Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid Book 1) (11 page)

“Considering the fact that the Blackstocks lost a child,” Cooper said, “you can see why I would want you to be
certain
that you’re talking about kids, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re sure?”

She smiled. “Yes, I am positive.”

“How?”

“Because I’ve figured out a way to communicate with them.”

“That can be dangerous,” Cooper said.

“So I’ve read,” she said. “But I have something that’s pretty safe.”

With that, she walked to one of the boxes that was packed and slid against the far living room wall. She dug around inside of it for a bit and pulled out an old battered Scrabble game. She opened the box and pulled out the velvet sack. She shook it, letting Cooper hear the tiles clinking together inside.

“Scrabble tiles,” he said. “That actually works?”

“Oh yes. They seem to enjoy it.”

“Have you
seen
any entities?”

“No,” Mary answered. “Sometimes I think I see something out of the corner of my eye, but it turns out to be nothing. Either that or they disappear before I can set my eyes on them.”

Cooper took the bag of Scrabble tiles and put his hand inside, feeling the letters. He grinned, disappointed that he had never thought of such an exercise when he had been deeply involved in researching the paranormal.

“Hey, Cooper?” Stephanie said.

“Yeah?”  He turned to see that Stephanie had sat down in the recliner at the edge of the living area. She held the book out to him and when he took it from her, he realized that she looked terrified.

“Read this one,” she said, pointing to an entry at the top of a page. Cooper took it and started reading. The entry was dated July 2
^nd
, 2011 and read:

Great week, great house, and beautiful beach. We really enjoyed having coffee on the patio while watching the sun come up over the beach every morning. But we’re leaving this note to say that we think your house might be haunted. We’ve seen a few other entries in this book that hint at this, too. There was nothing too bad about the things we experienced—they were actually sort of cool. The creepiest thing we encountered was waking up at 3:00 in the morning to a boy’s voice right outside of the bedroom door whispering “dark water” over and over again.

14

Five minutes later, Cooper and Stephanie were sitting on Mary Guthrie’s back porch. Mary had remained inside to give them their privacy. After reading the entry, Cooper had handed the book back to Stephanie. But rather than take the book back, she got up from the recliner without a word and headed out onto the back porch. Cooper had excused himself and followed her out, still holding the bag of Scrabble tiles.

Sitting across from one another at Mary’s patio table, Stephanie seemed to be in serious thought about something. She had pulled her damned sunglasses down over her eyes when she stepped out so he couldn’t read anything in her eyes. Her rigid posture and absolute silence made him think that she was reaching the point that most skeptics often hit head-on when confronted with the paranormal.

For some reason, the sight on the rocks last night hadn’t quite done it. But now she was facing it and wasn’t sure how to handle it. That was Cooper’s guess anyway.

“Talk to me,” Cooper said, wanting badly to put an arm around her but knowing that she would pull away.

“I’d love to,” she said, “but I don’t know what to say.”

“Take your time, then. Think it out.”

She did. They sat two feet apart from one another, the tiled table top catching slight glimmers of the morning sun. Waves crashed behind them and the gnat-like noise of an airplane flying over the ocean carrying a tacky advertising banner crept in. Cooper watched the course of the plane as he waited for Stephanie to collect her thoughts. As he watched the plane, he craned his neck to the left and saw the two black rocks in the distance. They jutted up from the ocean like ghastly sentinels. From this distance, they looked small and insignificant. But the memory of last night was far too fresh in his mind to accept that illusion. No matter how small they seemed in the distance, they loomed large in his mind.

“I wish I could help,” Stephanie finally said after several minutes. “I really do. But even if I knew where to start, I don’t
want
to help. This is too much for me. I can’t just openly accept these things…things I didn’t believe twelve hours ago. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” he said. And although he had always bought into the paranormal, he genuinely did understand what she was dealing with. He’d seen it countless times in his course of work, back when he’d had a normal life.

“So I think I’m going to go for now,” she said. “I was leaving this afternoon anyway; I’m just getting a five hour head start.”

“Stephanie, I can try to help y—,”

“I know you can,” she said. “And I know you’d love to. But I’m not ready for it. Not for the ghost stuff and, honestly, not for you. It hurts to be with you, Cooper. It really does. That girl that came running to your hotel last night because she was scared…that’s not me. That’s never been me.”

This was an overstatement, but Cooper wasn’t about to say as much. He was too busy dealing with the fact that she was leaving. He knew she’d be gone later that afternoon, but he felt as if he was being robbed of four or five hours’ worth of time with her. That, coupled with everything else they had experienced together in the last nine hours or so, made it even harder.

And that was exactly why he understood her need to leave.

“I understand,” he said. “But what are you going to do? Are you just going to go back to work? Just like that?”

“I have to,” she said. “I have to find normalcy after all of this. I have to bore myself.”

“Well, when can I see you again?”

She grinned at him and took her sunglasses off. He saw the fear in them and wished she had left them on. He couldn’t remember wanting to embrace someone so badly in all of his life.

She looked at him as sincerely as she was able, leaned across the table, and gave him a soft and brief kiss on the mouth.

“You be safe here and do what you need to do,” she said. “When you’re done, e-mail me. Don’t call. Give me the option of returning the e-mail. If I’m up to it, I’ll reply and we’ll figure this out. But for right now, all of this is just too much.”

Cooper’s heart felt like it was twisting in his chest but he managed to say “Okay,” without his voice breaking.

Stephanie stood up and opened her arms to him. He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. It brought back the year or so they had been together and made him wonder if they would have lasted if he hadn’t have so foolishly jumped headfirst into his writing. Thinking of his now-mythic book while holding her made him angry with himself.

“Don’t disappear on me again,” she said into his ear.

“I won’t,” he said. “As long as you’re going to be around.”

She made a soft laughing sound against his neck and then, with a final squeeze, she let him go and started down Mary Guthrie’s porch stairs.

Cooper watched her go. She walked in the opposite direction of the way they had come, headed for the little thoroughfares that wound between the houses. Cooper realized that she was his ride but figured that if it came down to it, he could walk the two miles to his motel.

Watching her leave, her hair blowing in the slight late morning breeze, he was aware that she was the only person alive that knew his secret. While there were two people that knew that he had returned and was no longer missing, Stephanie was the only one that knew what mission he had set himself upon. She was the only one that knew how he had his financial matters set up. With one single phone call or e-mail, she could blow his cover and get him in some very big trouble.

But he knew that she wouldn’t do such a thing. Besides, he was more worried about her disappearing on him this time. Why the hell
would
she want to keep up with him, tying herself to his madness in the process?

Cooper stood against the porch rail and watched her go until she angled up towards the other beach houses and headed down a stretch of unmarked blacktop that pointed back towards where she had parked her car.

Then, just like the ghosts and specters he had spent so much of his life chasing, she was there one moment and gone the next.

15

“Is everything okay?” Mary asked as Cooper came back in through the sliding glass door.

“Yeah,” Cooper said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

“You didn’t. This would have happened eventually anyway. But, at the risk of sounding rude, that’s not why I came back inside to speak with you.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said, picking the guest book back up. “I just need to piece this all together. You see, there’s an entry in here where someone says that they heard a young boy’s voice saying the words
dark water
over and over. It just so happens that those were the last words that Henry Blackstock ever spoke before he drowned.”

“Oh my God,” Mary whispered. She suddenly looked to be three shades lighter than when she had first introduced herself on the beach half an hour ago.

“Now, I’m not going to make the leap and say that Henry Blackstock’s ghost is haunting your house, but it does seem odd.”

“Wouldn’t he prefer to see his family?” she asked. “Why choose my house to roam around in the afterlife?”

Cooper didn’t know if it was the result of Stephanie’s sudden decision to leave or not, but he found Mary’s flippant attitude towards the topic aggravating. He tried to hide it, though, doing his best to stay focused.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “But I actually think there’s more to this than you might assume. And I can’t jump to any conclusions.”

“What do you mean
more to this?
What else should I know?”

“Nothing for now,” Cooper said. He already didn’t like the fact that he had divulged information about Henry Blackstock to this woman. He certainly didn’t see how telling her about Henry pointing towards the black rocks prior to his death would benefit her. And as for the ghoulish figure he and Stephanie had seen last night, there was absolutely no reason to share that information with her.

“Is there anything I can do to help you get answers for the Blackstocks?” Mary asked. “That’s what they want, right? Answers? They called those ghost hunting people to their home. That was all over the rumor mill around this end of the beach.”

“Yes, they need answers. But first, what can you tell me about Sam and Jenny Blackstock? Do you know them well?”

“We’re certainly not close friends or anything,” Mary said. “We wave when we pass one another. They’re considered the odd ducks on this stretch of beach because they’re the only ones that don’t routinely rent their house out for the summer.”

“Did you know them at all when their son died?”

“Yes. That was also the year I lost my husband.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It is what it is,” she said, her flippant attitude once again coming to the surface. “He died in a car accident in November of that same year. But he actually helped out with the searches for Henry. I assume you know that his body was never found?”

“Yes.”

“Sam and Jenny mostly stayed to themselves after all of that. I haven’t had a meaningful conversation with either of them in several months.”

“That’s fine,” Cooper said. “What I’m more interested in are these.”

He handed her back the bag of Scrabble tiles, which she took like a greedy child. She reached into the bag and plucked one out, as if for dramatic effect. She held up an
E
tile and looked at it.

“Two years ago, I had a gentleman over,” she said. “It was odd, as it was the first man I had spent any significant time with since my husband died. We had some wine and played Scrabble. It was my way of letting him know that I wasn’t ready for anything intimate, you know? Anyway, the night went on and he left. I was tired, slightly buzzed, and feeling depressed. I went straight to bed, leaving the wine glasses and the Scrabble board on the kitchen table. I woke up the next morning to a simple message on my kitchen table. There were six tiles. Two words, one on top of the other. It said
Hi Mary.
If I’m being honest, it freaked me out.”

“How do you know it wasn’t something left over from when your visitor left?”

“I thought the same thing,” Mary said. “I picked the tiles up and put them in the bag. I went to the coffee maker and when I turned my back, the letters all spilled on the floor. I had set the bag on the board, near the center of the table. But somehow, they all spilled on the floor. I turned around and actually saw the tiles scattering, like invisible hands were sorting through them. I watched the tiles get sorted and several tiles got separated from the rest. This time, the message was
Good Morning.
”

“That was it?”

“That time, yes. Of course, I had to try it out a few more times. It was scary but my curiosity wouldn’t let it go, you know? That morning, I was too frightened. It took time, courage and a few bottles of wine before I could give it a real try.”

“And it works whenever you do it?”

“No, not every time. It seems that the old clichés are true. The ghosts—or whatever they are—seem to really only want to participate at night. I’ll sometimes get them to play early in the morning.”

“What do you talk about?”

“Well, it’s really like a game to them. And you see, I think that whatever ghosts are visiting my house…well, none of them are Henry Blackstock. I have asked for a name before and the only one I have seen so far is Amy.”

“Amy,” Cooper said. “Spelled out in Scrabble tiles?”

“Yes.”

“What else have you asked?”