His gravest fear—and most haunting suspicion—was that he would not need to go looking.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“Yes. Don’t know if I can eat, though.”
“I’ll fix you something. Try.”
“Whatever.”
As he went down to the kitchen, for an instant, he thought he was on the stairs of the old Barrow house, trying to find a way out. A gust of panic almost swept over him, but it abated before it could mount. Every now and then, he would have one of these moments. Probably a natural reaction to his trauma, a delayed stress reaction. It didn’t have to have anything to do with his body’s physiological change; it was just a natural aftereffect, right?
He found himself pouring a glass of scotch rather than fixing any food. But hell, that was no more a result of repressed anxiety or unresolved fear than anything else he did; on an average day he had two drinks, and he had not increased his intake since the demise of the Dream Frontier. He had taken to analyzing his every move, second-guessing any thought in his head, hesitant to trust even his most mundane action—trying to prove to himself he was completely normal, unaffected.
But he wasn’t. He knew he wasn’t. Somehow, he had to accept that he wasn’t.
He took a long swig of the scotch, felt its frigid burn in his mouth, in his throat, in his stomach, steadying him, fortifying him. He opened the refrigerator and rummaged for food, found sandwich fixings of various varieties; he sort of craved a grilled cheese.
“Russell.”
There it was again.
He thought he’d heard someone whisper his name a time or two in the last couple of days, each instance when he was alone and everything was quiet. This was the first time it had been so clear, so unmistakable.
It sounded like Lynette.
Couldn’t be Lynette. She was gone. Forever. Dead.
How did he know for certain she was dead?
Just a stirred-up memory, that was all; a pang of repressed grief that had strayed to the forefront of his consciousness. Regret, maybe, for having cared too little about her when she was alive—when caring actually meant something.
He turned on the stove, dug through the cabinets to find a fry pan, and angrily shoved the errant thoughts out of his head. He almost wanted a cigarette.
Okay, I admit it. That’s the stress talking.
There were plenty left in Lynette’s house. He could always walk next door and grab a pack.
I will not go into that house. Not now. Not yet.
Not till he had gone home, gotten his ducks in a row at the office, and then returned. By then he would be able to face the task of closing out Lynette’s life and getting on with his own. Maybe by then he would have devised some plan for a future with Debra.
He buttered the bread slices, closed the cheese between them, and dropped them into the fry pan. The aroma immediately reached inside him and tugged the nerves that signaled hunger. At least he could eat again. During the crisis, he had gone a full 48 hours without food, and afterward, even when he was almost doubled over with hunger pains, he hadn’t been able to choke anything down; not until most of another day had passed.
The sandwiches done, he flipped them onto a plate. Debra liked the flavored bottled water, so he grabbed one from the fridge, balanced his refreshed glass of scotch on the plate, and started back upstairs, this time feeling almost as if he were walking back into a normal, prosaic world, one that had never been altered, where he and the woman he wanted for his new wife could anticipate nothing but a future of hope, health, and happiness.
When he entered her room, he found her still in front of the mirror, but now standing naked, her clothes scattered haphazardly around the floor. She turned slowly to face him, and somehow, the sparkling emeralds in her eyes made her all the more beautiful. And somehow frightening. He placed the plate and drinks on the dresser as she came to him, and he took her in his arms, lowering his head to press his lips to hers. Her fingers were at the buttons of his shirt in an instant, twisting them open, and then she was leading him to her bed, where she pulled his body over hers like a warm, comforting blanket. He worked himself free of his clothes, and in another minute, he was inside her, meeting her fervently heaving body with forceful, ardent thrusts.
They both opened their eyes at the same time, and the two pairs of emerald crystals met and held each other.
Copeland felt raw power crackling between them, an electric arc that increased in intensity along with his excitement.
Then he closed his eyes again because, far in the depths of hers, he saw shifting black shadows slowly beginning to take shape.
“I’ll be back in less than a week. But I’ve got to make sure a number of cases are settled or I’m going to wish we were still facing Lumeras.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Sorry. This is important, though. If I can get certain people exactly where I need them, then I’ll be free and clear for the foreseeable future. Then we can start making our own plans.”
“I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.”
“Maybe,” he added, a little hesitantly, “getting my mind totally back on ordinary work is just what I need to get grounded again. Maybe then I’ll be able to deal with coming back…and handling Lynette’s affairs.”
“I just don’t look forward to being alone. Even for a short time.”
“I keep asking you to come with. We couldn’t be together all the time, but at least you’d be away from…this. There’s nothing for you here but pain.”
She shook her head. “That’s not true. This is still my home, and I love it…in its way. And I can do some good here, I know I can. I’ve been trying to do good with these kids for a long time, and they’re going to need all the help they can get. Maybe that’s what I need to do to get grounded again.”
He let out a little sigh. “I don’t like that, either, but I understand.”
“I’ll miss you. Even if it’s just for a week.”
“Yeah. It’ll be a long one. But when I get back, we’ll figure out what we have to do to make things work for us. You still want that, right?”
“Yes,” she said with a solemn nod. “That’s what I want.”
“Me too.”
He looked out the screened door at the Lexus parked in the driveway. Miraculously, or close to it, he had found his car intact, exactly where he had left it in front of the sheriff’s office. The missing, presumed dead sheriff. Steeling himself, he pushed the door open and went out into the cool, sunlit morning, which waited for him in silence, except for a few distant, melodious birdsongs. Debra came after him, her pace purposely restrained.
“What are you going to tell people who know you were here?”
He shrugged. “Not a damn thing. Maybe just that I don’t remember anything.”
“You think they’ll believe that?”
“Don’t care whether they do or don’t.”
She sighed. “You may get some tough questions. I mean, the obvious change…”
“It doesn’t matter. There’s no one I’d share any of this with. Not there.”
“I know. I know what you feel. But maybe we’ll need to someday. Maybe we won’t be able to keep it just between us.”
“We’ll worry about it when the time comes. Not before.”
She gave him a little smile. “Okay.” Then she opened her arms to him, and he took her in a long embrace. He touched his lips to her forehead, and she breathed deeply, contentedly.
“I guess I’m off,” he said. “I’ll call you when I get home.”
“You’d better. You’d better call every day, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll have to keep you after school every day when you get back.”
“Yes, teacher.”
Their lips came together and parted only reluctantly a long minute later. Then he released her and checked the back seat to make sure he had his bag, which she had retrieved from Lynette’s house for him.
He opened the door and slid behind the wheel.
Debra stood beside the car, and he saw her eyes glistening. He had nearly grown accustomed to the bright green.
It didn’t mean anything. It was just a color. Just a new, unusual color.
“Drive carefully.”
He nodded. “You be careful too. I don’t want to hear any bad reports about you when I get back.”
Her smile was genuine. “I promise.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
He started the engine, gave her house a long last gaze, and shifted into reverse, turning to look behind him rather than watch in the mirror. As he pulled into the street and started toward town, they raised their hands to each other.
Then she was out of sight, and the cold, gray road lay ahead of him.
He drove on autopilot, his mind still with her, the scent of her home still wafting through his mind. He did not see the charred frames of devastated houses and buildings, or the rubble that still closed some of the streets, or the flashing lights and emergency crews that lingered in certain areas. It was time to start thinking of home, of what he had to do to get his company on track for an extended period without him, of the serious choices he would have to make in the not-so-distant future.
“Russell!”
It was in the car with him.
A voice from a dream…from deep in his own memory. That’s all it was.
Lynette was dead.
To his right, he saw the diminutive shack called the Chicken House; it was closed but had apparently weathered the cataclysm. Just a few days ago, it had perched on the precipice of the land beyond beyond.
His eyes briefly turned to the mirror, and he saw something.
In the back seat.
A dark, smoky shadow. Just a silhouette. But one he recognized.
“Jesus,” he whispered as his heart slammed into high gear. His foot hit the brake, and the car swerved to the side of the road, skidding to a halt just beyond the entrance to the little restaurant.
The back seat was empty now.
He sat there for a good couple of minutes, breathing heavily, trying to slow his heart’s jackhammer pounding.
What…was Lynette haunting him now?
As he turned back to face the road, something flashed brilliantly in the rearview mirror, again startling him. It took him a moment to realize it had been his own eyes, briefly reflected in the glass.
Something was happening in his head; he could feel it, had been feeling it since the day of their return. His intuition suggested that his senses were retuning themselves, adjusting to some unknown spectrum, a new wavelength, to detect things that his mundane senses could not.
The Dream Frontier’s legacy.
He cautiously put the car into gear again and slowly pulled back onto the road, anxiously scanning his surroundings with his newly refined eyesight. He did not want to see the dead; he had no business seeing the dead. Nor should he be able to hear their voices.
A glance upward, and he saw a vague, aqua-tinted shadow crawling slowly across the canopy of blue.
“No!”
The gemstones were gone. There was nothing left to open the way to a new dream realm.
Except for the two people who had borne the second alien object and been subject to its unknown energies. Who had been somehow transformed.
Transformed into what?
“God,” he whispered, and hit the brakes again. Without a care for any oncoming traffic, he spun the car around in the middle of the road and sped back in the direction of Silver Ridge, knowing he had to get to Debra. To get back to her and never leave her again because, if he did…
The car screamed to a stop as his foot shoved the brake pedal nearly through the floor.
Stretched out before him, from horizon to horizon, a vast, gaping chasm had opened in the earth and was slowly filling with swirling gray mist even as he watched. Soon, at the farthest reaches of the gulf, strange, mammoth black shapes were swimming through an endless sea of fog, soaring upward like breaching whales, then quickly sounding again.
He slid out of the car on rubbery legs and surveyed his surroundings.
Above, the sun had turned to quicksilver, the sky a luminous turquoise, and from a great distance the eerie strains of dark, inhuman choral music drifted to his ears.
Beside his car, Copeland dropped to his knees and wept.
-END-
Other Stephen Mark Rainey books available from Crossroad Press
THE MONARCHS
After her husband murders their daughter and then commits suicide, Courtney Edmiston, devastated and homeless, accepts an invitation to move in with her old college friend, Jan Blackburn. Jan lives with her brother, David, and eccentric Aunt Martha in the town of Fearing, North Carolina, at the edge of the Dismal Swamp. The Blackburn family has suffered its own recent tragedies — and Courtney learns that Jan and David have more than their share of enemies in the town. Because of her association with them, Courtney soon finds Fearing a very dangerous place to live. Certain members of the Surber family, who once worked for the Blackburns, hold a deep grudge against Jan and David and, on several occasions, attempt brutal acts of violence against them. Courtney, determined to help her friend in her own time of crisis, sets out to broker a peace but instead becomes more and more mired in the bitter feud.
For reasons Courtney cannot comprehend, many of the townspeople fear old Martha Blackburn. However, she begins to understand why when Martha threatens the Surbers with swift retribution — by way of a ghostly entity known as the Monarch — and gruesome death does indeed visit the Surbers. And to her horror, Courtney, caught between the two feuding families, at last becomes the focus of Aunt Martha’s fury.
In desperation, two of the Surber brothers abduct Courtney and Jan and threaten to kill them unless the Blackburns meet their demands. Instead, Martha unleashes the horrific Monarch against her family's rivals. And Courtney, whom Martha now considers an enemy, becomes as much a target for its inhuman wrath as the remaining members of the treacherous Surber family...
THE LEBO COVEN
When Matt tried to kill Barry with his car, the two brothers went their separate ways. Barry moved to Atlanta and Matt stayed in the family home in Aiken Mill, Virginia. One day Barry is notified that Matt disappeared. Since he lost his job and his girl, he returns home and is shocked by the damage someone did to his house. Even more perplexing is the word “Lebo” painted in Matt's room in cow's blood.
The first night he is in the house, strange things happen like a glass moving of its own volition; Barry hears strange inhuman noises and the word “Lebo” starts to glow. Jennifer Brand joins Barry in seeking answers. Since she is a gray mage, she senses the dark forces gathering around Barry and his house. They learn that Matt rented a room to Ren, a practitioner of the dark arts, who intends to invoke a spell that will require a blood sacrifice, preferably Matt's but Barry will do in a pinch. The two Riggs brothers and Jennifer try to stop him.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
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The Nightmare Frontier Page 27
