Voices in the Darkness

by Rebecca Royce

  The rhythmic thud was hypnotizing, soothing. I wasn’t sleepy anymore, but I floated in this place of utter contentment. On the edges of my memory, something poked at me, like it wanted my attention, but I swatted it away like a fly. I’d deal with that later. Right now, Aaron was putting off heat, and I got to absorb it.

  This was nice, and I was grateful for my small house. Because I didn’t have a lot of space, I got to enjoy the close quarters. Maybe one day, we would be tripping over each other. But not today.

  “Lacey.” Aaron kissed my temple, through my hair. He hadn’t opened his eyes, and I didn’t know if he was awake or not. I smiled against his chest, kissing him there.

  He pulled me tighter, mumbling something.

  The door creaked open, and I lifted my lids to look. Colton crept quietly in. He walked to the edge of the bed, placing his hand first on Aaron’s forehead and then mine.

  “Hey there,” he whispered. “You doing okay?”

  I nodded. “Think so. Thanks for helping me.” My headache was gone. I didn’t have a concussion headache. Huh. I would have thought whatever happened would have made my head hurt worse.

  “It was nothing. Thorn got some information we can go over with you when you wake up later. You feel cooler. For a little bit there, you ran a low-grade fever. Not all that unusual. I’m glad it’s done.”

  Aaron muttered something, and we both looked at him for a long moment. Colton smiled. “He’s going to be out of it for a bit. You should probably sleep a few more hours. Then come out when you wake up, and let us feed you.”

  For some reason, I was really not feeling like I wanted to sleep. Cuddle with Aaron, yes. Go back to sleep, no. My stomach rumbled. “Maybe I could eat now.”

  Colton winked at me. “Yep. Come on.”

  I got out of bed. Someone had dressed me in a pair of pajama pants and a tank top. I’d place bets it was Colton. He left the room quietly, and I looked for a sweatshirt. No wonder I’d been cold. I smiled. Colton did get the whole it’s-freezing-and-we need-to-bundle-up thing.

  Thinking of that, I took another blanket and covered Aaron in it. He mumbled again. He was going to give Colton a run for his money in talking in his sleep. Assuming Colt still did that. I didn’t know.

  I made my way downstairs and toward the kitchen. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace that warmed the entire room. Thorn sat with his laptop on his lap. He looked up when I entered. “Hey, look who’s up. You good?”

  “Little muddled but okay. My headache is gone.”

  “Really?” Oliver poked his head from the kitchen. “That’s great news.”

  “Yeah.” He stood over the stove, cooking what looked and smelled like pasta and chicken. There was even a red sauce bubbling on the back burner. “Wow. My kitchen has never looked like this before.”

  Colton set the kitchen table. “We stocked you up on some new pots and pans.”

  “What was wrong with mine?” They’d done the job.

  Thorn frowned. “They were aluminum. You should never cook with aluminum. Your body absorbs it.”

  I hadn’t known that. The pots they were using were pretty fancy; all of them were bright colors. I read the name on the front of them and winced. It was the French brand that I couldn’t pronounce and that made me choke on my spit whenever I looked at the price tag.

  They were really pretty though.

  “What kind of sauce are you making?” I asked.

  “Fra diavolo,” Oliver replied. “It’s spicy.”

  Yum. It’d warm me from the inside out. As if my belly couldn’t wait another minute, my stomach growled. I placed my hand over it, embarrassed, but the guys just smiled. There was a tension in their faces, though, that told me for all their banter, something big was waiting to be revealed.

  I’d never been good at waiting. “Do you want to tell me now, or when Aaron wakes up?” I asked.

  They exchanged glances. “We’d hoped to give you a little more time,” Colton replied.

  He sat, frowning, and I leaned over, putting my thumb on his dimple. He smiled immediately, grabbed my hand, and kissed it.

  “Just spit it out,” I said. “Can’t be worse than Erdirg, right?” I laughed a little at myself, but when none of them joined me, I sighed. “Worse? Or as-bad-as? Because if I have a choice, I’ll take as-bad-as Erdirg.”

  “It’s not better or worse,” Thorn said. “Just different.” He sat at the table and spun his laptop to face me. I was surprised to see he had a Wikipedia article on the screen.

  Lifting my eyebrow, I met his stare.

  “Would you prefer Reddit?”

  Ignoring his question, I leaned forward to read. “Sleep hag. That’s just rude. And ageist.”

  “Be serious for a second, Lacey,” he chided.

  I bristled, sat back, and crossed my arms. Was it time for a lecture? I was twenty-seven years old. If I wanted to deal with serious things by making a joke about them, I would. It didn’t mean I didn’t get the gravity of the situation.

  I’d had years to peel apart the layers of my damage. There was my childhood. There was the abuse. There was being bullied and isolated and scapegoated. There was Erdirg.

  Sometimes, I needed some distance from the serious stuff. My brain, one of my therapists had told me, was hardwired to overreact to situations. It had kept me alive in the past, and now that I was safe, I had to reteach myself how to deal with stress.

  One of my coping mechanisms—not the best one—was to deflect scary things with humor. When I did this, I didn’t get flooded with stress or anxiety. I stepped back, got some perspective, and went forward in a—hopefully—logical manner.

  Also, yeah. I’d had some therapy. It was clear to me after a few months in Alaska that I had some big shit to work through. I wasn’t ashamed.

  “Dude.” Oliver shook his head. “That’s how she deals. Like you with the stupid clicking of that pen. Click. Click. Click. Whenever you’re overwhelmed. Let her make jokes. They’re not hurting anyone.”

  Thorn winced. “Sorry, Lacey. In addition to clicking pens, I tend to order people around when I’m nervous. That’s how I deal.”

  Colton leaned against the wall. “Ya think?”

  Tension lowered, I looked back at the computer and the sleep hag. Seriously, what a terrible name. I moved past that. According to the website, it was the name given to a creature that was used to explain sleep paralysis. The person experiencing the phenomenon would feel something on his or her chest. Back before people knew better, they claimed the sleep hag was responsible for their inability to move.

  “And you think this is what is happening at the clinic?”

  Oliver sighed. “We don’t know what’s happening there yet. Just that this shows there are paranormal creatures associated with sleep that could be fucking with the people there.”

  “Not literally fucking, we hope.” Colton winked at me. “See? I can make jokes, too.”

  I shook my head, but didn’t hide my grin. “Maybe what we need to do is talk to the man whose wife hired Rick.”

  “Good idea.” Thorn smiled. “Let’s try to do that tomorrow. In the meantime, how does your head feel if I say that what happened today at the clinic was totally paranormal?”

  I waited to feel anything at all. “Normal. I mean, not a thing. Today, something paranormal happened.” I had no problem saying it now.

  Oliver nodded at Colton. “Good work. Lacey, Colton is a genius with a cleanse. That bath he gave you could have gotten Erdirg off you all those years ago so that you could have left town.”

  “Just took a decade of tinkering. Getting messed with by paranormal shit made me motivated to figure it out.”

  “Yeah, well.” Oliver rose to go check on the sauce. “My father has had a lifetime and not done that well.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “I’ve got father issues.”

  Laughing, I threw my head back. Which is what he must have wanted, because he grinned ear to ear.

  When I could final
ly speak again, I turned to Colton. “Thank you. For getting whatever the sleep hag did to me off of me.”

  “That’s my pleasure, Lacey.”

  Thorn shut his laptop. “The land that place is built on is so clean, it’s almost unbelievable. In fact, it is unbelievable. Everywhere has some kind of story. That place? It’s like it was wiped clean. I’m going to keep working on it, but I think someone really doesn’t want anyone looking into what has happened there.”

  “So, it’s not on the internet. But locally, that place has a reputation. Like I told you when we first started, there were rumors about the hotel it used to be. Colton, what did you get at the historical society?” I asked. “There must have been something there in terms of hard copies. And if not, we could maybe check out the library. Or the university. They might have old newspapers.”

  Thorn glanced at Oliver and then Colton. “I don’t remember that conversation at all.” His face paled.

  “Don’t freak out.” I patted his hand. “I talked about it with Oliver. I just thought maybe he’d passed the information on.”

  “Forgot all about it,” Oliver said. “Probably because I’ve been so hyper-focused on you.”

  My face heated, and I glanced down at the table. “Oh.”

  “We’ll go to the library. The historical society didn’t have newspaper articles, but I’d like to wait until Aaron is awake,” Colton said. “He was knocked on his ass repelling the negativity that attacked you.”

  I leaned forward, studying the wood pattern on my table as I searched my mind for any sliver of information about what had happened to me. “I don’t suppose any of you know how to hypnotize a person, do you?”

  7

  At my question, the guys exchanged glances. Finally, Oliver answered, “I do.”

  “We’re going to stay here today and wait for Aaron, but it would probably be helpful if I could remember what happened in the doctor’s office.” I trivialized the entire event with that one phrase. Probably be helpful. Taking a breath, I decided to tell them the truth. “Actually, I’m freaking out a little that I don’t remember. I’m afraid something bad happened.” The list of possibilities was endless, and I could imagine one horrible event after another.

  “Aaron protected you,” Oliver said, his voice firm.

  “I know.” With every ounce of my being, I believed that Aaron had done everything he could, but I couldn’t even remember if he was in the room with me when I met the doctor. I couldn’t remember walking through the office door.

  And I needed to.

  “Let’s eat first,” Colton said quietly. Oliver was staring at me, studying me, and seemed to relax when Colton spoke. “Okay?”

  I nodded. That was fine.

  The guys did their best to distract me during dinner. Or distract themselves. My worry about something seemed to weigh on them now, and more than once the conversation trailed off.

  “This is delicious,” I said, scooping more pasta on my plate. I was nervous but really hungry. “Thank you for cooking.”

  Someone grunted, and Thorn smiled at me.

  I needed to be better about keeping their attention on less serious topics. “Oliver, remember Bandit?”

  He glanced up, and he had a spot of sauce on his chin. I reached forward to wipe it away, and he leaned in to kiss my thumb. “Bandit?” His face cleared. “Of course, I do. We met him at Doc Holiday’s.”

  “That was a mean horse,” Colton said. “Took a chunk out of my arm when I was too slow getting an apple out of my pocket.”

  “I liked him.” He’d been a little ornery, but it had fit my personality back then. “He was just choosey.” That was what Oliver had said at least. “Is he still around?”

  Oliver nodded. “Funny you mentioned him. He’s mine now. I have a small paddock and a pasture near my office. He’ll live out the rest of his days there.”

  “He’s yours?” Happiness danced through my soul. That was perfect. “That’s great.”

  His smile was huge. “I’m pretty crazy about Bandit.”

  “So what do you do for fun when you’re not working?” Colton asked me. “Do you ride horses?”

  I played with my fork. “For fun? Now that is a loaded question. I do have some friends. We sometimes meet for coffee.” Although I was always so busy that I needed to make more time for that. “Every once in a while, I have a very bad date.”

  Oliver lifted his eyebrows slowly. “Had. Past tense. You will only have good dates now and only with the four of us.” His cheeks pinked, but he soldiered on. “I sound like a possessive prick. I can hear it, but I can’t stop it.”

  I smiled. “I… I guess I should be feeling sort of upset that you said that, but I kind of like it.”

  Actually, I more than kind of liked it. His words made me want to squirm, in a good way. I had to shift how I sat, and if at that very second Oliver hauled me across the table, even with Colton and Thorn sitting here, I’d—

  A knock sounded on the door, and I jumped, my fork clattering to the plate. All three guys jumped to their feet.

  “Expecting someone?” Colton walked toward the door.

  “No, but I mean—it could be a Girl Scout?”

  Oliver shook his head. “Isn’t it a little cold for Girl Scouts?”

  Colton looked through the window. “It’s a man. Big guy.” He flung open the door. “Hi. Can I help you?”

  “Who are you?’

  It was Rick. I’d know his rich yet scratchy voice anywhere. I rushed over to the door. “Rick!”

  “Sorry, kid. I didn’t know you had friends over. But after that message you left me today, I had to come by and see for myself that you were okay.”

  I hugged him tight. He really was the closest thing I had to a father. “I called you?”

  “That makes me even more nervous. Can I come in?”

  I stepped back. “Sure.”

  He looked around the room as he entered. I knew the man as well as I’d known anyone. My pseudo-dad was taking in everyone here and making fast judgments. “Three friends?”

  “Four. One is, uh, asleep in my bed.”

  Rick turned red. “Well, I don’t need to hear any more about that.”

  I helped him out of his coat. “He’s just sleeping.” I looked down at the floor to get my bearings. “This is Colton. And that’s Thorn. Oliver.” They both waved. “This is Rick. He’s my boss and my best friend.”

  Colton put out his hand. “Sir, it’s nice to meet you.”

  “And you’re all Lacey’s friends?” He stepped further in. “Lacey, you don’t remember calling me? Leaving me this message?”

  He held up his phone, and a second later, my voice filled the room. “Nothing to worry about at the sleep clinic.” I was speaking, but there was nothing about my tone of voice that was natural. “Nothing paranormal. No concerns.” I’d hung up. That was it. First off, I rarely left messages for Rick. I called, and if he didn’t answer, I hung up. Then later on, when he could, he’d call me back.

  “That sounds fucking weird,” I announced. The guys nodded, and Rick frowned.

  “I went by the clinic, and I was going to go inside, but my car wasn’t there. I was out of range before that, or I’d have been there earlier. I guess I’m sending my people in, huh?”

  “Well.” I studied the guys. Did they want me to tell him about them?

  Thorn solved the problem for me. “We’re actually in the business.”

  Rick lifted his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips.

  If we were going down the “business” road, then Rick should probably get comfortable. “Let me hang up your coat, old man, and take a seat. Oliver cooked, so it’s safe to eat, and I know you probably greasy-spooned it while you were gone.”

  He tried to hide his smile, but the kitchen smelled too good, and home-cooked meals were something both he and I rarely had. He kicked out of his boots and sat. “So tell me,” he said as he scooped pasta onto his dish and accepted the ladle Oliver held out,
“what kind of paranormal business you in? Finding missing people? Dead bodies? What?”

  “We’re Trappers,” Colton answered. It wasn’t a title I had known before meeting Aaron and Oliver, but my friend wasn’t fazed at all.

  “Trappers.” He slurped spaghetti and wiped his mouth. “Don’t suppose you have beer, Lace?”

  I laughed and got up. I kept it just for him. Of course, I didn’t let him have it every time he came over because I cared about him and his liver too much to let him play fast and loose with his health.

  Pulling off one of the cans, I turned. His hand was already outstretched so I handed it over. He popped the top and drank deeply. “Right. Trappers. How long? Generational? Or rookies?”

  Thorn and Colton choked, but Oliver laughed. “My brother and I are generational, on my father’s side. Thorn and Colton here are rookies.”

  Thorn crossed his arms as if unhappy with the categorization. “I’ve done more to bring Trappers into the twenty-first century than anyone. But yeah, I’m a ‘rookie.’” He made air quotes around the word.

  “I’m an archaeologist and a Trapper,” Colton said, “but we’re not here for work. We’re here for Lacey.”

  “Figured that.” Rick looked around the table and pulled a piece of garlic bread off the loaf. “You’re the ones from New Mexico. Lacey’s spoken about you enough that I knew you’d be headed here eventually.”

  “I barely talked about them at all!” I countered. It had hurt too much, and then later on, it seemed pathetic to still be pining for the boys I fell in love with at seventeen.

  “Exactly.” He pointed his bread at me. “That’s how I knew.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Rick took me in. I was a runaway. I guess you should have turned me over to the police or something. But he brought me home, helped me get my GED with a—granted—fake name. And then he helped me get this job.”

  He shook his head. “She rather insisted on the job. I’d have preferred her to go to school and do something where she didn’t get her head banged in by crazy cheating husbands, but I quickly learned you can’t get Lacey to do anything except what she wants to do.” He checked out the guys. “A decade is a long time to not see someone and keep looking.”