Page 8 of The Elementalist (Four Elements #1)
Sanity Check
Ron Moore sat across from me at the Pine Stump Cafe, drinking beer from the bottle and watching a group of boisterous high school students playing pool.
“Were we ever that obnoxious, Max?” he asked. “When we were in high school.”
“More obnoxious, I think,” I said.
My best friend drank more beer and shook his head. “We had more to laugh about, I guess. These kids today, they’re growing up in a different Shadow Pines. A dangerous Shadow Pines.”
Ron had a right to be cynical. Three years ago, Ron’s wife, Daphne, had been killed in—you guessed it—an animal attack.
Except it had occurred while she was jogging along the streets of her residential neighborhood, her normal route.
Ron had led a search for the creature and had returned with a dead cougar.
.. a particularly big dead cougar. It had been shot multiple times, prompting many in the community to predict that the animal attacks would finally now stop.
And they had... until now. Now, I worried the local mountain lion community would face a harsh backlash they didn’t deserve.
Meanwhile, Ron coped with his loss as best he could.
I knew he often drank to deal with things.
Hell, I would have, too. I missed Daphne more than I let on.
She was a true friend. She didn’t deserve what had happened to her.
None of the victims around here did. It got me wondering how many of these ‘animal attacks’ had really been the work of the same killer who’d claimed Dana and Luke.
After Ron drained his first draft and motioned for another, he looked at me. “So what’s up? You sounded upset on the phone.”
Ron would know. We’d been friends our whole lives. Met in first grade, hung out together all the time as kids. We played football from pee-wee all the way up through high school. I was the best man at his wedding and a pallbearer for his wife’s funeral.
“That would be an understatement.”
“What the devil does that mean?” he asked.
“Good choice of words.”
Ron stared at me. He was a big guy, which is why he played offensive line in football.
I wasn’t quite as big, which is why I played tight end.
That, and I could catch a football with my hands.
Ron more often tried to catch one with his chin.
Finally, he raised a bushy eyebrow and asked, “Am I missing something here?”
For an answer, I opened my hand, palm upward.
I had been practicing the movement since returning from the woods.
I’d discovered that my palm had to be faced upward; additionally, I had to raise my hand slowly.
And if I raised both hands together, I got a stronger reaction. At present, I lifted only the one.
His shirt began flapping. The little square napkin sitting before him fluttered... then went flying.
“Jesus,” said Ron, looking over his shoulder, already sounding a bit drunk. “Would someone close the goddamn door?”
Except the doors were closed, both front and back.
And still the wind continued, clinking the wine glasses that hung upside down in the rack overhead.
Napkins, receipts, and straws scuttled over the scarred wooden bar.
Ron’s shirt flapped wildly and so did his thinning hair.
Nearby, balls rolled and clacked around the pool tables.
A waitress carrying drinks reached down with her free hand to hold her skirt in place.
“What the hell’s going on?” asked Ron, turning in his seat. “Where’s that blasted wind coming from?”
He looked up for a ceiling fan that wasn’t there. Then he looked at me. As he did, I lowered my right hand, and the lower it got, the more the wind subsided.
Ron didn’t put two and two together yet. Not at first. After all, why would he?
“It’s coming from me, Ron.”
He snorted. “Now that I could believe.”
Crude humor aside, I made a show of raising my hand again and the wind increased, flapping his shirt around his big frame. I lowered it again, and the wind decreased. Eyes wide, Ron couldn’t help but do the math. Then he broke out into a wide grin.
“Ha, that’s a cool trick. You almost had me going there. Is someone controlling the AC?” He turned in his seat, looked for someone standing near a thermostat, except neither of us knew where to look. “Well, they’re somewhere.”
“It’s no trick, Ron.”
“You having someone film me? Is this going on some YouTube practical joke channel? Is that how you’re making money, now that your business has all but dried up?”
“First of all no, and second, ouch. I happen to have a client.”
“A paying client?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. So tell me how you did that wind trick.”
“It’s not a trick, and there’s no one controlling the AC or opening and closing doors or standing behind you with a giant fan.”
“Fine.” He squinted his reddish eyes at me. “Then do it again.”
For the first time in many hours, I grinned. After all, this had been a helluva weird day.
I took in some air and raised both hands, palms up. I did so with the intent to cause a bigger storm. Intent seemed to be the most important part.
Wind erupted seemingly everywhere at once, but I knew, in fact, it was blowing away from me, in all directions.
I was in a sort of wind-free vortex. Around me, everything moved.
Glasses shot off tables, menus erupted from storage bins like flocks of startled seagulls.
A bad toupee flapped free, and hamburger buns went flying.
Ron reached out, fighting the wind, and pulled my hands down.
The wind slowed, then stopped as my hands came to rest on the table top.
The restaurant devolved into turmoil, people standing, running, chattering, wiping spilled drinks and flying food from their clothing.
Neon signs had fallen from wall mounts, and glasses and dishes had flown off tables.
Napkins still fluttered in the air like so many butterflies.
Ron ignored it all; instead, he stared at me. “Holy sweet mother of God.”
“Exactly.”
“Max, what... was that? Please say it was a trick.”
“No trick.”
“Wh-where’s the camera?”
“There’s no camera, my friend. This is real.”
“You... you did that?”
“Would you like another demonstration?”
He said nothing, and so I raised one hand with the intent to whirl some wind around his head, and that’s exactly what happened. The look of fear and awe on my friend’s face was priceless.
“Okay, stop. Jesus, Max.”
“I’m not Jesus. At least, I don’t think I am.”
“What’s happening?”
“No clue. But I needed you to see it, too. At least I know it’s not all in my head.”
“It’s a miracle. Wait, there are no cameras on me, right? Swear to God this is true.”
“It’s true buddy. Something is happening to me.”
“If this is some trick, I swear to God I will get you back every day for the rest of my life.”
I laughed and was about to answer, when I noticed a man at the far end of the counter staring at me.
He had Hollywood hair and wore a leather jacket.
Late June was way too warm for a leather jacket.
Over the years, I’d seen him around town here and there, although we never spoke.
Small towns were like that. You could see some people nearly every day and never speak to them once in years.
Most people who lived in bigger cities thought all small town folk know each other.
Sure, we might recognize each other, and we might even nod and say hello, but we certainly don’t know everyone’s business.
Anyway, I wasn’t casually friendly with this guy, although I saw him often enough.
.. and usually at night. At the bars, in fact, of which Shadow Pines had about five or six.
Anyway, you would think if you’d seen someone a few dozen times, you would eventually nod or say hi.
But this guy never gave me an opening, and years ago, I’d quit looking for one.
Who he was, I hadn’t a clue. What he did for a living, I didn’t know that either. But he had nice hair.
It stood out to me at the moment that the guy had taken a sudden keen interest in me; in fact, I caught him looking over at us two or three times.
Perhaps most interesting, the blowing wind didn’t seem to bother him, unlike everyone else in the cafe, who all still looked around and chattered excitedly about the bizarre wind.
As if my being able to summon wind hadn’t been the weirdest thing I experienced, I had the distinct impression that despite him sitting all the way at the far end of the bar, he somehow listened to us.
Impossible, I knew. Then again, so was controlling the wind.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s walk, I’ll tell you outside.”
“Yeah, no shit. This place is a mess anyway.”
I laughed, and left some money on the table.
On the way out, stepping over some broken glass, I discreetly shoved a few twenties in the tip jar on the bar, which was presently being tended to by a befuddled Reggie Smith, owner of the Pine Stump Cafe.