by J. R. Rain
THE DRIFTING GLOOM
by
J.R. RAIN &
MATTHEW S. COX
A Maddy Wimsey Novel
Book #2
The Drifting Gloom
Published by Rain Press
Copyright © 2018 by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Reading Sample: New Moon Rising
Other Books by J.R. Rain
Other Books by Matthew S. Cox
About the Author: J.R. Rain
About the Author: Matthew S. Cox
The Drifting Gloom
Chapter One
Doubts and Shadows
Saturday Night – July 7, 2017
Serene woodlands surround us with an invigorating charge of natural energy.
I gaze up at the stars beyond the wavering branches while reclining on the ground with my back against a log. My hair’s fanned out behind me over the pile of jackets I’m using as a cushion, a few stray wisps draped over my face. Saturday’s almost over already, and despite the tranquility of Millersylvania State Park, a chip of discontentment needles away at my thoughts. I don’t want the weekend to be over already. It felt like this camping trip took forever to happen since I’d been waiting on it for over a month, yet it’s passed in the blink of an eye.
Caius relaxes at my right, one leg stretched out, one foot tucked in. A bottle of some craft beer dangles from his fingers, his arm draped over the peak of his knee. He and Owen had been discussing putting in a hot tub at our place. My best friend’s husband owns a smallish plumbing company, but Caius isn’t angling for a deal. He’d rather help a little guy feed his son than help a CEO buy another Learjet.
“I can’t believe it’s almost Sunday already. Feels like we just got here,” says Isabelle before taking a small sip from her beer.
Her cringe is subtle, but noticeable―at least to me. Of course, I’ve been trained to pick up on subtle reactions. She’s not much of a beer drinker. Isabelle, or Izzy, usually goes for those foo-foo fruity-type drinks that look all sorts of innocent but will still knock you on your ass.
“No kidding.” Owen yawns. “At least we don’t need to wake up early tomorrow.”
“A beautiful weekend with beautiful people,” says Caius, raising his plastic cup in toast.
Not wanting to sit up from my extreme lounge, I wave my cup in the air while the others all lean close to tap cups to Isabelle’s bottle.
“You asleep yet?” asks Izzy.
“Nope. Perfectly comfortable.” I wink.
As far as this craft beer goes, it’s okay. The guy who brewed it is one of Owen’s friends from his work, but I haven’t met the guy more than once or twice. He only brought four bottles, but they’re the fat, reusable kind, each one containing a different brew. We’re drinking it mostly to sample the taste and sharing each one. Izzy got the last serving of ‘Wanderlust,’ so she’s nursing it right from the bottle.
Noah, Isabelle’s three-year-old son, meanders across our little campsite to the fire. Somewhere within the past half hour, his shoes, socks, and pants have disappeared, leaving him with underpants and a t-shirt. I can’t fault the kid for ditching the shoes; except for the hike we took earlier, Caius and I did the same as soon as we’d left the city behind. There’s nothing like the feel of nature under my toes to lift me to another place, far beyond the worries of daily life.
Isabelle snags the boy before he gets too close to the campfire, and placates him with a lightly roasted marshmallow. He grabs it, grins at her, and wobbles off toward the tents.
“Saved the best for last.” Owen reaches into the little cooler, the ice long ago melted, and takes out the last bottle. After letting it drip a few times, he holds it out so I can see the handwritten label.
Wimsey.
I grab it, staring. “No way!”
Isabelle giggles. Wow, it must’ve been hard for her not to tell me about that little joke.
“Way.” Grinning, Owen takes it from me and fiddles with the metal clip keeping the cap on. The rubber seal gives way, releasing a fizzing hiss. With the grin of a schoolboy, he pours a dark red liquid into a plastic cup and hands it to me. Next cup goes to Isabelle.
“Why, my dear Mister Thompson, I do believe you are trying to get me intoxicated,” says Isabelle, mimicking the voice of an Old West floozy. She fake-declines the glass for a moment before accepting it.
“Ooh!” chirps Isabelle. “Wow… This is so good.”
Must be fruity. As I’m about to take a sip from my cup, Caius cracks up laughing. It takes me a second to figure out why. As soon as I spot Noah a little ways outside the camp watering a tree, I start giggling.
Owen’s eyebrows ask me what’s so funny. I nod toward the boy. He twists around, spots his son peeing shamelessly out in the open, and joins us laughing.
“Kid’s got the right idea.” Caius stands. “Back in a moment.”
He walks past the tents into the woods. The park has bathroom cabins, but they’re a bit of a walk from our campsite. For relief of the liquid variety, trees appear to be the preference of the boys.
I raise the cup to my mouth and get a blast of berry fizz up the nose. “What is this? Lambic?”
“Sorta,” says Owen. “Raspberry beer.”
“Ooo-kay.” I take a tentative sip, and an explosion of prickly berry goes off in my mouth. Wow this is sweet. It’s closer to raspberry soda than beer, but it’s definitely got an alcoholic kick at the end. Sugary fumes drift from my nose after I swallow. “Damn, this is high-octane, isn’t it?”
“About thirteen percent.” Owen salutes me with the bottle. “Comes out a little strong due to the extra sugar in the berries.”
Isabelle hands him her cup with a “hold that” request, and gets up. She chases down little Noah, and, after bringing him by for a round of goodnight hugs, puts him to bed in their tent. That done, she settles back in beside Owen, and reclaims her berry beer.
Caius returns, accepts a cup of the ‘Wimsey’ elixir, and sits beside me. Both his eyebrows shoot up when he takes a sip. He flicks a gaze at his friend. “You made your own Lambic?”
Owen chuckles. “I tried. But the real question here is, how does it taste compared to the real Wimsey?”
My face goes scarlet. Isabelle sp
utters, blushes as hard as I probably am, and stares at him.
“Hmm.” Caius swirls the ale around his plastic cup. “I fear there is no good answer to that question that would not result in vast amounts of pain and suffering. For me, I might add. Suffice to say, nothing compares to the real thing, but this ale is delicious.”
I lean against Caius as Owen cracks up. Izzy’s hubby can get a bit raunchy when he’s had a few beers. Usually, I hold together pretty well, but rumors claim I have a tipping point where the ladies sometimes come out to play. While I claim no conscious memory of ever setting my girls free in public, Izzy insists that after six or seven beers, my shirt tends to vanish… though, I haven’t gotten that destroyed since the latter part of my twenties. Maybe I’m a bit tipsy now, since my thoughts drift to Caius and how he’s so often naked at home. I wonder… if he got drunk, would he put more clothes on?
My sudden eruption into a fit of giggles gets Caius running a hand through my hair and Isabelle also snickering, even though she has no idea what I’m laughing at.
We hang out for a while more until the urge to let the ale out gets too strong. Unlike the boys, I don’t feel like watering the trees, so Izzy and I set off on the irritatingly long walk toward a stone cabin at the edge of the camping area. She’s a little nervous in the dark, but less so since I’m still carrying my service weapon. The thin dirt trail we follow snakes around a few other campsite areas. Between the thick trees and distinct lack of moonlight, I’m certain we pass by invisibly without drawing notice. Notice from whom or what, of course, is another story.
Isabelle stumbles on a root, grabbing my arm to keep from wiping out. She looks down. “Wow, Mads, I can’t believe you’re walking around out here with no shoes on.”
“You know me.” I poke her in the side. As a kid growing up, everyone knew me as ‘the barefoot girl.’ My sister’s the same way. Mom’s love for nature rubbed off on us. “Nothing new here.”
“Yeah, but the woods aren’t the same as suburbia.” She examines her sneaker for scuffmarks, and futilely tries to swipe them clean. My feet happen to be filthy, too, but they’re much easier to wash than sneakers.
I lean my head back and inhale deeply through my nose. “This isn’t the woods. It’s close, though.”
“What would you call the woods then if this isn’t it?”
“A place surrounded by trees and nature from where it would take more than, say, fifteen minutes to reach a Starbucks.” I start to laugh, but an odd, unsettling feeling comes out of nowhere.
“Like that’s possible,” says Isabelle, unaware of my sudden concern. She continues. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Starbucks at the top of Mount Rainier.”
My hair moves away from my eyes… it’s probably the wind, but still not a comforting sign.
“What’s wrong?” whispers Isabelle.
I start to reach around behind me for my gun, but something tells me it’s not the sort of tool I need at the moment. “I don’t know.”
Isabelle whirls left and right, searching the woods. Though her straight, brown, well-behaved hair never flops over her face, I don’t envy her at all. My hair, you see, is special.
“Did you see something?” she asks.
“No. It was just a feeling.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Maybe. I’m just being paranoid.”
Telling her I feel like a mouse sensing a hawk diving at it wouldn’t go over well. I didn’t actually see anything. No creepy guys stalking us, no bear out for a midnight snack… this is something else. A prickling evil runs down my back and arms, like the fingernails of a hundred ice faeries. Not that ice faeries are evil―or that they exist, although I’ve heard stories.
Isabelle, of course, doesn’t believe in anything she can’t see. I often wondered what that would be like. Healthy on the one hand, and boring on the other.
She resumes walking, but doesn’t let go of my arm. “I think someone’s watching us, Maddy. Is that what you are feeling?”
I’m not sure what I’m feeling, but I glance at her. If she feels it too… well, that’s not good. There are three good ways to shield oneself from darkness: have faith and believe in your safety, have zero belief in anything science can’t prove, or carry an enchanted talisman. Well, a combination of one and three is possible too. That’s the best option.
My friend falls into the second group, being a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. She doesn’t believe in anything, not me, not ghosts, and not any form of organized religion. I don’t have a lot of patience for people who turn spirituality into a business-for-profit, but I do respect those who are sincere in their faith. What worries me at the moment, though is, if Isabelle is feeling this energy, too, that means it’s either quite powerful or something’s happened to her that’s chipped away her total disbelief.
Ask any Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc.―any true believer―and they’ll probably agree that a demon can’t influence a person without an inroad. The dark ones need a crack to squeeze through: anything from a sliver of doubt, a desire to do evil, depression, drug or alcohol addiction, to a person openly inviting them in. Of course, I think of such beings as merely dark energy or shadow entities. Some call them demons. I’m sure people of other faiths have different names as well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right?
“Did you hear that?” Isabelle spins to look behind us.
“No…” I shift to the side, following her stare. “What did you hear?”
“Someone whispering over there.” She squeezes my arm tighter. “I thought they said my name.”
“It’s dark. We’re two girls alone. Your imagination is running wild.” I smile. “Come on. Let’s hurry this up.”
I’d never lie to Izzy. Well, okay, maybe I did just do that, but it’s for her own good. Humans are uniquely shielded against supernatural influence, and her disbelief is as strong as anyone else’s belief. If I tell her I feel something not someone is watching us, and she doesn’t immediately laugh it off, I’d risk punching a hole in her metaphysical armor. Best to leave her as close to her normal state as possible.
“Yeah, well, it’s a lot less scary now that you’re a cop with a gun than it was back when we were kids leaving the mall a bit too late.” She lets out a long breath. “All right.”
We hurry down the dirt path holding hands like a pair of schoolgirls in a horror movie. A few minutes later when the bathroom cabin comes into view, my hair relaxes and flops over my eyes. The eerie sense of being watched has gone, but it doesn’t comfort me at all. Whatever entity had been eyeing Izzy might be on its way to our camp for an easier target, like little Noah.
I bite my lip at the door. Hmm. Public bathroom. Maybe leaving my shoes at the campsite was a bad idea. Fortunately, it’s pretty clean inside. One valiant light bulb illuminates four wooden stalls. The toilets are the only thing in here that look made within the last century.
A little while after I lock the door and sit down, the bulb falters.
“Oh, that’s only a little freaky,” says Isabelle in the adjacent stall. “You still have your gun on you, right? Like, there’s gonna be some guy coming in here with an axe any second.”
The bulb flickers again.
Yeah. It’s here. I gaze down at my jeans bundled around my ankles, the back-belt holster jutting up at me. Ugh. Really? Don’t these dark entities have any sense of decency? Let a girl pee for Goddess’ sake. Heck, the sanctity of the porcelain throne is so sacred even most men can follow it. Starting a fight with a guy on the bowl is usually seen as bad form.
Isabelle laughs nervously. “You know, you always were the brave one. A crappy light bulb isn’t scaring you, I bet.”
“That power line’s going through a couple hundred yards of woods to get here, Iz,” I say, trying hard to believe my own words.
“Right. Probably the wind fussing at the wire.”
The light cuts off.
Isabelle screams, but stops three seconds later when the light comes back
on.
That eerie presence slips again into my awareness. Next, footsteps scuff and scrape on the tiles out in the bathroom at large, sharp like high heels or a man in dress shoes. I can’t imagine either scenario being likely at a campground, so I don’t even bother looking out from my stall. I know I won’t see a person.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” says Izzy. “Maddy, do you hear―”
“Quiet. Iz.”
Who―or what―ever is outside walks past me and stops by the next stall.
Worry cuts things off, leaving me with a half-full bladder. I need to do something now, but I’ve never invoked from a toilet before. Feels almost… disrespectful, but that thing is after my friend. I close my eyes and clutch the bunch of amulets at my chest, tuning my thoughts entirely to Isabelle and not my present surroundings.
“Stalking darkness, creeping dread,
Turn back upon the path you tread.
Do no harm, I banish thee,
As I desire, so mote it be.”
“What are you mutter―?”
The light bulb explodes with a soft pop and a delicate twinkling of glass.
Isabelle screams again.
“Iz?” I ask, releasing my amulets. “You okay?”
“What the heck was that?” whisper-shouts Isabelle. “And don’t you dare freak me out with any of your ghost stories.”
“Power surge made the light bulb explode.” I frown at my bare feet and the thought of all that broken glass. Spiteful bastard. At least it’s gone, whatever it was.
She lets out a long sigh. “Right. Wow it’s so easy to get scared being out in the woods at night, huh? Geez. Listen to me shrieking like a twelve-year-old at a sleepover with ghost stories.”
“Hah.”
“Maddy, did you hear… footsteps?”
“An animal,” I say. “We probably scared the hell out of a raccoon.”
“Oh, God! You mean, there’s a pissed-off raccoon out there?”
“I think we can handle a raccoon.”
I hurry the rest of what we came here to do, flush, and wrangle my jeans back into place. A pittance of moonlight leaks in a few narrow windows above the sinks, barely enough light to make a field of glass fragments all over the floor sparkle. Wonderful.