The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (23 page)

Evan’s face contorted
as he reached with two fingers and managed to grab the hairs. With a revulsion so pure it bordered on horror, he pulled the white hairs out of Shaun’s mouth, watching their length extend far, much too far, into his son’s throat.

“Uhhhhh,” Evan
moaned, and instantly remembered Becky’s incoherent mumblings down by the beach.

He pulled and the hair
s kept coming, impossibly long, stretching, catching the natural light of the room until they seemed to shine with a glow of their own.

Just when he thought his arm would not be long enough and he would have to re-grip the hair
s, they slid free of Shaun’s mouth and hung suspended from the tips of his fingers, limp, like pale parasites. With a cry of revulsion, Evan flicked them away, knowing, somewhere in the deep cellar of his mind where all morbid thoughts were birthed, that the hairs wouldn’t fly free of his fingers. They would wrap around his hand, entwine themselves to him, and begin to slither toward his own face, seeking the wet darkness of his mouth.

But they
did detach from his fingers. After an almost graceful flight, they landed in a coil on the kitchen floor and flattened there, unmoving. He looked down at Shaun, who breathed fully and deep, tears running from his eyes in streams that tracked sideways toward his temples.

“
You’re okay, honey, you’re okay,” he said, clutching his son close in a hug.

The sound of
Shaun’s heavy but easy breathing was like music to Evan’s ears, and he relished it the only way a person who knew the loss of something precious could.

“Da,” Shaun sobbed
, and Evan held him tighter.

“I’m right here, bu
ddy, you’re okay, you’re fine.”

He
rocked him as if he were an infant, for what seemed like hours, his eyes straying to the white hairs from time to time, which shone like threads of snow in the morning sun.

~

“Are you okay?”

Selena’s soft voice brought him out of his fugue
, and he blinked, sitting up straighter in the pontoon’s seat. The sunlight glared off the water, and he felt it tightening the skin on his face. He’d have to be careful not to get burned.

Burned. Burn it. Destroy it.

“I’m great,” Evan said, and tried to smile. “Thinking.”

“You were miles away.”

“Yeah, busy morning.”

Of pulling
white hairs that couldn’t have been there out of your son’s throat—out of his stomach.

He
shook his head, silencing the voice.

“Do you want to talk?” Selena asked, setting her rod
against the pontoon’s railing.

“You keep tryin
g to do your thing, don’t you?”

“Can’t shut it off.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Is it the article?
Is that what’s bothering you?”

Shaun kicked his legs out and squealed with delight as the pontoon drifted over a wave. Evan watched him for a moment
before he answered, telling himself he wasn’t waiting for him to begin choking again.

“Yeah. I got an email from my friend saying the editor w
asn’t interested in the story.”

Selena frowned. “I’m sorry. Is there any other magazi
ne that might buy it from you?”

He
shrugged. “Maybe. I’m giving it one last go with him, see if I can convince him it’s worth printing.”

“
So the mystery woman you went to see yesterday wasn’t a dead end?”

“No, no
, she wasn’t.”

Evan related the events at Cecil’s house to her
, as the boat drifted in a lazy line parallel to the nearby shore. When he’d finished, Selena sat quiet, not looking at him for a while.

“And you th
ink she was telling the truth?”

“Definitely. Even if everything she said was
made-up, she still believed it. Plus all the pieces seemed to connect.”

Selena picked up her rod and twitched it up and down
, and Evan once again admired her skill, which outdid his own.

“Is there another interest you have in all this?”
she asked, not looking at him.

Yes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you seem somewhat fixated on the story
. I’m wondering if it has any significance to you other than the article.”

“No.”

Liar.

“I think it’s an incredible mystery that no one’s heard before.”

You think it can do something impossible, you think it can turn—

“And one that could secure a future for Shaun and I if someone would pick it up,” he
said, fighting the voice into silence.

“Okay, I was curious, that’s all
.”

She tipped back in her seat and propped her feet up on the pontoon’s rail, giving him a great view of her legs. She glanced at him, the dark sunglasses doing nothing to hide the meaning of the look. Evan turned his head away, hoping the blush on his cheeks would be
hidden by the heat of the sun.

The sound of a boat motor drew their attention to a nearby point of land
, and a few seconds later a large craft appeared. As it neared, Evan heard the engine slow and saw the familiar form of Jacob at the wheel. The Irishman raised a hand in greeting and steered toward them.

“Oh God, it’s him,” Selena said in a low voice.

Evan looked at her, surprised. “You know Jacob?”

“Unfortunately. He screwed my dad out of a land deal years ago
. He was really rude and cruel about it too. I’m sorry, I can’t stand him.”

With that
, she turned away to fish off the opposite side of the pontoon. Evan was at a loss for words but had no time to ask any more questions, as Jacob idled his Lund sideways to them a dozen yards away.

“Mornin’
, boyos! I thought ’twas you over here. How’re we doin’ this mornin’?”

“Great, how about yourself?” Evan said. The awkwardness
of Selena’s words still hung over him.

“Oh
, not bad, not bad. Sorry bit of tragedy back in town, though.”

“Oh yeah, what happened?”

“Young gal by the name of Tram died at her own hand last night.”

A strange humming filled Evan’s ears
, as if his head had been thrust underwater. The pontoon lurched sickeningly beneath him, and his gorge rose like an elevator. Jacob said something else, and Evan had to struggle to keep his head up. He felt like lying down, even on the moving floor of the boat.

“Are you
all right, son?” Jacob said, throwing his boat in gear for a moment, to keep even with them.

“Yeah,” Evan managed
to say. Shaun squealed loudly, the sound cutting through the hum of Jacob’s motor and into Evan’s eardrum. “I’m sorry, I missed what you said before.”

“Oh, I jest said the poor gal must’ve been disturbed
fer a time.”

“How?” Evan asked, the breath
in his lungs hot, way too hot.

Jacob shifte
d his eyes in Shaun and Selena’s direction. “I’m not sure it’s proper for present company.”

“It’s fine,” Evan said
, with more of an edge to his voice than he meant.

Jacob looked doubtful but spoke above the rattle of the motor. “Word is she climbed out
onta her parents’ roof and fell headfirst onta the drive. I suppose it could be an accident, but that’s not what people’re sayin’. Horrible business. I know her father quite well. Tragic, so young.”

Evan nodded, his stomach almost boiling. It was all he could do to keep the vomit from
racing up and out of his mouth.

“Well, I jest wanted ta say hi
. Sorry ta come bearin’ such awful news. You have a good day. Catch me a fish, Shauny!”

After
a final wave, Jacob gunned the engine and raced off across the lake, spangles of water flying up from his boat’s prow and catching the sun like dropped jewels. Evan set his rod down and propped his face in one hand. His arm shook, and he thought he still might lose the battle to keep his breakfast down. He needed to rest and forget yesterday, forget the glassy stare in Becky’s eyes and the sound that came from her mouth.

“My God,” Selena said. She faced him again, her rod tied up and propped against an empty seat. “That was the girl who did PCA work for you yesterday?”

He could only nod.

“You said she acted
really strange when she left?”

“Yeah,”
he croaked.

Raising his face from his palm
, he gazed across the lake to where the island sat, a dark clump rising up out of the water like a tumor. He felt unhinged. Everything looked lurid and fake in the sunlight. He wanted to step out of the pontoon and tear a hole in it all, rip open the water, slash the sky so he could look beyond and see the dark, clicking gears that drove everything in a mockery of life.

“The hospital said she was safe, that she didn’t feel well but was safe,” Evan
said. “I let it go at that, didn’t give it another thought.”

“Look, you can’t blame yourself for this
. I’m sure there’s an explanation. People who do things like this usually contemplate it for a long time before carrying it through. I’m guessing you’ll find out that she was a deeply disturbed person.”

Evan tried to recall anything that Becky had said or done before her episode that would fit the criteria of a demented mind.

She went in the basement, that’s all it took.

He
wrapped up his fishing pole and made sure Shaun was secure in his seat.

“I think we’d better go home.”

Selena pressed her lips into a thin line and moved around Shaun, to where he sat. She knelt near his feet and placed her hands on his thighs.

“It wasn’t your fault, Evan. You had no idea she was capable of something like this. I’m just glad Shaun is okay
. Someone who’s that troubled couldn’t possibly be a good caretaker. I know you feel responsible in some way, but you’re not. Take it from a professional—I’ve dealt with multiple people who were suicidal, along with surviving family members and friends of those who killed themselves. Every survivor has the same guilt. They ask themselves, could I have done something different? Could I have prevented it? The answer is almost always no. If someone means to kill him- or herself, they find a way. Period.”

Evan looked down at her, her hair tossing in the light breeze. Her pretty face
was upturned to his.

“I told her not to go down in the basement,” he whispered.

Selena leaned back from him.

“But she did. Something happened
to her down there, I know it.”

“It’s
only a clock, Evan. I think you’ve become so embroiled in the research you’re putting merit in these wild claims. That woman you spoke to is probably senile, and if she isn’t, maybe her memory isn’t as good as she says. An inanimate object can’t make people kill themselves, it’s not possible.”

Evan looked away from her and stared across the lake.

“Yeah,” he said.

Selena cupped a hand around his neck, guiding his face back to hers. When he looked at her again, her face was very close, the dark lenses of her sunglasses reflecting the blue sky. Then her lips were on his. He had no time to react or pull away, even if he’d wanted to, the sweet taste of her breath in his mouth as she leaned into t
he kiss. It was surreal but so right. He couldn’t do anything but succumb to the pleasure of another person so close, who wanted to touch him, to care for him.

When she broke away
, a small smile played at the corners of her mouth. Her lips were red, full, and wet, and for a moment he couldn’t take his eyes off them. An alien lust flooded him, something he hadn’t encountered in years. He wanted her—it was undeniable. All of the restraint he’d held like a shield before him crumbled with that one kiss. If Shaun hadn’t been a few feet away, he would have been unable to stop himself from seizing her by the shoulders and pulling her to him again. He would’ve dragged her down to the floor of the pontoon and had her there in the middle of the lake. And he could tell she would have wanted him to.

“Sorry, I
had to do that,” she said, breaking him from the vivid fantasy.

He
stumbled on his words for a moment, his face flaming hot again. “Thank you,” was all he could say, which earned him another smile.

“It’s such a beautiful day and Shaun’s having so much fun, could we stay out a little longer? This
—”

Selena paused, looked down and then back up at him.

“This is the first time in all the anniversaries since my dad’s been gone that I’m enjoying myself.”

Thoughts of Becky’s suicide tried to hem in his mind again with clouds of angst, but he pushed past them, taking in the way Shaun laughed and stared at the birds flitting by and the
pleading look on Selena’s face.