word as long as he lived. You remember that, Jim?”
In astonishment, Holly turned to Jim and said, “Your grandmother died
the second year you were here, when you were only eleven?”
I told her five years ago, Jim thought. Why did I tell her five years
ago when the truth is twenty-four?
It was coming.
He sensed it.
Coming.
The Enemy.
He said, “Excuse me, gotta get some fresh air.” He hurried outside and
stood by the car, gasping for breath.
Looking back, he discovered that Holly had not followed him. He could
see her through a pharmacy window, talking to Handahl.
It was coming.
Holly, don’t talk to him, Jim thought. Don’t listen to him, get out of
there.
It was coming.
Leaning against the car, he thought: the only reason I fear Corbett
Handahl is because he knows more about my life in Svenborg than I
remember myself Lub-dub-DUB.
It was here.
Handahl stared curiously after Jim.
Holly said, “I think he’s never gotten over what happened to his parents
. . . or to Lena.”
Handahl nodded. “Who could get over a horrible thing like that? He was
such a nice little kid, it broke your heart.” Before Holly could ask
anything more about Lena, Handahl said, “Are you two moving into the
farmhouse?”
“No. Just staying for a couple of days.”
“None of my business, really, but it’s a shame that land isn’t being
farmed.”
“Well, Jim’s not a farmer himself,” she said, “and with nobody willing
to buy the place-”
“Nobody willing to buy it?
Why, young lady, they’d stand twenty deep to buy it if Jim would put it
on the market.”
She blinked at him.
He went on: “You have a real good artesian well on that property, which
means you always have water in a county that’s usually short of it.” He
leaned against the granite counter and folded his arms across his chest.
“The way it works-when that big old pond is full up, the weight of all
that water puts pressure on the natural wellhead and slows the inflow of
new water. But you start pumping it out of there to irrigate crops, and
the flow picks up, and the pond is pretty much always full, like the
magic pitcher in that old fairytale.” He tilted his head and squinted
at her. “Jim tell you he couldn’t sell it?”
“Well, I assumed-”
“Tell you what,” Handahl said, “maybe that man of yours is more
sentimental than I’d thought. Maybe he doesn’t want to sell the farm
because it has too many memories for him.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But there’re bad as well as good memories out
there.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Like his grandmother dying,” she noodged, trying to get him back on
that subject. “That was-” A rattling sound interrupted her. She turned
and saw bottles of shampoo, hairspray, vitamins, and cold medicines
jiggling on their shelves.
“Earthquake,” Handahl said, looking up worriedly at the ceiling, as if
he thought it might tumble in on them.
The containers rattled more violently than ever, and Holly knew they
were disturbed by something worse than an earthquake. She was being
warned not to ask Handahl any more questions.
Lub-dub-DUB, lub-dub-DUB.
The cozy world of the quaint pharmacy started coming apart. The bottles
exploded off the shelves, straight at her. She swung away, drew her
arms over her head. The containers hammered her, flew past her and
pelted Handahl. The humidor, which stood behind the counter, was
vibrating. Instinctively Holly dropped to the floor. Even as she went
down, the glass door of that case blew outward. Glass shrapnel cut the
air where she had been standing. She scrambled toward the exit as
glittering shards rained to the floor. Behind her the heavy cash
register crashed off the granite counter, missing her by inches, barely
sparing her a broken spine.
Before the walls could begin to blister and pulse and bring forth an
alien form, she reached the door, fled through the newsstand, and went
into the street, leaving Handahl in what he no doubt assumed was
earthquake rubble.
The tripartite beat was throbbing up from the brick walkway beneath her
feet.