Apparently, every single thing about my life is wrong. Even the stupid car I’m driving.
I was more than ready for a change of subject. “What time is it?” I asked.
“Nine twenty-six.”
“Getting close to nine thirty. Let’s concentrate on the Stop & Shoppe for now.”
“Good idea.”
We sat in silence, binoculars trained on the dilapidated old gas station. Not a damned thing happened—unless you counted Artie lifting up a butt cheek to fart.
I checked my phone. It was 9:57 p.m. “I think it’s time we—”
Grayson’s cellphone pinged. He glanced at it, then over at me. “It’s Vanderhoff. She’s getting a phone call.”
I smirked. “Maybe it’s Matlock.”
Grayson grinned and put his phone on speaker.
“Penelope? Is that you?” a man’s voice asked.
“Why, it sure is, tiger.”
The voice was Vanderhoff’s. In sexy mode.
Yuck.
“So nice of you to call,” she said. “I was just thinking I’d have to go to bed all by my lonesome tonight.”
The man laughed huskily. “Well, we wouldn’t want that. Are you wearing those sexy little red panties of yours?”
“You know I am. And now they’re getting all w—”
I reached over and clicked off the phone. “I don’t want to hear any more. I already threw up in my mouth a little.”
Grayson laughed. “Phone sex operators. Always the ones you’d never suspect, am I right?”
I grimaced, trying to block the vision my mind was trying to form. “Well, at least now I know how she supplements her Social Security check.”
“What say we cruise through the Stop & Shoppe for a six-pack to celebrate?” Grayson said.
I frowned. “Celebrate what?”
“Your first stakeout.”
“But it was a bust.” I reached down to crank the engine.
“Yeah, but we sat in the car for over twenty minutes without killing each other. That should count for—” Grayson’s eyes shifted to the Stop & Shoppe. “Hold on! What’s that?”
Grayson lifted his binoculars to his eyes and trained them on something across the road.
“It’s Artie,” I deadpanned. “Wow. He actually got out of his chair.”
“No,” Grayson whispered. “Up on the roof.”
I tipped my binoculars up slightly. There they were. Those red eyes again, just like two nights ago. “Oh, my—”
I never had a chance to finish my sentence.
Suddenly, the red eyes dipped, then headed right at us.
In the dim light of a quarter moon, a huge, bat-like creature swooped down over the car. As it passed over us, I stuck my head out the window and watched, slack-jawed, as it disappear over the treetops behind us.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“WHAT WAS that?” I squealed.
“Mothman!” Grayson said, like a kid who just spotted Santa. “Come on! Let’s see if it landed in the trees behind us!”
I winced. “Are you out of your freaking gourd?”
Grayson flung open the car door. “Depends on who you ask. Are you coming?”
I grabbed his arm. “Wait! It might’ve been a helicopter. You know, chasing an escaped convict.”
Grayson grinned at me. “Sure. If the convict was flying.”
My phone buzzed, scaring the bejeebers out of me. Grayson broke free of my grip and disappeared into the woods. I clicked on the phone.
“You still alive?” Beth-Ann whispered.
“Yes, I think so,” I whispered back.
“Did you see Mothman?”
“Uh ... thanks for calling, Beth-Ann, but I gotta go.”
I clicked off the phone and sat there, too stunned to move.
Had I? Had I really just seen Mothman?
Suddenly I realized I was alone. In the dark. With my car window open! I grabbed the crank and pumped it furiously. Nothing happened.
“What the—?”
Then I remembered the windowpane had broken at Bullet Point. My mind began to jump around like a squirrel on a hot stove.
Was that part of Grayson’s plan all along?
I shot an arm across the passenger seat to roll up the other window. Something grabbed my shoulder from behind. I screamed, whirled around, and hurled a blind punch at whatever had a hold of me.
“Ouch!” Grayson yelled. “Drex, it’s me!”
“You scared the crap out of me!” I screeched, wringing my painful knuckles.
Grayson opened his mouth to speak, but his cellphone pinged with another text alarm. He looked at the display. “Vanderhoff again,” he said, and ran around the car. He jumped into the passenger seat and clicked his phone to speaker mode.
“Hello?” Vanderhoff said.
“Beep. Beep. Beep. You weren’t there,” a mechanical voice said. “Tell no one ... or you’re next.”
“Tell no one what?” Vanderhoff asked. Her voice sounded frail and shaky.
The line went dead.
“So she’s not crazy after all,” I whispered. I turned to Grayson. “What do you think this means?”
Grayson shook his head. “I don’t know. But maybe we should do the same thing. For now, anyway.”
“Do what?”
Grayson’s green eyes locked onto mine.
“Don’t tell anybody. You know. For Vanderhoff’s sake.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I WOKE UP THE NEXT morning shivering. I reached for Grandma Selma’s afghan at the foot of my bed. It wasn’t there. I sat up. In the pinkish-gray of twilight, I couldn’t see it anywhere.
I crawled out of bed and looked around the room. It wasn’t on the floor, either. I got on my hands and knees to look under the bed.
When I lifted the dust ruffle, two red, glowing eyes stared back at me.
I nearly swallowed my tonsils.
A squeaky, ghost of a scream made it halfway up my throat, then collapsed into a disgusted groan. The eyes weren’t eyes. They were the reflectors on a pair of hand weights I wore back when I used to work out.
Geez. I hope this isn’t going to be one of those crappy days that lasts a freaking week.
I put a hand on the bed for leverage and hauled myself up off my knees. Shivering from the cold, I slipped out of my sleeping sweats into work sweats, then climbed into my coveralls. As I padded to the kitchen in my stockinged feet to get the coffee going, a random brain cell fired.
I’d left Grandma Selma’s afghan in her apartment the night I’d slept on the couch to keep an eye on Grayson.
Duh!
I dumped coffee into a filter and was contemplating taking a shower when I heard the sound of Earl banging around in the garage’s service bay below. I turned on the pot, tugged on a jacket, stuck my feet into my father’s boots, and made a quick clomp downstairs for a progress report on Grayson’s RV.
To be honest, my motivation was more out of self-defense that curiosity. If I was going to face Grayson this morning, my poor, addled brain needed a topic of conversation a tad lighter than his screwy metaphysical philosophy.
“How’s it going?” I asked Earl’s backside. He was bent over the engine compartment of the old RV, tinkering with something or another.
“Not too bad. I need a couple more parts.” Earl straightened up and handed me a list scrawled on a scrap of paper. “Be good if we could get ’em ordered this morning, boss man.”
I glanced over the list. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“How’d your date go with Grayson last night?” Earl teased as he stuffed the list back into his pocket.
“It wasn’t a date. We just ... you know ... shot stuff.”
Earl grinned. “Sure you did.” He turned and stuck his head back under the hood of the RV.
I should’ve just turned around and gone back upstairs. Earl ate up conspiracy theories like Cheerios. But I had a burning question on my mind, and my smartphone was still too smart for me to figure out h
ow to search the internet with it. That, and the bifocal demon had finally caught up with me. I needed glasses to read the damned cellphone screen. Glasses I couldn’t afford—both financially and cosmetically.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “Hey Earl, you ever heard of Mothman?”
He popped up from under the hood. “Mothballs? Sure. I can’t stand—”
“No. Mothman.”
Earl’s eyes lit up. “That critter what scared the daylights outta them people up in West Virginia? Sure, I heard of it.”
“What did it turn out to be?”
“Turn out to be? It was the Mothman, Bobbie.”
I suppressed a groan. “I mean in the official reports. What did they say it was?”
Earl raised an eyebrow, grabbed his stubbly chin, and rubbed beneath his nose with his index finger. “They never did say for sure. Some folks thought it came from outer space. Some thought it was a giant bat, all swoll-up and deformed by radioactive crap from that abandoned military place it hung around.”
I cringed, but kept going. “Why would people think it was from outer space?”
“On account of seeing all kind of strange lights in the sky. And them weird phone calls.”
My back stiffened. “What kind of phone calls?”
“Clicks. Beeps. Static. Stuff like that, mostly. Then these guys in black showed up and started tellin’ everybody not to say nothing about what they saw. That’s really why people think Mothman was the real deal, Bobbie. If it was a hoax, why would these guys come around and tell them folks to keep quiet about it?”
“What guys?”
“The weird dudes in black. That’s where that whole ‘men in black’ thing came from, I think.”
I frowned. “What were they like? These men in black?”
“Folks said they looked human, mostly. But something was always off about ’em. Some had real big, googly eyes. Like a bug. Some wore clothes that was out of style.”
“Earl, that describes half of Alachua County.”
Earl laughed. “I’m talking really old stuff. Like from the ’40s and ’50s. Or clothes that looked like they came from the future. They also spoke kind of stiff-like. Used old-fashioned words. A few of ’em didn’t know basic stuff, either. Like it was the first time they’d ever set foot on Earth.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I remember something about this one guy who tried to drink Jell-O.”
I blew out an annoyed breath. “He was probably just drunk. You’re full of it, Earl.”
“Am not! You know, now that I think about it, when Knickerbocker come up in here, he was all dressed in black.” He made googly eyes at me. “Maybe he’s one of them M-I-B’s. Think about it, Bobbie. He showed up here outta nowhere. And he’s always wearing that funny old hat.”
I scowled. “He wears that hat because his head is cold.” I blew out a frustrated sigh. “How much longer before the RV is fixed?”
Earl shrugged. “Might have it ready for a test run tomorrow. Why?”
“I need to give Grayson a progress report this morning.”
“Where is he?”
“Upstairs.”
Earl’s face took on a mischievous look. “Well, while he’s not here, let me show you something I found in his RV. Maybe you’ll change your mind about your boyfriend being one of them M-I-B weirdos.”
The part of me that wanted to tell Earl to mind his own business got kicked to the curb by the part of me dying to know what he’d uncovered. I followed my cousin over to the RV’s side door, and then crept inside with him.
I was expecting Earl to show me a baby alien in a pickle jar. Instead, he pointed to the kitchen and said, “Look.”
My nose crinkled in disappointment. “What?”
“All them cabinets is locked.”
I stared at the small padlocks on the kitchen cabinets. “So?”
“Why would he lock up his cabinets?”
“So stuff doesn’t fall out when he’s traveling? Or so nosy jerks like you don’t go through them?”
Earl shrugged. “All right. But why would he have eight deadbolts on his bedroom door?”
“How should I know? Same reason? To keep you out?”
“I’m telling you, Bobbie. Something ain’t kosher with that feller. Why you asking me about the Mothman anyway?” Earl grinned. “Wait. Don’t tell me. That’s what Knickerbocker calls his little man, ain’t it? Did you get a look at it last night?”
“No!” I growled. “He’s a customer. That’s all. Now get back to work.”
I turned to go. Earl called after me.
“Hey Bobbie, you ever smelled mothballs?”
I turned back around. “Yeah. Why?”
“How’d you get your big nose between his tiny legs?”
“Earl, you’re fired.”
I turned and stomped out of the garage. My cousin had aggravated the stew out of me for the millionth time. But he’d also gotten me thinking.
Why hadn’t Grayson mentioned anything about men in black when he told me about the Mothman case?
Chapter Forty
AS I REACHED THE TOP of the stairs, Grayson came out of Grandma Selma’s apartment. I couldn’t help but notice he was dressed all in black, including that old fedora.
Could he really be an MIB like Earl said?
“Good morning,” Grayson said pleasantly. “Coffee ready?”
“Yeah. Sure. Come on in.”
As he followed me into my apartment, my mind raced around like a rat on a greased Hot Wheels track. Earl was right. Grayson did come out of nowhere. He wore black clothes. Yesterday, he drank barbeque sauce like it was a shot of whisky, and licked salt like a Jersey cow. He claimed to be a physicist ....
Oh my word! A man from outer space would be well acquainted with physics, wouldn’t he? It was the perfect foil!
“You call Paulson?” Grayson asked.
I whirled around. Grayson was putting a dash of salt in his coffee mug. I stared, open-mouthed.
“What?” he said. “It cuts the bitterness.”
My cellphone buzzed. I looked at the display. “It’s the hospital again.”
“Answer it, Drex. They’re not going to go away.”
I groaned and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Roberta Drex?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m calling for Dr. Brown. He’d like for you to come in for an appointment.”
“What for?”
“He’d like to discuss your MRI results.”
I cringed. “Can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Please. He says it’s imperative that you come in as soon as possible.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I had a cancellation. The doctor’s got an opening in an hour if you can make it.”
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll be there.” I clicked off the phone.
“What’s the deal?” Grayson asked.
“I dunno. Dr. Brown wants to see me right away. It can’t be good. Unless .... Maybe this whole thing is a trap to shake me down for the bill.”
Grayson’s lip twisted. “I wouldn’t put it past them. Blasted doctors. Speaking of jerks, did you call Paulson yet?”
I shot Grayson a look. “Yes. I told him about finding the skull out at Bullet Point.”
“What did he say?”
“That he’d check it out. And I should get some rest. He thinks I could’ve had another post-concussion hallucination.”
“Huh.” Grayson took a sip of coffee. “So he thinks the skull could be another false sighting? Besides the dead guy in the orange jumpsuit and the dead guy who shot you?”
“Yeah.”
Greyson tapped his upper lip with an index finger. “Spooky action at a distance.”
“What?”
“Quantum physics theory. You see—”
My mind glazed over. “Save it. Maybe Paulson’s right. Maybe I am imagining things. I haven�
��t felt like myself since the accident.” I glanced at the clock. “Crap. I’ve got to be at the hospital in Gainesville in an hour. I better get going.”
Grayson followed me toward the door. “Can I catch a ride with you into town?”
“I guess. But first, tell me where you got your physics degree.”
“The University of Hard Knocks.”
I turned, suddenly angry. “I’m serious, Grayson!”
Grayson held his hands up. “MIT. Geez! Don’t shoot.”
I scowled. “Sorry. I’m just nervous.”
“Understandable. Nothing good ever came from an MRI.”
“Or an MIT,” I muttered to myself, then I stumbled down the stairs toward the garage, Grayson hot on my heels.
When we got to the service bay, Earl was hunched over the RV’s engine again, singing along with Madonna to Material Girl.
I suddenly felt all alone in the world.
I turned to Grayson. “Will you come to the hospital with me to see Dr. Brown?”
Grayson’s left eyebrow shot up. “Me? Why?”
“Who else am I going to take? Him?”
Grayson glanced over at Earl and blew out a breath. “You have a point. Okay. I guess I owe you one.”
Chapter Forty-One
“YOU COULD BE SUFFERING from a coup contrecoup concussion,” Grayson said as we climbed into the Mustang.
“A coo-coo what?”
“Coup contrecoup. It’s a kind of brain injury. A coup injury happens when your head’s struck by a moving object. A contrecoup injury occurs when your head is moving and hits a stationary object. You said the bullet hit you, then you hit the sidewalk. You could’ve sustained a kind of ‘rebound’ injury to both sides of your brain. Both a coup and a contrecoup.”
“Oh.”
“That might explain the strange visions,” Grayson continued. “You may be having flashbacks, or memories mixed together.”
“You mean my brain may be scrambled?” I turned the key in the ignition. The Mustang roared to life. I scowled at the dashboard.
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