Wings In Darkness

by Gregory Kay

Fiona couldn’t help but think of her mother’s recent words, but pushed them aside. Yes, she decided, he is good-looking, not to mention funny and unusually patient. Still, she knew nothing could come of this...except that she would definitely call her mother tomorrow. She didn’t know if a person could actually die of humiliation, but she wasn’t about to take the chance.

  She sneaked another glance at Luke. Her mother had insisted he liked her – not that it matters, of course – but she seriously doubted it. Well, he acts like he does, maybe, but he’s just being nice because he’s a nice guy.

  It’s probably just another strategic redeployment of the truth!

  CHAPTER 10

  “This is the place.”

  Luke eased the cruiser to the side of the road, killed the engine, and, with a nod of his head, gestured at the turnoff twenty feet ahead. It wasn’t much of a turnoff, really; although it obviously had been a road in its own right at one time, albeit a narrow one, its total distance now ran little more than a car length.

  They opened their doors and got out simultaneously, but Fiona paused to look around.

  This is a regular wilderness out here!

  She had been surprised by the place from the very beginning, at the time they left Point Pleasant. Used to urban sprawl, it was rather shocking to her to ride literally from one end of town to the other in just over five minutes, only to experience a sudden, almost abrupt transition from city to country. There was nothing gradual about it; Route 62 went past the high school across from the Dollar General Store, then she was looking at fields full of cattle and cornstalks. A couple more miles of pasture and forest interspersed with scattered houses and trailers here and there, across a creek – the line over the river and through the woods came to mind and tugged at the corners of her mouth – and then they turned right on what he told her was Camp Conley Road. After passing a few clusters of homes, civilization disappeared except for roads and power lines, replaced by more fields surrounded with thick, impenetrable tangles of Russian olive and multiflora hedgerows, followed by swamps and ponds, separated from one another by thick stands of black locust and Osage orange trees, their bases choked with underbrush.

  A ninety-degree left turn at a barred gate this time, followed by an equally hard right, and they were in a two lane corridor, and a handful of forest giants in a vast sea of smaller, second-growth timber pushed in against the sides of the long, straight stretch of road with an effect that was almost claustrophobic. The purely primeval impression was only broken by the bits of trash strewn here and there and by still more, regularly-spaced turnoffs like the one she now stood in front of.

  Approaching the parking spot slowly, she looked it over. It hadn’t been a real road for some time now, and a three-foot high mound of dirt bulldozed across it to block any further progress by car had been there so long it was colonized with tangled briers and saplings as thick as her wrist. Beyond that, the rest of the track was no more than a faint hint in the heavy brush.

  Scanning the ground, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was a lovers’ lane to be sure; the two weathered condoms beaten into the gravel by rain, sun and time told her that, loud and clear. From all the empty beer cans – mostly cheap lite brands – and broken bits of amber glass, it looked like a popular illicit drinking spot too, as well as a hunting ground, if the empty shotgun shells scattered around were any indication.

  After getting a general feel for the place and its lonely, seedy, and oddly heavy, brooding atmosphere, Fiona took out her Canon XTI. The digital SLR certainly wasn’t a top of the line camera, but it had the redeeming features of getting the job done while being something she could afford, since that cheap bastard Sidney certainly wasn’t going to pony up for it.

  Sensing she wanted to concentrate on her work, Luke leaned against a fender and watched in silence. It wasn’t hard to do, because, despite her small size, the reporter wasn’t at all hard to look at, especially when she bent, twisted and squatted while snapping different angles. Her breasts might have been small and her bottom little and tight, but everything about her was proportionate, with those proportions, especially the ones on her lower half, emphasized by her jeans when they tightened across her rear. Realizing he was staring, he made his best effort to look away, look at the trees, the sky, the fallen leaves, the glimmer of the pond over the embankment on the opposite side of the road, look at anything else, but his eyes kept being pulled back to her, and he felt a faint stirring behind his fly.

  Funny; I haven’t felt like this since...why her? Granted, she is fun; she might be little, but damn, she’s pretty!

  Fiona clearly felt his eyes on her, and surreptitious glances on her part told her he was trying his best not to look but failing miserably. Normally she would have commented on it rather acidly, suggesting he go to a strip club if he was determined to ogle women, but she knew he was making a genuine effort not to be a perv about it. It was also obvious he found her at least physically attractive; somehow – she wondered if it was some psychic connection – she was certain he was thinking she is really pretty! rather than I’d like to bend her over this cruiser and bone her right now! and that was the way she’d always wanted to be thought about, physically anyway. That thought brought both an external smile and an internal sigh.

  Fiona was not a promiscuous woman, if, for no other reason than that she stayed too busy. She’d had a grand total of three lovers in her life, including the last, whom she’d taken to mentally referring to as ‘Cliff the Son of a Bitch,’ but in every case, it had taken months for her to finally grow comfortable enough for sex. No one is more vulnerable than when they’re naked, and being vulnerable was the thing the reporter feared most. She had to know someone well enough to trust them completely before she could bring herself to be that way with them.

  And look what it got me, every time!

  Glancing at the big deputy, she had to admit he was not only attractive now that she’d gotten to know him, but also quite possibly the nicest man she’d ever met, while at the same time being willing to stand up to her, a quality she respected. Still, she knew it was way too soon, she didn’t know him nearly well enough, and she’d be out of here and back to New York in only a few days. Any romance she could have with him would only end in tears and regrets for both of them. She also knew that a part of her, the part that had felt so warm and safe and comforted when he’d squeezed her hand and when he’d held her briefly in his arms, already wished it didn’t have to be that way.

  While doing her best to shake that thought from her mind, Fiona moved closer to the earthen roadblock, and something snorted loudly on the other side and crashed in the brush.

  She yelled and jumped, staggering backwards, and setting the sole of her shoe on an unseen beer can that scooted in the gravel, taking her foot with it. She lost her balance and realized she was falling...when she impacted against Luke’s chest. He had jumped toward her when she’d jumped back, and he caught her under both arms to keep her upright.

  “It’s okay! It’s just a deer! Look, it’s a big buck; there he goes; see?”

  Forcing her heart down out of her throat, she followed the line of his arm and pointing finger extending past her shoulder, and saw a set of eight-pointed antlers leading a brown-framed furry white tail vanishing into the brush.

  “Damn!” she hissed in a whoosh of expelling breath, “That scared the hell out of me!”

  “It kind of startled me too,” he admitted, “and I’m used to it.”

  Suddenly Fiona realized he was still holding her with one if his arms firmly around her waist, and quickly extricated herself.

  “Thanks,” she said, a little too brusquely, before being getting a sudden flash of inspiration. Turning to Luke, she asked if it could have been a deer that had frightened the young couple, but he shook his head.

  “Deer can scare you, as you just found out the hard way, but other than the startle factor, nothing else fits. Deer are either brown and white or gray and white, depending on the
time of year, while the thing those kids saw was dark gray or black. Besides, even if a deer raised up on its hind legs, it wouldn’t be nearly as tall or broad as the thing they described. Plus, of course, they don’t have wings.”

  “But if it jumped out at them suddenly in the dark, and landed on top of the car and badly frightened them...”

  “They’ll do that sometimes; I’ve seen cars that very thing has happened to, and none of them showed damage anything like what was done to Johnny’s Camaro. Besides, both he and Alison have hunted deer themselves, so they know what they are when they see them.”

  Fiona had never pictured a school girl prowling the woods with a gun hunting deer, but she let that pass for now.

  “Alright; a bear, maybe?”

  “I’ve considered that,” he admitted, studying the woods, “Although they don’t really live around here, they do pass through on occasion, but there are a couple of problems with that hypothesis too. The only bears east of the Mississippi are black bears, and they don’t get that big. Most of them aren’t even as tall as a man, while what those kids described was the height of a full-grown grizzly. This sighting had more in common with a Bigfoot than a black bear.” When he saw the question coming, he assured her, “No, as far as I know, we’ve never had a Bigfoot sighting here. Also, bears aren’t great jumpers; a deer might leap on the roof of a car, sure, but not a bear. And, again, they don’t have wings.”

  “I know they don’t have wings! I’m not stupid!” She quickly took a breath and said, “Sorry again; I know you’re trying to help, but this situation is getting frustrating! There has to be a natural explanation of some kind for all of this.”

  Luke was obviously a little stung, and although he carefully kept his voice level, it was also full of challenge when he asked, “Okay, so what is it then?”

  She didn’t know, but, as she looked up at the treetops as if seeking an answer there, she suddenly thought she may have found it.

  “Do bears climb trees?”

  “Yeah; black bears do, anyway.”

  “What if whatever it was didn’t jump up on the car? What if it jumped down on it?”

  Luke rubbed his chin in thought.

  “You may be onto something.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked her as he watched her standing on one leg and taking off her shoes and socks while leaning against the tree with her free hand. Once Fiona had informed him of what she planned, he had taken an emergency blanket from the cruiser, folded it, and laid it out to protect her bare feet from the glass and gravel, as well as the tendrils of briar and poison ivy that snaked across the ground.

  “It’s the only way to find out.”

  Looking up at the elm, with its trunk as big as his chest and its branches overhanging the turnoff, he felt compelled to ask, “Have you ever climbed a tree before?”

  “Hey, we have something in the city called Central Park; ever hear of it?” Of course, she had never climbed a tree there or anywhere else either, but she saw no point in mentioning that; besides, she really didn’t want to lie to him for some reason.

  So I’ll just pull one of his numbers and strategically redeploy the truth!

  His highly skeptical look told her he was well aware that was exactly what she was doing.

  “Yes, and we have something here called an emergency room, and I really don’t want to have to take you to it.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she told him confidently. After all, how hard can it be?

  She quickly found out, and after about a minute of watching her stubbornly abrading the skin on her hands and feet while vainly trying to scale the steep, rough trunk, Luke sighed.

  “Here; step back and watch out for glass.” Once he got her out of the way, he set his own back against the tree, bent his knees, and clasped his hands, interlocking his fingers at his waist. “Put your foot here, and you can use me for a ladder.”

  Fiona was blushing, having just thoroughly embarrassed herself, but she obeyed, putting her bare right foot in his hands and pulling herself up while holding onto his neck and shoulders before putting the sole of her left foot on top of its partner. Luke straightened up to his full height, taking her with him while she balanced herself with both hands on his head.

  “Now what?” Oh no! My crotch is right in his face! She was suddenly very glad he couldn’t see her face right now.

  “Alright, now I’m going to lift you up so you can put a foot on one of my shoulders, then put your other foot on the other one.”

  Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned. He raised her weight with remarkable ease, but her left foot settled in place imperfectly, and, when she had the right almost in almost where she wanted, her heel rolled against his collarbone and she slipped. Her left leg shot out behind him to one side of the tree and her right knee dropped painfully onto his shoulder. She started falling backward, but she grabbed the back of his head with one hand and pulled, arresting the motion, at the same time he grabbed her butt in both hands and lifted, trying to stabilize her. Their combined uncoordinated motion made him overcompensate, tilting them both back against the tree. The back of his head thumped against it hard, and she managed to grab his cranium with her other hand.

  “Shit!” she muttered, then felt him squeezing and pulling at her rear.

  “Hey, cowboy! You can let go of my ass anytime now!”

  Luke only answer was a muffled, “Mrrrph,” with no break in the action, and she looked down to pick a target to slap the hell out of when she saw the problem: with her leg on one side of his head bent and wrapped across his back, her knee on the other, and her hands gripping the back of his head, she had his face ground so tightly into her crotch he couldn’t breathe.

  “I’m sorry!” she yelled, and began squirming harder to get up even while his own movements became a bit more frantic as he ran out of air. “Push harder!” Fiona shouted, and Luke complied, allowing her to come up to both knees, with her bottom on top of his head this time, so she was sitting on it. “I am so sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” he gasped, panting and obviously in some pain, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind at all, but that zipper is kinda hard on the nose. Okay, climb on up, but do it carefully, please; that one made my shoulders a little tender.”

  “I’ll come down – “

  “No! You’re already up there now, so you might as well go ahead.”

  She decided to take him at his word, but felt terrible when he flinched beneath her several times while she got to her feet.”

  “I’m up; I've got hold of the branch.”

  “Great.” He sounded distinctly unenthusiastic. “Let me know when you’re secure, and I’ll position myself so I can catch you if you fall.”

  As he felt her weight leave his shoulders when she pulled herself up onto the overhanging limb, she told him, “Don’t worry; I won’t fall.”

  “Yeah, right!” she heard him mutter under his breath and looked down to see him flexing and rubbing his shoulders, and a thin crimson stream trickling down his chin.

  “You’re bleeding!”

  Luke gingerly touched his face and regarded the red smear on his fingers.

  “It’s okay; your zipper slid down my face and caught my nose and lips.”

  “I am so sorry!” she repeated again, totally mortified.

  He must think I’m the world’s biggest klutz! Right now, I think I’m the world’s biggest klutz!

  “It’s alright,” he reassured her with as much sincerity as he could muster, “No major harm done. Do you see anything?”

  Sitting astraddle of the limb, she looked in front of her.

  “Luke, could you please stand about where the car’s roof would have been when it was parked?”

  “Sure.” He stepped a few feet away. “Probably about here. Why? Do you see something?”

  “Yes I do! Could you toss up my camera?”

  After he looked at her precarious perch ten feet above the road and then at her Nikon, his
answer was a definite no, but he did find a long stick in the form of a fallen tree branch, hooked the camera strap on the forked end, and extended it so she could reach. As she looped the strap around her neck, she felt like raising hell with him for being so concerned, but after her miserable performance so far, she could understand why.

  “What is it?”

  Steadying herself as best she could, she began snapping pictures, her flash automatically popping in the dimming afternoon light.

  “Something or someone’s been up here; all the bark is scraped off right above where you’re standing.”

  “How many scraped patches are there?”

  “Two of them, between two and three feet apart.”

  “You mean like where somebody’s feet would be if they were standing there?”

  “Yes,” she said, the satisfaction plain in her voice, “Exactly like that.” She began maneuvering further out on the limb.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting closer.”

  “Be careful! You might fa – “

  And, even while he was speaking, she did exactly that. A large spider, resting unseen on the lower side of the limb and camouflaged against the bark, scurried over her hand just as it was hanging on to balance her in mid-scoot. Spiders were one of the few things Fiona was afraid of, and they absolutely terrified her, so it was natural that she would squeal and jerk her hand back, and that was all it took. Overbalanced, she slipped to the right, spun halfway around the limb and fell.

  On the way down, she thought, a perfect end to a perfect day! This is really going to hurt!

  It did, only not her.

  Seeing Fiona losing her balance, Luke was already moving, trying to get beneath her. He saw he was going to make it, and instinctively prepared, as time seemed to slow down enough for him to think.

  She’s coming down on her back; all I have to do is get underneath her, stick out my arms to catch her, flex my knees to take the shock. She doesn’t weigh hardly anything; nothing to it!