Ashlyn's Radio (8 page)

Instantly, she knew. There was a connection.

“Tell me,” Ashlyn begged.

“When that radio told Mama about the train that was coming back through the Junction, she realized that’s why she was so upset when Colby got on board that day. It wasn’t just the normal fear and anxiety a mother has for her son when he goes off to war. She had looked at that troop train and that tall, smiling, skeletally thin conductor, and somewhere inside, on some level, she’d known. There was evil on that troop train. Pure evil — looking to steal the very souls of those who came aboard.”

Ashlyn blinked. “And your mother told people this?”

“She did. She thought she had to! People thought she was crazy, or course. Or
crazier
, I should say. By this time Catherine Brennan had quite a reputation. Someone got sick — it had to be her fault. If they lost a baby — all her doing. She’d hexed them somehow with her grim prediction. But then other people started dying, out along the tracks. People who shouldn’t have. For no reason, and people started thinking about that train. There was a certain quality, a very unique, identifiable quality, to the whistle of that troop train, the one with that tall, thin conductor. By now, the war was done, and that train wasn’t supposed to go through anymore. And when people heard the whistle at night, some got up to see. Some never came back alive. Their bodies were found trackside, their faces frozen in terror, their hands locked into claws. People blamed Mama, in their grief and in their bewilderment. They blamed the mysterious deaths on the only person they could — Catherine Brennan.

“Some people swore she brought the evil to the Junction, but it was already here. She just warned people to stay away from it. Told the news — news she heard from her radio — of the souls being stolen.”

Ashlyn looked into her coffee. Her untouched coffee. She hadn’t so much as taken a sip since her grandmother had started talking. She did so now in the silence. The frightening, heart-pounding silence.

The dogs had stopped barking. The radio had fallen silent, she realized.

Maudette must have noticed the silence too just as Ashlyn did. She stood and grabbed both their cups from the desk. “The radio ruined my mother’s life, and it did a pretty good job on mine. And your poor mother…. She never should have come home. She never should have tried….”

Her mother. Ashlyn’s throat ached with unshed tears. She blinked rapidly. “Why do you
stay
here?” she demanded. “Okay, fine, the radio won’t go, but why don’t
you?
Just get the hell out and leave it. God, if you’d only done that years ago, my mother wouldn’t … wouldn’t….”

Ashlyn closed her eyes on the sting of tears. A second later, she flinched as Maudette laid a hand on hers.

“I’m sorry, Ashlyn. Sorry about what happened to your mother. But I couldn’t have prevented it.”

She pulled her hand away. “Let me guess. No one wanted to buy Crazy Catherine’s house, so you couldn’t afford to move. I get it. You were stuck here.”

“Dammit, Ashlyn, I
did
walk away from this place, the first chance I got. Leslie had taken you off to Toronto, my husband was gone and my mother had died. It was my chance finally to get away. And you’re right, no one would buy the place. But I didn’t care. I wouldn’t sell it anyway. Saddle someone else with that curse? I couldn’t do it. So I just packed my bags and walked away. Went all the way to Bangor and checked into the cheapest motel I could find. I figured I’d get my bearings and start over.”

Ashlyn swiped tears from her cheeks. “So what happened? If you hate the radio so much, why’d you come back?”

“Because it came to me. It was right there in my motel room when I woke up. Hell, it woke me up, blaring that damned swing music. There’s no getting away from it. Not for long, at least. Since it didn’t matter where I lived, I came back.”

“Omigod,” Ashlyn breathed.

“It’s evil, Ashlyn. Stay away from it. Stay as far away from it as you can. Nothing good can ever come from that damned thing! If you listen, it will tell you things.”

“About the future? About the train? That conductor?”

“Things you don’t want to know. Things we don’t talk about.”

Maudette got up and walked away. Ashlyn followed her grandmother from the tiny office through the barn and out into the early morning. The sun was pushing up past the horizon now and birdsong filled the air. The first stirring of a breeze played through the leaves of the big maple in the yard.

So normal.

Ashlyn looked up at the old farmhouse, at her bedroom window still ajar with the mosquito screen in it, at the sun glinting on the old aluminum roofing.

Rubbing the goosebumps from her arms, she followed her grandmother back into the silent house.

A
LITTLE SLEEP MADE
all the difference in the world.

She’d gone back to bed immediately when they’d come in from the kennels. To Ashlyn’s surprise, she’d fallen asleep quickly, and she’d slept dreamlessly for three hours. The moment she woke, though, the memories rushed back in on her. The damned indestructible radio, trapping Maudette here all those years, intent on foisting on her its unwelcome, deadly predictions.

An evil train.
Man, she had to talk to Rachel about that.

She heard it then, the joyous barking of one of the dogs and that full, male belly laugh. That was probably what had woken her. She slipped out of bed and went to the window, careful to conceal herself better this time.

Yep, the same boy. Caden What’s-His-Name. He wore a long sleeved shirt today — it was much cooler this morning than it had been that other evening — but there was no hiding that hard body beneath. Even if she hadn’t seen him shirtless, she couldn’t have missed that lean, coiled strength.

She smiled. This was exactly what she needed. The perfect diversion.

And she had the perfect outfit.

Fifteen minutes later, she checked herself in the mirror. Her blond hair was twisted up into a casual knot at the back of her head. Or rather, a casual-
looking
knot. It had taken her most of a summer to master that particular feat of engineering. It had to hold securely, yet you wanted it to come down when a guy pulled out that one strategic pin…. She stood on tiptoe and angled her body for a better view of her butt in the dresser-top mirror. She grinned. Oh, yeah. The bootcut Sevens in the Soho wash were worth every penny. And the Hurley cami tank and her Etnies skate shoes completed her best
notice me
outfit.

Ashlyn found Maudette in her den on the phone to what sounded like a customer.

“Going out to the kennels,” Ashlyn mouthed.

Maudette nodded and went back to her customer.

Ashlyn ate two pieces of bacon from the plate on the counter, grabbed a coffee and headed for the barn. She followed the sound of Caden’s voice through the building and out back, to the big fenced dog run. Leaning on the barn’s doorframe, she sipped her coffee and watched, waiting for him to notice he wasn’t alone. Not that she was in any hurry. She was quite happy watching him chuck tennis balls for the goofy Airedales and handing out laughing praise and a scratch on the head when they returned them. Plus it gave her an opportunity to study him at closer range.

The first thing she noticed was his clothes. Decidedly urban, but definitely not what you’d call hood wear. His jeans — designer ones, she noted — fit well instead of bagging, and the long-sleeved woven shirt he wore was tailored to conform to his body. Sort of urban preppy, but not without a little edge. She half-expected to see some kind of dress shoe on his feet, but when her eyes finally dropped down that far (strange how they lingered), she saw he wore a sweet pair of Circas.

His hair was cut short, but the hairline was natural, none of the sharp, defined edges her friends back in TO liked. They’d have called this a Denzel do. Disparagingly. But Ashlyn liked it. It sorta went with the clothes.

It was Lolly-Pup who gave her away. The dog was returning a tennis ball when she noticed Ashlyn. Dropping the ball three feet short of Caden, she gave a happy yip and raced toward Ashlyn.

Caden turned, a wide smile on his handsome face. The smile faded quickly. “Oh. I was expecting Mrs. Caverhill.”

Well, not quite the reaction she was going for. “Guess you’ll have to settle for
Miss
Caverhill.” Ashlyn pushed away from the doorframe and walked toward Caden. “I’m Maudette’s granddaughter, Ashlyn.”

“I figured.” He turned to watch the dogs.

I figured?
What kind of a response was that? And why wasn’t he looking at her?

A dog glided up and nudged him, trying to return a tennis ball. With a “Good girl, Roxy” and a scratch on the head, he took the ball and flung it again. Tongue lolling, Roxy raced after it, two other dogs on her heels.

Ashlyn’s tongue was just about lolling too, but for a different reason. The boy had those muscles for a reason, it seemed. This close, she could almost feel the coil and release of energy as the yellow ball all but exploded from his hand.

When a few seconds had passed, she became conscious of the silence. And of the fact that she was pretty much staring at him. She looked down at her Etnies, toed the grass a bit.

Another dog galumphed up, and Caden repeated the process, this time saying, “Good boy, Hector.”

“You know them all by name?”

“Most of them.” He glanced at her briefly, then looked away again, his gaze settling on a pair of young dogs play-fighting in the far corner of the enclosure.

“They all look the same to me,” Ashlyn confessed. “Except Lolly-Pup. Right, girl?” She knelt to pat the dog, which practically vibrated with happiness at the attention. But making Lolly-Pup happy was not her primary motivation. Drawing Caden’s eye
was
. Lolly-Pup flopped down to invite a belly rub. Laughing, Ashlyn obliged. And when she looked up from under her lashes, Caden was watching her. Intently.

There! That’s what I’m talking about. He likes!

Of course, he looked away quickly.

Ashlyn stood, brushing dog hairs from her jeans. “So, I hear your family’s here for the year.”

“That’s right,” he said, keeping his eyes on the dogs.

“Your dad’s a prof, right? And you’re home schooled? That’s why I don’t see you at school?”

“Yes.”

Geez. Spill your guts, why doncha? She took a breath and tried again. “You like it? The home school thing, I mean.”

He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

She moved a little closer. Not too close. Not threatening, in-your-space close. Just … closer. While he didn’t exactly give ground, she could tell he wanted to. And what the hell was up with that? Was
everything
different here than it was in the city? Even basic boy/girl stuff?

Unless he was….

No. No way. Not gay. Not the way he’d looked at her for … like … all of that split second.

Just because he likes a female form doesn’t mean he likes
you,
Ash
. And why should he? He didn’t know her from Adam. Or Eve, as it were. And what was she trying to prove anyway? Suddenly ashamed of her childish bid for attention, she bent to pick a blade of grass, using it as an opportunity to move away again. God, she was such a jerk.

“It’s a little weird,” he said.

She turned back toward him. “Excuse me?”

He dipped his head. “The home schooling thing. It’s kinda weird. Especially when we move to a new place.” He took an incoming tennis ball from one of the big males and threw it. “Makes it hard to meet people, you know?”

“I can imagine,” she said, but her hormones were busy going
oh wow oh wow oh wow
again at the display of power when he’d thrown the ball. “But you met Maudette.”

  “Yeah. Through my photography. I begged her to let me shoot her dogs.”

“She told me.” Ashlyn nodded toward the barn. “Did you take that one of Lolly-Pup in Maudette’s office?”

He nodded. “A couple of others, too.”

“In the bamboo frames?” At his nod, she said, “I figured. They look like high art compared to the rest.”

He grinned, and she felt a flutter in her chest.

“Yeah, the others do kind of look like doggie mug shots, don’t they?”

Ashlyn smiled right back at him. “More like doggie driver’s license photos. There’s one with its ear askew and another with gleaming red devil eyes. Bet they’d ask for a do-over if they could.”

Caden laughed. “Oh, and how about the one with its lip hung up on one side?”

She giggled. “God yes! He looks like Elvis.” She curled up her lip.
“Thank you very much.”

Another dog presented him with a tennis ball and he obliged by throwing it again.

“I’d love to see more of your work,” Ashlyn said. “Maybe I could go to your place sometime to have a look?”

His smile evaporated. “I don’t think so. My parents aren’t much for company.”

Ashlyn blinked. Wow, no wonder he had trouble meeting people. First the home school thing, and then the no company rule.

Unless….

Maybe it was only certain people who couldn’t be invited over. Like the offspring of certified nut cases. The community pariahs.