The Piper

by Lynn Hightower

  Table of Contents

  Further Titles by Lynn Hightower

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Further Titles by Lynn Hightower

  The Sonora Blair Series

  EYESHOT

  FLASHPOINT

  NO GOOD DEED

  THE DEBT COLLECTOR

  The David Silver Series

  ALIEN BLUES

  ALIEN EYES

  ALIEN HEAT

  ALIEN RITES

  The Lena Padgett Series

  SATAN’S LAMBS

  FORTUNES OF THE DEAD

  WHEN SECRETS DIE

  THE PIPER

  Lynn Hightower

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9 – 15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2013 by Lynn Hightower.

  The right of Lynn Hightower to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hightower, Lynn S.

  The piper.

  1. Haunted places–Tennessee–Fiction. 2. Suspense

  fiction.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-385-3 (Epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8251-6 (cased)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Robert, my Frenchman

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To the usual suspects, Alan, Laurel, and Rachel.

  And David & Arthur, Wes, Katie and Isaac. Rebecca and Brian.

  To the French side of the family, Arnaud, Julien, Elda, Miria, Ernest.

  For Sheila, and Lindsay.

  And Matt, as always.

  ‘It is ten years since our children left.’

  Town Chronicles, Hamelin, Germany

  Eyewitness account, recorded by Decan Ludde, 1384

  ONE

  They call us, you know, the dead do. The ones we’ve loved, the ones who’ve passed. Someone you know has received a call – maybe it was you. They call to tell us they love us, to tell us they’re okay. And sometimes they call us to warn.

  For Olivia James, the phone call came through on the last night that she and her daughter, Teddy, spent in the California house. Olivia’s brother, Christopher James, had been dead for just nine weeks. Olivia immediately recognized his voice.

  The radio alarm had been set for seven a.m., but it went off just after midnight, at 12.12 precisely, waking Olivia with a song she had not heard since she was a little girl – ‘Heart and Soul’, that old romantic standby from the nineteen forties. Like every other child in America, Olivia had played the song on the piano as a duet, sometimes with her brother, Chris, but most often with her big sister, Emily, before Emily disappeared. Twenty-five years ago, when Olivia was only five. Six years later her mother died, from what Olivia always secretly thought was a broken heart. Both parents were dead now. It had just been Olivia and Chris, for the last ten years, expanding their little circle to spouses and kids of their own. Olivia and Chris and the ever present hope that someday their sister Emily would miraculously return.

  Heart and soul, I fell in love with you –

  Heart and soul, I fell in love with you –

  Baaaabyyyy . . .

  Olivia’s cell rang on baby. The land line had been cut for months.

  Olivia was immediately awake. She was a bad sleeper, particularly these last few months, when the money worries had been extreme. She heard static, and rubbed her forehead, then frowned over the distinct echo of chimes. Wind chimes, she thought. The voice, so familiar, so longed-for, brought her sitting up and trembling in her bed.

  ‘Livie? Do you know who this is?’

  It sounded like her brother. But it couldn’t be her brother. Her brother was dead. The death verdict had been bizarre. SUNDS. Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome. A rare, mysterious death that worked like an adult form of SIDS. People died in their sleep and no one knew why.

  ‘Chris? Is it really you?’ Olivia gripped the phone so hard her fingers ached. As if she could squeeze her brother out.

  ‘I tried to hang on, Kidlet. But it just wasn’t meant to be.’

  The voice was her brother’s, but different somehow, in a way Olivia could not quite figure out. But only her brother called her Kidlet. Her brother who was dead but talking to her on the phone.

  ‘Chris, if it really is you, somehow, I love you, okay? I miss you.’

  Static again, and Olivia got out of bed, pacing toward the front window, the connection was always better there.

  ‘—sten to me, Livie, I don’t have . . . ong.’

  ‘Chris?’

&
nbsp; The silence came like a vacuum, the voice gone. Olivia dodged the boxes that were stacked to the ceiling. The movers had taken ten long hours to get everything packed up, and were due in the morning first thing to load. She pinched one of the slats of the blinds and looked outside. The For Sale sign in front of her house was slightly twisted. There were lights in her neighbors’ houses, and the blue of television screens glowed in every house in the cul de sac, though everyone was sealed up tight. Californians lived behind closed doors and did not hang out on porches, like Olivia remembered from Tennessee.

  She saw the glow of a cigarette, and a woman in a dark tee shirt, walking her tiny dog. The woman lived three houses over, usually wore sandals with rhinestones, and she always turned away when Olivia said hello. Olivia made a point of saying hi whenever she saw the woman, in the way of southerners who use courtesy to mess with people under the cover of being polite. People who did not grow up in the south never understood they’d been insulted on the sly. Olivia had learned early that you could say any nasty thing that came to mind so long as you preceded it with bless your heart, and said it with a smile. Teddy’s father, Hugh, called it her southern bullshit.

  Olivia’s throat was tight enough that swallowing hurt. She had just decided the call was nothing more than a dream when she heard the chimes again, and a crackle, as if a lost connection had been restored.

  ‘. . . warn you, Livie.’

  ‘Warn me about what? Chris? Warn me about what?’

  ‘I had to pay the piper. You have to know it’s been taken care of.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What’s been taken care of?’

  ‘. . . my fault. Don’t let him . . . after you.’

  ‘Who’s coming after me?’

  ‘The Mister Man.’ Static again. ‘. . . ove you, Livie . . .’

  ‘Chris?’

  Silence like forever in her heart.

  The Mister Man.

  Olivia stumbled across the hall, dodging the boxed up pictures that were stacked next to the wall outside the bathroom. She peered into Teddy’s room, heart beating hard until comforted by the visible curl of her little girl, sleeping on the wrong side as usual, head at the foot of the bed, wrapped in the pink chenille bedspread. Olivia and Teddy had their peculiar habits of sleep, Teddy wrong side up, and Olivia always on top of the bedspread, because she hated the slippery sensation of sheets.

  Winston, the golden retriever, lifted his head and groaned because his bones ached, but dutifully padded out to the hallway to nuzzle Olivia’s knee.

  Olivia and Winston settled side by side at the top of the steep stairway, Winston with his muzzle in Olivia’s lap, smelling like old dog and comfort.

  The Mister Man. Sibling code for the nameless, faceless unknown that made Emily disappear. Olivia knew that it was her imagination, but ever since her sister went away, Olivia had often felt the ongoing, unsettling sensation that she was being watched.

  He is three million, eight hundred years old and counting. He is six hundred sixty years since renewed. In the flesh, he leaves the footprint of the goat, though he can leave the footprint of the man, if he chooses.

  Tonight he walks behind the woman with rhinestone slippers, watching with his lazy yellow sated lion eyes. Her tiny little dog looks anxiously over its shoulder, but the Piper’s business, his hunger, is not for the woman or this miniature guardian. The little dog strains the leash, hard enough for its tiny heart to burst, how delicious, yet the woman only frowns, no appreciation at all, too busy talking on the cell phone to her married lover. The Piper turns his connoisseur’s nose up at the reek of her, ennui on the hoof, no thank you – too easy, too tainted, too dry.

  It is the face he sees at the window that rouses him. Heart shaped and full, those fleshy pink lips, flower petal soft, the thick hair a man could wrap round his hand to pin her down, the juicy rounded body, contours where he could sink his teeth and chew. This one stirs his loins, and sings like an ache of exquisite pain in his blood. He tastes her, shudders at the strength of her yearning, though she hardly seems to know, truly, what it is she wants, only thinking of it as home, the hungry grief for the ones she has lost. Now hunger – that is one thing the Piper understands. And when they fall away into the dark, as some of them always do, the Piper is there to catch them. One more into the fold.

  But he yearns most particularly for the special ones, craving the warmth and throb of their light, wrapping himself around it tighter and tighter until he chokes it off for good.

  The Piper looks up at the window and smiles. She does not see him, oh no, she will not see him unless – until, dare he say it – she chooses that he be seen. The very best games have rules. But she can’t keep him from stalking, and she is sensing him, smelling him, he prickles now on the back of her neck. He knows her sweet spot, her little Teddy. The Piper can always taste the salty red meat of their hearts.

  He howls with pleasure, has watched her such a long time, licking at her heels, and he is after her now, like a dog digging up an old buried bone, but then he stops. He listens.

  A scent, perhaps? Merely instinct?

  Something makes him hesitate, stops him mid stride, chokes off the flow of pleasurable pain. He hears it very faintly, the voice that calls his name – not Decan Ludde, not Duncan Lee, the Piper has so many names, and he loves them all, like little treasures. This is the old name that knows him, that puts him in his place, and he feels the nasty anger that burns. He does not like being distracted from his pleasures, but he is a wise old hunter and he knows when to put the pretties aside and concentrate on the smells.

  Nothing he can see yet, just the feeling, which is knowledge enough. She will not be easy prey, this one, she is not alone. They never are alone, if only they knew it. And how little they do know, how innocent and simple their delusions. It makes them that much more delicious to hunt.

  He looks back up at the window. She is no longer there, but he feels her. Olivia. He knows her name and she’ll soon learn his.

  Next time he will leave her a calling card. A tiny pool of water, no bigger than your average blood stain, maybe by the bed. He likes water, it makes him strong, it travels, and he drowns them like rats in the water.

  Let me in, little girlies, let me in.

  This is how it begins. Again.

  TWO

  Olivia was barely aware when the movers arrived at nine forty-five a.m. instead of eight, and though she was a veteran mover and knew better, she supervised very loosely while they loaded the furniture and boxes. They were grateful for the Gatorade (electrolytes), the bananas (potassium for muscle support) and cashews (protein) that she always provided. They worked up a serious sweat and took smoke breaks, and, as usual, never stopped for lunch. By six p.m. the house was dirty, empty, echoing.

  Olivia did her final walk through, with her phone jammed into the front pocket of her jeans, where it had sat, silent and uncomfortable, all day.

  She had kept the phone line open for an hour last night before she hung up. Then she’d checked the record of incoming calls. It had been there, twelve twelve p.m., lodged, inexplicably, as voice mail. No number to trace.

  The Mister Man.

  Olivia was upstairs in Teddy’s empty bedroom when she heard the front door open and Teddy shout for Winston. She headed down the stairs, smiling hard.

  Teddy’s khaki shorts were crumpled and stained with something orange, little round glasses loose on her nose, fine brown hair limp from the heat. Her toes were dusty in the sandals, and she had a Nancy Drew book tucked under one arm. Right now it was The Secret of the Old Clock.

  ‘The truck’s gone, Mommy. How come you didn’t call? I’m hungry and Dr Amelia’s taking us to the Wolf Creek Grill. I ate a bite of Winston’s dog chow. It really wasn’t bad.’

  ‘I promise you she got to the dog chow before I could stop her.’ The red of Amelia’s hair had a harsh glint, like a bad dye job, though Olivia knew Amel paid several hundred dollars a month for that particular shade. Her eyes w
ere brown, slanty and kind, and she wore black cat glasses on a chain around her neck.

  Olivia had toyed with the idea of going red herself, maybe a rich auburn instead of her natural color of mud brown, but constant coloring was expensive so she settled for blonde streaks when she was in funds. She kept her hair shoulder length and layered to set off the rounded shape of her face, the Kewpie doll lips. On good days she looked at that face in the mirror and thought Botticelli angel. On bad days she thought fat.

  Amelia had changed out of the usual white coat and scrubs into blue jeans and a tee. She was a physician’s assistant with her own practice in conjunction with a family services clinic in Valencia, and she had been Teddy’s pediatrician since the Los Angeles move.

  ‘Teddy and I stopped and got your last bit of mail. Don’t let me forget to give it to you.’ Amelia patted the green crocodile purse slung over one shoulder. ‘It’s in the bag. So, are you hungry? Did you even eat today?’

  ‘I had a mustard sandwich for lunch. Teddy, did you thank Dr Amelia for letting you hang out at her office all day?’

  Teddy was shy around moving men. Packing up the house always upset her.

  ‘Thank me?’ Amelia said. ‘I should be thanking her. She organized my store room, sorted and threw away all the old magazines, then curled up and read her book for the rest of the day. If I’d known how useful she was, I’d have kidnapped her a long time ago.’

  Olivia gave Amelia a grateful look. Things had been going badly with Teddy since the divorce. Badly enough to scare both Olivia and Hugh into setting their inevitable hostilities aside, so they could present a united front.

  The most infuriating thing was the lies – not big ones, defiant ones. When it came to the big stuff, Teddy seemed to have the strong moral center she’d had since she was a little girl. No, the lies she told were stupid ones. Obvious ones. Like a little girl begging to get caught. Things like eating cookies for breakfast and saying she’d had toast and jelly, when there were Oreo crumbs spilling down her shirt. Or saying that Hugh had given her permission to pour beer into Winston’s water bowl.