Ria stood, trapped, an uninvited spectator to a very private moment in her own house. She backed out the door and closed it softly. She was drunk, that was it. She wasn’t a hard drinker and she never drank very much. Tonight she’d overindulged. She loved this house and all through the renovations, she’d imagined it in its heyday. What better occupants could her imagination create than a young, handsome couple, madly in love? Her father was a doctor, hence the subconscious choice of the man’s profession.
It was her imagination. Period. End of discussion.
She drew a deep breath and threw the door wide. Nothing. There was nothing there, nothing that wasn’t supposed to be. She raced across the floor of the living room, reached the sanctuary of her own bedroom, closed the door, and locked it. In the morning, this would be amusing. Maybe.
She collapsed on top of the bed. Her thoughts spiraled upward out of her head in an ever-widening circle until the whole room spun and she sank gratefully down into darkness.
* * *
Justin Dinardo rode his dirt bike through the darkness, down the narrow path toward Cochran Short Route. He ran onto the blacktop and rode on for a mile and a half, where he pulled off into the overgrown lot of an old, rotting country store. He rode around the structure and opened the back of his waiting Tacoma pickup, lowering the long piece of 4x4 that he kept as a ramp for the dirt bike. It was an old routine for the small-time teenage drug dealer, retrieving stashed merchandise from buried deposits scattered throughout the woods of Stone Creek Swamp for resale.
Now it was performed with a new companion. Dennis Billings was history. The dirt bike safely stored, Justin got in behind the wheel and turned to the occupant of the passenger seat.
“Big score tonight,” he said. “Lots of jack.”
“Dat’s good.”
Justin pulled the Tacoma out of its hiding spot and turned back to the highway.
“Cain?” His voice was low and respectful.
“Whut?”
“Where do you go? When you’re not with me?”
“Dat ain’t none of yo’ business, boy. Yo’ business doin’ whut you told and bringin’ in dat—jack.” Cain chuckled to himself. After overcoming his amazement at finding more than a century passed and the world as he knew it gone forever, he’d settled back and enjoyed. And made plans.
“But don’t you know? Don’t you realize? What you could do? By now, I mean, it’s been over a month, you could—”
“I gots my own reasons an’ dey ain’t none of yo’s, boy. You watch yo’ mouth.”
“I wanta help you,” Justin persisted cautiously. Wouldn’t do to irritate Cain. “And I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what you want.”
Cain gazed into the passing shadows as the Tacoma approached the entrance to I-16 and slowed. The things this world now held! He’d never have believed it. But whatever else it held, he knew it still held the man he sought, the man he wanted, the man he intended to find. Wherever he was. He’d use this fool, already the source of his spending money and creature comforts, to do it.
“I wants this town,” he said. Justin shivered in anticipation, seeing himself at Cain’s side, his trusted advisor. “It be mine, mine by right. Almos’ had it one time and now ain’t nuttin’ goan stop me. But dere be somethin’ I gots to tend to first.”
“What’s that?”
“Dere’s a man I gots to find. Fancy white doctor, Devlin be his name. He the man whut put me in dat cave, whut stole dis town and all dat time away from me. I goan find him. And he goan pay.”
“But it was so long ago—”
“An’ I be sittin’ right here in dis thing never thought about in my time. An’ if I here, he here. Somewheres. An’ dat’s why I’s waitin’.”
“I don’t understand.”
Cain snorted. The fool. He was drunk with visions of himself in possession of Cain’s marvelous power to fly disembodied through the air, to feast in the woods on hot and pumping blood, to cast his gaze into another’s eyes and enslave a soul.
Cain wanted to take him. Just sitting next to him in the truck, Cain smelled the delectable aroma of human blood. No game animal would ever compete with that. Not now, though. If he did, he’d never be content to hunt the woods again. No, then he’d surge through the sprawling city streets in a frenzied, bloody orgasm advertising his presence to the world, his anonymity shot to shit.
Besides, to hunt humans indiscriminately created rivals. Rivals who would rise, fully renewed, possessing the same powers Cain was still exploring and mapping.
He didn’t want rivals. He wanted slaves. When his time came round again, after he’d made his enemy sorry he’d ever been born, he’d be selective, feast fully and completely only on those poor-spirited souls he recognized as followers. All others, he’d drain to unconsciousness and then break their necks.
This fool? No. Too smart by half, far too much like Cain himself. He’d only semi-drain him. Then he’d snap his neck. Cain loved the sound of snapping bones. In the meantime, he’d grant his useful, adoring tool some small crumbs of satisfaction.
“Yo’ time’ll come, boy. After I find him. After he dead, finally and really dead, an’ son, he goan be prayin’ to die. Den you and me, we’ll take dis town like it ain’t never been took befo’. But till we find him, whut you want? Whut satisfy you?”
“I want Dennis Billings to lick the soles of my shoes,” Justin said. “Right after I walk through dog shit. I want him to be sorry he ever even thought about crossin’ me.”
Cain laughed. The fool talked his language.
“Well, I thinks we can manage dat, boy. Won’t be no trouble a’tal. None a’tal.”
Justin grinned. The pickup skipped lightly, carrying its cargo of madness down I-16. That cargo, caught in visions of grandeur to come, didn’t notice.
Chapter Four
Six nights after the official housewarming and opening of Bishop & Knight, Attorneys at Law, Ria stepped out of her apartment and went downstairs to finish up work on the brief she’d spent most of the day drafting. She stood motionless in the office alcove.
“But I’m not drunk,” she whispered in protest. The room no longer held their Victorian sofas or their secretary’s desk, and certainly nothing as modern as a computer.
The sofas looked Victorian, but they weren’t the ones recently purchased. The walls weren’t light taupe, either. They were duck-egg blue.
The young woman sat on the sofa that really wasn’t there. She looked just as lovely as she had in the resurrected bedroom in her blue negligee. Soft curls spilled out of an elegant chignon, glowing in the afternoon sun. She sat facing an older woman with a nose as sharp as a hacksaw. The younger vision held a box in her lap and lifted a white nightgown up out of the tissue.
“Well, it’s just lovely, Mama,” she declared. Charming, yes, but nothing like the blue negligee Ria’d seen in the bedroom. Safe bet Mama hadn’t picked that number out.
“I thought it quite suitable,” declared Mama. “Most tasteful, and I’m sure Paul will approve.”
Devilish light danced in the slanted blue eyes.
“Well, actually, Mama, Paul prefers me when I’m not in a nightgown,” she said, placing the gift back in the box and picking up her cup from the small table in front of the sofa.
For a moment, the meaning of that comment didn’t register. Then it did.
“Chloe Duval Devlin! Have you no shame at all?”
“Well, he does.” She laughed and shrugged. “Really, I prefer him the same way.”
“Ah!” The tall, lean figure passed Ria as though she wasn’t there. He strode over to the sofa and kissed Mama’s cheek. “And how’s my favorite mother-in-law today?”
Mama looked more than a bit flustered. “Leaving, actually, Paul. I was just leaving. Chloe, are you and Paul coming for Sunday supper?
“Certainly, Mama, we wouldn’t miss it. Paul, will you walk Mama out?”
The vision named Paul escorted his mother-in-law to the door.
He closed it firmly and made it back to the parlor. He burst into laughter.
“Chloe, you’re a devil from hell! You almost gave your poor mother apoplexy!”
She rose and flung herself into his arms. “I can’t help it if she doesn’t know what she’s missing,” she said, and kissed her husband soundly. They didn’t fade from sight. They just disappeared. One minute they were there, the next, gone. So was the afternoon light. It was night again.
Ria sat abruptly on one of their own Victorian sofas, miraculously visible again.
“Holy shit!” she breathed.
Ria had been fascinated for years by the paranormal. She’d poured over any library book related to the subject as a teenager. She culled her memory banks for information stored from those books. Ghosts, she recalled, were usually wavy mists, radiating a feeling of coldness. Theory held the coldness resulted when spirits drew warmth from their surroundings to acquire energy to materialize. She’d felt no coldness and the figures weren’t misty. They weren’t exactly solid, either. They were like three-dimensional projections, actors in a scene overlaid on current reality. They paid no attention whatsoever to her. She vaguely recalled a theory that claimed events imprinted themselves in their surroundings, that the proper catalyst made them replay like hitting the play button on a DVD player. The renovations maybe?
Mama’s shocked exclamation gave her a starting point. Chloe Duval Devlin. And the man was Paul. Paul Devlin. The first sighting told her he was a doctor. It was an old house. They had the property records. And the Washington Library had a very good genealogy section. These people were real. Or they had been. She’d find them.
She heard the key in the front door. Johnny.
“Hey,” he said, pausing as he saw her sitting on the sofa. “Whatcha doing down here?”
“Just came down to work a while,” she said.
“All work and no play makes Ria a dull girl. Want to hit Rock-a-Billy’s or Jazz Plex?”
“No, thanks, I don’t think so.”
“Want to come up to my place? Pop popcorn and watch a dirty movie?”
She laughed. “No, thanks. Actually, I don’t think I’ll work, either. I believe I’ll go start that new book I picked up the other day.”
“You’re no fun at all.”
“Providing your entertainment is not part of the partnership agreement,” she said, and went upstairs.
She tossed and turned most of the night and finally, it was morning. She sped out the door and timed her arrival at the library to coincide with the opening of its doors.
Ria was a good researcher. She organized her attack, pulled reference volumes and began cross-indexing dates and names. Two hours after she began her search, she had them.
“Oh, no,” she moaned softly to herself. “Oh, Chloe, no!”
The Devlin family arrived in Macon in the 1840s with roots trailing back to Stokes County, South Carolina. Paul wasn’t the first doctor in the family, though he’d been the first to study in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father and grandfather were doctors, too. The Duval family went back in local history to the 1820s. Henry Duval was a prominent banker in town in the 1870s and 80s. Chloe’s father, undoubtedly. Chloe was nineteen, Paul twenty-six when they married in 1883. She’d died in childbirth five years later, in 1888.
Ria felt bereaved herself. The girl deviling her mother was so alive and so in love. She moved down the pages, searching for further references to Paul.
There he was. After Chloe’s death, he’d taken an “extended tour” of the western frontier and returned to Macon in a coffin. No details of death, but his body’d been brought home. Both Paul and Chloe were buried in Rose Arbor Cemetery.
Ria glared at the books as though they’d caused the tragedy. And she’d thought her house was such a happy house. Shit.
* * *
Having learned the final ending of the private movies the house played just for her, Ria half-expected them to cease. But no. They accelerated. On the Friday marking the end of their third official week in the house, she walked into the nook in the rear of the offices they used as the office mini-kitchen.
A short, plump black figure, her head dressed in a bright turban, stood in front of an old-fashioned stove. She bent to pull the heavy iron door of the oven. Steam wafted out from behind it, and she turned her head suddenly toward the door.
“Joshua! You wipe yo’ feet, boy! An’ doan you dare slam dat door, you goan make my cake fall!”
“An’ I know you goan take it out of my hide iff’n I do,” he said. The vision named Joshua was a slender boy, sixteen or seventeen, his skin the color of café au lait.
“I sho’ ‘nuff is.”
Johnny spoke behind Ria.
“Did you leave any coffee? I don’t know how you ever get any sleep, much as you drink,” he said, and moved to the coffee pot.
The tableau continued to play in front of her, as oblivious to Johnny’s presence as to her own.
“Janie, Mist’ Paul say tell you he goan be late tonight,” Joshua said.
“Dat ain’t no surprise,” declared Janie. She turned away from the stove and back to her counter. She cut a slice of bread from a fresh loaf sitting on a clean white cloth and slathered it with butter. “Here, boy. Just got it out from de oven a few minutes ago. Doan know how you stays so little, much as you eat. Probably shrink to nuttin’ did you slack off any.”
Ria looked at Johnny. He sipped his coffee and stared unseeing at the two figures in front of them. “Got stuck with another new appointed criminal case this morning,” he said. “God, I’ll be glad when our five years are up and we can get off that list. You look a little funny. You alright?”
An African queen entered the kitchen. Her copper skin gleamed. She wore a wrapped turban on her head, too. On this woman, it served as the ultimate accessory of royalty, emphasizing the high cheekbones, the beautiful bone structure.
Janie continued her running commentary. “And Mist’ Paul, I swear, dat man. Sadie, you needs to talk to dat boy! Ain’t goan listen to you, neither, I knows dat, but you got more chance with him den anybody else do. Whut is it dis time? Sometimes I think doan nobody in this town, black nor white neither, stop to think dat man need time to eat and sleep hisself.”
“Mist’ Paul ain’t no little boy, Janie, he doan need us to tell him how to tend his business.” Sadie walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a glass.
Janie snorted. “Like dat ever stop you befo’ from tellin’ him whut to do! Sadie, you doan fool me none, woman. You raise dat boy, you all de time tellin’ him whut to do!”
“Something must be wrong with yo’ ears, den,” said Sadie, “’cause now I save dat for when he really need it, doan waste my breath on things doan matter two hoots nor holler no way.”
Ria laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it.
“Ria? Earth to Ria Knight!” Johnny waved a hand in front of her face. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Ria said. Confirmed then. Johnny didn’t see a thing.
“Ria!” Their secretary Katie appeared in the door. “Eleven o’clock appointment’s here!” She looked right through the trio talking somewhere in the past and moved over to the coffee pot to freshen her own cup. With regret, Ria walked out the door to meet with Mrs. Slatton and hear her tale of domestic woe. She’d have much preferred listening to that conversation from the past.
Chapter Five
Dennis Billings walked out the back door of his parents’ house and headed in the direction of his Camaro, whistling as he walked. Freedom from Justin felt like being out of prison. What the hell had he been thinking? He’d never needed the money from that damn drug business, neither had Justin. Their folks were more than well-off and bought both of them anything they hinted they wanted. That drug deal scene was all Justin. For the thrills, Justin said. Some excitement. He’d always been the leader, Dennis the follower. Since they were six, for God’s sakes! Thank God he’d come to his senses before they’d gotten busted!
During the past month, following his self-proclaimed emancipation from the influence of Justin Dinardo, Dennis rediscovered the advantages of independence. The biggest one was Lori Anne Denman. Even if she did beat the living shit out of him on the country club tennis courts. He and Lori were the new ‘hot’ couple and getting hotter by the day.
School started in two days, his senior year, and he intended to work his ass off.
Sliding and free rides were over. Today, one of the last days of freedom, he and Lori were heading to the lake for a day of swimming and sunning.
His whistle cut off in mid-bar as he stared at the Camaro, sitting ungracefully on its four flat tires.
“Shit!”
He squatted by the right front tire and examined the valve stem. Leaky valves? On all four tires?
Justin’s voice came over the hedge.
“Nice day for a drive, huh, buddy?”
* * *
On the second day of the new school year, the 3:15 bell resounded through the halls. Laughing, giggling teenagers poured in a floodtide out the doors. Dennis and Lori poured out with them, waving to friends across the parking lot. The school grounds echoed with good-natured insults, a light breeze tempered the heat, the sun was bright. In the air there was the mildest, faintest trace of a hint that autumn might come early to the south this year.
Dennis shouted over the top of the Camaro’s roof at Sean Whithers.
“You still drivin’ that piece of shit, man? Thought you were goin’ to do it a favor and shoot it!”
“Fuck you, Billings!” Sean shouted back. He was the proud owner of a red Mustang 5.0 five-speed. Most of the students old enough to drive had new or almost new sports cars. It was a rich, private school that catered to the children of professionals.
Dennis grinned and clicked the auto locks. They saw it at the same time.
Every CD Dennis owned was out of the case and scattered over the interior. Deep scratches glared, as though someone had taken a nail and run it viciously over the surfaces. A few lay shattered, their fragments strewn over the seats.
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 2