“Don’t fight it, baby, you know you want a piece of this,” replied Birdie, making suggestive flourishes at his crotch. “I’m the best you’ll ever have. Or at least, I think that’s what your drunk mother said last night.” Birdie stroked his chin as if pulling up an old memory.
She was livid and speechless. A first for Brianna. She didn’t know what to say, so she stormed off into the crowd, but not before giving him the finger.
I laughed until I was wheezing. Birdie just grinned at me inanely. “That was spectacular, even for you,” I said, gasping to catch my breath.
“Well, you know I’m good at improv.”
“Thanks. I was a goner, for sure.” Relief flooded through my body.
“Don’t thank me. You’re covering my shift, remember? I just came down to get the hired help,” he replied, shrugging.
To his surprise, I gave him a quick hug. “Thanks, Birdie. I’m sorry for what happened–”
He untangled himself from my embrace, causing me to stop mid-sentence. He looked as awkward as I felt, but somehow, I knew it would be all right. “It’s okay,” he said matter-of-factly, “get going.” I gave him one more squeeze and headed upstairs.
If I was hoping for a break when I got there, I was deluded. It was more crowded up than it had been down. This was partly due to the fact that the bands took up more space, but it was mostly because the Robotic Overlord fans had landed en masse upstairs in time for their set. I wasn’t sure how half of them even got in—some of them didn’t even look eighteen.
“Is it just me, or did Paddy’s just turn into a high school dance?” asked Haylee as she approached me at the bar.
“Funny, I was just thinking something similar,” I replied, brushing a piece of hair out of my face. I could feel sweat dripping down my back.
“You should be flattered that Birdie only has eyes for you, girl. Half these girls in this place wouldn’t kick him out of bed. Hell, Katie Fitzpatrick would probably wet her panties if he even acknowledged her existence,” remarked Haylee with a devilish grin.
“Haylee Jane!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t start,” Haylee replied.
Suddenly the lights went out, and a single spotlight illuminated the small stage. A raucous uproar erupted from the audience. Birdie’s band mates took up their stations behind their instruments. The crowd started clapping again, agitated and waiting. One brave soul even dared to yell, “Come on!” He was promptly silenced by more hooting and hollering.
Finally, a single note erupted out of the darkness, its baying echoing around the room, undulating under the guidance of a whammy pedal. The one note screamed into another, then one more—until the opening notes of “The Singularity” floated through the army of fans pushed up against the small stage. Birdie jumped out from behind a stack of speakers, driving the chord home, and the audience erupted into unified chaos, bodies jumping up and down in time to the bass line. The air was electric with their enthusiasm, and Birdie, as usual, pushed his range, his voice going from falsetto down to a mere whisper before slamming through the silence with another frenzy of distorted notes.
It was a beautiful thing to watch, and I stood entranced behind the bar, wondering again how my best friend had turned into a rock star in what had seemed like five minutes. It was like finding out your best friend Clark Kent was Superman. He’s too big to be contained by this small island, I thought to myself. It was only a matter of time before he realized that.
Frenzied applause was followed by a short “Thank you!” from Birdie before the thumping bass line of another song broke through my thoughts. If I had felt uneasy before, then I was completely unsettled by the eerie tones of the electric organ that snaked their way back to the bar. It was the same song that the mugger had whistled the night of the attack.
I searched around in the twilight, looking for Haylee, and saw her trapped by the music, too. As if I’d called her name, she looked directly at me, her eyes wary like mine. The organ wailed higher and higher, the despairing minor notes causing my brow to break out in a sweat as flashbacks from that night in the alley came flooding back. I could feel the panic deep down in my chest, and I gripped the bar with clammy hands, breathing in and out of my nose. It’s just a song. Over and over in my head, I chanted the mantra, hoping it would stick. At that moment, I would’ve done anything to make the music stop.
My wish was answered.
In the middle of the wailing came another sound—a siren mimicking the ebb and fall of the organ. At first, I dismissed the noise as feedback from one of the band’s amps until I saw the surprised look on Birdie’s face. It wasn’t distortion at all. The sound was coming from outside. Abruptly, Birdie stopped playing on his keyboard. Andre and Chris took his lead and the music stopped with a loud clank, but the noise kept going, wailing over and over again, hitting a high and then dropping to a low tremor. It finally dawned on me about the same time that it hit the discombobulated crowd—the town’s emergency siren was going off.
The room was eerily calm for about five seconds, no more, before a man burst out of the stairwell, his face red from exertion.
“Alberta Johnson’s been attacked by a shark!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
It took a moment for it to sink in—nothing like this ever happened in Tybee—then the mass of people surged toward the stairs. It was going to be a stampede.
I saw Haylee look at me, her eyes wide with shock, but before I could do anything about it, Birdie had me by the elbow, dragging me back toward the emergency exit at the rear of the bar. I looked back once to see Haylee fighting against the stream of people, her efforts to catch up with us impossible in the current scenario. I resisted the urge to yank my arm out of Birdie’s grasp.
“What about Haylee?” I yelled.
“She’ll find her way out,” he yelled back.
Birdie pushed me toward the emergency exit. I raised my arms up reflexively, trying to avoid being slammed into the door, and inadvertently whacked the metal bar across it. Now the emergency exit alarm was going off, its own blaring noise deafening. Seconds later and I was through the door, the chilling air catching me off guard. Disoriented, I couldn’t understand what the rush was until I saw the people streaming out of the exit behind us.
“Keep moving!” Birdie shouted.
So I did. I focused on each step as if my life depended on it, zoning in on the strange rat-a-tat sound my Docs made as we descended the metal staircase.
When my feet touched the pavement, Birdie grabbed my hand and started to run around Paddy’s toward the beachfront parking lot. There was already a mass of people rummaging around there—some inebriated, others unsure which way to go. Nonetheless, Birdie kept up his pace, heading toward the dunes rather than taking the wooden beach-access ramp that was gridlocked with bodies.
Others followed behind us and I found myself desperately trying to keep up with Birdie as he dragged me up the side of an impossibly large sand dune only to almost topple down the other side.
Birdie’s sense of direction was uncanny. As we rounded the corner toward the spit, I saw the lights of several ATVs careening toward a cluster of lights close to the riptide zone. I pulled against Birdie, trying to yank my hand out of his grasp.
“Come on!” he said breathlessly.
“I can’t!” I croaked, resisting his insistence that I move another inch. He continued to tug on my hand, and the panic tightened its hold on my chest. “Birdie, I can’t…Ellie.” I finally broke from his grasp.
The spit. Not there. Please god, anywhere but where my mother Ellie had meted out her own death.
Realization hit him.
“Poe, it’s okay.” He took a step closer to me, hand outstretched, talking to me like he would if he was calming a frightened animal.
I took a quick breath, then another, hoping to sequester the irrational fear from the part of my brain that screamed danger. I took anot
her breath, this time deeper, and reluctantly nodded my head. He reached out for my hand, and we were jogging again down the beach toward the area where the activity was the highest.
As we approached the scene, Sheriff Riley stepped in front of us, blocking my view of the rest of the beach. I looked down at the wet sand in the moonlight and saw the rough outline of a white foot attached to a leg and thigh. No bite marks or wounds at all.
“Sorry, kids, you need to stay back.” His tone was wavering yet authoritative.
“But we came to help,” complained Birdie, catching his breath between words.
“I know, James, but there’s no helping Alberta now,” the sheriff said firmly.
“What? Why?” Birdie asked, bewildered. “No one’s ever died from a shark bite around here.”
“Trust me…she never had a chance with this one,” the sheriff said quietly, almost to himself.
A shout for Sheriff Riley came from the other side of the scene. The deputy appeared to be struggling with a few drunken stragglers who were insisting that they knew first aid. The sheriff turned his back on us and trotted over toward the commotion. That gave us an unobstructed view of Alberta lying on the sand, the headlight of an idling ATV shining down upon her contorted face and the grisly scene that unfolded in front of us.
Alberta was lying on the sand, completely naked. Her skin had gone almost a pure white, probably from the loss of blood, although her lips and fingernails looked purple in the citrine light. One leg was folded beneath her at the knee, and her arms were flung far and wide from her body as if she had been making sand angels. Her head rested at a weird angle, yet her face was turned toward us. Two white orbs stared right through us, her bloated tongue sticking out of her mouth between two rows of nicotine-stained teeth. I gasped, crushing Birdie’s hand in mine. But that wasn’t the worst of it. If she had drowned, I might’ve been able to handle it, but the picture in front of me was more than I could take.
I felt the nausea ride up into my throat as I let go of Birdie’s hand, backing away from the graphic brutality, trying to force the image away, but it burned bright in my mind even with my eyes closed. And the smell. All I could smell was death. It filled my nostrils, causing me to gag, and I turned on my heel and ran. I didn’t make it far. Stumbling toward a patch of sea grass, I dropped to my knees, vomiting what little food was in my stomach all over the sand. Birdie caught up with me and kneeled beside me, pulling my hair back from my face as I continued to dry heave in between chest-crushing sobs, and yet I couldn’t erase what I’d seen, which was Alberta lying still on the beach, her life over.
Her abdomen, from her pubis to her ribcage, had been ripped apart.
5
I awoke to my own screaming.
I sat straight up in bed, my long bangs plastered to my forehead by sweat, my pulse racing. Drawing in a ragged breath, I stared around me, trying to slow my racing heart. My feet were tangled up in my comforter, and I ripped it away from me before falling back onto the mattress, my hand clutching my chest.
It was only a dream.
I rubbed my hand over my belly—it was still there and in one piece. No teeth marks, no scratches, just the belly ring I’d given myself for my sixteenth birthday. When I dropped my hand back onto the bed, Daisy promptly started licking my face.
“Stop it!” I yelled, pushing her away from me. She jumped off the bed in hasty retreat.
Another goddamn nightmare. Would they ever stop?
I got up from bed and scuttled down the hallway to the kitchen table. There was no way I was going back to sleep after that. Dropping into one of the kitchen chairs, I stared at the metallic flecks in the Formica tabletop.
It had been much worse than before…much, much worse.
The dream had started out the way it always did. I was lying on a canopied bed in a strange place, the smell of orange and clove strong on the breeze coming in from the window. I’d felt the bed dip before I actually saw Adam’s naked body come into view. The shadows from the candles in the room ebbed and flared as his body crushed mine. The sex was exquisite as usual.
I wasn’t surprised when the scene shifted and I found myself trapped once more in shackles on top of the large stone. It was so horribly predictable. I waited for the moment when I would wake up, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Adam stood by me, his pupils dilating until nothing remained but two black orbs. His face contorted and stretched, elongating his jaw as it became a gaping maw full of rows of teeth.
And then I knew. I knew what he had become, but I couldn’t stop it. I woke up right as he tore into my belly.
My cell phone rang.
It was Haylee.
“You are not going to believe it! Have you been watching the news?” Her breath was coming out in short bursts as if she’d just sprinted to the phone.
“What?” I asked, slightly unnerved.
“The TV! Go turn it on!”
I dashed into the living room and switched on the TV, putting the volume up. On the TV was a picture of Alberta from last year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Her blond hair was pinned back into a neat ponytail and she was wearing a green T-shirt and shorts that showed off her tan legs. She smiled at the camera, a tiny shamrock painted on her cheek.
“Do you have the TV on?” asked an impatient Haylee. I shushed her and turned up the volume further.
The newscaster was a pretty brunette with a fake tan. She was talking about Alberta…
“After the coroner’s report this morning, police have confirmed they are now looking for a suspect in the murder of Alberta Johnson. Johnson, the thirty-four year old Tybee resident who was found dead on Tybee Beach Halloween night, was originally thought to have been attacked by a shark in the early hours of the thirty-first. Police have set up a hotline for residents to call if they have any details that may assist them.”
I tuned out the rest of the broadcast as I gripped my cell phone in my hand, hardly hearing Haylee’s words.
“Baby Jesus in a basket!” she exclaimed. “Can you believe it?”
I couldn’t. That was part of the problem. I’d been there. I’d seen the wounds. It was an atrocity. How could someone have done that to another human being? I said as much to Haylee.
“Girl, I ain’t got no idea, but it’s makin’ me think twice about walkin’ out to my car after work.” Haylee’s mind had jumped way ahead of mine. She had a good point.
Alberta’s murder was sure to cause hysteria around the island. It was, after all, a small community. The worst thing that happened around here was a drunken altercation outside one of Tybee’s many bars. This was another level entirely. Tybee was a community that didn’t even lock its doors. That would all change now.
“Haylee, I gotta go.”
“What? Why?” she asked, obviously annoyed. While Haylee was good to talk this thing to death, I had no such inclination. Not after the nightmares.
“I’m just tired. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I quickly said goodbye and hung up the phone.
Suddenly, my mind was drawn back to the night in the alleyway. Was it possible that the guys who had attacked us had also attacked and murdered Alberta? I shook my head—I was becoming paranoid.
Sighing, I turned the TV off and headed back to my bedroom. I still wore my dirty clothes from work, so I pulled them off quickly and found an old cotton tee and a pair of yoga pants from my chest of drawers. After several unsuccessful minutes of rummaging through my closet, I finally found a pair of comfy slip-ons and a sweatshirt. It wasn’t a shower, but it would have to do.
I walked out back to my art studio, knowing that staying inside wasn’t an option. If I stayed, I’d end up glued to the TV, watching the newscasters pore over every aspect of Alberta’s murder.
Poor Alberta.
I hadn’t known her very well when she was alive, even though she’d grown up on Tybee just like me. Alberta had been older and had run in rougher circles. She’d b
een a professional waitress for the last decade and worked at the Crab Hut off of Lazaretto Creek. And now she was dead. I’d no longer see her in the Tybee Mart, or run into her at the Breakfast Bar on a Sunday morning. She’d been ripped away in as gruesome a way as I could’ve imagined. The thought nauseated me.
Turning on the lights inside the studio, I tried to focus on the canvases around me. It was a poor showing of work. I had dumped my own style for the more lucrative seascapes that brought in the tourist dollars. It had seemed a good idea at the time because they’d been easy to sell to the little gift shops and boutiques that were dotted around the island. Now, however, I was left wanting. The work was dull and boring, and I couldn’t face it right now.
I pulled a large prepped canvas onto my easel and stared at it. I was tempted to start a portrait of Birdie, but my mind kept wandering back to Adam Walker. He had shown up briefly last night, leaving almost as quickly as he had appeared. Part of me had been relieved by his hasty retreat, but the larger part had been disappointed. That was the truth, even if I was having a hard time admitting it to myself. I had wanted to see him again ever since our strange encounter at his house—I just hadn’t realized how much.
He really was going to be trouble.
Opening the drawer nearest my stool, I pulled out a piece of graphite. Clearing my mind of Adam, I began to sketch with no real intention. In no time at all, an image started to appear on the canvas, a mixture of dark shadows contrasting with a silhouette that seemed familiar. Intrigued, I settled in, allowing my mind to open up to the possibilities, trying to stay free and clear of any distracting thoughts. It sort of worked. After another twenty minutes of freehanding, I got up from my stool, stepping back several feet from my work.
The distance gave me perspective, and I realized where I’d seen the image before. It was a good likeness—I’d at least give myself credit for that—but the last thing I wanted to remember was that night in the alleyway. Yet here it was, plain as day: the vivid image of Adam towering like a raging inferno above me, his stance menacing and lethal, more terrifying than anything I’d seen up to Alberta’s death. The image made my breath hitch in my chest. Deadly and beautiful…so otherworldly.
Watcher (The Shining Ones Book 1) Page 7
