“We,” Ann said.
“Yes. We. This is not what we signed up for. If my term didn’t run through next year, I’d bow out now, but it’s only fair that I let this run its course and take the brunt of the kickback.”
Ann moved to sit on the arm of the chair where Peter rested. She kissed his head again and held him close. She’d had so many moments where she was left to comfort his worried mind that they all ran together. Still, Ann worried about the toll that such a weight was taking on her aging husband. She whispered in his ear, “We’ll figure it out. Hang in there, Hun.”
Peter whisked himself off to bed just before 10 PM but Ann wanted to finish the last chapters of her book. She’d worked her way through most of the library's best sellers and had moved on to some classics. She was devouring Goodreads’ Fifty Best Murder Mysteries list and aimed to finish before the end of the summer. She had fourteen left. She turned back to her book and tried to remember the last line she had read. The Drowner was one of two John MacDonald books that had made the list, but Ann had found it far too dark for her liking. She much preferred the witty, rapid-fire writing of Agatha Christie (who had eight books on the list) or the dense legal battles around murder that came with John Grisham’s work.
Once the last pages morphed into an “About the Author” page, Ann felt her eyes growing heavy. She left The Drowner atop the stack of books she had to return to the Brewster Library by the end of the week. The Outsider slipped off and fell to the side, and just seeing the cover shook Ann to her core. She’d had nightmares from the idea of an angry spirit being passed from one person to another, making them do terrible things. Peter had laughed at her when she’d explained the concept to him.
Ann crept upstairs and heard her husband’s familiar snore as he lay on his back with a hand tossed across his body and hanging on his ribcage. She already dreaded that she’d have to turn him to his side to shift the airflow away from his deviated septum for long enough that she could find silence and sleep. The worries from the day seemed to flow out of Peter and fill the room as Ann fought the concerns that consumed her and found peace in sleep.
FOUR
Friday, August 3rd
“This is the last one, I swear,” Casper said to Hoagie, who peered up at him with big, deep brown eyes, one of which was surrounded by a chocolate-brown patch of fur. The dark eye patch stood out in contrast to the rest of his white coat and was the first feature most passersby commented on. Hoagie’s back leg twitched and kicked, letting Casper know that the belly rubs were doing the trick. If he understood that Casper was about to leave him home alone while he went on yet another date, Hoagie might have protested a bit more.
Hoagie had been one of the only positive results of Casper’s year-long battle with anxiety. Prescriptions had left Casper feeling flat and more depressed than he cared to admit. Therapy helped, but progress was incremental and slow. A friend recommended getting a support dog and Casper jumped at the idea. After looking into the logistics of acquiring a highly-trained, certified support dog, Casper decided he may just have to settle for one with less official training and hope for the best.
Hoagie was the perfect companion to Casper’s lifestyle when there wasn’t a case to solve. Living just outside of Boston in the city of Somerville provided many nearby parks to explore and smells to sniff along the way. They’d even made their way down most of the bike trail that left Somerville and veered into Arlington toward Walden Pond. Hoagie barked at every passing cyclist at first, but eventually settled in and skipped along with glee.
When a case did pop up, Casper still found his pup to be essential to his process. Hoagie was always willing to listen to Casper’s half-hearted theories or rants without judgement or scoffing. When the phone would ring with new cases, Casper would try to explain to his canine companion that he’d be back soon, but Hoagie would sigh and curl up on his bed. Casper had grown to relate to Hoagie’s apprehension of being alone with his thoughts. However, Casper had begun to explore ways to combat his loneliness.
The dates had been a recent experiment. A break-out-of-your-rut attempt cooked up by his therapist after just two sessions of Casper’s whining about life. Get out there and meet people. You need more than a dog in your life, even if he’s a great dog. Casper considered bringing in the mouth-breathing furball to his next appointment to help the doctor understand that Hoagie was different. Special. The idea of such a dramatic gesture seemed to only reinforce the therapist’s advice that Casper needed human contact in his life.
Different was a word that Casper heard a lot from potential dates on the swipe-right apps that never seemed to have an actual human behind them. Your profile is very different. You look different. Blah, blah. It was difficult to blend into the crowd when your name was Casper, you looked a lot like the reincarnation of a ghost, and your job was, well, unusual.
Casper had fiddled and tweaked his profile on each app to ensure he came across as what he thought women wanted. Confident. Handsome. Wealthy. The works. But it all came crashing down when he actually found somebody willing to meet up and grab a cup of coffee. He was none of that, but instead much the opposite. But he still aimed high.
The previous week he had added his profession to the page in a desperate attempt to drive in some new traffic and score himself a date. It had worked. Maggie G. was waiting just around the corner at Forge Baking Company. First dates made Casper anxious, but he ignored his instincts. Maggie’s profile said she worked at a tech company in Central Square just outside the Red Line stop next to Thelonious Monkfish. Casper had grabbed Pad Thai to go from the jazz-themed restaurant on more than one occasion, so he was vaguely familiar with the area. Casper struggled to follow what her actual job was within the company, but from their website knew they worked with charities in Africa and Asia. Casper figured he’d be able to learn more over coffee and a bagel and was thrilled when she suggested Forge.
Forge Baking Company was a vast, open space with metallic tables and wooden countertops lining the walls. A large glass display case sat next to the register, which he used to look at his reflection. His pale face looked back at him amongst a stack of blueberry muffins and croissants. His ghostlike face was unsettling, but he brushed it off and looked up to the chalkboard menu above that listed different specialty options.
Casper’s eyes darted around the room as he tried to find Maggie. He had memorized her profile photo and tried to project her image against the handful of women sitting alone in the coffee shop. He had fallen for photo tricks more times than he was proud of, but he understood; everybody was hiding something. She had joked with him about being ‘as short as a one-word poem’ and her fiery red hair was prominent in all of her photos. He thought he had spotted her just as it was his turn to order. Casper froze in panic as he fumbled for words to order.
“Black coffee, for here,” he mumbled. The familiar scent of freshly ground beans mixed with sweet aromas from the back kitchen.
“That all?” the barista said.
Shit, is that all? Should I be ordering for her, too? This whole chivalry thing is super complicated to balance with respecting a stranger’s wishes.
“Uh, yeah, that’ll be it,” Casper said in a near whisper hoping to prevent Maggie from overhearing.
“Four dollars,” the barista said with a half-smile.
“For a coffee?”
“Best coffee in Boston, though!” The barista winked.
Why do I live near Boston again? Casper thought to himself as he waited for the credit card machine to beep. Another barista carefully placed a steaming mug of coffee on the counter and yelled, “CASPER! BLACK COFFEE FOR CASPER!”
Casper quickly raised his hand to claim the mug and put an end to the unwarranted shouting of his embarrassing name. He turned and faced the direction in which he’d seen Maggie’s hair bouncing in the breeze from the propped open front door. He nearly spilled his coffee, but held it steady and navigated discarded chairs as he joined her at the high-top table in t
he back. A large window before them looked into the bakery, where the staff was assembling different sweets and breads for the masses.
“Maggie?” he asked with a dash of guarded optimism in his voice.
“That’s me! You must be Casper,” she said, looking down at the table. “The barista kind of gave it away.” She had a tiny gap in her front teeth when she smiled that Casper found more cute than off-putting. He extended a hand for a handshake in that awkward all-too-common split-second panic where nobody knows how to actually greet one another as a human. She slid her soft, tiny hand into his.
“Thanks again for meeting me here, it’s one of my favorite spots,” Maggie continued. “Have you ever been here?”
Casper nodded and sipped his coffee, which instantly burned the tip of his tongue. “Yes, I actually love it here too,” Casper lied. “I just live a few blocks down the street. By Aeronaut Brewing.”
Maggie’s eyes lit up. “Ah! I love Aeronaut! That’s so cool. Although, I think I’d have a drinking problem if I lived so close by. How long have you been in Somerville?”
Casper was thrilled Maggie was taking the lead on the conversation, and little was expected of him so far. “About three years now?” he felt him state it as a question and kicked himself for it. “What about you?”
“Oh, I actually live in the South End. I just end up here a lot when my office gets too noisy. Which is… well, always,” she giggled and Casper thought the world was going to end before him. How had anybody heard that laugh and not instantly fallen in love?
“I saw your job title in your profile so I have to ask… what exactly do you do?” Maggie asked. Casper felt a dark cloud appear over them as if the rain was just about to pour down on him as he answered this normal, polite question that often led down a slippery slope.
“Uh, well. It’s a weird job,” Casper chuckled. “A few years ago, I was burned out from working as an engineer, so I was trying to find something new. I had always loved detective shows and books and always had that feeling that I could figure it out before other people, you know?”
Maggie seemed to follow so far, but that was expected. That was the normal part. Here comes the big one.
“And I coincidentally ran into a friend who needed a PI, like a Private Investigator, but for a really weird case. He thought his house was, uh, haunted.”
Maggie’s eyes grew wide. “Haunted? Was it haunted?”
Casper grinned and took another sip. Still way too hot to drink. Why do they serve coffee at absurd temperatures like this?
“It wasn’t, actually. He had a neighbor who wanted to buy his land and so he was pumping chemicals into the air ducts and causing my friend to hallucinate,” Casper replied.
“Wow. That’s insane! And then, like, what, you became a ghost hunter?” Maggie chuckled.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly but I wrote a book about the case and it kind of took off for a minute. Did a little book tour around Massachusetts. Then I just kind of got pegged as a paranormal specialist.”
“A paranormal specialist. That’s a new one to check off on my dating app bingo card,” Maggie grinned.
Casper laughed. “Anyway, tell me more about your work? You do something in developing markets?”
Maggie waved a hand in the air. “No, I think we’re going to talk a bit more about your work since I don’t fight ghosts for a living. Do you believe in all that?”
Casper paused and tried to size up Maggie. She didn’t seem put off by the paranormal investigator stuff. In fact, she seemed genuinely interested. Maybe too interested.
“I don’t, really. Like, I’m sure aliens are out there, and Bigfoot seems like a plausible enough creature to have existed at one point, but I don’t think spirits or ghosts or any of that are real.”
“Well, they are,” Maggie whispered. Casper was startled and looked up to see Maggie pull a notebook out of her bag. “And I can prove it.”
Ugh. Another one of these. Casper’s heart sank. The downside of adding his profession to his profile was that it caused a certain type of folks to come out of the woodwork. The believers. The haunted. They pursued Casper because of something they read that he did years ago. They weren’t looking for a date, they were looking for answers.
Casper sat and listened to Maggie’s woeful tale of her sorority house in college being haunted by the spirit of a woman who had died in her sleep some years back. He did his best to politely excuse himself to go to the bathroom and fought his urge to look back as he walked out the front door and into the summer sunshine of greater Boston. He had no patience for empty conversations with people hoping to use him for his so-called ‘paranormal expertise’. Hoagie was better company than them, anyway. In cases like Maggie G., when they insisted on telling their story, the suitors would usually just leave with the story of another ghost. This time, it was Casper leaving them behind without a trace.
FIVE
Saturday, August 4th
Pine needles crunched and sank into the sandy soil with each step of Delaney’s running shoes through the narrow path. Around her, the Punkhorns sprawled like a gray blanket, spilling over every inch insight. Branches reached from the canopies downward like outstretched arms, ready to snatch any soul bold enough to continue. Leaves danced in the breeze with an eerie rhythm that chilled her to the bone.
When Delaney had first run these trails, she laughed about some people calling them roads. They were barely passable on foot, let alone by car. Regardless, she was in her element – her nirvana – away from the depressing business of being a detective. Instead, she was knee-deep in nature, surrounded by scraggly pines that stood above thickets of rhododendron and azalea. Winterberry and tupelo blanketed the surrounding acres, swaying in the early morning air.
A coworker from the tiny Brewster P.D. had once described these acres as ‘nature’s graveyard’. Another as a ‘ghostly shipwreck of trees.’ The images had stuck with Delaney ever since but somehow made her appreciate the land even more. There was beauty in the bleakness. The pale gray bark of the taller trunks was littered with green and teal moss blown in from the wind over the nearby kettle ponds. The moss stuck like barnacles to the hull of ships that were left to rot and decompose in peace. No buried treasure was hidden here. Brown bark hung from the trunks, waterlogged from the previous night’s rain.
Delaney rounded a bend and hit a fork in the trail. Without hesitation, she veered to her right. Roots surfaced and dove beneath the soil like sea serpents. She’d recently done the math on a slow day at the precinct and guessed that she’d run the Punkhorn trails at least one thousand times since she’d moved back to the Cape four years prior. The ratty running shoes she’d started with had worn and fallen apart, but Delaney taped them up as long as she could. The overpriced wide-footed neon Altras had been a gift to herself when she’d been promoted. Delaney Shepard, Detective I. The advertisements that claimed that the soles felt like “running on clouds” weren’t quite true, but she’d still felt every ounce of the upgrade with each stride.
Delaney checked her GPS watch and noticed she was behind her target pace. She sped up and focused on breathing through her nose. Her black hair was pulled back tight but still bounced with every step. She remembered earlier years when her family vacationed on the Cape, and her brother’s harrowing tales of the dark Punkhorns. “The Boogie Man doesn’t live in Boston. He lives in the Punkhorns,” he would whisper from the top bunk as Delaney tried to fall asleep in the stuffy guest room of her Grandparent’s house. Although the rigid bed and pungent mothball aromas were contributing factors, most of her nightmares were about her brother’s warnings.
Even as an adult, when a strong wind blew and shook the trees, Delaney felt goosebumps arise. The naked branches would sway and dance like a scarecrow in a deserted field. She had seen the obvious flaws in the legends and had come to understand that there was, in fact, no Boogie Man to be found in this haunted hollow. Still, it unnerved her just how much the wind sounded like a whisper in h
er ears telling her to go home.
The narrow trail gave way to a broader single-vehicle road, and she shifted her stride right to follow one of the tire tracks. The banks of the path were carpeted with huckleberry, both old and new. She always looked forward to this last stretch of her run because the change in terrain meant she was a mile from her car in the parking lot. She kicked up her speed and cruised past a duo of squirrels chasing one another up a straw-pole pine that had weathered the last storm. The dust she kicked up with each step formed a cloud around her. Just try to catch me now, Boogie Man.
The sibling tradition of horror stories aside, Delaney had fallen in love with the Cape during those summers as a child. As she grew older, she’d ventured out further in kayaks and canoes to new areas that were uncharted to her younger self. She loved the morning birdsong that carried on throughout the day, and the hoots that accompanied the cool evenings.
Delaney was grateful every time she set foot on these trails. Grateful for the horror-story that was her dating history. For staying in her last relationship longer than she should have. For grinding out the last few weeks of her patrol waiting for her transfer to a Cape Cod precinct. Grateful for her predecessor in the department and his decision to follow his ex-wife and kids to the mainland and for freeing up a spot. So much to be grateful for.
She sat on the lip of her open trunk and kicked off her shoes. She held each shoe upside down, letting the soot and sand escape and remain where it belongs. Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but photographs. She noticed a few more cars than usual in the lot. Two, to be exact. There weren’t many early morning Punkhorn runners left these days. The stories and mystique of the place had scared most off or, more likely; folks were opting for the paved rail-trail or greenway. More space for me.
Welcome to the Punkhorns (Shepard & Kelly Book 1) Page 3