LOVE ME TO DEATH - Chapter 6

Maggie Shayne
1 day ago
8 min read

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

“All right, all right,” Nikki said. “You’ve had a day to recover while I found out what was what, and now you’re showered, you’re sitting, and you have some of that chamomile tea Mom keeps in the teddy bear cannister?”

“I’m clean, I’m sitting, I’m sipping. What have you found out, Nikki? Is that poor man dead?”

“I’ve talked to Mom, who phoned the town gossip, Nellie Camaroon, who is also the organist at the Methodist church.”

“You didn’t tell her why you wanted to know, did you?”

“And what would I have told her, Sara? That there’s a ghost haunting my friend? Or possessing her, or... whatever the hell this is?”

“Past life.”

“Huh?” Nikki asked, then she said, “Cami, come here. I’m putting her on speaker. Okay, Sara, say again?”

“Look, when I was out there—out at Sierra House—”

“When were you there?”

“About four in the morning yesterday, before I went to see Mark Potter and got him killed.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Thank God.”

“He’s not far from it, though.”

“Oh, hell.”

“Get back on topic, Sara. You went to Sierra House in the dead of night. And what happened?”

Sara took a breath and sighed. “Most notably, an old Indian woman approached me. She called me Sierra, claimed to be my Aunt Padma and said I had come back to work things out.”

She heard Cami’s swift intake of breath, and Nikki whispering the word, “Reincarnation?”

“I think that’s what she was getting at. Turns out Sierra’s father still lives here.”

“You have to see him!” Cami shouted.

“Uh, don’t think so,” Nikki said. “Look what happened to the last guy!”

Cami sighed. “Well, maybe you could wear a disguise. Or even talk to him by phone.”

“Maybe. But back to the subject, okay? What did you find out about Mark Potter and the others?”

“Well, Mark’s injuries are pretty serious. Word is he’s been asking for his friends—I know one of the nurses at Port Lucinda General, and she says they’re all arriving this morning.”

“They’re coming here?” Sara swallowed hard. “All of them?” And in her mind’s eye, she was seeing David Nichols. Those intense eyes, that warm smile. And her stomach was tying itself in knots. She was feeling his powerful arms closing around her, and tasting his desperate kisses the way she’d been doing in dreams, night after night, since before she knew his name.

“Yeah. Randy Madison’s family own a place out in The Heights. I can give you directions up there.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look,” Nikki said, “you’re there to find out what this is about. If you don’t talk to them, don’t talk to Sierra’s father, don’t even want to talk to this old woman who apparently wants to help, then what’s the point? You might as well come home right now.”

She drew a breath, sighed. “I know you’re right.”

But Cami jumped in. “No, she’s not. Don’t do one thing if you’re scared. We’ll be with you on Wednesday and we can be the ones to talk to all these people for you. Okay?”

“If I haven’t managed it by then, sure,” Sara said. “I’m gonna take a nap, I’ve been up all night for several nights in a row. Maybe I’ll know what to do when I wake up again.”

“Keep us posted, hon,” Nikki said.

“I will.”

***

Sara took a long nap. And then she returned to Sierra House, by car this time, intending to look for the old woman, maybe talk to her, perhaps even get a phone number for Sierra’s father. But the old woman wasn’t at home in the bright yellow house. The father's trailer was in a park full of them and she didn’t know which one to approach, and she found herself walking back up the road and staring at Sierra House again.

Until he came. His Jeep pulled to a stop alongside the road, and she knew him the minute she saw him. David Nichols. Older than the boy in the yearbook. Exactly like the man in her dreams. He sat there, staring at the house for a long moment, and she stood there, staring at him, with something happening inside her that she had never felt before. God, she was so confused, so overwhelmed.

She didn’t even believe in reincarnation.

“He was your soul mate, Sierra.”

She turned, expecting to see the old woman—but there was no one there, and having heard her voice so clearly shook her. The one thing she hadn’t considered during all this was that she might be losing her mind.

Now, though, hearing voices, seeing faces in windows when no one was there—now she had to consider it.

She dashed up the sidewalk to where she’d left her car, got in, and drove as fast as she could back to Nikki's mom's house, and then she shut herself inside and paced, and wept, and racked her brain to think of an explanation. Any explanation.

At length, she phoned Nikki and without preamble said, “Phone your mom, right now. Ask her the name of the person who lives in the yellow house on Maple Street, a block up from Sierra House, near the trailer park.”

“You don’t sound right. Are you okay, Sara?”

“I’ll tell you when you call me back with the answer. Please hurry.”

“Okay. Sit tight. I should be able to reach her cell. I’ll call you right back, either way.”

Sara hung up the phone and paced, waited, and wondered if she needed to check herself into a hospital or something. Her heart was racing. Her head was...it was just a mess. Jumbled, mixed-up notions and ideas, and an endless and ever-growing ache in her heart—a yearning for a thirty-eight-year-old man she’d never even met.

The phone rang. Three minutes had passed, according to Sara’s watch, but it felt more like a hundred. She answered immediately. “Well?”

“Sammy and Lois Sheppard live there with their three dogs. No one else. He’s a road crew guy for the county, and she works at the post office.”

“You’re sure it’s the right house?” she asked.

“It’s the only yellow house on Maple,” Nikki said.

“And there are no elderly relatives living with them?”

“No. And if there were, they wouldn’t be Indian women, Sara. That is why you’re asking, isn’t it? This woman you saw, this Padma, she’s messing with you for some reason.”

Sara shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think—I think she’s not even real.”

There was a long, long silence. Then, her voice taking on a new kind of tone, the kind she probably used for the most agitated patients in the E.R., Nikki said, “You know what? You shouldn’t be out there alone. I really think maybe you need to just rest now, Sara. Just rest. I’m gonna come out there, okay?”

Sara wiped tears from her eyes, and shook her head as if Nikki could see her. “God, don’t be so dramatic. I don’t mean I think I’m imagining her,” she lied. “I mean, I think she’s not really some aunt of Sierra’s. She’s not really who she says she is, and she doesn’t live where she says she lives. That’s all. Not that she... you know, doesn’t exist.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if Nikki was buying into her fabrication. But she wasn’t ready to have her roommate cart her off to an ER for a psych eval. She wished she’d never blurted her suspicion in the first place. But damn, she’d been stunned. Padma was a figment of her imagination.

Or was she?

“I’m going to go out to Randy Madison’s parents’ house,” Sara said. “I think my best bet is to talk to Dav—to talk to the four other men.”

“Okay,” Nikki said. “But just...be careful, okay?”

“Yeah. I will, I promise.”

***

Sara drove out past town toward the ocean, angling her Bug up the hilly, narrow, snake track of a road that led into The Heights—the cliffs high above the Atlantic, where the wealthiest Port Lucindites lived.

The "cottage" where the men were staying was just as Nikki had described—more modem than Sierra House, and yet clearly mature and solid. She didn’t turn in to the driveway. She was afraid—so afraid. What would they say to her? Did they blame her for their friend’s horrible accident? Would they think she was insane? Was she?

She pulled the car over along the side of the road, needing to work up her courage before she could face them—face him. David.

God, her heart beat faster at the thought of seeing him. Her blood heated and her skin warmed.

Getting out of the car, she followed a footpath that wound up a hill, through quiet pines part of the way and then covering a more barren, rocky terrain right up to the edge of the cliffs.

She stood there for a moment, staring out over the ocean.

The wind blew inward, whipping her hair around her head. The air tasted like the sea. Below, the waves exploded in bursts of white foam as they crashed against the rocky shore. It was good here, she decided. Right here, right now, this was good. She would be okay if she could just spend a few more moments here, with the sea wind in her face.

Eventually, though, she felt eyes on her, and turned her head to the left. It startled her how close the winding path had taken her to the cottage occupied by David and the others. Far too close. She hadn’t realized.

And, oh, God, there was someone looking right out the window at her, right now! Not David. One of the others, one who’d changed so much she couldn’t tell which one he might be. He was pale, balding and heavy. And then he was staggering backward with his mouth gaping.

Sara frowned, straining her eyes, moving her body left and right to try to see what had happened to him. And moments later, she saw David’s face in the window, staring out at her. There was raw anger in his eyes.

Turning away, she ran down the path, and she knew he was coming after her. She knew it.

But she ran. She ran, and the rocks were slippery and she had to take care not to fall. She ran, and the tree limbs tried to smack her, so she swayed and bobbed and avoided them with the skill of a boxer in the ring. She ran, and the road was nearly in sight, just around the next bend in the trail. She ran, and then she heard a siren.

And she stopped running.

Oh, God, what had she done? She’d thought the man in the window had glimpsed her and reacted in shock, alerting the others and sending David out to hunt her down. But now, she thought back on his gaping mouth and staggering backward steps, and she wondered if she’d caused even more harm.

Please, no. Don't let me have hurt another one.

Swallowing hard, she pushed aside a low-hanging limb and stepped around it, expecting to see only her little Beetle sitting on the other side awaiting her.

Instead, she saw him. David. Just as handsome as she had imagined he would be. Just as beautiful to her as he had ever been. As he had, it seemed in that moment, always been. Even though she’d never met the man before. Everything in her yearned to rush into his arms and whisper, “Finally.”

Again, she heard the heavily accented voice of the old woman, Padma. Your soul mate.