Southernmost Murder

by C. S. Poe

  NARCOLEPTICS DREAM a lot. That’s not surprising, since even though I crashed for twenty minutes and REM sleep doesn’t start for ninety in a normal person, I fall into it almost immediately. What a lot of people didn’t know was the surprising number of nightmares we tended to have.

  I remembered a lot of my dreams, and this one hadn’t started out scary at all. I was walking down Duval Street with Cher—I think because Jun had mentioned her being on the radio and that nugget lodged itself into my brain. We were looking for a rake, but when we couldn’t find one anywhere, that’s when the panic started seeping in and turning the dream into a nightmare. We needed a rake to stop the skeleton in the closet.

  And I know—what the fuck kind of logic was this? Cher + rake = certain victory. But a dream was a dream, and in that moment, I knew if we didn’t find a rake, we were so up the creek without a paddle.

  Cher and I never saw the skeleton, though. I’d managed to wake myself up before my nightmare had the chance to scare the piss out of me, but coming back to the real world was sluggish and… disjointed. I opened my eyes, but the rest of me was, to put it simply, still asleep. Sleep paralysis. Typically when people fell asleep, our bodies paralyzed themselves so we didn’t act out dreams and hurt ourselves. But sometimes when I woke, my body hadn’t always received the message.

  It’s difficult to explain. Sometimes, in the moment, I knew what it was, but sometimes I didn’t. And every time, no matter what, it was goddamn terrifying. My mind was going a million miles a minute and couldn’t understand why the rest of me wasn’t responding. I typically had hallucinations too. Nuts, right? Once, I hallucinated an alarm clock was creeping across the room to kill me. But that was tame compared to what I woke to this time.

  Skelly was staring at me from the side of the bed. Only the top half of him, slumped forward like how he’d been in the wall. He lurched suddenly and grabbed the edge of the bed to pull himself up.

  I tried to shout. I tried to kick and thrash.

  Tried and tried and, Jesus Christ, he was coming! Right there, touching my leg and—

  I bolted upright in bed suddenly, gasping for air, the dying end of a scream coming out of me.

  “Aubrey?” Jun was there beside me. He petted the back of my head with sure, gentle strokes. “Are you all right?”

  My chest heaved as I caught my breath. “N-no, what? I—bad dream.” I turned and stared at Jun. “Sleep paralysis,” I corrected as the fog in my mind began to clear. “It’s scary.”

  Jun frowned. He moved his hand around to cup my cheek. “Can I get you anything?”

  “Just you,” I said. It came out like a reflex. I didn’t even realize I’d said it until it was too late.

  But he smiled. Big. The twinkle in his dark eyes returned. Jun leaned forward, closing the space between us. His mouth was only an inch or two away from mine.

  Do it. Kiss him.

  We were officially dating, after all.

  I tilted my mouth to meet his.

  And then my alarm cockblocked me—Nicki Minaj telling haters what they could blow.

  I WAS a romantic at heart.

  I didn’t want a kiss; I wanted the kiss. So I didn’t push when the moment between us had been lost. Another would present itself, and it’d be the best goddamn kiss I’ve had in my entire adult life.

  Neither of us had been particularly hungry for a full meal around dinner, so I made a plate of bruschetta with tomato and basil, and we parked ourselves in front of the television. Jun had a glass of wine. I stuck with water.

  I was shaky with watching movies. I never lasted through the entire thing, ending up micronapping through the important bits and waking for the boring ones, so I stuck to short television episodes. Under thirty minutes was about all I could take with passive activity. Except this time I wasn’t home alone and bored with the same three shows I never strayed from. Jun was right beside me, and it was pretty fantastic.

  I really liked him. He made my stomach do summersaults.

  So instead of getting up after two episodes and three nap attacks to do something else, I stayed right there beside him. Jun wrapped his arm around my shoulders and let me lounge in and out of consciousness against his chest. Everything about him was good. Hell, Jun even smelled right, if that made a lick of sense.

  I opened my eyes when the room went quiet. Jun was flipping through Netflix. “Oh, that,” I said suddenly, making him pause.

  “Since when do you like horror movies?”

  “You’ll protect me.”

  “This is in Japanese, Aubrey.”

  “Subtitles?” I tilted my head from lying against him to see him staring at me. “What? Maybe I’d like to pick up a few words.”

  “Why’s that?”

  My heart did a little flutter. “Because you speak it.”

  He smiled.

  “And because you sound so freaking hot doing so.”

  Jun slid his fingers through my hair and spoke something in Japanese in his deep, powerful voice.

  Gay baby-making mode, activate!

  “Oh my God, you tease,” I said, sitting up to look at him better. “What’d you say?”

  He kept a straight face. “Where’s the toilet.”

  “What? You did not!”

  “Sure I did. Toire means toilet.”

  I smacked his arm lightly. “You’re an ass!”

  Jun chuckled. “Sorry.”

  I got up on my knees and swung one leg over Jun, settling on his lap. I slid my arms over his shoulders and rested them on the back of the couch. He dropped the remote to the cushion and put his hands on my hips. I curled one hand into his stylish hair. I liked guys with hair long enough to grip, and judging by the quiet gasp Jun made, he enjoyed being on the receiving end of that. I gave the handful a tug, just to test the waters, and his lips parted.

  Now that was an invitation if there ever was one.

  But Jun’s hands grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt before I had a chance to claim his mouth, and he pushed the clothing up. His hands on my bare skin were like fire. He drew the shirt up to my nipples and then dragged his fingertips across the piercings.

  I made a groan that sounded every bit of the two years I hadn’t been getting any. “Jesus,” I said, drawing it out into syllables that didn’t exist.

  Jun flicked each of them again. “I like these,” he whispered.

  Good. They were totally worth every penny.

  He didn’t do anything else after that, just moved his palms up and down my sides. Jun had sort of hinted over our daily phone calls that he wasn’t exactly an instigator in bed, but he never came out and said it. I’d been blunt about holding hands and us dating, because I suspected that if I was straightforward with Jun, he’d act. It really boiled down to that he simply never made the first move.

  And here was the thing I was beginning to suspect about Jun. Like me, he was probably a little nervous about our first time together, but I didn’t think there was any sort of wall that needed to be broken down with him. He could flirt and tease and show affection, no problem. I was pretty sure he just got off on being told what to do in bed. Whether he topped or I did wasn’t important; being ordered was what he liked. Jun was always in command at work, so maybe he found it relaxing when, at home, someone else took the lead.

  And it was new territory to me, but hey, I was more than happy to expand my horizons. The idea of telling a hotshot FBI agent what to do was sort of turning me on anyway.

  “Jun?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Lick my nipples.”

  His eyes widened slightly behind his glasses, and I caught a tiny intake of air. Oh yeah—that was so what he wanted. Jun took my hips again and leaned forward. His pink tongue slipped from between his lips, and then there it was, wet and warm, lavishing my piercings. He kissed and licked and used his tongue to toy with the barbell. I gripped the back of his head with both hands to keep Jun from moving away. He groaned in response and slid his hands lower, moving around to
my back.

  “Touch my ass,” I ordered, although I sort of lost the commanding tone because whatever the fuck he was doing with his tongue was going to make me shoot in about ten seconds.

  Jun obeyed, his hands moving to hold my cheeks, kneading through my jeans.

  Yeah, I could get into this real fast.

  I tipped Jun’s head back by tugging on his hair. He looked up at me, breathing fast.

  Fuck.

  I leaned down to kiss him, to have that talented tongue in my mouth, to feel the rasp of his stubble against my own soft skin—

  My phone rang obnoxiously from the coffee table, shattering the silence and whispered breaths between us. Jun leaned back against the couch cushion. He let go of my ass and looked up at me, not angry or annoyed, just… like he had all the time and patience in the world.

  “Don’t lose that train of thought,” I said as I scrambled off his lap, tugging my T-shirt down and half-tripping into the table. I heard him laugh quietly as I grabbed the phone and swiped to accept the incoming call. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Grant?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Joe Hernandez with Island Security.”

  “Oh no,” I said with a sigh.

  “Afraid so.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Jun. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” I muttered. “What sensor went off this time?”

  “First floor,” Joe answered. “I know it’s after-hours. I can send a police cruiser by the home, if you’d prefer.”

  “No, no,” I said, heaving myself to my feet. “They hate wasting their time doing drive-bys. I’ll go check.”

  “Very good. Give us a call back if you need further assistance.”

  I said goodbye, hung up, and looked back at Jun. “Will you hate me if I said our fun has to wait?”

  He got to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “The motion sensors at the Smith Home are going off.”

  “IT’S REALLY nothing to worry about,” I told Jun for, like, the hundredth time as I unlocked the gate outside the property.

  Jun had insisted on coming, maybe because it sounded suspicious or dangerous to him, but the security company and I had been playing this game for a while. I’d had the old detectors uninstalled shortly after accepting the job, because they seemed to always be malfunctioning, and had Island Security take over. Lo and behold, the same thing happened with their equipment. The motion sensors inside went off at random. Sometimes not for months at a time, and other times like once a week. Once, last October, they went off three times in the same night. That had been a real pain.

  The police had been called to check the historic property every time, but it was like a running joke on the island. Everyone knew the house was secure. When I became property manager, I took the responsibility of confirming everything was safe, no matter the hour. I’d regretted how much I’d insisted upon the duty once I realized the new gear didn’t function any better than the old.

  But hey—life, right? Take it in stride.

  The one thing I could really do without were the rumors that spread because of this. One technological oopsie and the Conchs—island locals—waved their finger at me, saying, “See, I told you the place is haunted!”

  It wasn’t. Perhaps it was faulty wiring. Or….

  I went up the porch steps, stopped to fish out my house keys, and unlocked the hurricane door. “This happens all the time.”

  “This is really a job for the police, Aubrey,” Jun said firmly.

  “I know, but things work differently down here.” I stood and glanced up to offer a smile. “Relax.”

  He frowned.

  I pushed the heavy door open and stepped into the pitch-black house. I turned on the little desk lamp beside the door to illuminate the security panel before punching in my code and silencing the chirping alarm.

  I will admit, at night the Smith Home was… different. Duval was only a block away, and even with the bands playing and loud drunks hanging out in the bars, inside the home it was like nothing could penetrate the walls. A little bit creepy—like, itty bitty. Just don’t tell anyone I said that.

  “Now what?” Jun asked.

  “I walk through the house to confirm it’s all good and then go home.”

  “Aubrey,” Jun said again in his not happy tone. “I don’t want you doing this alone anymore. It’s night, there are valuables in here, and what if someone had actually broken in and you didn’t suspect danger?”

  “Jun—”

  “I’m serious.” His face was cast in partial shadow, but he was giving me his angry cop expression—something I hadn’t seen since New York. I certainly didn’t enjoy being on the receiving end of it either.

  “You know I’m not a helpless little wimp, yeah?” I went to the stairs and started up.

  “I never said you were.”

  I groaned and waved my hands. “I don’t tell you how to do your job, do I?”

  “It’s not the same. This is a matter of personal safety.”

  “So I’ll buy some mace,” I replied in a half-assed attempt to get Jun to drop it.

  “Aubrey,” he said again.

  “Oh my God. Jun. Chill out, okay?” I asked, pausing to turn and look down at him. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine. Just stay here and let me do my job so we can go home.” I resisted the bad habit of rolling my eyes and finished going up.

  I’d walked the halls of the Smith Home a million and one times, so typically I didn’t bother with lights until I got to the third floor and then worked my way down. Jun’s paranoia wasn’t enough to make me deviate from how I’d conducted myself every time the sensors picked up motion that wasn’t there. I had no reason to suspect some psycho robber/killer/gang boss or whatever Jun felt was hiding in the shadows was, in fact, there at all.

  There hadn’t been a cause for alarm in the past, and besides Skelly’s World Famous Disappearing Act, I never expected there to be an issue in the house again. But remember what folks said to me?

  “Mr. Aubrey Grant, what a strange life you live.”

  Ain’t it the truth.

  I tripped on something in the middle of the hall on the second floor, went head over heels, and landed on the other side. I swore a stream of obscenities colorful enough to make my grandmother roll in her grave a dozen times over.

  “What was that?” Jun called from downstairs. “Aubrey?”

  “I’m fine!” I answered. “Just tripped.”

  When I pried my cell phone free from my butt pocket and turned on the flashlight, I realized I was going to have to get used to bodies and add them to the list of strange and unusual circumstances I’d been a part of.

  Because there was a dead man in the middle of the hall, a wooden marlinespike protruding from his chest.

  Chapter Five

  THE LIGHT illuminating the figure shook wildly, and I realized that was because of me. I fumbled with the phone and dropped it. The rubber case hit the wooden floor with a thud and bounced once onto its back, engulfing me in darkness again.

  I immediately slumped to the floor. Hello, cataplexy! I’m not sure how long it had me down for the count—it’s usually less than a minute—but sitting up was a struggle, and I felt disoriented and sleepy.

  Ugh.

  What was I doing…? Oh—the body.

  My blood started pounding in my ears, and I felt light-headed. If I jerked too quickly for the light, I was pretty certain I’d throw up.

  Fuck me sideways. What was going on? Who the hell was this guy?

  I slowly picked up the phone again and flashed the light in the body’s direction. The marlinespike was still sticking out of his chest, and I swallowed the bile trying to race up my throat. Okay. So. We could probably assume he didn’t die here alone or by his own hand. And was that Captain Smith’s spike? Oh, so not cool! The integrity of the—fuck, focus.

  I took a breath and could smell the blood in the air. I gagged and turned my head away.

  Smith’s marlinesp
ike had a dull point. No way he could have driven that into himself. Which meant…. Yeah. Great. Someone else killed him. Jun was right, and now I had to apologize for telling him to chill.

  But how’d these criminals get inside? The hurricane and house doors were locked, and I was sure the back door was secure too. And even if it wasn’t, the outside alarm would have gone off if the doors had been opened. They hadn’t. So what did they do, scale the freaking house?

  The parlor window.

  Fuckity fucknutter!

  I opened my mouth to call for Jun because I wasn’t sure I could get up and walk around the dead guy by myself, but then I heard a creak from one of the children’s rooms on my left. My entire body tensed.

  No reason to freak out. It was an old house. It creaked and groaned and settled all the time.

  No reason at all—other than a second person had been in here at one point to do the killing. And they might still be around. No. Freaking. Biggie.

  I stared hard at the marlinespike and swallowed the lump in my throat. I tore my gaze away after a moment and slowly raised my phone to point the light at the bedroom doorway.

  Captain Smith, silhouetted by the darkness inside the room, stared back at me.

  And then I screamed.

  Screamed high-pitched bloody murder, because Captain Smith had been dead since 1871, and there I was, looking at the guy! He was as real as could be. The clothes, the beard—a spitting image of the family portraits. He even had the eye patch from a misfortune at sea in 1861, where he lost his left eye.

  “Jun!” I screamed, then collapsed onto my back again.

  The thing about cataplexy was, it looked like I was unconscious, but I wasn’t. I was aware of everything going on around me. I could hear and understand—I just couldn’t respond. I couldn’t move my body because it was like someone pulled the power plug. My cataplexy was why I took life in stride, because if I allowed myself to become overwhelmed with emotions, good or bad, it triggered my attacks. So yeah, I was fairly chill and easygoing.

  Except now.

  Because who in their right mind could be cool about coming face-to-face with the ghost of a long-since-dead sea captain?