Danville Horror: A Pat Wyatt Novel (The Pat Wyatt Series Book 3) (12 page)

“All right,” she giggled, hugging me back. “No need to go all gooey on me. It’s weird, Patty, just stop.”

I laughed, letting go of her, and she winked. Then she, Andrew, and I sat back down at the kitchen table. We sat in silence for a minute, and I started laughing again. They all looked at me as if I had lost it. I understood that, especially since I could finally feel the painkillers kick in again. But I was laughing for a reason.

“What are you gigglin’ about?” Tina asked, and I stopped for a moment.

“It reminds me of the time Sandy was playing in the house and she knocked over the lamp, and it fell into the T.V. screen,” I explained.

Sandy turned a deep shade of purple. “It was an accident,” she protested. “How was I supposed to know that kicking around a hackie sack was harder than it looked?”

“Do you remember Pops’ face when Moms told him?”

She nodded and laughed a little. “Yeah, he was so pissed. But Mrs. W. always knew how to soften the blow.”

Moms did too. She could always calm everyone down when tempers were high. All she had to do was give you a look and your body would relax. I never knew how she did it, and now, I never would.

“Do you remember the time she sold all your dad’s stuff in that garage sale?” Sandy’s voice broke me out of my stupor.

I giggled. “Yes. Oh my God, I almost forgot about that.”

“Sold your father’s stuff?” Cindy inquired, cocking a brow at me.

“They used to go on these vacations,” I explained, “and he would always come back with these horrible little trinkets. One time he got some sort of animal skull from New Mexico.”

“Oh,” Tina laughed, “I remember this story now. Your mother hated that skull. Wasn’t it like a dear or somethin’?”

“Nah,” Sandy answered. “It was a buffalo?”

I shook my head, thinking for a second. Then it came to me. “Cow skull.” They both nodded. “Anyway, he would bring back these awful looking figurines, salt and pepper shakers, and sometimes random bones. So, they were collecting in the garage and my moms had about enough of them. Especially that damn skull. He was insistent that it brought him luck.

“Well, one day when she was off from the hospital and Pops was working, my mother decided that she would sell all of these horrid little knickknacks. Let me tell you it required a degree of stealth that only Moms could pull off. She had us, Sandy, Madison… where is she by the way?” I asked, off topic for a second.

“At the store. I just came over to see how you were,” Sandy answered, waving me on. “Keep going. I love this story.”

“She had us,” I repeated, “Sandy, Madison, Bobby, and I make up these fliers. Now, we were only ten years old at the time. Well, I was ten. Sandy and Madison were eleven, and Bobby was eight. And we had nothing to do on this hot, and I mean
hot
, July day. Anyway, Moms told us to make up these fliers for a garage sale that she was having, and we did as we were told.”

Sandy and Tina began to giggle, and I hushed them. “Later that afternoon, we had at least sixty people lined up outside our house to buy Pops’ stuff. Well, by around four o’clock we had sold almost everything, except that skull. It just wouldn’t die, as my mother put it. Suddenly, we see Pops’ truck pulling onto the street a whole hour early from work. Apparently, Jessica decided that she was going to tell him what we were up to.”

“Bitch,” Andrew blurted, interrupting me, and we all laughed. “Sorry. Continue.”

“She was always doing stuff like that. Getting everyone in trouble. And that day was no different. When he came home, he was livid. Pops got out of that truck looking like he was going to kill Moms. But she just stood up straight, looked him dead in the eyes, and when he was yelling at her about selling all his stuff without his permission, she said very calmly—”

“Do the voice,” Sandy insisted, and I nodded.

“‘Well, Richard,’” I said mocking my mother’s soft English accent, “‘if you didn’t want me to sell them, you should have said so when you bought them. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a skull to sell.’ And she went right on selling that stuff as if nothing happened. That night, when she had sold every bit of that junk, she calmly stated, ‘We made four hundred dollars today from your stuff, Richard, aren’t you so proud?’ He just looked at her and when she winked at him, he couldn’t help but smile. But that was my mother. No one could stay angry with her.”

Cindy shook her head and smiled so brightly that it made happy tears in her eyes. “He never told me that story before.”

I could feel my brows furrow. “Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. He never seems to want to talk about your mother. For instance, every time I ask how they met, he gives me this look and changes the subject.” She paused for a second, and I knew what she was going to ask, but I let her do it anyway. “How
did
they meet?” She leaned her chin on her knuckles and waited for me to tell her.

I sighed and when I looked over at Tina, she was nodding vigorously. “All right,” I huffed, and Sandy clapped her hands.

“Tell it good,” she said, laying her head on the table as she looked up at me.

“It was a party at the University of Pennsylvania. At least, that’s how my moms told it. They met at a real big party that her friend was having. Moms was studying to be a nurse, and her friend convinced her that she needed to take a break before finals. She was nineteen. When she walked into the party, she saw this man leaning against the wall, and he winked at her, but as she made her way over to him, another boy slammed into her. He apologized profusely, blushing, and as she looked up at him, she said that the man against the wall meant nothing to her. Their eyes met, and that was it. Fireworks.

“This boy, as she called him, was the one for her and she knew it. Pops was twenty-two. He was on leave, and he was in his uniform. What woman could resist him? Not my moms, that’s for sure.

“Anyway,” I sighed remembering how her face would light up when she would tell this story, “they danced all night long, and he left. He never told her his name, and she never told him hers either. About a year or so later, my mother had become a registered nurse. She had gone through college as if it was no big deal and had gotten all A’s in everything. She finished early. But I think she just liked to brag a little.

“On this particular day, she was doing her rounds in the emergency room in one of the Philly hospitals. She would never tell me which one. Anyway, she saw this man in the waiting room who looked an awful lot like this boy she’d once danced with. Apparently, he had dropped something on his foot. The way Pops tells it, it was an entire car. Moms’ version differed a little.”

“Well,” Cindy said when I paused, “what was it?”

“A tire iron,” I answered, and they all laughed while I just smiled a little. “Laugh all you want, but I’m with Pops on this one, those things hurt when they fall on your foot.” I shook my head, remembering the time one fell on mine. I could still feel the pain of it when I scrunched the toes on my left foot.

“This is the part of the story that I love,” I went on. “She brought him back to be seen by the doctor, checked all of his vitals, and started an IV on him. And just before she went out of the room, he remembered her. She had to work, but every chance she got she would look in on him, and they would talk. Moms would tell us that he was one of those men who said everything by saying only the minimum. After a while, he told her all about his honorable discharge from the Marines, and the fact that he was a mechanic. She said by the time they bandaged up his foot, they knew everything there was to know about each other. And as she wheeled him out of the ER, he asked her out. The rest is history.”

“How did they come to live here?” Cindy asked, looking so happy that someone finally filled in the missing pieces to a mystery she had been on the edge of her seat to find out.

“Moms got out a map of Pennsylvania,” I answered.

“She told Mr. W. to give her his finger,” Sandy continued, sitting up with a smile.

“Why
his
finger?” Andrew asked, his golden eyes confused.

I looked at him for a second. Some clairvoyant he was if he couldn’t see the past. “Because it’s not polite to point with your own,” I told him, and he smiled. “They picked this place because of dumb luck.”

We all laughed and before any of us were prepared, the front door opened and Pops called out, “Cindy, I’m here to take you out to lun…” his voice trailed away, and the next thing he yelled from the hallway was, “What the hell happened to my T.V.?”

That was my father. He always did have the worst timing.

chapter

THIRTEEN

After Pops calmed down, I explained what happened and that I was sure Samuel would be willing to pay for it. But, of course, my father wouldn’t hear of it. So he enlisted Andrew to help him take down the ruined flat screen then he persuaded the psychic to go to the store pick out a new one. After all, he still had the warranty on the broken television, and he convinced himself that he wanted the bigger one anyway. Only Pops could make a horrible situation into a positive.

When everything finally settled down, Sandy left to go back to the store, leaving me, Tina, and Cindy alone together in the kitchen. Both of them insisted that I go upstairs to rest, and after some severe protest, they got me to do as I was told. Tina also insisted that she take Cindy on her errands, so I was left alone in the house all day with nothing to do. I mean, I couldn’t even watch T.V.
Thanks a lot, Jessica.

It was as good a time as any to check my emails to see if my editor, Joey, in New York, had anything for me to do. And lo and behold, there were two emails from him. One was asking me where I was, and the other congratulated me on my father’s wedding. For a moment, I wondered when he had found out then I realized that Tina must have had mentioned it to him. She was always looking out for me. But just to be on the safe side, I texted her to ask if she told him. A moment later, I got a reply saying that she had, and I sighed in relief. Well, as long as it wasn’t Samuel, I was all right.

I emailed him back thanking him and explaining that if he needed me to do anything while I was in Danville, that I was up for it. About five minutes later he replied back saying, “Yeah, have fun. L.O.L.” I ignored the fact that a fifty some odd-year- old man actually typed the abbreviation for laugh out loud and sent him a response telling him I would.

So for the next couple of hours, I sat on my computer doing mundane stuff like watching cat videos and looking up things that really didn’t matter in life. By the time I was done it was getting dark, and the clouds were looking very threatening. There was a knock on my door, and as I looked up from my computer, I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the darkness.

“Come in,” I said, shutting down my laptop as Mortimer walked in, smiling at me.

“How was yer day?” he asked, looking very handsome in his long-sleeved white shirt and black jeans.

I shrugged. “Boring. How’d you sleep?”

He shrugged. “All right. Why don’t ye come downstairs and I’ll fix ye some dinner.”

I looked at my phone, and the clock read almost five-thirty in the afternoon. Time sure did fly when you were on the Internet, which is why I didn’t like going on it. Too many distractions.

Stretching, I got out of bed slowly, feeling how utterly stiff every part of my body was from sitting in one position all day. Then I realized I had to use the bathroom and told Mortimer to go downstairs and wait for me. I grabbed the bag with the bandages in it, which also held my toiletries, and walked across the landing into the bathroom.

Looking at myself in the mirror, I had to admit, I’d looked better. But I pushed my outward appearance aside to deal with the massive wound on my chest. One handed. I took off my shirt and carefully undid the bandages. I must have cried out because there was a tap on the door.

“Ye all right?” Mortimer asked, and I could hear the concern in his voice.

I shook my head, but said, “Yeah, I’m okay. Just go downstairs. I’ll be right there.”

“Yer not all right,” he protested. “I can tell. Let me in.” I reluctantly opened the door, grimacing. He took one look at my chest, and his eyes widened. “Jesus H. Christ, Patricia. How long ‘ave ye been walkin’ round wit dat?”

“Couple days,” I answered, still trying to get the bandage off.

“‘Ere, let me help ye,” he insisted, walking over to me, grabbing the bandage from my good, now bruised, hand. As he pulled it off, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from screaming. “Dis is a mess. Who did dis ta ye?”

“Mike,” I told him, and his eyes grew dark.

He shook his head, examining the wounds carefully. “Samuel told me it was bad, but not dis bad. Did he even offer ta fix it fur ye?”

That statement confused me. “Who would offer to fix what?”

He cocked his head at me. “Yer serious, aren’t ye?” I nodded. “Samuel didn’t offer ta fix the wounds fur ye?” he clarified, and I shook my head, becoming increasingly aware that he was looking up my shirt and I had no bra on. “He’s a feckin’ Cúl Tóna.”

I tried to squirm away from him, but he held my waist still. “A what?”

“Dickhead,” he explained and then looked at the wound closer. “I can fix these fur ye no problem. Do ye want me ta?”

“Yes, please.”

Mortimer smiled up at me then grimaced. “It might be a little awkward.”

I cocked a brow at him. “Why?”

“I’ve gotta lick ‘em.”

“What?” I squeaked out, hoping that I heard him wrong.

“I’ve gotta lick ‘em,” he repeated as if it was no big deal.

“How does that do anything?”

“We have a coagulate in our saliva that’ll help heal the wounds faster. Dat’s why when ye get bitten by one of us, it usually goes away in a matter of ‘ours.”

I blinked, stunned that I hadn’t known that and I was married to one of them. “Are you saying that he could have fixed these by just spitting on them?” He nodded, and my jaw clenched. “You’re absolutely right, Samuel is a cool tuna.”

Mortimer laughed. “Cúl Tóna. And dat ‘e is, darlin’. Dat ‘e is.” He grew silent for a second, looking at the wounds again. “These look simple enough. It’ll tickle a little, but it won’t hurt.”

I shrugged. “Pain is a part of life, right?”

He nodded. “Right. But dis won’t hurt.”

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and nodded. As if on cue, I felt something wet on the wounds. I didn’t want to look at what he was doing because when he was doing it, my stomach began to churn. Just the feeling of his tongue sliding along my stomach, cold and wet, sent shivers through me. And not in a good way, in an “I’m going to throw up all over the place” way. He hands grasped my stomach a little tighter and as he got to above my hip there was slurping sound. The bile threatened to come out of my mouth, but as he relaxed his cool touch, he began to rub my back ever so gently, which made me feel better. After another minute of licking, he stopped touching me, and I felt his tongue retract from my body. When I opened my eyes, he was standing in front of me with my blood all over his lower lip.

Looking down at my stomach, I began to see the wounds close and the bleeding stop. The pain was better too. “Thanks,” I told him, and he smiled, teeth filled with blood. “You might want to rinse your mouth out, you look kind of scary.”

He stopped smiling, turning around to rinse his mouth out in the sink, and when he stood up to look in the mirror, there was no reflection staring back at him.

“Holy shit,” I hissed as I pushed my shirt down carefully over the still tender wounds, and I walked up to the mirror beside him. “What the hell?” I touched Mortimer’s solid form, but there was no reflection to show that he even existed.

“Strange, isn’t it?” he asked, and I nodded. “‘Tis probably ‘cause we have no souls. But who knows really? Dat’s just one theory.”

“It’s just weird.”

He nodded. “Bit of a nasty shock when I found out too.”

“How do you do your hair?” I asked, and he laughed.

“We never really change, so it’s easy.”

“You mean…” I paused, trying to figure out what to say, “you wake up that way?”

“Yeah,” he answered with a smile, “pretty neat, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Very.”

“Well, I’ll leave ye alone ta do what ye need ta do.”

Before he left, I pulled him into a hug and it didn’t hurt. “Thank you so much, Mortimer.”

He pulled away from me, kissing me on the forehead. “Yer welcome, darlin’.”

I got a whiff of him, but he didn’t smell like anything. “That’s interesting,” I mused aloud.

“What is it?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“You don’t smell like anything,” I answered, trying not to offend him.

“We don’t usually,” he explained. “Some of us, Samuel included, wear cologne. But I don’t bother.”

“Do you smell to yourself?” I was doing that ‘too curious for my own good’ thing again, and I reminded myself that it was not a virtue.

He shrugged. “Ta myself I smell a little like a corpse, but wolves say we smell rotten. I just t’ink they want us ta believe dat so we stay away from ‘em.”

I nodded. “Good to know.”

“Glad ta be of service.” And after another smile, he left me to fend for myself.

The doctor in the hospital had given me some plastic bags, so I wrapped my cast in one, took off my clothes, and finally took a much-needed hot shower. It felt so good on my sore skin, and as I let the water pour over me, I looked down at the jagged wounds on my chest, watching them scab over before my very eyes. I washed as quickly as I could because I realized that I was hungry, and my hand was starting to hurt again, so it was definitely time for more pain meds.

After I had dressed, which took me a lot longer than normal, I went downstairs and a smell hit me. Not a bad smell, the best smell that I had ever smelled. In fact, my stomach growled in response to the wonderful smell of… “Pasta?” I asked Mortimer, walking into the kitchen. There was no other sound in the house besides him cooking and before he could answer my first question, I asked, “Where is everyone?”

He smiled over his shoulder at me. “They went out ta dinner, yer father said that ‘e wanted ta give ye some space. And yes,” he finally confirmed. “It’s ravioli. Hope ye like marinara.”

I nodded. “It’s my favorite, so is ravioli. How did you know that?”

He turned his face away from me as I stood on the other side of the median. “Just a guess.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t buy that for a second. “Are you lying to me?”

He laughed, and I knew that he was. “Whatever made ye t’ink dat?”

“The fact that you won’t face me, and when I asked your body went rigid,” I explained.

He sighed. “Yer just like yer mother. She could always see through me. And everyone else fur dat matter.”

“How did you know?” I asked again.

He turned around, looking me in the eyes. “I could taste it in yer blood. I know yer favorite foods and yer favorite drinks. I even know yer favorite deserts.”

My mouth dropped open. “Bah,” was all that came out at first, then I shook myself and said, “Are you telling me that you basically know everything there is to know about me by my blood?”

He shook his head. “No. I just know what ye like ta eat. Not what’s on yer mind.”

“Why do I have a feeling that’s not entirely true?”

“‘Cause it’s not,” he replied with a grimace. “I’m better at readin’ minds than most. Even Samuel.”

“Speaking of,” I changed the subject, “what’s his problem? I mean, you’re not like him. You’re nice and cook food for me. He takes me down into basements and…” my voice trailed away as the dungeon came back to me again. Suddenly, I felt a twinge of pain in my wrist and that brought me back to reality. “Where did Cindy put my pills?” I asked, and he pointed right in front of me. I shook my head. If it was a snake it would have bit me. “Water?” I requested, and he placed a glass in front of me. I took a pill, closing my eyes as I swallowed it. Then I looked at him, waiting for an answer to my previous questions before pain got the better of me.

“Feelin’ better?” he inquired, sounding concerned.

I shook my head. “No, it takes fifteen minutes for them to work. And don’t think I forgot my questions.”

He smiled. “I didn’t. Ta tell ye the truth, I don’t know why ‘e does what ‘e does, and when I ‘eard about what ‘e did ta ye, I was gonna kill ‘em. If it wasn’t against the rules.”

My brow furrowed. “Against the rules? Why is it against the rules?”

“He didn’t tell ye, did ‘e?” he sounded a bit frustrated. Then again, Samuel could do that to the best of people.

“Tell me what?”

He turned back around to drain the ravioli and then he put them in the marinara. Once he let them sit for a minute, he went looking for a plate.

I sighed. “They’re above you,” I told him, and he smiled at me again. “You’re avoiding the question. What didn’t he tell me, Mortimer?”

“Dat ‘e made me,” he replied, and my mouth dropped open.

“What?”

“Samuel’s me maker,” he repeated, putting the plate of pasta in front of me.

I blinked at him for a second because my brain couldn’t wrap around what he just said. How could this wonderful man have Samuel as a maker? It was impossible, yet he was telling me it was true. I shook my head and opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Then I tried again, but the only thing that came out was, “What?”

He shrugged, still smiling. “I thought ‘e would’ve said somethin’.”

I shook my head again. “Samuel doesn’t tell me anything. He usually just breaks something or tries to kill me.”

“I know,” he huffed, his smile fading. “‘E’s like dat wit everyone.”

“Oh good,”
sarcasm
, “it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one.”

“Forks?” he asked, and I pointed to the drawer under the sink. Mortimer handed one to me, and I dug into the pasta. They were good, but all of this had me thinking. If he was this open about Samuel being his maker then maybe I could get more information out of him.

He must have seen the wheels in my head turning, or he could read what was on my mind, because before I even said anything, he nodded. “Go ahead. Ask me anythin’.”

I chewed very carefully, swallowing before I began. “Okay,” I said, taking a sip of water. I thought of all the things that bugged me about Samuel, and I started with a simple one. “Why do you guys not like crosses?” I remembered Samuel hissing and throwing mine on the floor several times, even now I noticed Mortimer was staring at my mother’s cross around my neck, which had slipped out of my shirt. I quickly put it back inside, and he blinked at me.

“It’s not so much dat we don’t like ‘em, it’s dat they burn when we look at ‘em. I t’ink it’s ‘cause we don’t have souls. Not anymore, anyway,” he explained, and I nodded.