Page 48 of Brewbies
It was always the same. She was running down a seemingly endless maze of hospital corridors, chased by a shadowy figure she could never quite make out. The walls were white and featureless, the lights flickering and casting eerie shadows that seemed to move with her as she ran.
The fear in her dream was overwhelming, like an icy hand clutching at her throat and squeezing until she could hardly breathe. Her legs trembled beneath her and sweat stung her eyes as if it were real.
It always ended the same way. Just when Darby thought she had lost the figure chasing her, it would suddenly reappear in front of her, opening a hole in the waxed linoleum floor beneath the soles of her hospital-issue surgical pressure socks.
But this time, something had been different. It hadn’t been the dark figure that woke her, but a sound. A strange and unfamiliar creaking noise that her mind had attempted to weave into the strange landscape of her dreams.
Darby peeled back her tangled covers, rubbing her eyes groggily as she squinted into the darkness. When nothing leapt into her field of vision, she scooted to the end of the bed and slipped into her kimono.
On her way through the kitchen, she paused at the counter and fished inside her cookie jar for the .45 Patrick Kelly had given her as a going-away present.
That she was about a thousand timeslesslikely to need it once she’d left Boston hadn’t seem especially important to point out at the time.
The weapon felt reassuringly heavy in her hand as she tiptoed into her slippers. She was indescribably glad she’d taken a can of WD-40 to the hinges of the camper’s front door the day before.
Darby crept out into a starless night filled with the faint sigh of the wind off the water, her heart speeding when the strange creaking sound came again.
From directly over her head.
Mountain lion,her nightmare-addled brain suggested helpfully.Cougar. Black bear.
Swallowing hard, Darby clicked the safety off her gun and tipped her chin upward to look.
What she saw instead was considerably more alarming.
Sheriff Ethan Townsend was in her tree.
ELEVEN
Specific Gravity
A MEASURE OF DENSITY IN A LIQUID OR SOLID
No,I amnotbeing creepy.
Ethan’s argument with himself escalated into devil’s advocate territory as he used the strength of his legs to propel himself up the ginormous branch of the thousand-year-old oak.
Talking to yourself was normal, or so he heard. But if someone were to eavesdrop on the conversation in his head, he’d be branded certifiably nuts.
In fact, the longer Darby Dunwell lingered in Townsend Harbor, the more likely he was to catch a few diagnoses.
And possibly a straitjacket.
Because she was driving him out of his damn mind.
Returning something wasn’t the same as surveillance. It’s not like I brought binoculars or anything,he justified to himself.
No, you just drove past here an hour after nightfall to see if her light had gone off.
That was because—
Then, two hours later, you waited in your personal truck for the length of a particularly good PB&sugarfreeJ sandwich and a scotch ale from your own stock to give her enough time to establish a healthy REM cycle. Tell me again you’re not creepy.
“Fuck off,” he told his conscience out loud.
Looking fifteen feet down at his disarray of tools, he had to admit that itmightlook like the Night Stalker Serial Killer’s beginner kit… Complete with rope, tape, flashlight, and an impressive cacophony of blades, hammers, wrenches, and other things horror movie villains used to drain buckets of blood.
Shaking himself, Ethan focused his flashlight on the task before him.
