Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best way to read books txt) 📕

least whisper of wind or water, nor the faintest creak of working wood that always accompanied her slightest movement. The clock by the bunk showed two forty, no sign of morning light to disturb the opaque darkness that surrounded Jared as he lay there motionless, seeking the thing that had roused him. But there was nothing save a sense of nervous unease centred in the pit of his stomach. He pulled on a sweater and shorts and went up the companionway stairs searching for what had changed and pulled him up from unconsciousness. It was the sense born of a thousand nights at sea, a tuning of the inner self with Arrow so complicit that each one of a hundred different sounds was subconsciously assimilated and weighed and assessed for change, be it the shifting sound of a friendly wave changing to the hard slap of a rising sea, or the ascending pitch of the rigging calibrating a gusting wind.

Jared crouched motionless in the cockpit for long minutes as he searched for the source of the unease that shrouded him like a pall. A damp yellowish predawn inversion hung static in the air and transformed the dock lights into hesitant flickering haloes that only increased the isolation. A distant freighter’s foghorn sounded from Roberts Bank far off in the distance, the sound so muted it was scarcely audible. Beads of moisture blossomed and grew on Arrow’s rigging and dripped to the decks and the boat turned suddenly cold and unwelcoming. Far distant down the channel a fisherman headed out for the early morning bite, his running lights invisible and only the soft ka-thunk of an old Easthope engine giving sign he was there, followed minutes later by the last ripples of his wake dying silently against Arrow’s hull. At the end of the slip a heron stood sentinel, its head tucked under its wing in what passed for sleep. Leaving it to oversee the boat in his absence, Jared laced his Pumas and headed out for a solitary run. He knew he owed penance even if it wasn’t clear yet what for.

He jogged slowly through the silent marina and came out on the barren city sidewalks, the slap of his soles echoing softly up through the grey concrete corridors. Away from the water the fog thinned as the road tilted up before him, but the cold became more pervasive and he increased his pace in an effort to build up internal heat and overcome the bleak complicit chill rising inside him.

Jared left the deserted canyons of the city and ran towards the park seawall, and then, on a sudden impulse, turned again and moved down Hastings Street towards the East End, past the little park where the transients huddled in their cardboard shelters and a lonely sex worker scuffed the sidewalk, a thick scarf wrapped over her spangled top. She glanced up, dismissing Jared as he passed her by, cupping her hands around her cigarette for warmth. A cab approached, its headlights flickering towards her, and she posed and stuck out her chest as it drew up beside her and the rear window opened. A brief negotiation and she climbed into the back seat where a shrouded passenger sat with lowered head. She closed the door and they moved away and faded into the darkness.

Jared was accelerating now, driving himself towards the unknown thing that summoned him, no understanding yet, caught up in a nightmare where he ran endlessly on, never knowing the reason or reaching the final destination, a human hamster caught up in an eternal mocking treadmill. For a moment he wondered if he was dreaming, then shook his head against the absurdity.

It was coming up on three miles now and still Jared couldn’t get warm. It was as if he were labouring in a separate body, one that was subject to an outside set of imperatives, and somebody had turned the thermostat down to zero. He should have been sweating heavily by now, doubled over against the punishing pace and fighting for breath, but still he ran free, his cold breath merging with the cold night, moving silently in the chilled air, the only sound of his passage a slapping echo that trailed behind until it too was swallowed up by blackness.

He concentrated on lengthening his stride, building speed as the road sloped down and away before him, leaning forward in juxtaposition and letting gravity’s drag pull him on, extending his arms for balance as his body fought to stay synchronous with his stride. A lonely siren rose up from back in the city and grew louder, a land-locked foghorn splitting the ghostly air before the fire truck whipped past and the icy mist scattered in drifting streams in its wake before reforming once more. The truck’s tires screamed in a hard turn down Clark Drive and Jared turned in its wake and pursued the fading flashing lights, willing himself to greater speed for a reason he somehow knew but didn’t yet understand. A second fire truck sirened past and then an ambulance pursued by a police car, and then a light rose up brilliant and grew in the east but it wasn’t dawn, and the cold knowledge rose up from the pit of Jared’s stomach and enveloped him and his body turned to ice and shattered.

It was another two miles to Annie’s house, but Jared never doubted for a second what he’d find when he got there. He raced on and the sirens grew louder.

Chapter 35

Clarke and Danny stood on the sidewalk among the tangled hoses and smoke-stained men with their grim faces and endless thermoses of coffee. Little remained for the firefighters to do now but gather their equipment and commiserate before leaving the site of yet another defeat.

Inside the yard that had contained Annie and Joseph’s home nothing was left standing over three feet high. The concrete blocks that made up the foundation had been blown out into the yard by the