by Ann Swann
Stutter Creek, she thought, and she immediately felt a little better.
Struggling from the bed, she pulled a suitcase from her closet and began to stuff it with jeans and T-shirts. Stutter Creek, New Mexico. The place where she and her father had fled after her mother’s death so long ago. The place where she had been both a little girl, and later, a young woman.
The place where she had experienced her first real crush.
Big John.
She was positive she would feel better at the Stutter Creek cabin. Already she felt lighter. Just the thought of doing something, instead of simply wallowing in self-pity, made her breathe a tiny bit easier.
It wasn’t until she was packed and taking a last minute shower that she let her mind drift back to the latest dream. Even in the stream of warm water cascading down her body, Beth shivered. Images of shadows crept into her mind. She wondered if she would ever sleep normally again. Would the nightmares continue at the cabin?
One thing was certain. The nightmares were getting worse here. They were unrelenting. Beth tried to remember what each one was about, but in truth, she was glad when she couldn’t. It was always just a feeling of doom, and that thick black shadow that blotted out the sun and seemed to soak up the very air around her.
As she stepped from the shower, she spied the grief counselor’s card tucked into the edge of the mirror on her dresser. Cindy, a registered nurse who just happened to be her closest friend, had given her the card only yesterday. She was well aware of the difficulties Beth was experiencing. She’d given her the card in hopes that she could convince her friend to attend a meeting and realize she wasn’t alone in her pain.
Beth recalled the feeling of revulsion she’d felt when Cindy had pressed the card into her hand. She didn’t want to expose her pain in public. And she certainly didn’t want to hear about someone else’s trouble.
But that had been yesterday, before the latest bout of nightmares. Now, well, what did she have to lose? She felt like she was nearing the end of her rope. Besides, Cindy said she didn’t have to speak, or even give them her name. The hospital referred lots of patients there. She said it was the policy of the group to let folks just sit and listen if that’s what made them comfortable. And she promised Beth that if she hated it, she would never mention it again.
Beth looked at the small, non-descript card. Cindy did have years of experience with grieving patients. Maybe it was worth a try.
Wrapped in a towel, dripping all over the rug, she picked up her cell phone and tapped in the seven-digit number. She still intended to head for Stutter Creek, but she was half-afraid things would be the same there. Or even worse. Perhaps Cindy was right. Maybe talking to a grief expert would ease her mind—and her fears—before she left. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She pulled the towel a bit tighter and listened nervously as the ringing began.
Chapter Three
Danny kept whining that he was cold. Kurt warned him to shut up. What more could the kid want? He had the hat Kurt had taken off a homeless man in the city.
Kurt knew how to keep his son quiet. The first night Danny had spent with him, Kurt had crushed up a prescription pill he’d liberated from his “buddy’s” medicine cabinet. He’d sprinkled some of the residue onto a McDonald’s hamburger. When Danny complained about the grit, Kurt had grabbed the rest of the burger and tossed it out the car window. The kid never complained about a gritty hamburger again. After that, sleep had taken over, and from then on Danny was seldom awake long enough to register anything.
Kurt was glad the pills made the kid thirsty. That’s what kept him in line. He only gave him something to drink when he did what he was told to do.
After Danny had lured Amanda to stop, Kurt had rewarded the kid with a can of lukewarm Pepsi. Danny had downed it quickly. Then he’d dozed off with his back against a live oak. That was just what Kurt intended. It had kept the kid out of Kurt’s way.
Danny had been too stoned to notice the lifeless body of Amanda Myers pushed down into the front floorboard. He didn’t even wake when Kurt stopped beside the road farther on, wrestled the petite young woman out of the car and heaved her body over the edge of a rough arroyo. Kurt looked at the kid sound asleep in the backseat. He hadn’t seen him since he was a baby, but he’d kept tabs on him all along. He knew this was his kid, even if the damn state had taken him away when his mom had gone missing.
Kurt had been in prison for five years, but that had just been for selling drugs; no one had ever officially connected him to his wife’s disappearance. As a result, he had never been blocked from knowing his son’s whereabouts.
After he was paroled, Kurt had snatched Danny right out of his current foster parents’ front yard. The boy had been playing with a friend when Kurt pulled up in a “borrowed” car. It took him only a minute to convince Danny’s friend to run home to fetch a Band-Aid for the serious-looking cut on Kurt’s hand. Then, when Danny drew closer, to inspect the self-inflicted wound, Kurt had grabbed him. It was almost too easy.
Danny begged to go home. But Kurt had convinced him he was really his daddy and the state had taken him away from him. What could a six year old really know?
After that, the boy hadn’t asked to go home anymore. He hadn’t asked anything at all. He just did what he was told. An Amber alert had been issued immediately. Kurt guessed someone missed the kid. But he’d heard the news on the car radio. The only thing the other kid had been able to tell them was that Danny had been taken by a man with a cut on his hand.
Kurt entertained himself by ruminating on his plan. He was so furious with the people who had taken away his freedom—especially that hotshot blonde Prosecutor—that he had thought of little else for the past five years.
Now, he had it all figured out. Danny was the bait, and blonde girls were the prey. Pretty little blondes like his missing wife, Sherry, and like that interfering Prosecutor. Kurt didn’t want to go back to prison, but someone had to pay for what he’d been through.
His wife had paid as soon as she’d started demanding money from him for things like diapers and formula; now it was time for the Prosecutor to pay. But first, he would show her how powerful he was.
The prison psychiatrist had diagnosed Kurt as a true sociopath. He had absolutely no regard for the rules of society. To Kurt Graham, it had always been about him and no one else.
He had gone through his life totally confused by all the rubbish the system had tried to ingrain into him about compassion, sympathy, and golden rules. None of that made any sense to Kurt. It was survival of the fittest, and that was all. He could spell the word “conscience” but that was as close as he ever got to having one. A conscience only got you in trouble.
He was listed as chronically depressed because he never seemed to fit in. Kurt had been self-medicating long before he got out of junior high school. Alcohol was his first drug of choice. But he’d quickly moved on to others. By the time he was sent to Alternative School for slashing a rival’s tires in the school parking lot, he was already an old hand at making his own drugs or selling himself to get the money from someone else.
As soon as he turned eighteen, he dropped out of school and began dealing drugs in earnest. He had just discovered heroin when Sherry moved in. The two of them were in the same shape. She would do anything for drug money. Neither wanted an actual job, or even an actual life. The fact that they were so much alike was what made them comfortable with each other.
It wasn’t long before she found out she was pregnant with Danny. And although she loved getting high almost as much as Kurt, she had tried to stay off the harder drugs while she was pregnant. She said she had no intention of being saddled with some brain-damaged brat. Then she had seen a reality show featuring a couple that had paid for a woman’s entire pregnancy, delivery, and a bonus. In fact, the couple had been so well to-do, they’d even bought the birth mother a new car.
That’s when Sherry had started trying to stay clean. She told Kurt they could get rid of the k
id and get a new car, too.
Kurt didn’t care about any of that. He was strictly a live for the moment kind of guy. So when Sherry quit partying and bringing in the drugs, or the drug money, he knew something would have to change. Giving up his dope just so she could play mommy was not an option. He’d warned her not to ever get pregnant. Obviously, she’d forgotten their agreement.
It had come as a complete surprise to him when she up and moved in with the couple who were planning to adopt the baby, but when they found out about Sherry’s drug history a few months later, they called the whole thing off. In the adoption paperwork, Sherry had checked NO when asked if she’d ever used illegal drugs. They kicked her out.
Kurt was infuriated, but he allowed her to come back to him on the condition she would give the kid up anyway, just as soon as it was born. Sherry had been a very good prostitute. Between the two of them, they’d been able to live just the way he’d always envisioned. Sleep all day, party all night. That’s all he wanted. No way he was going to support the both of them plus a kid.
So Sherry had agreed. But once the baby was born Sherry changed. Not only did she stop partying with him, she stopped whoring for him. She became useless.
Danny was almost a year old when Sherry went missing.
By the time Children’s Protective Services got involved, even Kurt had forgotten where he’d buried her body.
Someone had alerted CPS that Danny’s mother hadn’t been seen in a while, and they had paid him a visit, with police in tow, before he could get rid of his lab.
The caseworker had sat across from him in prison and read the report to him. They had discovered Danny in his crib, naked and caked with feces. The back of his head was flat from lying on his back constantly. They said it would take months to heal the bedsores on his malnourished little body.
After hearing the caseworker’s report, Carol Jones, the prosecutor, had made it clear that she was making it her mission to get Kurt as much prison time as possible. It was because of her that he’d finally been forced into sobriety for the first time since he was twelve years old.
He didn’t like that. Not one little bit. The world was one ugly damn place without the haze of drugs. That’s why she had to pay. Kurt had lain on his cot night after night writhing in cold, clear-eyed agony. He’d been stoned all his life for a reason. He didn’t like the world when he was sober. Stoned, he could tolerate it, barely.
But she would pay. He would see to that. Carol Jones may have gotten him locked away, but he’d had five years to develop his plan of revenge. She’d made it her mission to get him as much prison time as possible, so Kurt had made it his mission to kill one girl for every year he’d spent behind bars. And he intended to make certain she knew they were all dead because of her. Carol Jones hadn’t seen the last of Kurt Graham, not by a long shot.
Chapter Four
Purse gripped tightly in her lap, Beth sat in the folding chair with her ankles crossed and her eyes downcast. She still couldn’t believe she was actually attending a grief session. Cindy had offered to come with her, but in the end, Beth thought she would do better with people who didn’t know she was once the epitome of calm, centered, self-control.
After introducing herself to the group and listening to all of their introductions in return, she said, “All I want to know is whether anyone else has experienced . . . nightmares.”
She glanced around the circle of chairs to gauge their reactions, but most of the faces were blank. Some of them looked away or studied their laps or their shoes. So Beth continued, “I expected depression and sadness, maybe even guilt. But these dreams—”
They all began to talk at once. It was as if a dam had suddenly opened. Dalton, the grief counselor, could barely contain the outburst. Apparently, everyone had something to tell.
The lady in the red velour jogging suit said, “When my son died of a drug overdose, I had such vivid nightmares of him wandering lost through the house that I would sometimes awaken to find myself in another room, trying to catch him before he left again . . . it got so bad that my husband started sleeping on the sofa so I wouldn’t try to go outside.” Obviously holding back tears, she added, “I never walked in my sleep before. Not even as a child.”
Beth wanted to ask her how long it went on, but someone else was speaking.
It was the man in the Harley-Davidson tee shirt: “My Sue was killed by a drunk driver. She was a teetotaler, a Christian woman. We prayed together on our knees beside the bed every night before we went to sleep. Every night!” His voice broke as he held out his arms for Beth to see. “I had one tattoo while she was alive,” he said. “From my stint in the Navy.” Now, both his arms were covered from his wrist to the edge of his short-sleeved tee. “All these tats are memorials to her.” He pointed to one that appeared to be some sort of demon. “That thing was in my dreams a lot. I think it wanted me to find that drunk and kill him.” His bloodshot eyes were weary, watery. “He only got probation.”
He pointed to his other arm. A heavenly angel with blue eyes adorned his forearm. “This is my Sue. She’s still with me, too. In my dreams.” He looked away, an expression of shame crossing his face. “She wouldn’t want me to kill anyone.” Then he glanced hard at Dalton as if to say, I know we’ve resolved this already, but she asked.
Beth wanted to wrap her arms around him, around them both. But another man was speaking, a young man by the name of Jared. “My daughter, Taylor,” he whispered. “Leukemia. She was five. I’ll never let her go, dreams or no dreams. My wife left me. She couldn’t take the screaming. My screaming. The cancer threatens my little girl every night in my dreams. I can’t save her. I’ll never be able to save her.” He dissolved into his chair in tears and Beth did go to him, she couldn’t help it.
She knelt and placed her arms around him. He was like one of her students in need of comfort. Beth didn’t know the group protocol, but she knew the emotion. He held on to her and cried. Someone slipped a chair underneath her as she crouched beside him, and then she knew it was okay. She knew she would be okay, too.
If this poor man can keep on fighting, then so can I, she told herself. It isn’t like I lost a child. At least mine happened in the correct order: parents are supposed to die before children. Millions of people experience it everyday.
Finally, that one simple fact gave her a tremendous measure of comfort. Just knowing she wasn’t alone.
She called Cindy on the way home. “You were right. I’m not going crazy. It turns out that everything I’m experiencing is perfectly normal. In fact, Dalton said he’d be more surprised if I wasn’t having bad dreams. You know, seeing as how the two most important men in my life deserted me, so to speak. And then Abby—I keep dreaming about my little blond girl disappearing—well, she basically has, hasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Cindy agreed. “Italy is a long distance from here. I’m just glad you’re feeling better. Are you sure you’re ready to be totally alone, though?”
Beth assured her she was. Then she went straight home and loaded up the car.
She locked up the house and was almost overwhelmed with a tremendous feeling of melancholy. There was no one to know if she returned or not. The click of the deadbolt on the front door was very loud in the tiled entry. She gave herself a little shake to dislodge the blues, and then she turned off the kitchen radio, straightened her spine, marched out to the garage and slung her purse into the passenger seat of the ’69 Camaro. It had been her graduation gift from her father so many years earlier—a classic, even then—and they had spent many happy hours together as he taught her to care for it and keep it running. He always joked that she was the son he’d never had.
After a stop at the grocery store, she was finally on the road.
Streaking through the night like a flash of blue lightning on wheels, she glanced at the speedometer. Eighty. Slowly, she eased her foot off the Camaro’s accelerator. Her dad always said she had lead in her heel and ball bearings in her butt. The memory made her
smile, but it also made her recall how many times the two of them had made this trip together.
She wiped away a sneaky tear sliding down her cheek, but it was too late. Once the tears got started, more followed. And more. And still more, until she was blubbering and leaking like a forgotten faucet.
Everywhere she went, everything she did, triggered memories of her father, or her husband, or her daughter. She felt abandoned, a middle-aged orphan. The thought did not comfort her.
It occurred to Beth that the best part of her life might now be over. Both of her parents were gone, her only child was living in another country, and her spouse of a quarter century had simply tossed her out with the trash. She tried to combat it, but suddenly she was completely overcome. She felt old, alone, and useless.
The blubbering turned to sobbing, which turned to shaking, and then the shaking became so bad that her foot jerked on and off the accelerator. She tried to keep it steady, but trying only made it worse. She was on the verge of hysteria.
The on and off motion of her foot made the little car buck like a mechanical bull in need of a tune up. Anyone seeing the car juddering down the highway would swear the driver was three-sheets-to-the-wind. Or having some sort of medical emergency.
Beth began to wonder if she was having some sort of breakdown. Maybe the grief group had been a bad idea. All those emotions . . .
The shoulder of the highway wouldn’t stay put. Every few seconds, she would veer onto the shoulder and then back onto the highway. Her tires would kick up loose gravel and she would yank the steering wheel back toward the road. When she couldn’t seem to control it, Beth began to worry that she would overreact and wrench the wheel so sharply that it would cause her to roll.
That’s what finally helped her get her emotions in check. She took a deep breath. Her foot stopped spasming on the accelerator, her sobs tapered off to hiccups, and the hiccups replaced the shakes, at least for the most part.
