The Darkness to Come (32 page)

Cornelia smiled. “Your wife called this morning and said you might be coming. She described you—very tall man, handsome, broad shoulders.”

Joshua couldn’t suppress a blush—or his surprise that Rachel had told them to expect his visit.

I shouldn’t be surprised
.
Remember her sixth sense for things.

“So I don’t need a reservation?”

“Of course not, dear. You have an invite. Show this to Jimmy when you board the ferry.” She slid a beige card across the desk that had the words “Guest of Resident” printed on it in black ink. She also gave him one of the informational booklets; it featured colorful photos of the island, a brief history, and the daily ferry schedule.

She took a log sheet out of a drawer, uncapped a pen. “How long will you be staying?”

“A couple of days, I guess.”

“I hope you enjoy your time here.” She read a clock on the wall. “The ferry leaves at noon, but you can start boarding in about twenty minutes.”

“Thanks.”

She glanced at his bandaged finger. “That looks very painful.”

“It is—I broke it.” He wondered how much Rachel had told this woman about him, and their situation. “What time did my wife call you?”

“She called soon after we opened, at seven o’clock.”

“She sounded okay?”

Cornelia frowned. “Yes, of course.”

Joshua skimmed the ferry departure times printed on the back of the booklet. “Did any unfamiliar black men board the seven-thirty ferry this morning?”

“No.” The furrows in her face deepened. “Why?”

The pressure in Joshua’s chest drained out of him. Bates hadn’t beaten him there. Not unless he had managed to pull off that weird, walking-around-invisible crap. That was a possibility, as much as Joshua wanted to ascribe the phenomenon to his own distorted perceptions yesterday.

He also realized that Rachel hadn’t told this woman anything about their circumstances. He wasn’t surprised. Rachel always kept her personal life, personal.

Oddly, he felt the need to be secretive, too. He didn’t know this woman. Although she seemed genuinely friendly and helpful, she was a stranger to him, and in his edgy state, he was unable to lower his guard enough to tell her why he was making these unusual queries.

Cornelia watched him expectantly.

“One more question,” he said.

“One more, dear. Ask another, and then you have to tell me what this is all about. You have my imagination working hard here.”

“How hard would it be for someone who isn’t registered to board the ferry?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one. It would be impossible. We have state regs to follow, so we run a tight operation. No one gets on without a boarding pass, and to get a boarding pass, you have to see me, first.”

“Thanks for the info.”

“I wouldn’t let just anyone on the ferry, dear, if that’s what you are worried about.” Curiosity glittered in her eyes; she was fishing for more information.

“That’s good to know,” he said, and meant it. The appearance of Bates, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, would certainly set alarm bells ringing in this woman’s inquisitive mind. Thanks also to his memorable line of questioning, she would be especially wary of visitors that day, which was all he could hope for without giving her the full story.

He thanked her again and left through the visitor center’s back door. A long dock stretched ahead. Shrimp boats and other sea-faring vessels bobbed gently in the water. The ferry was directly ahead; Joshua noted with satisfaction that it was the same boat he’d seen cresting the waves in the photographs that Rachel kept in the house. The vessel was the red of autumn leaves, and “Hyde Island Queen” was scrawled across the hull in eggshell white.

He had a little while before boarding began. He leaned against the dock’s wooden railing and watched the seagulls soaring through the cerulean sky.

The conversation with the woman had given him confidence. He dared to hope that he and Rachel would be safe on the island.

Nevertheless, he adjusted the overnight bag on his shoulder, so he could feel the reassuring lump of the gun against his side.

Chapter 54

Eddie was in the living room, watching a Season One episode of
The Boondocks
on DVD, when the doorbell rang.

Up until then, it had been a quiet morning. He’d seen his wife and child off, and before leaving, Ariel had gladly loaned him her stun gun. She believed, as Joshua had said, that Bates might pay them a visit. Tanisha’s murder had badly shaken her, too.

“Call the police if anything happens,” Ariel had said. “
Anything
. They need to catch this guy.”

“You do the same,” he’d told her, though he doubted she was in any danger. If Bates invaded their home, he would be coming for him, Eddie knew. He was Joshua’s best friend, and Bates might know that, and would assume Eddie could give him answers. The worry in Ariel’s eyes reflected that she believed the same thing.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. He made a show of whipping out the Taser like a gunslinger in a Sergio Leone western. “Fifty thousand volts here agrees with me.”

He’d sent his wife out of the house with a hopeful smile on her face—and the moment she closed the door, he locked it. He locked the other two exterior doors—one side led to the garage, the other, to their backyard—and he locked the windows. He closed all of the blinds, too. Like a man battening the hatches against a cataclysmic storm.

He had plenty of work to do that day—a couple of programming projects for small businesses—but his simmering anxiety made concentration impossible. He soon gave up all hope of working to re-watch some of his favorite episodes from
The Boondocks.
He rarely purchased DVDs since he could rent them more economically from Netflix, but the cartoon series was too damn funny not to own. Laughing hard, he almost forgot about the worries that had driven him to set aside his work in the first place.

And then the doorbell rang. Coco had been on the sofa with him, curled up against his leg, fast asleep. But at the chiming of the bell, she sprang awake and perched on the arm of the couch, eyes bulging, letting loose her distinctive, high-pitched barks.

“Relax, girl. It’s probably only a delivery.”

The dog quieted. She scurried into her kennel, which Eddie had placed beside the sofa.

She was such a nervous little dog. But the dog’s anxiety re-ignited his latent fear. He pushed off the sofa, touched the Taser on his hip.

Hold up, man. Bates wouldn’t announce his arrival by ringing the damn doorbell like UPS. You’re overreacting.

Eddie pulled down his sweater, to conceal the stun gun. He went to one of the front windows and parted the blinds.

There was no delivery truck parked outside. But he did see something alarming: someone had knocked over the family of plastic snowmen that graced the front yard.

“Damn kids playing pranks. Don’t people teach their children manners any more?”

Back in the day when he was growing up—not that long ago—his parents had taught him to respect the property of others. You didn’t vandalize someone’s house or screw around with their shit. Hell, you didn’t so much as walk through someone yard without permission. But nowadays, the youth did whatever they wanted. On numerous occasions, Eddie had caught kids walking through his backyard as a shortcut to getting to a neighborhood park, tramping across his wife’s flower garden, and he’d finally had to erect a fence to put an end to the trespassers.

He unlocked the front door and walked outside. The prankster kids were nowhere in sight, which was to be expected. After they did their damage they never hung around to own up to it. Brats.

He set the snowmen upright and returned inside the house. He locked the front door again.

That was when he noticed the smells.

The first was an outdoorsy odor: like old leaves, damp earth. Another, sharper smell was blended with it: a musky scent that reminded Eddie of a locker room after a football game.

The final olfactory thread, woven in with the other two, was the pungent scent of blood.

Bates. Somehow, he got in here.

But how? He’d kept all of the doors locked, and the windows, too.

Until he’d gone outdoors to fix the snowmen . . .

Eddie remembered what Joshua had said. Something about Bates being able to walk around, seemingly invisible. Eddie had chalked up Joshua’s story to a pressure-triggered delusion. No man could be invisible. It was ridiculous.

Now, Eddie wasn’t so sure.

He seemed to be alone. There were no visual signs whatsoever of Bates’ presence. But there were the awful smells.

Cold sweat slicked his spine. He reached for the Taser, unclipped it, slid his finger across the button that would release the electrifying prongs.

“Hey,” Eddie said, pleased with the firm authority in his voice. “I know you’re in here, man. I can smell you, you funky motherfucker.”

There was no reply.

Eddie wondered if he were imagining things, if perhaps the odors merely had been carried inside the house from outdoors by the wind. What tangible proof did he have that Bates had invaded his house? Could he call the police and say, hey, come get this psycho, he’s in my house, I can’t see him, but I can smell him? They would laugh and hang up.

“Come on out, man,” Eddie said, but with less forcefulness.

He crept down the hallway, glancing in the bedrooms, the bathroom. He found nothing.

“I’m not scared of you,” Eddie said.

The smell had faded, giving further credence to his doubts. He would check the rest of the house, just to be sure, but he was almost certain that he’d allowed his imagination, fueled by Joshua’s fantastic theories, to run away with him.

As Eddie moved toward the kitchen, his Blackberry beeped, signaling the arrival of a text message. It had probably come from Joshua. Eddie would read it after he had finished walking through the house.

He went to the kitchen. There was no one in there. However, the basement door hung open.

A frown knitted his brow. He’d circulated from the basement to the first floor and vice versa several times that morning, and could not recall if he’d left the door open, or closed.

He walked to the doorway. Thirteen steps dropped into dense shadows, which he expected, as he’d shut off the lights when he returned upstairs. But he caught that medley of foul odors again.

If it had been a scent borne into the house on wind currents when he’d opened the front door, it would not have dissipated, and then resurfaced at the entrance to the basement. Someone was definitely in the house, lurking in the cellar.

He was calling the cops. He would fabricate a story and say Bates had broken in. And hope they made a liar of him when they arrived.

As Eddie started to turn around, someone shoved him down the stairs.

Chapter 55

At a quarter to noon, Joshua boarded the ferry. The first mate was a short, dark-skinned black man with a fuzzy goatee fringed with silver. His name tag identified him as Jimmy. He nodded at Joshua’s guest pass and showed a gap-toothed smile. “I will speak with you soon, my friend.”

“Okay.” Why did this man want to talk to him? Had Rachel told this guy about him, too?

The ferry had a few rows of bench seats that ran the length of the vessel. Joshua sat at the end of a bench and braced his overnight bag between his legs. He was thankful that no one had asked to examine the contents of his luggage.

The only other passengers were a trio of kids with bulky backpacks and University of Georgia caps and jackets. Probably college students on a research trip.

While waiting for the ferry to set sail, Joshua flipped out his Blackberry. He sent Eddie a brief text message stating that he had found out that Rachel was indeed on the island, that he’d boarded the ferry that was going to take him there, and would touch base with him later.

He expected a prompt response from Eddie, but after five minutes, he’d heard nothing. Eddie might be in the middle of a project. If Joshua didn’t hear from him, he would try him again when he reached the island.

At precisely noon, the ferry cast off, and plied into the marshy channel. Seagulls circled the boat, like escorts. Cool, salty breezes swirled over the deck, tickling Joshua’s nostrils.

Joshua got off the bench and leaned against the deck’s metal railing, watching the dark water churning underneath as the vessel surged forward. A pair of dolphins swam off to the side, gray fins cutting the water’s surface.

He thought about his dream. Walking the beach with Rachel and their child. Gazing at the beach house, the ferry, and the sea. He felt an almost painful knot of yearning in his chest.

“It’s a scenic ride, no matter the time of year,” a man’s accented voice said, from behind him.

Joshua spun, startled. But it was only the first mate, Jimmy.

“Yeah, it’s pretty out here,” Joshua said. “You said you wanted to speak with me?”

“My name is Jimmy.” He offered his hand, and Joshua shook it. “I’ll also be driving you around the island, Mr. Moore.”

“You will? Who asked you to do that?”

“Your wife, of course. She asked me to bring you to her when you arrived.”

“Seems like she’s thought of everything,” Joshua said, under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“Never mind,” Joshua said. “It seems like my wife is pretty well connected here. She told the lady at the visitor center that I might be coming today, now she’s got you taking me to her, too. Is that regular treatment for guests of residents?”

“No, no,” Jimmy said. “But your wife is not a regular resident.”

“What do you mean?”

But Jimmy only smiled, and excused himself to attend to deck operations. Frowning, Joshua watched him hurry away.

He pulled the informational booklet out of his back pocket, and scanned it once more. When he reached the section of the brochure describing Hall Hammock, the Geechee community on the island’s southernmost tip, he wondered again about Rachel’s connection to this place.