It had been great. The others had squealed with fear and delight.
Except for Liam, of course. She could remember the way he would scoff at her stories. He was two years older than she was, but in their small community they often wound up at the same extracurricular events, and even when they were in grade school, they had battled.
“Yeah, sure!” Liam said, mocking her story. “Like the mummy really got up. The mummy is old and dead and rotten, and if you let me in the house, I’ll prove it!” he would say.
“Ask my grandfather!” she’d dared him.
“I’ll be happy to,” he’d assured her. But he never did. He didn’t want to prove his words, because her stories made her popular.
And they were good stories, of course.
He’d been so elusive; that little bit older, somehow, even for a boy, more mature.
And sometimes, when they were grouped together out on the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor, she told stories that were true about the aboriginal tribes her grand father had known, getting a little bit dramatic by adding the fact that Cutter had barely escaped with his life—and his own head.
Liam listened, rolling his eyes at her embellishments.
She had been tall, since girls did tend to grow faster than boys. But Liam had grown quickly, too, and by the time they had reached their early teens, he had stood at least an inch over her, and when she would talk, he would lean against a doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, that amused and disbelieving look on his face.
But when her mother had died, he had been like the Rock of Gibraltar, telling her to go ahead and break down when she had tried so hard not to cry in public, and he had held her while she had sobbed for an hour. He had been her strength that night, smoothing her hair back, just being there, never saying that it was all right that her mother was dead, just saying that it was all right to cry.
And then…
Then she hadn’t seen him again. Her father took her away from Key West, hurriedly, one night. She had left most of her belongings, taking only one suitcase, because her father had been in such a rush.
She’d told no one goodbye.
And no matter how real her life in Key West had been, everything about it had faded away. She had enrolled in a California school. She had acquired new friends. She had played volleyball in the sand, and she had finally learned to surf in cold water. Everything in their apartment was brand-new, and her father never even watched old movies.
There had only been one time when she had asked him about Cutter. She had never called him grandfather, grandpa, or even gramps—he had always been Cutter to everyone. And so she had asked her father, “Do you hate Cutter, Dad? Do you think that he hurt Mom somehow?”
He had hesitated, but then shook his head strenuously. “No, no. Cutter is a good man. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different, ever.”
“Then why did we run away from him?” she’d asked.
“Because bad things can follow a good man, and that’s that, and please, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
And that had been it.
Key West had faded away, like a scene out of a movie, one she had seen long ago. Until her father was dying, and he had talked about Cutter again.
Cutter wasn’t safe.
She’d loved him. She thought about it now, and she knew that she had really loved him. He’d had such a wonderful sense of adventure. His eyes had been brilliant while he’d described the pyramids in Egypt and the temples in ancient Greece. He talked about places like the Vatican, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame with great awe. He’d talked about the catacombs in Paris, and about marvelous, creepy grottos in Sicily.
His talent as a storyteller had been amazing. And, of course, he’d turned her into one, she thought. No one had ever really known when Cutter was telling the truth—and when he was spinning a very tall tale.
She called Joe Richter, the attorney, to let him know that she would come in person, and then she called Avery Slater, her creative partner, to let him know that she was leaving and why. And naturally, Avery appeared at her door within twenty minutes.
He was seriously one of the most beautiful people she had ever seen, and she used his image for one of her characters, Talon, an angel who had come to live among men. Avery was tall, and he spent his free time at the gym, so he was lean and muscled, as well. He had luxurious, thick, almost black hair, his eyes were chestnut and his features might have adorned a Greek statue. He was a skilled animator, her partner and one of her best friends. She knew that people often thought they were a romantic pair, but Avery was gay, not in the closet in the least, but someone who was very private as well, unless he was among close friends.
He burst into her home with the ease of a best friend, heading straight into the kitchen, opening the refrigerator and finding the chardonnay. He poured himself a glass, didn’t offer her one and swallowed it down as if it were water, staring at her all the while.
“You can’t just up and go to Key West,” he told her, setting his glass down firmly on the counter.
“I’m not moving to Key West, I’m just going down for a few weeks. My grandfather died,” she said.
“Yes, yes, you told me that. But you weren’t close—you hadn’t seen him in years,” Avery reminded her.
“I owe him a decent burial,” she said.
“Send money,” he said. He frowned. “Oh, wait—will you inherit money? A lot of it?”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe. He had a number of artifacts, but I knew, even as a kid, that he’d willed a lot of his things to various museums.”
Thoughtfully, Avery nodded. “Yes, yes, a will. Of course. There you go. There’s no need for you to go to Key West.”
“Yes, there is.”
“An attorney can arrange for a funeral.”
“Avery, he was my grandfather.”“But we have work to do!” he said.
“Avery, I will bring my computer. And my scanner. And I will send you the strips, and you will set them up for animation. It will all be fine. Seriously. We’re ahead.”
“You can never be ahead in this business. We have to keep the Web stuff going daily—that’s the only way to really acquire an audience. The bigger we get on the Web, the more the advertisers will pay,” he reminded her.
“I have to go.”
He frowned. “I don’t think you should go.”
“Why?”
“I’m seeing a guy who reads tarot cards,” he told her.
“Okay…?”
“He warned me that a friend would want to go on a dangerous journey,” Avery said, his expression somber and grave. “It’s dangerous.”
“The danger is in getting a serious sunburn,” she said. “Avery, I lived there, remember?”
“And your mother died there, remember?”
She felt a chill, and it was almost as if she knew the words would haunt her later.
“You can take me to the airport, if you want,” she told him.
He sighed deeply. “You’re going to go no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He came over to her and drew her into his arms, hugging her tightly. She was touched by the gesture; she had thought that he didn’t want her going because he was so ambitious, and he liked to work together, with her at his beck and call whenever he had an idea.
But he seemed genuinely concerned.
She drew away from him. He was so gorgeous.
“It’s okay. I’ll see to the house and his things. I owe Cutter that much. And I want to have a funeral for him. Then I’ll be back. It will all be fine. Really,” she assured him.
“No. That’s not what will happen. You’ll go home, you’ll see old friends. You won’t want to come back here.”
“I left as a teenager. My life is here,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
He wagged a finger at her. “If you’re not back immediately, I’ll be down there to get you. I’ll take care of you. And if there’s anything bad, well…I’m psychic, you know.”
She laughed. “No, I didn’t know. But by all means. Key West is beautiful. Come on down.”
He sniffed.
At last he left, still offering dire warnings to her.
She needed to pack, but she wandered out to the porch and gazed at the pool she shared with the others who lived in the group of old bungalows. She stared at the water.
Cold water. Even heated, it was still cold, in her mind.
Key West had warm water. Beautiful, warm water.
A sudden scream startled her and brought her back inside. She had a habit of keeping the television on for company. One of the movie channels was running an all-day marathon of classic horror movies.
Someone was running from a werewolf.
She smiled and sat, and then stretched out on her sofa, watching the television. As she did so, her eyes grew heavy. A nap would be great; she had tossed and turned through the night.
As she felt herself nodding off, she thought about fighting sleep.
She knew that she would dream.
It seemed that a scene from a movie was unfolding. The house was distant at first, sitting on its little spit of land. The water around it was aqua and beautiful, as it could only be around Florida and the Caribbean.
But then dark clouds covered the soft blue of the sky, and the ocean became black, as if it were a vast pit of tar.
The camera lens within her dreaming eye came closer and closer, and the old Victorian with its gingerbread façade came clearer to her view. She heard a creaking sound and saw the door was open, that the wind was playing havoc with the hinges.
She was in the house again, and she heard the screams and the wailing, and she saw her father, as she had seen him that day, holding her mother, the sound of his grief terrible. She ran toward him, screaming herself, calling for her mother.
Then Cutter himself came running down the stairs, crying out in horror. He sank down and she felt herself freeze, just standing there as she had on that day.