Cold Ennaline Read Online Free PDF

change.”

4
     
    F ATHER N ERVE pulls us from school the very next day. We stand in the registrar’s office while he talks to the principal. The principal seems disappointed but not surprised by the decision. We hear from the receptionist that we’re the fourth faith full “family” to come in today for the exact same reason. The promise of the rising god has infected all of us.
    “Is it the end days?” the receptionist asks, as we wait in the office for Father Nerve to finish filling out some paperwork. “Like Armageddon or something? I don’t really understand your faith—I’m Pentecostal. I didn’t even hear of the faith until I moved here.”
    “It’s not an end, it’s a beginning,” Ray explains. “The god is waking.”
    “Yeah, but what does that mean?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “You don’t know what your god is going to do?” The receptionist sounds skeptical.
    “No.”
    “What if he comes back and is really angry?” She chews on the end of a pencil. “I always used to worry about that as a kid. Well, I’d worry about my god. As human beings, we’ve done some really bad things. We aren’t really living in His image.”
    The twins exchange looks. I see doubt flicker in their eyes, just for a second, but it’s enough. Theo . I don’t even know the guy. I’ve barely met him, but I can see his influence on the twins as clearly as if he were standing above them, pulling them about with strings. I’ve never hated anyone before, but I think I might be very close to hating Theo.
    Father Nerve finishes his paperwork and ushers us outside. The sky above the school is a strange, green-gray color I’ve never seen before, and the clouds are swollen and lumpy like a newly sown field after a storm. The air smells different, too—it has a sweet, earthy taste to it.
    “Another sign,” mutters Father Nerve. “Get in the car, all of you.”
    “Where are we going?” Ro asks.
    “We’re going to your father’s parish,” says Father Nerve.
    “We’re going home?” the twins say in unison. Neither of them sounds particularly pleased by this news.
    “Your father has been following the movements of the god as he dreams. He’s plotted out the ripples the god has left in the earth. He believes he knows where the god is going to rise, and we should be there to meet him, in all his glory.”
    Ray shudders, and Ro quickly grasps his hand and squeezes it.
    “Something wrong, Regis?” Father Nerve asks.
    “It’s the wind,” says Ro. “The smell. It’s giving me the chills, too. It smells like something rotten, doesn’t it?”
    Now he mentions it, it does smell like something rotting. I swallow. For the first time the waking god feels real to me, really real , like something that could actually happen.
    “Just get in the car, Roland,” says Father Nerve wearily. “I’ll put on the air conditioning.”
     
     
    W E DRIVE . And drive.
    Faith full country is flat. Once we leave the village center, the fields stretch out before us in every direction. It’s impossible to judge distance; the fences and demarcation lines of different crops create a kind of optical illusion. Sitting in the passenger seat for the first time in my life, I find it hard to focus on anything between the end of the car and the horizon. When I do, my vision blurs and swirls. In addition to that, the smell of the wind has seeped into the car, and it’s making me feel nauseous.
    I wonder how Father Nerve can control the car in these conditions—it must be next to impossible to stay on the road….
    The twins sit in the backseat, still loosely holding hands. I can’t remember seeing them hold hands before, not since we were really little kids. They’re looking out the windows in opposite directions, biting their lips in identical ways. They’re scared, more scared than I am. I don’t remember ever seeing them scared before.
    After we drive for a few hours, we start to see ridges in the fields. At first they’re just