Gregg Hurwitz - The Rains

Uncle Jim came into view inside, heading for the front door.

“Thank God,” I said.

Uncle Jim opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. I started to jog forward, but Patrick grabbed my arm. “Hang on,” he whispered.

Something in his voice scared me into stillness.

We stopped behind the big old ash tree with the rope swing. I rested my hand on the trunk, feeling beneath my palm the carving that Alex had made last year with Patrick’s folding knife: A.B.+P.R . in a heart. I remembered watching her work the blade into the bark, her brow furrowed with concentration, her teeth pinching that full lower lip. As usual I was the third wheel, grinding a stick into an anthill and doing my best not to notice the way Alex’s shirt rode up when she leaned forward, revealing a strip of tan skin at her lower back.

After all the things that had happened, the memory seemed like a glimpse into another world.

I felt JoJo clutching my side again, but I couldn’t move to comfort her. I was rooted to the ground, my eyes fixed on Uncle Jim.

He stood perfectly still in the middle of the porch, lit from the glow of the house.

“What’s he doing?” Rocky whispered, and Patrick hushed him.

We watched Uncle Jim do nothing.

And then he shuddered.

Not a shiver from the cold but a full-body shudder as if an electric current had passed through him. Then he was still once again.

A few seconds went by.

Fear clawed up my throat, and I swallowed it down.

“I’m gonna go to him,” I whispered to Patrick. “He’s fine.”

I started forward, but Patrick’s hand clamped down on my arm. I shook him loose and stepped into the open.

My brother’s voice came at me quietly from behind. “Chance,” he said. “Wait. Just wait.”

The grief in his voice made my denial melt away, and I halted. The wind blew through my jacket. The bitterness was still in the air, riding the back of my tongue. I felt a pressure behind my face. I didn’t keep on, but I didn’t retreat behind the tree either.

Uncle Jim had no way to see me in the darkness.

He was just standing there, frozen.

Then a blackness crept across his eyes until they looked like two giant pupils filling the space between the lids.

And then the blackness crumbled away like ash. The breeze lifted the bits of residue out of his head.

The lights of the house behind him showed in those two spots.

I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sand. We watched as he stepped off the porch. He walked about fifty feet from the house, then halted. His head lowered, a smooth motion like a security camera autoswiveling. Then he walked a few steps, made a right-angle turn, walked a few more, and did it again. He walked a little bit longer each time, though the turns remained crisp. He seemed to be charting a rectangular grid, spiraling out from the center point. It made no sense at all, and yet there was some terrible cold logic to it, a logic I could not grasp.

Seeing him like that, all stiff as if under a hex, felt worse than if we’d come home and found him split open like Mr. Franklin. I realized I’d cupped my hand over my mouth, maybe to keep from crying out.

Uncle Jim, who’d played marbles with me when I was a kid. Uncle Jim, who made the best paper airplanes and taught me how to sail them across the barn from the hayloft. Uncle Jim, who’d helped me with my algebra homework, puzzling through the equations at my side.

He continued charting his course over the land in front of our house, his vacant eyes lowered. I remembered what Patrick had said about Mr. Franklin, how it seemed he’d been looking for something on the ground. Uncle Jim stumbled over a rock but then righted himself and kept on course.

I turned around and saw that Patrick was breathing hard, his grip firm on the shotgun. JoJo and Rocky had drawn back into the brush behind us, ready to run.

“We have to go to him,” I said to Patrick. “We can’t leave him like that.”

“I know,” Patrick said.

I stepped out and jogged for Uncle Jim, ignoring Patrick’s shouts for me to wait up. As I neared, I sprinted even faster. I had to see up close, to know it was true, because part of me wouldn’t believe it.

I got within talking distance, and Uncle Jim finally halted. His head tilted up, and then I was looking at his face and through it at the same time. Everything else seemed the same-the scuffed cowboy boots, his faded Wranglers, that worn Carhartt jacket. I felt an impulse to run to him and hug him-to shut my eyes and pretend he was okay.

But then his hands went to his buckle. He yanked his belt free of the loops on his jeans and came at me. At first I thought he was going to whip me. Then I remembered Mrs. McCafferty and her hank of long hair, and I realized he was going to restrain me.

And then do what?

My hands whitened around the baling hooks. The curved metal spikes stuck out from between the knuckles of my fists.

“Please don’t,” I said. “Uncle Jim? Please don’t. Don’t make me.”

His face lost to shadow, he kept on, readying the leather strap with his hands.

I raised my weaponed fists. “Please don’t.”

I could hear Patrick running to catch up. He wouldn’t be here in time.

Uncle Jim’s boots kept on, tramping across the mud, closer and closer.

I was crying. “Don’t.”

And then he was on me.

I sidestepped him and swung the baling hook. It embedded itself in his throat. He made a terrible gurgling sound and sank to his knees. I shook the spike free of his neck as Patrick finally arrived, his face flushed from his sprint.

Uncle Jim got one boot under him, then another. He stood, blood streaming from his neck, soaking the front of his jacket. As Patrick raised the shotgun, I turned my head, not wanting to see.

I heard the boom.

I heard the sound of a body hitting the dirt.

Then I heard the creak of our screen door, way over by the house.

I turned back in time to see Sue-Anne glide onto the porch. She halted beneath the light, a swirl of moths wreathing her head. For a moment she remained there, peaceful and still.

Then that full-body shudder racked her body.

I’d been waiting for it. That made it even worse.

Her chest jerked a few times.

We watched her eyes turn black and disintegrate. We watched those tunnels swivel across the landscape and lock onto us. Her spine curled, and she leapt from the porch, landing on all fours, then springing up onto her bare feet. She sprinted at us faster than she should have been able to, her muscles strained to the breaking point. She was thirty feet away. I blinked, and then it was twenty.

Her hair flew about her face, her lips stretched thin with effort. She had tugged the sash free from her bathrobe, and it flapped wildly behind her.

Patrick chambered another shell.

We didn’t want to take the time to dig graves, so we laid Jim and Sue-Anne side by side on their bed in the master upstairs. It was a messy business, but after everything they’d done for us, we owed them that. We set up Rocky and JoJo in the living room watching TV so they wouldn’t have to see the terrible state of our aunt and uncle.

My brother and I stood by the footboard, looking at them lying there. Patrick had draped empty pillowcases over their heads to hide the damage, but already blood was spotting through. It was an awful scene, made more awful by how normal it might have been, the two of them reclining beside each other as if ready for bed.

At least they were together.

Our family had never been big on praying, but Patrick clasped his hands at his belt and cleared his throat. “They were good folks who took care of us when they didn’t have to.” He paused. I heard him breathing wetly but didn’t dare turn to look at him, because I was worried I’d start crying. “And they didn’t just love each other but they liked each other, too, always laughing together and still slow-dancing sometimes. As far as I’ve seen, that’s pretty rare in a couple who’s been married that long. They set a good example for us, and I hope me and Alex are lucky enough to feel that way no matter how long we’re together, and I hope Chance finds that with someone someday, too.” He was quiet for a bit longer, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained. “They were lucky to have each other, and we were lucky to have them.”