The Rainy Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

along the perimeter of the well. Clumps of broad-leafed clover and tendrils of new vines grew out of the damp ground, pushing up urgently around the mossy stones. Nick stood up enough to see over the wall. The reflected shadow of his own face stared back out at him from a glassy field of water and stars. The ivory moon and a bank of gray-black clouds floated on the dark surface.
    Right then he felt the tongs sliding out of his back pocket. He slapped his hand against his pants and spun around, but Jeremy already had them and was moving farther away. Jeremy clanked the tongs shut over his head, making a face at him, and then slid them into his own back pocket. Nick shrugged. To heck with the tongs. Jeremy bent over peering at the moonlit ground.
    Nick turned back to the well, twisting the tip of his flashlight to narrow the beam, which illuminated a few inches of water at the surface. He moved the light along the rocks right at the waterline, and almost at once, directly opposite where he stood, the light glinted for a moment on something, just a pinpoint of light winking on and then off again.
    A coin? He tried to find it again with the light, but right then Jeremy made a noise, as if he had found something himself, and Nick turned around sharply and shined the light in his direction. “What?” Nick asked.
    “Look.” Jeremy pointed at something on the ground, a faint glow, like a firefly in the weeds. Clouds covered the moon just then, and the glow vanished. It started to rain—just the first few windblown drops—and in that moment there was the sound of a metallic clank from somewhere behind Nick. He ducked behind the edge of the well and swept the beam of the flashlight toward the corner of the tower, where he thought he saw the form of someone standing, half-hidden, nothing more than the shadowy outline of a shoulder and part of a face that had disappeared when the light had moved past.
    Nick glanced uncertainly back at Jeremy, who was bent over at the waist, reaching for whatever it was that lay glinting there in the moonlight, the tongs still shoved into his back pocket. “Wait!” Nick said, starting forward, trying to stop him from picking the thing up with his hand, whatever it was. He was too late: Jeremy picked the thing up and held it in his open palm. It was round and flat, like a tiny plate, a saucer for a doll’s tea set. He remained bent over as if he had frozen there. Nick glanced again at the edge of the tower, but there was no one there. It was time to go. …
    There was the sound of a low moan now—a human voice, but not Jeremy’s, and not coming from the direction of the tower, either. Nick backed up against the rock wall of the well, shining the light at his friend’s face, which was stretched and contorted into a visage that only faintly resembled Jeremy’s natural face.
    “I. … don’t. … want. … ,” the voice uttered—not Jeremy’s voice at all, but it was coming from Jeremy’s mouth. At first Nick thought he meant the thing in his hand. But he seemed to be oblivious to the pale saucer, which he held in his fingers like a playing card now; he seemed instead to be looking at something in front of him, something that he recognized with a terrible dismay, that he had a
fear
of. But there was nothing there, no shadowy stranger, nothing but the night and the tower standing alone in the weeds. Nick stepped forward, stretching out his hand to take the tongs out of Jeremy’s pocket. He had to get the object away from him, whatever it was, take it out of his hand without touching it himself.
    Jeremy screamed then. He looked Nick in the face, a blank look, his eyes unfocused, seeing something that wasn’t there, a ghost, something in the wind. Without another thought Nick threw himself forward, ducking his shoulder, slamming into his friend just above the waist and knocking him sideways, the tongs spinning away, the saucer falling into the sandy dirt.

Peralta Hills
1884

8
    “THEY