A Desolate Hour

by Mae Clair

  If there was a storm it lingered somewhere far off in the distance.

  “That’s a good idea.” Caden didn’t expect the Mothman to return, but if the creature had abruptly turned rogue hunter, he wanted Sarah and Quentin out of the fallout zone. He waited until they’d disappeared between the trees, headed in the direction of their car, before shifting his attention to Evening.

  “All right, Lach. Why are you here?”

  “Not the warmest greeting I have received.”

  “And likely not the worst either.”

  “Fair enough.” Evening accepted the repartee. “Are you going to radio your sheriff about the creature?”

  “You know better than that.” Caden turned, taking a hard look around the area. The path Quentin and Sarah had been following led to the igloo Evening’s father frequented. Given what he knew from Eve, Sarah tended to avoid the TNT. Her parents had been killed on Potters Creek Road when she was a child and she’d grown to hate the place. So why had she been taking Marsh to the igloo?

  Caden’s gaze skewed back to Evening. “I promised your father I’d try to communicate with the creature. Protect it.”

  Evening said nothing.

  A rush of breath burst from Caden’s lips. “I shot it. I put two bullets into its wing.”

  A promise broken. To Cold and to the creature. It had saved his life three times in the past. Was it any wonder it had shrieked in betrayal when he pulled the trigger? Grimacing, he rubbed the welts branded on his arm, the skin raised and rough beneath his fingertips. “I thought it was going to kill Marsh.”

  “Not kill, but there is no question he is part of the situation.” Evening played the oddly shaped fingers of one hand over the back of the other.

  “Part of what situation?”

  “I have yet to assemble all the pieces. Something…dark…has awakened in Point Pleasant.”

  “Dark?” A sliver of impatience prodded Caden’s nerves. Evening often spoke in an antiquated manner, but in this case, his word choice was too ambiguous for Caden. “What does ‘dark’ mean?”

  “A collision of old forces is gathering.” Evening stepped closer, his light tread barely disturbing the twigs beneath his shoes. “I recommend you keep an eye on Mr. Marsh. For your own safety and the safety of your town.”

  Caden disliked riddles. “What does Marsh have to do with Point Pleasant?”

  “Time will tell.” Evening kept his opinions to himself. “I also strongly suggest you monitor anyone descended from a settler named Obadiah Preech.”

  “Preech?” Caden balked, his mind spinning to Shawn. How many times had he heard the dirt track driver boast about his ancestor Obadiah, defender of Fort Randolph? If he were to believe Shawn, Obadiah had almost single-handedly won Lord Dunmore’s War.

  Evening studied him closely. “Do you know such a man?”

  “Sure. Shawn Preech. He’s a minor celebrity around here.”

  Unimpressed, Evening waved the comment aside. “Has Mr. Preech behaved differently recently?”

  Caden frowned. Preech was a drinker, more likely to fly off the handle since he was going through a divorce, but he’d never been particularly stable to begin with. Caden had responded to more than one shouting match between Shawn and Suzanne, including an ugly fiasco where Suzanne had taken a baseball bat to Shawn’s car. “He’s a drinker with a short fuse.”

  “That is not what I mean, Sergeant.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” Deciding he wasn’t going to get anywhere with Evening, Caden switched subjects. “How’d you find me out here anyway?”

  A slender brow arched into Evening’s hair. “I thought you understood I am not without skills.”

  “Yeah.” Flicker phenomena, mental manipulation, even a strange restorative healing power were all part of Evening’s cache of hidden abilities. Caden doubted those talents even tapped the surface, but the less he knew, the better. “Fair enough. Just tell me this—should I be concerned about the Mothman?”

  Something unreadable flashed across Lach’s face. “Most definitely.”

  * * * *

  Quentin eased his car into a parking spot at the Parrish Hotel, noting how the towering structure loomed over the street. Easy to spot from a distance, it was a dinosaur of monolithic proportions dwarfing smaller buildings within its shadow. He’d felt a similar insignificance when trapped by the crimson eyes of the Mothman. As if the creature swallowed every paltry speck of life around it, devouring anything in its vicinity.

  He’d said little on the drive back to town, the same with Sarah. Each had remained hunkered in their thoughts, neither wanting to express the turbulence of disbelief twined with fear. They’d gone in search of an alien but clashed with a monster instead.

  Leaves matted on the ground, wet with rain and blood…footsteps pounding against soft, wet soil…unbearable agony…emptiness, desolation…

  He didn’t understand what any of it meant. A part of him still struggled to believe the encounter had taken place and wasn’t a warped hallucination dredged from his subconscious.

  Deflating in his seat, he switched off the ignition. He’d come to Point Pleasant to solve the riddle of a curse but found himself confronted by greater puzzles.

  Sarah shifted beside him, angling her back to the passenger’s door. “Why didn’t you tell Caden we were headed to the igloo?” Her voice was measured and quiet, as if she’d been toying with the question for some time.

  “I don’t know.” Outside, a sliver of dying light speared between storm-gray clouds as the sun slipped low on the horizon. Sticky heat spooled into the cooler shroud of dusk. A bronze sheen flared from the hotel’s westward facing windows. “I had the feeling your friend wasn’t being one hundred percent honest, so I didn’t see any reason to be honest in return.” Or maybe he was used to keeping his business to himself. If the town of Point Pleasant didn’t need to know he was chasing down the origins of a curse for his pregnant sister, then neither did a Mason County sheriff’s sergeant. Exhaling, he rubbed his eyes. “I’m still grappling with the whole concept of coming face to face with the Mothman.”

  Sarah shivered, wrapping her arms around her body. “It could have killed you.”

  He wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t fear he’d felt when he’d looked up into those glowing eyes. The creature had no head, just an unnerving nothingness where its face should be. That was the strangest aspect of all. He’d latched onto the thing’s enormous insectoid eyes and all else had been blotted from his field of vision.

  “It didn’t feel like I was in danger—more like it was trying to show me something.”

  Emptiness. Desolation. The awakening of an old and vengeful evil.

  The communication had been muddled, framed by an alien mind, but there’d been a heightened sense of urgency in that bombardment of images and emotion.

  “Caden was right to shoot it.” Sarah’s response was rigid, tainted by fear. She seemed to shrink in on herself, her eyes overly large. The play of shadows under her lashes blotted her skin with smudges of ash.

  It was inconsiderate of him to overlook how the encounter had affected her. Taking her hand, he rubbed his thumb across the back of her knuckles. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”

  She startled slightly at his touch, blooms of color appearing on either cheek. “It was my idea to go to the TNT. It’s just a lot to absorb. I’ve heard about the Mothman my entire life, but part of me always believed it was a myth. Around here we take it for granted, but I think most people consider the creature a campfire tale to scare kids.”

  “Let’s forget about it for now.” In a few hours or even tomorrow, he’d be better equipped to examine what had taken place.

  Turning his attention to the sky, Quentin focused on a string of dark clouds huddled to the east. The weather had been unstable from the moment he’d arrived. If it wasn’t raining, then thunder, wind, and lightning played havoc with the air, spawning one dry squall after
another. He’d never seen such a freaky climate.

  “Looks like another storm is coming.” At least the hotel had a great vantage point to watch the show. It would be even better with a beer, or maybe Sarah would like to split a bottle of wine. He was getting used to her company and hated to see her drive off when she was unsettled. “Want to sit on the front porch and watch it roll in?”

  “No!” Sarah pulled back sharply, wrenching her hand from his. “I mean, I…” Hastily, she pushed the hair from her face in a movement designed to cover embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I don’t like storms.”

  He sobered, recalling something she’d said about her past. “That was stupid of me. I just remembered your parents died during a bad storm.” No wonder she didn’t like them.

  Expression softening, she nodded. With a glance through the window at the bruised sky, she spoke quietly. “Run from the thunder, run from the rain. Lightning can’t hurt you, the wind is in vain.” Her hand strayed to the pendant at her throat and her mouth relaxed in a smile. “I’ve always had a fear of storms, even before my parents died. My mother used to whisper that verse to me whenever I was afraid. I guess it’s silly.”

  “No, it’s not.” He brushed the hair from her shoulder. “You just saw something terrifying, an encounter that would naturally compound your fear of storms. Why don’t you come inside for a while? You can visit with Katie or Eve until the weather blows through.”

  She exhaled what appeared to be a grateful breath. “Thanks, but no. I should go home before it gets much later.”

  “I could follow you.” He didn’t like the idea of her driving alone after everything that had happened. “Make sure you get home safely.”

  She reached for the door handle. “I’ll be fine.” Hesitating, she turned back to him. “I’m not going to tell anyone what happened today…about the Mothman. And I don’t think I’m brave enough to go back to the igloo. Not now. I want you to find the information you came for, but not at the cost of your life.”

  He might have joked about her concern if she hadn’t looked so serious. He settled for a slight smile. “Don’t worry about me. There’s nothing in Point Pleasant or the TNT that’s going to hurt me.”

  Discounting the curse.

  Chapter 6

  Caden was summoned to Weston’s office first thing Wednesday morning. He had time to grab a cup of coffee and mutter hello to Ryan before the two of them trooped inside and shut the door. Caden took a seat in front of the sheriff’s desk while Ryan hovered by the side window, a shoulder braced against the wall.

  Weston grunted a greeting then immediately got down to business. Leaning back in his chair, he plucked a folder from his desk and scanned the contents. “Baxter lifted a number of latent fingerprints from Hanley’s kitchen. He’s running them for matches now.”

  “What about bloody prints?” Settling in for a debriefing, Caden hooked his ankle over his knee. An experienced tech, Roy would be thorough.

  “Several fingerprints, plenty of footprints.”

  “So, someone tried to clean up after themselves?”

  “Sloppily. Luminol picked up places that had been swabbed.” Weston scratched his chin, reading from a folder in his left hand. “Redmond lists the cause of death as massive organ and soft tissue damage due to multiple stab wounds of the upper and lower thorax. From the size and angle of the wounds, he’s estimating a four- to five-inch blade.”

  “Half the county carries a hunting knife that size,” Caden said.

  “Noted, but it gets interesting after that. Redmond said the guy used a trailing point knife.” Weston tossed a drawing on his desk. Redmond had sketched it on a plain white sheet of paper, a rough illustration of a knife with a slightly curved belly and longer tip. “The point of the blade trails higher than the spine.” Pete ran his finger over the tip to indicate what he meant. “There’s also a swage, a false edge at the tip that can be sharpened. Put together, those elements make the high point structurally weaker.”

  “Is there a reason for the lesson in knife construction?” Ryan asked.

  Weston flecked him a sour glance. “Somewhere, at some point, the tip was notched.”

  “You mean like a piece broke off?”

  “Could be. Or it could be a defect. Either way, Redmond doesn’t think it’s enough to be noticeable. It impacted the edge of the cuts, but there’s no indication to suggest the blade fractured during the assault.”

  “So we’re looking for a four- to five-inch blade with a notched trailing tip.”

  “More or less.” Weston tossed the folder on his desk. “Heinous butchery. The whole thing makes me sick.”

  Caden cupped his coffee mug in his hands. “What about defensive wounds?”

  “Minor. It looks like Will must have been caught by surprise and didn’t have a chance to fight back.”

  “Another indication he probably knew his attacker.” Caden scrubbed a hand over his jaw. The idea that someone in Point Pleasant was a murderer was harder to swallow than imagining a stranger guilty of the crime. If that was the case, someone in town had to know something. “What did Pastor Fred have to say?”

  “The poor guy’s broken up. I guess he and Will had gotten pretty tight since Grace died.” Weston chewed his bottom lip. He looked every one of his sixty-three years. “Said he can’t imagine anyone holding a grudge against Will.”

  “That’s pretty much what I got from the neighbors, too.” Ryan shifted, turning his back to the window. “By the way, Misty turned up at Ed Shumer’s place, not a mark on her. According to Ed she was scared shitless. Said he found her hiding under his porch yesterday morning and had to coax her out. He was headed over to check on Will when I showed up.”

  “Did he see anything?” Caden asked. “Hear anything?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Nothing that stands out. No odd vehicles or strangers. He remembers seeing Shawn Preech’s Charger out that way Sunday morning, but no other traffic that he can recount.”

  “Preech.” Caden narrowed his eyes. “What was he doing?”

  “Shumer didn’t say. He only remembers Shawn driving by because he walked out to get his paper. Said he waved, but Shawn didn’t wave back. Shumer said he seemed focused on heading somewhere.”

  Dropping his foot to the floor, Caden sat forward in his chair. “Maybe we should have a talk with him.”

  “Preech?” Ryan rolled his eyes. “Caden, get real. The guy’s a prick but he’s no killer.”

  “But he might have seen someone who is. Especially if he was out that way Sunday morning.”

  “Good point.” Weston liked the idea. “Look into it and let me know what you turn up.”

  “What about the press?” Ryan asked.

  Weston gave a snort of derision. “Word leaked yesterday. It’s no longer a matter of keeping it under wraps, but keeping it calm. Thank hell and high water no one knows about the Mothman note. I don’t need people worrying about a killer and the bloody bird.” He pivoted in his chair to face Caden directly. “Did you see it yesterday?”

  Caden shook his head, quickly covering the lie by downing a mouthful of coffee. If Weston knew the thing had been within inches of attacking a tourist, he’d go ballistic. Even more if he knew Caden had shot it and let it get away.

  Ryan watched him with narrow eyes, but Caden ignored the scrutiny. There’d be time for dissection later.

  “If that’s all, Pete, Ryan and I will head to Shawn’s place.”

  “Do that.” Weston picked up the phone, dismissing them as he punched out a number on the keypad. “I want this wrapped by the end of the week. Got that?”

  “Yeah.” Caden looked at Ryan. They both knew the odds of that happening were thin.

  * * * *

  “You did see the creature, didn’t you?” Ryan lobbed the accusation as soon as they were in the parking lot. “Why didn’t you tell Weston?”

  Caden never slowed his pace toward the cruiser. “I never said I saw
it.”

  “Yeah, and you forget I grew up with you, brother. I can read you like a book.” He paused with his fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  In the long run, Caden didn’t see that he had much of a choice. Ryan was almost as deeply involved as he was when it came down to Point Pleasant’s notorious cryptid. He relayed the tale on the drive to Shawn’s place, covering everything from discovering Quentin and Sarah in the woods, to shooting the creature, and the sketchy details Evening had shared.

  “What a mess,” Ryan commented when he was through. “Did you tell Eve you shot the thing?”

  Caden nodded. Palming the wheel, he veered toward Shawn’s place. “I don’t want secrets in our marriage, and she’s bound to find out eventually. Especially with Evening in town.”

  “Is he staying at the hotel?”

  “He wasn’t as of last night, but the guy isn’t exactly normal.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan flipped the sun visor down. “I better warn Katie, too. I know Lyle’s out of the picture, but if she bumps into Evening, it’s liable to resurrect all that garbage from last fall.”

  “How’s the adoption process going?” Caden decided to change the subject.

  “On schedule.” Ryan broke into a sloppy grin. “It’s weird to think I’m going to be a dad before you are.”

  “Sam’s a good kid.”

  “I can’t believe how lucky I am to have him and Katie both.”

  “Three more months and you’ll be married.” Caden was looking forward to taking his turn as best man, as Ryan had done for him when he married Eve. His brother and Katie had picked October tenth for their wedding date, planning a small ceremony with a similar-sized reception at the hotel. Dwelling on something pleasant was a welcome relief after listening to Weston recite the grisly details of Will’s death.

  Ten minutes later Caden pulled into Shawn’s driveway, parking behind Preech’s Charger. Finding the car there on a weekday likely meant he was home from work and just as likely hung over from another night of drinking.