Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (7 page)

“Mighty brave thing you doing, sugar. Spending time all by your lonesome in Chelby Rose,” Minerva’s husky voice said.

She already felt anxious about trying to find her way out of the endless circle of back roads; and the woman’s hard stare made her uneasy. “Something wrong?”

“There was a—I saw a man standing near my car,” Tandie said, her eyes wide and sweat beads prickling her underarms. “He was standing there beside the driver’s door.”

Minerva’s voice suddenly fell silent, and Tandie no longer felt her cat eyes boring holes through the back of her head. She turned around. The area behind the cash register was empty. A new country song blared through the speakers of a radio with a bad reception. But she was able to hear a few of the words to Garth Brooks’ song When the Thunder Rolls.

Tandie tapped her keypad, unlocked her doors, trotted to her car in the rain, and kept watching for the shadow people.

* * *

Flump! Flump! Flump! The Camaro’s tires chugged along the lane.

Tandie pulled over to the side of the road and eased it to a stop. “Oh shit, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she said aloud, glancing back at where she had just left the store. There were no streetlights and her Blackberry’s signal bar was empty again.

Opening her door she stepped out and examined the car. Both the front and back tire on the driver’s side were flat. She would either have to risk driving on them and experiencing a blowout, or stay put in the car until morning. She had one can of
Fix a Flat
and absolutely no knowledge of how to change a tire.

Glancing at her surroundings, she patted her chest. That was until she thought about the man from the store, the one who was standing beside her car. The woods around her chimed songs of frogs and crickets, and certain areas in the trees were so dark they appeared to be moving.

“Okay. Now your eyes are playing tricks on you, woman,” she said, her voice carrying over the forest sounds.

A light lit up the trees growing along the sides of the road ahead of her. Either a large truck or a vehicle with a diesel engine was headed her way. “Oh shit,” she said and quickly shuffled back into the car, locking the doors as she tried to calm her racing heart.

Coming closer now, the truck’s lights blinded her. She held her arm over her eyes, blocking the glare. It was a pickup truck, a large one with tires that looked too big for the body, and it slowed down until it stopped. Her heart thudded, making her feel as if her mouth was filled with its beats.

“You all right there?” a man’s voice called out, a familiar one.
Oh no.

For the second time in one night, she rolled her window down just a notch and said, “I think so. I’m waiting for someone to come pick me up,” she lied. But she had to tell the person something. It didn’t work. He opened the door to his truck, hopped out, and started toward her car. Tandie’s heartbeat thrashed in her ears. All of the night’s excitement was beginning to wear her down.

“Oh God. Please don’t hurt me,” she whispered furiously.

A light flickered into her face. “Miss Harrison? Is that you? It’s me, Gus, from the Aeneid.” He turned the light on his face so that Tandie could see it. The light reflected on his big glasses in a different way than the shadows did for the little boy back at the Catsburg Store.

“Gus. Of course it’s you,” she said and made a nervous laugh. Tandie released the steering wheel. Her hands felt so clammy that she didn’t even want to shake his hand.

“Got a problem or two, don’t ya?” He glanced at her wheels and then stepped back so she could get out of the car.

“Oh yeah. I got double trouble; or maybe triple trouble depending on how you choose to see it,” she said.

“I guess you don’t have two spares, huh?” he asked.

Standing beside him, Tandie realized he wasn’t as tall and lanky as she originally thought. “Miss Harrison, are you quite sure you’re all right?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, I’m fine now. Thanks, Gus. I have a can of
Fix a Flat
and a spare tire in the trunk,” she said.

“Well if you can fetch the can and open the trunk, I can knock those puppies out for you,” Gus said.

“Sounds like a plan.” Tandie walked over and opened the trunk for him. He set to work right away; and he was so polite, humming a familiar tune as he worked. There was no talk of her so-called celebrity status, or her witch’s mark that some other people in Castle Hayne seemed to think she had.

Shining the light on his hands, Tandie noticed welts running along the length of both his arms. Although the marks had long since healed, the deep gashes still looked very painful. “I think that about takes care of the last tire. You might wanna—” He glanced at her and stopped talking at once.

“What happened?” she asked.

His demeanor changed, and his bright face turned in on itself. “Life happened, Miss Harrison.”

All types of images came to Tandie’s mind. “Life?”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s tough being a mechanic’s son. No time to primp ourselves like the college boys do.” He finished packing the rest of his tools and rolled one of her old tires over to where she stood still mesmerized by the prospect of knowing the story behind the gashes on his arm. “I can get rid of these old tires if you want me to.”

“That would be great,” she said.

He stopped just before he headed toward his truck. “Mighty kind of you to ask about me like that. Nobody else ever did.”

“I’m the one who needs to be thanking you, I do believe,” she said.

“You know life is kind of like a flat tire. It gets you excited, takes you to all these fancy places, and then leaves you stranded someplace down the road,” he said.

“I guess it does do that, doesn’t it?” Tandie said, thinking of the way her life without Breena had changed over the past two years. She felt exactly the way Gus described.

“Better make sure you buy a new spare, Miss Harrison, “because life is out there waiting to see if you forget.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks again, Gus,” she said and got into her Camaro. As she drove off she turned on her radio. The country song playing on the station made her remember the tune Gus was humming. It was the Thunder Rolls, the same song that was playing on the radio at the Catsburg store when she left.

6

Tandie made her way back to Chelby Rose with ease. The signal on her phone returned, and she used the GPS software on it to navigate the roads. The way she was able to catch a signal on the return trip made no sense. The roads didn’t just move themselves around, and she was pretty certain the satellites were in their same positions.

Back at Chelby Rose, she prepped for bad weather. The thunderstorm brought large hail, torrents of rain, and wind howling like an animal caught in a trap. The lights inside the house blinked off and on before finally going completely dark.

“Great. Not only did you pick a leaky house, but you also picked one with electrical issues,” Tandie grumbled.

As the storm bellowed at full force outside, she gathered several purple, grape-scented candles, her hurricane lamp, and headed to the one area of the house where she spent most of her time, the living room that also served as her study. Chelby Rose’s dark rooms screamed with hidden energies of spirits from long past. That was one reason she chose an older home, to re-ignite the sight she’d lost.

Even though Tandie had been around a host of situations that could rival a Dean Koontz novel, she wasn’t prepared to hear Minerva’s disturbing news about Chelby Rose’s previous tenant, or Abby accusing her of being a witch. The world she left back in New York seemed to have been a dream as she sat on the couch in her office-living room and stared at the shadows moving along the walls.

After about a half hour, Tandie drifted off to sleep under the storm’s hypnotic rhythm of rain, thunder booms, and lightning. She dreamed of Breena wearing a white dress, running along an unfamiliar coastline. In the dream, she chased her daughter in a game of tag, her skin glistening with vivid life, as if she could reach out and caress the teardrop birthmark on her right cheek. The girl’s giggle echoed around the two playing on the beach.

But then, the sky darkened as Tandie chased her daughter further down the coastline. In the distance, a canon blared across the ocean, drumming into her eardrums. Tandie stopped running so she had a clear view of the water. Glancing back to check on her daughter, Tandie found nothing but an empty beach; even though Breena’s giggles still echoed around her, they soon began deepening into a knocking noise. Tandie’s mind was flooded with panic.

She bolted upright on the couch. The knocks were coming from her front door, and the lights were still out.

She checked her watch, wondering what strange person might be lurking outside her house in such a storm. Images of the shadow boy and man from the town store flashed through her mind. She picked up her lamp and inched toward the front door, her mouth dry. Moving to the window beside it, she slowly parted the curtains.

A hooded man stood outside the doorway. Tandie hesitated and thought about Frieda’s remark about what might happen if she disappeared.
No one would know.

“What oddity is happening at Chelby Rose now?” Tandie asked herself. “Patience, Harrison. He’ll go away.”

But he didn’t. His knocks became more persistent just before he glanced toward the window where Tandie stood. She moved the curtain back right away.

“Okay, too slow. You know he saw that.” She moved to the door and said, “Who are you looking for?”

“Could I speak with you for a moment ma’am?” the stranger hollered over the rain. He didn’t sound psychotic anyway. Instead, his voice sounded familiar. But women made that mistake all the time, trusting someone based on their voice.

“State your business or leave,” Tandie said, her breath quickening.

“A large branch fell on your roof. I’m pretty sure there’s a hole in it by now.”

These people are unreal. “
Sir, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s storming right now.”

“I just wanted to warn you. That’s all.  I hope you have a few buckets on hand,” he said.

“Thanks. Which spot did you say it was?” Tandie used to hear the officers say that letting a would-be assailant know that you’ve called his bluff sends a message that says: this is a smart victim, so leave them alone. She hoped Gomez and crew knew what they were talking about.

“Check the room closest to the back of your house,” he said.

Either this guy’s desperate for business, or a bona fide psychopath.

Tandie held her lamp up in front of her face and trudged to the kitchen. She heard the drip-drop-drip sound before she saw the water trickling from the stained ceiling.

“Peachy.” Tandie trudged back to the door. “Okay. You were right, Mr. Contractor in the rainstorm.”

“I’ll leave my card in your mailbox here outside the door. Call me once the storm clears up.” She heard the mailbox flap slam down.

“I don’t hire contractors unless they’ve been recommended.”

“Fair enough. But most folks find it mighty hard to get somebody out in these parts. The card is out here. If you need me just call.”

Don’t think that’ll be happening anytime soon.

“Right. You’d better get going before you wash away,” Tandie said, anxious for the lights to come back on and feeling uneasy about the desperate man at her door.

“Have a good night ma’am.” She watched his hooded form walk down the steps and into the darkness. At least he didn’t disappear like how the shadow people and even Minerva did from the store earlier. Instead, he took the thunderstorm with him. Only minutes had passed when the rain stopped and the lights fluttered back on, almost as soon as the contractor drove away from Chelby Rose.

* * *

Pathetic. What other way was there to describe his weak excuse for standing on her doorstep in a rainstorm? Eric plopped down in the Jeep’s seat, glanced back at the house, and then banged his head on the steering wheel. “You’re a real winner, man. I’m sure it excites her to feel like a crazy asshole is stalking her.”

Eric was going to have to accept Saul Chelby’s offer. Pastor Jeffries’s warning about the curse didn’t matter. The growl he heard in the woods that first night he stopped by Chelby Rose rattled his nerves. Even though his family had moved almost a thousand miles away from the small town of Bolivia, his father still heard the growls before he died of a heart attack. But his father survived almost a complete decade after the age that the alleged curse was supposed to happen. Why?

Could he learn enough from the elusive residents in this town fast enough to save his brother?

For now, it was back to Castle Hayne, the safe side of the world. It almost hurt him to leave the helpless woman alone in the house where his family’s curse began, a nagging ache that increased the further he drove. What was it about Chelby’s new tenant that stirred such a longing in him?

Pastor Jeffries warned him about coming back. Too late. Along with coincidences, he was never one to heed warnings and unsolicited advice. He’d never have turned the family business around if he gave in to those two weaknesses.

A buzz vibrated at his hip. The cell phone’s signal was weak, but one text message had made its way to the screen.

Eric! Where r u? I’m at the Aeneid. Virgil is dead.