We kept walking. “She appeared, dressed in a long beigey-gray thing. Turn of the century. Materialized at the end of the hall to where she looked almost solid. She was looking down, her hands motioning like she was about to key the door she stood in front of, and she said something to herself. I couldn’t hear it, and as if I had said that, that I couldn’t hear her, she turned her head to me. What she said was, ‘He said he loved me.’ It sounded like a real woman’s voice. She sounded distressed, spurned, about to cry. ‘He said he loved me. He said I was the only one for him. And now look. Look what’s happened.’ She turned to face me. She started to walk toward me. She shoved one sleeve midway up one arm, then the other. I thought maybe she was coming over to punch me out. Her dress swayed at her feet. Her head forward, jaw set, brow furrowed. The hall lights above her winking and strobing with her progress. She turned the insides of her arms to me. They had been deeply slashed from the meat of her palms up to her elbow.”
“Were you not just terrified?” Kodie asked, taking him seriously, as we got to the first house and stood on the small porch. “How did you just stand there when you saw her coming?” I looked at her like she was mad yet loving her earnestness.
“Well, yeah. Scared the hell out of me. And this is the thing. I couldn’t move. Overwhelmed. Like this morning until Kevin here saved me.” He gripped my shoulder and squeezed. I grew anxious to get inside. Though I couldn’t see them, I felt the kids gathering like Hitchcockean birds. “She got up close to me, about an arm’s length, her face alabaster, her wounds deep maroon, but dry. She looked at me, searching my eyes, and said, ‘If the world hurts so much, Bastian, why don’t you just leave it?’ I nodded my head at her stupidly, blinked at her. Then she repeated, ‘He said he loved me. He said I was the only one for him. And now look. Look what’s happened.’ She said this the way my mom or a stern teacher would talk to me after I’ve misbehaved. Like it was my fault. She was cross with me, her eyebrows all downturned. She slipped an arm behind her. She brought it back around and displayed a straight razor. It gleamed and flashed in the light as she turned it. ‘Why don’t you just leave it? You can, you know.’ I just ran.”
We stood on the porch of this house out of the rain. I really did not believe him.
“Why did you even go in there in the first place?”
“We all know that story of the ghost. I always wanted to go check it out. When we drove by, I felt, I don’t know, compelled, to stop and go up.”
“So you could go up there so she could suggest that you kill yourself. Fantastic. That’s great,” Kodie said.
“You looked freaked, but you said you didn’t see her. Why are you telling us this now?”
Bastian shrugged and smiled at me all beatific-like. “Dunno, man. It just seemed like the right time.” And here that smile turned so big and bright that it frightened me. It wasn’t the Suicide Smile. No. It was the I-Love-Kevin Smile, the Kevin’s-My-Hero Smile. I’ve seen Bass’s muy stoned smile but this was something else entirely. “I’m wondering now,” said Bass, pontificating, his eyes looking at the sky, “if maybe all the suicides were urged to by a ghost, a voice. When I was naked in your living room with that gun to my throat, it was her voice I heard. Her saying, ‘you can, you know.’”
“I don’t…” His morning protestations replayed between my ears then—I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. I shook my head at him and opened the door. We stepped into water. I ran and slid through the house, the floor sopping. I peered around the bathroom door hoping that maybe we’d just screwed up and left the water running.
The tub was busted. The porcelain edge of the tub exposed to the room had been demolished. Big white chunks of tub lay on the floor in an inch of roaming water.
Kodie and Bass came in behind and said iterations of what the hell. “Let’s check the others,” I said. Kodie and Bass gave each other this big-eyed knowing look I couldn’t decipher then and I was so freaked by the water issue that I didn’t ask what their deal was.
We ran to the next house in the rain. I led. A dog up the street barked. Kodie and Bass lagged behind, whispering.
That’s right, you guessed it, dear reader, same thing at the next one, though this time we saw the water on the porch having seeped under the front door. We checked the next several and each tub bore the same violent marks, each house a small flood.
The pattern was obvious. Panicked now, we jogged home and our thirst grew. A click formed in my throat.
I was the first one back to the house, dashing inside, hand on the kitchen faucet handle. Kodie and Bass came up behind me as I turned the knob. Air sighed through.
We still had a few cases of bottled water, but now the dynamics had shifted. They had made a direct, emphatic statement.
We don’t want you to have water.
We don’t want you here anymore.
I’m pissed now. Illogical. I’m loading up, scrambling around the house, packing more heat than made sense, striding out to the Hummer. “C’mon, Bass. Let’s go be that beast they’re so afraid of.”
Kodie and Bass stood the porch. “Kevin, no. We agreed.”
I stopped midway down the walk and turned to her holding an umbrella and a graphite crossbow. “Agreed to what? They’re saying they want us dead. It’s a formal unambiguous declaration.”
“But this isn’t what you do, Kevin,” said Bastian.
“The hell you talking about?”
“There’s something going on with you, Kev. I feel it, and I know Kodie does too.” Those two looked at each other with conspiracy in their mien, exhaling and nodding like well, we may as well tell him. “And you do too.”
“What?” I shifted my weight. “This isn’t funny.” My throat dry, voice cracking. But I knew what.
“I know you thought that we…” Bass checked back with Kodie. Her face said go on, but he stalled so she continued.
“We didn’t get together that night when you fell asleep. We found ourselves talking about you. How best to keep you going and positive.”
“You saved me, Kevin. You say you got lucky.” He shook his head. There was that word luck again.
I looked at Kodie and she just nodded, sniffing her red nose. Though evening was hours away, the November air grew cold with the rain. The air soaked, the colors of the afternoon shades of gray. She shivered in her T-shirt. “I know it freaks you out, but, Kevin, whatever all this is that’s happened… all I can say is, I,” she glanced at Bass, “we know that there’s something special in store for you.”
I eyed them incredulously, one then the other. “What exactly do you mean?”
“If I knew exactly, I’d tell you. It’s like… dreams, but it’s a feeling. It’s… You’re the leader now. Not by default, but by choice. You’ve been chosen.” Her body quivering, her face grave. “You think we come upon Jespers’s discovery otherwise? But that’s just part of it, it’s more than that. It’s—”
“Chosen.” I tried to get them to fall apart laughing by staring off into the middle distance with a rigid jaw, chest thrust out, crossbow fist on my hip like a superhero atop a mountain. Their faces stayed rigid. “We’ve got things to do. The water’s out, the grid’s probably—”
“Not kidding,” said Bass. “Do we look like we’re kidding?” I looked long and hard at each of them. They didn’t look like they were kidding.