Lords of St. Thomas by Jackson Ellis

Author:Jackson Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scissor Press

Chapter 15

My eyes popped open wide, and a chill ran down my spine. Had I dreamed that deep, booming roll of thunder?

No. A second clap echoing the first confirmed that it was real.

The wide brim of my hat and the big book fanned out across my torso had kept most of my upper body dry, but I quickly realized that my jeans were cold, wet, and sticking to my legs. I strained to sit up, my body stiff and sore, and tried to determine where I was. Then it came to me: we were in the boat, on the river, miles from home.

A light mist had glazed the boat and everything in it, but the thunderheads were growling, promising an imminent, fierce downpour, the kind that gives desert dwellers nightmares of flash floods and mudslides. A tenebrous shade of purple that deepened to navy in the east colored the evening sky, and I estimated that there was less than an hour to complete and total darkness. I must have slept for three, four hours. Maybe more.

Slowly, I crawled up onto my seat. Then I looked across the boat at Grandpa. He lay motionless, sprawled out with his hat over his face, neck crooked in a painful-looking position as his head slumped against the engine. His arms flailed out and his legs rested up on the bench seat. The fishing rod crossed over his chest like a sash, and water had begun to pool around his body, soaking his flannel shirt and jeans.

For the second time in barely two minutes, gooseflesh crawled up my back. How could he be sleeping through this? Maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me in the twilight, but I could not make out the rise and fall of his chest. I held my own breath, shaking, fearing the worst.

"G-grandpa?" I said, barely audible over the clatter of rain.

"What? What? I'm awake!" he shouted, jolting up and nearly capsizing the boat as he threw his weight around. "Holy hell, what is going on? I'm sopping! Henry, why were you letting me sleep through this?" He scrambled back into his seat, the heels of his boots slipping on the wet aluminum.

"I was sleeping too!" I yelled back, angry that I was being blamed for our situation, but also relieved that he wasn't dead. "I just woke up a second ago, and then I woke you up!"

But he wasn't listening. Grandpa yanked on the engine cord once, twice, three times, and it finally started up, eliciting a huge sigh of relief from the both of us. I pulled up the anchor from the dark waters and we spun around, aiming downstream toward home.

Just then, far up in the troposphere but directly overhead, a forked bolt of lightning arced sidelong across the sky, illuminating the river and mountains in white light. I turned to look back at my grandfather, and the taut expression of fear on his face did little to console me.

"I can think of a few places I'd rather be right now," I shouted.

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