Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1)

by Justine Sebastian

  Josephine heard the tinny, far away voice of the operator still talking, but she didn’t have time to talk on the phone, she had more important things to do. She turned to go back to the window and the whole room spun around her, going counterclockwise as she turned clockwise to face forward again. Her stomach lurched; the front of her shirt and pants were soaked with blood. She thought she might very well be bleeding to death.

  What an ugly thought that was.

  She clambered up on the lip of the kitchen sink, moving more like a drunkard than ever, bloody, sweaty fingers slipping on the windowsill as she gripped it to steady herself.

  Almost. Almost. Josephine mouthed it to herself as she took a deep breath then stuck her head through the window. It pressed her wounds against the windowsill and she nearly screamed as the new insult to her mangled flesh set off the alarm bells of pain anew. She took another deep breath and swallowed back the rum and tofurkey flavored rush that came up her throat. Her stomach heaved and trembled as she fought the urge to vomit. Rain pounded against the roof so hard outside that she could not hear herself think, but the wind blowing the rain under the eaves to hit her feverishly warm cheeks felt like a blessing.

  With another surge of energy, Josephine popped her shoulders through the narrow window and relieved some of the pressure against her chest. She smiled as she wiggled around to pull herself the rest of the way through.

  Something warm and wet ran over her cheek and she froze, breath caught in her throat. She smelled vanilla-mint toothpaste. Her mouth began to quiver again. No wonder it had gotten so quiet on the other side of the door.

  It is smart, she thought even as she opened her mouth to scream. Josephine tried to shove herself backwards through the window, but it was quicker, moving like greased lightning to step in front of her. It had been leaning against the wall where she couldn’t see it, but she could look up and see its eyes shining in the dark like two pale silver moons as it reached for her.

  Its claws pierced her shoulders and dug in, she felt them curve beneath her skin, hooking into her. It yanked Josephine into the night as she screamed, rain coming down on her as she was flung over the porch railing. She hit the ground with a soggy thud and heard the snap of her left arm breaking. Still, she tried to push herself to her feet, mindless in her fear, her only thought that she wanted to live. When she only went sprawling on the wet grass again, she began to crawl, pulling herself along by digging her fingers into the soft soil, pushing with her toes.

  Then her feet left the ground as crushing fingers wrapped around her ankles. Josephine screamed and screamed and her fingers fighting for purchase in the grass left long, black wounds in the earth as she was dragged deeper into the darkness.

  19

  Nick sat at a table in Bouchon’s Café fiddling with his shirt sleeves and telling himself not to bounce his knee. He had never been on a date before and this one was turning out rather badly he thought, what with the other half of the equation not being present yet. He told himself it was because of the bad weather; it had started raining around dusk and showed no signs of letting up.

  He sipped his drink and looked up when he heard the bell over the door jingle. It wasn’t Crash, only some guy in sad pink sneakers with no umbrella. He stood in the doorway, water puddling around his shoes and Nick stared at him. He flagged down the waitress passing by and said that he had called in an order to go. She took one look at him dripping everywhere and looking like a more clean-shaven and cute version of the Uni-Bomber and nodded. The guy looked familiar to Nick and after only a second, it hit him who it was.

  The guy was Aaron Talley, a former associate and binge buddy of Nick’s from high school; he raised his hand in a little wave. Last he had heard about Aaron was he’d been sent up to do a nickel for breaking and entering. Not long afterward, Nick had flown out of Sparrow Falls on his old bike.

  Aaron glared at him, everything about his demeanor saying he suspected Nick was up to no good. Nick remembered Aaron being paranoid, but he didn’t remember him being so bad that a friendly wave was cause for deep suspicion. After a few seconds, recognition dawned on Aaron’s face and he raised his hand in a wave, though he didn’t come over to say hello. Nick thought that was goddamn weird, they had been friends and as far as Nick was concerned they were still acquaintances at the least. Apparently Aaron didn’t feel that way, which stood to reason; he always had been a squirrelly little fucker.

  The waitress brought Aaron his food; he passed her a credit card. She came back with his plastic a minute later; he signed the receipt and then left after another little wave in Nick’s direction.

  “Well, fuck you, too,” Nick said.

  He checked his watch; it was fifteen minutes after nine o’clock. He’d been sitting there less than twenty minutes, but it felt like forever. They were supposed to meet at nine o’clock and Nick was nothing if not punctual. Crash clearly did not operate on the same kind of clock that Nick did. It didn’t stop him from feeling dejected and stood up. With each rotation of the second hand around the numbers on his watch, Nick felt more and more like an idiot.

  He had about decided to go ahead and order, have a few more drinks and say to hell with Crash when the bell over the door chimed again. Nick looked up and that time it was Crash. He was dressed nicely, a pair of black slacks and a long-sleeved button-up shirt. Nick felt underdressed in his jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt, but he was not a dating sort, he had no idea what the protocol was. All he knew was Bouchon’s was not a fancy dress kind of place—no such restaurant existed in Sparrow Falls—but he had tried his best to look presentable. Crash had his back to Nick, arms extended through the door as he closed his sodden red umbrella. He ducked back inside and dropped it in the umbrella stand before he looked across the small room and smiled at Nick. His cheeks were rosy and his eyes were bright as he walked toward him.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Crash said. “The rain is awful. How’d you make it here on time?”

  “I left early,” Nick said.

  “Oh,” Crash said. “I should’ve thought about that. Are you pissed? You look pissed.”

  “I’m not,” Nick said honestly. “I had about decided you’d stood me up though.”

  “No, Nick, never,” Crash said. “I always show up when I say I will and sometimes when I don’t.”

  Before Nick could respond to that, the waitress brought Crash a menu and a drink.

  “I went ahead and got it for you since I know what you like,” she said. Her name tag said her name was Brandi.

  “You are the best waitress in Louisiana,” Crash said.

  “Oh, you hush,” Brandi said with a giggle and toss of her hair. She couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen and was clearly smitten with Crash. She had been polite and nice to Nick, but she was practically wiggling with glee now that Crash had arrived.

  Nick laughed and watched her go while Crash flipped open the menu and scanned the items. “So… You come here often?” Nick asked.

  “Yep,” Crash said. “It’s by far my favorite place to eat in Sparrow Falls. I like Stayin’ Alive, but it can get a little too kitschy for me sometimes.”

  “It’s a seventies themed diner,” Nick said. “Kitschy is what it aims for.”

  Stayin’ Alive was the only 1970s themed diner Nick had ever seen or heard of. It did a booming business, but he figured that was because the food actually was good, not because people were flocking to the place so they could relive the days of leisure suits and The Bee Gees.

  “The place is fucking awful,” Crash said. “But in a wonderful way. It’s just so cheesy; you can’t help but love it a little bit. Right up until they play “Roller Coaster” for the twentieth time. Then suddenly I find myself wanting to burn the place to the ground.”

  Nick nodded; pretty much anything by Donna Summer had a similar effect on him.

  Brandi came back and took the menu from Crash. They both ordered and she grinned at them before bouncing her way back to the kitchen to
deliver the order.

  “She’s hot for you,” Nick said.

  “She does adore me,” Crash said. “You know she asked me to be her prom date. I of course turned her down being the noble gentleman that I am. Also, I am too damn old for the girl.”

  “Brandi doesn’t seem to think you are,” Nick said.

  “Yes, well, Brandi is but a tot wherein I… I am a tater,” Crash said.

  “Well. All right,” Nick said. He flagged Brandi down for another drink while he thought that one over and Crash smiled serenely at him. “All that means is tater tot.”

  “Not really, not the way I look at it,” Crash said. “I was thinking more along the lines of the tater being in the tot.”

  Nick choked on the last swallow of his drink and stared across the table at Crash.

  “That’s fucking gross.”

  “Thank you,” Crash said.

  They lapsed into silence after that and Nick found himself fighting the urge to fidget again. He usually didn’t have trouble making conversation, he wasn’t shy and he had pretty good social skills after working with the public as he had for so many years. That was a nice way of putting it, but Nick liked the way it played out in his mind:

  What did you do before you came to work at Sparrow Falls Memorial?

  I was a public relations expert.

  In his head, Nick aced that bit of polite conversation.

  The problem, he soon realized, was that he was not ever put in situations like this one where he was expected to make small talk and chit-chat. He didn’t know how to force conversation. It was weird how the word “date” changed things so drastically that he could do nothing but look into his drink and tell himself, Say something.

  Crash seemed content to sit there and watch Nick, which made him more uncomfortable.

  “You’re not from Sparrow Falls are you?” Nick asked. It was abrupt and maybe a little rude, but at least it broke the silence.

  “What gave me away?” Crash asked.

  “I don’t know you,” Nick said. “I went to school here and you’re about the same age as I am, so I would have recognized you from high school unless you moved here after I… left. That and your accent is different.”

  Crash raised his shoulders in a shrug and leaned forward. “Okay, okay, I confess: I am not a local.”

  “Where are you from then?”

  “Michigan,” Crash said. “However, I was born in Romania. We moved to the U.S. when I was little boy though and I am a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. Hurrah.”

  Nick mulled that over for a minute then just asked, “Why in hell did you move here then? Sparrow Falls is like the last stop on your way to Weirdsville, there aren’t that many jobs and there are two fucking serial killers active in this town.”

  “Weirdsville,” Crash said. The corners of his mouth twitched. “Is there really such a place around here? If so, we have to at least go there for a visit.”

  “There isn’t,” Nick said. “There is Transylvania though.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “I do say.”

  “I’ll be,” Crash said. “I should definitely visit there.”

  “There’s not much to it,” Nick said.

  “Spoilsport,” Crash said. He looked amused though. “Where did you work before the hospital?”

  “One of the many plate shops run by the Texas Department of Corrections,” Nick said. “You?”

  Crash blinked and cocked his head to the side. Then he said, “Oh. Oh, really? Really? What did you do?”

  “I shot a man in Reno,” Nick said. “Just to… ya know. Then I crossed state lines, got in a whole lot of shit and ended up extradited back to Texas because they’ve got sway apparently.”

  “Lies, all lies,” Crash said. “Funny though. Really, what did you do? Or wait—I’m being nosy. I do that.”

  “It’s fine,” Nick said. “I was a drug runner; I went across the border, picked the shit up and brought it back. In a car. Not up my ass. That’s the biggest difference between a runner and a mule, at least as far as I was ever able to glean.”

  “What kind of drugs?” Crash was leaning so far over the table that Nick could see the flames from the little cluster of three votive candles on the table dancing in his pupils. The orange of the flames licked across the grey of his irises and turned them to pale yellow gold.

  “Cocaine, heroin, pot even,” Nick said. “I got busted with a car full of meth though.”

  “Have you ever seen—”

  “I’m getting caught up on Breaking Bad now,” Nick said.

  He had seen that one coming. Everyone asked him that once they found out what drugs he had been transporting. Nancy had bought him the first two seasons for Christmas, Hylas provided him with seasons three and four and Dawn Marie gave him season five. Most of what he had gotten for Christmas was television shows and a nice set of clothes from Nancy, too, to make sure he always had something to wear if he needed to look nice.

  “Good, good,” Crash said. “Walter White is my spirit animal.”

  “How’s that work?”

  Crash waved a hand and shrugged. “I don’t know how it works, I only know that it does. I love the whole knocking thing.”

  “Knocking thing?”

  “You haven’t gotten that far then,” Crash said. “I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll know when you see it though. What was prison like?”

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me what you did before you moved here,” Nick said.

  “Ah, yes, all right,” Crash said. “I did the same thing in Michigan that I do here in Sparrow Falls. I was a morgue attendant. I wanted a change of scenery—hell, I needed one and I started looking for jobs online. I’d do a different state every week and lo, I found this gem under L, obviously. I did a phone interview and all that good stuff. Then before you could say ‘long distance plan’ I was on my way to Louisiana, home of crawfish boils, king cakes and other assorted culinary delights.”

  “It’s also the birthplace of jazz,” Nick said. “Can’t forget that. I wish we had gotten the blues instead of jazz though. I hate jazz.”

  “Isn’t that like blasphemy here?” Crash asked.

  “Yeah, kinda,” Nick said. “But I don’t care. Jazz fucking sucks.”

  “All of the brass instruments hurt my ears,” Crash said. “Especially trumpets. Sweet Mary in a peepshow is that painful.”

  Nick laughed. Something about the way Crash talked amused the hell out of him. It was odd and dated, but that was part of what he found charming about it. That and he was almost certain that at least half of Crash’s little sayings were made up on the spot.

  Brandi arrived with their appetizer, fluttered her lashes at Crash and then left again. Nick whistled low and shook his head before he plucked off a piece of the large blooming onion Crash had ordered.

  “She really is unsubtle isn’t she?” Crash asked, watching her go. Then he turned his attention back to Nick. “I was wondering… Was the meth—”

  “No, it was not blue,” Nick said with a little smile.

  “I get the feeling I am not the first person to ask you these questions,” Crash said.

  “God no,” Nick said. “Everyone that knows asks if I’ve seen Breaking Bad and then they want to know what color the meth was. And the things is, I don’t really remember that particular batch. Most of it is whitish or greyish, sometimes yellowish. Then there’s Christmas tree meth, which is green.” The shit was green because they used Drano to make it. That had not stopped Nick from partaking.

  “How festive,” Crash said.

  “You feel really goddamn festive. For days,” Nick said.

  “So you… ah… Did the drugs, too?”

  “Uh-huh,” Nick said. He ate a few more pieces of blooming onion. “A lot there at the end.”

  “And now?”

  “What about now?”

  “Do you still do drugs?”

  “No,” Nick said. “Pretty sure every jun
kie on the planet would say the same thing I am about to say, but here goes anyway: I never meant to end up an addict. Before I ended up in Texas, I wasn’t either. I did drugs, yeah, but I never was really hooked. I could do without and I might not like it, but it was manageable. Then I left and got stuck in Texas when I only meant to pass through on my way to fuck knows where; but probably Los Angeles because my imagination just didn’t stretch too far past getting out of this place. Anyway though, yeah. I got stuck, I got addicted and so the sad old story of users everywhere goes. Blah-blah-blah. The end.”

  “And then you came back home,” Crash said.

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Nick said. “My idea of living on a beach somewhere no longer held any appeal and I fucking well didn’t want to stay in Texas after all of that shit. So, yeah, I came home and ya know, despite all the freaky shit and homicide that goes on here, it’s not as bad to me now as it was when I left it. How long have you been here?”

  “I’ve been here since the end of July or thereabouts,” Crash said. “I was a little unsure about moving so far from home, honestly, but I like it here. The people are friendly and yes, the food is amazing. Sparrow Falls is a place with character, too, the stories you can hear about the goings on in this one place are mind blowing. I find it all fascinating. I’m rather partial to the library poltergeist story.”

  Nick smiled at that one. “Yeah, it is a good one.”

  “Oh and the haunted funeral home,” Crash said.

  “You into ghosts or something?”

  “Not particularly, but you’ve got a poltergeist that pushes people down in the sci-fi section and a schizophrenic ghost,” Crash said. “Those are fun.” He plucked off a piece of the blooming onion and then leaned back in his seat, gesturing with the little piece of fried root vegetable. “Of course, I suppose my new favorite tale is the Werewolf of Sparrow Falls. That’s one for the record books.”