Free Chill Waters by Joan Hall Hovey

out. Crazy. Why was she thinking like this? The nightmare, that was why.
     
    But it wasn’t the only reason. Her gaze wandered to the Emily Warren landscape hanging above the fireplace. Looking upon it usually had a calming effect on Iris, but not tonight.
     
    It was not an ordinary landscape, but one that took you in after you’d kept company with it awhile, that let you feel the salt-sea air on your skin, know the heave and sway of the ship beneath your feet, hear the wind filling the massive sails. She wasn’t the only person to experience its effect.
     
    Looking at it now though, she heard the faintest whisper of accusation. You have to help her.
     
    Is it my fault your granddaughter won’t listen? That she thinks I’m just a dotty old woman. I tried to warn her.
     
    Iris took a swig of the whiskey, choked and sputtered on its fire. Great! Obviously, she was getting too old to take her booze straight up. Reaching for the silver lighter on the end table, she lit her cigarette. For a few seconds, she stared at its glowing tip with distaste, as much for her own weakness as for the cigarette. Then she proceeded to smoke it down to its filter, as if the cigarette might contain the precious oxygen her lungs couldn’t seem to get enough of since she woke from her nightmare, gasping for air. Never mind that the thing tasted like scorched socks, and made her feel light-headed.
     
    Iris’ hand jerked as the cat let out an ungodly howl. Sparks flew from her cigarette, one landing on the back of her hand; it burned like the devil. Uttering a mild curse, Iris leapt to her feet, brushing frantically at it. Mashing the cigarette out in the ashtray, she said, “Cleo, what the…?”
     
    In answer, Cleo sprang up behind her to the back of the sofa, hackles raised, teeth bared in a deep, steady growl as she stared at a spot above the fireplace. Goosebumps raised on Iris’ arms as her own gaze followed her companion’s.
     
    Another nightmare, she told herself, as in disbelief she watched the clouds in the painting. They were moving. It can’t be. Black clouds, sun-yellowed at their edges, boiling into one another. Iris blinked, shook her head, as if to dispel what had to be a hallucination. She had to be losing her mind, didn’t she? Because this could not be happening.
     
    But it was. As the clouds raced across the painting, entering into some mysterious dimension beyond the frame, new angrier clouds took their place. And beneath them, the ship rode the giant swells, sails billowing in the wind.
     
    “Impossible,” Iris whispered, unable to look away. At last she squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe it’s the whiskey, she thought, grasping for some reasonable, sane explanation. After a moment, she took a deep breath, forced her eyes upon the painting once more. A shudder of breath escaped her lips as relief replaced her dread. The clouds were still now, mere images painted on a flat, canvas surface.
     
    Some sort of hallucination, she thought again. That was all. But Cleo had seen it too. She reached for her glass. As she tipped it to her lips, some of the liquid trickled from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with a tissue, was visited with a vision of herself sitting with a covey of other old women, staring with glazed eyes at a flickering television screen in some nursing home, while an impatient hand wiped spittle from her palsied chin.
     
    The phone rang and for the second time in a few minutes, Iris near jumped out of her skin, almost knocking her drink over. Cleo bounded from the sofa in fright, tried to scramble from the room but her feet were travelling so fast she was running in place, nails clicking madly on the hardwood floor. She looked so hilarious, so like a cat in a cartoon that Iris laughed with weak release.
     
    She picked up the receiver. Who could be calling at such an hour?
     
    “Aunt Iris,” her distraught nephew said. “Something horrible has happened. I’m sorry if I woke you. I