“Another wine?” the barmaid asks, sauntering over.

  Harry just grunts and sets some money down, then she puts her wallet on the bar and starts going through her coat pockets, finally fishing out a packet of cigarettes. Her hands are trembling slightly, and she looks so thin. My heart breaks to think of what it must have been like for her two decades ago, when she lost Dad just a day after losing her father. She must have been left all alone, and it looks like she never recovered.

  “Going for a smoke,” she mutters, climbing off the stool and heading through to the door at the rear.

  I almost go after her, but then I realize maybe that would be unfair. I should just get out of here and stop bothering her, although a moment later I see that she left her wallet on the counter. I immediately glance at the barmaid and see that she's busy with the glasses, and then I look around and see that nobody else is watching me. I know it'll look like I'm a thief, but I just to see those photos that Harry's carrying around, so I surreptitiously reach over and grab her wallet, and then I open it and see the pictures.

  I swear, my heart skips a beat.

  The first photo shows her father Buddy in his days as the local sheriff.

  The second photo shows Dad in his uniform, smiling at the camera.

  And the third photo shows me. Well, Ramsey. Which is me.

  I knew Harry well, of course, but I never would have thought that she'd carry a photo of me around. Yet there I am, in a snap taken during that year when I was living with her and Dad. It's as if she's clinging on to pictures of the family that she lost, and I can feel tears in my eyes as I imagine what things might have been like if Dad and I had both survived. I'm convinced he'd have asked her to marry him, and she'd definitely have accepted. They could be a happy old couple by now, heading for retirement after many years together.

  I look back at the picture of Dad, and then my eyes are drawn to Buddy's smiling face. In that instant, I remember something from my old life.

  “Are you enjoying having your father with you, Ramsey?” Sebastian's smile grows, although he's smiling through Buddy's cold, dead lips. “I hope you're not thinking about breaking out deal. It's a good deal, Ramsey. You should stick to it for the rest of your life.”

  “I'm going to, I swear.”

  “So this was a false alarm?”

  “It was...”

  My voice trails off, as I realize that maybe I shouldn't tell him about Ethan or about anything else that's happening. Dad will deal with all of that, and then finally everything will be okay.

  “I hope you're not trying to act naturally,” he continues, “because you look extremely nervous, even through a dead man's eyes. Now if you'll excuse me, Ramsey, it's cold where I am and I have to put some more logs on the fire. I have a full life, you know. The days of hiding away in a forest are over and I like my new habits. I'd strongly suggest that you need to get on with your own, and that way you never have to even think about me again.”

  “And you won't break the deal?” I ask.

  “Break it?” He hesitates for a moment. “Why would I ever do that, Ramsey? I got what I wanted, and you got what you wanted. Let's leave it at that. Let's never speak again.”

  “Fine with me,” I whisper, and now I realize I'm shaking with fear.

  “Hey!”

  Suddenly a hand snatches the wallet, snapping me out of the memory, and I see that the barmaid is glaring at me.

  “That's not yours!” she says firmly. “We don't take kindly to thieves in here!”

  “I was just looking,” I stammer as I get off the stool.

  “Sure you were.”

  “When Harry comes back,” I continue, trying not to panic, “could you tell her...”

  My voice trails off as I try to think of something, anything that might make Harry feel better. Someone smarter would probably think of some great message that would turn Harry's whole life around, but I'm just a dumb kid and I can't even begin to think what I could say. And as the seconds tick past, I realize that this is hopeless.

  “Tell Harry I'm sorry,” I say finally, before turning and hurrying out of the bar, almost bumping straight into the pool table in the process.

  Muttering an apology, I push the door open and stumble out onto the sidewalk.

  “Ramsey?” Ethan says, hurrying over to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Why did you have to bring me here?” I snap, turning to him. “I get why we had to go to the house in the forest, but why did you have to bring me to this stupid town?”

  “I -”

  “I didn't want to see that!” I yell, shoving him hard in the chest and forcing him to take a step back. “There's nothing here except memories and ghosts! And I know you say there's no such thing as ghosts, but I just saw one in that bar! She might be alive, but she's a ghost of who she once was!”

  I wait for him to make some kind of excuse, but he simply stares at me. And then, as I burst into tears, he puts his arms around me and pulls me tight. I want to shove him again, to get far away from him, but instead I simply cry with my face against his chest, sobbing at the memory of Dad and Harry and Buddy and Leanne and Esther and Molly Abernathy and all the people who've suffered because of Sebastian.

  “Take me back to the farmhouse,” I sob. “It'll get dark soon. I don't know what that thing was that I saw in Sebastian's farmhouse, but maybe I can talk to it. At least that way, we might be able to stop anyone else getting hurt.”

  Sixty-Five

  Ramsey Kopperud

  I sit in silence during the drive back to the farmhouse, thinking back over and over to my encounter with Harry in the bar. In particular, I keep thinking of the photos in her wallet. It's as if everywhere she goes, she's carrying around the ghosts of her lost family.

  The radio's on, but I don't pay any attention until suddenly Ethan leans over and turns the volume up.

  “Officials still don't have a line on these bizarre events,” a reporter is saying, “but the rain is continuing and the streets of New York are almost empty. It's hard to describe the smell here, but blood is literally pouring from the sky.”

  “And are we sure now that it really is blood?” the news anchor replies.

  “We're waiting for words from specialists,” the reporter continues, “but at this point it's very difficult to imagine what else it could be.”

  “What's happening?” I ask wearily.

  “I hoped I'd misheard,” Ethan replies, “but it sounds like there's blood raining down from the sky in New York.”

  “Huh?” I pause for a moment. “How is that even possible?”

  “It's not.”

  “And in terms of causes,” the anchor continues, “would it still be fair to say that the most likely origin of this gruesome weather is some kind of freak storm that's somehow sucked fish or other creatures up into the sky? Like some kind of real-life Sharknado?”

  “That's certainly a possibility,” the reporter says, “but skeptics are asking why only blood would rain down. Of course, one answer might be that the carcasses fell somewhere else while the blood was lighter and managed to get carried further, merging somehow with a storm system.”

  “And of course there have been reports of fish raining on people in the past,” the anchor points out, “and other animals.”

  “Absolutely. So while this might seem like some kind of apocalyptic event, officials are urging people to remain calm and to wait for the scientists and other experts to figure this one out.”

  “That's nothing to worry about, right?” I ask, looking over at Ethan as we flash along the dark road. “It must just be a coincidence.”

  “Three days ago,” he replies tensely, “a town in North Dakota suffered an invasion by millions of locusts.”

  “So?”

  “Two days before that, a woman in southern India reported that her two-year-old son was suddenly speaking in tongues. Usually I'd be skeptical, but in this case there was video evidence.”

  “That doesn't mean -”

  “The coincidences are piling up, Ramsey,” he points out. “There have been other incidents, too. I've been worried for a while, but we can't ignore what's right in front of our faces. New York is a couple of hours ahead of us, but who knows whether this blood rain is an isolated event or whether it's going to spread all across the country. Maybe even all around the world.”

  I open my mouth to ask whether he's serious, but then suddenly I remember something Sebastian said to me years ago, when he was speaking to me through Buddy's dead body:

  “Is there anything else you want to ask me while I'm here? I mean it, Ramsey. I only came to you today out of courtesy. It's almost four o'clock in the morning, you're lucky I'm even up this late.”

  I remember looking at the clock and noting that it was actually five o'clock, which means...

  “He's one hour behind us,” I whisper.

  “What did you say?” Ethan asks, as the voices keep blabbering on the radio.

  “Sebastian is one hour behind us,” I say, turning to him as I feel a sudden surge of realization. “When I spoke to him twenty years ago, back in the clinic when he was in Buddy's body, he said it was four o'clock when it was actually five. Which means wherever he was at that moment, he was one hour behind us. That narrows it down hugely. He must have been somewhere around the west coast!”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “I'm sure!” I say firmly. “How could I not have realized sooner? And you said it yourself, he's unlikely to have kept moving about. He probably took the witch somewhere and hunkered down with her, hoping to never be found again!”

  “Okay, so -”

  “And it was cold!”

  “Cold?”

  In an instant, I remember something else that he said that night:

  “If you'll excuse me, Ramsey, it's cold where I am and I have to go to the store. I have a full life, you know. The days of hiding away in a forest are over and I like my new habits.”

  “He was somewhere cold, and he was in a city. Or at least a town. He talked about going to the store. He said his days of being in a forest were over!”

  “That doesn't narrow it down to -”

  “It's a lot better than we've got now!” I continue, cutting him off as I grab my phone and bring up a map. “We can look for places near the west coast where it would have been cold at that time of year. We've just gone from searching the entire country to focusing on a few key places! Ethan, our chances of finding him just improved dramatically!”

  “If we set off tonight, we could be there in a day or two.”

  “I want to spend one night at that farmhouse,” I tell him. “If I can communicate with that thing I saw, with that woman who jumped out at me, maybe I can learn even more. These might be the breakthroughs we've been waiting for! I can't believe it took me this long to remember. We've wasted so much time!”

  “I'll figure out a route during the night,” he replies, and I can tell from the tone of his voice that he agrees with me. “We need to be methodical about this, but also quick.”

  “Just get us to the farmhouse,” I say, looking down at my phone and tapping at the screen. “I can do the rest, but we need to hurry if we -”

  And then I freeze, as I see that a gray, withered hand is resting on my right leg, reaching around as if from behind me even though I'm sitting in the passenger seat. I stare for a moment, and then I spot another hand on my left knee. Looking down at my chest, I see half a dozen more hands all reaching into place, just as I saw back in the motel bathroom. For a moment I'm too scared to say anything, and I tell myself that this must just be another waking dream, but slowly I begin to feel pressure from the hands gripping me tight.

  “Ethan,” I whisper, my voice trembling with fear, “do you see these?”

  “See what?”

  He turns to me.

  “Ramsey!” he gasps. “What -”

  Before he can finish, I'm pulled backward into the seat. Instead of being held in place, however, I somehow tumble back into a void, falling out of the car and into a vast darkness. I hear Ethan yelling my name in the distance, but then I scream as I feel myself falling and falling through an endless nothingness, tumbling faster and faster until I start to lose consciousness and – finally – everything goes black.

  Sixty-Six

  Sebastian

  Twenty-four hours earlier

  Even here in the room, I can hear sirens. The door creaks as I begin to turn the handle, and I flinch as I feel a tightening spasm of pain that ripples and then bursts in my spine. I freeze, waiting in case the sensation comes back, and then I pull the door open a little and stop to listen to the corridor outside.

  Somewhere nearby, just outside the apartment, there's a very faint tap-tap-tapping sound. I know what it is, of course.

  That stupid girl is on her phone again.

  Taking a deep breath, I contemplate going back inside and waiting for her to leave, but then I realize I might be waiting a very long time. I've known the little idiot to sit out there near the top of the stairs for hours at a time, tapping mindlessly at her phone as if nothing else matters in the whole world. I have been alive for a long time now, for well over a century, and mobile telephones are one of the more regrettable inventions that I have seen come to pass. And to think, I once thought televisions would be the downfall of mankind's great reach.

  Still, I cannot simply stand here and wait for the girl to leave, so I gird my loins and open the door before stepping out into the corridor. I do not look at the girl, of course. Instead, I turn and pull the door shut, and I check that it's firmly locked before starting to make my way toward the stairwell.

  “Going out?” the girl asks, not even looking up from her phone.

  In the distance, I can hear a man and a woman arguing loudly in one of the other apartments. Her parents? Maybe, or maybe I'm being too sympathetic. Maybe she has perfectly wonderful parents waiting for her elsewhere in the building, and this laziness is simply her nature.

  “Where are you going?” she asks, apparently not realizing that I am ignoring her on purpose. “Hey, old man. I asked you a question.”

  “My activities are none of your business,” I reply, leaning heavily on my cane as I reach the top of the stairs. “Don't you have anything else to be doing with your time?”

  “I'm alright here, thanks.”

  I turn to her, and of course she's still staring at her phone. Apparently she deems it acceptable to carry on a conversation without even making eye contact. How, I wonder, would such a pathetic and dull-minded child ever have survived in the old days, working on a potato field and struggling with the harvests? Back then, we all had to step up and work from an early age, but children now are just left to vegetate and occasionally cause trouble.

  “What is your name?” I ask the girl.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Curiosity.”

  She glances at me, with an expression of pure disdain. Disgust, almost.

  “Hayley,” she says after a moment.

  “A nice, old-fashioned name,” I reply.

  “But people call me Hay-zee.”

  “Of course they do. And how old are you, Hayley?”

  She furrows her brow. “Are you some kind of perv?”

  “Am I what?”

  “You got money?”

  “I was just trying to engage you in conversation,” I reply, although I see now that in this effort I was wasting my time. “Never mind. It's getting late and I have places to be. You'll excuse me, I'm sure, if I get on my way.”

  “Whatever,” she says, returning her gaze to her phone. “I didn't ask you to talk to me in the first place. I only wondered where you were going, that's all.”

  Sixty-Seven

  Sebastian

  As I make my way along the busy late-night street, I cannot help but think back to the endless arguments that I used to have with my father, back when we were struggling to make our farm work.

  “We'll move to the city,” he'd say, over and over again. “That's where the future is.”

  “Never!” I'd yell back at him, with all the ill-thought-out certainty of youth. “I'm going to stay here forever and look after the land!”

  And now look at me, enjoying life here in the city in a manner that I never thought possible. Indeed, over the past couple of decades I have even developed a routine, and one part of that routine involves me going out each evening for a drink in a bar that has become a particular favorite. This new life of mine is a far cry from the days when I lived in the forest outside Deal.

  “The end of the world!” a man shouts on the street corner up ahead. “God has had enough! We've blown all our chances, and now the end of the world is coming!”

  “Maybe,” I mutter as I walk past him, not even bothering to slow. “Or maybe new gods are going to rise up and take control.”

  Sometimes that's how I truly feel. With these powers, I might as well be a god. I might as well start taking action to fix this wretched and corrupt world in which we live.

  ***

  “I told you to sit down!” the woman shouts, grabbing her young daughter's arm and shoving her over to one of the corner booths. “Stop bothering me! Color in your goddamn book, okay?”

  She turns and storms back to the bar, where she quickly resumes her flirtatious chat with the gentlemen she's clearly trying to woo. Dressed in a very revealing outfit, the woman looks utterly unsuitable to be a mother, and I can't fathom why she has chosen to drag her pale, malnourished-looking daughter – who can only be seven or eight years old, if that – to a bar late at night. I'm also rather surprised that the child is allowed in here at all, although I suppose the owner of the establishment is not particularly strict when it comes to enforcing rules.

  The girl carefully selects a crayon, and then she starts coloring another page of her book. After a moment, however, she glances at me and stares, and then she smiles.

  I smile back at her, before taking a sip of sherry.