Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid Book 1) (12 page)

“I have asked how long she has been here and she said she didn’t know.
Not sure,
is actually what she spelled. I asked her how old she was and she said twelve.”

“Have you asked her if she knows she is dead?”

Mary shook her head. “It may seem silly, but I thought it might be rude.”

“Is there anything else you’ve asked and gotten a response?”

“It’s mostly small things. I have asked her what her favorite color is—it’s green—and the names of her parents. But the one thing I asked her that has always struck me as a little creepy was if she was happy here.”

“What did she say?”

“She spelled out
Sometimes.
And then she mixed up the letters again and spelled
Scared.
And then when I asked her what she was scared of, she said
the dark place.
”

Cooper thought about this for a while, his eyes glancing back in the direction of Mary’s sliding glass window and the beach beyond.

“Would you be willing to allow me to try it out tonight?”

“Of course. That is, if Amy doesn’t mind. I’ve had company over several times since it started happening and she doesn’t seem to want to show herself when new people are here. I’ve never tried the Scrabble trick when someone else was here, though. Again, I thought it might seem rude to her—like I was trying to train a pet or something.”

“Don’t worry,” Cooper said with a nervous grin. “If there’s a ghost here, I think they’ll warm up to me. I sort of have a knack for these sorts of things.”

***

He left Mary Guthrie’s house and walked along the beach until he could see the back of the Blackstock’s house. He had planned on just walking by, hoping to be led or inspired or…or whatever. While he wouldn’t come out and admit to himself that he was hoping for another of those psychic-like flashes, that was really what it boiled down to.

But when he saw the Blackstock’s patio, he also saw Sam sitting at their patio table. He was sipping on a cup of coffee and looking out to the sea. When he saw Cooper approaching, he gave an unenthusiastic wave and gave a motion for him to come up.

Cooper walked up the sand, across the yard, and onto the patio. He saw that Sam looked tired, his eyes glassy and his mouth drawn tight.

“Everything okay?” Cooper asked.

Sam shrugged. “Jenny’s having a bad migraine this morning,” he said. “I called into work and got permission to telecommute so I could stay here with her. I’ll start soon, I guess.”

“Does she get migraines often?”

“Not too often, but when they
do
hit, they can be terrible. She gets them during times of high stress. She had one for an entire week after Henry died. It started right after the service we had for him. ”

“Do you think my visit yesterday caused this one?” Cooper asked.

“It probably contributed to it. Hearing kids laughing in our house in the middle of the night isn’t helping either.”

“Did you hear it again last night?”

“No,” Sam said. “But I woke up around two or three and swore I heard footsteps.”

“I just want to make sure,” Cooper said. “If I’m infringing on your lives in any way, I’ll stop.”

“For now, we’re okay with you looking into it. You seem sort of real, you know? Those ghost hunter guys were very rigid and somber. They seemed pissed that they didn’t get any evidence. As long as you don’t get intrusive with us, we’re okay. If I’m being honest, you sort of creep me out…you know…the visions or whatever. But it’s proof that you’re the real deal, I guess.”

“I don’t know about that,” Cooper said.

They were silent for a moment as Sam sipped on his coffee and continued to stare out into the ocean.

“I met one of your neighbors this morning,” Cooper said. “Mary Guthrie. How well do you know her?”

“Pretty well, I guess. She seems nice. Her husband died a while back and she sort of disappeared from all the social circles around here. She’s hardly ever in her house because she rents it out all summer. How’d you end up meeting her?”

“I was checking out the area of beach where you guys were playing with Henry the day he died,” Cooper said.

“Find anything?”

“No,” Cooper said. He wasn’t about to tell him about the figure he had come face to face with last night. Cooper still had no idea what that figure represented and still wasn’t absolutely positive it had anything to do with Henry.

“So what else is on your agenda for the day?” Sam asked.

“I’m not sure,” Cooper said. “I’m sort of just winging this thing for right now. And as embarrassing as it might sound, I was wondering if I could maybe ask you a favor.”

“Sure.”

“I sort of got stranded without a car this morning. Do you think you could give me a ride back to my motel?”

“Sure thing,” Sam said. “Just let me slip in and tell Jenny. You can cut around the yard and just meet me out front if you want. I’d invite you through the house, but Jenny is on the couch, laid up and trying to sleep her migraine off.”

“Thanks,” Cooper said. “Let her know I hope she feels better.”

Sam went inside, leaving Cooper on the patio. As he walked down the stairs, Cooper looked out to the ocean, trying to see it in the same light as Sam. It was vast, endless and, on a day as clear as this one, majestic and beautiful. Gulls cried out and boats zipped across the water. Just another day at the beach.

But to the Blackstocks, Cooper assumed it must look different. To them, it was nothing more than one large and endless tomb that their son would remain inside forever.

16

It was hard for Cooper to imagine that the main stretch of road that connected all of the side streets and businesses would be packed in a few weeks. The traffic puttering along it as Sam carried him to the motel seemed casual at best. No one was in a hurry and there was plenty of space between every car. The beauty of the unblemished late spring morning was pristine. He wondered if it felt like this all of the time before all of the tourists came in.

“You know,” Sam said, breaking Cooper’s concentration. “I went ahead and Googled you.”

“And you still chose to give me a ride?”

“Nothing I read made me think any less of you. But it did make me wonder, though.”

“About what?”

“As far as the FBI and all of the agencies that were looking for you are concerned, you’re still missing. The general consensus is that you’re dead.”

“That’s right.”

“So why risk going so public? When you introduced yourself to me and Jenny, you didn’t even bother with a fake name.”

It was a good question, and something that Cooper had thought long and hard about after he had made all of his arrangements prior to driving out to North Carolina to start on his journey. He had nearly decided to use a fake name but, in the end, had decided against it.

“It’s really a matter of honesty,” Cooper said. “In the case of you and Jenny, I tried to imagine what parents that had lost a child would think of a man that gave them a fake name. Really, if I
had
have given a fake name, you could have probably done some digging on the internet and found out who I was pretty easily, right?”

“Right.”

“So then why take the risk of ruining what is already a very shaky sort of trust with complete strangers?” Cooper asked. “It simply wasn’t worth the risk.”

“Well what happens if someone decides to turn you in? What’s stopping me from giving the FBI a call and saying that not only is Cooper Reid alive and well, but investigating the death of my son and the haunting of my house?”

“Nothing at all,” Cooper said. “Although I certainly hope you don’t plan to do that.”

Sam smiled and shook his head. “No. I’m not going to do that.”

“Thanks.”

“Just so you know, there’s quite a bit of information online that makes you sound like a rock star. I found a YouTube clip of you on FOX News talking about how the FBI didn’t take the supernatural seriously. You were on there with one of those UFO nuts.”

“I met a lot of UFO nuts in my time,” Cooper said. “The hell of it is that most of them were on to something.”

“Did
you
ever find any solid evidence of UFOs?”

“No.”

“Ghosts?”

“I found more than enough to back up my own beliefs, but nothing that science would ever verify.”

“So…if you don’t mind my asking, where were you for the time you were missing?”

Cooper briefly thought of the conversation he’d shared with Stephanie the night before about this very topic. His inability to answer it was maddening.

“I’m not sure,” he answered.

“For real?”

“For real.”

Whether it was the stern look on Cooper’s face or the sense of impending awkwardness within the car, Sam left it at that. Cooper took advantage of the break in conversation to do some digging. There was no subtle way to transition the conversation, so he simply asked the question that was on his mind.

“I don’t suppose there are any cave systems around here anywhere, are there?”

Sam thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Not that I know of. Not anymore, at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t know the history behind it, but I think there was some sort of cavern attraction at one of the campgrounds outside of town. I’m pretty sure it’s gone belly-up, though.”

“Do you know what kind of attraction it was?” Cooper asked.

“Not really. I think it was something for the history buffs. It was about pirates landing here and hiding away from their enemies. Treasure hunts and swashbuckling and all of that.”

“Interesting.”

“Not really,” Sam said. “If you live around here long enough, the pirate crap gets boring. Every restaurant, every putt-putt golf course. Even those damned decals on the back of tourist’s cars.”

Cooper laughed, having seen his share of those decals since he had arrived in Kill Devil Hills two days ago.

They remained silent as Sam turned off of the highway and into the lot of Cooper’s motel. He felt like had and Sam could talk a while longer, even if it was nothing more than exchanging thoughts on the weather. Sam seemed like a relatable guy—something Cooper had not noticed yesterday.

“Thanks for the ride,” Cooper said. “Let Jenny know that I hope her headache gets better soon.”

“It will. These things come and go. She’ll be better by tonight.”

“I hope so. But tell me honestly…do you think her headaches have anything to do with the activity in your house?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I’ve wondered about that myself.”

“Well look, I’m in room twenty-eight. If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to call. Okay?”

“Will do. Thanks.”

With that, Cooper stepped out of the car. He gave a wave of appreciation and watched Sam Blackstock pull back out onto the highway before walking to his room. On his way, he pulled his cell phone out of this pocket, hoping that he had maybe missed a text or call from Stephanie.

But there was nothing.

He pocketed the phone and entered his motel room. Knowing that Stephanie had been here this morning and was now simply gone made him feel profoundly lonely. It was a feeling he had grown accustomed to over the years, specifically after leaving the FBI and the shadow organization that had recruited him, but it never got
easy
to handle.

He closed the door behind him and, as was his norm, closed himself off to everything outside so that he could think about the parts of the world so often shrouded in shadows.

17

With the rest of the day at his disposal, Cooper found himself with nothing to do. The fact that he was at the beach made it very hard for him to stay in his motel room, so he ended up taking his laptop to a small pier-side bar where he enjoyed two dollar beer specials and a bottomless shrimp plate for five bucks. All in all, not a bad lunch.

The bar was fairly crowded considering that it was only 1:30, so Cooper chose an umbrella-covered patio table along the edge of the pier. He connected to the bar’s WiFi and did a little more research. This time, however, he wasn’t interested in pirates and caves. What Sam had told him had given him a bit more to go on, but Cooper wasn’t quite certain that was the route he needed to take.

Not yet, anyway.

It was amazing how rusty his research skills had become since he had been steadily at work on his second book. Now, knowing that there was no paycheck and a great degree of uncertainty about his future, he found research tedious and boring no matter what the subject matter was. He figured that if Stephanie had still been there, she’d likely be a huge help with the research end of things.

Thinking of her, he pulled out his pay-as-you-go cellphone and dialed her number. It rang four times and then went to voicemail. He considered leaving a message but hung up before the beep.

Disappointed, he turned back to his laptop and started trying to uncover some path of research that might shed some light on why the area of beach containing Mary Guthrie’s house and the two black rocks might be haunted. He did a random search on deaths in the area but found very little at first. As he had expected, the bulk of deaths in the area came during the summer. A few were the result of car accidents as tourists started filling up the roads. But there were also a few drowning deaths, most of which were surprisingly not very close to shore but further out. He found stories about people having scuba diving accidents, falling off of party boats, and even a rather grisly fishing accident. But there were not many reports of people drowning near the shore.

Still, there were enough to sift through. By the time he was on his second beer, he had found something of a groove. It was nowhere near the trance-like states he had often enjoyed in the handful of years before his disappearance, but it made him remember what it was like.