by Celia Roman
He kissed me again, forestalling an answer even if I coulda give him one, and I opened under him, taking ever thing he was into me. His fingers crept up my torso, taking my shirt with ‘em, and finally slid against my breast.
I hadn’t worn a bra today. Hardly ever did, and thank the good Lord above for it. His fingers toyed with my nipple, shooting rippling waves of pleasure through me, and I moaned again. My hips lifted against his unbidden, and he ground his into mine, and I near about shattered right then and there, shattered into a million shards of pure pleasure.
What was we doing?
The thought shocked me into twisting my head away from the kiss. I panted out my desire against Riley’s mouth, still so close to mine, and let my leg slide back down onto the couch.
Riley touched his forehead to mine. His heart was wild thunder against my fists and his weight was heavy on me, heavy and delicious and right all at the same time. His eyes slid closed and he sighed out a long breath. “You’re not ready.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, to say yes, I am, but the truth was a hard nugget in the midst of my heart. I weren’t ready for sex. I weren’t ready to be hurt when he pulled away, and some part of me held still and quiet inside me, just waiting for him to say goodbye.
I swallowed down the regret already sinking through me. “I’m sorry, Riley.”
“It’s ok, baby. I’m not in a hurry.”
“Feels like it to me,” I retorted, but soft so as not to sting.
He laughed and eased away from me onto his side, then pulled me tight against him. “It’s always like that around you.”
A little thrill shivered through me. Did I really do that to him, me, a no account half-breed? “I ain’t teasing on purpose or nothing.”
“I know you’re not, but it still happens.” He bent down and nuzzled his face against my hair, and his scent washed over me, something woodsy and rich. “We can wait as long as you need us to.”
“You really wanna have sex with me?”
He huffed out a breath against my hair. “I thought that was kind of obvious.”
Well, it was right then, but that coulda just been ‘cause I was handy.
“I want you. Soon.” He strummed his fingers against my nipple and slid his thigh over my legs, pinning me against the couch. “Can I play for a while?”
“Riley, c’mon now.”
“Please, baby? I’ll stop when you want me to.”
His plea was so sweet, I couldn’t hardly refuse him, could I? “Just for a while.”
“Touch me, then.”
Oh, that I could do. He lifted my shirt high and placed his mouth where his fingers’d been, and it was a long, long while before I thought on anything ‘sides the desire growing between us.
I dragged home at nigh on midnight after a full evening spent being charmed and coaxed by Riley. True to his word, he stopped playing when I asked him to, though we was both so het up by that point, it was a wonder one of us didn’t explode. He slipped away into the shower whilst I called Mama G’s and ordered supper, and tried real hard not to imagine what he was doing under the hot spray of water.
After that, he mostly kept his hands to himself, but it was a near thing on my part. I cuddled right up to him during the movie, couldn’t hardly help myself, and when he kissed me goodnight, my hands took a lot of liberties under his shirt, exploring the broad expanse of his muscled chest.
Mm-mm-mm, did he have a fine chest.
I got outta the IROC and trudged up the stairs toward the trailer. A large brown envelope was stuffed flat against the door between it and the doorjamb. I tugged it out and let myself inside, and opened it soon as the light flickered on. A handful of paper was stuffed inside topped by a handwritten note signed by Angela Hill, a girl I went to high school with before Terry Whitehead planted Henry in my belly and I had to drop out.
I riffled through the pages, which turned out to be autopsy results and photos of Lily and Ferd’s corpses. Up close photos, at that. I dropped ‘em face down on my desk top so I didn’t have to look at ‘em too hard. The pasty death masks their faces was froze into was creepier than just about anything I ever seen, not to mention the bloody holes gored plumb through their chests from sternum to spine. Another picture showed a close up of the holes. In amongst the bloody tissue was tiny flakes of something I couldn’t quite make out, and probably wouldn’ta noticed if it hadn’t been for the arrows pointing at the largest ones.
I skimmed through the autopsy reports, then turned back to the note. Just got these from the Medical Examiner, it read in loopy cursive. Look at the evidence photo. That’s granite. How did it get into their chests?
It hit me right then why Angela brung the packet to me. She was the junior Deputy Coroner. As such, she’d be one of the first to see the autopsy reports. Fast’uns, too. The sheriff musta put a rush on ‘em, what with him being in a hurry to commit Fame to a lifetime of confinement on the state’s dime.
And Angela probably knowed Fame weren’t gonna get no fair shake.
On t’other hand, she’d made a point to highlight the abnormality. Flakes of stone found in holes gorged into two dead bodies. Evidence of the murder weapon?
I plopped onto the couch and scraped a hand through my stick straight hair. Me and Angela never spent much time together in school beyond a coupla shared classes. American Lit and Algebra, if I recalled correct, and I usually did. We was friendly enough, but we wasn’t the best of friends. So why was she doing me this favor? Did she know what I was, what I did when most folks turned a blind eye to the critters hid in the shadows? Was that why she delivered them pictures to me, ‘cause she suspected something unnatural had a hand in my aunt and uncle’s deaths?
The questions spun around in my weary mind, endlessly circling without a single answer presenting itself. Finally, I stood and dropped the autopsy reports onto my desk on top of the accompanying photos. Time enough for sorting one from t’other on the morrow. Between BobbiJean and Riley, I was plum tuckered out. Sleep, then, and a good night’s worth at that. Morning was soon enough for thinking.
Fifteen minutes later, I crawled into bed, and dreamt of a lurid shadow stalking me through the deep, dark night.
Chapter Twelve
Whatever I dreamed, it drove me awake at 5:17 a.m., gasping and clutching my chest. A faint echo of gloom lingered in the pre-dawn chill, though try as I might, I couldn’t connect it with nothing. No trace of my dreams remained, no monsters, no death, no blood, just a hollow where something shoulda been.
I shivered and clutched the covers to my thin chest, hidden ‘neath a ragged ol’ t-shirt, and that voice whispered to me.
Seek, it said. Hunt.
Now, I was a lotta things. Done a lotta good and bad, and experienced more’n most folks my age had, even them what’d traveled the world over and back again. I never heard no voice in my head before, never had nothing guiding me ‘cept instinct born of my coon crazy mama and honed by my daddy’s and Fame’s teachings.
And here it was the second time that little voice touched me. Maybe the craziness of the past few weeks’d done drove me right around the bend.
I shook it off and crawled outta bed. Just the thought of going back to sleep stirred a greasy unease in the pit of my stomach.
Oh, well. No rest for the weary.
Since I was up so early, I might as well do something constructive. Riley’d mentioned another body being found. Weren’t no harm in taking a look, was there? ‘Specially since right then it was about the only hope Fame had of clearing his name.
Half an hour later, after showering and gulping down a quick breakfast, I hit the road dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt under a warm jacket, with Daddy’s knife tucked into my boot and Missy’s ring looped on a chain ‘round my neck. I took a thermos of piping hot coffee with me and, on impulse, brung along a sheath of Styrofoam cups.
Hey, it was chilly outside. No telling who I’d run into what needed a little warming.
Half an hour la
ter, I pulled up behind a deputy’s car and cut the IROC’s engine off. This spot was a good ways away from Lily and Ferd’s campsite, and was probably gonna be a lot harder to get to, from what Riley told me. It was deeper in the woods along a narrow trail, not one used regular like among locals or nature lovers neither one.
I climbed outta the car, slammed the door shut. It echoed in the morning’s quiet. The sun’s leading edge was just cresting the mountaintops now, shedding thin light on the trees. Sunlight didn’t quite reach the ground, so I opened the trunk and rooted around for a flashlight, then slammed the trunk shut, too.
If anybody was in the deputy’s car, they was doing a good job of ignoring the one and only visitor to the crime scene.
I tromped up the dirt road toward the car, careful to swing wide so whoever was perched in there could see me coming. Soon as I swerved back toward the front of the car and caught a good look at the lone occupant, I laughed. Deputy Franks was sitting in the driver’s seat with his head leaned back against the headrest, sound asleep.
If me slamming this door or that trunk hadn’t woke him, like as not, he needed the rest. I let him be, switched on the flashlight, and followed a small herd of footprints pressed into the loamy verge into the forest.
The trees closed in around me, silent witnesses of the dawning day, and memory flashed, of Henry’s ghostly limbs gnarled into thin branches. I shivered in the forest’s chill and hunched my shoulders around my ears under my jacket. Dang ol’ dreams.
The trail narrowed as it wound through the scraggly undergrowth, thinning to a bare hint until it dumped out into a campsite almost a mile later, by my reckoning. Yellow police tape circled the area. Beyond it, the forest was thick and untouched around a single trail bisecting it. I slid the flashlight’s beam along the far side, beyond the scattered shambles of a canvas tarp and a lone backpack hanging off a branch by a ragged rope.
I frowned as instinct stirred. Something was off here. Something set this campsite apart from Lily and Ferd’s, but what? I scanned the area again, searching for the dissonance, and finally hit on it. No traces of blood on the ground, no traces of food in the campsite, no lingering hint of a campfire mingling with the musty scent of rotting leaves, but there was an oddly familiar odor I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Moss-coated stone, rich dirt, unwashed skin. Where’d I smelt that before?
After a minute spent combing my memory and drawing a blank, I let it go and, resigned, slapped the flashlight against my thigh. Whoever’d made camp here, it hadn’t been recent. Hang it all. There went Fame’s alibi.
On impulse, I ducked under the police tape, picked my way across the campsite, and ducked under more tape. The trail beyond hardly warranted the name, it was so faint. An animal trail, maybe, or used to be, likely commandeered by humans searching for the easiest path through the woods, same as the critters.
Unease stirred as shadow crept into my mind. I shook it off and stepped deeper into the woods, one step, another. It was like slogging through molasses, the reluctance was so thick in me.
The nape of my neck tingled. I hunched my shoulders against the chill fear, scrubbed a hand along the back of my neck. In the distance, birds chirped the sun awake. A car passed by on the road leading to the one what’d got me here. A door slammed shut a whole lot closer to the campsite. Somebody else’d arrived. Like as not, it was the investigator come to look the scene over, in which case, I better shake a leg if I wanted to get my gander in before I was chased off.
That urgency drove me farther down the trail. Low hanging tree limbs and leafless huckleberry bushes tangled with overgrown laurel into a gnarled mess. Voices echoed toward me, no louder’n the slammed car door, but my heart leapt in my chest all the same.
I broke into a jog, spurred on by my heartbeat thundering in my ears, drowning out my progress as I crashed through the woods with all the finesse of a mama bear chasing down a threat to her cubs. Faster and faster I went, ‘til I was at a near gallop. The trail wound around strong oaks and dying hemlocks, under fallen pines, and I followed it, propelled by the urgency burning hot in my blood.
The trail curved sharp to the right. I slowed a mite, more on instinct than fear I’d skid around it like a car gone outta control, and near about run into a jumbled stack of boulders. The trail veered left around ‘em, but I stopped there and doubled over, winded by my spur of the moment run.
I just needed to catch my breath, was all, then I could move on.
My lungs seized up on me, refusing to draw air, and the scars in my side throbbed a reminder that I weren’t supposed to be engaging in the overly physical just yet. I braced sweaty palms against shaky knees and sucked in a breath, and that smell hit me again, stronger now. Moss-covered rock, loamy earth, and the faintest hint of unclean.
I stared at the boulders, stared whilst my mind turned over and oxygen soaked into my lungs, and finally caught on to what I was seeing. A slim, black half moon outlined the edges of an opening in the rock where the trail veered away.
A cave.
Neurons fired in my noggin, I reckon, or maybe misfired, ‘cause the next word what leapt at me was monster.
I pushed myself into a stand, rolled my shoulders back ‘til my spine was stiff and rigid and my breath come proper like. The campsite Lily and Ferd had been killed in was located near rock, just like this one. Two incidences did not a pattern make, but it didn’t need to, as the first time I smelt that odd aroma finally popped into my head: That day at the cemetery, when me and Riley was studying the crime seen in the frigid winter air, that was when it was.
What smelled of rock and earth and critters? Why, a cave monster’s hidey-hole, that’s what.
I eased close to the cave’s opening and shone the flashlight’s beam inside. Darkness eat the light before it got too far, but I seen what I needed to, or some of it. The passage narrowed into a thin slit, too small for an adult human of any size a’tall, certainly a tad tight for me, and I weren’t exactly puffy around the middle. So whatever’d lived here was small, or narrow anyhow, as the cave’s opening stretched well over my head. It liked the dark damp. And it hunted humans.
I flicked the beam around again, learnt not a single dadgum thing, then pivoted away and jogged back the way I come. The sun was stronger now, brighter, and the air a mere fraction warmer’n when I stepped into the forest, but I shivered anyhow. No way in aitch ee double hockey sticks was I going into that cave alone, not when nary a soul knowed where I was, and maybe not even then. I could come back later, if there was a need, but I didn’t think there’d be much of one. Whatever critter’d tracked down that poor, hapless camper was long gone. Maybe it’d already skeedaddled away from Lily and Ferd’s campsite, too. My gut said otherwise, but it was a possibility I had to consider if I was gonna track it down.
In the meantime, I needed to record ever thing I knowed and hit the books in hopes of finding whatever monster I scented near the cave and the cemetery. Maybe there weren’t no connection between the dead and the monster.
Instinct jangled a warning and in the back of my mind, a tiny voice whispered to me. I was on the right track, I just knowed it, but it weren’t no easy track and it sure as tootin’ weren’t gonna be a safe’un.
Weren’t no point hiding my exit outta the woods, seeing as how the IROC was parked in plain sight right behind Deputy Franks’ patrol car. Still, I weren’t right keen on ever body knowing exactly what I was up to. I twisted a green needled branch off a pine sapling, jogged halfway back to the campsite, then swept my boot prints off the trail from there to the tape and through the site itself. That done, I tossed the branch into the woods and hightailed it toward the IROC’s roadside perch.
A cluster of uniforms awaited me on the other side. Three men huddled together beside Deputy Franks’ car, including him. I stepped on a dry branch in a polite attempt to warn ‘em of my presence. They glanced around and broke apart, leaving a gap for me in their circle.
“Hey,” I said right off. “I was just l
ooking at the campsite.”
The investigator shook his head, but he was grinning under the thick jut of his moustache.
Deputy Franks coughed into his fist. “She’s not been here long.”
I cut a side-eyed glance at him and, since he been so good as to keep Riley, and therefore me, in the loop, I cut him some slack. “I didn’t touch nothing. Just a quick walk in and out to see what was what. Want some of that coffee now, Deputy?”
His freckled face relaxed into a relieved grin. “Yeah. Thanks, Sunny.”
I grinned back and dutifully fetched coffee for him, but that echo of what I found in the woods pressed against me, like an invisible hand shoving at me. I left the thermos with the good deputy, told him to bring it by when he got a chance, and left before questions on what I seen, or didn’t, started flying. It sure was hard not to stir up gravel and dust as I drove off, but seeing as how I had places to go and research to do, not to mention three officers of the law bearing witness, I eased Daddy’s car around and headed home in a right sober manner befitting the girlfriend of a fellow law enforcement officer.
Once I hit paved road, all bets was off. I inched the IROC into a higher speed and hurried home whilst planning my approach so I could hit the ground running soon as I got there.
No such luck.
Old Mother was sitting on the head of the trail leading from the trailer to Fame’s, with her arms holding her bent legs to her chest. Bare toes peeked out ‘neath the dirty hem of her dress and her knuckles whitened where her hands clenched together at her shins.
I got outta the car, bit back the curse words threatening to spill outta my mouth, and searched for something a mite more appropriate. “Hey, there. You wanna come in outta the cold?”
I winced. ‘Course, she wanted to come in. It was near freezing out and she hadn’t a coat nor a hat covering the filmy white of her dress.
She lifted her head up to me and her normally placid expression twisted into confusion. When she spoke, her voice was Deep South and even, like a teenage country girl, not the hoodoo woman I knowed her as. “Where’s the third? I came to see the third.”
