“My mother used to talk about that thing,” Clark said when they climbed into her truck. “Bosheth.”
Joel wiped sweat from his forehead, looked back at the dark house behind them. In a voice she’d never from him before—cowed, incredulous, scared—he asked, “What did she say about it?”
Clark keyed the ignition, hesitated. She struggled to bring back the stories that she’d spent so long ignoring. She suspected she should have been talking about them from day one.
“Mom said that Bosheth came to town when she was in high school but he was already old by then. Very old. He swam here from somewhere else, came through a trench underground. He sleeps under Bentley now. Or maybe under the Flats—she used to call them ‘Bosheth’s house.’” She felt absurd saying all this, embarrassed at how quickly she’d abandoned logic and deduction for a story told to her by a woman who’d once spent a week speaking in nothing but Kabbalah predictions, and yet Clark couldn’t help but notice that her fingers had gone numb. “And he drinks tears.”
She could see Joel struggling to process this, could see him weighing how seriously he wanted to take any sort of superstition. She couldn’t blame his confusion. Ten minutes ago, they’d both thought his brother was involved in the drug trade. And now?
“Does he also eat young men?” Joel said, sounding faintly astonished at himself for asking.
“I don’t know. But he spreads nightmares when he moves—she said that.”
“Here’s what confuses me. The week before I got here, were you having those crazy dreams?”
“Not like the ones we’ve been having. Why?”
“Because I think Dylan was. That Sunday he texted me, he said he couldn’t sleep, said something about hearing the town talking in his dreams. Why was Dylan having the nightmares when no one else was?”
Something occurred to Clark. “My mom once told Troy that if your dreams went woolly it meant Bosheth had taken a shine to you.”
“A shine? It’s a monster that has crushes on young boys?”
“I—”
Clark’s phone buzzed. She read the name on the screen, cursed. “I have to take this.”
She stepped outside of the truck, brought the phone to her ear. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what she was about to hear. “Hello?” she said, and a moment later she was pinching the bridge of her nose and holding in an angry, tired sob.
She hung up the phone after saying only a few words. Climbed back into the cab. “It’s my father.” she said. “He’s in trouble.”