On Fridays I’m sharing a chapter a week from one of my books. The first book is Souls Lost. If you wish to purchase it to read faster, you can find it at your favorite retailer. Find chapter 1 here.
The rain that had been falling so hard was slowing to a patter. The roads were still creeks, better for navigating with toy boats than cars, but that would end soon enough. There was a sense, though, that things had just paused. The clouds that had been gray were blacker than ever and seemed to be even lower, a looming monster waiting to grab the unwary. Other than the falling rain, there was little sound.
Zoe made herself a sandwich, figuring her father was smart enough about the weather to stay at the coffee shop. He’d have plenty of cold food there even if the power was out, and it wasn’t like anyone would kick him out if it did. He and his cronies were such regulars that chances were if they stopped going for their daily meetings, the place would probably have to close or at least negotiate a cheaper rent.
Zoe sprinkled pepper on a tomato that she’d sliced. It was an ordinary one, too late to be local, but it was a tomato. Whenever she came home she missed the wide variety of fresh vegetables that she could get in Portland, all year, anytime. She sneezed when the pungent pepper reached her. Wiping it, she left a trace of spicy brown mustard across her nose. More pungent smells nearly made her eyes water as she hunted for a napkin to wipe away her small mess.
Finally, the deli turkey was added to the bread and she had something to eat. Zoe was about to pick up her plate and eat on the sofa when she heard the squeal of brakes outside. The high sound that reminded her of a woman screaming for her life negated all other sounds as Zoe rushed to the front of the house. Nothing.
She didn’t even see the tail end of the car that had made the sound. The neighborhood was quiet.
Which made her question whether the sound she heard really was the sound of brakes. She heard a tap on the sliding door. Turning, Zoe hurried back into the back of the house, not surprised when she saw nothing.
Now she worried the sound wasn’t squealing breaks but a dying cat or dog out in the rain. Sandwich forgotten, Zoe opened the door, thinking perhaps the animal had crawled to the backyard, where it might feel less exposed.
“You’re too soft,” Tyler had told her many times. She remembered the time she wanted a rabbit, a silvery white bunny with black splotches that she’d seen on an animal rescue site. She’d read up on rabbits for days before approaching Tyler, who would have none of it.
“But they’re sweet,” Zoe had said. She hadn’t added that they could be difficult to care for and that finding a vet was sometimes hard or any of the other reasons a person might not want to take in a rabbit.
“They stink,” Tyler had snapped.
And that was the end of the conversation. It was probably the beginning of the end of their marriage—not, of course, that a rabbit as a pet was the most important thing in Zoe’s life. Rather it was a sign, a final hammering in of the nails on the signs that said Tyler doesn’t care about anything but Tyler.
Here she was standing on the covered patio, hearing the rain patter across the aluminum cover, listening for another squeal so she could run across the wet grass in light canvas tennis shoes that would be soaked in ten seconds, probably setting herself up for a cold when she’d just found a purpose. Nothing moved but the rain against the leaves of the trees and the bushes. No dying animals.
Zoe sighed. She had a dark feeling that went beyond what she thought she would feel if there was merely an animal dying nearby. She hugged herself.
“Run!” a voice hissed in her ear. It was so real that Zoe thought she felt the warm movement of air as someone nearly touched her ear with the words.
Zoe backed up into the house, locked the door and hurried towards the front of the house. No one was there. She walked first through the kitchen, seeing no one, and then into the dining room, the walls covered in pine paneling that had been outdated when they purchased the house before Zoe’s birth. The hardwood had weathered well, though. The handcrafted bleached wood dining room set didn’t match the room, and it was something her momma had always wanted to change—the room, not the dining set, though that, too, was looking dated.
Zoe’s feet didn’t make a sound on the wood floors as she glided across them, barely raising her heels as she moved to the door that led to the garage. The old golden knob gleamed in the dim light, the paneling swallowing every ray that made its way through the small window that faced the front. It hadn’t been turned. There were no wet prints on the floor and there should have been if a stranger had been in the house.
Zoe turned the knob anyway and looked out. Her father’s car was gone, the garage not empty, of course, filled with the assorted boxes and paraphernalia that came from a lifetime of inhabiting the same place. One wall was lined with garden tools, each in their places, old and worn and a bit forlorn given that Ed hired someone to take care of the yard now. Another was lined with a workbench that held the tools of the trade for working on cars. Two brands of oil sat side by side, a testament to her father’s lack of loyalty to any particular maker.
No stranger waited in a corner or under the workbench—which was open to her line of sight—ready to pounce as soon as she came out. Zoe slipped back into the dining room and closed the door. She crossed back through the dining room and kitchen and made the same trip through the bedrooms and two bathrooms that waited in the back of the house.
No one hid under either of the beds or in any of the closets. No knife wielding psycho waited in the bathtub when she pulled back the shower curtain. Still, with every step in her search Zoe became more certain that she wasn’t quite alone.
But there was no one there.
She went back to the front room, debating calling the police, having a second pair of eyes look through the house. She went to grab her sandwich from the plate, which sat on the low coffee table where she’d left it, but there was no sandwich. It was gone.
Zoe’s hands reached her mouth even as she heard the faint wails of someone trying to scream but not quite able to force air out of their lungs. It wasn’t a dying squeal of brakes so much as it was a high pitched air leak in a balloon. Her mind blank, she was frozen, her eyes searching the room for her phone, which she didn’t see anywhere either.
Chapter 15 will be coming next Friday. Don’t want to wait? Find the book here.
