He took a step back, positioning himself just inside the door, and said, “Oh hey, nothing man. It’s just, you know, with what’s going on here and all.”
“No, I don’t know,” Lance said.
The man nodded. “Oh, right. Okay, yeah, you’re new in town, sure.” Then he poked his head out the door and lowered his voice a bit, like he was about to tell a secret. “Sugar Beach has been getting a bad rap lately. In fact, its new nickname is Suicide Beach. Young people keep coming here to kill themselves.”
5
The pieces fell into place, lining themselves up in a way that showed Lance a bit more of the picture. The janitor, Barb, the flyer with the heart and the number for the suicide hotline—Sugar Beach had a problem. Lance didn’t want to know how many people had come to this forgotten little tourist spot to end their lives, but if he’d been in town for only a few hours and had already encountered this many references to the issue…
He had questions. Lots more. But after the young guy in the apron had divulged this last bit of information to Lance, he quickly repeated, “My break’s over, man. Come back in later if you’re looking for work.” And then he pulled the utility door shut quickly.
Lance sighed. Walked back to the corner of the building and picked up his backpack and the to-go cup of coffee. The caffeine from his earlier cups had his head buzzing, but still he felt the grip of fatigue squeezing him tight. And with the overload of new information he’d just been given—the beverage-selling girls, and Sugar Beach’s unfortunate nickname—he knew all at once that this was a business trip after all. Not a leisurely pit stop.
He was still going to eat crabs. The Universe would just have to deal with it.
He sipped the coffee, still hot. Took two long swallows and then headed across the parking lot, across the street, and then started walking down the sidewalk lining Sand Dollar Road. Toward all the hotels and businesses and the sound of country music still coming from somewhere.
The same direction the black Excursion had driven.
There were streetlights here, big and bright and casting artificial life across everything beneath their cones. Made storefronts and the entrances to motel lobbies look new and sparkly in the evening darkness. But Lance knew the trick. Come morning, when the sun was just rising and the light was dull gray and sleepy, the warts and wrinkles of these places would be exposed—peeling paint, chipped flooring, windows that needed washing, outdated furniture and dusty corners. New cars always looked best in the showroom. It wasn’t till you got them home to your own garage that you saw them for what they really were.
He passed by two motels that looked as though they should be in hospice care, with empty swimming pools and a few beater cars in the lot. Doors to two rooms on the second floor were open, and the sounds of television echoed across the deserted cement pool area, down to the street.
The block ended, and Lance looked both ways before crossing the street. Once on the other side, Lance felt like he’d crossed more than just a road—perhaps a poverty line. A donut shop that looked clean and warm and might even sparkle in the daylight was on the corner, a few happy employees inside joking and cleaning up for the evening. Lance looked down to his to-go cup of coffee and briefly considered how good a donut would go along with it. Then he remembered his two slices of pie at the diner and decided to pass. Maybe he’d come back for breakfast. He made a note of the hours on the door and then moved on.
A pizza shop with plenty of indoor seating (Open). A surf shop with lots of t-shirts and trinkets and flip-flops and all the typical bric-a-brac (Closed). Two newer motels, side by side, that looked like places a family on a budget would come on vacation—not a Hilton, but leaps and bounds better than the ones a block earlier.
Across the street, the country music intensified, and Lance turned to see what he could only call a honky-tonk. Lots of wood on the outside and neon signs advertising beer in the windows. A set of antlers mounted above the door with a sign that read The Sand Crab. Lance thought it was a weird name for a country bar, but when the young couple pushed through the door, laughing and allowing the music to blare out into the street even louder, Lance saw the happiness on their faces and figured it didn’t matter what a place was called.
Besides, he wasn’t interested in the honky-tonk. In between the two motels was a wide parking lot serving both. A sign on the street told Lance there was beach access, free to guests, ten dollars a day to others.
Lance wasn’t a motel guest, but he also wasn’t going to park. Having a car didn’t exactly fit his whole “traveling light” ideology. Despite his exhaustion, despite the way his head seemed to be foggy and his body begging for sleep, he felt a strong urge grow in his gut, his heart. He wanted to see the ocean. He looked down Sand Dollar Road, toward the rest of the lights and businesses and the cars parked along the street and the people milling about, and he knew there was more for him to see there, more to explore. But right now, there was only the idea of the waves and sand waiting for him to the east, an image that promised calmness and relaxation.
And something else. Though he wasn’t sure what that something else would be.
He downed the rest of his coffee and tossed the empty cup into a trash bin by the entrance lobby of one of the motels. Then he walked down the side of the building, found the pass-through between the properties—a wooden bridge constructed first over grass and then rising higher as the ground bled into the sand. He stood at the precipice of the walkway and felt a strong, fresh breeze blow into his face. He licked his lips and tasted the faintest traces of salt, the grittiness of sand.
The moon was high above the water, big and bright and casting a shimmering gleam across the waves as they rolled slowly in and crashed against the shore. A lone lifeguard stand stood like a sentinel a few yards to the left, the wooden frame leaning slightly, warped and tired. Lance walked toward it, his sneakers feeling heavy and cumbersome as he trudged through the sand, yet he did not have the energy to stop and take them off. Felt the roughness of the grains invading inside, peppering the inside of his sole.
He climbed the lifeguard stand, feeling the sturdiness of the structure despite its weathered frame, and then set his backpack next to him and leaned back in the oversized seat. He felt he could fall asleep right there, and thought there were worse places to wake up than on a beach with the sun rising on the horizon.
But he had to do something first. He pulled his flip phone from his pocket and sent a text message to Marcus Johnston. Still alive.
Marcus responded almost immediately. Good to hear. Let me know if otherwise. Be safe, friend.
Lance used what little energy he had left to muster up a chuckle. Marcus Johnston, the mayor of his hometown and one of his oldest friends, had helped Lance and his mother on more occasions than Lance could count. Helped keep their secrets through the years, and had helped Lance the night his mother had died. He’d taken care of Lance’s mother’s affairs after her death, consulting with and keeping Lance in the loop the entire time. He hadn’t had to do any of these things, but that was the sort of person Marcus Johnston was.
Lance owed the man a status update at the very least, even if it was vague and ambiguous. But the ambiguity wasn’t only for Lance’s protection. It was for Marcus’s as well. Lance suspected the Reverend and the Surfer had gotten far away from Hillston after the night they’d killed Pamela Brody, and he knew they were actively hunting him, but that didn’t mean they might not have other birds in the sky, soldiers doing grunt work in an effort to track Lance down. What means might they employ to get the information they wanted?
It was why Lance never gave away specifics.
It was why he’d been forced to leave Leah behind in Westhaven.
Lance thought of her now, imagining her here beside him in the oversized chair, her bundled inside a sweatshirt with their hands laced together and her head resting on his shoulder as they watched the waves crash. If Lance closed his eyes and tried hard, he could smell the scent of
her shampoo.
He didn’t know for how long he’d dozed off, but he woke with a start, his neck sore from the angle he’d been resting his head against the side of the wooden chair. He fumbled with his phone in his lap, thankful it hadn’t fallen off and tumbled into the sand below, and saw it was nearly midnight.
The waves were still crashing, though the moon had shifted its position in the sky. The breeze carried the faintest sound of country music, still playing from the Sand Crab. Lance rubbed his eyes and rolled his neck and sighed. Debated just sleeping in the chair for the night, despite the chilliness that was creeping heavier into the air, versus trying to go check in to a motel.
And he just might have chosen the chair, if it wasn’t for the flickering of light that caught his eye on the sand up the coast. A fire, impossible to tell how far away. Silhouettes of people huddled around, walking about. And at once, there was a growth of curiosity in him, wanting to know who these people were, if only just to see them. And, hey, if they were tourists—kids from the colleges that were close by, like the guy at the diner had alluded to—they had to be staying somewhere. Maybe they could recommend a clean motel.
Lance climbed down from the chair, shouldered his backpack, and began walking toward the flames.
6
If it weren’t for the changing landscape of buildings to his left as he trudged up the coastline, Lance would have thought he was trapped in some strange mirage, a trick of the mind where, though he could feel the weight of his legs and feet propelling him through the sand, he was unable to close the gap between himself and the dancing light of the fire up ahead.
It was much further away than he’d originally guessed.
He would swear, in fact, that it had actually appeared closer when he’d first set out from the lifeguard stand, and as he’d journeyed toward it, it had continued to shrink in size, pulling away from him step by step. Impossible to reach.
He was very tired.
The waves continued to crash to his right, the sound of the ingress and egress methodical and soothing.
To his left, over the dunes and back toward what Lance could only guess was still Sand Dollar Road, the businesses and motels had become more and more sparse, larger gaps between properties, either empty or filled with something hidden from sight by the dunes. Then they’d stopped altogether and had morphed into large beach houses. The type of three-story vacation homes you had to rent by the week and that were filled with an ungodly number of bedrooms and bathrooms. They had sprawling decks and porches. Lots of windows and balconies. Any number of opportunities to wake in the morning and view a sunrise that helped justify the rental fee. There were lights on in some, but others sat empty. Ghost houses until the tourist season started again.
Like the businesses and motels, these vacation homes eventually faded away too, replaced by smaller, more modest abodes. Lance didn’t know if they were also for rent, of if they belonged to the actual residents of Sugar Beach. Most of them sat dark, but this could just as easily be because it was well past most folks’ bedtime as it was because there was nobody inside.
The fire began to grow closer, the silhouettes of the few people around it becoming clearer.
Lance walked faster, feeling as though, if he could just make it to the flames, he could finally rest. Collapse on the sand if he needed to and sleep till morning, hopefully without a sand crab using one of his ears or nostrils as a new home.
There were five people in total. Four around the fire, sitting two by two on a couple of large, almost prehistoric-looking pieces of driftwood that were positioned around the bonfire. The fifth person stood further down the beach, toeing the line of the surf as it rolled in and out, staring out into the water and scanning the coastline as if waiting for a message in a bottle.
Lance’s assumption had been correct—they did look like college-aged kids. The four on the pieces of driftwood—three boys, one girl—looked no more than nineteen or twenty from the short distance Lance stood. The person by the water—another girl, with long hair spilling down the back of her t-shirt—turned to head back toward the group, and when Lance caught sight of her face in the blue moonlight, she looked a bit older than the rest. Her face was more mature—wizened, even. But not by much. Not enough to look out of place with the rest. A grad student maybe, working on something big, like a doctorate, perhaps.
She noticed Lance standing where he was, twenty or so yards away from the group, creepily stalking them. She didn’t stop walking. Just offered a wave, which the rest of the group noticed and then all turned to look at Lance. Put on the spot, he smiled and waved back. The group looked curiously at him for another moment , then all turned back to the fire.
Lance wanted badly to go join them, to sit with some similar-aged people and just have a moment of relaxation and conversation by a fire on the beach. It seemed so normal—as normal as it could be for Lance. Normalcy, he found, was something he craved more and more as he got older. But he had no illusions that it would ever come. He’d accepted his responsibility to the Universe, and with his mother having given her life in order to allow him to continue serving this unseen, unknown agreement, normalcy was something he could only experience in small slices. Just like pie.
But he wouldn’t join them. Not now. Something else had caught his eye. To his left, back toward the dunes, a single lamppost was planted in the sand next to the opening to a small trail leading back toward the road. A white sign fixed securely midway up the pole. Large black text. Lance took another glance toward the group, sighed, and walked zombielike toward the lamppost.
The sign read: PRIVATE BEACH ACCESS – BOUNDARY HOUSE B&B GUESTS ONLY.
A bed-and-breakfast.
Lance needed a bed.
In the morning, he would need breakfast.
And suddenly the lamppost felt like a beacon, a lighthouse on the coast that had been guiding him. He began to wonder if it had been the lamppost itself and not the bonfire that had tugged at his intuition to head this far down the shore. Calling him to the place that he should rest tonight.
He looked over his shoulder again to the group of college kids around the fire.
Or maybe it was both, he thought.
He headed up the path and over the dunes, in search of the Boundary House Bed & Breakfast.
7
The climb up the path and over the dunes felt like the last leg of a marathon to Lance, but he pushed through, his legs burning and his backpack feeling like it was full of bowling balls on his shoulders. On the opposite side of the dunes, the land was flat and mostly empty, except for a large oak tree growing from the center of the grassy lot and four wooden benches set up around it, presumably shaded by the outstretched limbs of the tree when it was in full bloom. The walking path from the dunes made a wide circle around the outside of the benches and then continued on to the edge of the lot, where it met the corner of the sidewalk. Lance followed it there and stood, looking across the street at the Boundary House Bed & Breakfast.
It was a sprawling Victorian with overgrown shrubs and a stone stairway leading up from the sidewalk and through an opened wrought-iron gate. A fence surrounding the property was mostly hidden by the overgrowth. Lance wasn’t certain, but even in the darkness, he thought the house looked as though it were purple.
A lone lamppost, identical to the one from the beach, was just inside the open gate, another beacon guiding his way. It was, in fact, the only indication that the house across the street was the Boundary House at all. The only thing other than Lance’s intuition, which he could feel practically pushing him into the road and across the asphalt. Thankfully, there was no traffic at this hour.
Lance crossed the road and took the stone steps carefully, through the gate and up to a wooden front porch complete with two porch swings, a plethora of potted plants, and a ceramic frog the size of a poodle that stared up at Lance with bulbous white eyes that looked like hardboiled eggs. The porch smelled of lilac and pine and soil. And something else that might
have been mildew.
Lance nodded hello to the frog. “Evening, good sir. Might you have a room available?”
The frog did not reply, but a porch light burned next to the door, and Lance noticed a small sign mounted next to the doorbell that told him that guests could ring at any hour, which reminded him of just how late it was. Or how early it was, depending on your position on that sort of thing.
He didn’t want to impose on anyone, and certainly didn’t want to wake somebody, but as he was considering sleeping on one of the porch swings until an hour decent enough that he would be comfortable ringing the bell, he remembered the way he’d felt compelled to walk toward the fire, toward the lamppost.
He was supposed to be here.
Lance sighed, swallowed the anxious feeling in his stomach, and pressed the button for the doorbell.
Nothing happened.
No noise at all, not even a gentle buzz.
Lance pressed the button again, then again and again with the same result.
Then out of frustration, he peppered the bell with what must have been thirty finger pokes and was working himself up into a maniacal laughter at his own silliness when suddenly lights flashed on inside the door. There was a not-so-subtle movement from the curtains covering a small window, a deadbolt was thumbed back, and the door was pulled open with a force that told Lance the person standing inside was going to expect an explanation for his actions.
“Where’s the fire?” the woman in the doorway asked. She stood barefoot and wrapped in a black silk robe with a swirling floral print, maybe a Japanese-style artwork. The material looked much too thin for the weather, but Lance figured it might have been grabbed blindly from a floor or closet, tossed on hurriedly to meet him at the door. She was tall and lean, with an athletic posture and an energy buzzing from her muscles despite her half-opened eyes and groggy voice. Her hair was shoulder-length and blond, with streaks of silver showing at the roots that betrayed her actual age. In the dim light from inside the foyer, at first glance Lance would have thought the woman to be in her thirties, but now he guessed she was likely at the upper end of her forties. It was impressive, to say the least.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 4