LOVE ME TO DEATH - Chapter 2

Maggie Shayne
5 days ago
12 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

A chapter-a-day for 10 days! Your Halloween Treat from Maggie Shayne

David drove his Jeep Wrangler past the big wooden “Welcome to Port Lucinda, The Town Where Time Stands Still” sign, and shook his head at how appropriate the nickname was.

He’d never realized how stuck in time his hometown was, until he’d grown up and done some traveling.

The storefronts hadn’t changed. They had green-and-white striped awnings, and old-fashioned lettering, and the drugstore still served fountain sodas and root beer floats. Most of the buildings had expanded backward rather than sideways, not wanting to mess up the quaint look of the storefronts. Hell, the salon that today offered hot stone massages, manicures, pedicures, facials and anything and everything related to hair still had an antique barber pole guarding the front door. During tourist season, a quartet of moustached locals showed up to sing in harmony beside that pole every Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

Not so now, in February.

He passed Potter’s Grocery. Mark’s father had handed it down to him, just as his grandfather had passed it on to his dad, and he was pretty sure his granddad had taken over from his own father. It had been Potter’s for as long as anyone could remember.

But Mark’s sons weren’t even out of high school yet. God, it wasn’t time for them to have to take over.

Within a couple of minutes, David was driving out of the village and passing by the last place officially a part of it. The old Muller House. Of course, now it was called Sierra House, in honor of the girl who’d died there so long ago. Rebuilt, it served as a community center—a place to hold dances, talent shows, and host everything from local bands to bake sales. But it was also a resource for troubled teens. Twice a month, there were crisis counselors on duty there. Kids with problems could come and talk confidentially, and they’d be steered to the resources they needed. They’d be listened to and helped.

The fire hadn’t burned the old Muller place to the ground. It had only gutted it, and spurred the townsfolk to stop fighting over it and agree it was worth saving. The restoration had begun that very spring.

David pulled the Jeep onto the snowy shoulder of the road and sat there for a moment. There was a picket fence surrounding the house now. There hadn’t been before.

The sidewalk had been buckled and cracked back then—he remembered tripping on it as they ran from the blossoming flames that night. In fact, it was impossible for him to look at the place—all freshly painted with new shutters and curtains in the windows—and see anything other than the sagging, peeling menace it had been back then.

He hated the Muller House. He hated the town for not tearing it down to begin with. He hated himself for blaming the house, or the town, or anyone else for what happened. It was no one’s fault but his own.

God, he could almost see her face in the upstairs window staring out at him, with flames leaping up around her as she cried and pounded on the window glass.

He hadn’t seen that, not then, not now. It wasn’t a real memory, it was his mind torturing him. And he couldn’t stop thinking about the life he’d taken away.

Or the woman she would have become.

He’d been with that woman again the other night, in dreams so vivid they left him shaken and more exhausted than before he’d slept at all. Sierra. A little older, a little more beautiful. Sierra. God, how she haunted him.

He shook himself, dragged his attention away from the girl whose soul seemed to live inside his own, and shifted the Jeep into gear, glancing into the mirror. And then he froze, because for just the barest instant, he saw her in his rearview mirror.

Sierra Terrence was standing on the opposite side of the road, slightly behind where he was parked, staring at that house just the way he’d been doing.

It was a glimpse, no more. She stood there in faded jeans, enveloped in a big heavy parka, but its hood was down and her long dark hair was moving with the winter wind.

She was there, and then not there as fast as another car passed between them.

He slammed the Jeep into Park and twisted around in his seat to look again. But there was no one.

He took a couple of open-mouthed breaths, scanning the sidewalks up one side of the street and down the other, looking for her. Because that hadn’t been his imagination. Maybe the resemblance had—but there had been somebody there.

Or else he was hallucinating.

Damn, he had been without sleep for close to twenty hours. That was probably all it had been. But it had sure as hell felt real. Real enough that his heart was still racing.

Sierra. God, would he ever get over her?

He drove on, up the winding road that led to The Heights, which was what the locals had unofficially named the seaside portion of Port Lucinda. Not creative, but geographically accurate.

As Randy’s father’s cottage came into view, David noticed a green SUV in the wide driveway and knew his friends had already arrived. Moments later he was pulling in next to it.

Randy, Kevin and Brad came out the front door before he was even out of the Jeep, and then they were all around him, clapping him on the shoulders, pumping his hand.

Brad had gained weight and lost hair. Kevin still looked like a male model. And Randy, who’d barely changed at all, hugged him hard. David wasn’t ashamed to hug back. These were more than friends to him. More than brothers, even.

“My bag’s in the back,” he began.

“Why don’t you leave it, for now?” Randy said.

David frowned, and Kevin added, “We just got a call from Janet. She said we should hurry.”

“Aw, hell. Is he—?”

“She wouldn’t say. Just said he was asking for us and to get there, fast. So we’re going.”

“Okay. So we’re going.

As one, they trooped to the SUV and piled in.

***

“Oh, thank God. Thank God you’re all here.” Janet rose from the chair beside her husband’s bed and met the four men halfway across the hospital room.

David wanted to look at her, to acknowledge her, but for the life of him, he couldn’t take his eyes from Mark, because he didn’t look like Mark at all.

His face was red, swollen, bruised to hell and gone. His head was swathed in bandages that went under his chin and encircled his entire skull like a nun’s wimple. His left leg was casted all the way to his groin, and suspended from a rack over the bed. There were IV lines running into one arm, an oxygen tube taped to his nose, and other electronics wired to his chest and his head.

Janet had been hugging each of them, and finally it was his turn. He returned her embrace and as she stepped away, he looked at her and thought she’d aged ten years since he’d seen the two of them last summer—Independence Day. How long ago was that? Seven months? No one aged ten years in seven months. He suspected the weariness and stress he saw in her now had occurred in the last forty-eight hours.

He cupped the side of her face. “What can we do for you, Jan? What do you need?”

She shook her head. “You came. That’s all he’s wanted—insisted on. Maybe he’ll relax a little bit now that you’re here.”

“How is he, Janet?” Randy asked. “Really?”

She met Randy’s eyes, and then just shook her head, very slightly. As if to say they didn’t expect Mark to live. And David knew she wouldn’t want to say that out loud, not in the same room with him.

“Is he asleep?” David asked.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “His eyes are too swollen to open. Come on.”

She gripped his arm and tugged him closer to the bed. Behind him, he heard the door open again, heard a nurse insisting that only two visitors were allowed at a time and heard Brad telling her she’d need more help if she wanted to remove any of them. Then Randy said, “We won’t stay long, we promise.”

There was a sigh, then the door swung closed. The nurse must have withdrawn. And then Kevin was standing at his side, Randy and Brad on the opposite side of the bed, all of them staring down at Mark.

“What the hell happened?” Brad asked. “Randy said he was hit by a truck?”

Janet’s voice was so lifeless it was nearly a monotone. “The driver says he just came sprinting out of nowhere, right into his path. Everyone’s been asking him why, but he said he couldn’t talk to anyone but the four of you.”

“Don’t let that hurt you, hon,” Randy said, sending Janet a fond look. “We really bonded in the detention center. It was hell there, you know? We needed each other.”

“I know,” she said. “I know what you all went through together. And I know he never got over it. I’m just glad you came.” Leaning over the bed, cupping her husband’s face, she said, “Hey, baby. The guys are here, just like you asked. Can you hear me? Dave, Brad, Kevin and Randy. They’re all here. They came just as fast as they could.”

His head moved very slightly. His mouth seemed to tense, then his lips parted and he spoke with effort. “Guys?”

“Right here, Mark,” David said softly, and he laid a hand over one of Mark’s, so he could feel him there. Only then did he realize Mark’s eyes actually were open, mere slits between his swollen lids.

Mark nodded very slightly, and shifted what there was of his gaze toward Janet. “I need you...to wait...”

“You want privacy. I understand.” There was hurt in her tone, but she didn’t argue. She leaned down and kissed an exposed part of his face, then hurried from the room and closed the door.

“Okay, we’re alone, pal,” Brad said. “What’s going on?”

“Sierra.”

David and Brad shot each other a look, and David said, “What about Sierra?”

“I saw her.”

David felt icy cold right to his core. He shivered.

Randy frowned at Mark. “You mean you sort of crossed over for a few seconds, when all this happened? You saw her on the other side?”

“No. Here. She’s here. She’s... coming for us.”

Kevin’s brows went up and he actually took a step away from the bed. “Mark, come on—”

“She’s come back...for revenge.”

The other three had been leaning closer and closer to better hear him, but now Brad straightened with a grunt. “You probably dreamed about her while you were unconscious, Mark. That’s all. You’re hurt pretty badly, you know.”

“I know that,” Mark said. “But it’s not...a dream. I saw her—before…the accident. Waiting for me…outside the store. Just standing there in the snow, waiting. She came...for my soul... and she got it, guys. She got it.”

Brad shot David a quick glance, then said, “Wait, you’re saying this delusion started before you got hit by that truck?”

“No delusion!” He tried to sit up in the bed, but only rose a few inches then fell backward. The steady beeping of the machines increased in pace. A nurse came into the room, alarmed.

“She reached out... for me—might as well have pushed me in front of...that truck.” His brows crunched together. “Maybe—maybe she did push me. Without touching. ’Cause she’s not…alive. She’s a ghost...or something.”

“He’s too agitated, gentlemen,” the nurse said. “You really have to leave.” She shouldered her way in between them to the bedside. “Really—”

“No!” Mark shouted from the bed, and the word had more power than any he'd uttered so far.

“Take it easy,” Brad said. “This is ridiculous, Mark. You’re hurt, your head’s all messed up. Sierra’s dead. We made a terrible mistake, but we told the truth, and we did the time.” The nurse looked slightly alarmed at that. “It’s over,” Brad insisted.

“Really, sirs, you have to leave.” The nurse was moving them bodily away from the bedside now.

And then Mark’s hand flashed out suddenly, and closed around David’s with a surprisingly strong grip. “I stayed alive...this long...so I could warn you. Listen to me, dammit! She’s come back. She already had…her vengeance on me...but I’m telling you…you’re next.”

His voice grw louder, a final burst of strength empowering it. “She’s come back! The girl we killed has come back, and she’s won’t rest until we’re all dead just like she is.”

Then his hand went slack and his head sank onto his pillows.

“I think he passed out,” David said, leaning closer in alarm.

“I think it might be a bit more than that,” the nurse said. “Get out. Stay with his wife until we call.” Then she pushed a button on the wall and said, “I need Dr. Pollock, stat.”

Brad was already heading for the door, and the others followed, just barely getting through it before three white-coated individuals came running down the hall and pushed past them to get inside.

“Man, Mark’s messed up, isn’t he?” Brad asked.

David nodded, knowing Brad needed some kind of reassurance, because Mark’s words had probably sent the same icy chills running up and down his spine as had run David’s own. And with his physique, and the way he got out of breath just crossing a room, David didn’t think Brad could handle too many shocks.

So he didn’t say a word about what he thought he had seen outside that damned cursed house where Sierra had died this very morning. “He has a head injury, pal. That’s all it is.”

Brad seemed relieved, and then Janet was there, taking his arm. “They want me to stay out of the room while they examine him,” she said. “What happened in there?”

Brad lowered his head, as did Randy and Kevin when she looked at each of them in turn. But when her eyes met David’s, he said, “Why don’t we find a place to sit and talk? You look like you could use something to eat. Is there a cafeteria or—?”

Janet sent a yearning look at Mark’s closed door, but then nodded. “It’s just down the hall.”

David fell into step with her and the others followed. He didn’t feel like he could eat a bite, but once in the cafeteria he grabbed a plate and preceded to fill it all the same, hoping Janet would try to eat if the rest of them did.

He paid little attention to what he scooped onto his plate. There were fresh fruits, scrambled eggs, a stack of pancakes. A typical breakfast buffet. He watched Janet as she put a minuscule amount of fruit and a pastry onto her own plate, then he led her to a table.

She sat beside him, and the other three men joined them. Kevin had to pull a chair from another table over to theirs. David waited until she had taken a couple of bites, forcing himself to do likewise, and then finally he took a breath and looked her in the eye. “Do you know what Mark thinks, Janet?”

“No. But I know it has something to do with Sierra Terrence.” She looked at each of the men. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

They nodded, almost as one.

“He’s been muttering her name in his sleep," she said. "Especially right after the accident, when he was unconscious. And when he woke up, he seemed scared to death and kept asking for you guys—just you guys. No one else.”

David nodded. “He said he saw her—or her ghost, or something. That’s what made him run out into the street like that. He thought she was after him. He thinks she’s come back to get revenge on us.”

“He hit his head,” Randy told her, and he reached across the table to cover her hand with his own. “That’s all it is. He’s hurt and he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s part of a dream or a hallucination. That’s all.”

Janet met his eyes. “I don’t think so. Look, I don’t want to scare him, or you guys either. But I know my husband. And I think he saw something.”

“No, Janet, no. He doesn’t remember what happened,” Kevin said. “He doesn’t. This is all some kind of delusion.”

She shook her head firmly. “He saw something. I’ve never seen him that terrified. And he got terrified before the truck hit him. Something frightened him badly enough to send him running into its path.” She looked directly at David then. “I want to know what.”

David nodded. “I’ll look into it, Jan.”

“Will you?” She looked hopeful and surprised.

“You know how close we all are. I’m not gonna just let this go. He needs to know it’s not real, and he won’t accept anything less than proof. So yeah, you bet I’m gonna look into it. We all will.”

She closed her eyes, released her breath all at once, and lowered her head. “Thank you, David,” she whispered. “Thank you, all.”

“Mrs. Potter?”

They all turned to see the doctor who’d rushed into Mark’s room earlier approaching their table. They rose, all of them, and the fear that came into Janet’s eyes tore at David’s gut.

“It’s all right,” Janet said as the doctor—Dr. Pollock—looked at the men around her.

“They’re family. You can talk in front of them.”

The doctor nodded. “Mrs. Potter, your husband has lapsed into a coma.”

She faltered, her knees barely able to support her, and David quickly gripped her shoulders and eased her back into her chair. “Is he... is he brain-dead?” she whispered.

“No. But we have no way of predicting when or...or if he’ll come out of this. We’re going to have to wait and see.”

“Oh, God, this isn’t happening,” she whispered. Tears pooled and then spilled onto her cheeks. “I want you to keep talking to him, keep visiting him, keep encouraging him.”

“He can still hear us?” David asked.

“That’s the predominant wisdom, yes. And it could help.” Dr. Pollock put a hand on Janet’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I wish the news was better.” With a final squeeze, he left the room.

“He waited for you,” Janet told them. “It was so important to him that he managed to fend off coma long enough to talk to you.”

“He wanted to warn us that Sierra was coming after us next,” David said, nodding. “And I know it’s crazy, but to him, it’s real.”

“Yeah, and once we find out what he really saw,” Randy said, “and we tell him, really convince him that it’s all okay, he’ll come out of this. I know he will, Janet.”

“God,” she whispered. “God, I hope so.”