I can always feel it coming, like heat lightning on the horizon, flickering but powerful, out there and giving the signal there is a stench in that hot breeze that blows across your face you should fear.
The storm was brewing, and it was time anyway, so the unsettled atmosphere didn’t bother me.
I like those lowering clouds.
I read Stoker many times. Walpurgis Nacht was not new to me.
Whatever it was called, it was not different from any other passing phase of the moon.
Remember, the predators are always out there.
The cabin was homey, with pine walls and a plank floor, the furniture mismatched but comfortable, and though it was tidy, there were stacks of books everywhere and a half-unpacked box sitting on the floor of the tiny kitchen. There were also two Scotch bottles Alicia had sold him on the butcher block counter, one of them empty.
“I don’t know if we should stay here.” Jon looked frighteningly sincere. He hadn’t sat down but instead stood by the window, framed by the dying sunset, his face set. “Let’s go to a motel. Not in Black Lake, but a little farther away. I was thinking about doing that anyway, but after what happened to you today, I think it might not be a bad idea for you either.”
It had occurred to her already that maybe she shouldn’t stay with her parents if she had some sort of bizarre stalker. It might put them in danger, too.
“You’re scaring me.”
“You’re already scared, Alicia.”
She couldn’t argue that. “Yes, I guess I am. It is more accurate to say you are scaring me more. I get the impression that you know more about what’s going on than I do.”
“We can talk at the motel. It’s getting dark. Let’s just go.” He picked up his keys from a bowl on the coffee table.
“Are you sober enough to drive?” she asked bluntly. “Maybe we should take my car.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Good question. I don’t know if I am or not. Okay, you drive. And thanks for reminding me.” He walked over and picked up the full bottle of scotch. “This is coming with me.”
Whatever was going on, she was becoming more and more convinced that Jon Palmer should not sit in this cabin alone during a long Minnesota winter.
The shadows had thickened and taken form under the trees, and she felt a sense of urgency to get away as fast as possible. As she opened her car door, she stopped cold. “Did you hear that?”
He looked at her over the roof of the car. “Yes, I heard it. I’ve heard it before. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It had sounded like…children playing, but the laughter was all wrong, too high-pitched and unnatural. Her hands shook as she tried to put the keys in the ignition. “Jon—”
“I know. Just drive.”
She did, going down the lane probably too fast, the headlights catching the crowding trees and she barely stopped to look before pulling out onto the county highway. Having an accident would hardly improve an already horrible day, so she slowed down consciously, forcing herself to relax her vise-grip on the steering wheel. Her fingers had begun to ache.
“George told me a story last night I didn’t know.” His voice was almost casual and conversational. “And here I thought I’d dug out everything on Black Lake possible.”
That eerie laughter still had her trembling. “Like?” she asked hoarsely, and then cleared her throat.
“In 1952 a woman named Maude Davidson took her three children to the lake we just left for a picnic and some swimming. Then she drowned them all, laid their bodies on the bank, and walked into the water herself. They recovered her body three days later. I might have chosen a different lake for my restful return had I known that.”
Alicia’s mind rejected everything about that story, mostly that a mother would kill her own children. And a haunted lake? “You think…I mean…I don’t believe in...whatever that was.”
But that laughter…
“I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m just offering a possible explanation for what you heard. I’d like to say I’m happy I’m not just imagining it. I hear it too.”
She probably shouldn’t look away from the winding road, especially at dusk, but she shot him a glance anyway. “How can you be so…matter-of-fact about it?”
“God, Alicia, I don’t know what to believe anymore.” He suddenly sounded beyond weary.
She didn’t know, either.
“I at least need a toothbrush. Can we stop by my house?”
“If you insist, though I vote that stopping at a drug store and picking one up is the better plan.”
“I don’t even have anything to sleep in.”
Finally his smile held a hint of his usual charisma. “Do you really think that’s a valid argument to me? Sleep naked. I volunteer to do the same so you don’t feel alone.”
“How kind.” She even managed a laugh, which was nice.
Alone she did not want to be.
The town was quiet as they passed through, subdued and motionless. Almost as if a sign had been hung up that there was a murderer loose.
Again.
“Do you?”
“Sleep naked? Sometimes.”
“Oh, you are so funny. Believe in ghosts?”
He seemed to consider his response very carefully. “I believe that we only understand the world where we live inside the parameters of our limited perception. I don’t believe in billowing sheets and howling shrieks, but I do think that there are a lot of things that we just can’t comprehend happening to us that do happen anyway.”
She bit her lower lip. “What does that mean? Do you want to give me an example?”
“I’d actually like to spare you that.”
It already had started to rain, small splatters on her windshield. Alicia concentrated on the road, her vision swimming with damp pavement and double lines, but her mind’s eye elsewhere. Even impaired, maybe he should have just driven. Despite the empty bottle she’d seen, he didn’t seem intoxicated.
It was raining hard now, coming down in a solid sheet and as promised, there was sleet mingling with it, the temperature dropping like a rock. She was headed for Morristown. There was a decent small motel there just off the road, with a little restaurant and she knew the owner. He came down to get alcohol like rum and vodka by the bottle during the off-season when he didn’t want to buy it by the case wholesale.
“I hope you are going to explain that,” she muttered when she saw the blurred neon sign for their destination.
He didn’t answer.
* * * *
Jon approved of the generic little room. For one thing, it was on the second floor, and there was no outside door, so it was accessed by a hallway. It had a decent bathroom and a comfortable bed, plus in this day and age, a desk for a computer and the inevitable television.
They were relatively safe, at least for the moment.
When Alicia came out of the bathroom she had taken down her hair from the no-nonsense ponytail and combed through it so it softly framed her face. Even he was surprised given the current state of chaos in his existence that he could feel the rush of blood to his groin as he started to get an erection.
He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair. “I know you had an unusual day, so if you aren’t in the mood, I understand, but personally, I’d like to forget about it all for a while by doing something that feels good and alive.”
“Like what?”
“It involves both of us without our clothes on.”
“A male solution to every problem,” she said dryly, but some color had come back into her face. “If I just can get laid, it’ll all be better. That’s the motto of your gender.”
“I’d argue that, but it’s probably true.” He started to unbutton his shirt. “What’s your vote?”
“It’s a bargain.” She reached down and caught the hem of her shirt, pulling it off. “I’m all for the sex as long as we talk afterward.”
“Unfair advantage.” He stared at her breasts showcased by a lacy bra that he doubted was comfortable but certainly caught his attention. “I’d probably agree to give you a kidney right now.”
“I think you might be telling the truth about that.” She looked pointedly at the bulge in his jeans as she shimmied out of her loose slacks revealing panties to match the bra. “Lucky for you, as far as I know, I don’t need one.”
He didn’t really want to talk, but knew it was inevitable. So he might as well enjoy the first part of the bargain. “Agreed.”
It was a relief to unzip his pants and free his erection and he had to wonder if his elevated level of sexual hunger was related to his also elevated stress levels. Probably, he thought as he reached for Alicia and tumbled her back on the bed, swiftly unhooking her bra and then pulling her panties down her legs.
He disliked talking during sex. Connie had tried early on, even before they were married but had started sleeping together, to cajole him into sexy talk as part of foreplay, but it felt unnatural to him, and actually turned him off, so she gave up. He wasn’t a particularly gentle lover, either, unless he consciously reined it in, but he’d gotten the impression the other night that Alicia had liked that edge of roughness.
He licked a path along her collarbone to one breast, taking the nipple in his mouth and slightly biting down. Beneath him Alicia made a small sound, but it must have been pleasure since her fingers threaded into his hair and she pulled him closer. In a suffocated whisper she said, “I know we didn’t talk about it the other night, but I don’t take birth control or anything.”
“Noted,” he supplied succinctly, nudging her legs apart. He hadn’t even thought about it. She was wet and ready and it was a good thing, since he was uninterested in waiting.
George’s crude speculation was right, she was definitely built for speed.
He moved and she moved with him, and the sound of their breathing was overshadowed when the heater flicked on, signaling the weather was not getting better.
Jon felt her climax building by the tightening of her inner muscles around his penetration and the bite of her fingernails into his bare shoulders. She made a very sexy sound in the back of her throat when it happened, his response was the exquisite physical joy of ejaculation, and it was probably the closest experience he’d had to simultaneous orgasms.
Afterward, he lay on his back, sweat cooling on his body, the sound of muted rain still coming down outside. Next to him Alicia waited on her side, one hand lightly resting on his chest.
He owed her. Not on purpose, but he’d drawn her into his mess, and at the moment, extrication was a puzzle he had yet to solve.
“In preface, I am going to just admit this is going to sound insane.”
She spread her fingers just a fraction in reaction. “I’m all ears.”
He wasn’t about to tell her about the bloody shirt he couldn’t explain, the body at the Murray farm either, the missing holes in his life, the panic attacks…but the bare bones of the story she deserved.
“When I was seventeen, my mother married a man named Larimer Hanson. He was a professor of literature…I felt an innate loathing for him and he definitely knew it, but didn’t care. I began to suspect he might be behind the disappearances of those girls when we were in high school.”
Alicia said nothing, but then again, he still wouldn’t even look at her.
“I didn’t have any proof, just this very bad feeling. Believe me, I questioned if my dislike colored my suspicion, but it just seemed to fit. He was ostensibly out of town lecturing during each of the abductions, they were all very pretty, I’d gone out with several of them… I admit I was pretty freaked out over the whole thing as I thought more and more about it.”
“I remember when it was happening.” Alicia said it very quietly. “My parents wouldn’t let me walk even down Main Street alone, though we lived close by. I had to take the school bus.”
He finally turned his head and looked at her. “I think he’s the man you’ve now seen twice. I’ve seen him, too. He’s back.”
Her eyes were huge. “That was twenty years ago, Jon.”
It was. And still fresh in his mind as the day it happened.
“The scar on his cheek…I hit him with a shovel after my mother’s death.”
And killed him. Buried him. One of the more satisfying moments of his life. He left that out of the story.
“You thought he was responsible for her suicide?”
He knew Larimer, with his vicious nature, either hung her from that rafter, or the notion that she was married to a man who was a serial killer had made her do it. Either way, it was murder.
Even killing the man had not settled the score.
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jon.” Her expression was colored with sympathy, her hair spilled over the pillow.
He was lying to her to a certain extent by not explaining the man was dead, but she had earlier said she didn’t believe in the supernatural. Being hunted was bad enough, but being hunted by a force you couldn’t comprehend was worse.
So he carefully chose his next words. “I don’t know how he came back to Black Lake, but I do think he has a score to settle with me, and now, because of the other night, you might be part of it.”
Alicia might have said something in response, but the sound of his phone interrupted the conversation. Jon rolled over and grabbed it, looking at the display.
George.
He wasn’t annoyed with the interruption, since he’d told Alicia about all he was willing to say. “Hello.”
But it wasn’t George, it was Troy. His voice was icy when he said, “I went to your cabin, but you aren’t there, yet your car is. I take it she drove. Where are you?”
So much for feeling safe. His heart constricted. If Troy was with George, but the one calling him, that probably meant the explanation for the headstone hadn’t flown. “Motel,” he said as calmly as possible. There was no use denying it, as they would dig up his credit card records.
“In bed, no doubt. You’re a fucking prick, Palmer.”
That seemed like a strange thing for a lawman to say to someone who was no doubt now a suspect in a murder investigation but he and Troy went back a pretty long way. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but Troy stopped him.
“Let me talk to my wife.”
Jon went still. “What? You think I’m with Amy?”
“She’s gone, you’re gone.” The response was bitter. “What am I supposed to think?”
“I’ll be happy to let you speak with the woman next to me.”
Jon handed the phone to Alicia and ran an unsteady hand over his face as she spoke to the sheriff.
Thank God Troy had interrupted him. He’d been about to say, I didn’t kill her.