The Claiming Read online

  His other hand was fighting to get a grip on my nightgown. In my panic, I barely noticed the calluses of his hands or the way that his dirty fingernails scratched at the skin of my thighs, leaving tracks of heat and pain on my flesh. Tears sprung hot in my eyes and I did scream then, loud and piercing.

  He went rigid on top of me.

  For a moment, I truly believed he was going to stop.

  I sucked in another breath and the sweet arid smell of stale liquor filled my nose. I could feel tears pouring hot down the sides of my face and I prepared to let out a third scream.

  He struck me.

  I saw him for an instant before he did it, my eyes having adjusted to the darkness. He was grinned down at me, sweat beading across his brow, and there was a glint of hunger in his eyes. Instinctively, from somewhere primal and deep, I understood that the look in his eyes meant that he liked hurting me. That he couldn't wait to do it again.

  Then I felt a sharp blow across my face and black dots swam up in front of my eyes. My body went limp and there was a moment, maybe more, that I lost track of where I was and what was happening. Even so, in some dim and faraway part of my mind, I realized that this was was it felt like to really be hit. It wasn't like the times when my parents had swatted me for misbehaving. This is what Gwydion felt almost every night. I hadn’t known. Not really.

  My senses returned to me, flooding back in like a wave, returning me to the nightmare I'd awoken to.

  He was prying my legs apart.

  Instinctively, my body struggled against him, without my telling it to. Mentally, I felt paralyzed by the blind panic that had seized me. I still couldn’t make myself believe that this was really happening.

  Then, almost as though I'd been listening for it all along, I heard the door to my bedroom swing open and a long shaft of light swept over my eyes, momentarily blinding me. A cold draft of air sucked through the room.

  A gun cocked, an unmistakable sound.

  There was a moment of stunned silence that followed it. Then the crushing weight was suddenly off of me, but his reflexes were slow. Much too slow.

  A gunshot tore through the world, shattering everything that was or would be.

  I pushed myself up in time to see my uncle’s body fall to the floor. Gwydion was standing in the doorway, holding a small black handgun with both hands. His face was blank with shock and even in the dim light, I could see that his cheeks were coated with a fine mist of blood. And with a strange adult-like certainty, I knew that everything had just changed and it would never be the same again.

  Gwydion.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Are you okay?”

  The voice seemed to take forever to reach me. The horrible sound of a gunshot still echoed in my mind. I could still feel the crushing weight of my uncle on top of me. Moment by moment, my senses returned to me.

  The crushing weight wasn't my uncle. It was my seat belt, digging painfully into my chest. It was the only thing that had stopped me from going through my windshield. My car was at a strange, unnatural angle, caught in a copse of trees. The windshield was a spiderweb of shattered glass. Smoke was rising from the hood.

  “Are you okay?” It was a man's voice, but pleasant and soothing. “Can you move?”

  I felt shaken and some part of me was stunned. How had this happened? Had I been driving too fast and taken a turn too sharply?

  Nothing felt broken or even hurt. I felt fine.

  “I think I'm okay,” I managed. I looked at him for the first time. He was in his mid-twenties and attractive, but unremarkable. Longish straight black hair was swept back from his face, caramel-colored skin, dark eyes, and lips that were almost too full for a man. His cheekbones hinted at Native American ancestry. He was wearing a dark green rain slicker that had a Hollow Hill sheriff's badge embroidered onto it.

  “Are you a cop?” I asked. I felt confused, because I thought I knew everyone in the sheriff's department in Hollow Hill. I'd worked there in an on-call capacity since I'd moved back to Hollow Hill.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” He said, ignoring my question. “I think you might have hit your head.”

  “I'm fine,” I said. I fumbled for my seat belt buckle. It took longer than it should have, because my hands were trembling. I didn't want to go to the hospital.

  Between the car accident and the memory of my uncle attempting to rape me, I felt shaken and unsteady. I tried to push the memories down, but they wouldn’t be banished.

  Our uncle — Greg — had been both an alcoholic and a methamphetamine addict. He would stay up for days, then when he came down, he drank until he blacked out. During such occasions, his eyes would become blank and cold. And then he would hit us. Or, actually, he would hit Gwydion. It was always Gwydion. To say that he was abusive is stating much more mildly than he deserved. He was a monster and he couldn’t be reasoned with or pleaded with. He used to leave Gwydion lying on the floor, bruised, bloody, and utterly motionless. Gwydion had told me once that he didn’t ever want to cry, because he was afraid of what Greg might do to him if he did. We were both terrified of him. And Greg never seemed to fully remember what he had done afterward. It was after just such a bender — four days awake — that he had come into my room one night when I was eight years old. And he had tried to rape me. And Gwydion, my twin brother, had killed him with his own gun.

  “Hey miss, are you still with me?” The man asked, snapping me back to the present moment.

  Startled, I realized that I had been staring into space. I blinked at him, then nodded. He was looking at me strangely and I saw a strange and out of place emotion flicker across his face for an instant. It looked like guilt.

  I must have hit my head harder than I thought.

  He helped me out of the car. Immediately my feet sank into three inches of water and I swore under my breath. I suppose I should have been grateful it wasn't deeper. As it was, I could feel water pouring into my sneakers.

  I saw my phone lying on the floor of my car, under the brake pedal. I picked it up and examined it. The screen was shattered beyond recognition.

  “That's perfect,” I said. “Can I use your phone?”

  “No cell service out here,” He said, but handed me his phone anyway. I turned it on and immediately saw that it was disconnected. “It's a good thing I was out here,” he added.

  I nodded, handing the phone back to him. I took stock. My car was totaled. I was out in the middle of nowhere without cell service. I was at least ten miles from Hollow Hill, which was pretty far to walk in the dark during a rainstorm. I didn't have a lot of options.

  “Can you give me a ride home?”

  “Of course. Car's over here,” He gestured up the embankment behind us. I looked up and saw headlights slicing through the rain. He added, “But I think you ought to go to a hospital.”

  I followed him to his car, fighting my dread at getting into a vehicle with a perfect stranger. It was a black four-door sedan. I could tell it was relatively new, because even in the darkness, I could tell that the paint was still shiny.

  He unlocked the passenger's side door for me and I got in. The vinyl seat creaked under me softly as I sat down. He turned the heat on, which I was grateful for. I gave him directions to drive back to town, since I lived pretty close to main street.

  In silence, he turned the car on and began driving in the direction of Hollow Hill. Dark trees loomed up on either side of the winding two-lane highway as we passed, their wet bark shining in the glare of the headlights. I barely noticed it. Hollow Hill is situated on the northeastern point of the Olympic Pennisula, at the mouth of the Puget Sound. We’re in the shadow of the Olympic National forest, about an hour east of Port Angeles, which is the closest thing we have to a city. Rain, trees, and long car rides are big parts of living here.

  We didn't speak for several minutes. I should have been trying to figure out all the people to call when I got back home, but I couldn’t focus on
it. I was fixated on the memory of seeing someone — impossibly — manifesting out of thin air. I had to have somehow misunderstood what I had seen, because that simply doesn’t happen.

  Suddenly, I heard myself asking, “Did you see anyone else? On the road, I mean.”

  “Just you,” He said and gave me a strange, searching look. “Why? Did you see someone else?”

  “I thought I did,” I said slowly. “He was on the side of the road. And then...” I trailed off, feeling suddenly foolish. I was certain that I'd seen the same man inexplicably sitting in my passenger's seat. But that was impossible. People don't just suddenly appear out of thin air.

  “I think I see all kinds of crazy things out here sometimes. It’s usually nothing though.”

  I nodded, but I knew it hadn't been nothing. I'd seen a man standing in the road, right in front of me. And, impossibly, moments before, he’d been in my car with me. Fear danced up my spine at the memory. It hadn’t been my imagination.

  “Anyhow, if there was someone there, he's long gone by now. If he was even there to begin with.”

  I gave him a sharp look. That's when I saw it. The face I was seeing was different than the reflection it cast in the driver's side window. For an instant, I couldn't pinpoint the exact difference, except that it was shaped wrong somehow. It wasn't the same face. Frowning I peered at the reflection in the window. The face I saw was distorted and wrong somehow.

  Like a half-melted candle.

  My mouth went dry with fear.

  Maybe you did hit your head, I thought wildly. That's the only explanation. Because what you're seeing isn't possible.

  “I'm Rory, by the way,” He said. He smiled at me. He saw my expression and his smile faltered somewhat. “You okay, miss...?”

  “Kendra,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. “And yeah, I'm okay. It's just been a hard night.”

  “I bet,” He said with a laugh. “I'm glad you're okay. It's a shame the same can't be said for your car.”

  I was still watching the reflection in the window. Though Rory kept his eyes trained on the road, the reflection moved. It was as though he'd turned his head to look at me.

  I let out a startled yelp and recoiled, slamming my back into the passenger door.

  “Damn,” Rory muttered under his breath. Then, in a soothing voice, he said, “Kendra, I need you to be calm right now and listen to me.”

  The way he said my name was strange. It was far too familiar. Like he knew me.

  I realized, suddenly, that he was the man I had seen on the road. He was the one who had materialized somehow in my passenger's seat. He was the one who had caused my car accident.

  And I was alone in the car with him.

  Logically, I knew that was completely impossible. In fact, nothing about what had happened – or was happening – made any sense. But I knew, on a deep and instinctual level, that I wasn't dealing with logic anymore. I was dealing with something else.

  Every ghost story I'd ever heard rocketed through my brain all at once.

  My hand flew to the handle for the passenger door. It was missing. My panic crystallized, sudden and sharp.

  This can't be happening, I thought. But it was happening.

  “Kendra, please, I need you to relax. I'm not going to hurt you.”

  My eyes darted from him to the road and back again.

  I needed to think, but my brain felt locked up with panic. Maybe if I could knock him out somehow? I could pull the car over and climb out on his side. It would mean climbing over him. I'd seen that in a movie at some point. I couldn’t remember if it worked or not. I'd had self-defense training at the University of Washington as a Sophomore, but I didn't trust myself to remember any of it. Though, I promised myself, if it came down to it, I would fight.

  My eyes scanned the cabin of the car for anything that could be used as a weapon. The interior was spotless and, apart from a wax paper fast-food cup, there was nothing to even pick up, much less use as a weapon. I was still uselessly searching the cabin for a weapon while keeping part of my attention trained upon Rory, when I saw it.

  Up ahead, perhaps only a mile away, there was an ancient-looking greasy spoon diner off the side of the road. It was the sort of place for truckers and road-worn tourists who didn't have any other options. If I could just get to it, I could call for help.

  Rory followed my gaze and sighed. “This is going to be more difficult than I thought,” he muttered.

  I ignored his words. Rather than calm me, they set my teeth on edge. He looked so harmless, so human. But he wasn't.

  A small part of me pointed out that when we'd been in the woods, I'd been practically gift-wrapped as a helpless victim. He could have dragged me further from the road before I was even awake and no one would have heard me for miles, no matter how loudly I'd screamed. If he'd wanted to harm me, it would have been easier and safer for him to do it out there. That probably meant he wanted something else from me.

  However, most of my mind was still frozen by a visceral panic. I'd heard every ghost story about Hollow Hill. Growing up, I'd loved them, because they were part of the local character of the town and its surrounding areas. They were fun and they could even sometimes be genuinely scary. Every town has stories like this, about haunted graveyards and ghosts in white dresses that lurk along highways at night. Granted, Hollow Hill has more than its share of these kinds of stories. But I hadn't believed any of them.

  Until now.

  I'd just made up my mind to grab for the wheel when he slowed down and turned off the highway and into the diner parking lot. He didn't speak again and I didn't move. I was frozen against my seat, trying to put together what was happening.

  Rather than park in the main parking lot, Rory drove around to the back of the diner.

  Where there weren't any windows and where we wouldn't be visible from the highway, I couldn't help but notice. There was a single light pole in the back parking lot, casting orange light onto the cracked wet asphalt. A dumpster with peeling green paint stood squat against a sagging wooden platform that hugged the back of the diner. A line of tall trees ringed the parking lot. The spaces between the tree trunks were walls of darkness, black and uninviting.

  He turned the car off and faced me. The expression he wore wasn't crazed or angry or anything that should have made me afraid, but it did. Because I knew that it wasn't his real face. Beneath the attractive, forgettable face he wore, there was a monster staring back at me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The interior of the diner was 1950s pastiche. The floor was lime-green and white tile. The counters were covered in cracked and peeling laminate. The air smelled faintly of bacon grease and bleach. The dim and buzzing overhead lights cast everything in a murky yellowish glow. A forlorn jukebox stood against a wall. One of the pink florescent tubes was flickering, as though the machine was struggling to breathe. Faded pin-ups of 1950s celebrities were peeling off the walls. The floors were dirty in the corners and absolutely everything was covered in a thin layer of grease. Apart from us, the diner was deserted.

  Rory was seated across from me. There was a gathering bruise under his right eye. Almost as soon as he had opened the car door, I'd struck him and tried to run. I hadn't gotten very far. I'd slipped in a patch of mud that had somehow appeared out of nowhere in the parking lot. He had calmly taken me by the arm and escorted me into the diner, even as I was kicking and fighting against him.

  Now, at least, I was reasonably convinced that he probably wasn't planning my murder. It was hard to reconcile his behavior with that. Which means that he had other plans for me. The thought was not as reassuring as it should have been.

  A bored-looking waitress materialized at our table. She was squeezed into a lemon-yellow dress that only reached mid-thigh. Over that was a stained apron. Her hair was unnaturally blond and curled away from her face in a style that reminded me of 1970s movie stars. She was chewing bubble gum. I guessed that she was in h
er mid-forties and she reeked of cigarette smoke.

  I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my life. If I could just make her understand that I had been kidnapped, that I needed help...

  “What'cha want to drink?” She smacked her gum, looking at Rory.

  “Two coffees,” He said. Then, looking at me, he added, “And a slice of blackberry pie. Two slices. On separate plates.”

  My stomach growled. Blackberry pie was my favorite.

  “Someone joining you?” The waitress asked, ignoring me.

  “Something like that,” Rory said, giving her a dazzling smile. “And can you bring out lots of cream and sugar?”

  “Like your cream with a side of coffee, huh?” She shrugged and smacked her gum. “Yeah, sure. I'll be right back with that.”

  She turned to go. I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Hi,” I called after her loudly, “I'd like to order too.”

  The waitress didn't turn or make any other indication that she'd heard me. I watched her vanish into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with two coffee cups and a little metal pitcher of half and half. I watched as she placed these on a tray, sliced two pieces of the blackberry pie she pulled from a brightly lit dessert case. Then she balanced the tray on one hand and took a pot of coffee in her other hand. The entire time, I was willing her to look up, to realize she'd forgotten to take my order. She didn't look at me.

  She returned to the table and filled two coffee coffee cups. The coffee smelled burnt. She set down two pieces of pie on the table in front of Rory. She didn't look at me the entire time.

  “Hi,” I tried again. “Excuse me? Can I have a glass of water with lemon?”

  The waitress ignored me. She vanished into the back again, leaving me alone with Rory.

  She can't see me, I realized. I'd known it immediately, but I'd refused to believe it.

  Another, even more terrifying scenario played through my mind: what if Rory wasn't the ghost? What if I didn't survive the car accident as intact as I thought I had?