Dark Moon

Facing the woods in back of her house, Josie lifted the phone again and dialed the number of the police station. The line was clear.

Five years he’d been gone, and she hadn’t missed him, not after the first year, anyway, and then only because she wanted him there for Mellie, for Mellie to have a father’s hand to cling to as she took her first step. Josie couldn’t help the sliver of resentment over the intrusion of those old memories into her chaotic thoughts today. One more thing that made no sense, she thought as she waited for someone to pick up the receiver at the other end.

Something moved in the woods.

Holding the phone, Josie leaned forward, straining. Only a wisp of cloud passing over the sun.

No one there.

Ryder Hayes. That was why she was remembering Bart. Two very different men, but in those few moments with Ryder, she had been edgily aware of him. Uncomfortable, but caught in the spell of that disturbing, heated awareness, she’d been at a pitch of awareness she’d never experienced.

She bent down to pick up a white dust ball.

The voice rasped in her ear. “Stoner here. Whaddaya want?”

“Josie Conrad here, Detective,” she mocked. “And what I want is to see you. Today, please.”

Listening to the faint drone that translated into words, into meaning, she waited. “I know, but—It’s about my neighbor, Ryder Hayes. Please,” she said, her voice rising and sinking in the late-afternoon quiet. She twined the cord in large loops around her elbow and hand as she listened. “All right. If you can’t, you can’t. Tomorrow afternoon will have to do.” Carefully she placed the dumbbell-shaped receiver back on its hooks.

Tomorrow.

But there was another night to endure.

Just before supper, the phone rang.

Again the click and then staticky squawks.

“Hello?” Josie said irritably, thinking she heard someone say her name. “Hello? I can’t hear you. Can you speak louder, please. We have a bad connection.”

The static grew louder, hurting her ears until she dropped the phone. She’d been getting a lot of interference on her phone line lately.

Maybe she needed a new phone.

When the long summer twilight ended, plunging the earth into dark, she lit the candles and opened a can of tuna, breaking it up into chunks with her fork as she chopped up celery and stirred in yogurt. Sitting down at her empty kitchen table, she made herself eat, but she turned on the television.

Under the intensity of the surge-dimming studio lights, the weatherman wore rolled-up sleeves, a gleam of sweat and an apologetic smile as he slogged manfully through the news that one more hundred-degree day had made it into the record books.

“Sorry, folks, looks like there’s no rain in the forecast for this week. We’ve had reports of brush fires in some outlying areas, so keep an eye open for smoke, hear now?” he admonished as he concluded and turned to the anchor.

“Joel, thanks for that report!” The brunette with the stiffly sprayed hair beamed at him. The tiny line of perspiration along her upper lip caught the light as she spoke. “But at least it will be another record day for the beaches, right?”

Joel nodded as the camera closed in on his sweating face.

“It’s been an interesting weather year, hasn’t it? The January freeze and now this drought?” The anchor’s expression was professionally concerned, her eyes drifting to an offscreen TelePrompTer.

“None of our computer projections suggested this kind of summer, that’s for sure, Janet.” Joel patted his shining face. “And, no, we don’t have an explanation for it. Not yet. Maybe it’s a sign that the world is ending.” His laugh was too hearty. “No, but really, folks, we think it’s probably related to the volcano eruption or to those huge gamma ray explosions reported by the NASA observatory and—”

“Fascinating, Joel! I know our listeners will stay tuned for more background.” The anchorwoman’s chuckle was feeble. Joel had had too much airtime. Her voice dropped to a really, really serious register as she interrupted, “On to local news, Joel. Young Eric Ames is still missing. The search has been expanded to Manatee and Sarasota Counties—”

Josie got up and silenced the perky voice with a flick of her wrist.

Later, she lit the candles lined up along the screened-in porch one by one, a ceremony of remembrance and sorrow, their light a token in all the darkness.

Once, sometime after midnight, an animal shrieked, caught by unseen talons. For an unsettling instant, she had the fancy that she could hear the frantic beating of that distant small heart, feel its fear pumping through her veins.

Standing and pacing on her porch, back and forth, back and forth through the night, she watched the candles and their flickering reflections in the panes of the open windows, until the last candle sputtered out, leaving her alone in darkness.

In the teasing cruelty of the cool that came shortly before dawn, she had the dream again.

Even dreaming, she knew she slept, knew she wandered in some limbo of the soul.

And in her dream she heard the ringing of the phone and knew if she answered it she would hear Mellie’s voice.

“Mommy!” Ahead of her, Mellie danced from one foot to the other. “Hurryhurryhurry! You’ll be too late, Mommy!” Her short, sturdy legs were covered with bits of moss and leaves. Behind her and to her right, a tall shape hovered, its edges blurred and unrecognizable at first. Twisting on her bed, Josie moaned. This time, she recognized the form.

Ryder Hayes, stalking through her dreams, his face turned away from her, only his lean shape betraying him.

“Mommy!” Impatiently, Mellie waved Josie to her. The bangle bracelet, nothing but imitation gold, glittered with her movement. “Now, Mommy. Now!” She stamped one yellow-sneakered foot on the ground and turned to run.

The shape drifted with Mellie, tracking her.

Hayes? Or someone else?

Her blood quickening, Josie twisted in her sleep.

“Mellie, wait!” she called out. From the corner of her eye, Josie saw the shadowy figure stalking beside her now, moving with the easy fluidity with which Ryder Hayes had disappeared into the woods, and she wanted to turn and look, really look, see if its eyes were the haunted dark of Ryder Hayes’s, so that, waking, she would know.

But Mellie was vanishing ahead of her and Josie couldn’t take time to linger. She couldn’t lose sight of her daughter. If she did—“Wait for me, sweetie!” she called. Changing, swelling to an enormous shadow, the form brushed against her, closed her in its darkness as she screamed, “Mellie!”

She knew she screamed. Her throat was raw with the effort. But the words never came out. Strangled in her throat, they woke her every time. “Wait,” she whispered now, the early-morning sunlight a pallid yellow that hinted of the heat to come.

The phone was still ringing.

With a shaking hand, Josie reached for it.

She expected static.

“Mrs. Conrad?” Low, the voice slid over her skin like the tickle of a feather.

She thought he hesitated momentarily over her name. “Yes, Mr. Hayes?”

“You shouldn’t go to the police.”

“What?” she whispered, stricken.

“Don’t go to the police with your story about what you think you saw in my house. You’ll look foolish if you do. Your daughter’s not here. As far as I know, I’ve never seen her.”

Josie couldn’t speak.