The days before had been hard ones. For everyone. Now they were trying to heal as much as they could.
Adelaide Wilds put down her cards with a sigh. “I fold. You guys are too sharp for me.” She smiled. She was pretty with long brown hair and dark brown eyes to match. She had a wholesome, girl-next-door look and a down-to-earth personality to match it.
“It’s not your turn. Can’t you just wait till your turn?” her sister, Camille, said with irritation. At twenty four, Camille was older than Adelaide by three years.
Adelaide stuck her tongue out at Camille and she rolled her eyes.
“Ladies,” Tuck said, mildly, looking over his bifocals. At sixty seven, he was the patriarch of their group. He enjoyed the sisters’ shenanigans more than he let on. They reminded him of his own sprawling clan of six kids. All of whom he missed every second of every day.
“Tuck, can I quit, too? This game is so boring.” Johnny rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders as though the game were, quite literally, killing him. The cards had magically become grubby in his twelve-year-old’s hands. Tuck took a second to marvel at a male child’s ability to soil anything he touched.
Tuck sighed heavily and shook his head. “No. You’ll have to see it through. You have to finish what you start.”
Johnny rolled his eyes again, but settled more solidly in his chair. He loved Tuck, would do anything Tuck said to do. Being around him helped him feel like he didn’t miss his parents as bad. Although he still dreamt about them, sometimes it seemed like every night. A lot of the dreams were good, but even the good ones were still bad to wake up from…because it was like he had to remember over and over that they were…that they’d been…
He shook his head and sat straighter, focusing on the cards in his hand. He sniffed, trying to do it quietly. Adelaide gave his shin a light kick under the table and he looked up, smiling. She winked. He liked Adelaide a lot, too. She was really pretty. She was too old to be his girlfriend, he’d decided a month ago. But he did still really like her, anyway.
Adelaide went to the rail to look at the sunset. She thought she could see a big ship, south of them, way down the coast. But it looked odd, almost skeletal. She shivered. Maybe she’d go below and grab a sweater. Tonight, you could almost feel that September was already more than half over. She turned, going to the deck stairs that would take her below when movement caught the corner of her eye. She turned to look.
A yellow life raft floated peacefully, a hundred feet or so from the back of SillySally. In the fading light, she saw that a young man lay in it.
His leg moved.
“Oh my gosh!” she said, her hands flying up in alarm. She turned back to the card players. “You guys! There’s someone out there!”
Lying on his back in the bottom of the life raft, John Smith heard the girl’s alarmed cry.
He opened his eyes.
The End
The following is the beginning of
Born Lucky, The JD Chronicles, Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic
Available now.
Born Lucky
The JD Chronicles
By Christine Dougherty
www.christinedoughertybooks.com
Copyright © 2011 by Christine Dougherty
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
July 2010, The Pine Barrens, South Jersey
Gater Aronson brought the Ford pick-up to a rocking stop, tires sliding in the sand. The twin cones of the headlights picked out the twisted, light gray branches of wild blueberry bushes and the brown-black patched bark on the pines. Everything looked flat in the glare, like stage scenery. Just beyond where the headlights reached, shadows jumped in time with the lightly bouncing truck. A smoky cloud curled up before the headlights like gritty fog.
Gater was used to the dark woods at night, but he had an uneasy thought: why had he driven them so far back? They could have stopped a mile out from the main road just as easily as…what? four or five miles? more? How long had he been driving before he came across this little clearing? He found he couldn’t really judge the distance; hadn’t been paying enough attention. The seatbelt cutting across Mindy’s boobs–making them look enormous–had distracted him.
Now he dialed up 93.3 on the radio, trying to chase out the willies. Blondie was singing about how the tide was high but she was holdin’ on; wanting to be his number one. WMMR broadcast out of Philly so it was faint, fading in and out with an occasional burst of static as the radio waves traversed the twenty or so miles of pines between here and the city, but it was passable as long as he kept the volume turned low.
Mindy Gerber slipped out of her seatbelt and scooted down till her tailbone rested at the edge of the seat. She popped her flip-flopped feet up on the glove box. Then she crossed her arms.
“I’m not makin’ out with you, Gater. You can just forget about that,” she said. Her voice was tight, just shy of anger. Gater noted the ripple of unease that shook the last word, making it higher-pitched than the rest.
“Aw, come on, what are you scared of? Ain’t nothin’ out here gonna get you. I’ll leave the headlights on, how ’bout that?” He stretched his arm out across the back of the bench seat, his hand just brushing Mindy’s fluffy blonde hair where it had rucked up behind her head. He took in her pink-painted toenails, round calves, and smooth, suntanned thighs. Her jean shorts were short-short and her pink cotton underwear were peeking out under the curve of her buttocks. Her white blouse was a sleeveless middy, with a wide band of elastic tight to her trim little waist and the first three buttons unbuttoned, giving him an enticing view of the tops of her breasts.
Gater studied her like an engineer eyeballing a complicated run of pipes over a header. He can’t figure how to get his arm around her. Her shoulders are too far down. Frustrating.
“Come on now, Mindy, take a look around. It’s just the woods. Nobody here but us,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her comically.
Mindy sat up, bouncing on the seat, her mouth a tight pout. “It’s super trashy to make out in the woods. And in a pick-up truck! That’s even trashier, Gater. You think I’m a hick, is that it?”
Gater moaned and tilted his head back against the seat. “Jesus jumped up, Mindy, you know I don’t think you’re a hick. Where do you want to make out, huh? At DeAngelo’s like the eighth graders? We’re in high school. We’re seniors, just about; we can’t be sitting there in a booth with slices in front of us swappin’ spit while Tony pulls his pud behind the counter.”
“Gater!” she said, bouncing again and reaching across to slap his arm. “That is disgusting!” But she is on the verge of laughing, too; he sees it and his grin widens. Everyone knows old Anthony DeAngelo is a pervert. And his pizza sucks, to boot, but there isn’t a lot to choose from out in the boonies.
“You know what Mary told me?” Mindy said, “She heard he sneaks up into the drop ceiling and stares down the girls’ blouses!”
“Which Mary? Grungo or Russo? ’Cause I can’t see anyone going to any special effort to see down Mary’s shirt.”
Mindy slapped Gater’s arm again, and he was gratified to see her breasts jiggle in the opening of her blouse.
“You stop that, she’s my friend!” Mindy said. Then she leaned toward him, her hands on the seat in front of her. A slow smile was sliding across her glittery pink lips as her breasts were pushed together in the tight V of her arms. Gater was mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Know what else she said? She said that he–”
The truck bounced roughly, the cab tilting back and up. As though someone had decided to jump on the back bumper.
Mindy let out a breathy little scream and Gater was glad she did because he figured (hoped) it covered the yelp that had jumped unbidden from his own throat.
“Oh, my Jesus, Gater,” Mindy said, her voice a babble of rambling syllables. “I told you I hate these damn woods at night, what was that, is someone–”
Gater got himself together and put his hand
over Mindy’s mouth while flicking the radio knob down and dousing his headlights. “Shhh,” he said, leaning low and pulling her down with him. Her lips were still moving under his hand, hot and sticky, and he felt himself getting hard, but he willed it away. Don’t want to get boner if we’re about to get shot by some dipshit cranberry farmer, he thought, and laughed nervously.
“What the hell is so funny?” Mindy asked in a furious whisper, pulling his hand away from her mouth.
“Aw, nothin’. Now just be quiet a sec and let me listen.”
They both listened.
Gater heard nothing but the wind in the very tops of the pines, sighing. No crickets, no spring frogs, no cicadas. Weird. He opened his mouth to tell Mindy that everything was fine when the truck bounced again. Violently. The springs screeched and whoinged with the up and down movement. Gater reached to steady himself, his hand hitting the radio knob, and a burst of static blared through the cab of the truck. He hurriedly cranked the knob to off.
Mindy reached across the seat and grabbed at Gater’s hands, scratching him by accident across the back of his wrist. There were tears glinting at her lower lids. In her fright, she looked about half her age–a grade school kid again. Gater was feeling kind of like a little kid, himself, and it made him angry. He sat up, pulling her with him.
“Christ, it’s probably just Terry and them, trying to scare us. Probably rode out here on their quads. Fuckers.” He squinted out into the woods, looking for any sign of the four wheel ATVs, but could see very little. The Barrens were dense with trees and underbrush. The sandy ground glowed in ghostly patches in the blue-black night.
“We’d have heard them if they were on their quads,” Mindy said, her voice a shaky whisper. She wouldn’t look out into the woods, afraid of the twisted and deformed trees she catches in her peripheral vision. Like monsters surrounding the truck. She kept her eyes on Gater.
“Yeah. But they might have parked a ways back and walked up on us. Douchebags.” He had gripped onto the idea that Terry and John are fucking with him, but even before ‘douchebags’ is out of his mouth, he tries to remember if he told anyone he was bringing Mindy out here tonight.
Mindy was right, they would have heard the high-pitched quads–that distinctive, buzzing whine of the ATV engines–if they’d been anywhere close by.
“Did you tell anyone we were coming out here?” he asked and Mindy shook her head, blinking.
“Just my mom,” she said, as tears overflowed her lash line and coursed down her cheeks.
“Okay, okay, take it easy, we’ll just get the fuck out of here and–” he’d been turning himself forward, reaching for the keys dangling from the ignition while he talked. As his fingers grazed them, the truck bounced again, the back end seeming to come off the ground entirely, sending his face into the steering wheel and Mindy crashing sideways into the dashboard.
The truck bucked front to back over and over as though it had come alive, a demonic metal bull straight from the pits of some hellish rodeo. He turned to Mindy, dazed, and watched as she was flung between the dash and the back of the seat, her arms out to steady herself. She was screaming and her eyes were tightly closed, as if she were on a roller coaster. The glove box popped open and everything flew out. His owner’s manual, the insurance card, pens…Mindy screamed and screamed. He reached for her, yelling “Mindy, take my hands, hang on, Mindy–” but she kept screaming, trying to brace herself, getting purchase then slipping as the truck bounced and rocked.
Then she was looking at him, wide-eyed. “Your face, your face!” she screamed, and Gater felt the hot wetness that had burst from his nose, and with that realization, the pain set in. He knew right away that his nose was broken because he’d seen his friend Sean’s nose get broken once when they’d all been twelve. Sean had fallen into the handlebars of his bike. It had been bloody as hell, but he’d had been okay.
Just like I’ll be okay, Gater thought, soon as I get us the fuck out of here.
He reached for her, yelling over the screeching of the springs. “It’s okay, I think my nose is broken, but I’m okay! Hang on, hang on–”
Abruptly the truck stopped bucking. They froze, huddled together on the middle of the seat, instinctively bent low beneath the windows. Mindy’s eyes, red and teary and round with panic, were locked onto Gater’s face. She wanted him to fix this, fix this, get them out of here, she wanted her mom and her dad, she wanted her daddy to fix this…she wasn’t aware that she was saying ‘fix this fix this’ over and over, out loud. Like a chant. An incantation.
“Mindy! Be quiet!” he said, his voice low and choked. The fear–the terror–in his voice silenced her. She became aware of a chuffing, breathy sound somewhere behind the truck, almost like a laugh. But there was no humor in it. There was another chuff, deepening to a moan, from the front, and then an answering grunt from the back.
Mindy’s arms rashed out in goose bumps.
Like a conversation, Mindy thought. They’re talking to each other. But what the hell–
Gater’s eyebrows pulled down and he tilted his head–she knows he hears it too and is just as puzzled by it. Then her eyes stray past Gater to his door, and she sees that the lock button is up. Strong, cold hands squeezed her stomach.
His door was unlocked.
She reached past him, fingers straining. She touched the lock with the tip of one shaking finger when the door burst open outward. She shrieked and threw herself back toward the passenger door, as Gater was pulled out the driver’s side door, bouncing and screaming, his mouth a black hole of panic. A half moon crescent of blood stained the edge of the seat where his chin hit it.
At the last second, his hand caught the steering wheel, his knuckles white with strain as he is pulled backwards. Mindy reached for him, shrieking in terror, but the wheels turn in the soft sand and the steering wheel twists abruptly, shaking him loose.
Mindy threw herself forward across the seat, still shrieking, reaching for where his hand had been a split second before. Gater was dragged along the sand into a dense stand of bushes, further into the dark. He was still screaming. His eyes were enormous with fright, the lower half of his face black and shiny with blood from his broken nose.
He reached for her with one hand while the other clawed helplessly at the loose sand.
He disappeared into the underbrush.
There was a crack, like a large tree branch breaking, and Gater’s scream was cut off.
She realized she was still yelling his name and she bit down on her lip, cutting her shrieks to breathy whimpers. She reached for the door handle. She had to lean way out, into the black night. The crazily disturbed swirls of sand glow whitely where Gater had been dragged into the tangle of bushes. Her shaking fingertips bumped the door and it sprang open farther, creaking, and she yelped in panic. Then her hand connected with the cool metal handle, gripping it, and she pulled roughly, throwing herself back across the seat. The door closed with a bang and she slammed down the lock button with a sob of relief.
She sat back, shaking, wrapping her arms around herself.
She listened.
Her eyes strained to see into the black woods.
Nothing. No noise, no movement. Her shaking began to subside. She looked to the ignition. The keys were still there.
Relief, like a cool washcloth on her forehead, calmed her racing thoughts. Okay, it’s okay, I can just drive out, get help for Gater, bring help back, get daddy, daddy can fix this…
She slid behind the steering wheel, checking the door lock again, compulsively pushing it down just to be sure. In her panic, the passenger side door slipped her mind.
Shaking, she reached for the key and turned it. The truck engine ground lifelessly. Unaware she is doing it, she laughed, even as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. She shook her head in denial and turned the key again and from the engine, nothing but the low rurr rurr rurr of a dying battery.
“No…oh, no,” she said.
She let her hand drop from t
he key and closed her eyes, trying to compose herself. She couldn’t seem to get her thoughts ordered and she had to, if she was going to get out of this.
The night had gone quiet again…no wind, no frogs or crickets; just deep, untouched stillness.
She tipped her head into her hands, squeezing her eyes closed, trying to think.
The passenger door clunked and swung slowly open, creaking on its hinges. The chuffing sound rolled into the cab, seeming to run up her right side like a hot tongue, and she froze. Her eyes opened with reluctance and she stared blindly out the windshield, paralyzed with fear. The hair at the back of her neck rose.
She began to turn her head. The chuffing became a grunt. There was an answering grunt outside the driver’s side window.
It seemed to take forever to do this one little thing, to accomplish this tiny movement, to just turn her head and look…
But she did it. She finally got there.
And then she screamed.
The preceding was the beginning of
Born Lucky, The JD Chronicles, Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic
Available now. To keep reading, click here:
http://www.amazon.com/Born-Lucky-JD-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B006NZWQT4
Also Look For this Exciting New Release:
Blood Run, First Promise
Book One in the Blood Run Trilogy
It is 1985 and the United States is reeling from a disease that has taken huge, bloody bites out of the country as people are changed into vampires. The survivors have grouped together in remote outposts and the National Guard is the lifeline that runs between the outposts, bringing news and supplies.
In Wereburg, New York, a young woman named Destiny Riser has lost her parents in the plague but saved her little brother, Chance. But the outpost she brings him to is still young and learning and in an accident of fate, it is ravaged by vampires. Destiny sees her brother bit and changed and from that moment on, rechristens herself ‘Promise’ and vows to release Chance from his nightmare, nighttime existence.
The Boat Page 23
