Scared of the Dark: A Crime Novel

by Easton Vaughn

  “Tell me,” Mosley snapped again.

  Merritt’s smile widened. “You’re acting like a candidate for a vasectomy, Mose.”

  Mosley huffed, placed a hand to his chest, and left out of the tent. Haywood hesitated a moment, but moved to follow. Merritt let them get outside before calling for them. Both men turned back.

  “But,” Merritt said, emphasizing the word, “I’m not above taking action when it’s needed.”

  “Unlike Haywood,” Mosley said, “I don’t appreciate cryptic.”

  Merritt nodded. “I’d known Ruck since childhood and he was a loyal friend, but he made a conscious decision to cross me.”

  Mosley frowned. “What are you saying, James?”

  “Look for him when you get back to camp,” Merritt said, gravel in his voice. “I bet you won’t be able to track him down. And I’d stop concerning myself with Shepherd, too, if I were you.”

  Haywood placed a hand on Mosley’s trembling shoulder and guided him away from the beach. As they disappeared from view, swallowed up by the stand of thick trees, Merritt moved from the tent and went to the water’s edge and dipped his toes in.

  The water was warmer than he’d imagined it would be.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The air blowing in from the sound was briny and wool-blanket thick, and he was covered in wet muck up to his knees, but none of those things mattered to him as he trudged through the grass and slopped through winding, blue creek water, finally settling under a shade of scrappy, salt-stunted oaks. This was his secret place on the island, where he came for solitude and enough quiet to think. Folks didn’t believe he was one for thinking, couldn’t imagine he had one good thought in that empty head of his, but they were wrong. In fact, he considered himself to be a deep thinker. Sometimes he wondered whether he thought too much. It seemed as though once something got stuck in his craw he couldn’t dislodge it for a very long time. He smiled at this knowledge, this thing that others didn’t know about him, as secret as his special place here on the island.

  Today was definitely one of his more pensive days. He found himself consumed in contemplation, stuck considering what distinguished a good person from a bad one. Was goodness simply a matter of treating others kindly? Of treating them the way you wanted to be treated in return? If so, he was mostly good. On the other hand, was a bad person someone who’d done something terrible? Like killing someone? Once you’d done something like that were you bad always? If so, there was no doubt he was bad.

  He’d heard people say of complicated matters that they weren’t always “black and white,” that there were often “shades of gray” involved, and he believed that might be the case with the concept of good and bad. It wasn’t an easy thing for him to wrap his mind around, this idea of himself as some kind of gray. In his heart, he wanted so badly to think of himself as good, even though he’d done some terrible things.

  “Good,” he muttered, shaking aside his thoughts and getting to work. Eyes were always upon him, so he didn’t often get to labor on this job that mattered more to him than anything else. More than mowing. More than gardening. More than his compost pile. This work that he had to come to his secret place to complete.

  Are you my good boy?

  The question, and the voice that had spoken it was so clear, he actually paused and looked around. It took a moment for him to realize that it had been in his head. His mother’s voice and his mother’s question, posed to him the spring just before he turned eight.

  He hadn’t known how to answer her question. He’d frowned and stood mute for an interminable length of time. At least it felt like forever. Then his eyes were on his mother, searching her face for the expression that would show her disappointment at giving birth to a bad son. Instead, he saw that she was smiling, saw warm love in her brown eyes. He always swallowed hard when he looked into his mother’s eyes. Even then, her dying, her eyes held enough light to brighten the entire world.

  Are you my good boy?

  Her silk blouse hung on her no differently than it would one of the hangers in her closet. She’d had him fetch her wig from its dusty box, and had brushed and brushed some semblance of life into that furry rat, then shakily painted her lips with peach-colored lipstick that looked surprisingly at home against her cocoa skin. She’d dabbed perfume on her neck and wrists, too, but he could still smell a basement odor rising off of her flesh. It was a musty, cloying, hateful smell. The odor, he would later discover, of a coming death.

  Are you my good boy?

  He was nearly as tall as his mother at that point, his shoulders as wide as the path that cut through the woods behind their house. And yet he was just a boy. A boy who wanted more than anything to please his parents, and they him. His mother was dying but still wanted to go to his school to talk with his teachers, and his father was at work, no doubt rushing his shift so he could get home and go himself.

  He glanced at his mother’s hands, recognized how hard she was working to keep them still on her lap. Ten, fifteen minutes tops, and she would crash, would need to get back in bed. There wasn’t nearly enough strength in her ravished body for her to make it to his school for the conference with his teachers. Just the fact that she’d gotten up and exhausted herself getting prepared was enough for him.

  Are you my good boy?

  “Yes,” he told her, lying. One word, that’s all he could manage. He hoped she didn’t ask him to elaborate.

  “You know what’s happening with me,” she said softly.

  It wasn’t a question, but he nodded. “I know, Mama.” More tremble in his voice than in her hands.

  “I just want to know you’re my good boy,” she said. “And that you’ll always be.”

  “I will, Mama.”

  She nodded. “I know it, Sheldon. You remember that…always. And make sure your sister understands it as well. She’s too young to get it now.”

  He was about to say that he would as the bedroom door blew open. Sheldon’s father stood in the doorway, both surprise and consternation evident in his chiseled dark face. “What are you doing up, Phyllis?”

  “I asked Sheldon to help me,” she said, her eyes heavy, voice turned to a whisper. “His thing at school…”

  Sheldon swallowed. His daddy was a good man, mostly, but he was also quick to anger and rigid as a board of knotty wood. He wouldn’t like that Sheldon had disturbed Phyllis’s rest for this foolishness.

  But he looked at Sheldon then, and his face softened. “Help me get your mother back in bed?”

  Sheldon startled to action, rushed with his father to his mother’s bedside. “Yes, sir.”

  Phyllis didn’t protest, and after they had her back in bed, Sheldon positioned the blanket all the way up to her chin. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to keep her from shivering. “I wanted to go and talk with your teachers, baby,” she rasped. “But Mama’s awfully tired. I already know what they’re going to say anyway.”

  “That I’m a good boy?”

  Her answer was a smile. In the next moment, her eyes fluttered closed.

  Sheldon’s father sat on the bed beside her and absentmindedly rubbed her forehead while staring out the window at their naked backyard. Sheldon excused himself to the bathroom, where he wept until he was completely dry of any emotion. He wanted so badly to be his mama’s good boy.

  It was a moment he thought about often through the years. It hurt that he hadn’t been able to right his lie, that he hadn’t been able to comfortably be the good boy he’d told his mama he was.

  He groaned his parents’ names out loud now and lost himself in his secret labor, muscles straining, his skin glistening with sweat. So involved he didn’t hear the rustle of fallen dry leaves behind him until it was too late.

  “What are you doing? What is that?”

  Sheldon shot around, a frown creasing his forehead. Miss Amelia stared at him, propped up on a twisted tree limb she used as a cane, her eyes knowing.

  Sheldon couldn’t find any words to say. He remai
ned silent as she hobbled closer.

  “I likes to dip my old toes in the creek,” she explained, pronouncing it “crick.”

  Sheldon licked his dry lips.

  “I tells you, that creek water always feels cool. Lifts me up, makes me feel close to brand new. I never know’d anyone else on the island to come out this way.”

  Sheldon exhaled a long breath and flexed his hands.

  “Saw you rush past and got to worryin’,” she went on. “Old as I am, my ‘drenaline got me goin’, and I hobbled on after you. You didn’t hear me callin’ after you?”

  He didn’t answer.

  She looked at the ground behind him. “You’ve been actin’ mighty strange of late. And what is that for? What you up to, chile?”

  Are you my good boy?

  “I’m sorry,” Sheldon said, the first he’d spoken since Miss Amelia’s intrusion on his secret place. The words were for both her and his mama, dead all these years.

  “Sorry for what?” Miss Amelia asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  Just reached forward and covered her mouth with his massive hand.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The mosquitoes had been particularly hungry today. Which Lemon decided she would use as her reasoning for staying indoors from dawn to dust. She wouldn’t allow herself to admit she’d remained inside because of any lingering concern for Aiden. She wasn’t, for instance, moved by the lasting image of him struggling to fix her front door, beads of perspiration popping on his forehead, a look of pure satisfaction on his face once he finished the repair, and then the dawning realization that his work wasn’t done, his eyes seeming to droop and his shoulders seeming to sag as Will ushered him away with a shove. It wasn’t Lemon’s quiet and ultimately silent hope that Aiden would return unharmed by the day’s experience either. As the hours ticked by, and the sun eventually faded, she convinced herself that, no, she hadn’t stayed inside because of any of that and, yes, it had everything to do with the swarm of bloodthirsty insects just outside her door. That’s what it was. A convincing so thorough Lemon had no choice but to dismiss it.

  She sighed now and shook her head. She glanced at the repaired door. She contemplated moving toward it and stepping outside to gaze at the moon and lose herself in the occasional breeze. But instead, she sat on the edge of the cot in her one-room house, unable to move, looking at a repaired door that refused to open.

  She felt oddly removed from everyone else on the island. Completely and utterly alone. An only child, she’d experienced this feeling before, during her childhood. But she’d chased it away with family and friends. It was a rare day she wasn’t over at Eve Mayweather’s house. Or Rita Atwell’s. Every so often, Sue Ford’s. They called themselves “too cute times two.” If Lemon wasn’t at one of their houses, then they were at hers. Lemon’s mother’s cooking was legend in the neighborhood; she could take a nearly bare cupboard and coax magic from it. In addition, all the girls had a crush on Lemon’s father. Tall, light-skinned, sharply dressed, good smelling, a crooked and sexy smile, and he walked with a gait that had music at its heart—even Lemon had secretly pined for him.

  So even though Lemon had no brothers and sisters, family and friends had ultimately kept her from ever feeling lonely, from ever feeling alone. But now? What did she have to lean on now? Who did she have?

  “Shepherd,” she said out loud, not because he was the answer to her query, but because she suddenly realized that she’d felt this same loneliness even when he was here on the island. At the moment, she couldn’t even say for certain whether she even loved Shepherd. She respected him. She admired him. She was inspired by him.

  But love?

  Despite her dark mood she laughed, remembering the words Shepherd had said to her that eventually led her to take him up on his insane offer—run from her legal troubles to a paradise where she could start all over.

  He’d come from nowhere when she was in the midst of her darkest hour, the trial for Elena’s justice almost ready to start. Lemon hadn’t questioned Shepherd’s appearance or his timing. He was just…there. Taking her hand, shaking his head, his smile as crooked and sexy as her father’s.

  “What?” she’d asked. They were at a local park and marina on a night like this one, the water like a sheet of glass, silvered by the moon. Lemon loved the moon. Loved it then with a sense of urgency, a court appearance upcoming, her freedom in great peril.

  “I’d better not say,” Shepherd said.

  “Are you serious? You can’t do that.”

  “I want to give you an opportunity for a new life, Lemon. That should be all I’m thinking about. It’s improper for me to fill your head with romance.”

  “Romance?”

  He nodded. “Oh, if you could only move about in my head.”

  “What would I find?” she asked softly.

  “Silliness. The lovesick thoughts of a fool.”

  “I don’t believe I could ever think of you as silly or a fool, Shepherd. You’re the most serious man I’ve ever known.”

  “So you say.”

  “Try me. Share some of your lovesick thoughts with me.”

  He was silent for a long time. Then: “Your eyes.”

  “My eyes…?” she prodded.

  “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses,” he said, looking into her eyes, not the least bit embarrassed.

  She’d blushed like a damn rose.

  It wasn’t until Lemon came to the island, and had grown comfortable with Candace, relaying the story to her new friend, that Lemon learned the truth.

  Candace chuckled and smiled. “The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses. I believe that’s E.E. Cummings, sweetie.”

  “E.E. Cummings?”

  Candace nodded. “The poet. I dated a guy once, right after college when I was most easily impressed; he was full of wondering sperm and mock angst. Played the intellectual, to the hilt. He had volumes of poetry on his bookshelf that he never actually read. I read it myself and didn’t think any less of him for it. Thanked him, actually, for raising my appreciation of the form. By default but still…”

  “Yeah,” Lemon said, smiling, something alive in her starting to wither like…a rose.

  “It’s still very sweet,” Candace had said. “Shepherd’s got some game about him.”

  Lemon held her smile. “Very sweet. Of course.”

  Candace frowned. “Did I ruin it for you? Your love story?”

  “Not at all,” Lemon assured her.

  She sighed now, remembering how much Candace’s insight really had ruined it, and in the next moment the repaired front door finally opened, announcing itself with a creaking sound Lemon would never blame Aiden for, even though he’d been the one to fix the door.

  He stumbled into the room, abetted by another shove from Will. Will got off on shoving folks around.

  “Turns out his ankle isn’t broken after all,” Will said. He smirked and left, slamming the fixed door behind him.

  Lemon looked at Aiden. He was filmed with sweat, scratched and bloody.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “You’re on my bed,” he responded.

  She looked down as if to check, said, “Oh, yes, of course. Come sit,” and leaped up to assist him.

  Aiden brushed past her and plopped down hard on the cot. He sat up on the side, looking as though he was too exhausted to actually lie down.

  “I could clean those scratches up for you,” Lemon said. “And give you a clean shirt.”

  “One of Shepherd’s?” he said, a hint of rage in his voice.

  “You have a right to be angry.”

  “You don’t get sick of saying that?”

  “I’ll just be a moment,” she said, not wanting to push him any further.

  Shepherd kept a small bucket in the backyard. Lemon went out there and filled it halfway with water from the cistern. Back inside, she grabbed a rag she’d made from a pair of panties she couldn’t free of a stubborn menstrual stain.<
br />
  “You’ll need to take that shirt off,” she told Aiden.

  “Are those undergarments?” he asked, crinkling his nose at the rag in her hand.

  “Silk,” she said, smiling. “An old pair of my panties. Only the best for you.”

  “Christ.”

  “Let me help you with your shirt.”

  He shooed her away. She could see that something was wrong with his left shoulder; he winced as he tried to raise the arm.

  “I’m here to help,” she reminded him.

  “Just put the bucket where I can reach it,” he growled.

  His voice actually had the low register she associated with dogs.

  “I’ll put it and the washrag right here,” she said, indicating a spot on the cot next to him. “Careful not to knock over the bucket.”

  “Panties,” he muttered as he snatched the rag.

  It took great effort for him to lift the tattered, filthy shirt he was wearing above his shoulders. Lemon forced herself to stay still as he paused with the shirt comically draped over his head. His hard breaths making the material pulse like a beating heart. Then he managed the shirt all the way off, and dipped the rag in the water, shaking his head in disgust. A blossom of angry red marks covered his chest. He wiped at them first.

  For the first time, Lemon noticed his physical form: flat stomach and chest, the hint of a six-pack, a swell of biceps, nice enough shoulders.

  Aiden looked up at her. She didn’t look away.

  Neither of them, however, said a word.

  He shook his head and went back to washing his scrapes. On his arms now.

  After some time, without looking up, he asked, “How did you end up with Shepherd?”

  “Been wondering about that, huh?” For some reason Aiden’s question made Lemon’s stomach do cartwheels.

  “It’s just a question,” he said, still not looking at her, fingering his belly-button with the wet rag. An inny, just like her.

  “Aiden?”

  “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  He did.

  “Why do you want to know about me and Shepherd?” she said.

  “Just making conversation,” he said. “I could care less.”