Chapter 35

Outside the rain fell fat and wet and warm. Mud gurgled and splattered with our every step. The trees bent in the wind, waving their branches wild like people at a Pentecostal church. Lightning lit the sky in blue and pink and purple, the clouds torn and scattered. This was no normal storm. It was a sign, a vision that all could see, a promise that something big was coming, something that would change everything.

“You sure you want to do this?” I said.

Murphy nodded. “I want answers, Lee. And I can’t figure any other way to get them.”

Whatever answers you find, I thought, you might not like.

I followed my sister through the rain-ripped night. Lightning roared into the forest, sparks shooting up from a far-off tree. The noise was deafening, a thunder cannon. I wondered if that tree had split down the middle like the holy spot where I’d found the tape recorder. I wondered if Grandma had hidden the tapes there or if somehow Jeremiah had done it from beyond the grave. It wasn’t impossible. No one was ever really gone, not in memory or substance. We breathed them in the air, they were permanent wrinkles lodged in our brains. Their cells somehow made up our bodies, and we ate the plants that grew from them. All of life was connected, I could see that now, and I was a part of it all too.

“Come on,” hollered Murphy.

She was nearing the edge of the trees, almost to the small path that led to Jeremiah’s grave. I realized I hadn’t been there since the night we saw Grandma crying. It hadn’t made sense for me to visit his grave because Jeremiah wasn’t dead to me. He was a part of me, in my blood and mind, in my genes. I’d seen my great-grandfather in the campfire world, playing the mystic game with the dice. There was magic there, power in our bloodline. I knew now that I came from a long line of seers and prophets, even beyond Grandma herself. I wondered if that history was written down somewhere, if there were stories of our ancestors speaking before great crowds, maybe as tribal chieftains in Europe, maybe as weird soothsayers in Rome. I didn’t even know where our family came from. Mom said it wasn’t important, all that mattered was where we were now. I didn’t believe that anymore.

I stopped at Jeremiah’s tombstone. Small fires, little flames, red and strange and weightless as hummingbirds, hovered over the grave.

“Oh my god,” I said.

The rain didn’t even seem to touch them, like the fires burned and whirled so hot that water avoided them altogether.

“What?” said Murphy. “What’s there?”

“The flames,” I said. “Don’t you see them?”