Chapter 24 #2
I understand the draw this investigation had for my brother.
The life he’s rebuilt for himself is seated in the foundation of his idealism.
River needs people to be good. For better or for worse, he will scrub the mess until he finds something that shines.
Something hopeful. We are opposing sides of the same coin.
But what about this mystery has crawled so deeply under my skin?
Another breeze, this one stronger, sends loose strands of hair flying in my face as the ghastly voice crackles in my headphones. “The river.”
As in water, which the Ovilus spit out in the cafeteria. My pulse quickens. The repetition can’t be coincidence; this must be an important clue. Is that how Edith was killed?
Almost immediately, I pick out something else from the garbled noise. “Sounds like . . . bad.” Even in the fractured voice, I sense a deep sorrow.
It wasn’t just the townspeople who believed James was bad. He believed that about himself too. His self-condemnation was scribbled on every page of his journal, whittling down his life solely to his shortcomings.
But he sacrificed his freedom over a crime he didn’t commit—was dealt a punishment he didn’t deserve. I’m certain he was more courageous than he ever let himself believe. Who was he protecting? No one destroys their life like that without a damn good reason.
I should know.
I had a very good reason for ruining mine.
Only what I did wasn’t brave. Was it? It was survival.
It shredded my soul. Even if I did it to protect my brother, protect Charlie from drowning in the mess.
Brave isn’t the word I’d use for the way I shattered my marriage.
Cowardly, maybe. Every day since, I’ve been serving a sentence of my own, punishing myself for not being stronger.
A lump swells in my throat as the humming static overpowers all my senses and my hair whips into a frenzy.
But . . . if James’s decision to wreck his life came from a desire to shield someone else, is it really all that different from what I did?
Something touches my shoulder and I jump, ripping off the headphones as my eyes fly open and oscillating static is replaced with droning rain. It’s only Charlie.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” His eyes are wide with excitement as they slide between me and view out the window. “Things are picking up out there.”
It’s a shock to my system—reorienting to the world around me. The thick air, the rushing wind, the wash of green in the sky. Charlie’s already moving to the open window, camera at the ready, as I clutch James’s journal to my chest. So much for my good luck charm.
“How’d the session go on your end?” I ask.
“It was good!” For a skeptic, he’s far too chipper, already humming from the thrill of the churning sky. He doesn’t elaborate.
We’ll have to debrief later. He did his part and the storm he’s been waiting all day for is finally rolling right for us. His head’s in the charcoal clouds. I set the journal down on the table with the Spirit Box and pull off my headphones. Pressing a palm to my warm head, I take a deep breath.
Two truths wage war in my mind. One: the session went well, solely going off of the quantity of what came through the audio jack compared to the norm. Two: it still doesn’t feel like enough. It gave me something, but I’m greedy for more. I need more.
I have so many lingering questions about why James kept quiet about the truth for so long, and unfortunately, even the most methodical Estes session would leave non-believers doubting everything, no matter how convinced I am of his innocence. A few vague journal entries prove nothing.
I want the damn letter he wrote the warden.
Rolling my shoulders, I stretch out my frustration. No point wanting something I’ll never get.
Peering out the open window next to Charlie, I frown. “I don’t see any tornadoes.”
Charlie snorts, clicking the shutter on the camera. “No, but we’ve got a persistently rotating wall cloud now. See there? Where the clouds look like they’re dropping down?”
I squint, but it’s all thunderstorm to me. “Uh-huh.”
“That’s where we’ll get formation, if we get it. North of the RFD. But—”
I gasp, pointing. “There!” A sinewy tendril of gray sinks from the cloud mass, a rough-hewn funnel.
But Charlie’s unperturbed. “Just a scud cloud.” He snaps another photo. “Harmless.”
I rest my hand on my hip, head tilting. “You said not all storms spit out tornadoes, right?”
“I did. But this one’s going to give us something.
I have a good feeling about it.” He lowers the camera, flicking through his shots on the digital screen.
Dropping his voice into a lower register, like he’s more focused on what he’s looking at than what he’s saying, he mutters, “Intuitive spark, I guess.”
I say nothing, unsure if the extent to which he listens to me and catalogs what I say makes me happy or sad or some twisted compound of both.
Just beyond the prison walls, the atmosphere is boiling, the storm rotating with ripping fury.
With each passing second, more sunlight dims into shades of gray.
Charlie sucks in a sharp breath and my gaze flings to him. Silly, because the spectacle is brewing right in front of us.
It takes me a second longer than him, but then I see it.
A dimple, protruding from the base of the wall cloud.
Click, click, click—Charlie captures photos in succession, then ducks to check his timelapse setup.
The sharp excitement pulsing around him like a forcefield pins his grin into place. “Look at that!”
Like otherworldly demon fingers, the soot gray clouds descend.
I’m not sure how I mistook the earlier cloud formation for a funnel because this—this is the real deal.
This is the swirling birth of a tornado I remember catching on the local news every spring as a girl.
But, dear god, it’s so much more mesmerizing up close.
Charlie’s camera clicks wildly, but all I can do is stare in awe.
The jagged tendrils reach further and further and further, dust kicking up all around. Until finally, the atmosphere kisses the earth.
There’s a tornado on the ground.