The Lost: Book Two, The Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 2) (25 page)

Eddi
e
put the wood down and listened.

The scariest part was that he knew it wasn’t a ghost.

Ghosts didn’t kill people. Assholes trying to cover up fraud killed people.

He felt a shift in the air. Like someone was moving down there. He got that prickly feeling on the back of his neck.

His first instinct was to find the land line in the master bedroom. But he remembered from the other night. There was no house phone.

He resolved to buy a cell phone if he got out of this in one piece.

Creak
.

A footstep on the stairs.

He thought about charging. He could use surprise and daring to his advantage. But that wouldn’t work if the guy had a gun. Even if he managed to get down the stairs in one piece, Eddie still had to get out the front door, which was locked, or through the window, which was probably closed. Plenty of time for somebody to recover, take aim, and blow his ass away.

He was trapped upstairs.

Unless he went out through the window.

He closed the bedroom door then went to the window and opened the blinds. The blue sky was gone. Grey clouds lined the heavens.

There wasn’t much of a ledge outside the window. And even that was covered by six inches of snow and ice.

He slid the window up in its grooves. The cold wind blasted him. He tried to slide the worn screen up, just like the window. It resisted him at first but then he put his power into it.

The snow on the ground would help break his fall.

Eddie heard another creak, this time on the stairs. He put his foot through the window. His sneaker punched through the crusty coating of ice then buried in the snow on the roof. His foot slipped, and he latched onto the window sill inside instinctively.

This was insane.

“Eddie.”

The voice on the other side of the door sounded familiar. It wasn’t someone from around here.

It was someone from the past.

“I know you’re in there. I have a gun.”

Sean McKenna?

“You’re thinking that because I’m talking I’m going to offer you a fair fight.”

Eddie didn’t say a word. The wind started to howl outside.

“But you’d be wrong.” The man took a deep breath. Eddie could hear the smile in his voice. The words sounded rehearsed. A speech he’d been planning. “It’s Sean McKenna here, come to put two in your gut and watch you bleed out, you son of a bitch.”

Sean McKenna. Definitely. The man who blamed Eddie for his son’s death. Eddie cursed his luck. He’d popped up on the grid, and Sean Fucking McKenna had found him.

“I’m telling you because I want you to know fear before I kill you. When I open this door, things are going to happen fast, maybe too fast for you to appreciate them. I might have to shoot you dead. Or I might try to wing you but accidentally kill you. In case that happens, I want you to know it’s Sean McKenna out here.”

Eddie said, “Good thing I’ve got a gun too.”

Sean laughed. “I was a salesman for twenty years. I know bullshit when I hear it.”

“How did you find me?”

“Good things come to those who wait, motherfucker.”

Eddie stuck his leg through the open window, hoping to gain purchase on the slick ledge with his foot.

“Why don’t you put the gun away and fight me like a man?” Eddie said.

“I’m not here to fight you, Eddie. I’m here to torture and kill you.”

Eddie shifted his weight onto the foot outside the window. It slipped off the ledge. He wasn’t going to walk across the short roof and climb down. It was too slick.

“Hey, Sean, before you come in here.”

Sean’s hand was on the doorknob. “Yeah?”

Eddie brought his foot back inside and then squatted in front of the window, lining his shoulders up with the frame, and grabbed the sill with his hands.

“I just wanted to say, fuck you, asshole.”

The door flew open.

And Eddie pulled a Superman out the window.

Th
e
ledge outside the window was even shorter than Eddie thought.

He crashed against the roof and slid. In the blink of an eye, the roof wasn’t under him anymore.

The ground raced to meet him as the world did a somersault.

Bang
.

It took a second for his brain to figure out what he’d just heard. A gunshot.

He couldn’t orient himself in time so he just stuck his hands out like he was doing a push-up and hoped it would help break his fall.

The impact with the ground vacuumed the air out of him.

All at once the pain in his chest and shoulder hit him.

Bang
.

Sean was shooting. The sound of gunfire distracted him from the pain long enough for him to get up and start zagging through the snow.

Bang
.

Bark splintered off a tree next to him, marking where the last bullet had gone. Eddie realized he should be breaking for Ana’s car. As he tracked that way, he stole a glance back at the house.

The bedroom window was empty.

Sean was probably already downstairs.

Eddie would never make it to the car.

He sprinted back to the trees and hurried into the woods. Each breath sent a stabbing pain through his shoulder and his right knee throbbed.

He got behind a tree and tapped his collarbone.

His knees went weak and the pain nearly knocked him out.

He kept that arm glued to his side and stuck to the tree. He could run but he wouldn’t get far with a broken collarbone. And each shiver of pain threatened to black him out.

If he passed out, he was dead.

There was only one way to walk away from this.

“I’m going to fucking kill you!” Sean screamed.

Eddie scanned the ground for anything he could use to defend himself. The snow hid everything. His eyes spotted a branch sticking out of the ground a few trees ahead, but it would mean exposing himself.

He didn’t know how long the branch was or if it would be of any use but there was nothing else.

He bolted.

The pain in his shoulder made him light-headed. His back itched the whole way as he hurried.

There were no gunshots.

Eddie slid through the snow to the branch and ducked behind a tree.

How many shots had Sean fired? Four or five. Little good it did him though. He knew nothing about guns and wouldn’t know how many bullets Sean’s gun would carry.

He gripped the branch. It was heavy with snow. He pulled, hoping it wasn’t too big. Small would be better.

It came out of the snow. The branch was about as long as his arm and the width of his wrist. It would do.

If he could get close enough.

Now it wasn’t each breath, it was each heartbeat that sent a jolt of pain through his shoulder.

He had to get up and move again. He used the tree to bolster himself as he got his feet under him.

His arm was shaking from the pain.

Eddie listened but heard nothing. The snow was muffling all sound.

He pushed off from the tree and ran.

There were no gunshots and he didn’t see Sean anywhere. He found a slope behind two trees and a skeletal bush and hugged the ground.

He took ten full seconds to move his head up six inches. He scanned the area and spotted Sean about ten feet away. Sean was half-turned and had his gun out. The man stopped and did a slow sweep of the area. His breath fogged the air around him.

Eddie wormed to the side of the bush, making no noise. The pain was bad. Black curtains had formed on the sides of his vision but he forced them away.

He waited.

Sean completed his sweep and stood there, his eyes at about a forty-five degree angle to Eddie. He was looking toward the driveway.

Eddie waited.

Sean must have seen that Ana’s car was still there, so he turned the other way to go deeper in the woods.

Now or never.

Eddie sprang and brought the branch over his head. The black curtains formed along the edge of his vision again and started closing. He marshaled his strength. He’d only get one swing with the branch.

Sean heard him coming.

Bang
.

Eddie brought the branch down with all his might and blacked out.

Eddi
e
found himself on the middle of an icy lake.

The lake wasn’t big. Wasn’t like they’d told him it was. Wasn’t dark and mysterious and full of menace.

It was just a lake.

Someone tugged his arm.

It was Ana.

Her hair was in an updo and was very un-Ana. She was wearing a white button-down shirt and a pair of black pants. Looked like she could have been waiting tables at a nice restaurant.

She yanked his arm. It should have hurt, because his collarbone was broken. But it didn’t hurt. It was endearing. She was trying to help him.

He looked down at his feet and saw the cracks spiderwebbing into jagged veins in the ice.

He wanted to move but couldn’t.

On the shore Moira stood. She was no longer pregnant. She cradled a bundle in her arms, her son or daughter.

Tim appeared next to her. Eddie’s brother was somehow younger-looking, less paunchy in the middle.

Eddie realized he was now older than his brother would ever be.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Eddie,” Tim said. “A fucking idiot.”

Eddie opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Ana continued to tug on his arm.

“Eddie, come on.”

She tried to pull him toward the shore where Tim and Moira were. Moira passed her baby to Tim who continued to say, “You’re a fucking idiot, Eddie.”

Then Moira stepped onto the ice.

Eddie knew the ice was cracking and that this was dangerous, but he wasn’t scared. He was too distracted by Ana and the thought of seeing Moira. The pregnancy had been kind to her. She was still ballerina thin.

She put one foot in front of the other like a model owning a fashion runway. She sauntered up to them and ignored Ana.

“You gonna tie me up, Eddie?” Moira’s mouth moved, but it was Ana’s voice.

He still couldn’t speak.

Ana stopped tugging his arm, and he realized she was no longer there. It was just him and Moira now.

“Tie me up,” she said.

Eddie looked at his feet again, and suddenly the terror of the situation hit him. The ice was cracking. He would fall through. Drown.

“I know you want to tie me up.”

I still love you.

He hadn’t actually spoken but Moira responded like he had. “No. You just want to tie me up.”

Moira offered her wrists to him, like she was just slipping into some character in a bizarre sexual role-playing game for him.

But I love you. I always have. Why did you marry Stan?

“Tie me up,” she said again.

“That’s what Colin liked,” Eddie said.

“Tie me up like the deer.”

“What deer?”

“You know.” She turned and pointed behind her. Eddie saw a deer strung up in the trees on the shore, like it had been at Hollis’s place.

Then the ice shifted under his feet. A lurch. Slow-motion. Another great crack. The wet. The cold. The suffocation.

The purity of the water. A baptism. A life in death. Some kind of redemption. Some renewal.

The wet, the enervating sting of the cold. Like electricity through his body.

He knew he was dreaming now, but the terror still gripped him. He knew he wasn’t really under the water. He knew that if he just woke up—

H
e
was on the ground next to Sean.

Sean was lying on his belly. There was blood down the side of his face and a nasty-looking bump forming just at his hairline.

Eddie got up. The pain had expanded from his shoulder into his head.

Sean’s hands were empty. Eddie quickly scanned the ground and found the gun a few feet away at the base of a tree.

He pointed it at Sean.

He could kill him and nobody would ever be able to counter his story of self-defense. It was Eddie’s word against the forest’s.

Sean stirred but didn’t come to.

Eddie had the gun trained on Sean’s head. All he had to do was squeeze and he’d never have to worry about this guy coming after him again. He could justify it to himself.

Sean moaned.

“Fuck.” Eddie couldn’t kill a defenseless man, even if it was Sean fucking McKenna.

He searched Sean’s pockets for a cell phone, instead found a set of car keys. No wallet. No forms of identification.

Sean started to wake up. “Jesus …”

Eddie kicked him in the side. “Hey, asshole.”

Sean groaned. “You motherfucker …”

“I’ve got your gun, don’t try shit.” Eddie kicked him again. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable and his head felt like it was going to explode. “Stand up.”

Sean picked his head up out of the snow and saw his gun in Eddie’s hand. “Just shoot me. Just kill me.”

“Stand up.” Eddie kicked him again.

Sean staggered to his feet, one hand to his bleeding head.

“Now walk.”

Sean did.

Eddie marched Sean to Ana’s car and found the tires slashed. “Where’s your ride?”

“I don’t remember.”

Eddie shot the ground near Sean’s feet and the man jumped high enough to dunk a basketball.

“Where?”

“Alright! Alright, it’s just down the road.”

“Guess you don’t really want to die, do you?”

Sean said nothing.

“I didn’t kill your son, asshole. That was Eamon.”

Eddie watched Sean’s whole body tense. He expected Sean to turn and come at him. But the man kept walking.

Sean said, “You set Eamon off. You and your stupid fucking dipshit brother.”

Now it was Eddie’s turn to tense. His finger squeezed the trigger. He had to consciously ease off it.

“Who also died.”

“Asshole got what he deserved.”

The anger focused Eddie. He wasn’t lightheaded anymore.

“Yeah, and you’ll get yours. For attempted murder.”             

“I’ll get you one day, Eddie. I have nothing else to live for except killing you.”

Eddie shook his head. “Fucking waste of a life, considering I wasn’t even responsible.”

Sean didn’t respond. Eddie realized the man’s anger wouldn’t die soon, maybe not ever, if he was still this fired up after five years.

They walked to the road and went along the shoulder. Eddie kept ten feet between him and Sean. His head was pounding. If he could have torn his shoulder off, he would have. It would have felt better. He was careful on the ice, very careful.

Sean slowed a little. Eddie did too to keep the distance.

Sean looked back over his shoulder.

“You look back again and I’ll kill you.” Eddie kept his bad arm pinned to his side and the gun steady on Sean’s back. Sean trudged along and slowed at the bend. He’d parked just off the road between some trees.

Eddie stayed back and fished out Sean’s keys. He unlocked the car and popped the trunk with the key fob.

“Get in.”

“Fuck that,” Sean said.

Eddie didn’t know how many bullets he had left. And he was running out of time. He had to get to the prayer meeting, or vigil, or whatever the hell Marty Kindler was currently calling it. There was a murderer out there. Eddie had been thinking it was Kindler but now he had a different theory. It didn’t make sense but it was what it was. He didn’t think the killer would go after Ana, but all the same he wanted to protect her and be sure.

“Get in the trunk.”

“Fuck you.”

Eddie shot Sean just above the knee. It was the first time he’d ever fired a gun at anyone. It was loud and the result was immediate. Sean’s leg buckled and blood sprayed.

Eddie shot forward and pushed him into the trunk. Sean was too hurt to fight. Eddie slammed the trunk shut before Sean could get out.

Sean screamed but Eddie ignored him. The gun’s breach was open. Eddie wasn’t sure but figured that meant it was no longer loaded. He found what he thought was the safety and flicked it.

Sean was still screaming. And probably trying to find the emergency release to get out of the trunk.

Eddie got in and turned on the car and backed up to discourage Sean from getting out. After he got on the road he put the gun in the glove box, pointed away from himself in case it went off.

Then he drove as fast as he could to the lake.