The bay was a different story. She allowed me to loop the rope around her head, but she didn't budge when I tried to lead her to the post. After five minutes of gentle tugging and murmured reassurances, she slowly made her way toward the fencing, loudly protesting with snorts, whinnies, and shakes of her head. Once I was close enough to tie her off, I wasted no time securing her rope to the log-style railing for fear that she might realize what I was doing and bolt - with me still holding onto the rope. An image flashed through my mind of me being dragged down the lodge road, gravel filling my mouth and nose and tearing the flesh from my face.
"Now what?" Connor asked, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice.
"Now…we find a ranch that has stables and pick up some supplies." I turned from him, beckoning Kris to follow and marched down the trail to the cabins, not bothering to glance behind me to see if Connor was following or not.
After grabbing up the keys to the Jeep, Kris and I returned to the front of the lodge and climbed into the dusty vehicle. We left Connor brooding inside the cabin, alone. Even the dog seemed hesitant to stay with him, so she sat on Kris's lap as we drove down the long and gravelly driveway, turning South on the highway. Plenty of people had owned horses in the area; it was just a matter of finding what we needed and bringing it back.
We struck gold with the first ranch-style property we pulled into. The smell of decay had peaked in June; the heat of summer seemed to dry out the corpses that were in town. The stink there was mostly trapped inside houses, so the smell wasn't as pungent. But the countryside was different on account of all the dead livestock.
Regardless of the rot, the shadows never went away, not completely. It seemed that most of us were plagued by our dreams regardless of where we were, not by the ghosts left behind. Then again, none of us ventured out into previously populated areas of town unless we had to.
As Kris and I stood outside of a barn fit to house at least twenty horses, the only scent in the air was stale hay and dried flowers. And dirt. One of the barn doors was open and as we walked inside, a flutter of wings above us made me jump. A barn owl flew out of the rafters and out the door with a loud screech.
"Ouch," I said under my breath, grimacing at the bruises Kris was leaving in my arm.
"I'm sorry!" she said, releasing me. She gently rubbed at the spot where she had clamped on to me when the bird burst out of its nest.
"It's okay," I laughed, "It got me too."
The inside of the barn was poorly lit but after we stood still for a moment and let our eyes adjust, we could see well enough to look around the place. It took almost half an hour to find what I thought we needed. A few side pulls, extra rope, two shedding tools and an almost full gallon of horse shampoo. Kris found saddle blankets and carried them out to the Jeep.
"What about hay? Don't horses eat hay?" she asked as I dumped the supplies into the back seat. Zoey rushed in and out of the barn, nosing around the stable doors. I refused to look inside them. The smell of death lingered inside the stalls and I had no desire to see decaying horses.
"Uh, yeah. But, obviously these two were eating what they could find. Hey, look at that." I pointed to the side of the barn, at the truck that was parked in the weeds, a horse trailer fixed to the fifth wheel.
"The trailer?" Kris asked as I walked away from her.
"If it works, we could fill the back with hay. Maybe the horses will sleep in here till we figure out what to do with them."
"Can you drive that?"
"If there are keys…probably."
She stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the weathered wood wall of the barn as I inspected the vehicle. The horse-trailer was unlocked, and relatively clean on the inside. The truck was unlocked as well, but the keys weren't in plain sight.
"No keys," I said with a sigh, as I climbed back out of the driver seat.
"Now what? You going in the house?"
Kris didn't enter houses. She would climb fruit trees or scale fences to pick through over-grown gardens, but any time we needed supplies that we could only find indoors, she always waited in the car. She swore the ghost of a dead man had kissed her cheek once as she pilfered through a downstairs bathroom. She had run from the house screaming and crying, and vowed to leave the indoor gathering to the rest of us from that point on. I didn't blame her. I didn't much enjoy wandering through the houses of dead people either, stealing their canned foods, toilet paper and batteries.
"I'm not sure. Wasn't there a little office inside the barn?"
"Yeah, but it's like the size of a closet. I didn't see any keys in there either," she answered.
"We weren't looking for keys earlier, come on." The dry wind pushed against us as we rounded the corner of the building, causing dust to fly up in our faces.
"Yuck!" Kris spat as we rushed back inside the barn.
I swiped at my face with my shirtsleeve, rubbing the dirt off my lips. The wind had been picking up and the temperature was high during the day.
"Damn Santa Ana weather," I mumbled.
We trudged to the far side of the barn where a small room was tucked in the corner next to several large barrels. A few tools that I didn't know the names of hung from the walls, as well as a few framed pictures of prize-winning horses. Other than a small office chair and wobbly wooden desk, a four-drawer metal cabinet was the only other furniture in the room.
I sifted through the small wicker basket that sat atop the cabinet, finding loose keys, bolts and thumbtacks. No truck keys. Papers were strewn about the desk in lumps, as if someone had sifted through them. I pushed them aside into a pile, finding nothing but a bottle opener beneath the mess.
"Check the drawer," Kris said from behind me.
One thin drawer ran the length of the table and inside I found not only one set, but also two sets of keys, including a dusty Playboy magazine from the nineties. The cover had been flipped open enough times that the spine was completely pliant, bending freely. Soft wrinkles and bends covered every inch of the magazine, but it was otherwise in great condition.
"Someone must have liked this edition," I said with a laugh, raising it up for Kris to see the blonde model on the front, expertly hiding her private areas with her long hair and hands. The disgusted look on Kris's face made me laugh harder and I tossed the magazine back into the desk, pushing the drawer shut. The Playboy would be sealed in there, forever. However long forever ended up being.
We were covered in dust and smelled like old hay and horse and not in a good way. Instead of getting used to the smell of the dead animals, my nose seemed to have a harder time processing the sickly-sweet odor of the barn the longer we stayed inside it.
As we walked toward the exit, the morbid side of my curiosity won and I went up on my toes to look over one of the stall gates. I flinched back in horror, covering my mouth with the back of my hand and nearly stumbled over a felled pitchfork.
"What? What is it?" Kris asked.
I shook my head from side to side, not sure of what I saw, but certain I didn't want to see it again. "I-I don't know."
Before I could reach out and stop her, Kris stepped forward and gripped the stall door, going up on her toes, just as I had, to peer over the side. "No, Kris - wait!" It was too late. She recoiled from the gate, covering her face with her hands.
"I want to go - I don't want to be in here anymore!" she said, taking no time to wait for me as she stumbled away from the stalls and back outside, into the fresh air.
Zoey stood from her resting spot beside one of the Jeep tires, watching us with a worried expression. She had also stopped going inside houses and structures she didn't know. Her canine senses couldn't take the rancid stimuli.
We leaned against the Jeep, staring at the barn with the single open door that almost resembled a mouth. So much death. Everything had died. Well, not everything.
"What do you think did that?" Kris whispered, wiping clear snot from her leaking nose.
I glanced at her before returning my
attention back at the barn. "I don't know…some sort of large animal, I guess."
"Think it might still be around here, watching us or something?" Her eyes darted over the empty grass fields that surrounded the barn and up the hill that led to the main house.
"No. I doubt it, sweetie. Whatever…did that…well, it'll be long gone by now." I smiled reassuringly but did my own visual inspection of our surroundings before pushing off the Jeep and walking back to the trailer. I didn't want her to see my face. To see the doubt that I knew lingered there. The horse had been mauled to pieces; torn limb from limb and partially devoured. All except for the head - which sat picked clean on a bench facing the stall door. No sane animal had placed it there.
***
"What are we going to name them?" Kris asked as she pulled handfuls of hay out of the back of the open horse trailer I had parked on the lodge lawn, dumping them into a pile on the grassy ground. Tufts of the dry strands stuck to the ends of her curled hair and across her shoulders, almost making her look as if the stuff had been dumped over her head.
"Hmmm. Well, you were the one who found them first, why don't you pick?" I smiled at her face as it split nearly in half from a grin she didn't display often enough.
"Okay. Lemme think," she murmured against the friendly palomino's neck as she greedily dove into the hay pile - muzzle first. "Well, this one is super sweet and her gold coat makes me think of sunshine. Is 'Sunny' too corny?" she asked me.
"I think that's perfect," I leaned across Kris's shoulder and scratched the palomino's ear, "I think you look like a Sunny. How's that sound to you?" I asked the horse. She twitched her ear, but didn't stop eating.
"And the bay? What should we name her?"
Kris crinkled up her nose at the larger and much darker-colored horse. "She doesn't like me."
"She doesn't like anyone…yet," I laughed.
"Okay. She needs a name that goes with her reddish-brown coat. Hmmm…something grown up and attitudy."
"Attitudy? Is that even a word?" I asked Kris.
"It is now," she laughed.
"What about Foxy?"
Kris squealed, making both horses jump. They glared up at the teen who was bouncing on her toes, clapping her hands softy, before quickly returning to their hay. "Foxy is perfect for her!"
"Foxy and Sunny it is!" I laughed at the giggly girl until she danced off to retrieve one of the shedding tools.
"Have fun brushing them, but be careful, ok? I'm going to check on Connor and see if he's still pissed off at me." I waved at Kris, who seemed to have found her happy place amongst the horses while I backed away toward the trail.
We could do this, the horses were already trained, I could tell. They were healthy; they were strong - why not ride them, instead of noisy and unreliable motorcycles? I didn't understand Connor's reservations about taking them to Los Angeles. Especially since he admitted he could actually ride a horse. On the drive back to the lodge in the truck, I decided to cut back on trying to convince him to take the horses and focus on making them healthy and happy first. He'd come around. Connor always did.
My thoughts had been so preoccupied with getting the trailer onto the property and not startling the horses that I had almost forgotten about the mutilated one we found in the barn. The gruesome scene came flooding back to me as I climbed the porch steps. Out of habit, I looked over my shoulder at the quiet woods. I wondered, not for the first time, what lived inside the gloomy shadows that flanked the tall pine trees. I just hoped whatever it was that had attacked, eaten and dismembered the stable horse was long gone and not in our woods, watching us; waiting for its moment to invade our little community.
I squared my shoulders at the tree line and muttered under my breath, "Not on my watch."
***
Connor punched the closet door so hard three of his knuckle impressions were left in the painted particleboard. He flinched, staring at the caved-in spots with animosity, as if it was the doors fault his hand hurt, and not his own.
"Damn!" he cursed at the wood, rubbing over the raw parts of his hand with his other thumb.
She couldn't go, not on a horse, not all the way to Los Angeles. What if she was thrown or the horses got spooked and left them stranded in the middle of nowhere? What if he was thrown, his neck broken and not able to take care of her? With a sigh, he ran a finger over the amygdaliform of one of the indents, tracing the almond shaped hole carefully. She did this to him, riled him up inside; tortured his heart and clouded his mind. It was all her fault that he was falling apart at the seams. But he didn't mind, of course he didn't, because he loved her. And love was…well, messy.
She'd find a way to leave. Even if she started out on foot - he knew she would. Because Riley was the most stubborn woman, he had ever met. That damn heart of hers was going to get them both in trouble - or killed. And now Kris wanted to go.
"Damn it!" he yelled again into the empty bedroom.
He kicked at one of his boots and watched as it flung into the side of the bedframe and bounced to a stop below the open window. Still cursing under his breath, he strode over to the sill, brushing the sheer curtains aside in irritation and peered out into the woods, watching the shadows as they flicked in and out of the safety of the trees as sun shined down through their canopies. Before he turned away, he thought he saw a more solid shape take form but when he squinted to see it better, it shifted and blended in with the rest of the forest shadows.
"Great, now you're seeing things. Right. Just…brilliant," he muttered to himself as he stomped toward the bathroom, kicking the door open and cursing some more when it banged into the wall and swung back into him, catching his elbow painfully.
After splashing cool water on his face and staring at his rugged reflection in the mirror, he wondered what it was that Riley saw in him. His face looked gaunt; the dark circles under his eyes becoming more and more pronounced each week. He hadn't bothered to shave in more days than he could count on both hands - and his hair - what a mess that was.
"Oh my God, you look like shit. Complete and total shit," he hissed at himself.
He rummaged around in the sink cabinet pulling items off the shelves and dumping them onto the counter until he had everything out that he would need. He figured he had at least a good hour before Riley and Kris would be back from their horse supply trip. And he planned on looking less like a deranged serial killer-turned hippy by the time they returned.
"Bloody hell," he sighed. "I wouldn't listen to me either if I looked like this."
And with that comment lodged securely in his brain, he grabbed a fist-full of his dark curls and shoved the hair clippers underneath, snipping at least two inches off in one swipe. He grabbed another clump of hair and repeated the process over and over until the sink was full. After shaking his head to get the loose hairs off, he ran his hands through the shorter waves, trimming the back of his neck as carefully as he could. The clippings nearly filled the wastebasket after he dumped them. Next, he filled the sink with warm water and lathered his face and neck with shaving cream. When he was done shaving, his skin was smooth and soft. He even trimmed his eyebrows just enough to make them look a little less wild and jumped in the shower to wash all the hairs off.
He felt ten pounds lighter when he dried his body and climbed into clean jeans. Just as he was wrestling a thin t-shirt over his damp head, he heard Zoey bark from downstairs. Not bothering to pull on socks or shoes, he glanced at the oval mirror that hung above the dresser on his way out of the room. It wasn't that long ago where his job demanded a certain amount of attention aimed at keeping his looks agreeable. He had let himself go over the last several months.
He briefly smirked at the cleaner, younger-looking reflection. "Much better. Let her try and argue with that face."
CHAPTER seven
The instant I stepped into the cabin, I smelled him. The ocean fragrance of his body wash filled the entire lower level of the cabin so much so that I glanced around, thinking he was standing so
mewhere nearby. Zoey barked for him before padding off into the kitchen and nosily lapped up a generous amount of water before stretching out on the cool floor for a nap.
"Connor?" The room stayed empty but I heard the soft footfalls of his feet as he descended the stairs.
"Hey," he said to my back before I had a chance to turn around.
My mouth dropped open and my eyes glossed over. His shirt stuck to his chest, as if he had just pulled it onto his damp skin. His expression turned amusing as he strode up to me, pecked my cheek swiftly and continued on to the kitchen. Ahh, I see how it is, I thought, as I stared at his firm backside before it disappeared behind the island counter top. Zoey greeted him with a snort, and continued on with her nap.
Snapping my mouth shut and swallowing the lump in my throat, I stepped up to the counter as casually as I could manage and slid onto one of the stools to watch him bustle about.
"You cut your hair," I stated.
"Yup. It was time. Tea?" he asked as he held one of the colorful mugs out at me.
I shook my head and propped my elbows on the tile top. "No, I'm good."
With a shrug, he continued to move around the kitchen, preparing his drink, and ignoring me. Eventually the silence ate away at me and I released my lower lip from my teeth.
"You shaved, too."
He turned around and smiled, flashing his perfectly straight, white teeth. "That I did. You approve?"
"Sure."
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to charm me out of my anger with him. I sucked my lower lip in again and continued to nibble on it, thinking quietly to myself. My eyes couldn't stay on one part of his body for long, so I let them roam his figure, freely. With his back to me, I could stare unabashedly at his shoulders and the rounded muscles of his back and at the two indents above his ass that were visible beneath his shirt. The jeans he chose to wear hung low on his hips but hugged tightly to his legs, leaving not much for the imagination. Not that I didn't already know every inch of his naked form, but the outfit and his newly fresh look was a giant tease to every one of my senses.
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