Folly by Laurie R. King Read Free Book Online Page B

to illuminate the tent, which meant that it was also no protection against any Watchers trying to creep up on her. She clicked the flashlight on to check the door, immediately clicked it off again. On, off; which was worse? She wanted nothing more than to sit at the desk and write in her journal for the rest of the night, concentrating hard on ink and paper behind the shelter of the canvas walls until the darkness had been gotten through and dawn allowed her to buckle on the tool belt again. But writing was no solution. She turned on the flashlight, took Tamara’s matches out of her pocket, and lit the lamp again.
    She glanced down at the small battery-run clock beside her neatly arranged cot, and saw with despair that it was barely nine. Camp was set up, dinner dealt with, the tent’s sparse furnishings arranged and rearranged, tea made and drunk so slowly the dregs had been stone cold, the journal written in; still it was only nine o’clock.
    Keep busy;
but doing what?
    Standing beneath the whisper of the kerosene lamp, Rae became aware of a rustle in the front pocket of her shirt. She worked a hand under her fleece pullover and pulled out the curl of red cedar she’d taken from Desmond’s front door. It was a lovely wood, with the tight grain of virgin growth, and sure to have been taken from very near here. She turned it over in her fingers, and put it down on the desk, on the opposite corner from the wood-handled gun. Then, taking a deep and steadying breath, Rae turned her gaze to the tent’s zipped flap. Her heart began immediately to race, her lungs seemed to tighten, and even sitting she began to feel dizzy. Doom filled the air, the sense of imminent disaster built and grew in her very bones until she’d have been certain she was having a heart attack had she not been through this a hundred times before.
    Not outside. Oh, no. Not at night.
    Yes, outside.
    I can’t. I’ll—
    You have to. It’s why you came.
    But if someone’s there—
    Stupid, stupid. A canvas tent is no refuge
, Rae told herself ferociously, and took a deliberate step so that her shadow fell on the tent wall, its curve of fabric strangely motionless now despite the rising tempest. The darkness outside the screen pulsated with a throng of Watchers, whispering and waiting to grab at her as soon as she emerged, to seize her and press themselves against her and pant obscenities in her ears; she could feel the bristle of unshaven cheek scraping against her neck, hear the cheerful monologue of a dead child playing in the shrubs— She seized her hair with both hands.
    I am fifty-two years old
, she shouted silently against the rushing noise filling her ears.
I am the mother of two daughters, the survivor of more than my share of hell; the earth is not about to crack open, there are not two men breathing down my neck, my heart is not about to stop, and I will
not
be reduced to cowering imbecility by a panic attack.
I will not!
    Rae grabbed her heavy jacket from the makeshift hook on the tent’s internal frame, wrestled open the door’s long metal zipper with icy fingers, and stepped out into the nonexistent tumult with the effort of an Arctic explorer entering a blizzard. Abandoning the revealing circle of light, Rae Newborn stumbled out into the darkness.
    She tripped twice, nearly sent sprawling by unseen obstacles on the uneven ground, before she found the soft trunk of the fallen cedar that drew a line between her living quarters and the island’s forest. There she huddled, head down, fighting to wrap the feeble breathing and visualization exercises around the attack, waiting for the great body of the wave to break over her and retreat.
    It did, eventually. The sensation of being a small candle in a gale slowly gave way to steadying reason, the blood ceased to rush so furiously through her veins, her vertigo ceased its whirling, and she did not faint. The groans in her throat stayed behind her teeth. After a time, Rae sat up, bone weary,