CHAPTER 57 RILEY

57

Riley

"WHA … WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" RILEY stuttered as a cloud of black smoke drifted toward the ceiling of the cave.

When Robby cut the crow, its blood smoked, but it didn't end there. He pulled his hand away just as the feathers started to smolder, then crumbled. There was no other way to describe it. It was like the bird was actually some kind of delicate sculpture and it collapsed under its own weight. The pins were still in the cardboard, but there was nothing left of the bird but a pile of black ash.

For the first time, Riley noticed the other black stains on the cardboard. "Are those spots from other birds?"

Mason nodded. "The ones from the diner."

Riley watched in stunned silence as Robby repeated the process with the remaining two birds from his backpack. When they were gone, he carefully collected the black dust in three ziplock bags and labeled each with a black marker.

"They smoke, but they don't actually get hot," Robby explained. "They melt, but they're not damp. Just the opposite. The dust that's left over is so dry it's like all the water vanished from their bodies in a second or two."

"When you cut into them," Riley said softly.

Robby removed the pins from the cardboard and placed them back in the plastic container he'd gotten them from. "Did you ever eat astronaut ice cream?"

"Sure."

"When they freeze-dry it and remove the water, they compress it into those square bricks. The overall size is reduced by a factor of seven. If they didn't compress it, it would turn into powder. I think the smoke that appears when I cut the birds is the water leaving their bodies, but since they don't get compressed, they dist … dist …"

"Disintegrate," Evelyn chimed in.

"Yeah, disintegrate."

"Why would the water leave their bodies when you cut them?" Riley asked.

"Because there's something wrong with it," Evelyn said. "Duh."

Robby's gaze drifted to the small bottle of water they'd collected at the town's tower. "Seventy-three percent of the human brain is made up of water. If the brain gets dehydrated, cells don't work right. It can cause anything from headaches to poor judgment."

"Hallucinations," Evelyn added.

Mason grunted. "Like slime monsters swimming in your cereal bowl."

Riley looked back at the stained cardboard. That didn't make any sense. "Birds don't drink the same water as us."

Mason pressed down on his baseball bat and twisted the tip around in the dirt at his feet. "The birds drink from the lakes and streams. Rainwater, sometimes. The water in that tower comes from underground. Streams below us feeding down off the mountain. It all comes from the same place."

Riley thought of her water glass next to the bathroom sink. The other one she kept in the kitchen. She always drank from the tap, her mom, too. "But don't they … I don't know … clean it somehow?"

"Between pumping it from the ground and going in the tower, the water runs through a filtration system," Robby said. "It's out near the Saco River. Other parts are underground, but it's not like in a city where it runs through some treatment plant. It's mostly just sand. Water from the mountains and the underground streams is some of the purest in the world. It's the kind of thing they bottle and sell. It doesn't have to be cleaned much before you can drink it. It really doesn't need to be cleaned at all."

"Sand takes out the solids," Mason muttered. "Chemicals are supposed to kill the rest."

Evelyn let out a sigh. "Guess who's in charge of adding the chemicals …"

"No luck, Buck," Mason told her before Riley could answer.

Riley felt a lump grow in her throat.

"Who knows if he's been doing it."

Riley swallowed and eyed the microscope. "Test the water with that."

Robby was already working on it. He'd opened the bottle he'd collected at the tower and carefully tipped it until a drop fell onto a glass slide. He pressed another piece of glass on top, sandwiched the water in between, and put it on the microscope. When he looked down through the scope, he went quiet for a long time, slowly adjusting the various knobs.

Evelyn was getting impatient. "What do you see, Robby?"

Mason leaned toward Riley and whispered, "Imagine a million tiny versions of the thing you saw in your sink swimming around in there, in the water you've been drinking . Gross, huh?"

Riley's stomach lurched, but she managed not to get sick.

"Robby …" Evelyn said again.

Nearly another minute went by before he leaned back from the microscope. "I don't see anything."

Evelyn nudged her brother aside and looked for herself. "There's got to be something in there."

"Not something visible," Robby said. "That doesn't mean there's nothing wrong."

"Bugs so small you can't see them swimming," Mason said quietly.

Riley wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, like a self-hug. She didn't realize she was scratching herself until she caught Mason staring.

"What the hell is that?" He pointed at her wrist, near the spot where his name was written.

Riley felt the blood leave her face.

Roy Buxton had appeared there in the same blueish ink.

She rubbed it with her thumb but it didn't smear.

Evelyn's eyes narrowed. "Give me the pen."

"I didn't write it."

"Bullshit. Where are you hiding it?" Before Riley could stop her, Evelyn was patting her down, turning her pockets inside out. When she found nothing, she let out a frustrated grunt.

"I told you."

"You want us to believe those names magically appeared on your arms. Just like that."

"They did."

Robby smeared something across her skin, wet and cold. It was an alcohol wipe. She had no idea where he'd gotten it. He looked at the pad, then her arm, and said matter-of-factly, "It's not ink. It's below her skin. Like a tattoo." He went back to the water samples as if a tattoo appearing all on its own was the most normal thing ever.

Riley, Mason, and Evelyn all stared at each other.

Robby went over to the makeshift water collection system he'd rigged under the stalactite. Rummaging through his pockets, he found one of the test strips he'd pilfered from the water tower, held it under the spigot, twisted the knob, and soaked it. He shook off the excess and held the strip up to the light.

"We'll figure out your Harry Potter ink in a minute. I don't like where this is going," Evelyn said. "I just drank that water."

Robby stared at the strip, and for the first time since Riley had met him, he looked confused.

Evelyn drew closer. "Well?"

He removed the strip he'd used at the water tower from his back pocket and held it up to the other one. Now Evelyn looked confused, too. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Roy Buxton doesn't live very far from here," Robby said. "We need to show him this."