by K. J. Emrick
Or he’d found other things to do with his time. Like kill people.
“Um,” she said, not wanting to give away her thoughts. “So what happened to your furnace?”
“Wish I knew,” he said, stuffing his hands in his coat and bouncing on the heels of his feet. “The darned thing keeps shutting off and turning back on again. It’s really inconvenient with how cold it is outside.”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
“Well, it’s an old house. The man who lived here before me had it for a long time, so… yeah. Old house, old furnace, and I have no idea if it can even be fixed.” He shrugged. “Like I said, it will come on again in a minute or two but until then, how about a cup of coffee? We can sit and talk, and you can tell me what brings you by so early.”
She smiled at him, avoiding the question. “Some coffee would be great, thanks.”
The room he motioned to, off to the side, was one she remembered well from when she used to visit Benson LaCroix. It used to be full of books, the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with biographies and encyclopedias and novels. The books were gone. Most of the shelves were empty, and in fact the room kind of had a neglected feel. At least for Darcy, it did. There was a couch, and a low table, and a TV up on the wall that had a thin layer of dust across the screen. It felt like Mark might live here, but he didn’t spend a lot of time here.
She wasn’t sure if that was her own trepidation speaking to her, influencing how she saw things, or if maybe that was her special gift telling her things that she should know.
Sometimes it was hard to tell.
There actually were a few books on the shelves. She recognized a few of them as ones Mark had bought from her at the bookstore. She wouldn’t be surprised if the others were ones Izzy had sold him. They were all novels, but all of them still looked brand new. Mark must be the kind of guy who was really careful with his books. Either that, or he hadn’t opened up a single one of them…
She looked closer and found that at least one of them had been read. It had a crack down the spine, almost near the middle, like it had been held open there for a long time. Well, it was good to know these books weren’t just being ignored, she supposed. Unread books were like abandoned thoughts, left to wither and fade away into obscurity. Darcy always thought that was sad.
Across from the couch, on the low table, she saw an open laptop. Curious, Darcy sat in front of it, and touched the mousepad. The screen came to life. Mark was a freelance writer, and Darcy had always promised to come and read something of his, but she never seemed to find the time. But here were paragraphs of his writing. Pages, even. She began reading, wanting to see what kind of writer Mark might actually be.
It was a sci-fi novel, she discovered quickly. Not her favorite genre by any means but there were always exceptions. Isaac Asimov was a brilliant writer, for instance, but that was because his stories were more about the human spirit than robots and spaceships, even if he had come up with the famous ‘three laws of robotics.’
So she skimmed over a few paragraphs of what Mark had written, just to see.
* * *
“Era Rae,” Jadran called to me again, standing right beside me, sounding a million miles away. “Are you all right?”
I turned to him, sweeping away strands of hair that were sticking to the perspiration beading on my face. I wanted to tell him I was fine, just some scratches, just my heart that wouldn’t stop pounding from the terrors I had just seen. I wanted to say a lot of things. I just couldn’t make my tongue work.
When he saw my face, he gasped and shrank back from me. That’s when I realized I wasn’t all right at all. Something was definitely wrong. I wasn’t sweating from the physical exertion of this fight.
I was sweating and achy and disoriented because I’d been poisoned. When that one creature had cut me across my face. With its tongue. Some kind of venom…or toxin…
…or…
Darkness took me before my mind could finish the long list of things that might be killing me.
* * *
And then I scrolled down a few pages and read more.
* * *
“So how do the Children of the Event fit into the Restored Society’s plans? Were they a mistake?”
He shook his head. “This, I do not know. They were a result of the nuclear fire and the radiation afterward, but more than that I can not say. I only know they are dangerous, and we must avoid them. In the tunnels, we were trapped with them. Up here, we can hide and move when it is safe. They are a danger we can not stand against.”
He didn’t have to tell me. Those things hadn’t just frightened me. They had scared me bad enough that my genetically imbedded reflex of calm had splintered apart into nothing. I’d come to accept that part of me as a good thing. As something that could save me whenever I felt threatened. Not this time. This threat had been too much. I’d given in to my panic and it was just dumb luck that I’d survived. That any of us had survived.
What would happen the next time we encountered a Child of the Event?
* * *
This book on the screen… wasn’t bad, actually. It was certainly engaging enough that Darcy wanted to read more. Although, it actually sounded kind of familiar. Like maybe she’d read it before. It was right there at the edge of her mind, but she couldn’t quite drag it out.
“Ah, I see you’ve found my new novel,” Mark said to her as he came in from the kitchen carrying two cups of coffee. “It’s not finished yet. I have another twenty thousand words to put into it, and then there’s going to be three to four days of editing to get it set before I send it to my publisher for their review, and then I’ll have to make any changes he suggests… yeah. It’s a long process.”
He laughed as he passed her a cup of coffee. It sounded to Darcy like a lot of work. She’d considered writing a book before, maybe a ‘how to’ about conducting spirit communications like her Great Aunt Millie had written, but she’d never gone through with it. Was it really that hard? Mark sounded like he loved it.
The cup of coffee was warm in Darcy’s hand and it smelled wonderful. She might have to drink a whole pot to stay warm while she was here. It was absolutely freezing in this house. If only the furnace hadn’t gone out, it would be a lot easier for Darcy to concentrate on why she was really here if she wasn’t starting to shiver.
Someone had killed two people at the end of town. If it wasn’t the mother, Lana Harris, then it had to be someone who could move around in the storm. Sure, there were lots of people in town who might have ways of doing that, but Darcy had only seen a few of them actually out and about in the storm.
Mark Franks had been one of them.
He was holding his own coffee cup in between his gloved hands. He took several sips, and sighed. “There’s nothing like a good cup of coffee on a cold day. You should be home with those kids of yours, shouldn’t you? Such a nice family. You’re so lucky to have a family like that.”
“Well, yeah I guess I am,” she started to say, but Mark kept talking like he hadn’t heard her.
“Yes, family is really important to me. I hope to have one of my own someday. A couple of kids of my own, maybe. They say you get two chances at a family. The one you’re born with, and then the one you create yourself when you’re an adult.”
Darcy knew the truth of that, but then again she had lucked into having a good, strong relationship with her mother after a long time of barely tolerating each other. She’d made the best of her second chances. At least, she was trying to. “You never told me if you had a family of your own, Mark.”
“Hmm? Oh, I did. But you know how that goes. You grow up, you drift apart, some die, some live. It’s the way of things.” He shrugged and sipped at his cup again. “Ah, listen to me waxing poetic like a writer, when you came all this way to talk to me about something. Uh, you did come to talk to me about something, right? Is it Izzy? You’re not here about Izzy, are you?”
That gave Darcy a moment’s pause. “What? No, why woul
d you ask that?”
Mark chuckled again. “Well, she and I have been getting close and you’re basically her best friend. This is about the stage in a relationship where the best friend steps in to lay down some ground rules, isn’t it?”
Wow. That hadn’t even been a thought in her head. She wasn’t going to concern herself with who Izzy chose to date. That was Izzy’s choice. She was a grown woman and if the last guy had done her wrong, and Mark was willing to treat her well, then that was what mattered.
Unless Mark was involved in a murder. That would make it Darcy’s concern.
“Um. Actually, I was going to ask you about something else,” she told him. “There was… well, there was an accident at the far end of town two days ago. Jon is investigating it and he’s looking for witnesses. I remember you were out on your skis the next morning, like me and Izzy, and you said you went all the way down to Main Street the day before. So you were there when it happened. I was just wondering if you saw anything?”
It was a loaded question, but she felt like she had done a good enough job of disguising her real interest in what he might have been doing that night. The words had come out in a rush, but she made sure to call it an “accident.”
Still, he was looking at her awkwardly now, sitting there with his coffee in his gloved hands.
“I don’t think so?” he said finally. “I remember all the snow, but I didn’t see anyone, and I don’t remember seeing any accident. Don’t you think I would have said something if I had?”
Sure, Darcy thought to herself. Unless… he felt guilty about something.
She needed to ask him more questions, like—
A ratcheting, clanking noise trembled through the house and startled Darcy. Her untouched coffee slopped over the rim of the cup and onto her hands. Luckily, it was lukewarm already, thanks to this freezing house. She set it aside on the table, looking all around.
Mark laughed.
“That’s the furnace kicking on again, is all.” He tugged at the fingers of his gloves, anxious to get some heat to his cold hands again. “Ah. That’s better. I can feel it warming up already.”
He slipped the gloves off. When he dropped them on the table, he saw Darcy’s cup, and the spilled coffee.
“Uh, sorry,” Darcy said to him. “The furnace coming on had me a little jumpy, I guess. Now, like I was saying…”
She stopped.
Across the back of Mark’s hand was a long, narrow bruise. A purplish-yellow mark slanting at an angle like he’d been struck there with a stick. Or maybe, she thought, a metal bar.
Like the bar they found in Lana Harris’s purse, covered in blood.
As if… as if he was defending himself, with his hands up, when that bar came crashing down. What if Lana had been defending herself against the killer, and left a mark on him as she got away?
It would look just like that bruise…
“Let me get something to clean this coffee up before it stains something,” Mark suddenly said, still smiling at her like nothing was wrong. He stood up from the couch and went off to the kitchen. Darcy was left alone with her thoughts.
She jumped up as soon as he was gone. She needed to leave. Right now. She needed to tell Jon what she had just seen, and she needed to go before Mark came back and got suspicious about why she was asking questions. Maybe he already was. Maybe he wasn’t going to get a towel to clean up her spill at all. Maybe he was going to get a weapon.
This was bad.
Darcy could remember when Mark Franks first moved into town. Back then, she had suspected him of being involved in a horrible crime, all because of an injury to his hand. She’d been wrong that time. Her instincts had been wrong. Mark had turned out to be a good guy… or so she thought.
But what if her instincts had been right all along and Mark was a bad guy after all?
A killer.
She bumped the corner of the table with her knee in her rush to get out. It made the laptop bounce. The screen came back to life. She saw the words that Mark had typed onto the page again.
* * *
I’d given in to my panic and it was just dumb luck that I’d survived. That any of us had survived.
What would happen the next time we encountered a Child of the Event?
* * *
And just like that, she remembered where she’d seen them before.
With a quick detour to the side wall and the nearly empty shelves, Darcy grabbed the book with the crack down its spine. She tucked it into the pocket of her coat.
Then she practically ran outside.
Chapter 7
I’d come to accept that part of me as a good thing. As something that could save me whenever I felt threatened. Not this time. This threat had been too much. I’d given in to my panic and it was just dumb luck that I’d survived.
* * *
Those were the words Darcy had seen on Mark Frank’s laptop. The unfinished novel he was supposedly working on.
Only, these words were right here on the open page of a science fiction novel that had already been published to half-decent reviews, from a new author by the name of S.J. Taylor. Colony 41. This was the book from the shelf in Mark’s house. The one she snagged on her way out before snapping on her skis again and getting herself home as fast as she could.
Mark wasn’t writing a new novel. He was writing this novel. Copying it word for word. He plagiarized this book to make it look like he was writing one of his own.
It was more proof that he was a liar, and maybe something worse.
Jon closed the paperback novel and dropped it on the table. “I’ve been meaning to read that one. So, you’re saying that what you read on Mark Frank’s laptop is exactly the same as what’s in this book?”
Darcy nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
They were in their kitchen, sitting at the table with Izzy, talking about everything Darcy had just found out. She was lucky she caught Jon when she did. He’d been on his way out when she made it back home. It had taken her a little bit longer to get back because she kept looking over her shoulder to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Whatever Mark’s intentions were, he hadn’t come after her. Even so she hadn’t felt safe until she was back inside her own home.
Through the whole conversation Izzy hadn’t said much of anything at all. She listened to everything, sitting back in her chair, legs crossed and one foot tapping in the air.
“He was out there on Main Street, Jon,” Darcy repeated herself. “He was there in the middle of the storm, just like the Harris family was but he says he couldn’t see anything. How can that be possible?”
“Plus the bruise you saw on his hand,” Jon added.
“And, his lying about being a writer.”
“Hmm. Sure adds up to something.”
“Yeah. That’s what I think, too.”
Izzy’s foot began tapping harder.
Reaching across the table, Jon cupped Darcy’s face. “That’s my girl. Always thinking. We’ll add Mark into our list of suspects.”
“List?” Darcy asked him. “We have a list?”
“Yeah, unfortunately we do.” He yawned behind his hand. Obviously he hadn’t gotten much sleep and yet here he was, ready to go back into work where he was needed. “A list that keeps growing. We’ve got Lana Harris, the only survivor of whatever happened to her family in that car. Now, we have Mark Franks, who appeared suddenly in our town just a few months ago and who is apparently lying about why he came here, and what he saw or didn’t see on Main Street. Both of them can be placed at the scene of the crime.”
Izzy shifted in her chair.
“There’s still the question of motive,” Darcy said.
Jon nodded. “Yup. One problem at a time, though.”
Izzy stared down at the table.
“So,” Darcy said, “are there more names? You did say we had a ‘list,’ right?”
He held up two fingers. “Those two.” Then he held up all his other fingers.
“And an entire family.”
“A family of suspects? What do you mean?”
“Turns out,” he said, “that you were right with your other guess, too. The presents in the Harris’s luggage did have names on them. Fred, Sam, and Mary. With names like those it took my guys a few hours to put them to a specific family, but they did it. Grace called me just thirty minutes ago. After she rubbed it in my face that she got to work first, she told me that the presents were for the Levisons over on Fairfield. So. Now we know who Lana and her family were coming to see, and why they were here.”
“How does that make them suspects?” Darcy asked.
“You mean,” Izzy asked, her voice laced with sarcasm, “that we aren’t just picking people out of a hat?”
“No, we’re not,” Jon said. He glanced at Darcy, obviously wondering what was eating Izzy. “The Levisons are suspects for a specific reason. They would be the only ones who knew Lana and Brian were coming to Misty Hollow.”
“And Joel,” Darcy said. They couldn’t forget that whoever did this, had also killed a young boy…
At the mention of Joel’s name, the rubber ball rolled off the shelf from above the refrigerator. It bounced hard on the kitchen floor. It was a crazy bounce, sending the ball off at an angle through the entryway to the living room. Logically, that direction shouldn’t have been possible. It should have gone up, and then down, and then up again, like a normal rubber ball. Not sideways.
But when you were dealing with ghosts, the impossible often became possible.
Joel Harris was reminding them that he was still here, still hiding himself from the living. The three of them were staring after the ball from the kitchen table, waiting to see if it would come back. Darcy bit her lip. Now that she knew more about what had happened to the boy, maybe it was time to try a spirit communication with Joel Harris after all.