But he wasn't, and it didn't.
She turned on the shower and stepped under the water, wishing it could wash away every memory of the previous night. She scrubbed her skin roughly, punishing the offending bite marks, but they wouldn't fade, and she wondered what Jan would say if she knew what had happened. The idea of keeping such a secret from her best friend offended her, yet she knew that Jan would feel resentful, especially after she had just warned Courtney about the dangers of getting involved with David.
Once done with her shower, she felt refreshed, though the evidence of last night's tryst remained etched in her flesh like grotesque tattoos. The stormy weather bringing cool air struck her as fortunate, for jeans and a long-sleeved sweater would not appear unduly conspicuous. In fact, she noticed now that her room seemed quite chilly. Thankfully, they had no plans to visit the beach today.
It was just after seven, and Martha would likely be the only one already up and about. Courtney felt tempted to go confront the woman and damn the consequences, until she paused long enough to consider what those consequences might mean to her. At best, she would have to leave the Blackburns. And then where would she go? She didn't have a car or enough money to stay even a single night at a hotel.
She left her room and stood in the hall, listening. No sound came from anywhere in the house, and she wondered if Martha intended to avoid her for as long as she remained here. On that hopeful note, she headed for the back door and, after peering through the window to make sure the yard was empty, stepped out to the little stoop, boldly facing the shadowy woods as if to prove to any spying eyes that she had survived the night. Still, back here, where the trees pressed so close to the house, she felt small and exposed, even in daylight, and the memory of having come out in the dark, against her will, nearly sent her fleeing back inside. But she steeled her nerves, determined not to succumb to fears of phantom horrors.
The wind gusted fiercely through the branches, sending them into clattering motion, and thick, purple and black cumulous clouds rolled slowly overhead like undulating bruises in the sky. She stepped into the dew-frosted grass and went around the corner of the wing to stand outside her bedroom window, thinking that if her visitor from the past two nights were anything other than a dream it would have left some sign.
The grass did appear flattened in places by some great weight, though she could not make out any distinctive pattern. She took a few steps toward the woods, where the grass gave way to tall weeds and thick mud, and after a few moments' examination, she froze, her heart leaping to her throat.
If it wasn't a footprint, it was the strangest mark upon the earth she had ever seen: two semicircular impressions, forming something resembling a huge hoof, fully two feet long, with several smaller, snakelike indentations around their edges. One end was deeper than the other, as if the maker's weight had shifted forward. As if it were walking. Her eyes roved deeper into the woods, and six feet farther in, she found a second print. To the right, she spied another set of tracks, much smaller — her own — which stopped and reversed themselves just a few feet into the trees.
It occurred to her that the giant prints led out of the woods. She saw none going back in.
Taking a deep breath, she continued into the thick foliage and spied another of the huge, hoof-like marks a short distance ahead. She had no intention of venturing deeper into these inhospitable woods, but daylight and curiosity's grip had quashed most of her apprehension, and she felt no compulsion to rush back to the shelter of the house. Still, not far ahead, the dense, rustling boughs swallowed most of the day's gray light, and the rushing wind produced a disconcerting chorus of groaning and creaking from all around her.
At first, she thought it was just branches bending in the breeze, but then she realized that, some fifty yards into the woods, something was moving. An animal, or even a man, she thought, unable to make out details through the intervening trunks and limbs. An involuntary tightening in her chest, a herald of approaching dread, prompted her to start backing up, even as her eyes attempted to lock on the odd, shambling shape. For a few moments, it stopped moving, and the cold certainty that indiscernible eyes had fallen on her opened the gate for all the previous night's terror to come flooding back. As she watched, a pale, misty oval slid slowly into view from behind a thick poplar. Too indistinct to identify, but clearly enough, a face.
Not a human face.
Slowly — as slowly as if a ring of deadly vipers surrounded her — she turned around and began walking, picking her steps carefully so as not to slip in the mud and fall. A fall would be fatal. A fall would leave her helpless prey for the Monarch, but as long as she kept moving, she could get back to the house before it could reach her. She heard the heavy, sledgehammer thud behind her, then another, and she picked up her pace just a little, knowing it couldn't come into the house after her because Martha was in the house, and this was Martha's Monarch, wasn't it?
Once she broke free of the trees and found solid earth beneath her feet, she began to run.
Once back inside the house, she slammed the door and locked it, but remained at the window, peering through the glass into the trees, terrified but still determined, desperately determined, to view the thing that had taken such an intense interest in her.
There! There it was. Slowly approaching the house, its trunk-like body moving stiffly through the trees, its face lowering beneath the rafters of entwined limbs to peer in her direction.
Slowly, Courtney realized that the Monarch's face was a fat cluster of leaves at the end of a swaying branch, illuminated by a stray beam of sunlight that had burned its way through a gap in the clouds. The spindly body was a sapling caught in the wind, bumping and banging against the bole of a giant poplar.
"You've got to be shitting me," she whispered, realizing that she could no longer trust her own senses.
That she had lost credibility even with herself.
But the tracks. Those tracks were as real as the sturdiest oak out there, and nothing as illusory as sunlight on boughs could have made them.
She turned and went down the hall to the kitchen, where she found a dour-looking Martha standing at the counter, pouring the morning's first cup of coffee, and the old woman's unblinking eyes swiveled to regard her. Without breaking stride, Courtney raised a hand in greeting, said "Good morning, Martha," and continued on her way, heading to the staircase that led to the second floor. She marched up, went straight to Jan's room, and, without knocking, opened the door to find her friend just sitting up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
Her jaw dropped as Courtney came in, but seeing the look on her face, her expression changed to a thoughtful frown, and she asked, "What's the matter, honey?"
"Come outside with me, please."
"Why? What's wrong?"
"I have to show you something."
Jan looked perplexed but nodded. "Give me a minute, okay?"
"I'll be right here." Courtney stepped out to the hall, leaned back against the wall, and crossed her arms, trying to control her breathing to keep from hyperventilating.
Two minutes later, Jan appeared, dressed in a T-shirt, sweatpants, and tennis shoes. "Tell me what's wrong," she said, her tone slightly irate.
"Maybe you can tell me." She led the way down the stairs and back through the kitchen, where Martha continued to stand silently, glaring at them with unconcealed distaste.
"Morning, Martha," Jan said as they passed through.
"Yeah," the old woman said.
They went down the hall, out through the back door, and Courtney took Jan by the hand as she headed for the edge of the woods, more than half-afraid that the tracks would have somehow vanished.
She came to the first one, actually relieved to find it still there, and pointed to it. "Do you see that?"
Jan stared at the mark, her eyes widening a bit. "Of course I see it. What is it?"
Courtney showed her the next one, a few feet into the trees. "There are more of them back there. I thoug
ht maybe you could tell me what they are."
When she looked up at Courtney, her face was white. "No, I don't know what they are. Someone must have made them."
"Someone?"
Jan looked as if she might collapse into tears at any moment. "Apparently. How else could they be here?"
"You look spooked. What's the matter?" Courtney asked, staring hard at her friend.
"Nothing. I'm barely awake."
"What would you say if I told you these were the footprints of a living creature?"
Jan's mouth hung agape, her chest heaving as she breathed too fast and too deeply. Finally, she shook her head. "I'd think you had a vivid imagination. We have a prankster."
"And who would do such a thing?"
Jan's eyes flickered toward the house. She was barely keeping her composure and seemed on the verge of saying something significant, only to change her mind. "Maybe you should ask my brother," she finally said.
Courtney looked at the house as well, her brain shifting in new directions, trying to fit David into some pattern she might not have previously recognized. She had always suspected he might be guileful and — now she knew firsthand — even brutal.
However, as for last night, he had an airtight alibi. She almost started to say as much, but then cut herself off.
Now it was Jan's turn to regard her with curious eyes, and Courtney tried not to blush, but it was too late.
Chapter 9
Jan had not pressed her for any details, though after Courtney's foolish stumbling, she must have deduced the truth about her night with David. And Jan refused to elaborate any further about Aunt Martha's Monarch, so Courtney simply stopped asking. A wall now stood between them, and this, more than any fear of nocturnal horrors, twisted her emotions almost beyond tolerance. For all these years, Courtney had believed that she and Jan could share everything about anything, but her friend's stubborn silence and poorly preserved façade of normalcy convinced her this was no longer true.
Was it her going off alone with David last night? If so, then Jan was far more sensitive about the subject than Courtney had imagined.
Fortunately, Jan was happy enough to let her borrow her Jaguar to drive to Elizabeth City, and Courtney spent the morning and early afternoon exploring the town and filling out job applications. She targeted any place that might be able to use her considerable office management and customer service skills: insurance companies, the hospital, real estate agencies, even the local government offices. One Realtor happily accepted her application and asked her to come back for an interview the following week, to which she agreed, even though she had no experience or particular interest in the real estate business. Right now, though, she would take anything — anything — that would get her back on her feet and out on her own.
The silver Jag drew endless admiring looks from business owners and passersby alike, which she rather enjoyed, though she half-feared the expensive car might give potential employers the idea that she didn't really need the job. In her life, she had never desired extravagant things, but as she left Elizabeth City and hit the southbound highway toward Fearing, she realized how easily she could become accustomed to a car like this — not to mention everything it stood for.
She found herself wondering what kept David and Jan at their aging, secluded home in such a small town, one so overtly hostile toward them. In a way, she envied anyone who could claim a strong attachment to their ancestral home. Because her father had been in the Air Force, her family had moved frequently while she was growing up, and she had never had a chance to bond with any specific location. She had actually begun to care deeply for the home she and Frank had made in Atlanta, but now that place was poison, and if she never returned to Georgia at all, it was fine with her. Still, that was not the same as being surrounded by enmity, seemingly from all quarters — a situation that, to her, would become intolerable in a very short time. Perhaps, after their parents' deaths, Jan and David were discovering what it was like to bear the full brunt of the town's deep-rooted antagonism. Maybe Jan's wall was her coping mechanism, which Courtney could at least understand — yet she could not conceive of any reason for Jan to keep her on the outside.
When she pulled the Jaguar into the Blackburns' driveway, she immediately saw, parked next to the front walkway, a Town of Fearing police cruiser — all too likely, the same one she had seen in the Tall Ships parking lot the previous night. An electric buzzing began at the back of her skull, and her fingers tightened involuntarily on the steering wheel. She drove carefully around the cruiser and parked in the detached garage at the back of the house, wondering if this visitation had something to with their encounter with the Surbers. One thing was certain: given the things Jan and David had said about the local cops, one of them showing up here could mean nothing but trouble.
As if they didn't have enough of that already.
One eye on the woods, she went in through the back door and contemplated hiding out in her room until the visitor left. Her inevitable curiosity, however, refused to allow any such scheme, so she made her way down the hall, through the kitchen, and to the great room, from which low voices drifted through the door in somber tones. Just before she stepped inside, for one vain moment, she was glad she was dressed in her finest business attire rather than her typical casual wear.
The first thing she noticed was Jan and David sitting upright in their plush leather chairs at one end of the room, where the floor was elevated like a stage by a foot or so, the two of them looking for all the world like monarchs holding court. She almost went queasy at how quickly the term "monarch" came to mind. The police officer standing before them was a slender but densely muscled, gray-haired man with gunmetal eyes and startlingly large hands, one of which rested casually on the handle of his holstered revolver. His leathery skin was deeply tanned, his chiseled face ruggedly handsome. As she entered, his eyes regarded her curiously, and his other hand came up to stroke the bottom of his long chin.
"And you must be Ms. Edmiston," he said in a low, coarse voice.
David's face wore his customary dark smile. "Courtney, this is Mr. Flythe, our local police chief."
The chief nodded curtly to her, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "How long you plan to be here, Ms. Edmiston?"
"I'm not exactly sure," she said, moving to stand next to Jan, a little surprised by his question. "I'm staying here while I look for a job in Elizabeth City."
"Mr. Flythe has brought some rather disturbing news," Jan said, giving her only a brief glance. "Apparently there was some…unpleasantness…this morning."
"What does that mean?"
"It means murder, Ms. Edmiston." The older man's eyes bored into hers.
"Murder?"
"Mr. Hank Surber. He was killed sometime last night."
"Good God!"
Flythe's eyes refused to release hers. "I believe you'd made his acquaintance, had you not, Ms. Edmiston?"
Courtney could not suppress an irate scowl. "I would not say that, no."
"Perhaps I'm mistaken."
"Yes, you are. What happened to him?"
"Well, to put it bluntly, Ms. Edmiston, he was slaughtered. In fact, his body was brutally savaged." For a second, the chief appeared deeply unsettled. "Never seen anything like it."
"Why come here?" she asked, her voice weak. "I'm sure no one here would know anything about it."
"Interesting you should say that." He took a notepad from his shirt pocket and flipped through a few pages. "In fact, I have witnesses who claim that Mr. Surber and Mr. Blackburn here had an altercation last night that turned quite violent. I understand you were present at the time."
Now a few slivers of anger lanced her burgeoning fear. "You wouldn't happen to have been one of those witnesses, Chief Flythe?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Now, where would you get an idea like that, ma'am?"
"Because there was a police car in the parking lot when it happened. Whoever the cop was, he watched the whole thing without interven
ing."
"That doesn't sound very likely. If any of my officers witnessed a violent confrontation, they most certainly would intervene."
"Not last night."
"So you admit to being present at this altercation?"
"Yes," she said, despising the man for drawing her into such a dreadful situation. "Those two men — the Surber brothers — attacked David and me, and he acted in self-defense."
"And just how did Mr. Blackburn defend himself?"
She sent David a questioning look. His face remained impassive. "He sent them packing," she said, a little too tentatively.
"'Sent them packing.' Okay. How so? With his bare hands? Did he have a weapon?"
"Basically, the Surbers had knives, he disarmed them, and then invited them to leave. That was pretty much it."
"He didn't say anything about settling scores, or getting even, or anything like that — after he sent them packing?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Then exactly what?"
Courtney grimaced, realizing her tongue had slipped. "That's all," she said, anxious to avoid implicating David by revealing words he had uttered in the heat of the moment. "He ordered them to leave us alone. That's all."
"So, you misspoke earlier, Ms. Edmiston? You actually did know the victim."
"I would hardly call being attacked by him getting to know him. Would you, Mr. Flythe?"
He ignored her remark. "May I assume that, after you returned last night, you remained here for the rest of the night?"
"Yes, sir."
"How about Mr. Blackburn? Was he here all night as well?"
Now she felt both Jan and David's eyes on her, and her cheeks began to burn. "I believe so."
"You believe so. But you can't be certain?"
"During the time I was awake, he was here."
"And how late were you awake?"
"Nearly till dawn. I had a hard time falling asleep."
"Any particular reason?"
"Chief, I think my friend has given you as much information as you could reasonably expect," Jan said, flashing one cold eye at Courtney. "Since you're obviously not here to arrest anyone, I think it would be better if you left now."
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