The Storm King(68)

Tom opened his eyes and startled as if seeing Nate for the first time.

“Oh, shit.” His face fell like a collapsing building. “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” Nate said.

But Tom swore again and crushed his face into his hands as if to wring it dry. His temper overtook him like a squall. He slammed his head into the trunk of a tree. A wrenching sound poured from his chest, something raw and stripped of everything but anguish.

“Cut it out, Tom.” Nate tried to pull his friend away from the tree. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Don’t touch me!” Tom screamed as he wheeled on him.

Nate raised his hands in surrender. He didn’t know what to do, but he had to find Lucy.

“Just don’t.” A look of utter exhaustion bleached Tom’s features. Then he broke into a full sprint into the watchful trees.

“Tommy!” Nate tried to chase him, but the nighttime woods were too dense. He heard his friend tearing through the brush but couldn’t see him.

Nate picked his way through the trees, calling Tom’s name and then Lucy’s into its pillars. But the forest was dark and thick, and deep enough to hide anyone who didn’t want to be found.

—

HE REMEMBERED WALKING. He remembered the chafe of sore feet against wet shoes.



There was a place in the fever of the night when time had no meaning and events had no lucidity, and that’s where he was. Where were his friends? Why was he alone? Where was he going? Dream logic supplanted the rules of the world. He thought of something or someone—the Night Ship, Lucy, Tom—and there it was. Maybe they’d been there all along.

He was jostled by choppy water near the shore, watching a mass of people on the stony beach. The lake was all around, trapping him as a star is imprisoned in the void. Its cold water erased everything it touched. He was erased. A boy wrapped in a Mylar blanket was on the beach ahead of him. The boy was huddled alongside police and EMS workers. Nate knew the boy: He felt sure of it. The boy needed help—he needed so much.

For a moment it seemed like the boy finally noticed him. It seemed like Nate might be able to shout to him, but the lake shook him like a boat caught in another’s wake. Soon he couldn’t see the boy, he couldn’t see the beach, he couldn’t even see the—

“Nate. Nate! Wake up, boy.”

It took every ounce of will he possessed to open his right eye.

He was not in the lake or on the Night Ship or in the forest in some far-flung part of the headlands. He was in his bed.

“The chief’s here,” Grams told him. “Wants to talk to you.”

Nate sat up, and the room lurched dangerously. An alien heat resided in his brain. His eyes remained blurry no matter how many times he blinked. His fingers felt rusted at the joints.

“Might want a quick washup first.”

Grams flipped on the lights as she went back into the hall. He felt his pupils strain to contract as a shadow of sense snapped back into him. Greystone Lake’s chief of police was downstairs, and Nate was a mess. In the bathroom he hurriedly washed mud and blood from his hands. He shook twigs and leaves out of his hair and slapped some of the pallor from his face.

The chief could be here for a multitude of reasons, but at four in the morning, none of them could be good.



Nate still looked rough when he was finished. His eyes were an atrocity of blood vessels, and there was a nascent bruise on his temple, but his smile was gold and gold doesn’t tarnish.

He slipped into an undershirt, pulled on jeans, and trotted downstairs. His grandmother, wrapped in her robe, stood with the chief in the foyer. No one looked their best.

“Hey, Chief.”

“Sorry to wake you. Lucy didn’t come home.”

“She didn’t?”

“Mrs. Bennett called the station, and they radioed me. Normally wouldn’t draw up a search so soon, but I know you’re all close. Thought you and Tommy might have some ideas.”

A shriek tore from the kitchen. The kettle. Grams scurried past Nate, leaving him with the chief.

“You’ve been drinking, I think.” The chief squinted at him.

“A little,” Nate admitted. His face wasn’t built for sheepishness, but he did his best.

“You boys were safe, though.”

“The safest.”

“Your Grams is brewing me a bit of coffee. Tommy’s in the car. How about you two put your heads together about where she might have gotten to.”

After wedging sneakers onto his feet, Nate made his way to the cruiser parked in front. The shadow of Tom’s profile was in the backseat.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Tom said. He wore a polo shirt and khakis, like they were heading to school. Like it wasn’t predawn and they weren’t blitzed into another plane of existence. He didn’t look at Nate.

“I feel about nine-tenths dead right now.” Nate slid in next to Tom.

Tom didn’t answer.

“I figure there’s, like, an eighty percent chance this is a hallucination.”



Still nothing.

“I never found Lucy,” Nate said. “Wouldn’t be surprised if half our year’s passed out somewhere. She could be staying at Emma’s.”

“Dad tried there already.”