The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (27 page)

“Morning,” Evan said.

Arnold nodded. “Morning to you, young fella.”

“Going to be hot today
, you think?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s hot every
day now that the snow’s gone.”

Evan laughed, struck by how normal the conversation seemed
, in contrast with what had happened the night before.

The dream.

“You get ahold of old Cecil out there?” Arnold asked.

A little twinkle in his eye told Evan he alre
ady thought he knew the answer.

“Actually, I did,” Evan said, satisfied at the startle
d look both the twins gave him.

“You’re kidding?” Arnold said.

“Nope. She even let me come inside.”

“Well
, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. That’s the first I’ve heard of her talking to someone besides the grocer or repairman.” Arnold eyed him up and down. “You must’ve had a silver tongue to charm that old biddy.”

“Something like that. Is Jacob in
, by chance?”

“Oh yeah,
the old mick’s in there somewhere.”

“Thanks.”

Evan moved past the twins, through the door of the building. He wanted to stop and go back, to tell them both off for not having said anything about Jason’s grandparents, for they surely knew about what had happened. Well, he couldn’t fault Wendal for not saying anything. The dark humor made him smile a little.

“What’s so funny, boyo?”
Jacob said, standing behind a counter.

“Nothing
. How’s it going today?” Evan reached out and shook the older man’s hand.

“Goin’ well, goin’ well. Didn’t see ya come
in with yer boy this mornin’.”

“Yeah, he’s at his therapy now.” Evan watched Jacob nod and then begin t
o unpack a box of spinner lures. “Jacob, I know I owe you a beer.”

“Three, I think,” Jacob said
, giving him a smile.

Evan didn’t return it. “But could we go get some coffee in lieu of those? I need to s
peak with you about something.”

Jacob looked at him for a moment
, and then nodded. “Okay, boyo, what’s this about?”

“Jason’s grandparents.” He watched Jacob’s face fall a lit
tle. “I know about everything.”

Jacob sighed, looking down at the glass top of his counter. A boy no older than seventeen
, holding a stack of fishing vests, came out of the back room behind Jacob and paused, his eyes going from his boss to Evan.

“Nate, why don’t ya watch the store fer a
while,” Jacob said.

“Sure thing, Mr. Collins.”

“Come with me, Evan,” Jacob said, heading through the doorway behind the counter.

Evan followed him, smiling politely at Nate as he went by. The room behind the counter held several tall shelves stocked with boxes of fishing gear of all sorts. Jacob led the way through the stacks to a
gray steel door with a cartoon taped to it. Jacob opened it and beckoned Evan inside.

“Me office,” Jacob said
, closing the door behind them. “Ignore the mess, will ya?”

The office was spacious
, with two wide windows overlooking the lake. Dark paneling lined the walls, and several massive fish were mounted here and there, their taxidermied eyes glaring in glassy stares. Jacob’s desk had piles of papers and photos littering both ends, with a clear path down to the wood in the middle. The air smelled of sweet tobacco. Evan sat in a threadbare chair in front of the desk, while Jacob rummaged below it on the other side.

“I know it’s early, but it’s noon somewhere
, me father used ta say,” Jacob said, standing with a can of Budweiser in one hand.

Evan almost said no
, and then sat forward, taking the ice-cold can from the older man. “Thank you.”

“I keep a little stocked at the back of the fridge
,” Jacob said, pulling another can out. “Keep it fer emergencies, mind ya.”

“Is this an emergency?
” Evan asked, opening his beer.

Jacob’s eyes darkened.
“No, but it helps.” He snapped his beer open and took a sip, pulling the corners of his mouth tight as he swallowed. “Me wife’d kill me ass if she knew we were drinkin’ in here. But what she don’t know won’t hurt me.”

Evan said nothing and drank. It tasted good and felt great on h
is parched throat.

“I suppose Jason tol
d ya the nasty details?”

“He did.”

“Then ya know how much I cared for Daniel, his granddad.”

Evan remained silent
, and Jacob continued, looking down at his beer.

“When Ray passed away
, Daniel and Maggie were devastated, as was I. I took food out ta them from time ta time, jest ta help out. When I saw Daniel startin’ down the road of depression, I took him fishin’. It was all I knew ta do ta ease the pain. We’d spend hours in the boat, and even though he’d be away from Maggie most of the day, she didn’t mind so much once Dan started comin’ back around.”

Jacob took a
nother long drink from his beer, and set it down but kept his fingers wrapped around it.

“I guess in a way we
did some replacin’ of sorts. He became me best friend, and I became somethin’ like a son ta him.”

“Why did you lie to me when we first came here and I asked if you knew Jason’s grandparents?” Evan said. The
earlier anger diminished when he saw how affected Jacob was.

“I didn’t want ta scare ya away.” Jacob rolled his tongue around in his mouth
, as if tasting something bitter. “Lots a rumors fly around this little town. People gab when they shouldn’t, make up parts where they’ve lost the story, and soon ya have shit rollin’ around town that’s nothin’ like the truth.” Jacob looked at Evan, his eyes sad but sober. “I didn’t want ya gettin’ scared off by a bunch of ghost stories.”

Ghost.

“What do you mean?”

“After Dan and Maggie passed, all kinds of things were said. Superstitious bunkum, all of it.
I tried ta quell it. It made me madder than a shaken hornet, but people will talk, as they say.”

Evan sipped his beer and looked past Jacob’s shoulder
, to where the island sat on the lake. “What do you know about the clock?”

Jacob finished his beer and set the can
down with a
thunk
. “Ugliest stack of sticks I’ve laid eyes upon. Dan bought it at auction when the title dispute fer the Kluge property was finally resolved, got it as a project ta fix on.” Jacob laughed once, a short bark, and shook his head. “I asked him, ‘Dan, why would ya want a feckin’ clock that don’t work?’ and he jest said it was valuable.”

“When did he buy it?”

“About a year before they passed, I suppose.”

“And did Daniel seem
different after he bought it?”

Jacob eyed
Evan, wariness on his features for the first time since they’d met. “This fer yer article?”

“Yes
, and out of curiosity.”

Curiosity killed the cat.

Jacob paused and then pulled another can of beer out of the fridge beneath his desk. “Evan, I like ya, boyo, but I won’t tolerate Dan and Maggie being misrepresented. Follow?”

“I follow
. I just want to know.”

Jacob stared at the desk.
“He became a little distant after buyin’ the clock. Maggie told me once that sometimes he’d spend most of the day down in the basement, tinkerin’ away. You see, he bought that thing in several pieces. Someone had partially dismantled it durin’ the years, maybe tryin’ ta do the very thing that Dan was.” Jacob shrugged. “Either way, Dan was no clockmaker, but he was smart and good with his hands. He got it mostly assembled, showed it ta me one day before we went out on the lake.”

“Did he mention why he was so dead set on getting
it running again?” Evan asked.

“No, but I will say this
: I wouldn’t call it frantic, but he was obsessed with that clock. Talked about it from time ta time, but I could always tell it was on his mind. Sometimes he’d go twenty minutes jest starin’ out at the lake while we fished, not sayin’ a thing, jest lookin’ at somethin’ I couldn’t see.”

I can go back.

Evan finished his beer, and saw that his hand trembled. Jacob seemed to notice it too.

“You okay, boyo?”

Evan set the empty can down on the desk. “Yes, I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

This was definitely the truth
, what with armed men coming into the house at night and then disappearing without a trace. Evan sighed with the weight of the memory. It was still fresh in his mind, but with the bright lake beyond the window and the taste of beer on his tongue in Jacob’s snug office, it was far away—someone else’s problem.

“What do you think really happened out there?” Evan as
ked, nodding toward the island.

Jacob’s brow crinkled
, and the darkness returned to his eyes. “I don’t know, boyo. No one but Dan, Maggie, and the good Lord do fer sure.”

“If you had to guess.”

Jacob fell silent for over a minute, and then turned and stood, looking out the window at the impressive view beyond. His voice floated back over his shoulder, disembodied and thin.

“I never knew
a couple who loved one another as well as those two. Dan would’ve died fer Maggie, and she fer him. And maybe that’s jest what they did.”

Jacob turned back to
Evan, and he saw a glaze of moisture on the older man’s eyes, like windows after a mist.

“All superstitions aside, you mark me words, boyo. Somethin’ right terrible happened on that island
, and I thank God above I don’t know what it was.”

21

Evan almost drove straight to Selena’s office, but thought better of it and went grocery shopping instead.

It
wouldn’t have done to show up at her business with beer on his breath, no matter what time of day it was, and noon was still a couple of hours away. He pottered around the grocery store like a much older man, forgetting why he went to an aisle, only to realize he was staring directly at what he needed.

After leaving the store
, he drove to the hospital and waited in the car until Shaun’s appointments were over. He watched people come and go, watched them walk across the parking lot to their vehicles, some laughing, some somber. He wondered about their lives, who they were, whom they loved, why they were here. He’d done it many times before, especially when his dreams were still attainable and his life hadn’t been taken apart and rearranged into something unrecognizable. He remembered Elle telling him his people watching was a result of being a writer at heart.
You want to know because you want to tell their stories, or make them up,
she’d said. He had no interest in writing about other people now; he merely wondered if they’d suffered more or less than he had.

Inside the hospital his
mood rose the moment Shaun came into view down the long, sterile hallway, this time guided by a heavyset therapist with blond hair and a permanent smile. The thought that Becky Tram would never walk down these halls again caused the strength to drain from his legs. She wouldn’t get married or have children because she was now lying on a cold metal tray somewhere in town, a mortician standing over her trying to figure out how to put her head back together.

Evan bit back the sick that tried to rise into his mouth and smiled as he picked Shaun up. The
woman related the events of the therapy session and commented on how strong Shaun was. Evan smiled and nodded at the right times, then thanked her, feeling like a marionette with invisible strings.

Since it was almost tradition, they went to their café and sat outside after ordering a banana split. Evan hadn’t brought his la
ptop with him, and he didn’t miss it; anything to do with the clock brought up too many uncomfortable questions. Instead he focused on Shaun, who was watching a group of boys approaching on the sidewalk. They were maybe twelve or thirteen, and their laughter and talk seemed to flow from one to the other—boy-speak that most adults couldn’t understand. Evan gazed at his son.

Do you know that you’re different? Can you tell? Do you long to be free of your chair and constant fatigue? Do you have an inkling that there’s more to all of this?

The thoughts pulled a knot tight in his chest, and he had to look away. He noticed that the waitress bringing their banana split and coffee was struggling with the door leading onto the patio. Evan stood and walked over, opening it for her.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling.

“Here, I’ll take that for you.”

The wa
itress smiled again, giving him the ice cream and coffee cup. “Thanks, I just started, and I haven’t got the hang of carrying food through here without spilling it yet.”

She let out an
endearing, nerdy honk of laughter as Evan took the food from her.

“No problem,” he said
, as she disappeared back inside.

He heard the laughter of the boys on the sidewalk
, along with sounds Shaun made when he was happy or excited. Turning, he saw the group of boys standing on the other side of the low, decorative fence that separated the café’s patio from the sidewalk, a few feet from where Shaun sat. The largest of the boys, who had a wild shock of black hair and a sunburned forehead, was pulling faces at Shaun, his tongue hanging out wildly as he rolled his eyes back in his head.

“Ahhhhh, does the retard like it?” the boy said
, and screwed up his face while mimicking Shaun’s sounds. “Ahhhhhh!”

“He probably thinks he’s looking in a mirror, Davey
,” one of the other boys said, and the entire gang broke up in shrieks of laughter.

A
boiling sensation flowed over his body, as if a powerful UV lamp had been turned on only feet away. A savageness unlike anything he’d ever experienced before blinded him, and all he felt was the flow of air over his skin as he moved. There was a panicked shout that echoed on the building fronts, followed by a yelp of pain, and when he blinked, Evan saw one of his hands wrapped firmly in the big boy’s dark hair. The other hand held the scalding coffee a few inches from his face.

The rest of the boys stood several steps back, their faces pale whit
e in the brightness of the day, eyes wide and staring. Evan expected them all to start screaming or calling for help, but they were transfixed by what was happening before them. The shock of what he’d done dissipated almost at once, and the rage returned full force as he remembered the mocking sounds that came out of the big boy’s mouth. He pulled Davey closer, yanking at his hair so that the kid’s head jerk around.

“Listen
, you little fucker, my son was in a car accident and has brain damage. He’s gone through more in the last three years than you probably ever will in your life. Now if you don’t want me to burn the fucking skin off your face with this coffee, you’ll get moving. You got me?”

“Yes
, sir,” Davey squeaked. His voice sounded so high that he could have sung soprano.

Evan released his hair, giving him a little shove that he hadn’t meant to but couldn’t help. The boy rubbed his head where
he had gripped him, his eyes full of tears and absolute fear. There was a beat, and then the whole pack of kids ran, the bottoms of their shoes kicking up dust from the sidewalk as they pelted away. They never looked back, and Evan watched them round the corner and disappear like a herd of prey running from a predator.

Shaun’s sobs brought him back
, and he looked at his son, who stared at the ground where the banana split lay facedown, rivers of melting ice cream flowing away through the cracks in the patio blocks. Evan closed his eyes and sat, then held one of Shaun’s hands. He surveyed the street and saw no one, silently thanking fate that they were the only customers outside at that moment.

“
I’m sorry, honey, I dropped it.”

Shaun gazed at him, his eyes rimmed with tears.

“D-d-drupa.”

Evan nodded. “I’ll get you another one. To go
.” He picked up his coffee as he stood.

~

They arrived at the island around noon, the sun finally making its first appearance of the day overhead. A sickening sensation flowed through Evan’s stomach as he tied up the pontoon and carried Shaun to shore. Had he really meant to grab that kid? To burn him? No, he couldn’t have actually gone through with it—but he wondered. A second more without restraint, he might have. He might have tipped the cup and let the steaming liquid stream over the kid’s already burned forehead and drizzle down his cheeks, red streaks appearing like tracks of fire on his skin as the coffee did its work.

He
shook his head. No, as much as it would’ve been satisfying to hurt the boy, he couldn’t have done it. Grabbing his hair had been a step too far; even laying a finger on the kid’s shirt would land him in court these days. He stopped, standing still on the dock for a second, his hands full of grocery bags. What if little Davey told someone, or one of the other boys said something to their parents? Would they be able to identify him?

Of course. He and Shaun were probably the talk of the town
because they were living on the island, and with Shaun’s disability, there wouldn’t be much room for mistaking who he was.

H
e moved to the shade where Shaun rested in his chair, anxiety constricting his lungs. He dropped the groceries and sat, crumpling more than easing down. When he looked out across the lake, he expected to see a boat topped with red and blue lights approaching, stern-faced men in uniforms at its helm.

Get a grip.

He hadn’t hurt the kid, not really, only scared him, and the little shit deserved every second of it. Maybe next time he would think twice about teasing someone with disabilities.

A little heartened by the thought,
he pulled his phone out and dialed Selena’s number, then ended the call before it could go through. Glancing at Shaun, he saw his eyes flutter and close, only to open again.

“Let’s get you inside, b
uddy. Dad could use a nap too.”

After laying Shaun
in his bed, Evan hauled the remaining groceries into the house and put them away. He’d bought the makings for lasagna, one of Shaun’s favorites, and wondered if Selena liked it too. He reached for his phone again, to call her, and once more stopped himself, feeling needy and pathetic.

“Take a nap, you need it,” he mumbled out loud, and went to the couch.

The sun faded behind a layer of clouds, and the cool, gray light that filled the house was soothing. Evan looked down the hallway, making sure that he could see where Shaun lay, and put his head on a pillow. He fell asleep like toppling into an abyss before he could adjust himself into a more comfortable position.

~

He awoke to the feeling of soft fingers stroking his hair. As the vestiges of sleep left him, Evan thought it was Elle waking him in the morning, as she sometimes used to do. She would draw him out of sleep by dragging her fingertips through his hair and then trailing them down his shoulder and onto his stomach, where they would do a few slow circles before traveling farther south. Then she would pause, stroking his upper thighs with maddening restraint. He would be fully awake by then but still feigning sleep, a smile on his lips, waiting, waiting for her hand to slide over and ...

Evan opened his eyes to find Selena standing next to the couch, her fingers brushing his hair. He
started, his heart leaping and then jigging in an insane rhythm. She stepped back, her eyebrows drawing together.

“I’m sorry,
I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Ah, it’s okay,” Evan
said, clearing his throat.

“I wouldn’t have come in
, but the door wasn’t shut completely and came all the way open when I knocked.”

He
cleared his throat again and sat up, acutely aware of the straining bulge in his jeans. What the hell had he been dreaming about? He crouched over his erection, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

“That’s fine
.” He frowned. “I’m sure I shut the door tight.”

He traced back through his actions before lying down
, and couldn’t remember if he had or hadn’t. Evan rubbed his face and looked around. Shaun still slept, although he’d turned over and one arm dangled out of bed and into the shadow below it. Something could grab him like that. Grab him and pull him under the bed if it wanted to. He shuddered, blinking at the sun that now sat above the mainland.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Four o’clock.”

“Oh, wow, we’ve
been sleeping for four hours.”

“Well, you must have needed it,” Selena said, turning away from him.

Evan began to rise off the sofa and paused, her words striking a nerve. Elle used to say that whenever he overslept on a weekend or when Shaun would sleep sometimes for five hours or more right after his accident. Even the way Selena said it reminded him of his wife, the caring tone telling him he could’ve slept all day if it pleased him. Brushing off the déjà vu, he stood, thankful that his arousal had dissipated enough for him to move normally.