Grave Echoes: A Kate Waters Mystery
Read Grave Echoes: A Kate Waters Mystery Online
Authors: Erin Cole
Published by Erin Cole
Copyright © 2013 Erin Cole
2nd Edition
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Other Books by Erin Cole
Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Book 2)
Of the Night: witches, zombies, monsters, and more
The Shadow People: a short horror
After Dusk: 6 dark tales of the macabre
Between Feathers and Fins: 10 tales of strange, speculative fiction
Feral Things: a werewolf novella, by Damnation Books
~ forthcoming:
The Dead in Two Creeks Forest, a dark fiction novel
To my husband, Vasile,
who’s unwavering support and belief in me,
kept me following a dream.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I would first like to thank my editor, Janice, whose insight is invaluable and whose critiques dug deep; Melissa and Alison who offered further critique of my manuscript; my family and friends, who never doubted my crazy dream—especially my mother for her loving support and honest advice and my father for following his own dreams no matter the climb ahead.
More thanks to Elise and Marcie, who read early drafts of my novel and didn't laugh or tell me to join the circus; Autumn who I can always count on for beer and horror; Michelle for her herbal remedies; my chiropractor, White, for going out of his way to keep me more like a T than a Z; the USGS and their comprehensive website; and my writing cyber friends for their continued time and support in my craft.
Most of all, my three children and husband, for everything they have ever given me—horrific, endearing, and the whole lot in between.
“
That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.”
—Charles de Lint
No, not again, she thought. Kate felt so tired, heaviness seeped into her like mud. After an exhausting move in with her boyfriend David, she needed to relax for a few moments, just enough to rest her eyes. Five minutes, that was all. But sleep softened over her and she slipped into an unconsciousness so deep, body and soul detached. Her worst nightmares followed this kind of sleep. The doctors said these episodes would feel like they were really happening, but to remember they were only hallucinations, a common feature of sleep paralysis. Except this was the third time this week.
Something cold pressed against Kate’s face. The same suffocating pressure came at her again, as if someone pushed her down. She tried to move her legs, but they were lifeless and felt disconnected from the rest of her. She couldn’t lift her arms, or even feel them, and then she recalled having wrapped them around the steering wheel where her head lay. Her shoulder sockets stretched as the weight of her torso slumped into them. She couldn’t move her hands, eyes, or mouth. Nothing. She was completely paralyzed. It’ll be over soon, she said to herself.
Outside the jeep, she heard the loud drone of a car, an engine gunning. The shrill squeal of tires screeched and Kate’s heart kicked in her chest—she sat helpless in the car, unable to brace herself for a possible collision. She wasn’t even wearing a seatbelt. Even though adrenaline coursed through her body, her muscles continued to disregard every impulse to move.
A deafening crash exploded, and the sound of shattered glass and twisted metal blasted through the street, coalescing into an awful clamor of destruction. Pieces of the wreckage clanged against the pavement. Iron and metal scraped against asphalt. Kate imagined the brutal force of the wreckage would slam into her any second, hurling her comatose body like a child’s doll. But the collision didn’t occur. Quietness returned with a whisper, a muffled voice that sounded like her sister, Jev. Kate couldn’t make out what Jev was saying, though it had the distinct edge of fear, one that she hadn’t heard in Jev’s voice since their mother had died two years ago.
‘Jev!’ Kate tried to call out. She still couldn’t move. Jev’s voice disappeared, and that is when Kate saw her—blood trailing down her face and dribbling over her lip. Fear ripened in Kate’s mind. Was this all part of the hallucination?
Her vision shifted again, and Kate noticed something shiny and gold on the floorboard of the passenger’s seat. She knew what it was. She had seen it before, in her last hallucination. A gold key. It was uncommonly long and brassy with a Celtic knot twisted at the base. For the first time, she could see letters inscribed along the stem…, T. C., …and a third, but the image disappeared when Kate heard the clap of footsteps approaching. Whether they were real or imaginary, she couldn’t tell.
A woman shouted, her voice unfamiliar to Kate. Whoever she was, she cried out in panic and Kate presumed she was the source of the woman’s alarm, paralyzed and slumped in the driver’s seat of her Jeep. Desperate to move, she knew the harder she fought her cemented hell, the worse it would get. Relax, breathe in and out five times…but pounding on the window startled her. Kate suddenly broke through her concrete shell, jerking awake and emerging like a gargoyle statue coming to life. Her body shook violently. She flailed her arms trying to grab on to something. With great difficulty, she lifted her head, her body sluggish and heavy. Brightness swallowed her. Through blurred vision, she could see the silhouette of someone standing outside the car. It wasn’t Jev. Kate clutched onto the wheel and sat up. Her eyes glanced at the door locks. The red strip indicated they were locked. Not knowing who was outside, she felt reassured by the security.
“Kate?” the woman called out. “Are you okay?” A girl’s eyes were wide upon her. The black of her pupils swelled into the iris until there was only a thin ring of cobalt remaining. “Kate, it’s me, Terry. Jev’s neighbor.”
Through the combination of voice and name, Kate recollected her. She reached for the lock and opened the door, her arm moving stiff like machinery. Terry reached for Kate’s shoulder, steadying her as she stepped from the jeep. A cool breeze, tinged with the dank sweetness of fall, roused Kate’s awareness.
“Are you all right?” Terry asked again.
Kate nodded, although she didn’t feel right. She glanced around the neighborhood, looking for the wreckage she’d just heard. The cars parked along the curb, free of damaged fenders and windows, suggested nothing had occurred.
“I’m okay, but what about the accident?” Kate asked. Terry appeared confused. “I thought I heard a wreck.” She looked down at Terry, noticing her skirt and white blouse were clean and unwrinkled, not like someone who had just been in a car accident.
“What wreck?” Terry’s eyes flitted sideways at the street and back to Kate. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yeah, I just fell asleep.” Kate turned to the surrounding houses, expecting to see people gawking out their doors and windows, wondering what happened too, but she and Terry were the only ones visible in the neighborhood.
“I’m sorry for waking you,” Terry said, her eyes still distended with concern, although the fear Kate saw in them a moment ago, had dissipated. “I saw you hunched over…I thought something was wrong.”
“Sometimes I have sleep attacks.” Anticipating Terry’s frown, Kate elaborated. “The doctors call it narcolepsy; it’s just a fancy word for a sleep disorder.”
“I see,” Terry said. Kate sensed she didn’t.
“Jev’s been fixing up her place; looks real nice,” she said, changing the topic. “Are you watching Jev’s house for her?” Terry looked down the driveway.
“No…Did she go somewhere?” Kate asked. The comment troubled her. She hadn’t been able to reach Jev, and she didn’t think her sister would leave town without telling her.
“Oh…,” Terry paused. Her manicured hand came up to her mouth as if to stop further mention of Jev’s personal activities. “Well, she left last night with what I thought was an overnight bag. I just assumed she went out of town.”
“What time did she leave?”
“Maybe 10:30 pm. Sometime around then.”
Kate glanced around the yard, wondering if Jev had gone over to Sean’s house. They had been spending more time together, a romance she didn’t necessarily approve of since Sean was her coworker. Her job as a geologist and evacuation specialist for the Pacific Northwest Geological Survey had always been a positive escape from family and friends and she regarded the mingling of the two as an invasion on her privacy. Jev found Sean intelligent and gregarious, and he thought she was refreshing and eccentric. Kate believed they were both too much alike, but she felt ill equipped to offer opinions on relationships, since she had been single and downhearted for months before she met David and had been close to accepting celibacy as a new lifestyle.
She looked back at Terry. “She’s probably staying with her boyfriend.”
“Oh, right,” Terry said, nodding.
“If you see her around today, would you mind telling her to give me a call?”
“Sure,” Terry replied and then walked across the street to her silver Prius. Kate waited for her to leave, watching the golden spray of leaves whirl across the street behind her car as she drove off. Dusk neared and a gentle breeze fanned through the neighborhood. The rustling of brilliant red, yellow, and orange leaves flickered in the canopy of branches above, reminiscent of Kate’s pulse, which still palpitated from her hallucination. The bloody image of Jev. The visions were getting stronger. She glanced around the neighborhood one more time before going into Jev’s house. Everything looked normal. It was only a hallucination.
Retrieving Jev’s spare key hidden underneath a ceramic toad, Kate opened the front door and stepped inside the living room. A log-framed pine-colored futon and several lush houseplants furnished the room. In the center, above the fireplace, hung a Steve Lyman painting of a wolf in the snow, staring back at the viewer. Jev loved wolves and believed they were kindred spirits, sharing roots with the earth and the night. Maybe Jev was just breaking away from her pack for a few days, Kate thought.
On the coffee table, she noticed an empty mug, a plate of crumbs, and a pillow on the floor. It looked as if Jev had been home recently. She crossed the living room and went into the kitchen, looking through drawers for a pen and paper. If Jev wasn’t answering her phone, Kate wondered if her sister could avoid the traditional “note.”
A row of mason jars, filled with roots and herbs, lined the counter. Kate picked one up and turned it around to read the label. “Horehound Root.” She shook her head, thinking how Jev would make an excellent candidate for Fear Factor. Eating bowls of maggots, tiptoeing over coals, sitting in a pool of snakes—they were all things Jev would have the guts to do. She, on the other hand, couldn’t even watch the show and was more likely to be a contestant on Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune.
Kate set the container back down on the counter, and found a tablet and pen in a desk tray. She asked that Jev contact her right away, but she didn’t mention why, that her sleep attacks were worsening. That each episode she’d experienced this week had visions of a gold key and Jev, who always seemed distressed and hurt. Kate kept telling herself they were probably just neurological fragments of random memory. Although, these were different from those she normally had. Panic and mild delusions dominated many of them, but they had never lasted as long or came on as often. And, they never repeated.
***
There were no messages on the machine when Kate arrived home. Disappointed and a little irritated, she set her keys on the bureau next to the phone, wondering why her sister hadn’t called her yet. It wasn’t unusual for Jev to retreat into hiding, but considering Kate had just moved to the outskirts of town with her new boyfriend, one that Jev reminded her she hardly knew, she thought her sister would at least want to check in on her. Maybe Jev was just trying to give her and David space to settle in. After all, it was a big move, shifting from the convenience of city life to the isolation of the suburbs. Still, another reason for a check-in call, Kate thought, especially when it came to sisters.
She heard David in the kitchen and went in to see what he was doing. Normally he worked Saturday nights, but he’d taken a vacation day to fix the place up when she’d decided to move in with him. He had wanted to rejuvenate the classic two-story farmhouse since he and his ex-wife, Robyn Bradshaw, had moved in several years before, but remodeling plans had ceased when they divorced. The old charm of the country home, close in proximity to Mt. Hood and the Columbia River, had always appealed to David. Yet, for just himself, it was too big. Then he’d met Kate.
“The rooms look great,” Kate said, noticing a fresh coat of ginger-colored paint on the walls and white trim on the floorboards and ceiling.
David glanced over his shoulder and stepped down from the ladder. “Hey,” he said with brightening eyes. The shadow of a beard swathed his jaw line and upper lip. Because his job as a paramedic at the Providence Medical Hospital required him to keep his beard trimmed, he took pleasure in the shaggy growth during his off days.
He set the hammer down and walked over to her, reaching for her arms. His lips met hers slowly. Kate returned his kiss, but it came stiff. David noticed it.
“Something wrong?”
Kate licked her lips, catching the faint taste of hops from the beer he drank. “I had another sleep paralysis and hallucination.”
“Another one?”
“With terrible visions this time, more like the others.”
He reached for her wrists where he could feel her pulse and then pulled her to him. “You seem worried. Is it the hallucinations or Jev?”
“Mostly Jev. I talked with her neighbor, Terry. She thinks Jev left town.”
David let go of her wrists to take a sip of his beer. “Jev has done this before, right?”
“Yeah, but she usually returns my phone calls and always tells me when she’s actually going to leave town.” His Lycra shirt accentuated the firmness of his body underneath and Kate started to feel some of the difficulties of the day melt away with the heat of his sweat, the strength of his hold. It felt good to be with someone again.
“She’s probably just finding herself,” David replied.
Kate imagined so, but didn’t say anything. David moved his face in front of hers. She noticed that his almond-brown hair matched his hazel eyes tonight. Sometimes his eyes were green, like a desert cactus, but now, he had a mellowness about him that brought light to his face, softening his features. He kissed her on the lips and stepped back on the ladder.
“Give her a call tomorrow, invite her over for dinner. I know Jev wouldn’t turn down a home-cooked meal.” He sunk a nail into a bracket to mount the blinds on the wall.
“I don’t want to bug her,” Kate said.
He lifted the frame of the blinds into the bracket. “She’s your sister. You’re supposed to bug her.”
Kate smiled and sat down at the table. “You know, I am the little sister. She’s supposed to be taking care of me.”
“Well, now she’s got Sean to take care of her.”
Kate thought about that, but she didn’t think Sean had it in him to take care of Jev. Not because he wouldn’t try, but because she didn’t think his qualities were of any use to Jev. She needed a man with heroic traits, a superman who could spin her world around, or a James Bond who could lure her into a world of intrigue and mystery. Neither of which she saw in Sean. He was good looking, with dark hair and bright blue eyes, but he seemed too young for Jev—too normal.
