s not,” she says. “It isn’t and it won’t be. Not for me.”

“We’ll make it all right.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We’ll do what we can, I guess. We can’t do anything more than that.” But though Joseph’s words are comforting, he is