“I smelled it on you,” Crash growled in his ear.
“Shut up,” Nick said. He tried to be forceful, but he was starting to shake. This was wrong, everything about Crash was wrong and the more he learned, the more he saw, the more aware of that he became.
“I almost… I could’ve… Mhmm… Yeah. I could have,” Crash panted in his ear. “I wanted to, God you… you would have been so good. But no, I didn’t because you are everything I ever dreamed of and I couldn’t. Don’t you understand?”
“I know about Michigan,” Nick said. He was trying to derail him, to snap him out of his crazy spiel and get down to the business of saying, I know who you are and I know what you did.
Crash laughed and it stuttered in his throat on a low, long moan. “Michigan… Oh, Michigan… what a lovely place to live and die,” he sang in Nick’s ear around his panting, gasping breath. “I dream about you every night. Just let me love you, Nick. Nick… Mmm… oh, oh, NICK.”
Nick threw the phone then and listened to it hit the far wall as he bowed his head with an ugh sound in the back of his throat. “Sick. Fuck,” he bit out as he raked his hair back from his face. “Sick, sick fuck!”
Nick slumped against the counter and glared across the room at nothing. He felt violated and intruded upon; it didn’t frighten him even though it probably should have. It pissed him off something fierce. He was mad enough that he was about two seconds away from going down the hall, throwing on some clothes and driving over to Crash’s place so he could have the pleasure of kicking the shit out of the son of a bitch.
“Nick, is everything all right?”
Nick jumped with a curse and turned to look at Wes who took a step back when he saw the expression on his face. Only then did Nick realize that he probably looked as murderous as he felt and made a conscious effort to smooth out his expression.
“Did I wake you?” he asked as he looked away from Wes toward the living room where the phone, miraculously unbroken, was going bonk-bonk-bonk to let Nick know it was off the hook.
“You were yelling,” Wes said as he inched back toward Nick. He was rubbing his arms against the chill in the air, bare feet scuffing across the linoleum, the trailing cuffs of his pants whispering behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. He let out his breath in a deep whoosh then stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He hadn’t bothered to zip or button them and the action tugged them down low on his hips, but he didn’t care; they could slide all the way down his legs right then and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“Who’s a sick fuck?” Wes asked.
He put a hand on Nick’s arm and it was shocking in its warmth. He could feel the uncontrollable tap-jitter of Wes’s damaged pinky patting lightly against his skin.
“Nobody,” Nick said. “Donald Trump. The Marquis de Sade. I don’t know.”
“Um…” Wes tilted his head to peer into Nick’s face, an uncertain little smile tugging at his mouth. “The Marquis de Sade called you on the phone?”
Nick looked right at Wes and raised an eyebrow. “Were you eavesdropping, Wesley?”
“Oh. Oh, no,” Wes said. “I just heard the phone is all and then you yelled and then there was a thunk and then the phone was making that annoying sound. I just, you know, deduced that you were yelling at someone on the phone then threw it.”
“Good point,” Nick said. Trailers had walls about as thick as single ply paper towels. “It isn’t anything to worry about.”
“Nick… Nick, if something’s bothering you and you want to talk about it—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Nick said. And you don’t need to know.
Wes frowned at him and tilted his head again, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth.
Nick watched him in the watery, overcast light as thunder rolled in the distance and he felt something warm and liquid run through him. The sensation startled him; he had never felt such a thing before and it was as unpleasant as it was nice. Nick didn’t know what to call it and didn’t want to think too much about it. Instead, he reached out and drew Wes in, wrapping his arms around his scarred back. Wes’s head fit perfectly beneath Nick’s chin and he rested it there for a second before dipping his head to kiss Wes’s silky dark hair.
Wes held him back, turned his head to lay it against Nick’s chest and Nick knew he was royally fucked. This was not on the program, but he couldn’t make it stop because he didn’t want it to. He didn’t know how to deal with it either and his first instinct was to do something horrible to fuck it all up so it would go away and stop confusing him.
He held Wes closer instead and let Wes stroke his lightly trembling shoulders, smoothing away the rage that had boiled up inside of him for a little while. Somewhere out there, Crash was sitting in his dark house with sticky fingers, grinning into the darkness, shining eyes alight with madness. He needed to be dealt with, but Nick didn’t know how to do that other than by calling the cops, but any evidence he had was circumstantial; none of it would hold up to close inspection. Crash wasn’t going to stop and with Wes’s breath ghosting warmly over his skin, Nick felt ill thinking about it. The damage Crash could do was enormous because for the first time in his miserable life, Nick really had something to lose. Nancy, Hylas, Dawn Marie, Wes—all of them were in danger because Crash was not the kind of guy to take no for an answer.
To a mind that worked like Crash’s, the best way to get what he wanted was to make sure Nick had no reasons left alive for him to keep saying no. If Nick had nowhere to turn to in the end then the only place he would have to go was right into Crash’s waiting, suffocating arms.
Nick pulled away enough to kiss Wes, to slide his hands up his back to the sides of his neck where he stroked the softly thudding pulse points in his throat. Wes swayed into him and Nick made a softly encouraging sound in the back of his throat. If that was what Crash thought then let him keep thinking that because it meant he didn’t know Nick half as well as he’d deluded himself into believing.
If this kept on though then Crash was going to meet the Nick he used to be. The Nick who had never died but had only been laid down for a long, hopefully permanent rest. That Nick was easy to resurrect though, with each little trespass Crash made, Nick felt those former vestiges of self stirring more, growing agitated. Sooner or later, Nick was going to put his fist through Crash’s face and keep swinging until he stopped moving.
Wes moaned into Nick’s mouth and Nick smiled in response even as he thought, I think I would like that very much.
28
Around noon, Nick left Wes at Greene’s Funeral Home with Dawn Marie who had promised him a tour of the premises with the hopes of bumping into Gary, the resident schizophrenic ghost. Gary had dropped dead at his mother’s funeral about seventeen years earlier due to a lethal side effect of some new medication he had been on. He’d stuck around ever since and was one of the more active spirits in Sparrow Falls. Wes invited Nick to come along, but he declined; he was too sleepy and needed to attempt getting some rest before his shift at the hospital that night. Besides, Nick had already met Gary; he was incredibly friendly and vocal for a ghost, too. Hylas speculated that it was because he was crazy. Dawn Marie said Hylas was stereotyping Gary and that he was only like that because he was lonely and liked the company.
Once he was at home, Nick couldn’t sleep, his mind was too active, too full of thoughts colliding around in his head like asteroids. He thought about Wes, about how he still needed to end it and how he still didn’t want to. He thought of the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body rising to meet him; the sound of his laugh in the dark and his predilection for saying things like jeepers. Alongside of that were thoughts of Crash, his voice like corn stalks rustling in an autumn breeze. Nick. Oh, Nick. Hunter, the Washingtons and the Turner’s dog. So many dead bodies and one prime suspect amid the carnage, standing at ground zero and clean as a whistle. There was a pattern to the murders; it had nothing to do with class, race or gender and everythi
ng to do with location. Nick knew where Crash lived and he knew where all of the victims had lived; their homes spun out from the central axis of Crash’s residence like spokes on a wheel.
Wes in the dark.
Crash on the line.
Blood everywhere in Nick’s mind.
He put his head in his hands and wished he had someone to talk to or something to take the edge off. Some pot or a bump of meth; anything to distract himself. Nick told himself no. He told himself, I will not. Stress of the sort he was under was exactly the kind of thing they coached recovering addicts about. They were to avoid such situations at all costs because they could trigger a relapse quicker than you could say, Gimme a teener. Nick wanted to relapse, he wanted something to candy coat his mind from the assault of images and thoughts and unfamiliar emotions. He didn’t want to think anymore because he was coming unglued.
“No,” he said again aloud. “No.”
Nick got up from the sofa and went down the hall to the medicine cabinet. He had some Benadryl in there because he was allergic to bee stings. Benadryl caused marked drowsiness and Nick needed marked drowsiness more than anything. He popped three capsules free from the blister package, went back down the hall and grabbed a beer from the fridge to wash them down with. Antihistamines were an ingredient in methamphetamine production, but they were not the meth itself.
Nick ran his tongue over his neatly capped teeth and remembered how they had started to break off there at the end. One day he’d be eating a bowl of cereal and a tooth would snap off like a piece of brittle glass. Snaggle-toothed meth whore was what he’d been morphing into. Not just the common ditch weed whore he had comforted himself with being, but a legitimate bottom-of-the-barrel junkie fuck hole. It was not a road Nick wanted to go down again and he wanted to keep his damned teeth. He’d only broken five and they’d all been in the back. If he started up again though he’d lose his front teeth and all the others as well so that by the time he was done, he’d only have the capped teeth left.
Nick lightly banged his head against the wall to try and shake loose the sound of Crash’s panting, whispering voice. He wanted Wes’s laughter back, the smell of his clean skin and his light, expensive cologne. Wes was a good thing, Crash was the thing that went bump in the dark right before it consumed you. For once in his life, Nick wanted to pick the right door, the one he knew the prize lay behind. He didn’t want to walk through Door Number Seven and into the waiting arms of insanity and addiction again.
He scratched a phantom bug on his face, shook his head and went to lie down because he was exhausted. Even if the Benadryl didn’t knock him out at least he could rest for a while before the inactivity started to drive him bonkers.
The pills did eventually knock Nick out and his sleep was heavy and empty of dreams for a change. It was a good rest though his head felt heavy and muzzy when his alarm started blatting at him to wakey-wakey. He slapped at it, knocked it off the nightstand and lay there another couple of minutes listening to the idiot shriek of the damn thing until it cut through the fog in his mind enough to become truly irritating.
Once he got the alarm turned off Nick levered himself up out of bed to go make coffee. He was still dumb from the Benadryl, but the fog would clear before he went to work. While the coffee was brewing, he sat at the kitchen table and dozed; elbows propped on the table, head cradled in his hands and face tipped down toward the dark oak tabletop.
The ringing of his phone startled him so badly that he lost his balance and barely managed to stop a half inch away from smacking his face against the wood. “Shit,” Nick muttered as he pushed himself back upright. He turned his head and glared at the phone with deep suspicion, prickles of unease needling his skin.
He started not to answer the phone, but then got up and did it anyway. It could be about something important, like work or Wes calling him to talk before he left for the day. Nick was reaching for the phone when that last thought rabbited through his mind. He closed his hand into a fist and stared at the phone with a different kind of anxiety.
“Shit,” he said again.
Nick decided on the spot that on his next payday he was going to get caller I.D. and maybe a phone with a built-in answering machine because he currently had neither of those things. Finally, he snatched the phone up and held it to his ear, but did not say anything.
A couple of seconds ticked by then, “Nick? Hello, are you there?”
“Hey, Nance,” Nick said as he went back to the kitchen table. He felt weak with relief; it was nothing good or bad, just his dear cousin.
“Hey, yourself,” Nancy said. “Did I wake you? I didn’t think it was too early to call.”
“It’s not,” Nick said. “I’m up. Mostly.”
“Good,” Nancy said. “I was calling to see if you wanted to come up to the house for breakfast.”
“You mean supper?”
“Given the hours we keep, no,” Nancy said with a laugh. “This totally counts as breakfast for night people like us. So, yes or no?”
“Sure,” Nick said. “Give me about twenty minutes; I need to shower and get my work clothes on.”
“Okay,” Nancy said. “I’ll hold off on starting the bacon and eggs then.”
“Are there biscuits?”
“Those, sir, are already in the oven,” Nancy said. “You want some gravy with them?”
“Hell yes,” Nick said.
Nancy laughed then cleared her throat. “Hey, Nicky?”
“What?”
“Did you hear about E.O. Fussell?”
“No,” Nick said. “What about him?”
“They found his body a little while ago down in his gravel pit,” Nancy said.
“Goddamn,” Nick said. He never had liked E.O. and the feeling had been mutual, but it was still awful. “What did he do, get drunk, fall in and drown?”
“No,” Nancy said. “They haven’t said for sure yet, but they think either a gator got in the pit or… you know. The other thing.”
Nick said nothing, only tapped his fingers on the table and chewed his bottom lip. “How’d you hear about it?” he said after a minute.
“I bumped into Hylas at the grocery store when I went out a little bit ago,” Nancy said. “I was out of everything, but I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway, I bumped into him and he was all excited like he gets and asked me if I’d heard anything at the hospital. I said I hadn’t because I’m off, so then he told me. E.O. didn’t show up for his bus route this morning, which left a bunch of kids standing around going, ‘What the fuck?’ and ‘Yay,’ I’m sure. They sent someone over to check on him after parents started calling, but didn’t find much; his truck was there and the door to the house was locked. When he didn’t show up again this evening, they sent a deputy out to the place. He did a better search of the property and that’s when they found him.”
“Jesus,” Nick said.
“Uh-huh,” Nancy said. Then she let out a breath and added, “All right. We can talk about it more when you come down here. Right now, you need to get your shower and get dressed; we’re wasting time yammering on the phone.”
Nick smiled and said, “Yes, Mother Nancy.”
“Ugh, Nicky,” she said. “I don’t ever want to be anyone’s mother.”
“Especially not mine, right?”
“Well, she was kind of a bitch, sweetie,” Nancy said.
Nick laughed and said, “True enough. I’ll see you in a few.”
“Back atcha,” Nancy said. She hung up and Nick got up to put the phone back on the cradle before heading down the hall to shower.
He really hoped it was an alligator that had found its way into the gravel pit and gone for a swim with E.O. instead of the other suspect. E.O. lived right across the road from Crash; it left him a prime target if Nick’s little half-baked baby theory about proximity was right. It was possible that he had just gorged himself on too many episodes of Criminal Minds and CSI the last few months though. Not to mention he was maybe paying too much a
ttention to the shit he was finding on the internet (with which he was quickly becoming proficient) and reading it like it was gospel truth even though he knew the internet was about ninety-five percent bullshit and something Hylas called the Duning-Krueger Effect, which was a fancy way of saying hysterical bullshit and hive mind retardation.
Nick showered and got dressed for work, thinking be an alligator, be an alligator the entire time. He drove down to Nancy’s place after standing on the porch, looking around and listening to the glorious noise of night birds and insects humming in the forest. Silence was a dead giveaway when something was off, Nick had figured that out early on and hearing such racket spelled s-a-f-e-t-y to him. It meant his stalker was otherwise occupied.
Stalker. What an ugly fucking word.
Nancy’s house smelled like home when he walked through the back door. The delicious odors of bacon and eggs tickled his nose, the warm scent of freshly baked cat head biscuits made his stomach rumble. Nancy was standing over the stove making an omelet when he walked in.
“Hey, doll,” she said. “Hold your breath and cross your fingers, I’m about to try and fold this omelet.”
Nick dutifully did as she asked, which made her grin as she worked the spatula under one side of the omelet.
“Almost, almost,” Nancy said under her breath as she lifted the edge of the omelet and began to fold it over. At the last second, it cracked on one side and she blew her bangs out of her face. “Son of a bitch.”
“Good thing you didn’t decide to become a surgeon,” Nick said as cheese oozed from the wounded omelet and sizzled in the skillet.
“No shit.” Nancy glowered at the eggs like they had personally insulted her. “I’ve never mastered this art.”
Nick laughed as he went to the cabinet to get plates and cutlery for their nighttime breakfast. She finished cooking without further incident and they sat down to eat. Nancy gave him a look for drinking a beer with his food, but didn’t say anything to him about it. It was only one beer plus the two he’d had after his shower. It wasn’t enough to at all qualify him as being drunk and he swore he wouldn’t drink again for a couple of days. Not falling off the wagon also included not becoming an alcoholic as a way to compensate for the things he was denying himself.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 33
