Visible Friend by K.Z. Snow

Author:K.Z. Snow [Snow, K.Z.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Chapter Eight

DENNY didn’t return. He simply walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, and by the time Chris got up to look for him, he was gone.

It was impossible not to think about him. Chris kept busy through the weekend—reading, doing housecleaning and laundry, reading more, watching a few DVDs, taking a long walk along the lakeshore—but he couldn’t keep his mind from rerunning every one of Denny’s appearances, every conversation they’d had. What had happened following Winston’s visit nagged at him the most.

That these interactions were unexplainable no longer upset Chris too much. What was it Denny had said? “Are you aware of everything that’s possible and everything that isn’t? Even geniuses don’t have that kind of intelligence.”

He was right.

Chris’s childhood had been infused with belief in far stranger things—incorruptible saints and luminous angels and a man who could walk on water and raise the dead. Three of those wonder years had been dominated by a sweet, caring boy whose devotion was unconditional, even when Chris was a brat. People took all sorts of outrageous claims at face value and found them spiritually sustaining, so why couldn’t a recovering addict find strength through an unconventional childhood friend?

“Twilight Zone” twists even occurred to Chris. What if he and his life, his world, only existed in Denny’s imagination instead of the other way around? Or what if parallel universes were somehow intersecting, and both he and Denny were straddling two planes of existence? Maybe Denny was composed of neutrinos or some extraterrestrial material that only occasionally morphed into matter. At this point, anything seemed possible. No explanation was any more or less ludicrous than any other.

It was during his Sunday walk along the lake that Chris finally allowed himself to talk to Denny. He might’ve accepted the fact that extraordinary things sometimes happened to ordinary people. He might’ve been willing to let faith occasionally supplant reason and science fiction to supplant both. But he still felt thrown off balance by Denny’s reemergence.

Chris cut through the small downtown area where Ginke’s was located, paused in front of the Vista Inn, and wondered which direction to take. Across the road, carefully placed boulders—gleaming or glowering, depending on the level of sunlight—formed a retaining wall that ran the short length of the business district. He didn’t want to dawdle there. Even before Memorial Day, the area was too busy.

Cold Harbor wasn’t exactly a major port but did get its share of boaters and fishermen, so it had a charming, visitor-friendly lakefront. Local color was concentrated at the south end of town, past a narrow concrete jetty that stretched far into the water. At its end was the Cold Harbor Light. Far less than a proper lighthouse yet more than a flashing bulb, it was a stubby-looking structure elevated on cross-braced steel legs that were certainly sturdier than they looked. Commercial boat docks lay beyond the Light to the south, as well as weedy nets and scattered small pole buildings redolent of whitefish and chubs, yellow perch and smelt.

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