Shadows in the Sand (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller Book 2) Read online

  Shadows in the Sand

  A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller

  By Scott Langrel

  Copyright©2013 by Scott Langrel

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  SelfPubBookCovers.com/Burner

  Other books in the Finn McCoy series:

  The Grass Monkey and Other Dark Tales (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Prequel)

  Homecoming (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller)

  Cold Chills (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt From Cold Chills: A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller #3

  Prologue

  The moon was just rising above the outer rim of the sea when Stef Albright started her walk. The wind coming off the ocean was cool, and she shivered in spite of the fact she’d worn her sweater. Gulls and terns competed with pigeons for scraps of food left by beachgoers earlier in the day. The tourist season wouldn’t start for another month or so, but there was a good share of locals who visited the beach on a daily basis, not to mention the odd vacationer who’d gotten a good deal on a beach house during the off season.

  It wasn’t like White Pine Island was a hub for the tourist crowd even during the peak of summer. It was more of a retirement community; the houses were older, the residents were older, and there were none of the gift shops and restaurants which littered every square inch of real estate up in Myrtle Beach. White Pine Island sat further off the beaten path, and the full-time residents liked it that way. A few of the houses were rental properties, but not many. Stef could remember a time when none of the houses were rentals, but times changed, and seldom for the better.

  A gull circled her briefly as she walked, casing her for food, then went off in search of better prospects. In the distance, the fading light gleamed off a jet which was making its way to the airport in Myrtle. Stef’s sandals splatted on the damp sand as she walked. Bob called them Jerusalem cruisers, and it never failed to make her laugh when he did so. This particular pair was looking kind of ragged. She made a mental note to pick up another pair the next time she went shopping.

  She often wished that Bob would come with her on her evening walks, but her husband would rather sit on the balcony and watch the sun set with a glass of wine in his hand. True, it was sometimes nice to be alone with her thoughts, but Bob had been putting on weight in the past year or so, and a little bit of exercise wouldn’t hurt him a single bit. Still, trying to get him to tag along was like trying to pull a sore tooth, and she had pretty much given up for the time being.

  Steph’s walk usually took her down to the pier and back unless she was really tired, in which case she only walked about half that distance before turning back. The total distance for a full trip was slightly less than two miles, and she never walked at a brisk pace, preferring instead to take her time and enjoy the sights and sounds of the ocean at sunset. This evening, she intended to go all the way to the pier before turning back toward home, unless the evening wind chilled her too much.

  Her presence startled a group of terns, and they cajoled her for the intrusion. The sun was almost gone, a mere cuticle peeking above the western horizon. The sound of the waves breaking against the beach was hypnotizing. Other than the ocean and the occasional cackling of the birds, the world was silent. The salty, sweet smell of the ocean filled her lungs as she walked. The wind began to pick up slightly, and it stung her bare legs with grains of sand and other debris.

  She stopped as the sound of a radio drifted across the ocean breeze. She looked around for the source of the music but could not pinpoint it. As far as she could tell, she was alone on the beach. There were no houses nearby, and the pier was still half a mile in the distance. She listened more closely and decided that it wasn’t a radio, after all. It sounded like someone singing. The voice was high, like a woman’s voice, and the tune reminded her of a lullaby, or maybe an old blues tune by Billie Holiday. Stef couldn’t make out the words, but they definitely had a sultry feel to them.

  Puzzled, but not overly concerned, she continued her walk. Sounds had a way of behaving strangely on the beach. Likely, she was simply hearing the sound of someone singing from a distance.

  She began to hum as she walked.

  Near the water’s edge, she could see several large shells glistening in the light of the rising moon. Slipping off her sandals, she walked across the wet sand and bent to examine them. One of them was broken and useless, but the other two appeared to be intact. She picked them up and slipped them into the pocket of her sweater.

  She could still hear the singing, and she noticed that she was humming the exact same tune.

  That was strange. The tune wasn’t familiar to her; she was positive she hadn’t heard it before. But here she was, humming along in perfect time and pitch. The singing seemed to be growing louder, as well. Or was that only a trick of the wind?

  She gazed out over the dark ocean and saw someone in the water.

  That was ridiculous. The water temperature was too cold this time of year for all but the hardiest of swimmers, and even then only in the daylight hours. Her eyes had to be deceiving her. She strained harder to make out the object. Surely it was nothing but a buoy or a large piece of debris. Whatever it was, it wasn’t splashing around or making any motions that would indicate swimming. It looked, for all in the world, like someone treading water, their head and shoulders visible as they bobbed along with the ocean’s current.

  Though Steph could not make out any features, she could feel eyes upon her. Suddenly spooked, she stood and began retracing her steps back to her house. She was not in the mood to walk anymore. She simply wanted to return home and join Bob on the balcony, maybe even have a glass of wine herself. The night was getting too chilly, anyway.

  She expected the singing to recede as she walked away, but if anything, it was getting louder. Slowing, she turned and looked back at the sea. The object she had seen was gone. Perhaps the tide had carried it further out. Or perhaps she hadn’t really seen anything at all. The caps of the incoming waves could play tricks on the eyes.

  She caught herself humming again and forced herself to stop. She didn’t want to go back home with a case of the heebie-jeebies; Bob would never let her live it down. The moon was on the rise and it cast a soft illumination upon the beach. The waves danced and twinkled in its light.

  Stef began to feel foolish. At fifty, she should have been well past the age of jumping at shadows. Here she was, in one of the most relaxing places in the world, and her nerves were wound up tighter than Dick’s hatband.

  The wine was sounding like a better idea all the time.

  She was nearly home. The lights from the nearest houses were maybe a hundred yards away. The singing was growing louder, and she supposed it could be coming from this direction. Either someone in one of the houses was singing or they were listening to a radio or CD player. She could make out some of the words, but the song was being sung in a foreign language. It sounded like German, but since Steph didn’t speak G
erman, she couldn’t be completely sure.

  She looked back out at the ocean, saw nothing, and continued walking. There were more shells scattered along the beach here, and she scanned the sand under her feet for some more take-home treasures. Bob would fuss—there were shells piled up everywhere already—but he would get over it. She glanced at her shadow, looked back at her feet, and then froze in her tracks. She looked at her shadow again, and her breath caught in her throat.

  Directly behind her shadow was another shadow. It was longer than her own, indicating a much taller person. When she had stopped, the other shadow had stopped as well.

  Stef turned slowly and deliberately. She was not a large woman, but she had taken a few self-defense classes, and she had always thought that she could handle herself in a situation such as this. The eyes and the groin, she thought. Always go for the eyes and the groin. She remembered one of her instructors drilling that into her. If they can’t see and they can’t walk, they can’t chase you.

  There was a man standing behind her. He was smiling, he was naked, and he looked like the image of a Greek god carved into flesh-colored stone. His beauty was so stunning that Stef was taken aback. All vestiges of fear left her and she stood frozen, entranced by the man’s mere presence. She felt as if she were suffocating, and she suddenly realized she was still holding her breath. She exhaled the stale air and took in a deep lungful of brine-tinged night.

  The man said nothing, but the smile remained. He was tall, maybe six-two or six-three. His hair was dark and tousled, and his skin was a golden bronze. Stef had never before gazed upon anyone so perfect, male or female. She began to feel aroused, and was instantly ashamed. She tried to picture Bob, her husband of thirty years, and was inwardly horrified to find that she couldn’t.

  The man held out his hand as if inviting her to dance. She had no intention of taking this stranger’s hand, and was amazed as she saw her own hand raise and slip delicately into his. The strange singing grew even louder, and her head started to spin. She felt drunk, euphoric. She hadn’t felt this way since she’d tried marijuana back in college, and that had been many moons ago.

  The man began to walk toward the ocean. He kept his head turned toward her, his eyes locked on hers, his smile hinting of things she had only dreamed about in her wildest schoolgirl fantasies. A part of her struggled to resist, but her mutinous body followed him anyway.

  Hand in hand they walked into the ocean. She was vaguely aware of the chill of the water as the waves rushed against her bare feet and legs. Where were her sandals? She must have dropped them; she wasn’t carrying them anymore. His hand felt much too cold, but whenever she tried to think about what that might imply, the singing grew louder still and her head swam even more.

  They waded in up to their knees, then their waists. Stef was shivering so badly her teeth were chattering, but she could not take her eyes off his, and she could not stop walking. Soon the incoming waves were washing over her head, and still she walked, until her feet could no longer touch the sandy bottom. She swallowed a mouthful of saltwater and gagged violently. Their eyes never left each other’s.

  They began to move swiftly away from the beach. A small part of her, a part that was aware and screaming for the rest of her to wake up, realized that they were caught in a rip current. Her sweater and denim shorts were soaked, and she was having a hard time keeping her head above water. He was still grasping her hand, but he made no attempt to aid her. He simply stared into her eyes and smiled.

  She swallowed more brine. She could no longer keep her head above the water. They were both under now, and as she stared at him through the dark and churning water, she couldn’t decide if his eyes were blue or green.

  Green, she thought. I do believe they’re green.

  And then the darkness came and carried her away.

  Chapter One

  “I don’t see the problem,” Finn McCoy said as he followed Amanda Porter from her car to the front door of his house. “You said you wanted to go to the beach. You made me promise, in fact.”

  “I said I wanted a vacation,” Amanda replied smartly. “Not another ghost hunting trip dressed up to look like a vacation. For Pete’s sake, Finn! Your leg’s barely had time to heal.”

  McCoy glanced down and saw his limping gait; there was no denying the fact that he still wasn’t moving at one-hundred percent, but there was a good chance that he never again would be. The break he’d suffered the previous October had been a bad one. Normally, a broken leg would heal in about three months. It had been over four months since he’d been injured while battling a demon in his hometown of Shallow Springs, and the leg still wasn’t right.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said as he unlocked the front door. “I’m as right as the rain.” Out of habit, he bent to check the line of red brick dust under the door’s threshold. It had not been disturbed. He pushed the door open and Amanda went in carrying two armfuls of groceries.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “You can’t even drive across town without your leg going numb. How are you going to handle a trip to South Carolina? That’s a seven hour trip, at least.”

  “I guess you could drive,” McCoy said. “Boo probably couldn’t handle the trip, anyway.” He looked forlornly at his beloved pickup which sat at the curb behind Amanda’s car.

  “Like I would ride in that hunk of junk for seven hours.”

  “I’ll have you know that truck is a classic.”

  “Yeah. A classic example of junk. What was the name of the woman who called you?”

  “Nan Roberts. She was a grade or two ahead in me in school. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Lucky for us she remembered you.”

  McCoy ignored the sarcasm in her voice. “We’ve kept up with each other. She and her husband moved to White Pine Island several years ago. Her husband passed away last year, I think. Maybe it was the year before.”

  “And now she’s seeing ghosts?”

  “Not exactly. There have been two accidental drownings in the last three weeks, and it’s not exactly swimming season yet. But the residents have been seeing something. Nan thinks it’s the Gray Man.”

  “The Gray Man?” Amanda asked as she sat the bags on the kitchen counter. “What’s that?”

  “An old coastal legend in South Carolina. The Gray Man is said to appear before a hurricane to warn the residents of impending danger.”

  “I’m no meteorologist, but I don’t think the hurricane season’s started yet.”

  “No, but maybe the Gray Man’s there to warn them of something else.”

  “High gas prices?”

  “Who knows? That’s why we need to go down there. To find out for ourselves.”

  She turned to him, perplexed but aware that she was fighting a losing battle. “Finn, I wanted a vacation.”

  “And that’s exactly what we’ll have. I’ll admit, it’s a little early in the year for a beach trip, but we’ll be staying with Nan, so we’ll save on lodging. There’re plenty of great seafood restaurants just up the road a bit, and we can drive up to Myrtle to do some shopping.”

  “Call it what you want, it’s still a ghost hunt,” Amanda pouted.

  “Well, maybe just a tad of ghost hunting,” he replied. “But after the deal with the Fey in Shallow Springs, dealing with a poor little ghost will be a walk in the park.”

  “Don’t say that,” she warned. “Every time you start going on about how simple and easy something is going to be, someone almost dies. And that someone is usually you.”

  McCoy gave her one of his best grins. “Trust me,” he said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “That’s it,” Amanda said, shaking her head. “You’ve jinxed it, for sure.”

  ***

  Nan Roberts sat on her deck and watched the waves rolling gently onto the beach. On a table by her side sat a half-full bottle of beer, but she’d let it get warm and it held no further interest for her.

  When she and Pete had moved to White
Pine Island four years ago, she had been on top of the world. It had always been her dream to retire to the Carolina coast, and the fact that they had been able to do it while still in their late forties was simply the icing that topped the magical, fairy tale cake that had been their marriage. Pete had started his own business right out of college, and by the time he sold it twenty years later there had been no need for either of them to ever work again.

  The house on White Pine had been his anniversary present to her, and the following three years had been the best of her life. Then Pete had fallen ill, and within months the cancer had taken him from her.

  Nan sometimes wondered if this were the penance she had to pay for being happy for so long, for having to endure no real hardships in her life until Pete’s death. If this was her comeuppance, then it was damn sure an overly harsh one. When Pete had died, she had almost lost her will to go on, as well. Only her love for her home and the island itself had carried her through the dark waters of despair and allowed her to make it through the storm and into relatively calmer waters.

  Now something dark had come to her beloved island, something that cast a sinister shadow over the only thing left in her life which was dear to her. She and Pete had never had children; in fact, Nan had precious few family members still living, and fewer still that she had any desire to communicate with. There were a few close friends, but most of them lived in Tennessee or Virginia. And while she and Pete had made several acquaintances here on the island, none of them were really close.

  The Albrights had been the closest thing to real friends she and Pete had enjoyed on the island. Steph and Bob were around the same age, came from similar backgrounds, and enjoyed many of the same activities as the Roberts. Steph’s untimely death, coming as unexpectedly as it had, had almost pushed Nan back into the depression she’d fought so hard to free herself from. She might have relapsed entirely, had she not seen the ghosts.