Page 113 of The Whispering Night
The wind, at least, is gentler. Theonlyimprovement, since the mist cloys at Winnie with carrion smells. It strokes against her legs with hungry heat. And Jay’s song—she still hears it, still feels it.
Elliott Monday hypothesized in 1974 that a siren’s song switches on key dopamine receptors in the brain, and it is in fact this hunger for dopamine that drives people to follow the song.
Winnie dips away from the steering wheel to light another match. This one catches on the first try, and she tosses another crate of fireworks overboard.
Once again, Wednesday green lights up the sky. Beacons for scorpions to follow. Lying lights to lead them into danger.
The more I forget you, the deeper you sink in
Fangs at the neck and red paint on a lost cabin
Ten dollars to kiss, a bet I can never win
Snow on your lips
It’s feast or it’s full famine
I miss you more now
Now that it’s been so long
CHAPTER
45
Winnie runs the pontoon boat aground. She doesn’t have much choice. There are too many rocks as she goes upstream, and the river rapids are too turbulent for the swan to sail against. This vessel was built for show, not power. So she veers the boat onto the eastern shore and runs the poor Sunday beast aground.
The pontoon boat launches upward like it’s hit a ramp. The right wing cracks against a hemlock. Winnie topples backward, falling alongside her final crate of fireworks toward the railing at the boat’s end.
She hits the railing. The crate hits too, bonking right against her swollen ankle. She yelps. Then clasps her hands over her mouth to stay quiet. And other than a brief lurch when the current headbutts the swan farther onto its rock, Winnie and the fireworks don’t move again.
Her heart gallops inside her skull. Her ankle is really shoutingSOSnow. But if it ain’t bleeding—which would attract nightmares—then Winnie still ain’t stopping. At least there’s no mist here, and Winnie can only assume that’s because it has finished its job. It has built the nightmares it needed, so now it glides southward, raising nightmares far beyond the spirit’s usual realm like a gardener plucking weeds from a vegetable patch.
She peers around the crooked pontoon boat; its electric engine is still thrumming. The shoreline is almost all conifers. This has never been a place dense with monsters because running water deters land nightmares—which is why Winnie madethisher route into the forest in the first place. Unfortunately, she’s on the wrong shore. She wanted west because that iswhere the trail switchbacks up to the overlook and the Big Lake beyond. But oh well. East she is, so east she shall go.
Wind kicks upward in blustery, unpredictable bursts, as if the spirit inhales. As if itlaughs.Finally, I am awake. Finally, I am free.But Jay’s song continues to call to Winnie too. Louder than the spirit’s tempestuous laugh.I miss you more now. Now that it’s been so long.
As Winnie clambers from the pontoon boat, the scent of petrichor pings around her like a pinball, promising rain at any moment. Her boots slide on slimy rocks. Water splashes to her calf. Her ankle snarls its rage. But with only a little wobble and no surprise drop-offs, she reaches the shore in seconds.
Where she immediately sets off north. Toward the lake, toward the Crow and Erica and…
Jay.
To kiss across shadows into a bright fever
The dawn mist rises inside me like a wildfire
Winnie unstraps a hunting knife as she creeps forward. A fine, serrated thing that Mason probably spent a lot of time selecting for himself. It even has his initials on the hilt (MRT). Briefly, she considers unstrapping a second blade for bilateral symmetry, but a low-hanging branch that almost swats her into the river ends that thought. She’ll need one hand empty for climbing and grabbing.
Lights flicker to her left. A nest of will-o’-wisps jets across the river like dragonflies before zapping out of sight. In the distance, she thinks she hears gunshots.
T minus forty-nine minutes until the Crow makes good on her threats.
Winnie stays as low to the ground as she can. As close to the shore too. Her eyes search the veiled, gusting dawn for any sign of game trails, worn into the ground by nightmares or hunters or both. But she spies nothing. And when she squints east, she sees flames in the distance.Salamander,she remembers from the radio, and if that is one, then she’ll want to avoid it.
Actually, she needs to avoid it. Those things are massive and spit fire.
Salamander: These large amphibious nightmares are able to start firesthanks to special glands on their backs. They are cold-blooded, so salamanders hibernate underground in winter.
