Midnight in Christmas River Page 5

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Because I could have sworn that you said—”

  “Do you need any help there?” he asked, nodding to the stack of plates in my hand.

  I smiled, shaking my head.

  “No, I got it. This is the last trip.”

  He nodded, then quickly walked toward the cabin. I watched as he set the pumpkin down on the porch and then sprinted back to the van, grabbing the next one. He was back at the van again by the time I got to the front door.

  “Hey, can you do me a favor?” I heard him shout from the van.

  I turned around — he was shutting the back door and was walking toward the driver’s seat with a marked intensity in his step.

  “Can you tell Mr. Black I have somewhere to be right now, but to have his assistant send me the check instead?”

  “I’ll tell him, but he’s just in the living room now and you could probably—”

  “No, that’s okay. It’s easier this way.”

  Josiah jumped into the van and started it up.

  “See ya,” he shouted from the window.

  “Yeah, see you—”

  But by the time I finished my sentence, Josiah Davis was already pulling out of the driveway in the same crazed, speedy way the Jaguar had done only minutes earlier.

  Maybe this place wasn’t the old haunted cabin I thought it was.

  But it was clear there was something about it that repelled people just the same.

  Chapter 12

  “Ashcroft Black’s success proves that if you’ve got the talent, the passion, and the hunger, then the sky’s the limit, kids. He’s a self-made man of the highest order, and though few — if any of you — will attain his level of success, take a page from his book and aim high.”

  Don Wharton, CEO of one of the most successful publishing companies in the country — as he reminded us repeatedly in his long speech — readjusted the baseball cap on his head as he spoke.

  “You know that old saying: Shoot for the moon. If you miss, you’ll land on the stars? Well, it’s all a big crock of B.S. that soft, woo-woo people have sold you on, kids. The truth is, if you miss the moon, you’ll land into a void of dark, hopeless failure. But you know what? At least you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror and have pride — knowing you weren’t some coward too afraid to try.”

  He took one more look around the room at the small group of aspiring writers.

  “And when it comes down to it, having your pride is more important than book sales, bestseller lists, or TV deals. When it comes down to it, it’s all about this.”

  Don made an unseemly gesture toward his nether regions.

  “Cojones. That’s what it’s about, ladies and gentlemen.”

  I shot a look at Kara. Her arms were crossed and her eyes had narrowed like she was looking at one of those old school Magic Eye illusion coffee table books.

  I could tell that Don Wharton hadn’t exactly impressed her with his speech. Or with that crude gesture, for that matter. He might have been a big shot publisher, but what he said didn’t make much sense and more than that, there was a vein of condescension throughout his speech to the group of young writers. One I didn’t much care for.

  But then again, it wasn’t really my place to care. It was my place to make sure everyone at the writer’s event was well-fed, and luckily, aside from Ashcroft and Don Wharton, everyone else there was down-to-earth, kind, and easy-going. I’d been expecting a grim group of goth-inspired people, considering they were all horror authors. But to my surprise, they were the exact opposite of grim. They laughed and smiled easily and seemed to love the food I’d brought. And even though I’d made quite a bit of it, the way things were flying off of hor d’oeuvre plates, I wasn’t sure if there would be leftovers.

  I felt Kara’s hand on my shoulder as Don Wharton’s profanity-laced speech wound down to its finale.

  “Hey — I’m just going to step outside and call John,” she whispered. “You need me right now?”

  “Tell him I said hi,” I whispered back.

  I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for Kara. I wondered if she regretted coming out here with me. The people she’d been excited to meet weren’t exactly living up to her expectations.

  Once Don Wharton’s speech ended, the dozen or so people in the room began clapping wildly. Ashcroft stood up and shook his publisher’s hand. But his face remained locked in its usual unhappy glare and it was hard to tell whether the high praise meant anything at all to him.

  But then again, maybe he’d just been having a hard night.

  I’d been thinking about earlier and the way he’d snubbed Kara. And though I still felt upset about it, I’d also been thinking about the argument we’d overheard. It was clear that his marriage was on the rocks, and I knew from experience with my first marriage that things could get really ugly at that stage.

  Maybe Ashcroft was just having a hard night and didn’t mean to snub Kara the way he had.

  And maybe I ought to have had a little more compassion for the troubled writer.

  “Hi, there. Can I please have one of those pie pops?”

  I glanced up — people were scattering across the room in small groups, carrying stacks of paper in their arms.

  A woman in her late twenties with heavily lined eyes, a round face, and red hair was standing in front of me.

  “Of course,” I said, reaching for the platter with the pie pops. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “Uh, I’d take one of those apple turnovers, too. Ashcroft told us they were the best thing he’s tasted since he left New York.”

  I tried not to let that go to my head, but I felt my cheeks flush a little at the roundabout compliment.

  Although when I thought about it — I wasn’t sure whether it was a compliment at all. It sounded more like an insult to the Pacific Northwest and to Christmas River’s culinary offerings.

  In the end, I tried not to over-think it. I fixed the red-headed woman a generous plate. She took it from me, nodding thanks. Then she glanced back behind her, looking around the cabin.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of this place,” she said. “Do you think it’s really haunted?”

  “I don’t know, but a lot of people in Christmas River sure do.”

  I followed her gawking gaze.

  The interior of the cabin looked like a spread in the October edition of a Martha Stewart Living magazine. Its pine boards were painted a shade of chic country white and the floors were a dark-stained mahogany. A modern-looking concrete fireplace that was framed on both sides by spindly willow branches anchored the room. Abstract paintings of elk and deer grazing in dark forests hung from the walls — a nod to the cabin’s former life as a hunting lodge.

  I returned my attention to the young woman in front of me. Though I’d handed her the plate, she had made no motion to leave. She still stood next to the catering table, off to the side, watching the rest of the workshop participants as they spoke amongst themselves.

  I sensed a kind of hesitation in her, and I gathered that perhaps she didn’t feel all that comfortable here yet.

  “What do you write?” I asked, knowing that was probably a stupid question considering that this was a workshop for aspiring horror authors.

  She glanced back, taking a bite of the turnover.

  “Psychological horror with a feminist edge,” she said with a giddy smile. “I mean — that’s what I’m working on, anyway. When I’m not doing marketing for the local theater here in Christmas River. I haven’t gotten anything published yet, but I’m hoping my book will get picked up when it’s finished.”

  She eyed Don Wharton.

  “Didn’t you love Mr. Wharton’s speech? I tell you — if he decided to publish my book, it’d just be like...”

  Her eyes went wide, and she trailed off at the prospect of it all.

  “I mean, it’d be like... making it,” she added. “In the biggest sense of that term. I think I
could die happy if he published my book.”

  I smiled.

  The young woman struck me as a little naïve, but there was something about her I couldn’t help but like. She seemed funny and genuine and unafraid to sound enthusiastic.

  “Well, I wish you luck,” I said. “What was your name again?”

  She stuck a hand out.

  “Cordelia Corso,” she said. “I mean, that’s going to be my pen name. My real name is Mary Lou Anderson.”

  I cracked a smile — her real name sounded the picture of innocence, and I could see why she needed a pen name for her genre.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Mary Lou. I’m Cinn—”

  But I didn’t get a chance to finish my introduction.

  It was cut short by a howl that turned my blood to a glacial flow.

  “SHE’S OUT IN THE TREES! SHE’S COMING FOR ME!”

  Chapter 13

  “One moment, Ashcroft is standing there making small talk. And the next… the next he’s staring out into the woods and acting like he’s just seen the devil himself.”

  Kara rubbed her arms and shivered visibly, watching as the paramedics carried Ashcroft Black on a gurney down the steps and toward the ambulance.

  “Then he screams like that and just… just collapses.”

  We watched as Don Wharton followed the paramedics. He ran down the steps, shaking a pill bottle at them.

  “He has a heart condition,” Don shouted. “Here’s the medication he’s on. Is he going to be transferred to Portland? Because I don’t want any backwoods redneck doctor working on him. This here is precious cargo, and he needs the best of the best medical professionals.”

  Normally, an insulting comment like that aimed at my hometown would have made my hair stand on end. But I guess I was still in a state of shock, and I couldn’t seem to feel anything but a strange numbness.

  I wasn’t alone. The writers were all standing out on the porch in the frosty October night alongside us, gazing on in solemn shock as their idol was loaded into the ambulance.

  Kara had been the only one to see what happened.

  Once Don Wharton’s speech was over, Ashcroft slipped out to the porch to smoke a cigar. Kara was there, just ending her call to her husband when she saw him. She said Ashcroft had actually spoken to her and apologized for brushing her off so rudely earlier. That he was feeling under the weather, and that had caused him to act “in an unbecoming manner.”

  Kara said she’d been in the middle of asking him some questions about the publishing industry when, out of the blue, something in the woods seemed to catch his eye. A moment later, he let out the scream that all of us heard and collapsed.

  Luckily, one of the writers had a day job as a nurse and had monitored Ashcroft until the ambulance arrived.

  Now, all of us watched in silence as that ambulance pulled away into the dark night, leaving only the pumpkin carvings of Ashcroft’s novels to flicker on the railing in the bitter autumn breeze.

  Chapter 14

  Even though it was now morning, the murky feelings left over from the events of the night lingered around me like smoke from leaf fires.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about it all.

  And more than that, I couldn’t seem to stop hearing Ashcroft’s horrible, haunted howl.

  And those words.

  She’s coming for me!

  I shook off a round of chills as I rolled out some sour cream hazelnut dough for a batch of pies.

  “Kara said she didn’t see anything in the woods,” I said. “But you should have heard Ashcroft scream, Daniel. It was…”

  I trailed off, stopping what I was doing and looking up at him.

  “I’ve never heard anybody scream like that,” I whispered.

  Another tsunami of chills traveled down my spine, and I thought about going over to the kitchen’s thermostat to turn the temperature up even higher — something I’d already done twice that morning.

  Daniel rubbed the stubble on his chin, gazing out the window.

  He’d stopped in to make sure I was doing okay after what happened. Daniel had gotten home late the night before on account of having to be at the monster truck rally, and I hadn’t had a chance until now to tell him the full story.

  “Maybe it was connected to his medical condition, Cin. You said his publisher told the paramedics he had a bad heart, right?”

  I nodded.

  Despite what I had thought initially, it was clear now that the silver cane Ashcroft carried around wasn’t just part of an act.

  “Well, hallucinating might be a side effect of the medication he takes for his condition,” Daniel said. “Maybe he got his dosage wrong or something. That kind of thing happens a lot more than you might think. Just ask Wes Dulany — the fire department’s always getting calls from folks who took too much medicine by accident.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I guess that might be. But I don’t know, Daniel. I…”

  I trailed off.

  There was something I’d been thinking about all night, though I felt foolish about admitting it.

  I’d been wondering about places, and about whether putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls and adding chic furniture changed anything. The bones of that cabin were still the same, even if it was masquerading as a modern home.

  Maybe the place really was haunted and whatever Ashcroft had seen had something to do with that.

  Daniel looked at me for a long moment as if reading my thoughts.

  “We don’t know that Ashcroft hasn’t had episodes like this before, Cin,” he said. “This probably started long before he moved into the cabin. And when you really think about it, we don’t know much about him at all. He might have a history of illness.”

  Daniel had a point — we knew very little about Ashcroft. Hell, Ashcroft probably wasn’t even his real name.

  “When you told me the other day that you were going up to cater the workshop at the cabin? I went and did a little digging, trying to find out if that story about the murdered hunter was true,” Daniel said. “I wanted to look into it for you.”

  I stopped rolling out the pie rounds and glanced up with raised eyebrows.

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “What did you find out?”

  “Well, I wanted to come back and tell you that nothing happened up there — that it was just an urban legend. But it turns out there was some truth to it. A hunter did die in that cabin back in the 70s. Man by the name of Melvin Shackelford. But the stories had it wrong. He didn’t get shot by his friend over a woman.”

  I took a seat across from Daniel, cupping my hands around a mug of steaming hazelnut coffee.

  “How’d he die?” I whispered.

  “It was a stroke,” Daniel said. “In his sleep. Melvin had just turned 92 years old. His grandsons took him up to the lodge to celebrate. He died peacefully by all accounts.”

  I raised my eyebrows again.

  “So that’s it? No murder or evil deeds?”

  Daniel shook his head, taking a sip of the coffee I’d poured him a few moments earlier.

  “That’s all that was on file. There were a few other incidents over the years — drunken altercations, things of that nature. But nothing about a murder and no other deaths. I’m not sure exactly how the Juniper Hollow Cabin got a reputation for being haunted, or how kids around here got such crazy notions. But there’s nothing sinister in the police reports from that era.”

  I furrowed my brow, deep in thought.

  I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that the cabin wasn’t haunted, or to feel silly I had ever entertained the prospect that it was.

  But regardless, it did sort something out.

  That whatever Ashcroft Black’s problem was, it wasn’t related to the cabin being the home of a disgruntled or angry ghost.

  Daniel took another long swig of his coffee then stood up, coming around to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and smiled.

  “Stay warm in h
ere today, my pie baking beauty. There’s one of them arctic weather systems blowing in this afternoon.”

  He glanced out the window, gazing at the trees swaying in a brisk wind.

  “You stay warm, too, Sheriff. And if you’re lucky, I might just brave the cold this afternoon to bring you a slice of this Sweet Potato Hazelnut Pie I’m making.”

  “Wish you hadn’t told me. Now I won’t be able to think of anything else all morning.”

  I grinned.

  “Say, what do you want to do for Halloween next week?” he added.

  In past years, we’d thrown a Halloween bash for family and friends at our house. But since my grandfather opened Geronimo Brewing Co. in downtown Christmas River, most everyone in town would show up at the brewery’s annual rip-roaring Halloween party anyway, and we no longer felt the need to host our own party.

  Which was actually kind of a nice thing. We could leave the party anytime we wanted, and we didn’t have to deal with Deputy Trumbow drinking too much zombie punch and passing out in our backyard meadow, or Mayor Pugmire’s long-winded rants about what was wrong with the voting system in our county.

  “Well, how about we put in an appearance at the brewery Halloween night,” I said. “Then maybe we could come home, build a fire out back, make up a big cauldron of hot cider, and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Sound good to you?”

  He leaned down pecking me on the nose.

  “Sounds like my kind of Halloween, Mrs. Brightman.”

  He reached for his cowboy hat sitting on the counter and adjusted it on his head.

  “So what time should I expect my pie delivery?”

  “I’d say about 12:30. That work for you?”

  He let out a groan.

  “I guess… I’m not sure if I can manage until then, Cin.”

  He patted his abs, which in truth, had become a little less defined in the last month or so on account of his love for my fall pies.

  “Oh, you’ll manage just fine, Daniel Brightman. You’re one of the tough ones.”

  “Usually. But when it comes to pie, even the toughest man turns into a helpless fool.”