The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (28 page)

“I thought I’d drop by and check on you guys, make s
ure you were doing okay today.”

“We’re good, thanks
. I appreciate it,” he said, moving toward the kitchen. “We got back around noon from Shaun’s therapy—”

He
halted halfway across the threshold of the kitchen, his eyes widening as he stared at the floor.

Three watery footprin
ts trailed across the linoleum.

Evan swallowed and jabbed his fingers into his eyes, rubbing them, sure that sleep still clung to the lids
and made him think he saw—

But when he opened them again, the footprints were still there. Their
forms were drying, beginning to shrink, becoming baby prints, but still very much real. He knelt and reached out, touching one of them. His finger came away wet. He heard Selena move closer and step into the kitchen behind him.

“And then
what’d you guys do?” she asked.

Had his feet been wet when he put away the groceries? No. His shoes might’ve been, but he’d taken them off at the door
, like he always did. His sock-covered feet were dry. Besides, the shape of the tracks couldn’t be denied. They weren’t shoe prints. Whoever had walked into the kitchen had been barefoot.

“What are
you looking at?” Selena asked.

“You didn’t come into the kitchen, did you?” he asked
, without taking his eyes off the small puddles.

“No, I shut the door and came over to wake you. I probably should’ve just let you sleep.”

His jaw worked for a moment, and then he grabbed a dishtowel that hung off the nearby counter.

“No, that’s fine
. I needed to get up anyway,” he said, swiping the tracks away with the towel.

He felt the cool water soak into the fabric
, and it repulsed him on some base level. Evan stood and opened the trash lid, then tossed the towel inside, glad to be free of its touch.

“Are you
all right?”

He turned and saw
the concerned look on her face, maybe the way she looked at a client who sat, no doubt, on a heavily padded leather love seat in her office.

“I’m fine, just a little wonky from the nap.”

“‘Wonky’?” she asked. “Are we British now?”

He shook his head and
chuckled, the laughter feeling good after the touch of the dishtowel. “Yeah, what of it?”

Selena
smiled. “Oh, nothing. I always liked British guys, their accents are a turn-on.”

He
blushed but couldn’t help returning her smile. “I’m half English.”

Selena
giggled and tilted her head in a way that made him want to go to her, put his fingers in her hair, and pull her close. Their eyes locked for a second, and time stretched out like pulled taffy, elongating while their gaze welded solid. Selena finally dropped her eyes, smiling again, this time to herself.

“Do you mind if I
use your bathroom?” she asked.

“No, go ahead, the
loo’s down the hall, on the right,” Evan said, in his best English accent, which wasn’t very good.

S
he laughed again and disappeared into the living room. Evan walked out to the kitchen’s boundary and turned around, expecting the tracks to be back on the floor, but it was dry. He sighed, rubbing his forehead. What the hell was happening to him? Hallucinations? He hadn’t imagined the wetness of the towel. Was there any other explanation?

An idea came so
quick and clear to his mind, his head almost snapped back with its arrival. He had the urge to slap his forehead, like a character in a classic comedy show. The grocery bags—he’d set them right where the tracks had been. There were cold items in there, things that would cause condensation. A little moisture had leaked out and only
looked
like footprints.

The explanation felt so good, so right, that
he almost sagged with relief. That was it, definitely and most assuredly. He pulled a chair out from the table and heard the wind chimes outside spring into life, as if slapped by someone passing by. At the same time, movement to his right drew his eyes to the wooded backyard.

A dog crawled across the grass, its front legs straight and jerking with effort to drag the rest of its body
, which slouched low because of its missing hind legs.

Evan rounded the table
, hearing a chair flip over with his passage, but it sounded dim and distant as he pressed his face against the window like a child peering into an exhibit at a zoo. The dog looked like a golden lab, its fur almost orange in the afternoon light. Its head drooped below its shoulders as it moved, its concentration held on the edge of the woods. Its hips swayed back and forth, the bleeding nubs twitching with effort to move legs that were no longer there.

“Holy shit,” Evan
gasped, his breath fogging up the window and obscuring his view.

He wiped the moisture away, leaving a streaky haze at eye level. The dog stilted its way over a hump in the lawn and then
, after one baleful look at the house, slid itself behind a large pine tree.

“What are you looking at?”

He jerked, his stomach constricted so he couldn’t get out the moan that ached to be free of his lungs.

“Dog,” he said, his mouth forming the word
without conscious effort.

“What?” Se
lena asked, coming to his side.

“There’s a dog outside
. Shit, it needs help, it’s injured.”

Evan moved around Selena
, to the counter, where he knew more towels lay neatly tucked inside the lowermost drawer. He pulled three or four out and dashed through the living room to the outside door, not bothering with his shoes before plunging outside.

The air
was warmer than earlier, and the sun looked too bright in the now-cloudless sky. A small stick cracked under his foot as he ran around the side of the house, but other than that he heard no sound. How the hell had a dog gotten onto the island, much less one without rear legs? A collage of images including spinning boat propellers and glistening bone shot through his mind. Evan ran to where the dog had vanished from view, trying to decide what action to take when he found the poor creature. Could he stanch the flow enough to get the animal across the water and into town? Was there a veterinarian in Mill River that would be open now?

An oily patch of blood glistened on several blades of grass
, and the sight made his scalp pull tight, halting all other thoughts. He slowed his pace and traced the two drag marks with his eyes. The faint sound of the house door swinging shut echoed across the yard. He walked in a straight line, stepping around a few globs of coagulated blood, all the while searching the trees ahead for the golden fur he knew couldn’t be too far away. The tracks led down through the quiet trees, never deviating left or right. His throat tightened against the thick smell of blood. There was a lot of it, pools of black here and there, reflecting the thick canopy of branches overhead in monochrome flashes. The ground leveled off, and he could hear the slow beat of waves against the shoreline. If the dog got confused and waded into the water, it would certainly perish. Evan picked up his pace and then slid to a stop, turning back the way he’d come.

The drag lines curved a little and then stopped beside a towering pine tree. A few specks of blood dot
ted the ground and then disappeared, as if the dog had paused here and then ... what? Evan hurried around the base of the tree, sure that he would find the hump of matted fur barely breathing on the other side—but there was nothing. A sound drew his attention back the way he’d come, and he saw Selena making her way toward him, her face full of questions.

A horrifying thought came to him
, and he froze, watching Selena approach.

“Do you see it? The blood?”

She frowned and looked at the ground, then returned his gaze. “Yes, how could I miss it?”

He
nodded.

“What the hell happened to it?”
she asked, stepping beside him.

“I don’t know
, but its back legs were gone.” He heard her surprised intake of breath.

“But where is it?”

They moved out in an expanding circle, keeping the last sign of blood at the center. Evan walked all the way down to the lake before coming back to the pine. He stared at the ground and knelt, touching the blood with one finger. It was sticky, and a bit of sand came up with it. He rubbed his finger against his pants legs and looked at Selena, who appeared shaken. Her hair hung in damp strands next to her face, and her cheeks, normally full of color, were slack and pale.

“Maybe it made it all the way to the lake
,” she said.

Evan shook his head, still staring at the bare spot of ground
on which the last drops of blood lay. “There would’ve been something, blood on the rocks, and if it drowned, it should still float.” He tore his gaze away from the earth and looked at Selena. “Was Shaun still sleeping when you left the house?”

“Yeah, I checked
on him before I followed you.”

“Let’s go back
, and I’ll call animal control in town, maybe they have a list of missing pets.”

S
he nodded and turned toward the house. Evan stood a moment longer, listening to waves lap on the shore, the smell of blood no longer strong but still in the air, before following her through the trees.

22

“Thanks very much, I appreciate your help.”

Evan ended the call and looked to Selena and Shaun at the kitchen table. Shaun sucked on a glass of orange juice through a straw
, while Selena cupped a mug of tea she hadn’t took a drink from yet.

“Well?” she asked
, as he sat in a seat opposite them.

“Nothing. No golden labs
, or any dogs for that matter, have been reported missing in the last week. They said if we saw it again to call them and they’d send someone out to take care of it,” Evan said, rubbing a dark stain on the table with his finger.

“Someone must have dumped it here then,” Selena said. “Threw it out of a boat as they were passing by.” She made a disgusted face and cupped her tea tighter.

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Horrible.”

“Do you
think it’s still alive?”

Evan recalled the amount of the blood on the ground and how the animal had moved, jerking and lunging forward as
though determined to get into the woods. It was on its last legs. He closed his eyes and forced the black humor away.

“No, I don’t think so.”

No one said anything until Shaun finished his orange juice with a loud sucking sound as the straw vacuumed up the last vestiges of liquid. Shaun sat back, belched, and looked at Evan.

“More!”

Evan glanced at Selena, and they both burst out laughing. Shaun smiled, delighted at having caused the outburst. He signed with his hands and yelled again.

“More!”

Evan stood, the laughter pealing out of him. “You need to eat dinner first, buddy.”

He
tousled Shaun’s hair as he walked by and opened the fridge to begin the process of making supper.

Selena chuckled a few more times and then
took her cup of tea to the sink. Her hip brushed his thigh as she walked by, and a ripple of pleasure rolled up from the point of contact. He cleared his throat and pulled the hamburger and cheese from within the fridge.

“Stay for dinner?” he asked
, as she poured the tea out and set the cup down.

“You know, I better not. I heard there might be rain tonight
, and I’ve been out on the lake in storms before. It’s not pleasant.”

He
was about to say,
You can stay here tonight
,
but cut it off with a self-conscious effort. His mind immediately pelted him with versions of how the night would go. How he would make up the couch for himself and give Selena his bed. How she would come to him in the night, silent and ethereal, covered with only a blanket, and ask him to join her.

He swallowed, realizing she’d said something he hadn’t caught.

“Sorry, what?”

She smiled a little. “I said, maybe tomorrow or the next day
, though. I shouldn’t be busy.”

“Sure,
no problem. I’ll walk you out.”

Selena said goodbye to Shaun before t
hey moved to the door, Evan maddeningly aware of how close her skin was to his. Should he try to kiss her? Would that be too forward? She’d already bridged that particular gap, so he didn’t think she would shrink away, but did he really want to? His emotions seemed caught on a bungee cord. One minute he would be tight, bound by thoughts of Elle in cords of guilt, and in another he would be free-falling, recalling the gentle breeze that had seemed to caress his face that day on the porch when he’d asked for a sign. Elle would want him to be happy; she’d even said so.