Cold Fire

is of It's just because I love him. It's the only thing that ever leads to healing.”

ave a Stroking Jim's hair, she said, "You couldn't have saved them, baby. You didn't have the power then, not like you have it now.

You were lucky to ward get out alive. Believe me, honey, listen and believe me.”

last. For a moment they sat unspeaking, all of them in pain.

Jim Holly noticed more blackbirds had gathered in the sky. Maybe a dozen cess- of them now. She didn't know how Jim was drawing them there-or why — but she knew that he was, and regarded them with growing dread.

She put a hand over one of Jim's hands, encouraging him to relax it.

Though he slowly stopped crying, he kept his fist as tight as a fist of sculpted stone.

To Henry, she said, "Now. This is your chance. Explain why you turned away from him, why you did. whatever you did to him.”

Clearing his throat, wiping nervously at his mouth with his weak right hand, Henry spoke at first without looking at either of them.

"Well.

you have to know. how it was. A few months after he came back from Atlanta, there was this film company in town, shooting a movie-" "The Black Windmill," Holly said.

"Yeah. He was reading all the time. " Henry stopped, closed his, he eyes as if to gather strength. When he opened them, he stared at Jim's of. He bowed head and seemed prepared to meet his eyes if he looked up. "You clench was reading all the time, going through the library shelf by shelf, and because of the film you read the Willott book. For a while it became.

hell, I don't know. I guess maybe you'd have to say it was an obsession with you, Jim. It was the only thing that brought you out of your shell, talking about that book, so we encouraged you to go watch them shoot the picture. Remember? After a while, you started telling us an alien was in our pond and windmill, just like in the book and movie.

At first we thought you was just play-acting.”

He paused.

The silence lengthened.

About twenty birds in the sky above.

Circling. Silent.

To Henry, Holly said, "Then it began to worry you.”

Henry wiped one shaky hand down his deeply lined face, not so much as if he was trying to scrub away his weariness but as if he was trying to slough off the years and bring that lost time closer. "You spent more and more hours in the mill, Jim. Sometimes you'd be out there all day.

And evenings, too. Sometimes we'd get up in the middle of the night to use the john, and we'd see a light out there in the mill, two or three or four o'clock in the morning. And you wouldn't be in your room.”

Henry paused more often. He wasn't tired. He just didn't want to dig into this part of the long-buried past.

"If it was the middle of the night, we'd go out there to the mill and bring you in, either me or Lena. And you'd be telling us about The Friend in the mill. You started spooking us, we didn't know what to do. so I guess. we didn't do anything. Anyway, that night.

the night she died. a storm was coming up-" Holly recalled the dream:. a fresh wind blows as she hurries along the gravel path.

.

"— and Lena didn't wake me. She went out there by herself and up at the high room". she climbs the limestone stairs.

"— pretty good thunderstorm, but I used to be able to sleep through anything-". the heavens flash as she passes the stairwell window, and through the glass she sees an object in the pond below.

"— I guess, Jim, you was just doing what we always found you doing out there at night, reading that book by candlelight". inhuman sounds from above quicken her heart, and she climbs to the high room, afraid, but also curious and concerned for Jim.

"— a crash of thunder finally woke me-". she reaches the top of the stairs and sees him standing, hands fisted)7 at his sides, a yellow candle in a blue dish on the floor, a book beside the candle..

"— I realized Lena was gone, looked out the bedroom window, and saw that dim light in the mill". the boy turns to her and cries out, I'm scared help me the walls, the walls!.

"— and I couldn't believe my eyes because the sails of the mill were turning, and even in those days the sails hadn't turned in ten or fifteen years, been frozen up-". she sees an amber light within the walls, the sour shades of pus and bile; the limestone bulges, and she realizes something is impossibly alive in the stone.

"— but they were spinning like airplane propellers, so I pulled on my pants, and hurried downstairs-". with fear but also with perverse excitement, the boy says, It's coming and nobody can stop it!.

"— I grabbed a flashlight and ran out into the rain-". the curve of mortared blocks splits like the spongy membrane of an insect's egg; taking shape from a core of foul muck, where limestone should have been, is the embodiment of the boy's black rage at the world and its injustice, his self hatred made flesh, his own death-wish given a vicious and brutal form so solid that it is an entity itself, quite separate from him.