CHAPTER 40

Corin drove away from his meeting with Nicole hoping the rain would hold off till he reached the cemetery and was finished with his time there. It didn’t. A light mist filtered down out of the darkening sky and blanketed his windshield as he pulled into the parking lot.

It was empty except for his car. It didn’t surprise him. Who else came to graveyards in the evening unless it was October 31 or prank night for high school kids looking for a rush? Corin did it to be alone.

After he slid out of his car and locked the doors, he shuffled down the familiar path that would take him to his parents’ matching headstones. Two minutes later he slipped to his knees in front of their graves, the dampness of the lawn seeping through his jeans, chilling his knees. He didn’t care. The loamy smell of the soil filled his head and he breathed it in deeply.

“Watching us grow up, did you ever think Shasta and I would arrive at this spot? Two kids who did everything together, who made you wear grooves in the road taking us to the emergency room after one of our adventures.”

Like the time they were six and four and jumped off the roof and discovered that Superman and Batman capes didn’t automatically make them fly.

“All you wanted for us was to be friends—and you got your dream. And left us thinking we’d be best friends forever. But if you’ve watched lately, the dream crashed and burned.” He glanced from his mom’s headstone to his dad’s. “And now it looks like the final chance for restoration has vanished. Just thought you should know.”

He jammed his hands into his coat pocket. “What did you think of my final try? Did you think Shasta could sit in my magical chair and it would heal him and we’d be jumping dirt bikes over canyons again? Did we ever tell you about the time Shasta came six inches from landing his bike three hundred feet down in the Metus River and almost beat you to this cemetery?”

The lamppost to his right flickered and then went out as if on cue, smothering him in the darkening twilight. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Dad. So sorry.”

Corin closed his eyes and instantly images flooded his mind. First the accident, the numbness in Shasta’s eyes as he lay on the slope waiting for the ski patrol, soft flakes of snow landing on his face and Corin realizing in a flash why his brother didn’t brush them off.

An instant later that scene was replaced by the rippling surface of Lake Vereor. He wasn’t sleeping, but the pictures in his head were just as vivid as if he were buried deep in the dream. A shake of his head did nothing to rid him of the terror. He tried to stand but instead tumbled onto his side and his eyes closed and he entered the world between dreaming and waking.

This time no light filtered through the surface of the water five feet over his head. There was only darkness as his dad yanked on his life jacket.

Water flowed around his body, pressing in on him as if he was hundreds of feet down, pressing into his eardrums like ice picks.

His dad dove a second time. A third. A fourth.

But it no longer mattered. All the air had been purged from his lungs and now they were full of water.

There was no panic this time, no determination to reach the surface, no life in his fingers to scrawl his desire to live into his dad’s forearms. Only acceptance that all hope was gone.

And the fear. Deeper this time than it had ever been.

Corin shrank inside himself till he was smaller than an atom, but still the fear came and found him, mocked him, and a moment later devoured him.

He woke to the kiss of soft rain on his face, the lamp to his left flickering off and on, and the smell of damp soil.

The vision or dream—he couldn’t tell which it had been—faded quickly but left him with a thought that lingered like a chilling fog.

Death would win, had won, had always held him in the palm of its hand, and would never let him slip through its fingers.