The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

it go, but it doesn’t fall. Its movements even out, its blurred lines sharpen. It goes still. It plays dead.

“So . . . what,” I say “You want to go there, too?”

They don’t respond. But if they have ears, they’re going to listen.

“You know, the sheriff thinks you can’t hate a shark for being a shark,” I say. “She thinks this is just your nature. Is it? Or are you having fun?”

The lights flicker twice, three times. But I’m shouting over my own fear now. If something’s happening, that’s good. It means they can hear me.

“You understand me, then.” My voice keeps rising. “So how about you use your words, because I’m not impressed with the smoke and mirrors show anymore. Tell me why you followed me here. Tell me what you want. Talk to me.”

Then a quiet, familiar voice to my left says, “Okay.”

And there she is. Leaning against the doorframe, watching me steadily, unblinking. That mystical beach goddess maxi dress whipping in a breeze from another time. Nearly every inch of her is Gaby. But when I meet her eyes, I know better.

“You’re not Gaby,” I say.

She shakes her head gently.

I take a deep, shuddering breath. The room feels cool and damp and vast, like the air at the edge of the ocean. “Then I’d rather you pick another face, if that’s all right with you,” I say. “Not hers.”

Her head tilts a little to the side. Her face remains Gaby.

“Okay,” I say. “So what do I call you, then? Because Rudy’s already taken. Got a nickname, maybe? What do the other ancient, unknowable somethings call you?”

Her head slowly rights itself, her eyes unblinking.

“Okay,” I say quietly. “The Flood it is. Closest word in our vocabulary, I hear.”

Her eyes don’t leave mine. She looks whole. Three dimensional. But the longer I look at her, the more I see a paper doll. A flat, inanimate face at the edge of a closed curtain. And somewhere in that moment, I remember to be scared.

“Do you understand me?” I cringe. I sound so small.

She nods.

I swallow. “Then answer the question. Why are you doing this?”

She inclines her head at something past me. I look where she’s looking, at the now-still paring knife behind me.

“And your point is what?” I say. “That you know everything? Then you know nothing happened. That I left before anything could happen.”

It’s then that her expression changes. She narrows her eyes. “No.”

“It’s true,” I say, with more force.

“No,” she says, her own voice rising, and with a sound remarkably like annoyance, she points at the back of the kitchen.

I look behind me. Over my shoulder is the dusty, empty classroom of Lotus Valley Elementary School, and in the center is Christie Jones, smiling affectionately at the massive shadow spreading from her feet.

“But he’s never had the words to tell me his name,” she says.

There’s another flicker of the lights, and the scene collapses on itself, leaving only the kitchen.

I turn back to Gaby—to the Flood. Her face has turned to stone.

“I don’t understand,” I say slowly. “Is this . . . how you talk? Through images?”

“Memory,” she says softly. Gaby’s voice handles the word gently, reverently. But that softness is gone with a flicker of her gaze.

“Memories, then,” I say. “My memories?”

She nods.

I let out a sigh of a laugh. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but . . . post-traumatic stress disorder. Memory is my problem. I mean, of course you’ve heard. You know everything.”

I don’t think she understands what I’m saying. She’s looking at me, but her stare is focused somewhere far away. In the distance, I hear that sound again. That low, shivery roar.

“What’s that noise?” I say. “I keep hearing it.”

In the harsh light of the kitchen, Gaby’s eyes look black and endless. “The beginning,” she says.

I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.

“Okay. Christie Jones says you came to me because there’s something you need from me.” I cross my arms tight across my chest. “But I don’t know what you’re trying to say, unless you’d like to drive home that life’s sucked for the past year.”

She shakes her head.

“No?” I say.

“No,” she echoes. And for a second, she does look like Gaby—like that look Gaby used to get when I picked at plot holes in her favorite movies. “Listen,” she says. “Remember. Understand.”

“Listen . . . to what you’re showing me?” I ask. She nods. “Sure, but I can’t stop remembering it, that’s my entire . . .” I get the Gaby look again, and I stop. “Okay. Understand. So . . . I look at what you’re showing me. I remember it. And then I understand . . .”

There’s a surge of air from behind her shoulders, like an exhale. I remember, a little late, that this is not a person. This is a lure at the end of a hook.

Just like the voice on that cassette. Broadcasting into the desert. Knowing I would come.

I’ve started shivering. I hear it in my voice before I think to look at my fingers. “I listen,” I say slowly. “I remember. And then I understand what I’ve brought to this town.”

She nods. No emotion. Like I asked if she wants cream in her coffee.

“This is your home. The place you were born,” I say. “You’re really going to destroy it?”

Another cool nod.

I look at her empty face. I don’t see anything familiar. I don’t see anything human. I don’t see my best friend, even in this thing that’s wearing her likeness.

But I do see something alive. Something that chose me, even if I can’t understand why. Christie and Alex said the Flood is following me for a reason. That I would regret not learning what it was.

I don’t think I want to know the reason.

But I don’t think I want Rudy to kill the Flood, either.

“Can you tell me why?” I say softly.

There’s a creak at the far end of the bedroom wing. And then, almost inaudibly, soft, desperate sobs. The same I heard just hours ago at Lotus Valley Elementary School.

I jerk back instinctually. And that’s when I realize that my bare feet