Free The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree by S. A. Hunt Page A

me. I thrust my cellphone toward the jackets and shirts and realized that I was looking at a floor-length mirror, leaning against the back wall of the closet.
    Sawyer relaxed. “You have got to be kidding me. It’s a mirror. It’s a goddamned mirror. You saw your own reflection in a mirror that was in the back of the closet.”
    I whirled on him. “What I saw earlier, that was no mirror. Something reached out of there and grabbed me. Don’t even go there. I’m not crazy, and I’m not stupid, and I’m no coward. I saw what I saw and I felt what I felt. ”
    “What I feel is freaking stupid,” Sawyer said, walking away. He turned off his camera and looked at his watch. “It’s midnight...I’m getting out of here and hitting the hay.”
    What I felt right then was the suspicion that someone had been grinding up crazy pills and stirring them into my dinner.
    I saw no sense in trying to explain, or excuse, or rationalize any further, so I just gave up and let him leave. I followed him back down to his truck, both of us traipsing through the moonshadows. The fear and trepidation were disspelled by the strange mix of disappointment and relief, oh, great waves of relief coursing through my system, leaving me spent and dull-witted.
    We rode back to the gas station in silence, but my mind rocketed through plans on a red-hot wire, powered by the last dregs of adrenaline in my brain. I would be back tomorrow, and I would see in the heartless blaze of day, just what was so special about that mirror.

 
     
     
    White Lightning

     
     
    T HE AUDITORIUM WAS PACKED WITH people I’d never met. They’d all shown up to see people that I’d never meet again. I stood on the basketball court floor, my Oxfords just as polished as the boards under my feet, looking up at them, scanning the crowd for someone I might know, hoping someone had come to see me.
    I was alone in the thunderous pandemonium of that screaming standing ovation. My green wool uniform made me sweat in the harsh glare of the studio lights overhead, reflected by the gold buttons on my lapels and the medals on my chest. Hundreds of beaming faces regarded me from the stands, none of them familiar, none of them clapping for me.
    I closed my eyes. Silence fell in a sequential rush from the back to the front like a late summer shower, until I was an island in an ocean of soundlessness.
    When I reopened them, my breath caught in my throat.
    The stands were empty, but I was no longer alone. My father stood in front of me, holding a six-shooter at arm’s length, a Colt Single Action Army .45, pointing it at my forehead.
    When I didn’t move, he flipped the gun around with a flick of his wrist and offered it to me, saying, “You don’t know where you’re goin’, son, ‘til you can see where you’ve been.”
    I looked down at the revolver and the pink, black-taloned hand holding it.
     
    _______
     
    I awoke with a start, and opened my eyes to cold iron light seeping between the hotel room curtains. I felt like I’d been twisted and wrung out by a Greek god. Every joint in my body was radiating heat and my left tricep felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. I tried to shake off the grainy-eyed remnants of the melatonin I’d taken to fall asleep.
    I’ve never been able to sleep in hotel rooms, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s a mental block, or the highway noise, or the unfamiliarity, or what. As I lay there under my warm blanket reassembling my brain and gearing up for another day, the phone rang.
    I picked it up. “Hello?”
    “Morning,” said Maxwell Bayard. “I’m going to grab something to eat. You game?”
     
    _______
     
    I slid into the booth across from Bayard and ordered us coffee. The IHOP was packed with people. Luckily, they were all homebodies still recovering from a night’s sleep since it was half past eight and the workaday crew was already on the clock. Everything was relatively quiet except for the clinking of silverware,