He would laugh at her mushiness, but then give her a rib-cracking hug. If he were home, he would be in the passenger seat, hot on the tail of a child killer, desperate to find their mother. He would turn the most serious, heart-breaking moment of their lives into an adventure.
“But you’re not here, are you?” Jude grouched.
A flash of black raced from the woods in front of her car and Jude slammed on her brakes, clutching her steering wheel. A black cat passed, pausing on the side of the road to look back at Jude before he disappeared into the forest beyond. Jude breathed and watched the darkness he’d vanished into, swearing he’d had jewels for eyes.
“Fucking Felix,” she grumbled, hands shaking as she eased the car forward. “And bad luck to boot.”
Chapter 31
September 19, 1965
Hattie
Hattie didn’t look away. She stared into Damien’s eyes as he got closer and the gray turned to a prism of gold, black, little flecks of light, a gateway. When his lips touched hers, she closed her eyes. The intensity rocked her back. His tongue slid into her mouth and she didn’t know how, but her body seemed to understand what to do as she opened her own lips and reached, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He stood, his face splotched with color, his chest rising and falling and leaned down, scooping her from the couch. He carried her up the stairs, and Hattie stared dazed at the shadows dancing on the ceiling, at the soft curls of his blond hair.
When he laid her on the bed, she realized what would happen next, but didn’t know how to go about it. She’d never made love before, and felt awkward and terrified.
Before she could curl into a ball and turn away from him, he was leaning over her again, pressing his mouth against hers, pulling her out of her mind and pushing her into her body. He stripped off his shirt, flung it to the floor. His body was hard, contours she imagined on a canvas, an array of light and dark, crevices and hills. She smoothed her hands over tan muscles, a fine blond fuzz coating his chest down to matching dips along his hips to his pants he’d unbuttoned, now shrugged off. And then his hands were on her skirt, not pushing it up, but gently turning her, unzipping it and pulling it over her naked thighs, pale and covered in goosebumps.
She shivered as he pulled up her shirt, took it up over her head and returned his mouth, hot and moist, to her collarbone and shoulders down to her breasts, naked. The sensation as he took her nipple into his mouth forced her up onto her elbows, gasping. He returned to her mouth, kissing her, pressing her legs open, and she glimpsed him for only a second before he slid inside her and she called out - not in pain, or maybe in pain - but also pleasure and need, she needed him to be inside her, needed to snake her arms around him and bury her face in his neck. He was not animal-like as Hattie had often feared men would be. Damien was slow and deliberate, searching her face for signs of discomfort, kissing her, murmuring into her ear she was beautiful, that he dreamed of her every night.
Jude
The dirt driveway, with its fallen down mailbox, slid into view and she turned in, still shaken from nearly hitting the cat.
“It wasn’t Felix,” she whispered. Except the previous weeks had offered more than their share of unearthly revelations, which Jude preferred not to contemplate at that moment.
There were no houses next door or across the street. Her mother’s childhood home was cloaked in darkness, the grass overgrown, the heavy trees blocking most of the house from view. Pulling down the driveway, she strained toward the window looking for any markings in the dirt, footprints, tracks, but saw nothing.
When she stepped from the car, it was not utter silence that greeted her, but the night songs as her mother used to call them. Crickets, tree frogs, cicadas - all indistinguishable from one another - a symphony of insects and reptiles. Jude popped her trunk and rifled through her duffel bag, retrieving her flashlight. She glanced at the smooth black pistol, but left it tucked inside, imagining Hattie over her shoulder scolding her for returning it to her car.
Shining the beam on the ground, Jude crunched over dirt and stone and into dried grass, moving close to the house. She looked at doors and windows, hoping for some evidence that her mother had been there, but it appeared as though no one had walked through the doors in years, decades. Grimmel had told Jude that their mother sold the property and moved two towns over a few years after Rosemary’s death.
At the barns, Jude paused, shining her light through the darkened doorways. The woods stretched beyond the last barn, dark and ominous, sheltering a ramshackle cabin where a little girl once died. Against her better judgment, she stepped into the trees, swinging the beam of her light back and forth, lighting trunks and bushes, catching on a pair of glowing eyes, a possum, clinging to a tree.
Now the creatures seemed quieter, the night thicker, and Jude swallowed a lump forming in her throat.
I am not afraid, she thought, frustrated that she needed the mantra, but repeating it in her head, anyway.
Jude usually courted the night. She loved the sensation of moving down a dark sidewalk, heels clacking, with the effervescent thrill of a few cocktails and an evening of flirtation behind her. Unfortunately, tonight she was sober and walking alone through the forest, something Hattie might enjoy, but she did not.
A twig snapped behind her and she spun around, the light weaving through the darkness, but illuminating only the trees, the foliage, the huge darkness beyond.
Jude pressed her hand against her chest, felt the irrational thud of her heart and held the flashlight steady.
I am not afraid.
An owl hooted, and another twig snapped, closer. She moved the beam of her light, feeling suddenly exposed, the single shining thing in a sea of black.
A sharp scratch sounded behind her and Jude turned again, this time flicking the flashlight off as she twisted because she knew that sound. In the distance, not five yards away, a tiny ember glowed. She could not see the silhouette of the person, but already the smell of his cigarette reached her nostrils, released a momentary ache to inhale that smoke, which was quickly buried by terror and a resulting spasm in her abdomen that made her want to puke. The cigarette rose, paused, glowed bright red. A halo of smoke drifted up and dispersed.
Jude froze, not allowing a breath to escape. Why had she left the gun in her car? Idiot, idiot, idiot! I’m not afraid, but she was afraid, and her mind scrambled between running as fast as her legs would carry her and lifting the flashlight for a fight. It settled briefly on the possibility that this stranger in the forest was amicable, just a nice old man out for a stroll, but then what nice old man didn’t make himself known to a girl alone in the woods?
She stepped away from the glowing ember, leaves and branches crunched underfoot. The ember lowered and the person holding it laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
“Runnin’ll only drag it out.” The man said, and Jude knew the voice, remembered the sound as he drank beer and spoke of his sister - the sister he had murdered.
Jude searched her mind for a plan - crime books she’d read, scary movies, snippets of advice gathered over the years. Keep him talking, they told you, but did that ever work? How many dead women had kept them talking?