Shadows in the Sand (A Finn McCoy Paranormal Thriller Book 2) Page 7

  “Whatever it is, it has some power. Maybe magical, maybe just something innate to its kind.”

  “Magic?” Nan asked, doubtful. Even after experiencing what she had, she remained a skeptic at heart. Old habits were hard to break.

  “I tried to call several times before we arrived. Couldn’t get a call to go through.”

  “Maybe it was the storm,” Nan suggested.

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I also suspect the tire on Amanda’s car had a little help blowing out.”

  “But you said that it was probably just an accident at the time,” Amanda countered.

  “That was before we got here and I heard about Fabio. I think something was trying its best to stall us. And Nan, you said that it felt as if you were being hypnotized?”

  “Well, I’ve never actually been hypnotized before, but that’s the closest I can come to describing it. It started with that singing. It was almost as if I was being lulled to sleep.”

  “And the voice that was singing,” McCoy prodded. “You’re sure it was a female?”

  “Yes, it was a woman’s voice. No question about it.”

  “Do you think there are more than one?” Amanda asked.

  “It sounds like there are at least two. A male and a female, possibly a couple. Of course, we can’t assume that they’re either male or female. It’s possible that they simply project themselves to us as they want to be seen.”

  Nan shook her head. “All this talk. Even after what I saw—what I felt—it’s still hard to comprehend. I think I need a beer. Anyone else?”

  “Far be it from me to turn down a beer,” McCoy said as Nan rose from the table. “After that, we’ll help with the dishes.”

  “Amanda dear, do you want anything?”

  “No thanks. I’m pretty exhausted from the trip. One beer and I’d be out like a light.”

  “Do you think we’ll be safe here tonight?” Amanda asked McCoy after Nan had walked into the kitchen. “I mean, you don’t think whatever it is will come back and try again?”

  McCoy shrugged. “I’ll take some precautions before we turn in, but I doubt we’ll see it again tonight. Our very presence here will make Nan a lot safer.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, think about it. Whatever these things are, they seem to prey upon people who are alone and isolated. The two ‘drownings’ happened when the victims were alone. They thought Nan was alone when they tried to nab her. I’m pretty sure they had no idea that Pru was hiding nearby.”

  “Yeah, good point. But the thought of something like that being out in the ocean creeps me out big time.”

  “Try not to think about it. You’ll sleep a lot better.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  Nan was returning from the kitchen with two bottles of beer when the phone rang. Rolling her eyes, she returned to the kitchen to answer it.

  “I’m helping with the dishes, whether Nan likes it or not,” Amanda said. “You can sit here and rest. I know the trip was hard on your leg.”

  “Not nearly as hard on it as Pru was,” McCoy grumbled. “Speaking of Pru—“

  A gasp and the sound of breaking glass cut McCoy short. He shot up from the table like the McCoy of old, heedless of his bad leg. In seconds he was in the kitchen, Amanda hot on his heels. Nan was there, phone in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. The second bottle lay shattered in a golden puddle at her feet. She was staring at the phone dumbly, as if it were some foreign object she’d never before seen.

  “Nan! What is it?” McCoy grunted. His leg, obviously a little slow, had just realized what he’d done and was beginning to cramp and throb.

  Nan looked up from the phone, her eyes large and frightened.

  “That was Pru,” she said. “There’s been another drowning.”

  Chapter Eight

  Pru felt sick. She didn’t understand how this could have happened. The bad thing had been so close, must have been, yet she hadn’t sensed a thing. She told herself that the tongue lashing she’d received from her mother during the ride back from Nan’s had upset and distracted her, and she wanted to believe that, but it didn’t change the fact that a woman was dead.

  She looked out the window toward the beach, which was now crowded with emergency personnel and policemen. Dusk had settled in, and many of the workers carried flashlights as they moved about on the sand. She couldn’t tell if they had moved the body or not, but a tight group of paramedics and cops were huddled around something on the ground, suggesting that the corpse was still lying where it had been found.

  Pru shifted her gaze to the deck, where her mother and aunt stood watching the activity below them. It was hard to tell, but she thought Aunt Karen was crying. It stood to reason that she probably was, since it had been Aunt Karen who had discovered the poor woman.

  They’d been home less than half an hour when her aunt had gone outside. She had said she was going out for some air, but Pru suspected that her aunt was growing tired of listening to the verbal beat down her mother was giving her. God knows Pru herself had been. When they had come to pick her up at Nan’s, Pru had been hopeful. Evidently, Nan and Aunt Karen were acquainted and on good terms, and Nan had laid it on thick in Pru’s defense.

  By the time they’d pulled out to head back, however, Pru had known that it was a lost cause. Nan may have swayed her aunt, but as far as her mother was concerned Nan might just as well have been reading the menu of a Japanese restaurant. In Japanese. Pru had caught a glimpse of her mother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She’d been giving Pru a Medusa stare, one that could turn most children (and more than a few adults) to stone in a matter of seconds.

  By the time they’d made it back to Aunt Karen’s, her mother was in full-force hurricane mode. Pru had suffered the onslaught in silence, partly because she couldn’t explain herself to any degree without mentioning the ghost or the other bad entity, but mostly because she knew she’d given her mother a bad scare. She could see it in her mother’s eyes: a look of fear and desperation which still lingered just under the surface.

  Though her mother’s tendency toward being overprotective annoyed Pru, she was wise enough to realize its source. Her mother had lost her husband, and she was scared to death she would lose her only child, too. This caused Pru no little amount of frustration, for even though she longed for more freedom, she felt guilty each time she took advantage of that liberty.

  And so she’d spent her time since returning to her aunt’s house sulking and feeling generally sorry for herself, and she had been as surprised as anyone else when her aunt’s screams began to filter in from somewhere outside. Her mother and uncle had gone busting through the door, nearly knocking each other over in the process, and Pru had followed right behind them. She had remained on the deck for only moments before her mother, realizing what was happening, had ushered her back inside and admonished her to stay there.

  Those few seconds, however, had been enough for her to get a glimpse of the body lying at the waterline. It had also been long enough for her to get a quick scent of something, the briefest of feelings that something bad had recently been there. It was weak, but there was still enough of it to pick up on.

  It was the same feeling that the man-thing at Nan’s had given off.

  After she’d been forced back inside, and while her mother and uncle were preoccupied outside, Pru had scoured the phone directory and had come up with Nan’s number. McCoy needed to know about this. Pru was a smart girl, and while she was confident enough in her abilities to work with some aspects of the supernatural, she realized that this situation was above her pay grade.

  But McCoy would know what to do.

  After speaking to Nan, who had taken the news harder than Pru had been expecting, she settled back on the couch to wait. She would have preferred to have been back outside, but she was already in hot water with her mother, and it seemed prudent not to push matters by disobeying her again.

  As Pru sat waiting for McCoy to sho
w up, she couldn’t help but wonder if the grisly discovery on the beach was meant to be a sign, a warning for her to back off. Even worse, the man-thing might be showing Pru what it intended to do to her. The thought of meeting up with that thing, alone and unprotected, sent a shiver through her.

  But what if that thing didn’t plan to come directly for her? Perhaps it planned to take her aunt first, then her mother, so as to make Pru suffer before finally leading her to a watery death. Pru was suddenly scared, more scared than she could ever remember being before. She didn’t know how to protect herself from this thing, much less the people that she loved.

  She left the couch, walked to a side window with a view of the street, and waited for McCoy to arrive.

  ***

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Nan said from the back seat of Amanda’s car. She stared down at her hands and noticed that she was wringing them nervously. She forced herself to stop.

  “I wasn’t expecting things to get serious so quickly,” McCoy admitted from the front passenger’s seat. “After they missed taking you earlier, I figured they’d wait a while before trying again.”

  “There’s no way you could have known,” Amanda said. “Hell, we don’t even know what they are.”

  “I’m not so sure,” McCoy grumbled. “About me not knowing, I mean. We interrupted their hunt. Maybe I should have guessed that they’d go off in search of another victim.”

  “What would you have done?” Amanda asked. “Patrolled the whole island by yourself?”

  McCoy didn’t answer. He stared through the windshield, his face set in an expression of grim determination. He didn’t like bad things happening on his watch. The earlier deaths were regrettable, but he hadn’t been aware of them, and had much less been in any position to do anything about them. But he was here now, and he knew that there was something evil out there. But still someone else had died.

  It wouldn’t happen again. Whatever those things were, they’d just punched their last free meal ticket.

  “Does the island have its own police force?” He asked Nan.

  “No. We’re way too small for that. Besides, nothing ever happens here. Well, nothing used to happen here. The island falls under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.”

  McCoy winced. He’d been hoping for something more local than the county. A small, local force consisting of three or four officers would have been ideal. Cops like that, they knew almost everyone in the community, and they would have more of a vested interest in protecting the citizens. Not that the sheriff would be negligent or anything, but he had a whole county to worry about. And with no signs of foul play…

  “It’s going to be hard for me to get any useful information from the cops,” he said at length. “I’m not a local, and none of them know me. They’d have no reason to share anything.”

  “I’m on a casual speaking basis with one of the deputies,” Nan offered. “A very nice young woman. Deputy Courtland. A few years ago, when I was on the way home from taking Pete to see his doctor, our car broke down near Pawley’s Island. I was a nervous wreck, as you might guess. Pete was so weak by then…” She paused and her eyes glazed over for a second, but then she caught herself. “Deputy Courtland happened along. She was so nice, so polite. She arranged to have the car towed to the garage, and she brought us on home in her cruiser. I’ve seen her out a few times since, and she always stops to ask how I am.”

  “Okay,” McCoy said. “If Deputy Courtland happens to be here, it’ll be up to you to glean any information you can. Don’t push it, but cops understand the general public’s curiosity. Besides, if it’s not actually considered a crime scene, they won’t be so hush-hush.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Nan assured him.

  “I need to talk to Pru as well, so I guess I’ll need an introduction to her family.”

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t let a child—" Nan began.

  “No. She’ll be inside the house, I’m sure. But I really need to talk to her. We’ll have to figure something out.”

  “Make a left right up ahead, Amanda,” Nan said. “It’s the second drive.”

  “Someone’s beat us here,” McCoy said, noticing a lone patrol car blocking the public access walkway to the beach. Beyond the cruiser, almost on the beach itself, sat an ambulance and several more cruisers. “Let’s hope it’s your pal Courtland.”

  As it turned out, the deputy was a middle-aged man named Foster, and he was neither nice nor polite. He nearly turned them back, relenting only when they explained that they were only there to visit the Stallings and promised to stay off the beach. Even then, he didn’t take his eyes off them as they walked to the Stallings’ house, prompting McCoy to give him the sign of the Evil Eye as they reached the front door. At this, the deputy stiffened and stomped back to his cruiser.

  “He was a lovely gentleman,” McCoy said as they stood on the front stoop. “Okay, what’s our excuse for being here again?”

  “We were on our way up to Myrtle to do some shopping, and we decided to stop by and check on Pru,” Nan said. “Just being neighborly.”

  Nan rang the bell, and almost immediately the door opened. There stood Pru, wide-eyed and pale, looking as if she’d just returned from a particularly distressing trip to Hell. Her eyes darted to each of them, lingering on McCoy.

  “We need to talk,” she hissed softly.

  McCoy nodded silently.

  “Pru, honey?’” Karen Stallings’ voice came from somewhere within the house. “Who’s at the door?”

  “It’s Nan,” Pru answered. “Mr. McCoy and Amanda are with her.”

  There was a flurry of footsteps and Karen appeared, followed closely by her sister, Becky Pridemore. It was apparent that Karen had recently suffered a traumatic experience; her eyes were red and her mascara was smeared. She regarded her visitors with curiosity and what appeared to be a small amount of suspicion.

  “Nan?” Karen asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “No! No, we were just on our way up to Myrtle. We thought we’d stop by and check on Pru.” Nan made a point of glancing back at the deputy’s car. “Is everything all right here?”

  “Actually…no.” Karen wrapped her arms around herself and tried to stifle an involuntary shudder. “There’s been an accident. A horrible accident.”

  “A woman drowned,” Becky added. “Karen…found the body.”

  “Oh dear God!” Nan exclaimed. “You poor girl! You’ve had a terrible shock.”

  Karen nodded as she tried not to start sobbing. “It was awful, Nan. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Nan?” asked Pru. “Did I leave my sweater at your house?”

  “Pardon?” Nan asked, confused.

  “Her sweater,” McCoy jumped in. “Did we bring it? I thought I saw it in the car.”

  Becky looked at her daughter. “You weren’t wearing your sweater when you left.”

  “Yeah, Mom. I’m pretty sure I was. I must have taken it off at Nan’s.” She turned to McCoy. “Do you think it’s in the car, Mr. McCoy?”

  “I could’ve sworn I saw a sweater. I’ll go and check.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Pru said, pushing her way out the door.

  “Prucilla!” Becky said sternly.

  “Mom. I’m just walking to Nan’s car. I’ll be in sight the whole time.”

  “Well, get your sweater and come straight back inside.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “We’ve got major problems,” Pru said as soon as they were out of earshot of the others. “The same thing that tried to take Nan killed that woman on the beach. I felt it.”

  “You’re positive?” McCoy asked.

  “Yeah. McCoy, I’m scared. What if it decides to come after me? Or someone in my family? I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’ll be all right as long as you stick together. No one should be alone, especially outside. Can you make sure of that?”

  “I’ll try. But I gotta sleep sometime. Even though right
now I feel like I’ll never sleep again.”

  They reached the car. McCoy opened the passenger door and made the motions of rummaging around as if looking for something.

  “Can’t you show me something to do to protect us from whatever it is?” Pru asked worriedly.

  “In thirty seconds? Not hardly. Besides, I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.” He reached into the floorboard, opened his knapsack, and withdrew a small plastic bag. After glancing around to make sure they weren’t being observed too closely, he handed the baggie to Pru.

  “What’s this?” the girl asked.

  “Red brick dust. Sprinkle a line of it under the threshold of all doors leading into the house. It keeps bad things from getting in. But don’t let anyone see you do it. It’ll raise questions we can’t answer right now.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” Pru stared dubiously at the baggie.

  “Well, reasonably sure. Whatever these things are, they seem to operate within the normal laws of the supernatural.”

  “Normal laws … look, McCoy. Just ‘cause I’m a kid doesn’t mean you can blow smoke up my rear.”

  “I’m serious. Paranormal beings have to obey natural—or supernatural, as the case may be—laws just like we humans do. We have physics, gravity—stuff like that. They have other laws.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, take magic, for instance. They were using magic to try to delay my arrival here. I was able to counter that magic with magic of my own. So I think the dust will work. I don’t think they’ll cross it. Just make sure the line is unbroken, and that it runs the entire length of the threshold.”

  “So, all I have to do is lay down this dust. And then try to keep three adults from stepping foot outside. Should be a snap.”

  “I don’t think your uncle is in any immediate danger,” McCoy said. “It’s the two women you need to keep an eye on. And yourself. None of you should be outside alone, especially not down on the beach. And if you hear a woman singing, call me. I don’t care what time it is.”

  Pru looked back and saw her mother eyeing her. “Okay. That’s got the defense covered. What are you going to be doing?”