Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

  He’d already helped Mia load her bags into the Jeep and said his goodbyes to her mom and sister. Now he sat in the driver’s seat, while Rashella, Dom, and Ann argued about the radio from the back. It was comical to see Dom, David’s best friend and star linebacker, stuffed between the two petite girls. His mass covered half of the bench seat and left the girls pressed up against the inside of the doors, each with an arm hanging out of the convertible SUV.

  Mia had almost made it to the Jeep when Lissy, her younger sister, charged out and gave her a big hug. David and his brother had shared a similar farewell earlier that day. That was one of the many things he and Mia had in common, they both actually enjoyed spending time with their younger siblings, unlike most of their schoolmates.

  After exchanging goodbyes with Lissy, Mia climbed into the Jeep. They were ready to go, and they were ready to have fun.

  “Thanks for joining us, Mia,” Ann kidded.

  Mia ignored her, leaning in and giving David a peck on the cheek. She’d already done so when he first got to the house, but his gut filled with butterflies just the same.

  “Everybody ready?” David asked.

  “Go!” Dom laughed his deep, heavy laugh.

  David shifted into gear and pulled the Jeep onto the road.

  Mia surprised the group by pulling out a CD she’d burned just for the trip, complete with the Billboard’s top-twenty hottest tracks. They spent the entire ride headbanging and singing loudly to their favorite songs. David loved every minute of it, mainly because Mia was happy.

  David gazed at the moon’s reflection on the water. He hadn’t been able to sleep. His mind was racing, so he got up and walked to the lake. But that also proved unable to calm him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the ring he carried in his pocket, feeling the weight of it. The week before, he’d bought a chain to hang it on. It would be the most valuable gift he’d ever given Mia. Not strictly monetarily speaking—although he thought the diamond was probably worth something—the ring held a stronger significance for him. It had belonged to his mother. Upon being given to him by his aunt Yunjin after his parents were killed in the crash, it was his most prized possession. Which was why he wanted to give it to Mia.

  He wasn’t going to propose, not in the traditional sense. They both already knew they were going to be married; they talked about their future together almost every time they were alone. But they had agreed it would probably be best to wait until they were graduated for at least a year before they tied the knot, knowing their families would freak out if they informed them that the two eighteen-year-olds had decided to get married.

  No, he wasn’t going to propose to her. He was going to make a promise. A promise that he would always be there for her, not just to live with her, but to really be there, no matter what came at them. He was hers and she was his. They would do life together.

  A sound from behind him interrupted his thoughts, someone unzipping one of the tents.

  He turned to see a dark silhouette emerging from the girls tent. He knew just by the outline of her petite frame, the height, the gait of her walk, and every movement that it was Mia. She must have noticed him because she immediately began to walk toward him.

  Whispering, she asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  He matched her tone, “I was gonna ask you that.” He paused as the butterflies returned to his stomach when she moved to his side. He put his arm around her waist. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Nah,” she replied. “Ann snores like a wildebeest.”

  He chuckled. “So that’s who I heard.” Then, “Do wildebeest snore?”

  They laughed, but as it dwindled, the air between them was thick with something . . . something David couldn’t peg. That same strange vibe Mia had been putting off for a couple of weeks leading up to the trip.

  “Wanna take a walk?” he asked, knowing that one of the biggest reasons they had come to the lake that weekend was because she wanted to show him some cliff that she loved visiting with Lissy.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she replied, more timidly than he expected. She’d been telling him about that spot since the idea to spend the night had first come to her. But now, when the perfect chance arose for him to give her the ring, she had that weird tone in her voice.

  “What’s eating at you, Mia?”

  “Me? I’m fine,” she said without conviction.

  “Is it something I did?”

  “No,” she responded quickly, with more passion this time. “It’s not you. You’re perfect . . .” Her voice tapered off.

  “Then what?”

  She stepped in closer to him, siphoning strength from their closeness, he thought. He tightened his grip on her waist.

  “Just something Lissy and I were talking about. Does it ever make you nervous that we’re moving too fast? I mean . . . what if—” She stopped midsentence and went silent.

  “What if?”

  “What if we’re too close?”

  Her words hurt. But he knew exactly where she was coming from. They’d skirted around the conversation before, close enough for him to realize now what was bothering her.

  He kissed the top of her head, then said, “I’m not going anywhere, Mia. It scares me too, you know? Every time I think about the rest of our lives, my stomach climbs into my throat. What if this . . . what if that?”

  “So, you’re saying we shouldn’t do it? We shouldn’t set ourselves up for the pain?”

  He thought about it before responding. “You think your mom wishes she’d never met your dad?”

  Her response was immediate. “No. She loved their time together. And besides, she got Lis and me out of the deal.”

  “That’s why we don’t give up then. ’Cause no matter how much time we get together, it’s worth it.”

  They stood in silence for minutes, staring at the smooth water in front of them.

  Finally, David spoke again. “Could you?”

  “What?”

  “Could you just walk away? From us?”

  “No. I would never stop thinking about you.”

  “Neither could I. So let’s set the fear aside, all right? It won’t help.”

  “Yeah. It won’t help,” she repeated. But he could tell he hadn’t reached her. He put his chin on her head and held her.

  10

  August 20, 2019

  The restaurant was quiet when Lissy entered, yet she already felt the familiar tremor throughout her body that accompanied nervousness. She knew she had absolutely no reason to be nervous. Rose and Albert would be gracious with her, as they always had been. And because she’d purposely come during the slowest time of the day, there was only one person in the dining room, Ganesh, the second and only other reporter for the Mitchum Times. But the last few days had put her in a permanent state of emotional turmoil.

  Rose exited the kitchen, broom in hand, her face lighting up upon seeing Lissy. She leaned the broom against the wall and jogged over to hug her.

  “How are you, baby?”

  “I’m doing okay,” Lissy replied.

  Rose held her by the shoulders, looking her up and down. “You look half-starved and exhausted. How you really doin’?”

  “It’s been a week,” was all she could muster. Rose nodded and gave her a wide, compassionate smile.

  “Did you want some lunch, or—”

  “No, no, I’m good. I just wanted to see if you’d be okay with me taking another couple days off. I know Albert doesn’t like—”

  “You let me handle that old man. You take as much time off as you need, baby. You know we’ll always take care of you. We’ll be here when you’re ready.”

  Lissy had no doubt that Rose would approve the time off, but it flooded her with relief nonetheless. She hated the thought of disappointing or inconveniencing them somehow.

  She hugged Rose again and tried to put on a happy face, or at least not a hopeless and confused one.

  “You sure you don’t want some pie? It’s good for—
”

  “The soul . . . I know.” Lissy smiled, gave Rose another hug, and left the building.

  It was especially cold that afternoon, the wind biting at her through her sweater as she walked. She crossed her arms and held them tight to her chest. She should have been wearing a jacket, but she hadn’t paid attention to the weather, and the temperature had dropped significantly that morning.

  Lost in her thoughts about the week’s events, she almost stepped out into the street in front of the sheriff’s truck as it blew past her. The light bar flashed to life and the sirens began to wail. She wondered where he was going in such a hurry. He was driving right toward . . . the lake.

  She immediately pulled out her phone and dialed Logan. He answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, Lissy.” He sounded focused. She presumed he was already driving toward the lake too. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah I—” She stopped, realizing how stupid it was for her to have called him. He was law enforcement, and she was . . . just butting in. But she had already called. “I just saw Jack driving toward the lake and—”

  “Oh yeah,” he interrupted. “I can’t really talk about it. Sorry, Lissy.”

  “Of course. Sorry. This was dum—”

  “Sorry, Lissy, I really gotta go.”

  The line went dead. She chastised herself for having acted on such a stupid impulse.

  Before she resumed walking, Logan’s big Ford sped by, a single light spinning on the top. Something had happened. Something bad.

  Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She took it out. Neil.

  “Hello,” she answered.

  “Hey, Lis.” He paused, then said, “I . . . Hey. I just saw Porter and Logan racing to the lake. Any idea what’s going on?”

  “I did too, actually. I’m not sure.”

  Another pause.

  “You near the strip?” he asked. The question made her insides curl. He was nearby. She wanted to see him. But thinking of their conversation the night before made her want to find shelter under a rock and take up residence. She had no desire to talk about love.

  He must have picked up on her hesitation, because he added, “I was just about to grab a late lunch. That’s it.”

  She decided being anxious and being with him would be better than being anxious and being alone.

  “Yeah. I just walked out of Rose’s—”

  “Wait there.”

  The next thing she knew, Lissy was back inside the restaurant, sitting in a booth across from Neil. At first it was awkward, but as usual, he treated her the same as always, as if the whole conversation about his unending love for her had never happened. She couldn’t believe the man’s capacity for forgiveness. She’d treated him like trash over the years, not wanting him to fall for someone else, yet not allowing him to grow any closer to her. She was damaged goods, and he deserved more than that.

  “Okay over there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sorry, just a little dazed by the whole thing still.”

  “Understandable. It’s been a wild couple of days.”

  “Right.” To her it felt like mere minutes since she’d found Melissa laying mangled in the mud. “Do you think it’s another body?” she asked, needing to share the thought.

  He nodded. “Not sure what else would have them headed out of town in such a hurry.”

  “I don’t understand. If this is an animal, then why hasn’t it killed more people over the last eleven years?

  He poked at his food with a fork. “I’ve been thinking about it since talking with Porter and David. Maybe it has.”

  She ran her hands down her braided ponytail absentmindedly, tracing its lines with her fingers. “What do you mean? We would have heard about any murders at the lake.”

  He responded in a hushed tone. “But we’ve heard of a higher-than-average amount of suicides, right? And Porter even said they get clawed postmortem all of the time. Maybe they weren’t jumpers any more than Melissa was.”

  The idea wasn’t out of the question. She’d watched Jack shaping the evidence to fit his hypothesis and was repulsed by it. “Even still . . . why? Why kill all of these people? And how is it never seen? I mean, it has to be huge, right?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot that still doesn’t make sense.”

  They sat quietly for another minute, Neil eating and Lissy fidgeting with her hair.

  “Lis?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think there could be something to this whole monster thing?”

  She scowled at him. Since the article ran about Melissa’s death, the city had gone wild with rumors of lake monsters. It always did when someone died at the lake. She partly wondered if someone had murdered Melissa just to get the tourists flowing in again.

  You would think people would stay away from a place where monsters were killing people, but it seemed the opposite was true. Whenever something horrible happened at Diamond Lake, within weeks tourists showed up in droves just to sleep near the lake where the monster supposedly had been. Lissy guessed it was quicker than going to Scotland in search of the Loch Ness monster. The whole thing disgusted her. It was as if the real lives being lost meant nothing more to the tourists than the characters they watched on TV.

  “I think that trivializing such a tragic event down to folklore is more than a little ridiculous.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m doing. But I also don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility.”

  “Fine. Nessie killed Melissa.”

  His brow furrowed. “I wasn’t referring to Nessie. I was thinking something within the realm of the real world, like an overgrown animal of some kind. It wouldn’t be the first time people have encountered something like that. And it would make sense how that would feed the stories.”

  Her face flushed. Maybe she was the one too hung up on monsters. She recalled suffocating during her vision, feeling the constricting in her chest at the mere thought. It was almost as if something wanted her to suffer the same fate as Melissa, was threatening her. She shook off the thought. This was the kind of thinking that she hated the people in the town for, and now she was participating in it.

  “You okay?” Neil asked.

  “Sorry. I was—”

  “In that place you keep going. Is it back to Melissa? Or Mia?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about something so personal with him again. It felt like if she allowed herself to go there, it would be unfair to him. She couldn’t allow herself to get any closer to him before deciding what she wanted their relationship to be.

  “Just have a lot on my mind is all.”

  As if he’d heard everything she’d been thinking, he responded, “You know, you can talk to me without swearing your soul to me for life.”

  She had to grin. “Am I that obvious?”

  “Only to me. Like an open book, Lissy Oullette. An open book with enormous letters and a lot of white space.”

  She tossed a napkin at his face and smiled. “Shut up, Neil.”

  Their eyes locked, both smiling. She needed to look away; love was not what she wanted. But for that split second, she thought it might be what she needed. She blinked off the stare and looked down at the table.

  “One of these days you’ll stop doing that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Looking away.”

  She fiddled with the coffee mug beside her pie.

  “All right,” he said. “Enough of this slacking. It’s time for me to get back to work.”

  They stood and walked out of the diner together, heading in the direction of her apartment above his workplace. She was shivering again.

  “Pretty cold,” Neil said.

  “Definitely is.”

  “I’d give you my coat, but I also didn’t check the weather.”

  She smirked and continued on. They walked a long way without saying anything more, which wasn’t too hard considering Lissy’s teeth were chattering.

  Just
after turning the corner into the alley behind the apartment, Neil said, “I hope everyone’s okay wherever Jack and Logan were headed toward earlier.”

  “Me too,” Lissy agreed. But she didn’t hear Neil’s response because just as he began to speak, the world started to spin. Lissy felt herself falling. “Neil!” she heard herself scream as darkness took over.

  * * *

  As quickly as it came, the inky void morphed into the night sky, though the sun had shown brightly before she’d blacked out. And, as if waiting for her arrival, a storm began to brew. Thousands of pinprick stars and the large full moon were instantaneously overcome by deep, dark clouds. Again, Lissy found herself on the cliff.

  Intense dread overwhelmed her as rain spilled on her cheeks, causing the hair on her arms and neck to bristle. Goosebumps formed over her entire body and her palms started sweating. She was afraid the voice would call her name again and afraid of the electrocuting constriction she’d endured in the first vision. She turned toward the large, halved boulder, looking for the man. He wasn’t there.

  The rain pouring now, she attempted to run. But she was stuck, hitting the same invisible barrier she had in the first vision. This time she noticed the wall had a curvature of some kind, as if she was slamming into a massive pipe or tube . . . only an organic, electrified pipe. She could feel that same zinging current sparking from it—almost as if the rain colliding with it was causing the sparks. She’d been wrapped by a giant live wire.