The first time had been several weeks before Steph’s death and, at the time, Nan had chalked it up to an overactive imagination and perhaps one beer too many. She had been sitting in the same chair which she now occupied. It had been later in the day, maybe five or six, and the overcast day had begun to fade into twilight. The beach and ocean were beautiful, but they could be lonely places in the winter months, unless one happened to live further south where the cold weather could not get a grip.
Nan had been engaged in a particularly vicious battle with self-pity that day. She wasn’t sure if the underlying cause had more to do with the time of year and weather or simply the latent emptiness which seemed to be her constant companion. In the end, it really didn’t matter. The depression was the same, whatever the cause.
She had never been one to believe in ghosts and goblins. Even growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where there was never a shortage of ghost stories or spooky folklore, she had seldom given the supernatural any credibility. Nan came from a long line of skeptics, and she had carried on that tradition quite admirably until now.
She had been staring out at the deserted beach, thinking of Pete and fighting back the tears. With her vision blurred, she had almost missed the person in the ocean, thinking the shape to be merely the dark underbelly of a wave. She had wiped her eyes and looked again, and this time there was no mistaking the form for anything other than human.
She had jumped up, alarmed, for the person was out further than a swimmer should have been, especially since it was getting dark and the water was so cold. She hadn’t seen anyone enter the water, but that didn’t mean anything. The person might have been out on a kayak or sailboat before falling into the water, or it might even be a surfer who had lost his board. There were any number of possibilities. The most important thing, right now, was to ascertain if the person needed help or not.
She called out, but even as she did so, she doubted that the person would be able to hear her over the crashing waves. She needed to get down to the beach. She had run back into the house, grabbed her cell off the nightstand beside the bed, and headed down the stairs and out of the house.
It had taken her a few moments to get her bearings. From the ground level, it was harder to see anything in the churning water. She’d scanned the horizon repeatedly, to no avail. She had begun to panic, thinking that the person had gone under, that they were drowning as she stood there. She was not a strong swimmer, and she knew that going into the water would be foolhardy, if not downright dangerous.
She had almost dialed 911, then decided to go back up to the deck for one last look before she called. She had turned back toward the house, and that’s when she’d seen the second ghost, if that’s what it had been.
The figure was about fifty yards away, and it was waving its arms over its head, as if in warning. Nan was pretty sure it had been a man, but the figure had been so far away that she hadn’t been able to make out any features. He had been dressed in what looked like a gray jacket and matching trousers.
She had turned back to the ocean, thinking that the man had also spotted the person in the water and was trying to raise an alarm. She had seen nothing in the dark water, and when she’d turned back around the man, or whatever it had been, was gone.
She’d stood there for several minutes, confused. There was no way the man could have crossed the expanse of beach and ducked behind the dunes in the few moments Nan had been looking out to sea, yet he was nowhere to be seen. Finally, she had given up and gone back into the house. She had locked the doors behind her.
Three weeks later, Steph was gone. The authorities had ruled it an accidental drowning. Nan didn’t believe that for a second. She had known Steph well enough to ascertain that the woman hadn’t been crazy, nor had she been a druggie or a drunk. There had been absolutely no logical reason for Steph to go into the water that night.
Of course, Steph might have gone into the water if she’d thought she’d seen someone out there. Nan thought back to the person she’d seen in the ocean. Had there really been someone there? She had kept up with the local news for the past several weeks, and there had been no mention of anyone missing.
Had the ‘ghost’ in the water and the man in gray been one and the same? It was possible, but she didn’t think so, though she really couldn’t give a reason why. The man on the beach had been waving his arms, either trying to get her attention or—and she thought this more likely—trying to warn her. He did not seem to be threatening her in any way. But whoever or whatever had been in the water definitely gave off a feeling of malevolence. The shape in the water had been watching her, she was sure of it. And she sensed that it harbored no good intentions.
Nan had seen no more of the Gray Man, but she had glimpsed the other one on several occasions recently. Most often, it was in the water, silently watching her from the waves. A few times, however, she had seen shadows in the sand as the last rays of the sun streamed across the empty beach. Shadows with no person around to cast them. Twisted, malformed shadows.
Two days ago, out of the blue, she had thought about Finn McCoy. She had been hesitant to contact him at first, fearing that he might think her simply unbalanced due to her husband’s recent death. But McCoy believed in the paranormal, had supposedly dealt with it on numerous occasions, and was reportedly in possession of certain ‘gifts’ which enabled him to see and communicate with spirits. Nan had finally decided to take a chance and send him a message, and been surprised and relieved when he had replied a short time later.
McCoy had listened to her story and had seemed to accept it without question. To Nan’s further relief, he had agreed to come to the island and investigate. He and his lady friend would be arriving near the end of the week. Nan had insisted that they stay with her, partly out of hospitality and partly because she was becoming increasingly nervous about being in the house alone. The whole island, in fact, had taken on a different feel in the past several weeks. Nan was certain that something had to be done before the summer tourists started pouring in.
She yawned and looked at her watch. Almost ten, nearly time for bed. She needed to be up early in the morning to start cleaning. If her mother had taught her nothing else, she had drilled into Nan that one did not invite company to a messy house.
She rose, took the warm bottle of beer, and went into the house.
She was careful to lock the door and close the shades behind her.
***
They watched her go into the house from the darkness of the sea. The water was cold, but it brought no shivers to their bodies nor goosebumps to their skin. A small shark swam near, sensed something, and turned and fled for the safety of deeper water.
“Soon,” the female said in a German dialect, her voice alluring yet devoid of any emotion. “Soon, I shall sing for her.”
“Soon,” her male companion agreed. He turned to the female and smiled, the moonlight sparkling in his green eyes.
Chapter Two
McCoy awoke early, just before six. It was getting to be the norm for him. His bum leg simply refused to allow him to sleep in. Each morning, he woke to find it stiff and numb and demanding to be used. He had sworn recently, more than once, that he was simply going to have it amputated. It would probably do him no good, though. He had read somewhere that a person could experience phantom pains, even though the actual limb itself was missing. McCoy figured it would be just his luck to be haunted by his own severed leg.
The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Apparently, Amanda was already up and in the shower. Good. It usually took him three or four minutes to get himself out of bed in the mornings, and if Amanda was around, she wanted to help. He knew that her intentions were well-meaning and that she did it purely out of love and concern, but it still irritated him with the fire of a thousand suns. He did not like to be seen as weak or helpless, especially not in front of Amanda.
Of course, since she had basically moved in with him, it was hard to hide the f
act that he was a step away from being a cripple. It had started innocuously enough; she had begun staying overnight when she’d brought him home from the hospital. He had barely been able to get around at all then, and he had needed help with almost everything. It amazed McCoy that he’d been able to survive that time, given his abhorrence for dependency. Then again, he’d been on some pretty good meds.
By the time a month had passed, he had been able to hobble around enough to make it through the day without any help, as long as there was no need for him to leave the house. Amanda, however, had refused to leave. The nurturing caregiver in her had flowered into full blossom, and she was convinced that he would manage to fall and kill himself within hours, were she to go back to her apartment.
He had managed a slight victory when he had convinced her to return to work full-time. Until then, she had been going in only a few times a week, and then for only a few hours at a time. The whole affair had McCoy thinking that she ought to just put a diaper on his ass, a pacifier in his mouth, and be done with it.
After a while, though, he got used to having her there. Even the constant fawning over him began to bother him less and less. And now, though he could get around just as well—if a bit slower—as he could before the injury, there had still been no mention of her returning to her apartment. He supposed the issue would come up soon. It really made no sense for her to keep paying rent when she wasn’t even living there.
After much groaning and cursing, he got his feet on the floor. He rose, and his leg felt like a pincushion with a million needles stuck in it. The first couple of steps, as always, were like some drunken dance, with much stumbling and arm flailing. Then his leg loosened up a bit and he was able to make it into the kitchen.
The aroma of freshly-brewed coffee greeted him as he walked into the room. He went to the cabinet and rummaged around for a mug, found his favorite, and filled it up. He thought of going to the back porch and drinking his coffee in his favorite rocking chair, but it was cold outside and he was only wearing shorts. He didn’t feel like struggling with a pair of pants yet. He sat down at the kitchen table instead and took the morning’s first sip of heaven.
There were things that needed to be done before they left for White Pine Island. Packing, of course, but McCoy also needed to touch base with John Talbot over in Shallow Springs. John was the new sheriff in town, and he had inherited much more than the badge when he’d taken the job. He had also been given the responsibility of being the chief negotiator and peacekeeper between the people of the town and the Fey. The Fey were a race of beings commonly referred to as fairies, and few people other than John and McCoy knew of their existence.
John was uniquely qualified to hold his current position due to the fact that he himself was part Fey. John had told no one this fact, not even McCoy, but McCoy had sensed it when he’d teamed up with the man to fight the evil Sluagh last October. Together, they had narrowly averted seeing the town overrun by the malicious fairies, and it was during that battle that McCoy had suffered his leg injury.
Since that incident, the Fey were holding to an uneasy truce with John and McCoy. The fairies had agreed to leave the residents unharmed in exchange for the pair’s help in covering up the Sluagh incident, an act which surely would have brought unwanted attention and scrutiny to the town. Of course, John had done most of the covering, with Amanda’s help, since McCoy had been out of it in a hospital bed.
In the bathroom, the water stopped running. McCoy heard the shower curtain slide open. He took another sip of coffee and smiled as he pictured Amanda toweling herself dry. Not a day went by that he wasn’t thankful she’d come into his life. He had never realized how lonely he’d been until he met her.
He was in the mood for a doughnut to go with his coffee, but there weren’t any. Amanda had been on a bit of a health food kick for the past several weeks, and doughnuts, along with almost everything else McCoy liked, were currently off-limits. Beer had also been in her crosshairs for a few awful moments, but McCoy had put his foot down. He had, however, switched to a light brand as an act of good faith.
He nosed around and came up with a bran muffin. It tasted more like cardboard than anything that could be considered food, and after only a few bites he tossed it in the trash, being careful to hide it about halfway down so Amanda wouldn’t notice.
“Look who’s up,” Amanda said as she walked into the kitchen. McCoy eased away from the trash can and tried not to look guilty.
“The leg wanted up,” he said. “At least I almost made it to six. Anything to eat around here?”
“There’s some bran muffins in the cabinet over the sink.”
“Mmmm.”
“Don’t be so finicky. They’re good for you.” She took a mug from the cabinet and poured some coffee. “Have you started packing yet?”
“No, but it won’t take me long. I travel light.”
“Good. Then you can help me with mine tonight. What time do you want to leave in the morning?”
“Around six. If we take an hour to stop and eat, we’ll still be there by two or three.”
“I can pack us a lunch,” Amanda offered.
McCoy shook his head. “You’ve been starving me for the past two weeks. Tomorrow, I’m having me a double cheeseburger and onion rings.”
“Finn! You’ll clog your arteries!”
“Sorry. Vacation rules.”
“Vacation rules?”
“Yeah. Vacation rules state that while you’re on vacation, you don’t have to follow your regular home rules.”
“Who came up with that?”
“A very wise man. One dying from a cheeseburger deficiency, probably.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Not me. I’ve suffered plenty.”
“And you’re a smartass, to boot. I’ve got to get ready for work.”
“Have fun with that.”
She shot him a bird and walked back to the bedroom.
McCoy finished his coffee and began the all-important task of wondering what to do with himself for the day. It was too early to call John Talbot, and Jerry Springer didn’t come on until ten, so he thought he might surf the internet for a bit. As far as Nan’s case was concerned, he had no idea of what he might be walking into. Maybe nothing. Nan had gone through a lot in the past year or so, and it was possible that she was simply seeing things that weren’t actually there.
On the other hand, Nan had never been prone to believe in what she had once called ‘superstitious mumbo-jumbo’. And the Gray Man was a well-documented phantom, having been seen by numerous people over the years. So it was perfectly feasible that Nan had seen something. Whether or not it had been the actual Gray Man remained to be seen.
He shambled over to the computer desk and eased himself into the chair. It was uncomfortable, but he didn’t plan to stay there very long. He typed Gray Man into the search engine and looked over the results it brought up. The first few concerned Albert Fish, the serial killer who was also known as the Gray Man. The fourth result, however, was about spirits of the Carolina Lowcountry.
The article contained only information that McCoy already knew. There were several theories on the origin of the Gray Man, all of them questionable and most of them contradicting. Most of them focused on a pair of star-crossed lovers, with the man dying (from either a duel, a war, quicksand, or some other equally nefarious circumstance) and then returning from the grave to warn his lost love of the danger of an impending hurricane. Over the years, the same spirit had resurfaced to warn other families. Supposedly, if the family heeded the phantom’s warning and evacuated the area, their home was spared destruction during the storm.
The hotspot for this paranormal activity appeared to be Pawley’s Island, which was located between Myrtle Beach and Georgetown. But while some spirits were regulated to haunting a particular place, such as a building or old battlefield, others seemed to enjoy a wider range in which to operate. Since White Pine Island was located just down the road
from Pawley’s, it wasn’t out of the question that the Gray Man might be able to appear there, also.
Nan was convinced that the spirits she’d seen had something to do with the drownings that had occurred on the island. In this scenario, the Gray Man didn’t quite fit. The ghost was not known to be malevolent; to the contrary, he usually appeared to be aiding the living by warning of impending disasters.
But Nan had also mentioned seeing other figures and shadows that did not match the description usually given of the Gray Man. It was likely that there was more than one spirit active on the island, though whether or not any were connected to the drownings remained to be seen.
Then again, it was just as likely that the accidental drownings were, well, accidental.
McCoy switched off the computer as Amanda came out of the bedroom and snatched her keys off the kitchen table. If McCoy had been an insecure man, he might have worried about her leaving the house looking like she now did.
“Looking good,” he said. “You’d make a bulldog break his chain.”
“The only dog I’m concerned with is the old hound dog I’ve got right here.” She bent over and kissed him on the cheek. “Stay out of trouble today. I want to start packing as soon as I get home.”
“Scout’s honor. Reckon you could pick up some doughnuts on the way home?”
“Eat a bran muffin,” she called as she walked out the door.
McCoy, who would have rather eaten a dog turd with sprinkles than another one of those cardboard muffins, sighed.
***
McCoy gave it until eight-thirty, then hit John Talbot’s number on the speed dial. The sheriff answered on the third ring.
“What’s up, Finn. How’s the leg?”
“Like having a zombie for a wife. Stiff, and a pain in the ass. How are things up in the Springs?”
“Still smooth sailing, believe it or not. At least as far as the Fey are concerned. The town council nearly had a collective heart attack when they saw my requisition for three new cruisers. I swear, if I’d known how much politics played into this job, I would’ve turned them down flat.”
Shadows in the Sand (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller Book 2) Page 2