The Cove

by Hautala, Rick

  A week after Pete died, she took the envelope from the mayonnaise jar and stashed it down in the cellar behind the boxes of Christmas decorations. She doubted the police would ever search Capt’n Wally’s house. Why would they? After a few months, she started depositing the money into a savings account in small increments. If she ever had kids, she wanted them to go to college and — she earnestly hoped — get the hell out of The Cove and never come back except to visit on vacations and holidays.

  For his part, Tom didn’t take his situation very well. He didn’t “man up,” as the Red Sox Nation likes to say. He was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Tony Gillette and the third-degree murder of Jerry Lincoln. If he was convicted, he’d be spending the rest of his life in Warren, housed with convicts he helped put there. So he ratted out as many of the local drug dealers as possible, spewing fact and rumor in equal measure. That kept the investigators busy for the next few years. He even ratted out Dick Pilsbury, a local real estate agent and town selectman who was dealing cocaine and other high-end drugs to assorted area bigwig — lawyers, doctors, and businessmen. Worst of all, Pilsbury kept a detailed account of all his customers and their purchases on his home computer, so after he was arrested, even more people found themselves under intense police scrutiny.

  One of those people under scrutiny, of course, was Richie Sullivan. Everyone in town knew that Richie was behind most of the illicit drug traffic in the area. But Richie had distanced himself from the whole thing, covering his tracks so thoroughly the police and feds couldn’t even make a parking ticket stick. Still, to take the heat off, Richie “retired” to Key West, claiming he’d had enough of New England winters. Word was some folks in Rhode Island weren’t very happy with some of his other business dealings. So, all in all, it was probably a good time for Richie to take his retirement.

  Late in September, Tom finally accepted that Louise was not going to change her mind and, Tammy Wynette be damned, “stand by her man.” Convinced she had lied to him about the cops having the money he’d stashed away, and that she had it and was keeping it from him, he tore the bed sheet in his jail cell into several strips, tied a makeshift noose, and tried to hang himself from the top rung of bars.

  Problem was, although he didn’t die, the blood supply to his brain was cut off long enough so he suffered some minor brain damage that led to memory loss and problems with physical coordination. Days before his case went to trial, a fellow inmate — a guy named Eddie “Critter” Winston — decided on a little vigilante justice. A few years ago, Tom had beaten Eddie up badly while bringing him to the station for questioning and then brazenly lied about it in front of Critter, and had gotten away with it. Using a spoon with an edge sharpened in the prison workshop, Critter laid open Tom’s throat. “Gave him a ‘new smile’ below his chin,” as Critter so eloquently phrased it. Tom bled to death before the prison guards realized what had happened.

  That winter proved to be one of the hardest in recent history with blizzard after blizzard piling up snow in record amounts. One night in February, Kathy Brackett was driving home from visiting her mother in Brunswick. Her daughter, Amanda, was in the baby car seat in the back when she hit a patch of black ice on Route One in Wiscasset. The car careened into a utility pole. Amanda survived, but Kathy died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

  She was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery on the outskirts of town. Amanda lived with her father in the house on West Tower Road, but Dwight soon realized that he couldn’t handle being a full-time parent. After a few months, Amanda went to live with his parents in Portland. Without any females there to domesticate him, Horse Lips soon slipped back into his old life. Seven nights a week, he was down at The Local, drinking with Wally until closing time. He seemed to forget he had a daughter, which made Ben feel sorry for Amanda. He briefly considered admitting paternity and bringing up Amanda himself, but he decided to let the child live her life without any more grief or complications.

  Also buried in the same cemetery was Lilly Brown, Ben and Louise’s mother. Lilly had continued to be a “wanderer” at the nursing home. One night in late November, a few days before Thanksgiving, she somehow escaped the notice of the person on watch at the front desk and walked out of the nursing home sometime after midnight. She wandered around town for hours. Apparently no one even saw her.

  As she was making her way through the woods, heading in the general direction of the home she had once shared with Capt’n Wally but no longer remembered, she crossed the old Miller property, which had been abandoned for years. The house was a tumbled-down ruin, populated by bats, mice, and a family of owls. The old wooden door someone had used to cover the old well had long since rotted away. When Lilly stumbled over it, she crashed through the wood and plummeted to the rocky bottom.

  Of course, the nursing home was in an uproar as soon as it was discovered that she was really missing, and not lurking in the darkened corner of the TV room or hiding under her bed as she had taken to doing recently because she was convinced that her father — who had been dead more than forty years — was coming into her bedroom at night and molesting her.

  The police mounted a massive search and rescue effort, which included dozens of volunteers, but her body wasn’t discovered until three days later. By then, the rats and other vermin living in the well had done a good job of stripping her flesh from her bones. She was buried under a rose granite headstone Wally had carved for her which also included Pete’s birth and death dates even though he was not buried there.

  One warm spring day, Ben was sitting in his car in the parking lot at Sand Beach. It had been a year since he’d come back home. His mind flashed through the losses.

  The memory of Pete still burned like a red-hot coal, but like all things, with time it was getting better … slowly.

  As for his mom, dying the way she did was so goddamned awful it was tough to think about, but in the end, it was probably a mercy. She had stopped being his mom a long time before she died.

  And as for Tom Marshall? Good riddance. A shank across the throat couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

  But there were the gains as well.

  Capt’n Wally had the Lou-Lou Belle, which he owned outright and had no more pressure from Richie Sullivan or anyone else. Louise was seeing a decent guy from Durham, a high school English teacher named Nate Kenyon. He wasn’t a Cove-ah, but he treated her as much like a queen as he could on his teacher’s salary.

  And, of course, Julia was never far from Ben’s mind. They kept in periodic touch — not as much as he would like, but he didn’t want to pressure her. His feelings for her hadn’t changed, but he knew she would never come back to The Cove even to visit, much less stay. She had been hired to teach first grade in a small town outside of Waterbury. He often wondered about how long it would take her to find someone else in Connecticut.

  Maybe she can find me in Connecticut, he thought … Maybe it’s finally time for me to blow this taco stand …

  His cell phone chirped, making him jump. He fished it from his jeans pocket and glanced at the Caller ID. When he saw who it was, he smiled widely. With a quick flick of the thumb, he opened the phone.

  “Speak of the devil. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’m out at Sand Beach … just chillin’.”

  There was a long pause.

  “So how you doin’?” he asked. “How’s the teaching going?”

  “It’s good. One more week and it’s summer vacation.”

  “So you finally got to use that college degree, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice but was sure he wasn’t succeeding.

  “You know … I’ve, uhh, been thinking, too,” Julia said.

  “Uh-oh. That sounds dangerous.”

  He smiled, wishing she was there to see his smile.

  “Oh, stop it. No, I was thinking how you must have some vacation time coming.
Don’t you?’

  “Well … I know a little place in southern Connecticut that would be great for a water rat like you to relax.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Are there trees and flowers and gardens?”

  “Absolutely,” Julia said, “and definitely no ocean.”

  “Hmm, sounds interesting. But is it quaint?”

  “Oh, yes … Very quaint. It’s a lovely little private B ’n B with a charming hostess.”

  “Do I happen to know this hostess?”

  His jaw was hurting now, he was grinning so hard.

  “Quite intimately, in fact.”

  “And — umm … and how long, exactly, can I stay?”

  “Totally up to you. How long are you thinking of staying?”

  When Ben took a deep breath, he felt light-headed as the salt-tinged air and a gush of warmth filled his chest.

  “I dunno. I ’spoze as long as you’ll let me.”

  This was followed by a silence that went on a bit too long. He stared out over the ocean, his eyes unfocused.

  “Julia? … You there?”

  He heard sniffling and knew that she was either laughing or crying … maybe both, but then there was such total silence.

  “You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought the call got dropped.”

  “I’m still here.” She took a breath, hissing it between her teeth.

  Is this a mistake? she asked herself. But even before she could think about it, she added, “So how soon can you get your ass down here?”

  “Give me an hour to get packed, and I’m on my way.”

  The End

  Before our lives divide forever.

  While time is with us and hands are free.

  (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever

  Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)

  I will say no word that a man might say

  Whose whole life’s love goes down in a day;

  For this could never have been; and never,

  Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

  — Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Other Rick Hautala eBooks Available from Crossroad Press

  UNTCIGAHUNK: THE COMPLETE LITTLE BROTHERS

  It has been five years since Kip Howard saw his mother killed horribly by a blur of "little brown things." Five years of nightmares and a terror of dark places. Five years of struggling to overcome what must have been just his imagination…But the "untcigahunk," the Indian word for "little brothers," are no one's imagination. Hideous forest creatures who feed every five years on human flesh, the little brothers are about to emerge from underground once again. Only this time, there will be no escape for the young boy who witnessed their last feast.

  Untcigahunk —The Novel is an updated version of Rick Hautala's classic novel Little Brothers. Also included are seven short stories about the Untcigahunk:

  Little Brother

  Little Brother Speaks

  Redman

  Chrysalis

  Love on the Rocks

  Deal with the Devils

  The Birch Whistle

  Oilman

  OCCASIONAL DEMONS

  This collection, from an acclaimed Master of Dark Fiction, consists of twenty-one tales with some being straight genre entries, others psychological terror and finally a few shorts that include science fiction elements. The first eighteen are short stories written solely by Rick and the final three are collaborations with Jesse and Matti Hautala, Matthew J. Costello, and Jim Connolly.

  The stories included in this collection are:

  The Nephews

  Nightmare Transcript

  Non-returnable

  Dead Legends

  I’ve Been Thinking About You

  The Man Who Looked Like Murphy

  Toxic Shock

  The Call

  Getting the Job Done

  Every Mother’s Son

  Knocking

  Hotel Hell

  The Compost Heap

  Iron Frog

  Setup

  The Gates of Dawn

  Off the Cuff

  The Screaming Head

  Abduction (written with Jesse and Matti Hautala)

  And the Sea Shall Claim Them (written by Matthew J. Costello and A. J. Matthews)

  Scared Crows (written with Jim Connolly)

  BEDBUGS

  From the subway tunnels of Boston to the rain-swept streets of Quebec City to the deepest snow-filled forests of Hilton, Maine, no one in these chilling stories by horror master Rick Hautala is safe from the darkness or the dangerous things that lurk in the shadows. Waiting for us. Reaching for us...

  Over the years, Rick Hautala's stories and novels have terrified and captivated millions of readers around the world. Bedbugs is a career-spanning collection of stories that whisks you away on a guided tour of the darkest reaches of the human mind and soul — a tour that could only be conducted by someone with Rick Hautala's ability to make your blood run cold.

  The stories included in this collection are:

  The Back of My Hands

  Schoolhouse

  The Voodoo Queen

  Surprise

  Tunnels

  . . . from a Stone

  Crying Wolf

  The Sources of the Nile

  Silver Rings

  Colt .24

  Bird in the House

  Cousins’ Curse

  Speedbump

  Rubies and Pearls

  A Little Bit of Divine Justice

  Karen’s Eyes

  Master Tape

  Breakfast at Earl’s

  Closing the Doors

  Worst Fears

  Winter Queen

  Late Summer Shadows

  Hitman

  Perfect Witness

  Piss Eyes

  Served Cold

  MOONBOG

  THE EVIL GLOW OF THE MOON...

  lit the path as twelve-year-old Billy Wilson walked past the bog. He knew he shouldn't have gone near the inky shadows of the swamp — but something forced him to come closer to the yawning darkness, the suffocating tangle, the flesh-tearing brambles of Holland Bog.

  THE MURKY DEPTHS OF THE BOG...

  sucked the boy into its fetid earth and claimed its human sacrifice. But one child wasn't enough. It needed a second, a third — and then nothing could stop the unquenchable hunger, the raging blood thirst of the MOONBOG.

  GHOST LIGHT

  Cindy Toland knows that her sister's violent death was no accident. She knows her abusive brother-in-law too well... knows the dark, brutal things he's capable of doing. That's why she took her niece and nephew away into the night—away from a dangerous and twisted madness called home.

  But ten-year-old Billy and his kid sister Krissy know something their Aunt Cindy doesn't. It's about the blue lady who comes late at night and whispers strange things. Billy and Krissy aren't scared of the lady. Even though she lives beyond the grave. But there's something else out there. Something much more terrifying. It's daddy. And he's coming to get them.

  Look for more Rick Hautala titles coming soon from Crossroad Press

  Cold Whisper

  Dark Silence

  Impulse

  Night Stone

  Shades of Night

  Twilight Time

  Writing as A.J. Matthews:

  The White Room

  Looking Glass

  Follow

  Unbroken

  Also Available from Crossroad Press

  ASHES

  Desperately searching for a kindred spirit, an evil force, filled with a terrifying hunger that leaves its victims burned to ashes, arrives in a small Pennsylvania town, plagued by its own dark history, where it has discovered what it has been yearning for over the centuries.

  A Note from Crossroad Press

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