by Aly Noble
“What else am I supposed to do?”
He made a murmur of agreement. “True. Okay. Take care, Miri.”
“You, too.” We hung up, and I grimaced at Estelle. We’d reached the creek a minute or two before my conversation with Trevor had ended and she’d been glaring at the water for at least that long. “What did the river do to you?”
“Something in my time here, I’m sure,” she mused. “So, I heard your half—how’d he respond?”
“Disbelief. Slow realization. Denial. Disbelief again,” I listed, tapping my fingers as I moved through the sequence of his reactions. “And maybe like reluctant belief? Or half-disbelief. I don’t know what to call that last one.”
“Real easy to say something isn’t real from wherever the fuck he is,” she figured. “You went way easier on him than I thought you would.”
“He’d shrivel under my full ire,” I said, and she just nodded in reply. “So. Let’s start looking, I guess.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Estelle asked, frowning as she tapped a thin sheet of ice near the bank with her foot to clear it away. “And why? It’s stupidly cold out here.”
“It’s November,” I reminded her, though I had to agree. “We’re looking for Jonah’s scythe thing. I’m assuming it looks like an actual scythe, but who knows. Just look for something weird, I guess.” I then grumbled about old habits as I took a cigarette from the pack in my jeans and lit it, taking one drag before crouching next to the water.
“Does it help the chill when you’re basically a human fireplace?” she asked sardonically.
“Nope,” I mumbled. “If anything, I think it makes it worse.”
She shook her head. “I hope you realize that I’m allowing this now, but as soon as all this crazy shit’s over, you’re quitting.”
“What are you—my mom?”
“No. If you were my kid doing this shit, I’d throttle you.”
I let the cigarette hang between my teeth as I quickly shifted some rock out of the way to widen the excavation area. Curiously and carefully, I asked, “Did you ever plan on kids?”
She considered my question before answering, “Yeah. I really wanted kids.”
“Could you…?”
“I could. My ex couldn’t,” she explained as she put one foot on the other side of the creek and stared past the water into the dirt beneath, looking for something significant. “Really hit him in the manhood, too.”
“Because ego’s the important part of that,” I said sarcastically.
“Right?” she murmured. “He didn’t really want them anyway though—he was kind of just going along with it because I was so insistent. Once I hit thirty, I was on him about it all the time.”
“Is that—never mind, I’m being nosy,” I reconsidered on the spot, making a face as I put my hands in the cold water to turn over a few stones. That made me remember the white stone I’d found a few days ago, and I checked to see if it was still in my pocket. I felt the smooth surface when I put my hand inside, and that bore an unfounded sense of relief.
“It’s not why we got divorced,” she said before shaking her head. “And you’re not being nosy. They’re valid questions. Do you want kids someday?”
I thought about that before shrugging noncommittally. “I’m not really sure. Sometimes I think I do. Other times, I don’t. I guess if I found the right guy maybe I’d be more interested in the prospect.”
She nodded. “I didn’t want kids until I was like twenty-six. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” I replied, washing mud from my fingertips.
“You’re an old twenty-four,” she remarked. “And I mean that in a totally nice way, I promise.”
“No, I get what you’re saying. I’ve heard that a lot,” I said. Old soul, born forty, mature for my age—whatever that last one meant. I’d heard it all.
“Except the hair. The hair dulled my shock a bit.” She contemplated my head a moment before commenting, “Though you’re almost back to natural, it looks like.”
“Ugh, I know. I haven’t really been thinking about hair dye recently.”
“Can’t imagine why,” she mused sarcastically, plucking a beer can from the undercurrent. “Gross,” she mumbled, tossing it aside on the bank.
“We’ll quit pretty soon,” I murmured. “I don’t even know how to go about this, and this area is huge.”
“Cool,” she said, continuing to work her way along the creek and look for anything suspicious or shiny. “So what happened that made you move to a place like this?”
I blinked and looked over at her. “I never told you?”
Estelle shook her head. “I never really wanted to ask, honestly. It’s not my business… But I gathered from other conversations that it wasn’t good.” I felt my mouth curve down, and she added, “You still don’t have to tell me—even though I asked.”
“I know,” I said before answering, “and I dumped my fiancé. Flew the coop.”
“Shit, really?” Estelle asked, surprised by the news. “Why?”
“Normal bullshit,” I sighed. “Cheated on me. Then proceeded to blame me for it.”
“That shitbag,” she grumbled. “Mike never cheated on me, but he was a fucking prick. Who knows—maybe he did, and I just didn't know about it. Doubt it though. He wasn't smart enough to be sneaky.”
“And the whole thing was cliché as hell, by the way,” I ranted quietly. “Like it was seriously pathetic. She wore No5 for fuck’s sake.”
“Oh, my god,” Estelle said, trying not to laugh. “That’s like the signature spray of the Other Woman. It’s probably a legitimate requirement.”
“There was one time toward the end that I confronted him about these longish blond hairs on his coat and—oh my god, I was irate,” I smirked. “So I came at him with his coat and was like, ‘Whose the fuck are these?!’ And he acted like he didn’t know, like I was crazy, and the only thing he could coherently say was, ‘How do you know they’re not yours?’ And I was like, ‘MY HAIR IS PINK, YOU GODDAMN CREEP’.”
“Oh, my god,” Estelle laughed, leaned over with her hands propped on her knees. “That’s amazing. Almost as good as…” She trailed off and frowned a little, though she still had the remnants of laughter in her expression.
“What?” I asked, feeling my own smile fade as I tapped an excessive amount of ash off my cigarette.
“Well, I was going to say that it was almost as good as when you lit Carla’s spirit board on fire, but… I don’t know, it just still doesn’t feel real that she’s dead.”
I couldn't disagree with that. Had I not seen her body, myself, I’d be in the exact same boat as Estelle. “The moment is still funny. She’s gone, but…” I shrugged. “I don't know. I’ve never been one to think that the end of something should be allowed to unfairly affect what came before it. Except with relationships because fuck exes.”
“Cheers to that,” Estelle grumbled and she plucked the old beer can off the ground again, toasted me, and then hung onto it to throw it away later. “Ugh. Are we done here? I’m fucking depressed.”
“Yeah, we’re done,” I mumbled as I stepped back across the creek. My footing faltered against a wet rock on the other side, and I swore loudly as I submerged my entire foot into the icy water.
Estelle laughed and remarked, “Nice one!” as I pulled my foot out and shook it off. I muttered for her to yuk it up until I got a good look at my shoe. Leaning against a tree, I pulled my wet pant-leg up and looked over my saturated sneaker and the sock beneath.
“What's wrong?” she asked as she came over to look. “Hurt yourself?”
“Uh, no,” I murmured distractedly. “My sock’s orange.”
Bewildered, Estelle looked at my face and then at my foot. “Orange? Is it supposed to be?”
“No—it’s stained,” I murmured, pulling the wet fabric from my ankle to look at it. I grimaced when I let it go and put my hand into the water, retracting it to check the difference. Had I not b
een looking for it, I may have never noticed it, but there were faint traces of orange in the ridges of my fingertips. “Weird.”
“What is it?”
I shrugged and rubbed my fingertips together, testing the consistency. “I don’t know... Rust maybe? I don’t know what would be putting this much into the water.”
“Hey, look.” I glanced up, and Estelle was pointing toward one end of the creek where the water looked a bit darker. “Maybe whatever it is is coming from down there.”
“All right, I’ll bite,” I remarked as I stepped out of the creek and shook off my foot, following her downstream. The creek took a turn as we got closer, and the water made a gradient effect from a barely noticeable orange tinge to something closer to red. My stomach rolled a little as I realized it was blood. It had to be. Why was it always blood?
I’d just started to convince myself that I was overreacting when we took the curve of the stream and a pale arm became visible amongst the snow-dusted foliage.
“Jesus,” I murmured. I heard Estelle gag behind me and, even though the smell hadn’t hit me yet, I knew where she was coming from. I cautiously circled the face-down body and felt the answering tumble of my insides as I took in the physique and aspects of him I could see—it was Tom, my gardener, shirtless with his face in the river. Whatever part of him was bleeding had to be in the water…
Swallowing convulsively, I wedged my foot under his side.
“Oh, my god, Miri. What the—”
Before Estelle could finish her half-choked sentence, I’d thrown my weight into rolling him over.
Tom was missing his jaw—that was one source of the blood in the river. In fact, now that I was looking at him, I was surprised there wasn’t more. He also had a gnarly black eye that connected up to a crater on his forehead. And yet, that wasn't what held my attention.
“Oh, god…,” Estelle whimpered after she’d taken a step closer to see what I was staring at. “Oh, god, no…”
Deep cuts riddled his stomach with unmistakable intention. They spelled the words, ‘COME HOME.’
Chapter 26
Estelle unleashed a stream of curses behind me that better fit her personality than the fearful whimpering tone she’d emitted just seconds before. I was still staring at Tom. “Shit! Fuck, Miri—we need to go,” she exclaimed agitatedly. When I didn’t move, she smacked my arm. “What are you—in shock or something? Come on!”
“I’m sorry I’m a little stunned at my fucking gardener getting murdered out here not twenty yards from my house!” I shot back, but my voice shook.
“Look, okay—I get it,” she said, changing her attitude just enough to appeal to me. “Not like it’s happened to me, but I see where you're coming from. But look, I don't know where he was long enough for your yard to get that bad or for those bruises on his back to be that old, but—look at me—this guy is newly dead, and we need to go. All right?”
My brain processed this way more slowly than either of us would have liked, but I realized that she was right—I’d thought before that she’d been gagging at a smell that hadn’t blown my way yet, but it was just the sight of him that had disturbed her. He didn’t stink yet. “Shit.”
“There she is,” Estelle mumbled half to herself as she grabbed my arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
I followed her out of the woods and away from the river, feeling some sense of shame for leaving Tom out there like that—he’d seemed nice for the approximate total of fifteen minutes I’d known him. Probably thought I was crazy after seeing me bail on my house, but that was a valid observation from someone who didn’t know what was going on. Should I have warned him?
When we crossed through the treeline, I realized I was kind of shocked we were just walking out of there. I’d fully expected Price to just show up and try to kill us again and, honestly, it would’ve been a perfect time for him to. No one knew where we were except for us, we were alone, we were both in a state of shock to some degree, and neither of us had weapons on us. I made a mental note to fix that last one as soon as possible—that was just pure idiocy on our parts.
We reached the driveway and I glanced behind us against my better judgment, figuring the dark skeletal knots of trees would be the ominous sight to greet me.
Instead, I saw a figure through the trees.
I almost stopped walking as a mix of shock and adrenaline crashed into my system. There was no way. He would’ve taken the shot if he were right there. We would have had to have walked right past him if he’d been there the whole time. My mouth felt dry. He wasn’t moving—he just watched us walk away.
Estelle had gotten a little ahead of me in my hesitation, and I felt the confusion work its way onto my face as I stared down the killer behind us. Why isn’t he doing anything?
A cold, smug smile crept across his thin mouth before he turned and disappeared back into the woods.
“Miri, come on.”
I blinked and looked toward Estelle's voice—she’d made it down to her car already. I swore softly and glanced back at the woods one more time before hurrying down the gravel drive to catch up. By the time I got to the road and what had just happened caught up with me, my heart was in my throat. “He was there,” I said urgently.
Estelle raised a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Price. He was there,” I hurried to explain. “I saw him.”
“There’s no way, Miri. We would’ve come after us, and we would’ve had to walk within feet of—what the hell are you doing?”
I scoured the trunk before checking the back seats, not satisfied until I made sure the car was empty. I whirled and checked the drive and the trees and brush lining the road as I fumbled for the door handle behind me. “We passed him—we had to’ve passed him. He was there. I don’t know why he didn’t—”
“Miri, look at yourself!” Estelle snapped.
I looked at her instead. “…What?” We looked at each other for a noticeable moment before I said, “What—so you believe all the shit before this, but this, this, is where you draw the line? Not whether the psychopathic, undead, demon-possessed serial killer exists and is all of those things, but whether or not he was standing back there? Next to a fresh body he put there?!”
“I don’t know whether he was there or not,” she said evenly over the blue roof of her car. “What I do know is that I’m worried the anxiety’s getting to you, okay? Maybe he was there—if so, it was weird that he didn’t try anything, you’re right. Maybe he wasn’t though. Maybe you’re scared, and your brain saw what it wanted to see.” She paused briefly, during which she shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Once the moment had passed, she dropped her hand and regarded me again with renewed calm. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I swear. That’s not what this is about. I’m just worried about you—understand that it comes from a place of love. Now get in the car.”
I felt like a hole had been punched in my chest, but I did what she said. “Where are we going?”
Estelle started the car, and I only felt better once the motor was running and we were pulling away from Red Heather Road. “To get a fucking drink.”
• • •
We rolled up to Jill’s just a few minutes later, and I realized that I should’ve felt some relief when we were back in the public eye. More so because we were back in a familiar place. Maybe even my favorite place in Grendling. I didn’t though—and maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Besides, what was Price doing at this point but busting down every “however” I was using to renew my sense of security?
He’d shown up at the grocery store in broad daylight amongst a mix of strangers. He’d broken into Estelle’s house and had caught us both just off-guard enough that he’d had a clear shot at killing or seriously injuring me—it would’ve worked had we not been ready. He’d murdered my maintenance man and left him in the creek for me to find, knowing I was heading there sometime that day. I had yet to figure out how he’d timed Tom's death so closely with our arrival.
And he’d opted not to attack us after we retreated from the woods, but had lingered in plain view long enough for me to know that he’d let us go. He was shattering any illusion of safety I had one scenario at a time, and he wouldn’t stop until there were no more moves to make. He wouldn’t stop until the game was over.
He wouldn’t stop until I was dead.
“You look like you just saw a dead body,” Estelle said in a low voice as we took over a booth. “Relax. We’re fine.”
“You know, now you’re the one being a little too chill about this,” I murmured, amazed that she wasn't thinking on the same lines that I was. Maybe because, in some ways, she was still an outsider to all this.
She set her purse next to her on the bench and regarded me with some weird variant of disapproval. “We’re safe right now and I’m about to have a beer, so that’s what I’m focusing on. It’s keeping me out of shock. You should try it.”
“Estelle,” I murmured seriously, “I can only box in my experiences into standalone scenarios for so long. This isn’t slowing down.”
“Well, try,” she replied gently, looking tired again. “I don’t know how else to handle this unless we somehow manage to get him and the cops around at the same time and I’m not sure that’ll happen. Dude’s slick.”
I looked at her incredulously. “‘Dude’s slick’? That’s your assessment of…” I tried to figure out a word to encompass all that was Connor Price. “…all of that?”
Estelle shrugged helplessly. “I guess. I don’t know. He’s not partially demon anymore, so… Yeah. Slick.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I mumbled, noticing when Jeff looked over at us from the bar. He raised his eyebrows and held up two fingers with a silent question. I nodded, and he started filling a couple of steins. “We need to do something. We can’t keep living like this.”
“Could always move, I guess,” she reasoned quietly. “I don’t know how else to manage it unless the perfect scenario for catching the bastard happened to fall into place.”
