Whisper Lake (The Turning Book 2)

by Micky Neilson

  "Been a little while," Celine said.

  "Yeah, some meth lab nonsense out in the county had me away for a bit, but I'm back now." Though Ty's jurisdiction was the entire county, he had made Whisper Lake his home.

  "Mom's not here," Celine offered innocently. Of course, she knew why Ty was there. And, he knew that she knew why he was here.

  "Oh, that's alright," Ty said. "If it's all the same I'd like to shoot the breeze with you for a bit."

  "I gotta be at work before long but come on in."

  Ty wiped his boots on the mat in front of the door after Celine opened it. Once inside, he groaned as he took a seat on the couch. Celine closed the door and sat in her mother's chair.

  "How's Lucie?" Ty asked.

  "At the doctor. Again."

  The older man nodded. Nothing new there. "And your brother?"

  "Still working on his bachelor's." Celine hadn't thought about Roland in a while. He was quiet, reserved, and stand-offish to anyone who wasn't family. Celine always thought it appropriate that he was studying mortuary science.

  "Good. Your mom told me about Jason's accident. Sorry to hear, but I guess you're happy he's on his way back."

  Celine smiled.

  "Well," Ty leaned forward. "I wanted to talk to you about what happened at the Whisper last night. I guess you know CJ Pruitt's truck ended up in the lake. Him and some of the boys pulled it out this morning. I've spoken to him and he said the two of you had some words."

  "He tell you he tried to rape me?"

  Ty's brows furled upward in the middle. "What? When did this happen?"

  "It's been a little while. I fought him off."

  "Why didn't you come to me?" Ty had seemingly forgotten about the truck. He had always looked out for Celine, it was true, but what if she had gone to him? It was her word against CJ's.

  "I should have. But look it's over, I'm done with it. I argued with him at the Whisper, got pissed, and left. Okay? That's it. You can talk to Kyra Richie about CJ's truck, she'll tell you it was right where he left it when I took off."

  "She did say that," Ty responded. He scooted forward a bit on the couch. "I want you to know that whatever happened, whatever does happen, you can always talk to me. Okay? You know I mean that. Every word."

  She did know. Though she never quite knew why he watched over her so faithfully. She didn't like lying to him, and she felt sure that Ty could see right through it anyway, but even so the old guy wasn't going to press the issue. It made her feel worse. "Yeah," she said. "But if I don't get to the Wayside I'll never hear the end of it."

  "Okay." Ty worked his way to a standing position. "If you think of anything else, you give me a call."

  Ty walked Celine out to her Jeep. "Be careful," he said, holding the driver's side door open. "Despite you not bein' the one responsible," he continued, being coy without sounding coy, "if CJ thinks you did it he might look for some kind of payback."

  "Well if he does, he's got you, me, and pretty soon, Jason to deal with. Let him keep stirring shit up," Celine said and closed the door.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Wayside Cafe was a greasy spoon located just off the main highway. It had been around for as long as Celine could remember— she used to eat here with her dad at least once a week growing up. The management had changed hands a few times but the name had remained. Celine's relationship with the Wayside was love/hate. She hated working her ass off for peanuts, but she loved the familiarity of the place. The vinyl booths, the long lunch counter, the old time jukebox, Hell, even the shiny napkin dispensers exuded some sense of stability. It seemed as though time stood still here. Sometimes that was good, sometimes it wasn't.

  Celine had only been at work a few hours when a young couple with a baby nearly brought her to tears. They were in town visiting relatives, showing off their eight-month old, and they looked happy.

  Typically, Celine wasn't the type to dwell on matters; she got pissed, she vented, and she got over it and moved on. But obviously CJ's outburst was still eating away at her. She had brought the couple their order, looked down at the baby, and her heart melted when the adorable girl looked at her with gorgeous blue eyes and smiled.

  For the next five minutes she sucked on a cigarette in the ladies' room stall.

  The choice she had made years ago, just after she had turned seventeen, was the most difficult decision she had ever come to. She hadn't been ready for a child, and she knew it. There were so many reasons: she was still just a kid herself, there would have been no way for her to provide any kind of a life for a kid and still have a life of her own, and she knew that she would have had to give up her education. She just couldn't see herself raising a baby in that trailer with her hypochondriac mother. On top of all that, her friend Becka had dropped out of school to have a baby. A little while later Becka's boyfriend left her high and dry and her life was miserable. Yes the reasons were many, but above all of them was her firm belief that it didn't make sense to bring a new life into a world that continually disappointed her.

  Jason had been supportive. Celine's Mother had ultimately supported her as well, though they had argued for hours on end. Now, upon learning that Jason had confided the "secret" to CJ, it made her wonder if Jason had really wanted the baby after all… despite him telling her that she was making the right choice.

  So she sat in the stall puffing a cancer stick, thinking about Becka, about the couple sitting near the window with their gorgeous smiling baby, and how they looked like the happiest people in the world. She wondered for the thousandth time if she had made the wrong choice. Becka's life situation had scared her because Becka had ended up in a dead-end job, living with her mother and just generally hating life.

  Sounded pretty fucking familiar.

  Come on, shithead. Suck it up.

  Celine left the ladies' room and put on a brave face, making sure not to look down at that baby when she brought the couple their check. She tried to push their happiness from her mind as she pocketed the five dollar tip they left… and cursed herself for sneaking one last look at them as they walked out the door. She spent the rest of the night in a kind of daze and as she slipped on her jacket, she said goodbye to Burt, the owner/chef and the other girls. When Celine stepped out the back door, all she was looking forward to was a cup of wine and bed.

  There was a biting chill in the air, and the threat of rain from the stark clouds above. Celine had just dug her keys out of her purse when she noticed something wrong with her Jeep. It was too low. There was only a small light above the diner's back door and she had to squint as she walked across the small parking lot to her vehicle.

  "Son of a bitch!"

  The rear tires were flat. She walked around to the front. "Fuck!" Those tires too. Now she would have to get Burt or Sally to—

  Suddenly, she heard the rushing of steps across the pavement. There was a blur of motion in the dark, a bone-shuddering impact, and then she was on her back staring at the night sky. The man was hovering close over her, blue eyes glaring and fogging breath emanating from a black ski mask. She had little time to notice anything else before a hard blow caught her across the cheek and another smashed into her right eye. The man was breathing heavily, and struck twice more before he was up. She thought he had left. Then pain exploded in her ribs, a low wheeze escaped her as another hard kick landed.

  Then there was the crunching sound of footfalls as the attacker ran, leaving Celine clutching her battered body, coughing blood onto the asphalt.

  ***

  "Was that a body?"

  Jason turned to Styles, but the passenger seat was empty. This wasn't right; he wouldn't be driving alone.

  You're dreaming.

  He turned his attention to the road. There were no vehicles ahead, only a never-ending band of blacktop lit by an overly full moon. The orb hung so low it seemed almost close enough to break through the earth's atmosphere; a massive, scrutinizing presence, like a milky eye peering through a magnifying glass.
<
br />   There were forms large and small scattered in the road ahead and littering the whitewashed desert sands to either side; vehicles and human remains.

  Jason was back once again on Death Highway.

  This was a familiar dream. But in the others Styles had been next to him, as she had been in real life, when the truck struck something in the road and he turned to ask if what they had hit was a body. In his previous dreams, as in real life, there had been no intrusive, bloated moon. Why was this dream different?

  The five ton's motor wound down, its sluggishness radiating through the steering wheel. It was like driving through molasses. The truck slowed to a crawl and stopped.

  Several meters to his left was a tipped-over bus. Ahead, the burned out husk of a light armored vehicle. And littered all about were bodies. Bodies and pieces of bodies.

  The last thing Jason wanted to do was leave the relative safety of his vehicle, to step outside…

  Wake up. You can make yourself wake up.

  He was no longer in control of his body as he opened the door and slid out of the driver's seat.

  With a slow, heavy tread he walked to the front of the five ton then further toward the armored vehicle, passing the corpse of a dark-skinned man wearing the uniform of the Iraqi Republican Guard. The corpse was lying in an awkward position, his right foot severed at the ankle and resting a few inches from the leg.

  Jason stopped before he reached the armored vehicle. To his right, sitting half-off the road, was the charred shell of an Ashok Leyland truck. Its driver, a human briquette, sat in the driver's seat, blackened hands clawing the steering wheel.

  Jason turned his attention to the impossibly large moon. He heard a voice behind him:

  "Beautiful, isn't she?"

  The voice was familiar. Jason turned to see Serrano standing in front of the five ton; the same position he'd been standing in when Jason dreamed of him before, behind the hospital privacy curtain. This time, however, instead of holding a roughly chiseled relic, Serrano was holding the head of Private Szymczyk—Alphabet. Those eyes were staring at Jason once again, just as they had on the night of the attack. The greatest difference now was that a malevolent intelligence lurked behind the glassy stare.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up…

  Serrano was smiling. The blood on his camo shone in the moonlight. "The Far Reaching One is bound by the Lady of Sorrow," he said.

  There was a creaking sound: Jason looked to the Ashok Leyland truck. The head of the driver, large chunks of skin peeling from the blackened skull, had turned to face him…

  Jason popped awake, drawing short, ragged breaths.

  Once again he was in a hospital room. This was similar to the room he had occupied in Baghdad, except the space was larger (this was a two-person room) and the walls were white. It took a moment for the fog of sleep to lift, for Jason to remember that he had arrived in Frankfurt, Germany, just yesterday.

  He lifted his bandage-wrapped arm and wiggled his fingers. There was no pain. In fact, he felt strong, healthy… in body if not in mind. The dread of his nightmare still lingered. What did it mean?

  The Far Reaching One is bound by the Lady of Sorrow.

  To his right was an empty bed. Why keep him here by himself? Jason was half asleep when he was brought here. A sudden panic took hold. What if he wasn't, in fact, where they said he was?

  They know.

  The blood test. Yes, of course they knew. He had been brought to some top secret federal facility. Though he hadn't seen a guard, Jason was absolutely certain that if he walked to the door he would see a sentinel posted there.

  He rose from his bed and shuffled to the doorway. His room was at the end of a long hallway. Jason peered out and saw no guards, but two officers in full dress uniform. He couldn't make out the ranks that the overhead lights were glinting off of, but the gray-haired man in front had a full rack of service medals.

  This is it. They're coming for you.

  The gray-haired officer was in conversation with the second officer. They didn't notice as Jason pulled his head back into the room.

  It's not too late to run.

  No, it didn't make sense. Why send high-ranking officers to come and lock him up? He needed to stop being paranoid and get ahold of himself. The footsteps in the hall were drawing closer.

  Jason ran back to his bed and managed to pull the sheets over himself when the two men stepped through the doorway. The gray-haired one was smiling as Jason stared at his collar rank: three-star general. The general's steely eyes fixed on Jason.

  "Son, how we doin'? I'm general Wagner. Heard you had a run-in with some kind o' animal. What happened?"

  The other officer stood quietly nearby, his hands clasped behind his back.

  What's he hiding? What the fuck are they going to do to me?

  "I don't remember much, sir. An animal… like you said." Jason swallowed. "Bit my arm. It's not really that bad, though, I mean everything's healing up good. I'm fine, really."

  General Wagner's eyes studied Jason closely. "Yeah? You sure about that? You're feelin' okay, everything's good?"

  The general held his hand out to the officer. Jason watched, alert and anxious. "Yes sir," he replied.

  "Well that's real good, son. So listen, the reason I'm here today…"

  The officer pulled out a certificate from behind his back.

  "Is to give you this purple heart."

  Jason let out a long, grateful sigh of relief and listened as the general began to describe the history of the award once known as the Award for Military Merit, now called the Purple Heart.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The day before yesterday Celine's face had felt like a saddlebag full of broken glass.

  After surgery for an orbital fracture, she had awoken to a bright room, her mother seated near the hospital bed, eyes glued to the wall-mounted television and that day's episode of the People's Court. Once Mom had realized she was awake, Celine hadn't felt like talking much. When Mom asked her how she felt, she simply shrugged. The truth was she felt numb. Physically. Emotionally was a different story altogether. Celine was experiencing several emotions: confusion, disbelief, frustration, despair… but beneath it all was a swift undercurrent of rage. It was there; the truth was it was always there, just looking for the path of least resistance.

  Jason won't need to take that fucker down. I'll do it myself.

  Aside from the hairline orbital fracture and several bruised ribs, Celine had gotten off fairly lucky. Her attacker, for the most part, hit like a pussy. And, he had hit awkwardly, now that she thought about it, as if he wasn't used to inflicting injury.

  Ty had shown up close to noon, and then Celine talked plenty. Though her jaw ached something fierce even with the pain killers, she told Ty everything she could remember about the assault. Ty, God bless him, had looked even more upset about the whole thing than Celine was.

  There had been more visitors throughout the day including, of course, Kyra. Her best friend's relationship with her boyfriend (whose name she had the worst time remembering, though she didn't know why) was off and on, but her final year of classes at Willamette, a Liberal Arts University in Salem, were proceeding smoothly. They chatted for a solid hour before Kyra went to meet what's-his-name.

  Jason's mom Bethany hadn't shown, but that wasn't a huge surprise. Bethany hadn't really approved of Celine from the word go. Still, Celine missed Jason's sister Trish and would have liked to have seen her.

  Jason's sister had mental retardation and cerebral palsy that affected all four of her limbs. She was confined to a wheelchair and had difficulty speaking and learning. Despite these handicaps, Celine had gotten to know Trish during the time she had spent dating Jason. Before then Celine had known very little about the mentally handicapped. She had assumed that someone with a condition like Trish's could not understand or communicate with others. She had learned from Jason that Trish understood what was said to her, and that she was able to communicate effectively through vo
calizations and body language.

  Celine had often wondered what it must have been like for Trish to be trapped in a defective body. As she lay awake past visiting hours, she had begun to understand perhaps just the barest hint of what Jason's sister lived with every day. The doctors had kept Celine overnight for observation, and late into the evening she had dreamt of the attack. In the dream she clawed at the ski mask, shouting "I know it's you, you fucking prick!" In her mental fabrication she was able to rip the mask off, but what this revealed was simply a blank face, like those of the featureless, poseable wooden mannequins used by artists.

  Early this morning Celine had been released. Her mom drove her home from the hospital in Salem. Shortly after she had returned home, her Brother Roland stopped by. He had gained weight and was growing his beard out again, which always made Celine think he looked like Father Murphy. Roland never spoke much, but he had sat with her a while and asked if she wanted him to "pay CJ a visit." It was a nice gesture, but Roland just wasn't the violent type (Celine suspected that the all the hostile genes in the family had been passed directly to her). He knew it, and he knew she knew it, but she guessed it had seemed like the right thing to say. Despite all this she was also quite sure that if she said yes, Roland would have done it. He would have gone to CJ and tried his damndest to lay a beating on the stupid shit. And he would have only succeeded in getting himself hurt, and arrested, and sued…

  She thanked him but said to let the police handle it. In her mind, what she had thought was: let Jason and me handle it. Roland had stopped in once more, just a few hours ago, before heading back to school in Seattle.

  Mom had run out for cigarettes and Celine was on the couch, halfway through a bottle of Boone's reading one of her true crime novels when the phone rang.