by Celia Roman
Riley didn’t call me back ‘til I was in bed tossing and turning my way through a fitful sleep. I slapped around on the nightstand, fumbling for my cellphone, and finally got the dadgum thing answered.
“What is it, baby?” he asked.
Relief sagged through me so strong, I near about cried. “Riley. Thank the good Lord you’re ok.”
“Of course, I’m ok. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“The fire,” I croaked out. “Where are you?”
“At the Microtel in Robbinsville.” He coughed and cleared his throat, coughed again a mite softer. “You want to tell me what’s wrong now?”
I flopped back against my pillow and covered my eyes with my free hand. “I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning sounds like a good place to me.”
It was hard to miss the slow, wry humor in his smoke roughened voice. I let it seep into me, let it pry out the last of my worry. He was safe. He was ok. Now I had to help him stay that way.
So I started at the very beginning with the human-eyed painter and went through ever related event since then, even the ones he participated in, not leaving out a single thing. It was nigh on the same tale I spun for Libby, only with her parts included. Maybe I shouldn’ta told Riley what she was, but seeing as how it was pertinent, not to mention part of my own blood, I figured she’d forgive me for the telling.
Riley hmmed a lot and coughed a coupla times, but otherwise let me say my piece. When I laid ever scrap of it out for him, I ended with, “And that’s why you gotta come home, Riley, the sooner, the better.”
“Sunny.” His sigh burst through the phone on a wave of static. “I can’t. I’m already committed to being here.”
My fingers dug into the phone, grinding the casing into flesh. “Please, Riley. Come home for me. I sworn, I’ll never ask nothing outta you again, but please, just come back to me.”
“I’m going to, baby,” he said, soft and gentle. “I’m gonna come home as soon as this fire’s contained.”
Tears sprang into my eyes, clogging my sinuses, and my throat closed off. I opened my mouth to beg, plead, promise anything, but not a peep come out.
“Don’t be mad, sweetheart. I swear I’ll be careful. We’re never alone up here anyway. I’ve got two roommates and a half dozen other guys in my fire crew.” He paused for a minute. A door closed and another male voice spoke, too low for me to hear, and finally, Riley said, “Sunny?”
“Still here.” I swallowed hard and mustered up a little more, just for him. “Swear you’ll be ok, ‘cause if something happens to you, I’m gonna whoop your ever loving hide.”
His laughter morphed into a full blown chuckle, ending on a wheeze. “Sorry, baby. You’ve got such a way with words.”
“That ain’t all I got a way with,” I said, tart as a sour cherry, and he laughed again.
I couldn’t let the conversation end on a low note, so I asked him about the fire, then bullied him into a promise to find some cough drops for the cough he got from inhaling too much smoke. When we said goodnight, we was both about back to normal.
Only for all Riley’s promises, I couldn’t help the fear clinging to my heart that something bad was headed our way.
Chapter Twenty
I didn’t sleep no better after Riley’s call than before. Seemed like overnight, my mattress growed a few lumps what I never noticed before, ‘cause I discovered ever single one that night.
It weren’t the mattress stealing sleep, though. It was the worry eating away at my innards. I didn’t rest none ‘til dawn broke over the mountains, bathing barren trees in a cold, golden light, and Riley’s morning text beeped on my phone.
I rolled over soon as I heard the beep and read the message posthaste. Still here, baby, it said, and I flopped back on the mattress and sank into a relieved sleep.
The phone rung, waking me a scant half hour later. I checked the call’s ID. Local number, not one I knowed. Dang it all. Just when I was getting some good snoozes in, too.
I rubbed bleary eyes awake enough to swipe the call open and answered with a curt, “Yeah?”
“Sunshine?” a delicate female voice said. “This is Jena Brookshire. I’m sorry to call so early.”
“No problem, Miss Jenny,” I mumbled. “Is ever thing ok?”
I near about slapped myself. ‘Course ever thing weren’t ok. Nobody called at this hour of the day ‘less something was wrong.
“I have a problem.” The words was spaced a mite too far apart, like they was drug outta her one syllable at a time. “I asked around at school, very discreetly, of course, and a fellow teacher told me you were the one to call, so I…”
“You?” I prompted when her voice tapered off.
“I don’t know what to do,” she continued on a near wail.
“Well, I reckon you best start at the beginning.” Riley’s voice echoed mine in memory, and I winced. Dang his hide. Weren’t it bad enough agitating over him kept me awake all night? Now I gotta have his wry voice in my head telling me what to say, too? I shook off my grump, or tried to, and said, “Where you at?”
“A hotel.”
That woke me up like nothing else could. I sat straight up, holding the covers to my bitty breasts with one hand and the phone to my ear with t’other. “Something happen at home?”
“Something.” She huffed out a sound what was part laugh, part terror. “Evil. I know it sounds crazy.”
“Not so much,” I murmured. Weren’t it my job to deal with stuff ordinary folk didn’t understand, or out and out denied existed? “Did you get a good look-see?”
“Not much of one. I was getting ready for bed last night when I heard a weird scream outside, like a woman crying.”
Oh, crap. Not another painter. I slithered outta bed, ignoring the shivers trembling through me, and snagged a pair of clean jeans outta the chest of drawers. “What time was this?”
“Around ten? I like to read in bed for a while, so.” She laughed again, this one more genuine. “You don’t need to know that.”
“Ever little bit helps.”
And it did, considering some of the books I caught her toting home from the library. Weren’t beyond reckoning what she mighta summoned up something ‘cause of her nighttime reading, or something was attracted to her ‘cause of it. Not the same thing, though most folks wouldn’t make the distinction.
In any case, I weren’t gonna discourage her none from telling the story in her own words. Sometimes folks overlooked details when they was being questioned. Best to let the words flow where they would.
“A shadow passed across the window,” she said, “and big clomping footsteps hit the porch.”
“It skeered you.”
“Scared the life out of me, quite frankly. I panicked and packed a bag, and left as soon as I found my car keys.”
I paused in the middle of digging out a clean t-shirt. “You didn’t go outside, didja?”
“Oh, no. I was far too scared. Terrified, really. My car was in the garage. There’s a door between it and the kitchen.”
“Did it come after you when you left?”
“I didn’t look. As soon as the garage door opened fully, I left.”
Did she realize how close she coulda come to being got? Being inside a car weren’t much protection from monsters, ‘specially one determined to get you. And if it was big enough, well. Some monsters could crumple a car with one swipe of their hands or paws or whatever appendage was handy.
On the other hand, maybe it weren’t no monster. Maybe it was a painter up to no good, like my daddy’s mama stalking me in the deep wood. Only one way to find out and that was to visit Miss Jenny’s house and scout around.
“Can you meet me at your house in about an hour?” I asked.
Her breath rushed out in a shallow sigh. “Why on Earth?”
“So I can have me a good look-see.” I slammed the t-shirt drawer shut and gathered underwear. “It’s gotta be done, Miss Jenny.”
“O
h, my word,” she said, and her voice was so faint, I scarce heard it.
Took a few minutes to calm her down, and why not? No shame in being skeered of the unknown. Probably wise, as a matter of fact, and Miss Jenny weren’t nothing if not wise. She recited directions to her house on a shaky promise to meet me there in an hour or so, and I hung up speculating on whether my kin was causing trouble among ordinary citizens now or if something more sinister was after Henry’s almost teacher.
Miss Jenny lived on the Warwoman side of Clayton, just inside the city limits not twenty minutes from Jazz and BobbiJean, nor ol’ Aunt Sadie, neither. I got distracted by Old Mother’s seeing and neglected my active cases, but no more. Riley weren’t here to stop me, and since the doc cleared me, even if he tried, I could argue him down.
A pang seized my heart swift like and my breath hitched. Riley filled a mite too much of me, here of late. It was natural, sure. We was spending a lotta time together, but this worry was new, consuming. It et at me, nibble, nibble, nibble, like an ant gnawing away at a dead mouse one tiny bite at a time. Pretty soon, weren’t nothing gonna be left of me, I didn’t watch out.
Couldn’t help the worry, though.
I shoved it down, hiding it deep, and checked the knife strapped to my ankle. To be on the safe side, I tucked the 1911 into its holster and brung it along. Couldn’t fire it inside the city limits. Dang ordinances forbade it, but if a monster come leaping at me or Miss Jenny, I’d shoot first and pay the fines later.
Miss Jenny’s rental was nestled into a nook off Polly Gap Road, surrounded by woods on three sides. Like her, it was neat as a pin and pretty as a button, and that weren’t no lie. The concrete driveway shone bright under the morning sun and was a ruler’s edge alongside the green, green yard. Her house was stout and white, and capped by gray shingles. Red shutters bracketed the windows and a covered porch jutted away from the matching front door.
It was exactly the sort of domicile I expected a single teacher to live in.
Her car, a white Prius, was sitting in the driveway in front of the open garage door. I pulled in and parked the IROC behind it, and got a good gander at the garage. Nothing outta place. Nothing tore to pieces. Fact was, weren’t much of nothing in there nohow. A bicycle hung on the far wall on padded metal hooks. A shiny black tool chest hunkered down on a bare wood table in one corner and a large plastic trash can occupied the space behind the two concrete stairs leading from the garage into the house.
That was it. I sworn, it was the most Spartan garage I ever seen. Weren’t even an oil stain on the concrete floor.
I got outta the IROC the same time as Miss Jenny slid outta her car and met her halfway. She was wearing an old college sweatshirt over jeans what looked to be about the same age, and her blonde hair was pulled into a jaunty ponytail. It was the most casual I ever seen her. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was still in college ‘stead of a full growed woman in charge of herding a passel of young’uns through their ABCs.
She rubbed her hands down the outside of her thighs and gifted me a sheepish smile. “Thanks for coming over.”
“It’s what I do.” ‘Sides which, only a heartless, no account loser left a woman sweet as Miss Jenny in the lurch. “You wanna show me where you seen what?”
“Sure. Let me get my keys.”
She retraced her steps to her car, leaned inside, and come out holding a small ring of keys. Her hands shook ever so slightly, clanking the keys against themselves as she led me into the garage and unlocked the door.
The inside of her house was just like the outside, tidy and neat and not a thing where it ortn’t be. I scraped my boots along the doormat, hoping against hope nothing was on the soles what’d stain the white linoleum in the kitchen and the beige carpet springing up beyond.
Where I usually wandered, clean soles was probably too much to ask for.
“You don’t got no school today?” I asked.
She shook her head, bobbing her ponytail. “I took a personal day.”
“Hunh.” Me, I woulda placed money on them personal days being few and far between where Miss Jenny was concerned, but what did I know? On the other hand, weren’t ever day a monster come creeping through your yard, neither. “You remember anything else since you called me?”
“Just a scream and a shadow, really, and the feel of evil.” She pressed a palm to her heart and shuddered. “I know how crazy that must sound.”
“Not so much,” I murmured. “Where’s your bedroom?”
“This way.”
She pivoted on a sneakered foot and strode outta the kitchen through the dining room into the living room, and turned left into a short hallway. Framed pictures lined the walls, splashing color along the plain white. Miss Jenny graduating from college, surrounded by the proud smiles of her family. A younger Miss Jenny sitting astride a great beast of a horse, jumping over a fence.
But most was of her young’uns, the kids what was hers five days a week between school bus rides. My eyes lit on one in particular, a framed snapshot of a young boy what’d never made it into her classroom ‘cept to meet her.
Henry.
Miss Jenny’s quiet footsteps stopped beside me. “He was a lovely boy.”
I sucked grief in on a deep breath, storing it inside where it wouldn’t hurt nobody. “He was.”
“I was so looking forward to teaching him.” Miss Jenny slid a pale pink fingertip along the edge of the frame and a sad smile trembled across her mouth. “So bright. So much potential.”
The injustice of it all, of losing the pure love of my only child, swelled up in my throat, choking out the words like a weed clogging the end of a water pipe.
“You were a good mother,” she murmured, and tears sprang into my eyes, uncalled. “If he hadn’t wandered into the woods that day. If he’d stayed on the trail.”
“He didn’t wander.” The words popped outta my mouth before I could stop ‘em. “I sent him, Miss Jenny, sent him up to Fame’s to borrow some sugar.”
Her arm dropped to her side and her gray eyes fixed on me, calm as the sky before a storm. “Fame?”
“My uncle.” I shook my head. Who he was weren’t no part of the tale, were it? “A monster got my boy, took him right off the path and dragged him into the deep wood.”
“Sunny,” she breathed out and her fingers clutched my elbow, digging deep into skin and bone through my jacket. “I didn’t know.”
“Not many do.” I swallowed down the tears, pushed ‘em away. I didn’t deserve tears. I lost the right to cry over my baby the day I killed him. “Was my fault he died, Miss Jenny. I shoulda never trusted the deep wood.”
“Sunshine, no. It wasn’t your fault.” She tugged on my arm and stepped closer, and in the unlit hallway, her eyes took on the luminous glow of a believer. “Things happen, things beyond our control. We all find a way to death in the end.”
“His coulda come a little later.”
“Much later,” she agreed, and her hand fell away.
My elbow ached where she’d gripped me. I rotated the pain away and nodded toward her bedroom. “Show me where you seen your monster.”
“In here.” She turned and walked away, and entered the room at the end of the hallway. Soon as I slid in behind her, she pointed toward the two windows placed side by side on one wall. “These overlook the front yard. That’s where I saw the shadow.”
I stepped closer and lifted the sage green curtains away. Blinds was under ‘em, turned down to block the light coming in or to keep somebody from peeping into the bedroom, one or t’other. I flicked one slat up and peered into the front yard. Sunshine streamed down, casting a short shadow of the treetops against the grass.
“You hear it on the porch before or after you seen the shadow?” I asked.
“Before.” She sank onto the end of her bed, denting the eggplant colored duvet. “It was a weird sound, like scraping and thudding at the same time.”
“Then the shadow?”
Her ruler s
traight posture stiffened. “Leaves crunching.”
Good. She’d remembered a little more. “How big was the shadow?”
She stood and walked over, and slashed a hand across the windows just below her boobs. “About there, but it didn’t look like it was cast.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looked like it was right against the window.” Miss Jenny shuddered and backed away from the windows. “Whatever it was.”
“You recall the shape?”
“Hunched over, like an animal’s…” She crooked her arm and slapped her upper back, below her neck. “Haunches? Like a large wolf.”
“Best take a gander at the porch.”
We tromped out the front door, and there they was, faint divets in the concrete, like somebody punched nails into it. Which they mighta done. But what kinda critter was heavy enough to dig holes in concrete just from walking? ‘Less maybe it stopped long enough to flex its paws or whatever it walked on, breaking the concrete
I followed the marks across the porch through the flattened grass where it drug its feet, and at the windows happened to look up. A coupla hairs was stuck in the edge of one screen, right about where Miss Jenny thought the shadow fell.
I faced the woods, hooked my hands on my hips, and mulled it over. Something big and hairy walking on all fours, something what give off the stench of evil so strong, a normal human could feel it.
It weren’t much to go on. Fact was, it weren’t enough for me to begin to narrow down the possibilities.
I trudged back to where Miss Jenny stood with her arms wrapped around her waist and her shoulders hunched. “You got another place to stay for a while? Just ‘til I can figure out what’s doing here.”
“The hotel.” She shrugged and them gray eyes of hers slid to the side. “I’ll be fine there.”
Like as not, that was a whopper. I narrowed my eyes on her as a crafty idea popped into my head, and shoved down the guilt accompanying it. Introducing two lovers of all things Greek weren’t throwing Miss Jenny under the bus, ‘specially now when she needed protection of the supernatural kind.