In his absence, Phoebe thanks me again for all my help the night before and slips away. Over by the old jukebox, Danny’s voice rises. I grab a dishcloth and creep closer to listen in.
“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” He slams his hand into the wall, almost hard enough to leave a dent. “Dammit, Ian, someone died, and Frank won’t be the last if we don’t stop this.” He pauses. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. They didn’t find whatever it was, but someone will.”
My eyes skip across the other patrons, but other than a covert glance or two, none of them appears to notice Danny’s muttered outburst. They continue sipping their coffees, chitchatting about the weather, their neighbors, or the newspaper.
“Fuck that. I know all about your precious lines. I feel like the damn things are crawling under my skin. It drives me crazy.” He takes such a deep breath I can see his chest heave. “I also think that you know how to shut it down.” Danny shakes his head. “Of course you’ll use that excuse. ‘It’s not that easy,’” he mocks. “Don’t forget we still don’t know what happened to Gillet. Just another clusterfuck to add to the pile.”
A chill pulses through me. Dad. The police aren’t the only ones looking for him.
“Jesus. You’ve got to be kidding me. Now we have Irish mermaids?” Danny swears several more times under his breath. “You better take care of it. We don’t need one of those things getting loose and hurting anyone else or getting caught by some idiot fisherman.”
With that, he stabs the “Off” button on his phone and shoves it in his pocket. After taking one last deep breath, he scrubs his hand over his forehead and through his hair before storming from the diner, leaving without his bagel.
Jerk. I don’t know what his problem is, but he doesn’t have to act like to Ian. Especially since Ian saved my life, a couple times over now. Still irritated at Danny, I grab his bagel as soon as it pops out of the toaster, slather on some butter, and plop it on the table in front of Bill, whose already plunking away on his laptop.
Startled, Bill pushes his wire-rim glasses further up on his nose and looks at me. “Thanks.” He stares at the bagel for a few seconds, as if unsure about what to do with it.
“I made an extra on accident,” I prompt, feeling awkward all of a sudden. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“Oh.” He nods. “Okay. Thank you.” He takes a bite before turning back to his computer.
“No problem.”
Ezra arrives a couple of hours later for the dinner shift. “Did you get any sleep last night?” He slips an apron on over his clothes.
“Oh yeah, like a baby.” I keep my expression calm so as not to give anything away, but it’s difficult.
He studies me, and under his scrutiny I become even more self-conscious of the dark circles under my eyes.
“Uh huh, sure.”
“It’s fine. Honest.”
He shrugs. “If you say so.”
We fall into work easily. I wait on the customers with Maggie, another part-time waitress, while Ezra busses the tables and takes the dishes back to wash them. About halfway through his shift, we hit a lull and lean up against the front counter, sodas in hand.
“What are you doing after work?” I peer at him over the lip of my cup.
The corners of his lips twitch. “Are you asking me out?”
My face bursts into flames. “No, just making conversation.”
He chuckles. “Good, because I’m going camping.”
Yeah right. I can’t believe anyone would actually want to spend time outside right now, especially with what happened to my dad and with that creature still out there. “Seriously?”
His lips press together in a grim line. “I’m not afraid of anything in these woods.”
He should be.
When my shift ends, Mom’s on the phone with the police again, checking to see if there’s any news about Dad. By the set of her lips and the slump of her shoulders, I can tell there isn’t.
“Why don’t you go home.” She tosses me her car keys. “Phoebe wants to go out for a drink, and, honestly, I could use it.”
I stuff her keys in my pocket. “What about Brett and Molly?”
“They’re staying the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” Her gaze loses focus, and a wistful expression crosses her face. “I miss them, but it’s what’s best for now. I don’t want them to hear about any of,” she gestures vaguely with her hands, “this. You know?”
Her eyes implore me to agree, so I nod. “Definitely.” My little brother and sister would be terrified if they knew the circumstances surrounding what’s happened. It’s better that they think Dad’s on a business trip than missing.
“You can head out, too,” she says to Ezra. “Mark’s coming in, and he’s great at closing.”
He stuffs his apron in the wash bin. “Awesome. Thanks.”
I walk with him out to the parking lot, making idle conversation about some of the customers we had today. When we get to my mom’s car, he says good night and walks away. I can tell from his hurried, stiff-legged gait that he has other, more pressing concerns.
I mentally weigh going home with following him. Despite the creature still being out there, following Ezra wins, hands down. I’ll just see where he’s going and then leave. If I stay in my car, I can drive away if there’s any danger. I highly doubt whatever killed Frank can outrun my mom’s car.
After Ezra peels out of the parking lot, I pull out behind him, keeping a couple of cars between us. Excitement thrums through my body. This is much better than going home. Yeah, there’s a slim chance the creature is close by, but I have to weigh that against the secrets Ezra keeps and the possibility of finding something, anything, that might tell me what’s going on.
“Where are you going?” I muse as Ezra passes the dirt road to his uncle’s farmhouse and heads toward Camp New Horizons. An uneasy feeling roots around in my stomach, telling me louder and louder that I should turn around if I know what’s good for me.
I ignore it, and follow him until he turns down a service road, the same one we’d used to sneak onto the camp to search for the keys. So he doesn’t catch me, I keep driving until I pass around the curve and find a similar overgrown rut through the trees, this one leading to an old, abandoned deer camp.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.
I slowly open the car door and sneak outside, holding my breath until the door snicks shut behind me. The need to figure out what Ezra’s doing burns inside me until I can think of nothing else. He’s hiding something. I have to figure out what it is.
As quietly as I can, I creep through the forest toward where Ezra’s car had disappeared between the trees. A few minutes later, I spot a hooded figure bobbing among the pines.
Maybe he’s meeting someone. I lean forward and squint into the deepening shadows and see a guy emerging into a small clearing. He’s wearing dark pants and a hooded sweatshirt; Ezra was wearing jeans and a Rosie’s T-shirt at work. He could have changed, but I stay back anyway. Besides, if he had wanted you to know he was out here, he’d have invited you himself.
“One of these times, you’re going to get yourself killed,” I mutter and follow the mysterious figure until he reaches the towering Jurassic Park–style fence separating the camp from the lighthouse.
The hooded figure shrugs off a backpack. He sets it on the ground and removes a pair of heavy gloves, a small shovel, a metal stake, a bunch of wires, and a bottle of water.
I dart behind a clump of ferns and crouch down as whoever it is surveys the area. God, please don’t let him see me. If it’s Ezra, he certainly isn’t acting like himself, and if it’s not, then I don’t want this person to catch me in the middle of nowhere.
As I watch, the unknown person twists a long pair of wires to the top of the stake. Then, using the hand shovel, he digs a hole in the ground deep enough to plant the stake securely, fills in the dirt around it, and packs it down.
That finished, he sets his
tool aside and pours the bottle of water around the stake. Maybe this is some strange occult ritual, trying to summon a demon or something. Right. That makes sense. I chuckle to myself. Since when does any of this make sense?
A shaft of fading sunlight slices through the branches. The figure slips on the gloves and grabs the wires. My heart stops. No, this guy isn’t a devil worshiper, he’s insane. Even I can hear the electricity humming through the wires.
Before I can jump up and warn him, the person clamps the wires to the fence. A bright flash of light and a shower of sparks explode from the fence, and the figure flies backward, hitting the ground with a low oomph.
Heart racing, I peek around the trees, expecting to find an extra crispy body sizzling on the ground. Instead, the person gets up, brushes himself off, and studies the fence once more.
Wait. This guy should be toast. How is this even possible?
That’s when it hits me. Silence. No birds, no bugs, no frogs, and no fence. And anyone who watches scary movies knows that as soon as everything goes quiet, the really bad stuff begins to happen.
After returning to the backpack, he digs around for a few minutes. His hood seems to get in the way because he finally brushes it back. Ezra. It’s him. Part of me feels like I knew it would be him, but it’s still a shock. What else is he hiding? I rock back on my heels and with a loud crack, a branch snaps beneath my foot.
Ezra whirls around. “Who’s there?”
I don’t answer. Something inside me says it’s important that I keep quiet, that I don’t make another sound.
“I know you’re out there,” he growls. He brandishes a knife with a wicked curved blade. “Put your hands above your head and come out. Slowly.”
In the constantly shifting shadows, his face is a stark map of light and dark. All the kindness, friendliness, and flirtatiousness that I saw before is gone. This new Ezra is brutal, strong, and angry. When he waves the knife again, I raise my arms over my head and step out of the shadows.
Ezra drops his arm. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
I cross my arms in front of my chest, suddenly annoyed. “Following you, obviously. I want to know what’s going on, and you were being Mr. Secretive.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not safe out here. Go home.” Ezra stows his gloves in the bag.
“You first.” I jerk my head at the fence. “Are you trying to break into Ian’s property?”
His shoulders tense, and he pulls a heavy pair of wire clippers from the pack. “That’s none of your business.”
“Bull crap.”
“Dammit, Austen,” he growls. “I don’t have time for this. I need to go.”
“Why are you trying to get in there?”
“Ian’s not some saint like you think he is. He knows a hell of a lot more than he’s letting on. Shit, I bet he knows what happened to your dad.”
“You’re wrong.” I can feel the blood drain from my face. “If he knew something, he would have told me.”
He throws his head back and laughs. “I wouldn’t count on that. The same thing that happened to your father happened to my brother ten years ago.”
“That’s impossible.”
Ezra chuckles. “You’ll see.” He grabs the clippers and snips a rectangular hole in the fence a couple of feet wide. Then he tosses the clippers in the bag, zips it up, and shrugs it on. “Go home, Austen,” he calls out over his shoulder. “It’s not safe for you here, and I don’t have time to babysit you.”
Anger and humiliation flare up my spine as a low snarl, like the one that haunted me last night, fills the air. I spin around, but I can’t make out anything in the darkness. Something rustles behind me, and I turn to see Ezra disappearing through the hole he’d created in the fence.
“Where are you going? You can’t leave me!”
“I’m sorry.” He pauses midstep. “I know my brother’s here. I can feel it. Go home.”
The growl echoes again, closer this time. “Ezra!”
But he’s gone. Just another shadow among the trees.
I turn and sprint through the woods, not pausing to catch my breath until I make it back to my car.
***
Hands clammy and heart racing, I wrench the steering wheel and fishtail into the diner’s parking lot. Gravel spits up behind me and pings the sides of the car. I’ve got to tell Mom; she’ll know what to do.
Skidding into the diner, I scan the mostly empty booths until my eyes light upon Mark, one of our servers. “Where’s Mom?”
“Hello to you, too,” he says. Ignoring my question, he snags a french fry off the warmer and pops it into his mouth.
“Sorry,” I say. “But I need to talk to my mom.”
“She’s in the back.” Mark jerks his head toward the back. “She might be on the phone, but—”
I sprint past him, feeling guilty that I don’t have time for chitchat. I can’t dwell on that now. I have to tell Mom what happened.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” I burst through her door.
Her irritated expression stops me dead in my tracks, until she notices my panic. She quickly hangs up the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Ezra, he . . . he went through the fence and he’s gone and the monster’s back and he knows what happened to Dad and . . .” Mom’s face grows ashen as I tumble over the rest of the story.
“That’s not possible.” With shaking hands, she pulls me into a hug. “Listen to me. That boy has no idea what’s going on. None.”
“But he does. He said the same thing that happened to his brother, happened to Dad.”
She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks me directly in the eyes. “He’s wrong. He’s filled your head with lies and wants to drag you down with him. You’ve got to stop this.”
My eyes well up with tears. I can’t. She doesn’t understand. If Ezra knows something, anything, about Dad’s disappearance, then we need to go after him. We need to find him.
“Oh, baby.” She pulls me into her arms and tucks my head under her chin, just like she used to do when I was a little kid. “I miss him, too, and I want more than anything for him to come home. But I’m telling you, Ezra doesn’t know anything about your father. He can’t. That’s impossible.”
I collapse against her strength, inhaling the unique scent of gardenia flowers and fryer that is my mother. Usually her perfume calms me and soothes me, but not today.
“What if he does?” I mumble into her shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that Ezra might have been right.
“We’ll call the cops, of course. They’ll know what to do.”
“And if they don’t?” I step back, trying to pull myself together before I start sobbing onto her shoulder. “What if they don’t do anything?”
She sighs, and suddenly she looks so much older. The shadows under her eyes are so much deeper, and she slumps against her desk. “Then I don’t know, baby. I don’t know. If the police don’t do anything, then I’m not sure what else we can do.”
“But we have to do something. We can’t just leave him out there alone.”
She grabs my shoulders and a fierce look enters her eyes. “I know you’re worried about him, I am, too. But don’t you dare go after him, Austen. Do you hear me? Stay home, please.”
Chapter 7
That night, falling asleep is almost impossible because even the smallest sound startles me into wakefulness. When I finally dream, I’m outside under the stars and approaching the lighthouse. Only it’s not Ian’s lighthouse. It looks exactly the same, except it’s perched high atop a cliff.
Some movement draws my attention to the edge, and suddenly I’m up there as well, staring at a silhouette before me. Ian. He stands with his arms outstretched, a dark-haired angel about to take flight. The wind picks up, and his muscles tense. He’s getting ready to jump.
“Wait!” I scream, but the wind whips my words away before they fully leave my throat. He dives off the cliff, disappearing from view. I race to the edge and look down, but h
e’s nowhere in sight.
At the bottom of the cliff stands Ezra. His gaze is fixed out on the bay, as if it holds the answer to what he’s searching for.
I jolt awake, my heart beating out of my chest. An owl hoots outside my window, and I imagine Ezra out there, alone in the dark. Was my dream a message? I never remember my dreams, so maybe it’s related to all the crazy stuff that’s going on. Or maybe it’s your subconscious telling you to leave this alone or you’ll end up crazy like Ezra and break into a high-security fence to find someone who disappeared ten years ago.
What if Ezra’s lost or hurt? I bet the cops haven’t searched the land around the lighthouse yet. When Mom called them, they didn’t even seem to care about the hole in the fence. The same animal that got the truck driver could attack Ezra as well. My mom’s wrong. I can’t just stay home and hope everything works out. I have to do something.
Unable to sit still for even a couple more seconds, I start pacing my room. The Ezra from my dream haunts me. The desperation in his eyes sears into the back of my skull. He’s out there, I know it. If I find the hole he cut, I can sneak onto Ian’s property and search for him.
I lean against my windowsill and watch the stars glow in the sky before my eyes get drawn to the forest. A deep sense of foreboding fills me. Ezra’s out there. He’s all alone, and no one’s looking for him. No one’s willing to help him. Odds are that monster is long gone by now. It has thousands of acres of forest to roam. I doubt it would stay around people if it had the choice. I’ll look around for half an hour to an hour, tops. If I don’t find him, or any sign of him, I’ll come right back home. But if he’s out there, injured or lost, I have to help him. Even though he abandoned you out there? Fine. I’ll kick his ass later, even though I might have to save it, first.
With slightly more than half of my mind made up, I dress quickly, throwing on jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. I tuck Mom’s keys and a little flashlight in my pocket. Without thinking, I reach for my cellphone, but then I remember it’s still a lump of useless plastic. Great.
I briefly debate stopping at the camp and sneaking in to grab one of Phoebe’s two-way radios, but I’m sure she’ll catch me. Besides, I’d have to have someone listening on the other side, and I’m sure not going to ask my mom to do that. I’m still grounded, and she’d kill me if she knew I was even thinking about leaving.
When Darkness Falls Page 9