Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

  Clawing Free

  Copyright © 2021 by Josh Roberts

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means—whether electronic, digital, mechanical, or otherwise—without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  * * *

  Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version ®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Author’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  ISBN: 9798599355885

  * * *

  Cover design by Josh Roberts

  Contents

  Free Content Offer

  Quote 1

  August 16, 2008

  1. August 15, 2019

  2. August 16, 2019

  3. August 16, 2019

  4. November 22, 2005

  5. August 17, 2019

  6. August 18, 2019

  7. August 19, 2019

  8. August 19, 2019

  9. August 14, 2008

  10. August 20, 2019

  11. August 21, 2019

  12. August 22, 2019

  Quote 2

  13. June 5, 2006

  14. August 23, 2019

  15. August 24, 2019

  16. August 25, 2019

  17. August 26, 2019

  18. August 15, 2008

  19. August 26, 2019

  20. August 27, 2019

  21. August 27, 2019

  22. August 13, 2008

  23. August 28, 2019

  24. August 29, 2019

  25. August 15, 2008

  26. August 30, 2019

  27. August 30, 2019

  28. August 30, 2019

  29. August 16, 2008

  30. August 30, 2019

  Quote 3

  31. August 30, 2019

  November 22, 2019

  Note From Josh

  Free Content Offer

  About the Author

  Get your free content when you sign up for Josh’s mailing list. Get Started here:

  Josh’s Mailing List Signup

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

  * * *

  ~Psalm 23:4

  August 16, 2008

  David awoke, lying in the grass. Dried blood matted his hair, and there was a horrible pain radiating from the right side of his face. He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around. It was early morning, and he was at the lake. They’d been attacked.

  Sharp pain stabbed at his chest as he struggled to his feet. He must have cracked a rib when he was thrown, probably more than one. He pushed the pain aside; he didn’t have time to think about it. David needed to find his friends—find Mia.

  A dense fog had engulfed the mountain overnight, making it impossible to see more than ten feet into the distance. He made an instinctive decision to run in the direction he’d last seen Mia going, limping up the path to Pine Bluff. She’d been calm—too calm—as she glanced at David and headed up the trail. The image haunted him. In the midst of everything going on, she appeared to be at peace.

  He shouted as he moved through the fog: “Mia! Dom!” Then, with senses clouded by fear, he listened for a response. Nothing.

  Eventually he spotted his Jeep lying on its side, just as it had been when he last saw it with three of his friends trapped inside. Only now, the driver-side door was bent all the way back to the hood and the roof was torn open, a gaping hole at its center.

  He ran to the vehicle and used the front axle to hoist himself up. He peered inside. It was empty.

  “Dom!” he shouted again, punching the Jeep’s bent frame when only his echo responded.

  He hopped down and ran in the direction of the forest. The trail was fairly easy to find, even through the fog, as he was able to make out the tree line as he came closer. When he approached the thick wall of trees, he looked for a gap, a carved out opening, amid the high-climbing firs.

  Although the shade from the surrounding forest combined with the fog made the path challenging to traverse, David made quick work of the initial stretch. But the closer he came to the place where the path emerged from the trees, the steeper it got. He remembered how challenging it had been to climb in the low light of the evening the night prior. That was before everything went to hell.

  After about thirty minutes, David burst out of the trees and into the open plateau. The fog had dissipated enough that he could scan for signs of life.

  Then he saw her, twenty feet away, lying on the enormous halved boulder that served as the centerpiece of the clearing.

  “Mia?” he said softly as he approached.

  The closer he came the more his chest tightened, and bile climbed into his throat. The surface of the rock around her was black, like charcoal. Her body was burned too—her skin blistered and blackened as if she’d been struck by lightning.

  David dropped beside Mia, his system infused with adrenaline and shock, then pulled her into his lap and tried to wake her.

  “Mia. Mia, baby, wake up. Mia, come on. You can’t be—this isn’t—” The sight of her lifeless eyes rolling back into her skull caused him to erupt into uncontrollable sobs. He yanked her into a tight hug, gripping her limp body as if his squeezing would somehow bring her back to life. Somewhere deep in his subconscious, David knew she felt all wrong. Beneath the burns, her body felt soft, too malleable, as if the bones that had once constituted her frame had been shattered.

  Finally, he pulled up and looked at her petite frame through blurred eyes. Her clothes were shredded, and more singed skin could be seen through every rip. And there were gashes, hundreds of them, as if she’d been attacked by a knife-wielding lunatic. It was obvious, though, that these wounds weren’t something a knife could produce; they were too large. Her whole body was covered in huge, jagged claw marks, as if she’d been ripped apart by the talons of a massive eagle.

  A glint near her neck caught David’s eye. What he saw when he looked up shattered him.

  Hanging from a chain around Mia’s throat was the engagement ring he’d given her just before the attack.

  1

  August 15, 2019

  The restaurant was bustling as Lissy narrowly avoided spilling a tray of food and wine all over a man as he pushed back his chair, standing directly in her path.

  “Almost fed you the tray, Todd,” she gibed, twisting behind him so as not to lose her forward momentum.

  “Sorry, Lissy.” He chuckled. “Tryin’ to score a free meal.”

  She spoke over her shoulder as she served the table in front of her.

  “I’ll talk to Albert. I’m sure he’ll get right on that.”

  “You know Albert and I go way back!” Todd shouted across the small restaurant, making sure the pop in Mitchum Steakhouse’s mom-and-pop operation could hear him. “Isn’t that right, Albert?”

  Albert, a stout man in his late sixties, gave Todd a flippant wave and went about clearing the table that currently had his attention. The restaurant’s patrons laughed collectively, and Todd’s wife, Yunjin, quipped at him to sit down and stop embarrassing her.

  This was a typical Friday night in Mitchum, Colorado. All of the town’s mainstays came to the steakhouse to hang out, swap stories, and recount their week to one another. The group only totaled about thirty, but it was enough to pack out the small building and keep Lissy on her toes all night.

  The
restaurant’s staff was limited to Lissy waiting tables; Albert’s wife, Rose, acting as maître d’ and bringing out orders when Lissy was backed up; Billy the cook; and Albert, who played double duty as sous-chef and busboy. It wasn’t much, but Lissy was okay with it. It kept things simple and predictable—how she preferred them.

  She weaved through the tables with an empty tray at her side, stopping when she reached Rose, who watched over the crowd like a mother taking stock of her children. She would make sure no one waited more than twenty seconds for a response if they had a request, complaint, or complement to raise.

  The older woman beamed at Lissy as she approached.

  “How you doin’, honey?”

  “Doing good,” Lissy replied. “Trying to keep the horde at bay.” She forced a smile.

  Rose leaned in, her greying eyebrows pulled tight with concern. “You lemme know if you wanna get outta here early tonight. I’ll talk the Big Bad Wolf down.” She peered over the rims of her glasses at her husband as he toted a bin of dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  “I’ll be okay,” Lissy said, hoping that the statement was truer than it sounded.

  Rose lifted her eyebrows, then raised her face to match them, allowing her to look through the bottom portion of her glasses at Lissy.

  “You know I’m here tomorrow. Albert too. Even if you just want me to walk into that kitchen and cook ya up somethin’.”

  Food was Rose’s solution to every problem. There wasn’t an ailment or emotion in the world that she didn’t have a recipe to combat. Lissy was sure the whole town knew her motto: “There’s a fish for every frown.” Every once in a while she would tack on, “Don’t even get me started on what a good piece of pie can do for ya.”

  “Thanks, Rose. I know.”

  Lissy took the empty tray into the kitchen and began loading it with the next table’s entrees. Smoke plumes poured from the grill as Albert passed behind Billy.

  “Gonna catch the whole place on fire if you keep doin’ that,” Albert grumbled.

  “Maybe if I had a grill that wasn’t as old as you, we wouldn’t be worrying about that,” Billy retorted. They had the same conversation every night, sometimes to the point that Lissy wondered if they remembered it or if they had simply been doing the same thing for so long that routine had taken the place of actual thought. She shook her head and carried the full tray back out to the dining area.

  As she was serving the food, she noticed Rose seating someone she didn’t recognize, which wasn’t uncommon. Mitchum attracted a fair amount of tourists. They often flooded in to visit Diamond Lake, especially after someone decided to end it all on Suicide Ridge—a nickname given to Pine Bluff long ago, before she could walk. But every time the monster hunters and small-time tabloid reporters rolled into town, it made her want to be sick. And after years of encounters with seemingly normal people, she realized even the ones who said they weren’t chasing folklore probably still were, only they were too proud to admit it.

  On top of her distaste for tourists, conversing with people she’d never met terrified her. She was able to grit her teeth and make it through, but even after years on the job, she couldn’t force her body to stop shaking when she approached the table of someone she considered an intruder.

  Rose waved her over. Her hands quivered as she walked toward the table, the tray pinned between her elbow and her side.

  “Lissy, I want you to meet Melissa. She just bought a house in Mitchum.”

  Rose was giving her a tip. Melissa wasn’t a tourist; she’d actually moved to Mitchum, which probably meant that she wasn’t there because of the stories about the lake. Lissy had yet to encounter anyone dedicated enough to relocate to the mountains permanently just to try to glimpse the lake monster. Although, there was the off chance that Melissa could be the first.

  “Welcome to Mitchum,” Lissy said with as much pep as she could muster.

  “Thank you so much,” Melissa replied cheerfully. She was younger than Lissy by a couple of years, probably somewhere in her early twenties. She had vibrant pink skin, big blue eyes, and dark black hair that contrasted starkly with her other attributes. She was stunning.

  Rose handed Melissa a menu. “Now, I’ll get you that iced tea, and Lissy will keep you company for a minute.” She patted Lissy on the back and moved over to check on the other guests. It was Rose’s belief that if the customer made a real connection with the staff during their first visit, they were sure to come back. The truth of it was that there was no other option for quality food in town because it was a thirty-minute drive to reach the closest restaurant down the mountain.

  Lissy fumbled for the right words and eventually settled on an easy cliché.

  “So, what brings you to Mitchum?”

  “Oh, my husband recently got work down the mountain,” Melissa replied. “We were so excited to move to Colorado, but we really wanted to live somewhere a little more peaceful than the big city. So, we moved up here and my husband is going to commute part time, then stay in the city the rest.” She grinned. Lissy couldn’t help but feel the unmistakable excitement that Melissa seemed to exude. She took a stab at guessing its origin.

  “Did you two just get married?”

  “Am I really that obvious?” She grinned, her pink cheeks turning a deep red.

  “No, no,” Lissy said, wondering where on earth Rose was. “That’s great. Congratulations.”

  Melissa, still blushing, responded, “Thank you!” She squealed the words like a child opening a Christmas gift. “I can’t believe it.” She looked around as if trying to see beyond the walls of the restaurant. “This is all just so perfect for us.”

  Just before Lissy was forced to come up with some other piece of useless chitchat to respond with, Rose returned, drink in hand.

  “Thank you, Lissy,” her boss said with a mischievous grin.

  “It was nice to meet you!” Melissa said as Lissy turned to check on the other tables.

  “You too,” she replied, wondering if her frayed nerves were as exposed as they felt.

  Lissy pulled the door tight, put in the key, and turned the deadbolt. She usually closed the restaurant. There was no reason for her to rush home, since no one was waiting up for her. She’d lived on her own since her mother left Mitchum and didn’t see that changing any time soon. So why not let Rose and Albert get home and enjoy each other’s company?

  She’d thought about leaving Mitchum several times, like her mom had. It would probably be better for her, and instinctively she knew it. It wasn’t that she wanted to stay. In fact, she desperately wanted to get out of this city, this place that held so much of her personal baggage. But there was something about Mitchum that had a hold on her, as if she were tethered to the town itself. And there was no question in her mind as to what it was that held her in its grip.

  By force of habit, she looked down the hill on which the restaurant sat—Mitchum’s backbone. Main Street ran its length, and every other road in town branched from it like nerves from a spinal cord. She gazed past the city lights, beyond the forests at the base of the hill, and all the way to Diamond Lake.

  The lake was breathtaking. It extended from just beyond the trees crowding the town’s edge to farther than the eye could see. It covered over two thousand acres, delved as deep as 250 feet, and had an astonishing twenty-one miles of shoreline. Over fifty campsites sat along its shores, and it was frequented by thousands of tourists every year. But Lissy feeling fated to remain there had nothing to do with Diamond Lake’s ability to take one’s breath away. She actually hated the lake, wished a thousand times—probably more—that the stupid thing had dried up during Mitchum’s gold rush years. Better yet, she liked to imagine that it had never existed at all.

  Lissy could see the subtle reflection of stars gleaming on the water’s surface, along with the reflection of the full moon on the edge nearest the hill. She sighed. That lake had robbed her of any chance at living a happy life. But she couldn’t leave it now, because deep down
Lissy believed that staying near the lake meant staying near her sister, no matter how ludicrous the idea was.

  Tilting her head from side to side, she released the tension from her neck. And with the lake in the forefront of her mind, she began the short trek to her apartment.

  As she walked, her thoughts moved from the lake to her sister. There was never an official statement that the police had stopped looking for Mia’s killer, not that she’d seen anyway. The investigation had eventually just gone quiet in the way those things do. People get back to their lives, chalking it up to, “Ah, well, that’s too bad.” And those who can’t cope simply leave, ridding themselves of all reminders that the hardest part of their lives had ever taken place or that the person they’d lost was once such a part of them. She shook her head, knowing she would never be able to take that path, though she’d tried many times. Running from the pain only seemed to magnify it. For her, there would be no getting back to life. Any chance of something beyond menial existence had been ravaged eleven years prior and was left to rot on that broken rock alongside her sister’s body.

  Rose and Albert waved from their porch as she passed by. They were listening to the radio, as they’d done every night for thirty years. This ritual reminded Lissy of something people did in old movies. She waved back, put her head down, and walked on.