Moonlight Meetings - Three Erotic Supernatural Stories (The three first stories from Suzy's Adventures) (5 page)

 The two men leaned close to each other, still swaying. They conferred in hushed voices for a moment and then turned to face her, wincing and smiling at the same time. Had they not been so obviously drunk, they would have been terrifying.

“Hi, um. I’m Terry. And you’re…?”

“Busy,” Suzy said. “What do you want?”

“Oh.” The other man slapped the speaker’s arm and whispered in his ear. “Right,” the first man went on. “We just wondered if you and your girlfriends want some company?” More mad grinning. Seeing them in the bright light, Suzy realised that they were sixteen or seventeen, if even that. She also saw that their clothes were of the brand new, uppity-class variety.

“Girlfriends?” Suzy echoed before she could stop herself.

“Yeah, your pals.” Then he frowned, slowly, with the concentration of a line dancer. He really was fantastically drunk. That, or an Academy Award-worthy actor.”This is a party, right? With more girls?” His friend, possessing an ounce more tactfulness, slapped his arm again.

Suzy realised the implications of her answer. “Yeah,” she said. “There’s about twenty of us in here. Big, strong girls. One or two karate black belts.”
Stop it, you idiot,
she thought.
You’re overdoing it!

But her outrageous lie was lost on the men, who smiled even wider and high-fived. Annoying as that was, it was also comforting; had they been out to do something nasty, they would not have liked idea of that many people around.

Then it came to her. She wanted to smack her forehead, but then she would have dropped her towel and that would probably kill the men by cardiac arrest. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re staying at Eagle Villa?”

Open-mouthed surprise. “How did you know?” the duo’s self-appointed spokesman said. “I mean, yeah, we do. My dad’s a lawyer. With Johnson and Sons. You’ve heard of them.” A statement, not a question. Suzy was ready to bet that this young man would not be one of the future ‘sons’ of the firm.

She sighed.
Great.
She had two off-their-faces, possibly-not-out-of-high-school airheads on her lawn, hoping to get lucky with at least one of her twenty imaginary friends. How the hell would she get out of this? She could easily see them snooping around for hours in hope of a glimpse of something interesting.

And then, just when she was about to tell them to get lost, things got a little weird.

*

It started with a word.

“
Woman.
”

Suzy jumped at the sound. The call carried through the dark from the far edge of the lawn. A man’s voice, deep yet oddly boyish and with a strange accent. Something told her the newcomer was not a friend of the drunk, juvenile yuppies on her doorstep.

Well, I know he’s talking to me,
Suzy thought
. That’s always something.
But while Suzy felt a trifle nervous, the boys’ reaction was more dramatic. One of them puffed out his minimal chest, stared into the night and raised his chin, while the other hid behind his friend and peered over his shoulder with the rum-and-coke can trembling in his hand. There was no glimpse of the man who had spoken.

“Hey, dude,” the bolder of the boys shouted. “Stop sneaking around in the dark. Are you, like, spying on the girls? We’re protecting them, so you better stop.”

Suzy wanted to go out and smack the poker over the boy’s perfect haircut. These two were ‘protecting’ her? She wished Catherine and the others were here; they would never believe this when Suzy told them.

A shadow detached itself from the trees, some fifty metres away, and stepped onto the lawn. A man, walking towards them unhurriedly. Suzy squinted to make out his features, ready to close and lock the window, but it was not until the mysterious speaker approached the crisp halo of the floodlights that Suzy got a clear view. She blinked, leaned closer to the window and bumped her head lightly against the glass. “Ouch,” she mumbled absently and stared at the man.

Lean and tall, with black, wild hair down to his shoulders and dark skin the colour of oak, the man towered over the two boys. His green flannel shirt was buttoned but missed several buttons. Bare feet peeked out under the end of his paled blue jeans. His face was long, his cheekbones high, and he had eyes so dark Suzy thought he must have worn lenses. His features seemed almost chiselled from a tree, but he was anything but gaunt; his rolled-up sleeves exposed muscular, veined lower arms. And, Suzy thought, he was beautiful. Stunningly so, if in an eerie, untamed yet statuesque kind of way. A Greek hero sculpted by someone with a penchant for metal music. And boy, he was
tall
. He stood easily two heads taller than the boys, and they were not exactly short. The man looked to young too, perhaps around twenty, but he had the calm and bearing of someone closer to forty, and his voice was way too deep for him to be the boys’ age.

The boy who had stared at the man fought to keep his valiant attitude. “Who are you, then? You look weird. And you’ve got no shoes. What are you, a homeless?”

“Not really,” the man said. He did not raise his voice, yet Suzy, standing mesmerised in the window many metres away, heard him clearly. “Not yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the boy demanded. “You better get out of here. Or I’ll call the police.”

“I would rather that you did not.” The man smiled, and the boys retreated a step. Suzy gripped her towel tighter, feeling her throat go dry. There was something vaguely feral about the man’s small smile. She was half-surprised to see white, normal teeth and not fangs.

“Okay,” Suzy said, in complete lack of anything more intelligent to say.

The man turned his black eyes on her, and Suzy stood lost between two impulses. Half of her wanted to slam the window and hide under the bed, while the other half of her wanted to give in to temptation, open the window and walk up to the man. She wanted to touch that strange skin, those arms. She wanted to look deeper into those twin black inkwells in his face. She wanted to...

“You, woman,” he said.

Suzy faltered. Who said ‘woman’ these days? But there was no sarcasm, no derogatory tone to his deep voice. Maybe he was an immigrant and did not know the language that well. Except for his height, he looked vaguely Native American, but there was a faint slant to his eyes that spoke of different origins. She cleared her throat. “Yes?”

“Are these men threatening you?”

“Hey – “ one of the boys began.

“Quiet. I am addressing the young woman,” the man said. Not snappy, not challenging, only in command. Someone used to being obeyed. Was there a military base nearby? No that was ridiculous; with that hair, he would not be in the military. Suzy shook her head, as much in reply as in at the whole situation. Her friends would perhaps believe her when she told them about the boys, but they would never believe this.

She realised the man still waited for an answer. She was tempted to say yes, if only to see what would happen. Nasty, perhaps, but she was only human.

Then she changed her mind. First of all, the boys had not threatened her. They were just hopeful kids with one too many sugary rum drinks in their systems. And Suzy had a feeling things could get ugly if she said yes. The boys were probably anything but violent, but the man’s calm unnerved both the boys as well as Suzy. There was something about the way he stood, relaxed and totally still, yet somehow ready to spring. It was time to sort this out before something bad happened.

“I’m fine. They just wanted to join my, um, party. But they haven’t done anything bad. I’m sure they’re sweet as pies.”
Did I just say that?

A short silence followed. “I see,” the man said. “And you say you mean this woman no harm? Be honest. I do not take lightly to lies.”

“Of course, dude. We were just – “

“We’d never – we just thought they’d – “

The man cut them off. “Understood. A good night to you all, then.” He nodded at each of them, his black gaze lingering a moment longer at Suzy – and there it was again, that faintly feral smile, playing at the corners of his mouth.

Suzy’s throat felt tight. Once again feelings clashed inside her. Part of her told her to run away, part of her said the same thing, only to run in the other direction. And part of her wanted to…
growl?
What was that all about?

Then he turned and walked away, across the lawn, blending with the night until he was gone. The boys did not stop staring at his back until he vanished. They looked at each other, then turned to Suzy and babbled.

“We better, you know, go back.”

“Yeah. Our friends will wonder where we are.”

“Sorry if we bothered you.”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t want to…”

“…cause any trouble.”

“But if you change your mind, you know where –
ouch
.”

Once again the boy with a trace of tact – or maybe a measure of survival instinct – slapped his friend over the back of his head. Then they turned and walked quickly down the path.

Suzy watched them go, then closed the window and leaned against the wall. She did not move until her heart stopped hammering.
Christ.
Weirdness galore. Her memory flickered back to the night she had spent in New Orleans a month ago. She had put off that whole unbelievable – but pretty interesting – event as an unusually intense dream, but now she recalled the night with polished, sparkling clarity. Was she losing her mind? ‘Cabin Fever’. The term came sailing back and run aground in her brain. Turning nuts from being confined too long. But did not that require more people, or could one get it by oneself?

Suzy snorted, stalked back to the stereo and whacked the power button. Seconds later a brooding tune made the house’s walls shudder.
Much better.
She swapped the wet towel for a black tracksuit with orange stripes and threw the wine-stained carpet into the washing machine. Having checked all locks, she poured herself a new glass of wine and went back to the deck chair with her bag. The moon had turned the forested landscape into a mass of silvery peaks, broken only by a few, dark meadows and clearings. A small stream wound its way through the forest, starting far up in the mountains and running in gentle curves towards the hill upon which the cabin rested. In the moonlight, it looked like a shining rope flung across the woods.

She upturned her bag in her lap and dug out her black nail polish from the mound of bric-a-brac. Not that she needed another layer, but she had to do something to take her mind of the unexpected visitors. She glanced at her watch. Eight-thirty. They had better not miss another flight. She sighed and turned her attention to her left fingernail.

A movement in the forest made her look up. Something had stirred deep in the woods. Probably an owl, or perhaps another fox. She cursed her jittery nerves and scowled at her fingers, only to look up again when a shadow crossed the stream. She watched the shining brook for a few seconds. Once again a shadow flashed across the stream. A big shadow. Hundreds of metres away, yet clearly visible in the pale light.

Suzy paused. Were there bears in these woods? She screwed the cap back on the nail polish, unloaded her belongings onto the veranda’s wooden floor, stood up and walked over to the telescope. After a minute of zooming and scouting around, she spotted the shadow again, lost it, grimaced as she whirled the telescope around and found it again. She was not even surprised to see it was the tall man who had been on her lawn.

Suzy did not know how she could be sure; after all, all she saw was shadowy
someone
walking along the stream. But there was something to the man’s build that she remembered, and she could tell even from this distance that the night-time wander was really tall. After a moment’s fine-tuning of the zoom, she could discern his shirt, his jeans and his unruly hair. The only thing she did not recall was the hat he wore. She could not see for sure, but she thought it was one of those silly tourist caps with beer can holders and tubes to drink from, but there was something about its silhouette that made her think of a hart.

Suzy took her eyes from eyepiece and pinched the bridge of her nose. So her would-be saviour walked alone by the stream in a stupid hat. Not her problem. Probably a local loony. All towns had one. New York, she knew from experience, had plenty. Why not Newridge?

Meaning to look one more time for good measure and then go back to her nails, she peered through the eyepiece, adjusted the zoom, and gasped.

There
was
a beer, right behind the man. Her heart started hammering again as she gripped the telescope with white-knuckled hands. The huge beast lumbered along the water, not far behind the man who looked in the other direction. Had he not seen the bear?
Turn around! Run! Or you’ll be eaten alive in that dumb hat!

Then another shadow appeared next to the stream, behind the bear, and then another. Suzy zoomed and felt her jaw go slack. Two more bears, both trotting in the same direction as the first animal. The three animals moved behind the man, all four of them heading in the same direction, away from the cabin.

“No, no, no. Look back.
Look back.
” She accidentally bumped the telescope and lost focus. Her mind raced, seemingly trying to outrun her heart. What could she do? Scream? No, that would perhaps scare the animals and make them attack the man. Or attract them to the cabin. Could she use a flashlight to signal? Suzy remembered seeing a large portable halogen torch in a drawer in her bedroom labelled ‘outdoor equipment’ No, that was useless; he was looking away from her. She cursed, and made a decision. She had to go there.