Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set (8 page)

A small laugh rumbled in her throat. She was being
ridiculous. How could she even consider let- ting some silly fears stop her
from learning more about her mother? This decided, she went to a cupboard and
grabbed a large, plastic food-storage bag. She'd keep the book in it to protect
it from water, and maybe read it on the journey.

After tucking the journal safely in one of the larger cargo
pockets of her overalls, she walked through the front door to the boat.

When she climbed aboard and draped her coat over the front
passenger seat, Zach greeted her with an appreciative grin.

"Cute," he remarked. "I remember the last
time you wore those."

Liz felt a bit self-conscious and looked down to see what he
found so
 
attractive.

"They're too baggy," she said. "And my legs
look like they belong to a ghost."

"You've got great legs,
cher
. Trust me, I'm a
connoisseur."

"I'll bet you are," she replied dryly, wanting to
divert his unsettling attention. She had a feeling he was trying to travel down
memory lane, a place she definitely didn't want to go. "Well, we're
finally off to Fantasy Island. I feel rather inane boating to a place that
doesn't exist."

"Which'll make it a lot harder to find your pa."

He eased the boat away from the dock, then gave it more gas.
As soon as they'd gathered a little speed, he eased off the seat and pulled
something silver out of his pocket. When he uncapped it and lifted it to his
lips, Liz realized it was a flask.

Oh, great, she thought. Just great.

He recapped the flask and put it on the floor by his feet,
then lit a cigarette. This hinted that he planned to stay sober for the trip,
so Liz relaxed somewhat. She wiggled around in her seat, trying to get
comfortable, and felt a prick from the corner of the journal, which prompted
her to take it from her pocket. After she'd slipped it out of the bag, she
leaned back to read.

A dog-eared page drew her attention, and she flipped to it.

"A map."

"To where?"

Liz let out a short laugh. "To Quadray Island. There
are some notes about it too."

"That's a piece of luck. It'll give us an idea which
way your pa went. Although, I should remember. I headed that way myself . . .
once."

"Yeah," she said, a smile coming to her lips.
"To bring me back a spotted orchid."

"Boys do besotted things," he replied curtly as he
extended a hand. "Let me see that for a sec."

Liz handed the book over, a bit miffed about his dismissal,
and about bringing the incident up in the first place. Hadn't she herself
decided not to discuss the past?

They were headed north into a smooth, wide waterway that
allowed Zach to prop the journal on the steering wheel and read while they
traveled. He'd opened the throttle full bore and wind rushed over the
windshield; tearing at Liz's short hair, causing her to experience a feeling of
freedom she hadn't known in a long time. "If this map is accurate,"
he said after a time, "we'll have to cut off here into this cypress
swamp." Liz leaned over to see the spot he tapped. "It might be tight
for this big tub, and your pa'll get through easy, so that will cost us some
time. But I think we can catch him before dark."

"Glad to hear you being optimistic."

"No,
cher
. . Just not quite so
pessimistic."

As she settled back into her seat, she noticed him scanning
the opposite page, which was written in a combination of French and English and
contained baleful warnings about the island. Dividing his attention between the
book and the waterway ahead, he studied the information with obvious interest.
Once she saw him mouth a phrase she suspected was in French and wasn't easy for
him to understand.

Finally, he handed back the journal, tossed his cigarette
overboard, then bent for the flask. The tour boat sped across the water as he
took another drink.

Zach sighed as he put the flask down. He was getting
downright schizoid around this woman. Sometimes he saw so much of Izzy in her.
At those times he was torn between intense hostility at the absence of the girl
he'd loved, and a craving to yank this replacement close and kiss her till she
begged for more. At this precise moment, he wasn't sure which he felt.

She looked soft and cuddly now, with her hair curling into
soft tendrils around her face and bare legs sticking out of those shapeless
shorts. Yet intense, too, in the passionate way she'd been as a girl. Alive and
eager for each experience. Feeling each one deeply. Looking almost as she had
the last time he'd seen her wear those denims.

Her parents had thrown another
fais do-do
shortly
before Liz disappeared. Only they hadn't been little kids anymore. As
teenagers, they'd thought they were so grown up and had two-stepped and waltzed
on the lawn with the adults, trying hard not to betray the heat they felt for
each other.

That was no longer all there was to the girl he'd loved.
That was only Izzy. A "what you see is what you get" girl, incapable
of hiding her thoughts and feelings. A girl who'd touched his heart so much
he'd once wanted to find her a golden orchid.

Liz Deveraux isn't Izzy. Liz Deveraux isn't Izzy. If he
repeated it enough times, he might get it through his thick skull.

Man seedling, come to me.

The words intruded into his thoughts and wiped out the
mantra he'd been repeating. He shivered, recalling the day he'd attempted to
find the fabled Quadray Island.

On a dare. After one of the guys on his eighth-grade
football team had said he was too chicken to go after the orchid that reputedly
grew there. They'd been scaring each other with stories: Half-Man, a creature
missing half its body who traveled by forming himself into a hoop; and the
ghost of Jean Laffite, which no one bought because good old Jean was reported
in every spooky nook and cranny of Louisiana.

But
le fantome noir
. Even the name made kids tremble.
A swirling mass of inky black, he was said to turn men's blood to ice, to suck
up young boys, only to spit them out like icicles.

Izzy had been listening to the stories, too. When the dare
came up, she looked at the other guys like they were fools and said, "Zach
can do it."

So Zach, barely thirteen, and wanting so badly to impress
her, had climbed into his pirogue one summer morning and headed out to fetch
the orchid. He'd paddled and poled through the swamp all day until, as he let
everyone think later, he'd actually found those mythic shores.

The sun was nearly down when he entered the bog near the
island's reputed location. Cut grass and lily pads choked the shallow water so
badly he couldn't row more than two or three feet that the vegetation wasn't
grabbing at his paddle or slicing his hands and arms. Mosquitoes swarmed,
biting him and raising welts that itched all the worse when he scratched them.
Nothing else moved out there—not an alligator or a nutria, not even a fish
surfacing for food. He hadn't seen a bird in over an hour.

But he was determined to get Izzy that orchid.

Then things got scary, real, real scary. The sky darkened,
but Zach saw no clouds in the sky. The falling sun looked like a pale fuzzy
moon behind the gloom. He stopped paddling, scanning the area for anything to
explain it.

Fires danced on the bogs, lifting and falling, falling and
lifting, or so it seemed. He knew they were just swamp gases, not spirits of
the dead as some believed, because he'd learned it in fourth grade. But he
could never remember will-o'-the-wisps glowing red like that.

He paddled on and on, dedicated to getting Izzy that orchid.
He couldn't stand to let her see the other boys laughing at him, humiliating
him, letting her know he wasn't an idol, just a damned scared thirteen-year-old
boy, who still coughed and puked when he smoked cigarettes, and hadn't really
laid Suzie Martin, no matter what he told the guys.

Hell, why was he doing this? She was only ten; it was not
like she was a girlfriend or anything. And everyone said things about her. She
was being raised to be a voodoo queen, had second sight, and you better not
make her mad or she'd put a hex on you.

But all he knew was she laughed all the time and made him
feel like a king.

He paddled on.

Until he heard it.

He hadn't heard it exactly, not with his ears. It was in his
head, echoing like his conscience.

Man seedling.

Man seedling, come to me.

I need your soul.

The bog came alive with light—skimming the murky water,
first as one
 
yellow-and-red flame, then
exploding into myriad fingers that surrounded his pirogue
 
and flooded him not with heat, but with a icy
chill that numbed his fingers.

Ankouer!

He grabbed the pole and stood up in that little pirogue, not
nearly as afraid he'd
 
overturn as he was
that whatever talked in his mind, whatever danced on the bog, was
 
coming to suck him up and spit him out like
an icicle. He lurched and pulled, lurched
 
and pulled, turning his little canoe almost in a circle.

The mud grabbed at his pole like it had strong bony fingers,
and sometime he fell on
 
his butt in his
struggle to pull it out.

Man seedling, come to me
.

Small flames bobbed around his canoe.

Worse, something inside him wanted to answer that call. But
the part of him that
 
wanted to run was
stronger. This was danger, danger that wanted Izzy, and he had to
 
get back to protect her. He knew that, knew
it as well as he knew that something
 
horrible called him. So he kept on lurching and pulling, lurching and
pulling, driven by
 
a need he didn't
understand.

Then the spiders came. Tiny spiders, crawling as with one
mind around the pirogue, spinning webs that covered everything. They crept
 
up his bare arms and legs, biting his skin,
making it itch worse than the mosquitoes.
 
He'd let out little horrified cries that scared him almost as much as
the swarming
 
spiders and the strange
voice calling him. And all the while, the fires danced around
 
him.

Somehow, he blocked it all out. He just shoved that pole in
the mud and pulled and
 
pulled, ignoring
the swarm that he swore covered every inch of his skin.

At some point, he saw the lights of the Port, and he poled
more furiously, running
 
and running from
the mesmerizing voice in his head, the icy fire, and the spiders that
 
assaulted him.

Finally, the grasses thinned, and each pull propelled his
little craft a greater
 
distance. By the
time he lay down the pole and picked up the paddle, the fires were
 
gone, the voice no longer called him, and the
spiders had vanished, taking their webs
 
with them.

When he reached the dock, his parents were out looking for
him with searchlights.
 
And while he
waited for their return, his grandmother wrapped him in a big blanket
 
because he'd been shivering like crazy, even
though it was one of the hottest nights of
 
summer.

He'd never told anyone about the voice or the flames or the
spiders, and when asked
 
if he'd really
found Quadray Island, he just forced a smile and refused to answer.

Man seedling, come to me.

But he'd never forgotten the flames or the voice and, damn
it all, he still dreamed about spiders

Liz appreciated Zach's steady hand on the wheel. It gave her
a chance to relax, and
 
also to call
Stephen before they got out of range. She didn't particularly want Zach
 
overhearing, and since she'd put her purse in
one of the storage bins, she had a perfect
 
excuse to go to the back of the boat.

The conversation was brief, covering the stock she'd finally
decided on the previous
 
night. After business
was done, Stephen perfunctorily asked how she was, then told
 
her a little bit about the basketball playoff
game he'd attended the night before with his girlfriend.

When Liz disconnected, she replaced the cell phone in her
handbag, then returned
 
it to the bin,
being careful to secure the complicated latch that kept the seat benches
 
that served as lids from flying up in a brisk
wind.

When she returned to the front seat, she thought about
telling Zach how glad she was he'd come, but before she could, he spoke.

"You ever go anywhere without that phone?"

"Not if I can help it."

He gave no response to her answer, and dropped back into the
funk he'd entered earlier. She didn't know the reason for it, but since he
appeared in no mood to talk she decided to go back to the journal. She read for
quite a while, her throat thickening when she encountered a passage about how
deeply her mother had loved her. Later that sentiment turned to guilt as the
pages relayed the grief Liz
 
had caused
during the months she'd allowed her parents to think she was dead.

She lifted her head, staring out. A warbler sang in the
distance, and a little blue heron stood on the shore. Willows and oaks rimmed
the shore, interspersed with the occasional cypress and maple. She'd forgotten how
beautiful the bayou was, along with why she'd left it.

All she remembered was being convinced that the swamp had
killed her grandmother. Why she thought so, she could no longer say, but she'd
believed it so completely that after her grandmother's funeral she'd taken her
pirogue downstream to Vermillion Bay and hitchhiked north.