After Forever (25 page)

“You okay there Rookie?”

I looked up at my partner, Cragger. For all
of the nonchalance of his words, he was looking a little green
himself. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I told him.

He clapped me on the back. “I bet you didn’t
think that you’d be seeing something like this during your first
few months on the job.”

“I bet you didn’t think you’d ever see
anything like this in Evergreen anyways,” I answered back. We both
turned back toward the house and Cragger shivered. “Who made the
call again?”

He nodded toward a young girl sitting on the
edge of an ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders. Although
she was visibly shaken and pale, there appeared to be no other sign
that anything was wrong with her.

“The victim’s granddaughter. Apparently she
was stopping by to check on her and found her like this.”

I inhaled sharply, “that’s kind of a sick
messed up way to find your grandma.”

The current sheriff, Sheriff McNaley, walked
up behind us. “You boys okay out here?” When my father was alive,
Sheriff NcNaley was his partner. I always wondered if he hadn’t
passed away if he would be the one wearing that shining star.

Turning my thoughts away from things in the
past, I turned toward the sheriff. “Who could have done this to
that poor little lady?” I asked him.

He shook his head sadly and looked up at the
darkening sky; it was going to be night soon. “That’s what we are
going to find out Nate.”

He walked a little ways down the wraparound
porch and studied the granddaughter with a curious expression on
his face. Something about the way he was watching her made the
hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Cragger, why don’t you go
on down and see if the granddaughter knows anything more or has any
suspicions,” he said finally… only Cragger had his head hanging
over the porch railing and was busy spraying the yard with whatever
he had eaten for lunch today.

“I’ll do it, sir.”

He eyed me for a second and I wondered why
he was so hesitant to send me over to her. Finally he nodded, “see
what you can find out.”

When I walked toward her, she was alone.
Since she had no real injuries, it was more imperative that the
crime scene was secured and the victim’s remains were gathered.
There was something eerily familiar in the way she watched me. I
couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but the awareness was there. She was
young; probably around seventeen and there was a tiny spark of
recognition in her eyes when I stopped in front of her.

“Didn’t we go to high school together?” She
asked.

Taken aback by her question, I stared
blankly at her face trying to process what she was saying. Finally
I answered her, “it depends. How old are you?”

She smiled slowly, despite the current
situation, and shrugged, “I think you were a senior when I was a
freshman.”

I nodded, “I guess that’s possible.” I
scratched at my face absently and looked back over my shoulder.
“Look, I’m really sorry about your grandma. No one should have to
live through something like this.”

Her jaw tensed and I saw a flash of pure
rage in her eyes. “There are a lot of things someone shouldn’t have
to live through,” she mumbled.

I frowned, but some sort of commotion going
on behind us drowned out her words. I turned fully toward the house
just in time to see one of the EMT’s running around the side of the
house. He was screaming and pointing behind him.

“What the hell is going on?” McNaley called
from his perch on the porch.

“It’s… I mean… there’s…” he stuttered,
pointing to the back of the house where the forest swallowed it
up.

“Take a deep breath, son, what
happened?”

I took a few steps toward them then, so that
I could hear what he said. Most everyone had gathered round at his
panicked screams and terrified glances back the way he had
come.

The EMT, I thought his name was Brandon,
gulped down air the way some people gulped down water. “There’s
something back there… in the woods. I heard it.”

At first the crowd around the house was
extremely quiet and then all at once people began shouting
suspicions and orders. It was almost chaotic the way the stumbled
about at Brandon’s exclamation. McNaley stood there, though, calm
as if he was standing in church and just chewed on a toothpick
contemplating Brandon’s claim.

“It’s a forest,” he said finally. “There are
lots of things ‘back there’”

Brandon shook his head. “No, sir. I grew up
here, I know what the forest is like.” He looked behind him in
terror, “this was something else.”

The girl inhaled sharply and I turned back
toward her, “don’t worry miss, we are here to protect you.”

“It’s not me that needs protecting,” she
mumbled under her breath.

I couldn’t be certain, but it almost seemed
like her eyes darted toward the sheriff when she said it. There was
an edge of tension in the air and I cleared my throat trying to get
a solid hold of the situation again when all of the sudden all I
wanted to do was back away from this girl and get the hell out of
here.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The cop in
me asked instead.

I stared into her eyes, mesmerized by their
strange shape and color, while she answered. “There are things
about this town that you don’t know about, Tanner, things that
could get you killed.”

I frowned. Her voice had gotten so soft that
I was sure no one else had heard her, but I still couldn’t help
looking behind me to make sure no one was paying attention to us;
no one was. “I don’t understand.”

She put her hand on my arm and pulled me to
the side of the ambulance, out of the view of anyone around. Her
grip was surprisingly strong and the hair on the back of my neck
stood up. I had this eerie feeling that something else was going on
here; something that I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

“I’ve always kept an eye on you,” she said
softly, “I didn’t want you to end up like your father.” That caught
my attention and my breath caught, but before I could say anything,
she held up her hand to stop me. “I was there that day. You
wouldn’t have seen me, not in the way you see me now; but I was
there.”

I shook my head, “my father died in a car
accident. There wasn’t anyone there, no witnesses. It was a hit and
run.”

She smiled sadly. “Things are seldom what
they seem in this world.” She looked back toward her grandma’s
house and her jaw clenched. “But I’m going to make a difference
this time. He took things too far.”

I turned to see what she was looking at, but
all I saw was McNaley and Cragger standing on the porch, both of
them looking unconcerned about Brandon’s accusation. There was
something… off… about the whole scene and I suddenly felt like I
was watching a horribly written horror flick. I wanted answers. No…
hell, I needed them. But when I looked behind me, the girl was
gone.

The forest floor flew beneath me as I
quickly made my way through the woods. There was no one around to
hear me so I wasn’t cautious as I drifted through the familiar
surroundings. My brain was working in overdrive. Too much had
happened for me to believe it wasn’t him. But why? That was the
question eating away at me now. After all of this time, why had he
chosen now?

My heart was hammering in my chest; beating
too rapidly for comfort. It was making my vision blur… making it
hard for me to see anything but red as I made my way to the spot I
was looking for. As if going there would make anything easier. As
if I didn’t already have all of the answers that I needed.

A cry escaped my hoarse throat and I
whimpered softly as I finally emerged into the clearing. It was
empty. Just as I had suspected it would be. My heart broke all over
again. No one was coming then. The tides had changed and I was on
my own. Blue eyes flashed before my eyes and I thought, “Not alone…
I still had him.” Nathan Smalls.

I let emotions rush through me. There was
something about him. Something that had kept my eyes on him for as
long as I could remember. If only he had realized I had been there,
watching… waiting. Maybe things could have been different. I had to
trust him now though. My grandma would have wanted that.

With that thought held securely in my mind,
I retreated back the way I had come; more careful this time in case
I was wrong and I wasn’t alone… in case I was being watched.

It was going to be a long night. Where the
hell had she gone? Of course, it’s my fault that she’s missing and
I’m left with two words ringing in my ears. FIND HER!

Yeah… yeah, I thought irritably. If only
Sherriff McNaley knew how badly I wanted to find her, maybe I
wouldn’t be feeling his disgusted stare boring into the back of my
head. Only I couldn’t tell him that I needed to find her because
she said she was there when my dad died. That would just sound
crazy. Everything else about this night was crazy enough, I didn’t
need his radar trained my way.

That was why, even though Brandon had
claimed there was something in the woods, I was still walking far
back behind the house with my flashlight in hand. I knew I wasn’t
going to find her. She had disappeared right under our noses. If
she had wanted to get away that badly, I doubted she was going to
be easy to find. Still… I had to try. If nothing else, it gave me
some room to breath away from all the action.

The woods were eerily silent. Not the
peaceful, nightly silent, but the silence that was missing the
normal sounds of the woods. No birds chirping, no animals rustling
in the brush, no scampering of the night creatures. Nothing but
silence. The hair on my arms began to stand on end and a nervous
knot began forming in the pit of my stomach; like a rock, complete
with jagged edges that were causing all sorts of pangs and aches to
run through me.

A snap to the left of me had me spinning on
my heel. Because the forest was so eerily silent, that one sound
was like a shot gun going off. “Who’s there?” I shouted. More
silence. Then another snap but to the right this time. I spun that
way. “Hello? This isn’t funny.”

Then, as if just waiting for me to say
something, I began to hear laughter. Not the normal, human,
tinkling laughter, but a hoarser scary version of a laugh. It took
everything inside of me, all of my police training along with
growing up with my father to stand my ground. It wasn’t easy. Not
when everything inside of me was screaming for me to run. I had to
face this. It was my job to face this.

“Who’s out there?” I asked again.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Talia?” When I turned at the statement, it
was to face my sister. Only she seemed… different. There was
something wrong with her face. It almost seemed like her features
were stretched, like she was standing in front of an abstract
mirror in a fun house. Only she wasn’t. Her eyes seemed huge… too
big for her face.

She rolled her neck and I could hear the
bones cracking inside it. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said
again.

She was younger than me, and I was more
concerned about her safety out there than with her purpose for
being out here. “Does mom know where you are?”

She laughed then. That hideous hoarse
laughter that wasn’t at all like the laugh I was used to from her.
Then she placed one finger in front of her lips and I gasped in
horror. “Shh… someone might find us,” she said before laughing
again.

I couldn’t stop looking at her finger, her
hand, her arm, then back to her finger. It was longer and thicker.
It was covered in a hair that from this distance looked coarse and
thick. But it wasn’t those things that really had me worried. It
was the razor sharp claw like nail that was protruding from it.

“Talia, it’s late and it’s not safe out
here. Let me get you home.”

She shook her head exaggeratingly slow. “I
think I’m right where I should be.”

She smiled then and her teeth were white in
the darkness and big… too big… and sharp… too sharp. I felt sick to
my stomach. I was shockingly close to losing what little food I had
in my system. This was my sister; my baby sister. Sure we hadn’t
been super close since our dad died, but hell, we had lived through
a traumatic experience. It had been expected to force some distance
between us. Especially because while I had been heartbroken over
it, she had gone on with her life like nothing had even happened. I
had resented her for that… but I had never seen her like this.

“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered.

She walked closer and I noticed that her
clothes were covered in blood. I could smell it on her. As she drew
nearer, I could see it smeared on every exposed surface of her
body. As she watched me watch her, her tongue whipped out and she
licked at a smudge close to her mouth. My stomach heaved and I felt
myself dropping to my knees. I knew I had to get out of there, but
this was my sister. She wasn’t a monster… was she?

“Leave him alone Talia.”

It was her.

Talia growled and threw her head back
causing more bones to crack, more distortion to her face. “He is
mine Micha.”

She stood her ground.

“He is your brother, not some pet to play
with… not another meal.”

I stood up and back a few steps away from
them. “What is going on here?”

“It’s simple really,” Sheriff McNaley said
as he walked toward us, “this monster killed her own
grandmother.”

My eyes flew to the girl and I watched as
she flinched and then clenched her fists. “He’s lying,” she said
through her teeth.

“Tell him, Talia, tell your brother what
happened.”

Talia had begun to whine when the sheriff
walked up and now she was on her knees and twitching strangely.
“Yes… she killed her grandma.” She began licking at her grotesque
arm and I realized she was cleaning herself.