Page 11 of The Elementalist
And so, I raised my hands. As a cold shiver swept through me, the wind appeared, rustling the forest. It built into a howl around me, over me… but despite its apparent ferocity, I felt only a mild breeze against my face.
“What the…?”
I raised my hands higher and higher, and the wind roared faster and faster. As I stretched my arms out over my head, the treetops bent almost horizontally. Branches cracked and crashed throughout the forest.
“My God,” I whispered… but the howling wind swallowedthe sound of my voice.
I lowered my hands and the wind died down.
“I’m dreaming.”
Indeed, I would have chalked it up to my overactive imagination except for one thing: hundreds of broken branches littered the ground at my feet. Clear evidence that a mini hurricane had occurred. One of the branches caught my eye…
Resting on the ground a few feet away lay a tree branch stained in blood.
Chapter Six
Sanity Check
Ron Moore sat across from me at the Pine Stump Cafe, drinking beer from the bottle and watching a group of boisterous high school students playing pool.
“Were we ever that obnoxious, Max?” he asked. “When we were in high school.”
“More obnoxious, I think,” I said.
My best friend drank more beer and shook his head. “We had more to laugh about, I guess. These kids today, they’re growing up in a different Shadow Pines. A dangerous Shadow Pines.”
Ron had a right to be cynical. Three years ago, Ron’s wife, Daphne, had been killed in—you guessed it—an animal attack. Except it had occurred while she was jogging along the streets of her residential neighborhood, her normal route. Ron had led a search for the creature and had returned with a dead cougar... a particularlybigdead cougar. It had been shot multiple times, prompting many in the community to predict that the animal attacks would finally now stop.
And they had... until now. Now, I worried the local mountain lion community would face a harsh backlash they didn’t deserve. Meanwhile, Ron coped with his loss as best he could. I knew he often drank to deal with things. Hell, I would have, too. I missed Daphne more than I let on. She was a true friend. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her. None of the victims around here did. It got me wondering how many of these ‘animal attacks’ had really been the work of the same killer who’d claimed Dana and Luke.
After Ron drained his first draft and motioned for another, he looked at me. “So what’s up? You sounded upset on the phone.”
Ron would know. We’d been friends our whole lives. Met in first grade, hung out together all the time as kids. We played football from pee-wee all the way up through high school. I was the best man at his wedding and a pallbearer for his wife’s funeral.
“That would be an understatement.”
“What the devil does that mean?” he asked.
“Good choice of words.”
Ron stared at me. He was a big guy, which is why he played offensive line in football. I wasn’t quite as big, which is why I played tight end. That, and I could catch a football with myhands.Ron more often tried to catch one with his chin. Finally, he raised a bushy eyebrow and asked, “Am I missing something here?”
For an answer, I opened my hand, palm upward. I had been practicing the movement since returning from the woods. I’d discovered that my palm had to be faced upward; additionally, I had to raise my hand slowly. And if I raised both hands together, I got a stronger reaction. At present, I lifted only the one.
His shirt began flapping. The little square napkin sitting before him fluttered... then went flying.
“Jesus,” said Ron, looking over his shoulder, already sounding a bit drunk. “Would someone close the goddamn door?”
Except the doorswereclosed, both front and back. And still the wind continued, clinking the wine glasses that hung upside down in the rack overhead. Napkins, receipts, and straws scuttled over the scarred wooden bar. Ron’s shirt flapped wildly and so did his thinning hair. Nearby, balls rolled and clacked around the pool tables. A waitress carrying drinks reached down with her free hand to hold her skirt in place.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked Ron, turning in his seat. “Where’s that blasted wind coming from?”
He looked up for a ceiling fan that wasn’t there. Then he looked at me. As he did, I lowered my right hand, and the lower it got, the more the wind subsided.
Ron didn’t put two and two together yet. Not at first. After all, why would he?
“It’s coming from me, Ron.”
