Kindred Read Free

more.”
    He made his voice very gentle. “If it happens again, and if it’s real, the boy’s father will know he owes you thanks. He won’t hurt you.”
    “You don’t know that. You don’t know what could happen.” I stood up unsteadily. “Hell, I don’t blame you for humoring me.” I paused to give him a chance to deny it, but he didn’t. “I’m beginning to feel as though I’m humoring myself.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. As real as the whole episode was, as real as I know it was, it’s beginning to recede from me somehow. It’s becoming like something I saw on television or read about—like something I got second hand.”
    “Or like a … a dream?”
    I looked down at him. “You mean a hallucination.”
    “All right.”
    “No! I know what I’m doing. I can see. I’m pulling away from it because it scares me so. But it was real.”
    “Let yourself pull away from it.” He got up and took the muddy towel from me. “That sounds like the best thing you can do, whether it was real or not. Let go of it.”

The Fire
    1
    I tried.
    I showered, washed away the mud and the brackish water, put on clean clothes, combed my hair …
    “That’s a lot better,” said Kevin when he saw me.
    But it wasn’t.
    Rufus and his parents had still not quite settled back and become the “dream” Kevin wanted them to be. They stayed with me, shadowy and threatening. They made their own limbo and held me in it. I had been afraid that the dizziness might come back while I was in the shower, afraid that I would fall and crack my skull against the tile or that I would go back to that river, wherever it was, and find myself standing naked among strangers. Or would I appear somewhere else naked and totally vulnerable?
    I washed very quickly.
    Then I went back to the books in the living room, but Kevin had almost finished shelving them.
    “Forget about any more unpacking today,” he told me. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
    “Go?”
    “Yes, where would you like to eat? Someplace nice for your birthday.”
    “Here.”
    “But …”
    “Here, really. I don’t want to go anywhere.”
    “Why not?”
    I took a deep breath. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s go tomorrow.” Somehow, tomorrow would be better. I would have a night’s sleep between me and whatever had happened. And if nothing else happened, I would be able to relax a little.
    “It would be good for you to get out of here for a while,” he said.
    “No.”
    “Listen …”
    “No!” Nothing was going to get me out of the house that night if I could help it.
    Kevin looked at me for a moment—I probably looked as scared as I was—then he went to the phone and called out for chicken and shrimp.
    But staying home did no good. When the food had arrived, when we were eating and I was calmer, the kitchen began to blur around me.
    Again the light seemed to dim and I felt the sick dizziness. I pushed back from the table, but didn’t try to get up. I couldn’t have gotten up.
    “Dana?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “Is it happening again?”
    “I think so.” I sat very still, trying not to fall off my chair. The floor seemed farther away than it should have. I reached out for the table to steady myself, but before I could touch it, it was gone. And the distant floor seemed to darken and change. The linoleum tile became wood, partially carpeted. And the chair beneath me vanished.
    2
    When my dizziness cleared away, I found myself sitting on a small bed sheltered by a kind of abbreviated dark green canopy. Beside me was a little wooden stand containing a battered old pocket knife, several marbles, and a lighted candle in a metal holder. Before me was a red-haired boy. Rufus?
    The boy had his back to me and hadn’t noticed me yet. He held a stick of wood in one hand and the end of the stick was charred and smoking. Its fire had apparently been transferred to the draperies at the window. Now the boy stood watching as the flames ate their way