Shadow Creek

by Joy Fielding

  Was it possible Val actually enjoyed this type of thing? Or had she just gone along with it because it was something Evan enjoyed? And wouldn’t she be doing exactly that, if Evan were here?

  Except he wasn’t here, Jennifer thought, sparing herself the danger of further self-examination. If Evan were here, everything would be completely different. None of this would be happening.

  Damn it, she thought, feeling the walls of the tent closing in on her as her father’s disapproving gaze fell across her face like a suffocating pillow. It doesn’t bode well.

  AN HOUR LATER, emboldened by the sound of James’s steady breathing, Brianne climbed out of her sleeping bag and crept through the front flap of the tent.

  “Hi,” Jennifer’s voice greeted her as she emerged.

  “Oh, my God!” exclaimed Brianne, dropping to her knees, her heart beating so fast it threatened to burst from her chest. What the hell was Jennifer doing out here at this hour? Now what was she supposed to do?

  “Sorry. Did I frighten you?”

  “What do you think?” Brianne asked, her brain going, Shit, shit, shit, shit! “What are you doing out here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. The tent’s very claustrophobic, don’t you find?”

  Brianne shrugged. She’d never had a problem with tight spaces.

  “I don’t like anywhere where I can’t stand up,” Jennifer said, continuing. “I’m pretty good in places where I don’t have to crouch. Like elevators. I don’t have a problem with elevators. I even got stuck in one once. In New York. Between the thirty-second and thirty-third floor of William Morris Endeavor on Avenue of the Americas. You know the building?” she asked, plowing right on before Brianne could answer, tell Jennifer that not only did she not know the building, but that she wasn’t the least bit interested in either it or Jennifer’s story. “Well, I had a meeting there one day. It was just after the merger, and they were thinking of launching a campaign … anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

  It certainly doesn’t, Brianne thought.

  “And so I’m in this elevator with about half a dozen other people, and everything’s fine. Three people get off. A few others get on. And suddenly the damn thing lurches and comes to a stop. And there we are … stuck. Four of us. In this old elevator. And we’re there for almost an hour. And this one guy is freaking out. I mean, he’s sweating and hollering and carrying on. ‘Let me out of here. Let me out of here.’ And we manage to get him calmed down, but it’s hot in there, because it’s summer, and the air-conditioning isn’t working now, either, and the other people in the elevator are starting to get a little upset. And I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.”

  “Amazing,” Brianne deadpanned.

  Jennifer nodded her agreement. “And yet, put me somewhere where I can’t stand up, like a cave or something. Or like this stupid tent,” she said, slapping at it with her hand, her voice trailing off. “I didn’t realize tents were so confining. Did you?”

  “It’s a tent,” Brianne said, as if this were explanation enough.

  “I saw this movie once. It was about some girl who was being held prisoner in an underground cave, and in order to escape, she had to crawl through this long tunnel. And every so often, she’d come to a little space where she could just manage to sit up, but that was all, she couldn’t stand up straight, and then she’d have to start crawling some more, and I just freaked. I had to leave the theater. Just shoot me now, I said to myself.”

  With pleasure, Brianne thought, glancing at her watch. In twenty more minutes, it would be midnight.

  “Or like in the days of the Roman Empire …”

  “Whoa!” Brianne said, stopping her. “I get it. You don’t like places where you can’t stand up.”

  “When my mother was sick,” Jennifer said, either oblivious to Brianne’s indifference or ignoring it, “she had to have an MRI. You know what that is?”

  Brianne nodded. She’d seen enough reruns of ER and House to be able to operate the damn machines herself.

  “Well, my mother had to have one. And, you know, they put you through this tube …”

  “I know.”

  “And there she was, lying on that skinny table, about to be swallowed up by that awful thing, and I’d think …”

  “… Just shoot me,” Brianne said.

  “I’d think, she must be so scared.” Tears suddenly spilled from Jennifer’s eyes and down her cheeks. “Being so trapped, being so helpless, knowing she was going to die, knowing there was nothing she could do about it.”

  Brianne sat very still for several more seconds, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now. She had less than twenty minutes to meet Tyler at the camp’s entrance and here she was, stuck with Little Miss Doom and Gloom. “Well, as much as I’ve enjoyed our little talk,” she said, reaching back and reopening the flap to her tent, “I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep now.”

  “I’m sorry. Weren’t you on your way to the johns?”

  “Lost the urge.” Brianne was already halfway back inside the tent. “It’s getting pretty chilly out here. Don’t you think you should at least try to get some sleep?”

  “Don’t think I can.”

  “I think you should try. Maybe if you closed your eyes, you’d forget about your phobias.”

  Jennifer didn’t move. “I read somewhere that all phobias are really just a fear of death.”

  “Sounds logical.” Brianne crawled back inside her tent and into her sleeping bag, then lay in the dark with her eyes wide open. Just shoot me, she thought.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE GIRL SAT UP in the too-soft bed and looked toward the window. Okay, so where is he? she wondered, checking the clock on the end table beside the bed, and noting that it was almost 2 A.M. She was starting to worry. He should have been back by now. How long did it take to dispose of a body?

  Her mind raced through the night’s events: the lateness of his arrival; the look of relief on his face when he saw that she wasn’t mad—“I got interrupted,” was all the explanation he’d offered; the unfamiliar clothes he was wearing, and how he’d kept them on even as he was pulling off her jeans and pushing his way into her, first on a blanket of cold, damp leaves, then back here in the Laufers’ cottage, in their unwitting hosts’ too-soft bed. Lovingly, she retraced the bloody imprint his hand had left on her breast and smiled at the memory of the taste of fresh blood on his lips.

  Whose blood? she’d wondered. But she hadn’t asked.

  He’d killed again, she knew that for certain, and she felt a stab of jealousy that she hadn’t been there with him, a flash of anger that he hadn’t waited for her, but she also knew better than to call him on it or question him. He didn’t like to be questioned.

  There was a reason for everything. He’d tell her all about it when the time was right. “Later,” was all he’d said to the question mark in her eyes. That single word—overflowing with promise and intrigue—had excited her all the more. And then, after he’d taken her a third time—this time from behind, riding her as if she were a bucking bronco—he’d announced that he had to go out again.

  “I’ll go with you,” she’d said immediately.

  “No. Stay here,” he’d told her. “I have some cleaning up to do. You hate that. I’ll be back soon.”

  So where was he? What was taking him so long? Had something happened to him?

  She climbed out of bed, pushing the uncomfortable thought from her mind. She would simply not entertain such a horrifying possibility. If anything had happened to him, if he’d been captured by the police or, God forbid, injured in any way, she didn’t know what she would do. She loved him so much, she simply wouldn’t want to live without him. “There is no me without you,” she said out loud. Catherine … Veronica … Nikki—they would all cease to exist.

  Did he feel the same way about her?

  She wasn’t sure.

  Which was when she was seized by another uncomfortable thought: that he might be with someone else.

&nb
sp; The very idea of him with another girl made her feel sick to her stomach and she flipped on the overhead light to wipe out the image, watching the bedroom come into sharp focus. “Ugh,” she said, her eyes skipping across the yellowing lace doily on top of the dark oak dresser, then continuing over to the matching lace curtains draping the large, rectangular window. Old people’s stuff. Although she’d rather enjoyed the Percodan she’d found in their medicine cabinet, she thought, popping another one into her mouth in an effort to still her growing anxiety.

  On top of the doily sat an ornate, silver-framed photograph of the people she’d helped slaughter. The Laufers smiled back at her pleasantly, innocent to the fate that awaited them at her hands, as she lifted their picture closer to her eyes. Why is it that all old people look alike? she found herself wondering, without pity or remorse. Interchangeable faces. Interchangeable lives.

  Interchangeable deaths, she added, smiling at her cleverness.

  She thought of the other couples they’d murdered. There’d been nothing remotely exceptional about any of their victims, except the exceptionally violent manner of their deaths.

  Yet even under such spectacular circumstances, they’d proved remarkably alike, all dying with the same horrified looks in their pale, watery eyes—as if they couldn’t believe that after having managed to survive this long, this was to be their fate, as if the simple fact of having lived such long, boring, and utterly inconsequential lives entitled them to slip into death’s peaceful embrace with a minimum of fuss and pain.

  “Surprise!” the girl shouted gleefully, popping yet another Percodan into her mouth as if it were candy, and letting the photograph slip from her hands to the floor. She began pulling open the dresser drawers, her hands rummaging thoughtlessly through their contents. The top drawer contained a bunch of ugly rhinestone brooches and gaudy beaded necklaces, the middle one an assortment of delicate undergarments and nightgowns. “Don’t think you’ll be needing any of these things anymore,” she said, retrieving a pale pink silk camisole that fell from the drawer and caught on her big toe. She picked it up and held it against her naked breasts. She went to the closet, examining her image in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of the door. “Why, Grandma, what big tits you have!” She tossed the garment up into the air and watched it float gently back toward the floor, like a parachute. “What other stuff have you got in here?” She rifled through the clothes hanging neatly on the row of dark green plastic hangers. In quick succession she tried on a lilac-colored shift, a royal blue cashmere sweater, and a pair of white Capri pants, all at least several sizes too big for her, and all of which she left lying on the floor. “You’re not the only one who gets to play dress-up,” she said, thinking of Kenny and wondering what he was doing at this precise moment, once again praying he was all right, and hoping there was a good reason he’d chosen to exclude her from his latest kill.

  “Please don’t let him be with anyone else,” she whispered, hearing the fear in her voice bounce off the walls. Could that be where he was now? Back at the lodge, where they’d treated themselves to several celebratory dinners, auditioning her replacement?

  The thought made her double over, and she fought back the urge to gag. No one had ever made her feel so wanted, so valued, so loved. Surely he would never betray her. And yet, there were times when she caught him checking out other girls, which had made her feel so inadequate. Sometimes she doubted her ability to hold his interest, times she was afraid he would leave her for someone prettier, smarter, more adventurous.

  Still, hadn’t she done everything he’d asked of her, and more? Hadn’t she performed each assigned task to his satisfaction, even the cleanup part she despised? Hadn’t she been instrumental in not only finding their latest victim, but in leading him directly to the slaughterhouse?

  “Hi,” she heard herself say, sighing with the memory. She watched herself approach him as he sat off by himself at the far end of the lodge’s Olympic-sized swimming pool, its shiny blue chlorine shimmering in the moonlight. “Can’t sleep?”

  “One of those nights.”

  “For me, too. Do you mind if I join you?”

  The look that said he was intrigued. “Lots of empty chairs.”

  “I saw you earlier. In the dining room. David, right? I heard your wife call you David.”

  “Among other choice epithets.”

  “Yes. She seemed pretty upset.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “You are …?”

  “Nicole. But you can call me Nikki.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “Thank you. I’ve always liked the name David.”

  He’d shrugged, although she could tell he was flattered. Men are such suckers for a few kind words, she remembered thinking. “Pretty common name,” he said.

  “Maybe. But it’s a strong one. And very handsome, I think. You wear it well,” she added for good measure, repeating a line she remembered hearing on one of those Lifetime TV movies.

  David chuckled, and for a second she feared she might have gone too far, that her boldness might send him running for cover. He was on his honeymoon, after all. But after fidgeting for several seconds, he settled back in his chair, not ready to go anywhere. “Aren’t you going to ask me what the fight was about?”

  “No need.”

  He arched one eyebrow.

  “I pretty much heard the whole thing.”

  He laughed, and she looked around, wary that the sound might have attracted attention. But there was no one watching, or even close by.

  “For what it’s worth, I think you were right.”

  “I appreciate that.” Then, “Isn’t it a little late for you to be up?”

  “How old do you think I am?” she asked in return.

  “I don’t know. Sixteen, seventeen.”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “No way.”

  “All right. You got me. Nineteen and a half.”

  “You look younger.”

  “You want to see my ID?”

  A smile, colored with a hint of relief. “Don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “I think you should be able to go fishing,” she told him, “if that’s what you want.”

  “What I want doesn’t seem to matter much.”

  “It should.”

  “It’s not even that important. Just that I made these plans weeks ago, and I told her about them. Really, I did.”

  “And I really don’t see the problem. You want to go fishing; she wants to spend time with her family. Why can’t you both have what you want?”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Maybe she’ll come around.”

  “Maybe hell will freeze over.” He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort, and she tried to imagine the sound he’d make as she was sliding a long knife between his ribs. “I shouldn’t have called her a bitch,” he said.

  “She shouldn’t have called you an asshole,” she reminded him, giving her imaginary knife a nasty twist.

  “Maybe that’s what I am.” The tone in David’s voice begged her to disagree.

  She obliged him. “You’re not an asshole.”

  “You don’t know me very well.”

  “I don’t know you at all. But I have good instincts.”

  “And your instincts are telling you … what exactly?”

  “That you’re a pretty decent guy. That you don’t deserve to be yelled at and embarrassed in public.”

  David stiffened with the memory. “You know what my instincts are telling me right now?”

  She held her breath, looking up at him through strategically lowered eyes.

  “That I should probably get out of here before I do something really stupid.”

  “Like what?” she asked provocatively.

  He paused, clearly debating with his conscience over what to do next. Then he leaned over and kissed her. “Shit,” he said in the next breath. “I
really am an asshole. I’m on my fucking honeymoon, for God’s sake.” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m sorry. I really need to get back upstairs.”

  “Of course. This is all my fault.”

  “No. Of course it’s not your fault. You were just being nice.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Nice, that is.”

  He smiled and turned to leave.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” she asked.

  He turned back.

  “Forget it. It’s too much to ask.”

  “What is it?”

  A moment’s hesitation. Then, “It’s just that I’m not actually staying at the lodge. I just came here for dinner. I’m staying at a friend’s cottage. Just up the road a bit. And I was wondering … if you wouldn’t mind walking me home. It’s so dark and everything. I promise it won’t take more than a few minutes. You’ve already kissed me good night,” she added softly, playing on his guilt.

  It was his turn to hesitate. “Sure. What the hell? What’s another couple of minutes? It’s the least I can do.”

  And the last, she thought now, picturing them as they walked beside the creek that ran behind the lodge and up the winding dirt road. “We’re almost there,” she’d said several times. Then, after more than ten minutes had passed, “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so far.” And when the cottage finally popped into view, “If you could just wait till I’m safely inside …” And finally, “Would you mind coming in for a minute? Just till I get the lights on.”

  The knife was in his back almost as soon as his foot crossed the threshold. He’d grunted and lurched forward, the air rushing from his lungs as he spun around, the initial confusion in his face giving way to the recognition of what was happening, and then to fury. He lunged at her, his hands reaching for her throat even as his legs were collapsing under him.

  “Jack be nimble, Jack be quick,” she’d teased, ducking out of his reach, watching his fingernails scratch impotently at the air.