An intruder should have left behind something, a faint hint of aftershave, even a different soap. If he were a smoker, the smell would be stronger and definitely more out of place. Even Zoe would have noticed. But there was nothing. If it weren’t for Zoe’s body language and the clarity of her story, Taran would have chalked it up to her being mistaken, having eaten the sandwich before she heard the noise. She’d been upset talking to him. Things like that happened.
“Nothing,” Taran said.
Zoe nodded, like she’d expected that.
Taran went to the sliding glass door, looking down to find the lock. He glanced over at Zoe, who had her eyes closed, as if she didn’t even want to get close to reliving the memory of the voice.
Taran slid the door open and stepped out onto the covered patio.
“Close your eyes,” a harsh voice whispered in his ear.
Taran spun, but only Zoe stood there, inside, her arms crossed beneath her breasts, head down, one foot resting lightly on the other. The voice hadn’t been hers, wasn’t even like hers.
Goosebumps raised on Taran’s arms and his neck prickled, like something was behind him. Once again he turned to face the yard. Still nothing.
A shadow flitted to one side. Taran moved to get a better look at it but it was like when he tried to see it, it made it harder to focus. It was like trying to remember the name of a song—the harder you thought about it, the more impossible it was to retrieve. Only when you stopped trying to remember it did the name come to you.
Zoe was still in the house standing on one foot. As Taran watched he thought he saw a dark hand with claws reaching out for her. He raced for the door certain he’d be too late.
Chapter 16
Zoe opened her eyes to see Taran racing towards her like a bull charging her. She stepped to one side slowly, worried he’d plow headfirst into the television that sat behind where she stood. Her father would be livid considering he’d spent weeks with the coffee guys discussing the pros and cons of the sizes, brands, and style that would fit in the family room. He’d gotten it after her mom had died, the flat screen a treat for himself to stave off the sadness that came from the unending grief of the loss of a loved one.
Taran slowed though, stopping next to her, his eyes darting side to side as if he couldn’t find where she’d been. He was breathing hard, almost rasping like he’d suddenly developed asthma, although Zoe had a feeling he didn’t have any such ailment or it would have been an impediment to being police chief.
He smelled faintly of the rain and an exotic spice that she couldn’t quite place but made her think of jungles filled with wide leafed trees where monkeys played in the branches avoiding the shadow of the jaguar which was always on the prowl. Drawing in a breath, having exerted himself far too little to be that tired, Taran met her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Zoe asked. The room was getting close from the air that was coming in through the open sliding door. She wasn’t paying attention to that. She wanted to know what Taran knew.
“I saw something,” Taran said. “I thought something was going to grab you.”
Zoe remembered the sense that a bug was crawling on her arm just before she’d opened her eyes to see Taran rushing her. Nothing was there.
She shook her head feeling the strange disquiet that came from knowing something was wrong but not knowing how to make it right.
“I heard something, too,” Taran continued. “I heard someone say ‘close your eyes’ when I was out there.”
Zoe hadn’t heard the voice but she’d had the feeling. There was the sense that if she’d closed her eyes she’d be safer, so she’d done that, feeling like a little girl pulling the covers over her head because if she couldn’t see the monsters then they couldn’t see her either.
“I had my eyes closed until I felt something like a bug crawling on my arm.” The thought of it made her shiver. She wasn’t particularly fearful of bugs but this particular bug bothered her.
Taran said nothing for a long moment. Then he spoke. “Maybe we should both close our eyes?”
Zoe wanted to scream at him. Was he kidding? That was when the monsters came. Who would watch out for them? Except the only option would be to call her father home and have him look out for monsters while they stood there with their eyes closed, waiting. When nothing happened, her father would be livid and chances were he’d try and have Taran fired.
So instead, she stood facing the backyard. She didn’t know why she did that. She could only describe the feeling as being better, like she was tossing and turning in bed and this was the best position for her body. Her lids fluttered down and she felt Taran turning, his hand brushing hers like he was thinking about taking it, as if they were two kids going to prom instead of two adults standing in her family room facing the rain in the backyard through the open sliding door with their eyes closed.
Zoe hoped her father didn’t come home just then.
She listened to the rain, which was pattering lightly, and the rush of a car going by but no brakes. She heard the clunk of the air conditioner as it worked outside, its machinery chugging away from around the side of the house so it didn’t disturb people sitting on the back patio. She pictured the patio out there, remembering other times with her momma when they’d sat out there drinking not-so-sweet tea and talking about Zoe’s prom dress or her history project. They’d folded flyers for the city council out there, giggling excitedly as if her momma was running for the student body.
The work put into that campaign had kept Zoe from ever wanting to run for an office. She liked to do things her own way, not by committee, but her momma had a talent for leading people.
In the midst of those memories, a strange figure appeared. Zoe would have said man, but perhaps creature was better as his limbs were too long, his skin slightly greenish, and his nose was narrow and rather gnarled like the roots of an old tree.
“They are after you,” he said, looking into Zoe’s eyes, though she knew they were closed, but somehow, she understood he could see them and was trying to reach her.
“Who?” Zoe thought.
The man seemed to understand he was talking to her.
“I can barely reach you, the Blood is too thin, but with both of you together, I can warn. Find one of the Blood. He has known her, loved her. She needs to return or all is lost and your life is forfeit.”
The man tried to say something else. Zoe had questions, a dozen thoughts about the thin blood and what he meant by that and who “He” was, but even as she thought that she knew the creature meant Taran, and the only person Taran had loved, to Zoe’s knowledge, was Kay Pugh.
Zoe opened her eyes. Taran’s mouth was open slightly but his eyes were still closed. His head began to move from side to side like he was saying no. Zoe had a feeling she knew what conversation he was having.
She waited for him to open his eyes. While she did so, she felt something crawling on her other hand, her right hand this time. She shook it like shaking off a bug. She got the faintest glimpse of a narrow black hand with claws that could have belonged to the creature she had just spoken with but for the color of its skin.
Zoe turned around, feeling Taran move slightly next to her. She went over the liquor cupboard and grabbed a bottle of vodka. Not her favorite, but she didn’t care. She needed something strong because none of this was making sense. If she was going crazy, she at least wanted to be a fun crazy person.
Chapter 17
Closing his eyes at the suggestion of a thought, a ghost, or some Rumpelstiltskin-like creature was the craziest thing Taran had ever done. But it seemed like the only thing he could do. Something had touched Zoe, something she had felt, had known about but didn’t see, and he couldn’t see it either, exactly, but only catch glimpses out of the corner of his eye. It was like a fly that buzzed here and there but without the buzzing sound you could listen for.
The air conditioning hummed away even as the rain pattered outside the still partially open sliding door. It wa
s the first thing Taran saw when he opened his eyes. Zoe’s backyard, while not specifically familiar to him as he’d not been to her family home before, was familiar in the way that all things in Corbin Meadow were familiar. He noticed the tree with the thin leaves, the bushes with the wider green leaves that never turned color. He didn’t know the names but saw them on nearly every street in town. On some streets the bushes were in every yard. They grew too quickly around his home and he had to trim them back regularly.
The rain, too, was comforting, not so much for its normalcy, but because he had seen it raining when he’d arrived at the house. It might have been coming down a little harder but not so much so that he felt as if he’d lost time, a thought that struck fear into his gut.
The sharp smell of vodka as Zoe poured herself a quick shot brought him back to this place in Corbin Meadow. He hadn’t lost time, hadn’t gone to sleep for a hundred years like in those old stories, at least not as far as he could tell. Everything seemed to be the same.
“What was that?” Taran asked.
Zoe offered him a shot.
He shook his head. He was on duty, assuming that he hadn’t gone to sleep for a hundred years just by talking to the creature. Taran didn’t know what to make of his experience. Worse, the thing said he needed to contact his ex and ask her to come back to Corbin Meadow. Like Kay would be open to that. She’d run off as quickly as she could when it became apparent that he wasn’t going to be able to purchase one of the old mansions to the north side of the city where the oldest and richest families lived and, worse, that he was always going to remain a police officer and not run for mayor, at least not in a time frame that she’d decided worked for her.
“Did you see what I saw?” Zoe asked. “That creature?”
“I think so. It reminded me of Rumpelstiltskin or some creature like that.”
“Wasn’t he the guy who could turn straw into gold by spinning?” Zoe had swallowed her vodka and was eyeing the bottle like she was considering another.
Taran shook his head. He was pretty sure that’s who it was but he didn’t want to discuss fairy tales. He wanted to figure out if this had happened for real, because if it had, then he had to figure out whether he ought to do what the thing asked.
“It was so weird,” Zoe said slowly, even as she turned away from him towards the vodka. Taran watched her, in her jeans that fit so cleanly along her hips that made such a perfect curve—hadn’t he read something about some sort of perfect angle for a curve on social media one time? Taran let the thought go, his mind whirling to a dozen different unrelated thoughts, some about Zoe, others about his ex-wife, Kay, and the sinking feeling in his gut, the actual knife-cutting pain that existed there when he thought about her, and the fear that he’d have to call her and say… What exactly would he say?
“I think it said I had to contact my ex,” Taran said.
“Did he use her name?” Zoe asked. “To me he just said ‘he needs to.’ Was that you?”
“He said I needed to contact the one I had loved, which seems to indicate Kay.” The name hurt to speak but he had to.
“He said my life would be forfeit if you didn’t,” Zoe said.
Taran watched Zoe’s face, wondering what she was thinking as she talked about his ex-wife. It had closed off in a way he hadn’t seen before, as if she wanted to keep her thoughts to herself. Had she been a friend of Kay’s that he hadn’t known about? It was possible, what with her being a few years behind them in school. But it seemed unlikely. Zoe didn’t seem like the kind of girl Kay would hang out with.
Zoe, Taran thought, had actually left town on her own and gone after her own life before returning. Kay had wanted to do that. It was the sort of thing that would make Kay dislike Zoe rather than be endeared to.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I can’t just call her up and ask her to come back for me. We’re divorced. I think she’s even seeing someone pretty seriously, at least that’s what the gossips say.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Zoe said. “It’s not like we were friends and I could call her…”
Taran waited for her to finish whatever thought she was having but nothing was forthcoming.
“What?”
“Wasn’t she close to Charlene Winston?” Zoe asked.
“You mean Charlene Zemmerbecken?” Taran corrected.
Zoe shrugged. “She has a sister, Donna?”
Taran nodded. That sounded right.
“Donna’s a friend of mine. Maybe I can talk to her about what happened. See if she can call her sister and have her talk to Kay. Get her to come for a visit. We can talk to her then. Or you can. Or whatever you think is best.”
Taran sighed. The knife eased slightly and then plunged back in and twisted. The idea of someone else calling Kay worked. The idea that he’d still have to talk to her about what happened didn’t work so much.
“Try it. I can’t believe she’d come talk to me if I called her,” Taran said. “And seeing this was a warning, do you suppose that you’d be safer if you left Corbin Meadow?”
Zoe tilted her head, clearly thinking about it for a moment. She sighed. “I don’t know. At least here if my life is forfeit, you’ll be there to investigate no matter how weird it is. If I take off, who will care?”
Chapter 18: Before
When Lorne proposed to her, Dixie had giggled and smiled. Her heart was happy but it didn’t soar the way hearts did in books. It stayed firmly rooted in her chest, although perhaps it got a little bigger. She couldn’t be certain as she didn’t feel any different.
She’d gone to community college in Hickory, even getting her own apartment there where she lived with another girl. Living in the city, although Dixie knew that Hickory wasn’t a big city, had been different than living on the mountain in a place like Corbin Meadow. Lorne had been there, of course, and they’d talked about moving in together because he was always over, so much so that her roommate began to resent him.
Still, Dixie knew that people would talk. The dreaded, “She wasn’t raised right,” would reflect harshly on her momma after all, and Dixie was close to her family. So in the end, he’d proposed and she’d accepted and they would go back to the town and raise a family there, although not right away.
Deep down, Dixie realized, she was relieved that she’d go back home. The wide streets of Hickory made her feel too exposed when she had to cross them, the constant traffic sounds, the hush of wheels on the pavement, the occasional squeal of brakes and the honk of a horn intruded upon her thoughts in ways she disliked. The smell of exhaust made her cough.
That would be mitigated in Corbin Meadow. Even if it wasn’t, Emrys would make it seem like it was.
And so when Dixie went back to her momma’s after a day of shopping for a dress, she’d taken a moment to sit in the back garden and look for Emrys.
It was a warm day out, almost hot. There was only the faintest breeze to ruffle the ends of her long hair and it helped keep her a bit cooler. Her momma had a wind chime now, which dinged and clanged with each little mini-gust that blew through. The damp scent of the forest reached her nose, and the smell of exhaust seemed to be pushed out with each breath she took.
She was home. Exactly where she belonged. It didn’t matter if she married Lorne or any other man. Dixie’s real love was the land upon which Corbin Meadow was situated. The town was secondary. This was her home.
Emrys appeared, watching her, an approving look upon his twisted and wrinkled face. Dixie wasn’t certain why he approved but she got that feeling from him.
“You understand you’re home,” Emrys said quietly. “How can I be of service? A perfect wedding location? Decent weather? Someone you don’t want there?”
Dixie smiled, thinking about it. She and Lorne would get married at the big Bible Church where her parents went. Her momma wasn’t much for church, which always surprised her. It was her father’s church, really. While her momma went, fearfully clutching her Bible, saying verses
over and over again as if she wanted to prove her faith, her daddy was the one who insisted they get up and head down the mountain to the church no matter what the weather.
He was the one who participated in the choir and offered his time as an usher. He was the one who suggested that Dixie’s momma help out with certain functions. He was the one who kept alcohol out of the house. When they were down in Hickory looking for her first apartment, just Dixie and her momma, they’d gone to lunch and her momma had shocked her by having a glass of white wine with lunch.
Dixie hadn’t said a word. Neither had her momma. It was their secret. The ease with which her momma became someone Dixie wasn’t sure she knew bothered her from time to time and she wondered if there were other secrets her momma kept from her, secrets that might include her time with Emrys.
“I think the celebration will be fine,” Dixie said. “I wish, though, that I could love him more deeply.”
“I think you will,” Emrys said.
“Will you help me?” Dixie asked. “Lorne is nice and he’s steady and he’ll never leave Corbin Meadow but…”
“He doesn’t make your heart soar,” Emrys finished for her.
“Exactly.” Dixie was pleased that Emrys understood.
“A soaring heart is not always a good thing. It can keep you from seeing what you should see. Lorne is of this land, of this Blood. Your daughter will be stronger for it.”
“You can see that?” Dixie almost squealed. “That I’ll have a daughter?”
Emrys nodded.
“Will there be other children? Maybe a son?”
Emrys was silent on that account, looking at her in a way that made her feel sad, as if he knew something but he wasn’t about to give it up. Perhaps in some way she would regret having a son.
“But you’ll grant my wish to love Lorne more deeply?” Dixie pressed, afraid of knowing too much of her future. To know the grief of losing a child, or of a being so disappointed in a child, might make her flee Lorne and Corbin Meadow, seeking refuge in her California dreams while she tried to forget this small town on the edge of the Appalachians.
Souls Lost (Appalachian Souls Book 1) Page 7