He was awake, face sweaty and hands clutching his mother’s arms as if he’d clawed his way back from the land of the dead.
And Liv knew, as she watched his sunken, haunted eyes, that he’d done just that.
The first time Liv saw Mrs. Kaiser, she gazed at the woman in awe. She seemed transported from the marquee posters. She looked like a Hollywood starlet, with silky black hair curled and fastened with a sparkling comb behind her ear. She wore an emerald green city dress with puffed shoulders and a pearl neckline. Her eyes were big and dark, and her lips painted red.
“What are you looking at?” Stephen asked, stepping to the window beside her.
He gasped when he saw his mother climbing from the polished black car and yanked the curtains closed.
“What?” Liv asked at the alarmed look on his face.
“You have to leave. Come on. Hurry.” He pushed her toward the door and down the hall, but as they neared the top of the staircase, the front door opened and they heard the woman’s shoes on the polished floor.
He jerked her back, and Liv started to cry out, but Stephen clamped a hand over her mouth.
He threw open another door and shoved her inside just as his mother’s feet pounded up the stairs.
Liv gazed at another narrow set of stairs. He’d pushed her into the doorway that led to the attic.
“What are you doing?” Stephen’s mother asked, her voice cold and filled with suspicion.
Liv took a few steps up the stairs, watching the door.
“Nothing. I heard the door open, and I was coming to see…”
“To see me?” Mrs. Kaiser snapped. “I’m sure. Go make tea. I’m exhausted. Bring it to me in the parlor.”
Liv heard the woman’s hard shoes clack down the stairs.
Stephen cracked the door open.
“Shh…” He put a finger to his lips and led Liv down the stairs.
“Is she angry?” Liv asked, but Stephen’s lips were pressed in a tight line. He shoved her out the front door, closing it quietly behind her.
Liv hurried down the porch steps and toward the tree line.
She paused and looked back, catching the smallest flick as a curtain fell back into place in one of the lower rooms. She hoped it had been Stephen watching, but she didn’t think so.
Stephen arranged a cup and saucer on a silver tray. He added a small bowl with cubes of sugar, a glass pitcher of milk, and a single piece of chocolate.
When he stepped into the room, his mother was draped across the burgundy crushed-velvet sofa in her slip. She’d loosened her hair from the clip, and a curl fell across her forehead.
He set the tray on the table and lifted her steaming cup of tea.
As he reached toward her, her hand shot out and caught his other arm, holding it firm. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of his wrist.
“Who is she?” his mother asked.
Stephen’s hand started to shake. A drop of tea splashed from the cup and burned his finger. He winced and tried to steady his arm.
“I… she…”
“Drink it,” she told him, releasing his hand. “Drink it, now.”
He looked at the tea, tendrils of steam rising from the liquid.
“Drink it or you’ll spend the night in the cellar.”
“She lives in town. She’s harmless, Mother,” Stephen tried to explain.
“Drink it,” his mother shrieked.
Stephen lifted the cup to his mouth and opened. The tea scalded his lips and tongue, and he choked as it burned the back of his throat. He didn’t dare spit it out on her Persian rug. Tears streamed from his eyes as the hot tea blazed a scalding trail down his throat and into his stomach.
When he’d swallowed the last dredges, he returned the cup to the tray.
His mother watched him steadily, her eyes hard.
“Go make me another,” she snapped. “And then get out of my sight.”
That night, Stephen barely slept. His mouth and throat ached. He drank three cups of milk, but the burning did not subside. He fell asleep just as the morning sun crested over the trees beyond his window.
Chapter 8
Mack
Mack woke to the sound of something hitting the floor with a thud. He sat up and squinted into the room, unable to make out any movement in the darkness. Fumbling the lamp on next to his bed, he gazed toward his door, still firmly closed.
Misty lay at the end of his bed, the fur on the back of her neck raised and a low growl emitting from her muzzle. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. He scanned the meager furnishings, a dresser with a little portable radio, a wooden chair he’d stacked his clothes on, before climbing into bed. No shadows stirred on the knotty pine walls.
“What do you think, Misty?” he asked, leaning down to stroke her red-brown fur.
He waited, listening, but heard nothing else.
Probably the wind, he figured, laying back down. He closed his eyes and heard another sound: the slow creak of footsteps in the room above him.
Misty let out a single loud bark and stood up on the bed.
Mack sat back up and listened. The footsteps had stopped, but now his heart had caught on to the noises and it thudded behind his breastbone. Mack was not prone to panic. He stood six feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred pounds. He could more than take care of himself. But his mind flashed on the corpse in the woods.
The sensation of being watched returned, but in the closed bedroom, nothing could see him. Unless they peeked through the tiny slit beneath the curtain, he reasoned, but the sounds he heard had not come from outside the cabin.
“Stay here, girl,” he told Misty, shutting her in the bedroom. Other men would have sent the dog ahead of them, but Misty was pushing ten years and excitement could kill her as quick as anything else. He would need Misty in the days ahead. Leaving Tina would not be an easy task. The thought of doing it without his pup made his heart ache.
He eyed his rifle propped next to the couch and opted for a baseball bat instead.
The upper floor consisted of a single large room with slanted ceilings, and Mack had to duck as he walked up the stairs. He gazed across the room. The blinds on the single window were lowered, but as he studied the opposite wall, his breath caught.
A figure stood there, a man as tall as Mack himself. His back faced Mack, as if he stared at the wall.
Mack’s hand shot out and flicked on the lights, raising the baseball bat in his left hand. He took an automatic step backward as light filled the room.
The man no longer stood at the opposite wall.
Cheap plastic blinds and a picture of a buck standing in a meadow were the only objects before Mack.
Mack’s heart hammered in his ears, and he walked across the room. There was nowhere for a person to hide. Two twin beds stood against one wall, a long chest of drawers on the opposite. He stared at the shag carpet as if he expected to see footprints, but the fabric appeared undisturbed.
“Damn, Tina,” he grumbled, returning to the stairs. When he’d told Tina about the cabin, she’d delighted in sharing a story about her cousin’s friend Marty who went camping for a week and disappeared without a trace.
“They found his shoe a year later,” she’d said, picking at her disgusting grapefruit and challenging him with her made-up eyes. “Nothing else, just a shoe.”
Of course, it wasn’t only Tina. It was the dead man in the woods. Who wouldn’t be spooked after a thing like that?
He flipped off the light and hurried down the stairs, returning to his room and sitting on the edge of the bed for several minutes.