With the daisies finally resting safely in the passenger’s seat of the PT Cruiser, Eric started the engine and then sat silently behind the wheel for a moment, reflecting on all that had just occurred.
Could that really have been Aiden Chadwick? It didn’t seem possible. Why would he be back now, after six long years? Where had he been all this time? Why did he disappear in the first place? And why did he seem so determined to remain missing?
He supposed it didn’t matter. The boy had vanished again, just as mysteriously as the first time.
He wondered if he should contact the police. It was a criminal investigation, after all. He could tell them what he saw, let them look into it. But then he’d have to admit to his own crimes. He didn’t exactly break into that apartment, since the doors were unlocked, but he was still trespassing on Leon and Brooke Rufar’s private property. That didn’t look good, regardless of his motives for doing so. And if something turned up missing, he’d surely be the one blamed.
He recalled the apartment. The reeking bathroom. The garbage. The laundry. Those maps… Something about all that was unsettling. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt very strongly that contacting the authorities would be a mistake. At least until he understood things a little better.
But what more could he do? He’d lost Aiden.
For that matter, how, exactly, did he get out of that apartment unseen? The paper sack was there, sitting on the counter, proof that he’d been there, but the only way out was through the tavern. Did Aiden know another way out of the bar? Or was it possible that the Rufars were harboring Aiden?
There was an idea… Maybe Aiden had his own key. Maybe he could come and go as he pleased. But then how long would it be before Leon and Brooke realized that he’d been lying to them when he told them that he entered their tavern through the front door? He gazed through the windshield at the bar, wondering.
“Wait…” He leaned forward, squinting into the sunlight at the upper floor of the tavern. From here, he couldn’t see the broken window. There was no sign of the plywood with its curious peepholes. Instead, all four second floor windows were intact, with curtains visible through the panes of each…curtains that weren’t there when he was inside looking out.
He looked across the street, but from down here he couldn’t see the tower that he’d spied through those two holes. Where was that, anyway? It still didn’t ring a bell. But then, he wasn’t in the habit of memorizing every structure in the city. He’d only seen the tower, so he probably just didn’t recognize it by itself.
He leaned back in the seat again and closed his eyes, but his thoughts remained drawn to Aiden. He couldn’t help but feel that their encounter was somehow significant. He kept thinking about that strange day last August…
He put the PT Cruiser in gear and checked his mirrors. Then he paused. Was there something else he was supposed to do?
His phone alerted him to another text message. He pulled it from his jeans pocket again and read the screen.
SPARKLING JUICE
“That’s right. Thanks.”
NO PROB
Eric dropped the phone into the cup holder and drove to the shopping center. At the grocery store, he purchased the four bottles of sparkling grape juice (two white, two red, as requested) and returned to his car. As he was fastening his seatbelt, his phone rang. He didn’t have to look at the screen to know it was Karen, wanting to know what was taking him so long.
With the air conditioning blowing across him, he sat behind the wheel and told her his story, beginning with his sighting of Aiden Chadwick and ending with his uncomfortable escape from Big Brooke Tavern.
“Are you sure it was Aiden?” she asked when he was done. “I mean how many years has it been now?”
“About six. And I’m not sure of anything. But it definitely looked like him. I couldn’t forget his face. It was everywhere you looked for months after it happened.”
“How did it happen again? Didn’t he disappear right under everyone’s noses?”
“He did,” Eric recalled. “He walked into a gas station one afternoon while his mom was filling the car and never came back. That’s why it was such a big deal. They have him on security cameras. He just walked in and never left. No one ever figured out where he went or how it happened. The media had a field day with it, turned it into the biggest story this town’s seen since the big fire in 1881. Scared the hell out of every parent in Wisconsin.”
“That’s right. I remember. It was really scary.”
“I don’t know where he’s been all this time or why he suddenly showed up again.”
Karen was quiet for a moment. Then she said in a hushed voice, “You don’t think he could’ve been… You know. A ghost?”
Eric would be lying if he said it hadn’t crossed his mind. After all, he’d had some experience with ghosts. Sometimes it was impossible to tell them apart from the living. “It’s not impossible, I guess, but I didn’t see the sixteen-year-old Aiden who vanished six years ago. The Aiden I saw was older. About six years older, I’d say. He had longer hair, a good amount of stubble on his chin. If it was a ghost, he didn’t die anywhere near six years ago when he vanished.”
“Well that’s a relief, I guess.”
“Also, ghosts don’t generally eat that much junk food,” he added, recalling the grocery sack Aiden left sitting on the kitchen counter.
“I suppose not.”
“I still don’t understand how or why he disappeared or what made him suddenly turn up today.”
“Those are good questions. A better question is should I be jealous of Big Brooke?”
Eric sighed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“I hear she’s real popular with the men-folk around town.”
“I’ll just bet she is.” He recalled that wicked wink and her promise to give him “something on the house” if he brought her a pretty flower. Add to that her…ample assets and he was sure that she commanded a lot of testosterone-fueled attention. “You know her?”
“Not personally. I’ve met her a few times at church functions. She’s…”
“Big?”
“Yes. Loud, too. You always know when she’s in the room.”
In the background, Eric heard Diane ask, “Are you talking about me in there?”
“Big Brooke Rufar,” replied Karen.
“I know her. She makes good wings at the tavern. And the best taco dip I’ve ever had. Delicious. Why are we talking about her?”
Why indeed, wondered Eric. He’d just spotted Creek Bend’s most famous missing person and Karen wanted to discuss the buxom bartender.
“Eric bumped into her. I think she likes him.”
“Really?” said Eric.
“Oh, he totally couldn’t handle her.”
“I know, right?”
“I mean, can you picture him? He’d be like one of those little purse-dogs trying to mate with a Rottweiler.”
Karen started giggling. “He would, wouldn’t he?”
“I’m still here, you know.” But they were both already giggling uncontrollably.
Eric lay his head back against the headrest and waited. This conversation, like so many before it, was rapidly deteriorating. He loved Diane. She was a wonderful person and a great friend, but she possessed a sometimes shockingly immature sense of humor. Whenever she and Karen were together, every discussion, if carried on long enough, would eventually go south. And for some reason they especially enjoyed ganging up on him.
“Oh god…!” gasped Karen. “I totally just got this image in my head of her dragging him around by his—” The rest was mercifully lost in a loud snort of laughter.
“Nice. Well, I’m hanging up now.”
She didn’t seem to care. She and Diane were both laughing hysterically now.
Eric disconnected the call and dropped the phone into the cup holder. Immediately, it chimed at him. A text message. Begrudgingly, he picked it up and glanced at the screen.
ARF ARF
“Et tu, Izzy?” He dropped it back into the cup holder and pulled out of the parking lot.
As he drove toward his home, he thought about the maps in the apartment. What were all those circled locations? What did they mean?
Specifically, he recalled the location that was crossed out in red marker. That wasn’t far from his house. In fact, if he took a little detour, he could drive right past that area.
And since he was no longer in any hurry to get home and be laughed at, he decided to do just that.
He passed his usual turn and drove three blocks farther to Hosler Avenue, where he made a right and drove another block, past Ednos Street. This was the area. This was all residential, middle class. Nothing particularly impressive. Again, he wondered if this was all some kind of convoluted burglary scheme. Was there something in one of these houses that was of particular interest to someone? With as little as he knew, it would be impossible to know which house it was. Aiden’s maps were as imprecise as they were vague. Those circles had encompassed the majority of the block. And the fact that this particular circle had been crossed off might have meant that it was a mistake, that there was nothing here and never had been.
But then he saw it: a narrow, weedy lot wedged between two neatly mown lawns. Several large trees crowded the property. Fallen branches littered the rough ground beneath their twisting boughs. Barely visible in the high brush and weeds was the crumbling remains of a structure that might have been a house in utter disrepair fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. Little more than half its walls remained standing. The bristling skeleton of a rotting roof jutted out of one side of the rubble. The other half had collapsed entirely into the ruined yard ages ago.
He pulled up to the crumbling sidewalk in front of the lot and killed the engine. It was utterly out of place. It wasn’t a terribly wealthy neighborhood, but it was nice. The neighbors here took pride in their lawns and gardens. It was surprising that they would tolerate such an eyesore.
He took the cell phone from the cup holder and stepped out into the bright sunlight, leaving the PT cruiser idling. He wasn’t sure it was necessary, but he’d gone through too much with those damned daisies to let them wilt in the heat.
The sidewalk here was in the same state of disrepair as the rest of the lot. The pavement was broken and worn. Tall weeds struggled up through the cracks, brushing the legs of his jeans as he stepped across it. This was strange, too. Maintaining the sidewalks should’ve been the city’s job, regardless of the state of the lot.
He stood amid the weeds and gazed across at the remains of the building that once stood here. He’d never seen it before, but then again, he didn’t often have reason to drive down Hosler Avenue and it was mostly hidden behind the trees at the very back of the narrow lot. It could easily be that he simply never looked very hard at it before. He was no Sherlock Holmes. Karen often reminded him that he wasn’t known for his observational skills.
His phone chimed.
THAT PLACE FEELS STRANGE
“Like the apartment?”
LIKE THAT, YES. BUT SOMETHING ELSE, TOO
“What kind of something else?”
I DON’T KNOW. JUST SOMETHING
Eric hesitated. “Just something” wasn’t very helpful, but he’d learned long ago to trust Isabelle’s feelings.
BE CAREFUL
“Of course.” But the most “careful” thing he could do was get back in his car and drive home. Instead, Eric began walking toward the ruins at the back of the lot.
He could almost see what it used to be. A simple structure, it was probably only a three or four room house, single story, brick, with a tin roof that had rusted almost to nothing over the years. There was a portion of a stone chimney, like an exposed bone shining through the broken skin of a great, rotting beast. It looked even older than he first perceived.
Why was it still here? Everything else in this part of the city was new. Out in the country, on the winding, two-lane roads, he’d seen many places like these. There was plenty of room out there. You left the old where it was and built newer and better somewhere else. But here in the city the trend was to keep moving forward, wipe away the old and replace it with the new. Very little was ever just left to the elements like this.
If nothing else at all, it would be a death trap for curious children.
Maybe it was only a coincidence. Maybe it really was one of the nearby houses that Aiden had intended as the target for his mysterious, crossed-off circle and it just happened that this place was here.
But it was so out of place… It couldn’t be here by chance. It was too much of a coincidence.
And then there was that strange feeling Isabelle had about it…
Although narrow, the lot was deep. He weaved around the dense brush and past a large, sprawling apple tree heavy with green fruit, stepped over a broken limb and approached the front door. …Or what remained of the front door. It was little more than a gap in the crumbling wall. Yet the space behind that doorway seemed especially shadowy, giving it an ominous appearance.
But it was easy to find creepiness in a place like this. His vivid imagination was difficult to control in situations like these. It insisted on revealing hidden horrors in every mottled shadow.
He had to stop and tell himself that there was nothing here.
But he was wrong.
It came from around the intact side of the structure, slinking through the high grass, a sleek, black shape with a small, narrow head and long snout.
Eric stood frozen in mid-step, watching it. Glossy white eyes stared back at him, sizing him up. It was long and lean, about the size of a German shepherd, but much slimmer. His first thought was that it did not look like it was built for grazing. It had the distinct look of a predator on the prowl, complete with large, yellow teeth that bulged from its streamlined muzzle as if too big to fit in its mouth. They bristled from its lips like the tusks of a wild boar.
What was it doing here? Creek Bend was no sprawling metropolis, but it was hardly the wilderness. There must have been at least half a mile of heavily populated residential and commercial properties surrounding this lot. More than thirty thousand people lived here. He could see at least a dozen houses from where he stood. How could something like this be here?
The creature crept closer.
It seemed remarkably sure of itself.
Eric, on the other hand, did not feel nearly so confident. Slowly, cautiously, he took a step backward.
Movement caught his eye to the left and he caught sight of a second black creature emerging from the gaping doorway of the ruined house. A third appeared behind the second.
Not a pair, but a pack.
Very softly, very quietly, Eric said a very bad word.
Two in the doorway, one on the right. His eyes swept the forest from right to left and spied another crouched beneath a twisted oak tree. The outcome was looking more and more bleak.
This purposeful approach and pack mentality reminded him of wolves, but these things did not precisely look canine, except in their long, narrow snouts. The rest of their heads were a little bit cat-like, but they did not exactly resemble cats, either…or any other creature he’d ever seen before. (And he’d seen some remarkable creatures.) They were either covered in very short fur or were hairless. It was difficult to tell. Very lean, very flexible, they practically slithered through the grass. He could see no ears at all and those white eyes were disturbingly unnatural.
Did he dare make a run for the PT Cruiser? It was so far away, and their legs looked long and powerful. He had no doubt that they would be on him long before he could reach it. Yet there was nowhere else for him to go.
He took another step back and then dared a quick look toward the street where he’d parked. Immediately, he saw two more moving toward him from behind.
He was surrounded.
He said that very bad word again. It didn’t carry much authority. He sounded less like a heroic action hero than a whimpering child. If they had any doubts about their ability to take him down, the sound of his shrill voice surely must have bolstered their confidence.
The PT Cruiser was definitely not an option. He glanced back toward the house and saw that the creatures there had advanced several paces while his back was turned. When he looked back at the ones behind him, he saw that they, too, had advanced. Then the ones in front again. They were taking advantage of his distraction. Each time he looked away, they’d slink closer, using their numbers against him.
At this rate, they would be on him in seconds.
He surveyed the land around him and found a single ray of hope: the apple tree. It was only about ten paces away, forked, with a massive limb that stretched out low over the weed-choked lawn.
He had just one chance.
He took it.
As soon as he began moving, all of the creatures bolted after him. They were fast. Too fast for him to make a single mistake. But if he was quick enough… And limber enough…
He propelled himself up the base of the tree and onto the low limb.
The quiet lot was now filled with the chaos of snarls and strange yipping noises as the creatures converged on the tree below him.
The things did not appear to be built for climbing. Their legs, while fast, were too long and slender to claw their way up the trunk of the tree and the large branch was just high enough to prevent them from jumping up to him.
That was a stroke of luck.
But he was still stuck in a tree. And the creatures had no intention of giving up. They clawed at the bark, snarling and jumping. They were so close… If they wanted him badly enough, it was only a matter of time until one of them found a way to reach him.
His heart racing, Eric rose to a crouch and began inching farther out onto the limb, away from the trunk of the tree and a little higher off the ground.
His cell phone began vibrating in his pocket. Squatting down and wedging himself firmly between two fat, jutting branches, he fished it out of his pocket, mashed the button and pressed it to his ear. “Isabelle!”
“Who’s Isabelle?” replied a familiar, slurring voice.
“What?”
“Hey buddy, it’s Gerry.”
“Gerry?” Gerry Nesby was an old acquaintance from way back in high school. At one time, they were pretty good friends, when they were in the same classes and ate at the same lunch table and had a mutual fascination with video games. But beyond that, they had almost nothing in common. Gerry never went to college. He never cared about literature. In fact, he hated to read, except for those weird, graphic, underground comic books he used to have. Eric didn’t even know where he used to get those. These days, he was a body shop mechanic and a notoriously heavy drinker. He was also a raging UFO fanatic. In short, he was everything Eric was absolutely not.
He couldn’t understand why this man still wanted to stay in touch, yet Gerry called at least twice a year, just to shoot the breeze. These calls usually came at inconvenient times…
“Hey, thought it was time I called to see what you’ve been up to. What’re you doing?”
Eric stared down at the sleek, black creatures beneath him. “Um…”
“Is it a bad time?”
“You have no idea.”
He tried to count the things beneath him, but it was difficult. There was something strange about the way they moved around. It was as if they kept jumping around whenever he wasn’t looking directly at them.
“I already did.”
Eric lifted his gaze, confused. “What?”
“Sorry, I was talking to Maggie.”
Eric had no idea who Maggie was and didn’t care to ask.
“I will in a little while.” That was apparently to Maggie, too, since Eric hadn’t asked him to do anything.
He looked out over the brushy yard toward the PT Cruiser. A car drove by without pausing. It still struck him how strange it was to come across such obviously vicious creatures in the middle of a city, even a small one like Creek Bend. Across the street, he could see a swing set in the back yard. What kept them from wandering over there at night? What if the children who used that swing set put up a tent right next to it? The very idea made him sick to his stomach.
On the phone, Gerry said, “Sorry about that. What’s that noise?”
That noise would be the snarls and queer yips of the strange, black creatures currently trying to climb up to him so they could eat him. But Eric only replied, “Nothing. Just the television. Look, I’m kind of busy right now.”
“Sure. Yeah. I was just going to tell you the good news.”
“I really need to keep the line open.” He needed to talk to Isabelle. Now. But if Gerry wouldn’t hang up…
One of the beasts finally managed to reach the branch, but it slipped and fell again. It was only a matter of time now…
He looked up into the boughs above him. It was hard to think.
“I got married.”
Eric took the phone away from his ear and looked at it as if it had malfunctioned. “What?”
“I know, right? It’s crazy!”
Eric looked down at the creatures beneath him. “You seriously have no idea.”
This was a lot to deal with already. He really couldn’t handle the idea of any woman willingly marrying Gerry Nesby. The last time he saw him, the man still had the ugliest teeth he’d ever seen.
“I just met her a few weeks ago, but I’m telling you, I’m totally in love with her.”
“That’s…um… That’s great… But I really have to—”
“No, it’s Eric Fortrell.”
Eric snapped his mouth shut and fought back the urge to scream obscenities into the phone.
“Fortrell. No, he’s the school teacher. Yeah. Creek Bend High.”
A second creature scrambled up to the branch, using another creature for a stepstool, but although it clawed valiantly at the bark, it fell back to the ground like the first, disappearing into the swarming pack.
Eric rose to his feet. He seized the next branch up and held on, ready to climb higher as soon as one of the creatures succeeded in climbing onto the limb.
“Oh, hey, there was something I wanted to ask you about.”
He stared down into the angry pack beneath him. There was still something odd about their movements. He couldn’t quite follow them. It was disorienting.
“What was it now?”
Eric took the phone away from his ear and silently screamed.
Hold it together, he told himself. If you break the phone, you can’t talk to Isabelle. “Really, I—”
“In a minute.”
“What?”
“Not you. Just wait until… Okay, fine. Hey, can you hold on a minute, I have to let the dog in.”
“I really can’t hold on, actually.” But Gerry had already put the phone down and walked away.
Eric banged his forehead against the branch he was gripping with his free hand. Had he already died and gone to hell? Was that what was happening?
Beneath him, the creatures were still climbing toward him. Their persistence was impressive.
On the phone, he could hear Gerry yelling, “Jeanie! Come on, Jeanie! Jeanie!” to a dog that clearly did not want to come into the house. “Hey! Get over here!”
With a frustrated cry, Eric took the phone from his ear and mashed the button to end the call. In the process, it slipped from his fingers and he fumbled it. For a brief instant, he had it, but then it slipped through his hands and fell all the way to the ground.
Eric made up a new swear he didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone use before. It didn’t make much sense, literally translated, but it was definitely vulgar enough to fit his mood. If he survived this, he was definitely changing his number. And for Gerry’s sake, he hoped he didn’t bump into him around town any time soon.
Now he was really trapped. He couldn’t ask Isabelle if she had any advice about these things. And he couldn’t call for help.
He looked out at the street again, then around at the surrounding homes. Through the dense limbs of all these old trees, he could just make out the manicured lawns of the neighbors, but in spite of all the noise these things were making, no one was coming out to see what was going on.
When he looked back down, he realized that one of the creatures had hooked its claws into the branch and was slowly scrambling upward. He looked up at the branches above him. He should be able to climb higher, but he wasn’t sure he could do it from here. He needed to be closer to the trunk. He wasn’t left with much room to fight, but if he played this right…
The thing righted itself on the limb and crouched there for a moment, sizing him up. Then it began moving toward him, its terrible teeth showing.
Eric stood where he was, both hands gripping the limb above him, his knees bent, loose. He waited, watching.
Still, there was something odd about the creature’s movements. It seemed oddly unnatural somehow, yet he couldn’t quite tell why. Nor did he have the time to consider it further.
With a horrid snarl, the beast lunged at him. At the same moment, Eric thrust his leg out, kicking the thing in its shoulder and knocking it off the limb. But it was faster than it looked. It snatched at his foot, caught the leg of his jeans and dangled there, growling.
He kicked his foot violently, crying out in fear and revulsion, but the thing’s jaws were powerful. It held fast to the fabric. It had no intention of letting go.
Fortunately, the fabric was less stubborn. The denim ripped and the beast dropped to the ground and landed with a sharp yelp that stirred in him not an ounce of pity.
Eric regained his balance and stepped back toward the trunk of the tree, where the upper branches were closer and stronger. As he did so, he called out for help, hoping to draw the attention of a neighbor, but no one called back to him. No one came out to investigate. In spite of the cars parked in the driveways, no one seemed to be around.
He gripped the branch firmly and swung himself upward with all his strength, hooking his legs over the branch and pulling himself onto it. He was surprised by himself. Even as a child, he’d never been all that good at climbing trees. Clearly, nothing motivated him to get physical like abject terror. He rose shakily to his knees and then reached up and seized another.
He glanced down again as two more of the creatures scrambled up onto the branch below him. They were beginning to learn. Apparently, they were channeling their inner squirrels.
He heaved himself up onto the next branch, stood up, side-stepped to another and pulled himself up onto the next.
How long could he keep this up? How long could he stay ahead of them?
He stood up again and heaved himself up onto the next branch, determined to keep moving upward until he could climb no higher, hoping the creatures would just give up and leave him alone.
But then the branch snapped.
He fell.
His butt landed hard on the branch below him and he tipped backward. He tried to grab the limb, to hold himself up, but he flipped over, lost his grip and fell. Another limb caught him in the stomach, forcing the air from his lungs, then he slipped, held, cursed, slipped again. Twigs and leaves and hard, abrasive branches slashed past him in a confusing storm as he plunged downward.
Then he hit the ground hard on his back. His breath was gone. His vision blurred, doubled. His whole body ached.
Quickly, he curled himself into a ball, protecting his vital parts, unable to even scream, and waited for the worst.
But it didn’t come.
Trembling, gasping for breath, he dared to blink open an eye, then both eyes.
They were gone.
He lifted his head and looked around with a painful grunt, but there was no trace of them anywhere. The yips and snarls were replaced with the quiet, droning background noise of the modest city. A dog was barking somewhere nearby. Someone was using a lawnmower. A noisy truck roared by on the street, going about its usual business. It was as if they’d never existed at all, as if it had all only been inside his head.
“Huh…” was all he could manage.
What happened? Where did they go? They had him. They should be tearing him apart right now. Surely his fall hadn’t frightened them away. They obviously weren’t nearly that timid. And they were certainly real. The proof was right there in his tattered pants leg.
But then he felt something else…something deeply unsettling…something that filled his aching gut with ice. Slowly, he rolled onto his back and looked the other way, toward the remains of the ruined house. There, standing in that dark, broken doorway, clothed in a filthy, ragged housecoat, was what appeared to be a very old woman.
She wore a gray scarf over her head and it cast an unnaturally deep shadow over her face. Even in the shade of all these trees, the day was too bright for such darkness. It gave her the appearance of a reaper.
There was something terribly wrong about the woman.
His phone lay somewhere in the tall grass nearby. It began ringing, but he ignored it. That would be Gerry again, most likely. Isabelle would know he couldn’t reach it.
Instinctively, he knew that it was time to leave.
He rose carefully to his feet, still trembling, and took a step backward.
Then the old woman was moving toward him. She wasn’t running, exactly. She seemed to glide toward him instead. Her feet didn’t quite touch the ground somehow.
She lifted her hands and black, skeletal claws as long as carving knives glinted in the mottled sunlight.
Eric turned and ran.
The woman followed.
A strange, unearthly shriek filled the air right behind him and a white-hot streak of pain shot across his back.
He screamed.
The PT Cruiser was right there beyond the sidewalk, yet it was too far away. He’d never make it.
Again something hot flashed across his back.
Those claws! The woman was going to flay him alive!
Pain streaked from his left shoulder to his right. Then from the right side of his ribcage to his left shoulder. Then up and across his spine. He cried out in pain. He was going to die here, sliced open and gutted and left to rot in the summer sun.
But then he reached the sidewalk and raced around the front of his vehicle. Seconds later he was inside, the door slammed closed, locked. He thanked God for the foresight to leave the engine running and the doors unlocked.
And then it was over.
He looked around, but he was alone. No one was there. The lot was empty. The old woman and all her nasty pets had vanished and no one seemed remotely disturbed by all the chaos that had erupted in the middle of this quiet neighborhood.
Panting, his heart still racing, he stared back at the ruined house. What the hell was all that?
Clearly, whatever Aiden Chadwick was doing, it was far stranger than he’d ever imagined. He doubted now that those maps had anything to do with burglaries.
He needed to talk to Isabelle. She was the only one he knew who could possibly help shed any light on these bizarre events for him. But his phone remained beneath the apple tree.
Karen wasn’t going to like that he’d lost another one. But he sure as hell wasn’t going back for the stupid thing.
He stepped on the brake pedal and reached for the gear shift, but he hesitated when his eyes fell on a plain, white envelope that someone had slipped under the windshield wiper. He didn’t have to leave the car to read the message. It was not inside the envelope, but written on it, scrawled before his eyes in thick, black letters:
DEAD BEFORE SUNSET
Eric glanced around once more, but of course there was no one lingering in the vicinity. Anyone could have left this note for him without being seen. He’d taken his eyes off the vehicle more than once, certainly leaving more than one window of opportunity for the mystery messenger to come and go.
Dead before sunset… Eric didn’t like the sound of that. Who would be dead before sunset? Was this about Aiden? Was he in trouble? He recalled the panic that flashed across the young man’s face when he realized that Eric had seen him.
Wary for any more angry hags, he opened the door and snatched the envelope off the windshield, but it was empty. There was nothing more than the three ominous words.
His back stinging from the bite of the old woman’s demonic-looking claws, he shifted the PT Cruiser into gear and drove away.