“Jay!”
It was Kelly. She’d made the short distance to the river’s edge, dragging the raft of inner tubes behind her.
“Wait there,” Jay said. “You shouldn’t breathe this shit in.”
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. This ash is all stirred up. It’s hard to see.”
“Be careful.”
“Just wait there, okay?”
He spotted Patchouli’s tie-dyed shirt in the distance, surrounded by trees and—
Shapes. Moving shapes.
Mounds of swirling ash jumped from the earth. Patchouli ran toward one, then spun and dodged it. Particles of soot tickled his skin.
Another one leapt from the ground, fuming gray wisps of smoke.
There was another.
Patchouli dug his bare heals into the forest floor. Sweat poured off his bangs.
Okay, think.
It felt like his heart was going to burst through his chest.
Fuck.
They moved with a fluid grace. Dust, embers, soot, bits of bark and dirt all swept up into their forms as they moved closer, growing. They seemed to have their own internal wind, still-glowing embers hovering within them.
Okay, no time to study them. Maybe I can run through them. What the hell are they? Ash?
More of them exploded from the ground. Patchouli looked for the smallest one. The one closest to him.
He took a deep breath. Held it.
Its eyes glowed like the coals of a campfire, hypnotic and beautiful. The swirling embers that gave it shape fluctuated in elegant, fluid patterns.
More ash drifted up from the ground and joined it, making it grow. Patchouli saw a cluster of cigarette butts whip around inside the thing, making him think of Ann.
He needed to breathe. He needed air. Just one more quick breath and I’ll close my eyes and run through the goddamn thing. Just one breath. One tiny breath. One more breath is all—
The entire mass of smoking cinders rushed forward in a hurricane. Patchouli opened his mouth to scream, but the ash filled it and forced the scream back down into his lungs.
He fell over in a bloated heap, all the moisture in him bubbling out through his skin until there was nothing left but a dry, burnt husk.
It felt like the powder under Jay’s feet was becoming —
That can’t be a good thing, he thought. He had to get off this ash and into the water. He turned back toward the river.
Kelly trudged through the ash toward him.
“No!” he shouted. “Stay down by the river!”
But his voice was drowned out by the hot wind. He ran to her, but skidded to a stop when—
One of the creatures rose in front of him.
Jesus.
It was huge. It stepped toward him, its mass towering above him. As he stared at it—
- he heard more of them shoot up out of the ground.
What the hell—
The mass in front of him undulated like a cobra waiting to strike. Coals, embers, danced within its body, making patterns that held his gaze. For a moment, he thought it was trying to communicate with him. He tried to read into what the movements meant.
His mouth hung open in awe.
The creature hovered just in front of him, moving, swirling, its mass a wall of circling, seething formations.
He felt ash touch his lips, his tongue.
Then—
“Goddamn it, Jay — close your mouth. Close your eyes!”
A hand reached through the creature and roughly grabbed his arm.
It was Kelly.
“Shut your damn eyes!”
She pulled him into the creature.
Ashes to ashes to ashes.
A cyclone of hot, tiny pin-pricks stung his chest, his face, his legs. It hurt. It tickled. It burned. It made him want to scream and cry. He didn’t know what would come out of him if he opened his mouth. Maybe he’d start laughing and never be able to stop.
Don’t even
Kelly’s nails dug into his wrist. She jerked him forward. Forward? He couldn’t tell up from down.
Oh God, oh Christ, it fucking
He tripped on something. A branch? A root?
Kelly’s leg?
He fell forward into open space, Kelly no longer holding him, and his arms flailed out for something to grab, something to—
He hit the river’s edge with a splash. The pain of sharp rocks bit into his knees, forcing his eyes to open, forcing a scream and a desperate intake of breath.
A breath.
He could breathe. He’d fallen off the steep river bank.
The chill of shadow grew over him. And then Kelly—
“Get in the water!”
He lunged into the water, ducked under to get all that damn ash off of him. He felt Kelly next to him. When he surfaced, he looked to the shore. The creatures stood together, a wall of soot and ash. They spilled down the bank, then rose up again onto the dry land as if testing the water.
“They’re not coming in,” Kelly said. She grabbed hold of Jay and hugged him. “They’re not coming in!”
The raft of inner tubes still floated against the shore where Kelly had left them. She swam to it and pulled it into the center of the river. “Get on,” she said.
As Jay climbed on, the creatures dissipated into the air in a rush, swept up by some unseen force, creating a blinding cloud. It edged out over the river. Kelly and Jay watched as it floated above them, the cloud swirling and glowing with hot embers. Tiny bits of burnt wood and debris fell on them like pepper from a grinder. More creatures crawled or walked to the shore and were swept up, joining the cloud that now spread from shore to shore.
Jay and Kelly continued to stare as their raft spun in a lazy circle. The cloud glowed. It was beautiful. More debris rained on them. A thick ash fell on Kelly’s eyeball. It stung. She blinked. She tore her gaze away from the cloud, and as she did so, realized it was slowly descending. The bottom of the giant mass was only ten feet above
