6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Wilder Lee
A sleepless night and the growing heat of the morning almost make me want to take a dip in the lake. Not that I’m going to. My visions certainly curtailed that desire long ago. Any movement is taking great effort right now.
Rolling over, I can’t help groaning. Every muscle is still sore from the episode I had after my shower last night. It hit aggressively, causing me to fall and bang my shoulder against the towel rack.
Laying near the pebble stone path of Lakeside Park, my stomach rolling, I can’t help heaving.
In the distance I can hear someone calling ‘Mia? Mia? Miaaa?”
Straining to sit up, to answer the voice… to see who is calling. I feel gripped. My limbs weighed down. My voice strangled in my throat.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I try to focus on breathing, but it gets thready. The sensation of sinking, water filling my nostrils. I’m choking.
My throat feels strangled.
A female voice is softly chanting, “Stop him, stop him…”
Pushed… I’m being pushed down. A male voice... “Remember… cleanse… remember… cleanse…”
I’m still choking as I start to come to.
Now, this morning, I’m bruised, tired, sore, and no closer to understanding what any of it means.
Just the universe testing me.
I’ve kept this to myself, until I can explain any of it to Remington, but I’ve started to jot things down. Connections. All the drownings are connected, I feel it. Three summers, seven deaths… they are all related.
Pulling myself up to grab the notebook I’ve written in, I look it over:
Mark Tullery, 16, Lived next door to Grady, walked with me to school-possible crush on my mom, coached Cal’s Little League team, no known link to the Gibsons.
Mia Kelley, 18, Grady took a music class with her, family friend of the Gibsons, no real link to me.
Tera Hersch, 14, Stayed at The Bends, followed around Cal and Charlie, ran a 5k race with Grady, friendly with Katie.
Jeremy Eiler, 18, worked at Gibson Funpark, friends with Grant Marlow, didn’t know him
Susanna Ross, 15, stayed at The Bends, crush on Cal and maybe Grady? Never knew her.
Sara Truitt, 16, my girlfriend, Cal’s sister, Grady’s best friend, Charlie -no real issues.
Katie Gibson, 12, Charlie’s sister, friends with Grady and I, Cal -no real issues.
Then it ended.
But that overriding sense of doom makes me think it’ll start again. Soon.
No matter how many times or ways I go over it all, there is no reason or connection that I can see between the victims other than how they died. Nothing that points to Cal or Charlie. If Carlotta found something damning, I can’t imagine what it was.
My visions haven’t lied to me yet.
The messages don’t make sense until it’s too late sometimes, but they haven’t led me wrong. What is the link?
Whistling to Droolius, as he runs along the shoreline, I glance back at Remi’s cabin. Guess he found a way out again. “Hey pal, needed to stretch your legs, huh?” I scratch his side, while squatting next to him. “Where is your cute as hell owner at? Hmm? Should we go track her down? Are we going to find her in the rockstar's cabin? That’s my guess.”
He follows me without needing to entice him with the stick I picked up. Since Grady’s privacy was compromised by the local media and talk from indiscreet locals, he made a few moves to ensure he’s not bothered at The Bends. He paid a pizza delivery guy with similar hair to switch vehicles and draw attention to his house on the southside of the lake, while he drives the guy’s Prius in peace.
Droolius bounds ahead of me towards the door of Grady’s cabin, the sound of his guitar can be heard along with Remi’s soft laugh. Letting myself in, since both do the same at my cabin, I lean back against the doorframe. Remi is in her underwear, topless, Grady is in his boxer briefs. I’m suddenly overdressed in my shorts and tank top. “Am I interrupting?” Not that I care.
Remi bounces up with a little squeal of delight. “Perfect. Get over here. Listen to this song. It took him all of fifteen minutes to write. It’s Romantic Ruin’s next hit. Come over here.” She grabs my hand to pull me over to the couch. Instead of playing, Grady puts his guitar down, with hesitant smile on his face.
I’ve done my best to steer clear of intimate interactions with both of them. Not because I don’t want them. Fuck, this close to them both is making me crawl out of my skin with want. But my seizures, Lala’s death, the past rearing its ugly head… it’s been like a dark veil over me. Do I pull them close to me, when the future is so unsteady seeming? It would be selfish. It would kill me if I can’t keep them in my life.
“Did you have another seizure?” Grady asks quietly noting the purplish mad looking mark seen under my tank top.
Shrugging, I pick his guitar up, cradling it against my chest, I strum a few notes. “What was the chord progression that Katie loved to use in her songs? She called it the cute boy bop?” My faint smile falls off my face as I remember the time spent with her excited to show us a new song. She loved to explain her ideas with her eyes shimmering. I play with my eyes closed, a hand coming to rest on my leg. When I open them, Remi is watching me intently, her thumb caressing the inside of my thigh.
“You’re really good. I mean… freaking good.” She blinks at me in surprise. “I had no idea.”
I don’t play much anymore. Over the years it became too fraught with heartache. Memories of Katie, Sara, Grady… loss, betrayal, bitterness.
“He’s better than I am,” Grady says reclining back. “He won’t admit it, but he is. He doesn’t write music, but he sure as hell plays better than I do.”
Stopping mid stroke, I put the guitar back down. I know what he’s doing. My hand rests over Remi’s. “How was the charity event?” It’s taking some restraint not to look over at Grady lounged back on the couch. His lengthening dick outlined within his maroon underwear.
“Where to do I start?” She moves behind me, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her breasts pressed against my back. Christ, we have lift off. “Father Lowe is traumatized from meeting me, I’m sure. First, I asked him a bunch of questions, then I couldn’t figure out the mechanism of the dunk tank, and kept accidentally plunging him in the water, fed him Ceily’s cookies because I mixed up the plates, stepped on his bare foot, gave him an inadvertent peep show changing out of my wet shirt… oh, oh, and this one tops it all, my phone had our Pillowbiters playlist on it, I hadn’t swiped out and I was opening my phone to look at my calendar and FMRN blared out.”
Wiping tears from my eyes from laughing, I grab ahold of her forearm. “You definitely left an impression.”
My cellphone rings, with the horse’s ass I programmed for Cal’s number. “Now what do you need?” Should I answer his call that way? Probably not, but we’ve transitioned from getting along into the more mercurial waters of friendly. So much could go wrong with that.
“Hi to you, too. Are you with Remi?” Not this again. What’s with his sudden desperation to know what she’s up to all the time?
“If I am?”
Remington mouths ‘who’s that?’ but I get up and walk to the kitchen area.
“She hasn’t called or texted me back. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, but you don’t sound like you are. You’re coming off strongly pathetic, with a side of obsessive.” I can’t resist needling him a bit. “What’s going on?”
He gives me a dissertation on the spiral he’s been on. I hear him talk more than I have the entire time I’ve known him. Maybe I should be alarmed he’s dumping it all on me, but instead there’s a part of me feeling downright triumphant that I’m the one he’s confiding in. Not fuckface Gibson for once.
“Wait… what? She came and found you at work to ask you that?” Mary Ross confronting him had to blow his mind. If she showed up on my door, I’d probably pledge to help her find out what happened come hell or high water. My soft spot has always been women my mom’s age or older. “Did Detective Hemminger meet with you?”
Both Grady and Remi are watching me, as Cal goes on, “Do you mean recently?”
Nothing gets by him. I roll my eyes. “Uh huh.”
I let him go on for far too long about the state of his life before making an excuse to get off the phone. Turning to Remi, I ask her, “Okay, truth time. Why are you ignoring Truitt?”
She squirms around, scratches her ankle, her face scrunching. “I’m not hiding anything.”
Oddly specific.
Grady looks at her, tapping his knee his voice sarcastic, “So… what are you not hiding then?”
In true Remi form, she bites her lower lip, sways my way ditching her underwear as her steps bring her inches from me. “It’s hot in here, dontcha think? You need to lose some clothing.” Maybe she’s able to sidetrack Grady, Charlie, or Cal this way, but she needs to learn that I’ve got more self-control than all three of them put together.
“Nice try. Now that I know you’re keeping secrets, I’m more interested in that .” Backing away from her to lean on the kitchen counter, I almost miss the disappointed look pass over her face. “Just tell me, you’ll feel better.” Her anxiety over Cal asking about her was palpable. The thing is, Remington James may be even more stubborn than me, I don’t hold out much hope that she’ll give in.
“Right.” She looks over her shoulder at Grady who has sat forward watching where things go between us. “It has to be eighty degrees in here…” She tugs lightly at the leg of my shorts. “You’ll feel better…,” she says in a sing-song voice. “We’ll make you feel so much better.”
Grady can’t stay away, joining us in the kitchen, he grabs Remi’s shirt handing it to her. “There’s a boat a few feet from the shore, they have a clear view into the cabin through the picture window.”
She takes the shirt, tying the front up. “I thought I’d heard a boat motor. Hardly anyone fishes near The Bends. That’s weird, right? The guy that cuts the grass around here said the fishing is the best on the north end near the bend in the channel.” The rumors keep the locals from this area of the lake, a lot of the tourists keep near the south end where they stay, but the darker, weedy waters near The Bends are home to the trophy fish.
“Occasionally, someone comes along, like that guy we saw pull up that big thirty-inch Northern Pike.”
She hums to herself, eyes closed while she leans back into Grady’s chest. Her voice is relaxed and hushed sounding, “It’s so peaceful around here, I like the fact we don’t have to listen to motors all the time.” He kisses her shoulder, making eye contact with me.
Every cell of my body wants to reach out for them, but I’ll take my control where I can exercise it. When he moves around her, grazing his side across the front of me, my dick strains inside my shorts. The fucker is trying to provoke me. I’m not playing into this. “Yeah, not a lot of people fishing in row boats.” My laugh is halfhearted.
Row boats . Why is it that making my mind grasp for something… something I should remember.
Not a boat with a motor… a rowboat.
Fuck me. Goddamnit, why didn’t I remember this when Hemminger asked about Susanna Ross?
Looks like I need to reach out to the detective. The boat that was seen in front of The Bends was a rowboat from what I’d been told. At the time it didn’t even dawn on me how strange that was, I hadn’t been here when it happened. Whoever told me about it, said specifically that it was a rowboat. The thing about a rowboat is that you wouldn’t accidentally strike someone in the water and do much damage. In a boat with a motor of any kind you certainly can. If a rowboat was seen here, no struggle in the water was heard… a sensation grabs hold tightly. I know I’m on the right track because that dread and creeping darkness seeps in.
Could she have been killed elsewhere and dumped here… could the others have been? By someone using a rowboat to deposit them in front of The Bends.