Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (50 page)

***

He opened his eyes to a bustle of
activity. Glowing orbs of glass hung from a silver cable, warming the room with
incandescent light. The bitter aroma of roasted coffee filled every crevice.
Burlap sacks that once held beans hung from the walls, decorated with stamps
from their countries of origin. A behemoth, silver freezer sat in one corner,
rumbling as it kept the gourmet ice cream frozen. The machine on the counter
whistled, and a barista coaxed the hot air into a frothy mix.

A man with a black fedora sat in the
corner, perched atop a three-legged stool like a pigeon on a skyscraper. He
wore a maple-bodied acoustic guitar strapped across his torso, fingers moving
across the frets. He spilled blue notes and minor chords into the swirling mix
of muted conversation and clanking dishes. Samuel recognized the melody, an old
delta blues standard, but he could not place the song. A microphone jutted from
the top of a stand, but the guitarist ignored its existence, his head down and
swaying along with the swinging beat created by his right hand above the sound
hole.

Samuel looked down at a white mug on a
table. A book and a folded newspaper sat askew, the newspaper dangling from the
edge as if trying to escape. He could see the dark swirls in his chai latte as
the steam climbed through the air. He noticed a half-dozen other people
involved in various solitary acts. One woman bounced her head in rhythm to the
song confined to her ear buds, ignoring the guitarist pouring his soul forth
from the guitar. One man sat in the corner, a single chair at a small table
facing the wall. He thumbed through a crumpled, dog-eared book. A young couple
sat at a table across the room. They both wore safety pins for earrings and
patches on their black leather jackets, declaring allegiance to long-dead punk
bands. The man had his hands on the table face up, while the woman had hers
inside of his, facedown. They gazed into each other’s faces, oblivious to
everyone else in the room.

Samuel turned back to the bluesman. He
saw the alabaster skin on his hands and chuckled. Purists claimed the white man
could never play the blues like the originators, but he wasn’t a purist. Samuel
closed his eyes and let the familiar, twelve-bar pattern soothe his nerves.

“Is this seat taken?”

The question ripped him from his
thoughts. He opened his eyes to find a woman standing before him, holding a
steaming mug and a Danish on a plate. The corner of the wax paper beneath the
pastry stuck out at Samuel like a preschooler’s tongue.

“No,” he said.

Samuel felt an immediate sense of
connection with the woman or, more accurately, the girl. But he also felt a
deep sadness. She appeared to be on the verge of womanhood, sparkling eyes,
slight hips and an optimism about love and life she would share with everyone
she knew.

She wore her jet black hair
below the shoulder in wavy patterns that reflected deep, purple hues in
the light of the coffee shop. Samuel loved the way it framed her oval face. The
woman’s skin shone with a brilliance punctuated by dark eye shadow and
glistening, maroon lips. She shed her bulky winter coat to reveal a lithe form
beneath. Faded, black jeans clung to her shapely legs and rode low on slender
hips. She wore a ragged, gray sweater over a black nylon top that held her
breasts upright. Samuel guessed her to be in her early twenties, but with a
vulnerability that made her appear even younger. He made eye contact, trying to
avoid being hypnotized by her blue eyes.

“I’m Mara,” she said, extending her hand
outward while placing her coffee on the table.

“Samuel,” he said.

“I never approach guys. Even at the
bar. Sorry if this is a bit awkward.”

He smiled and waved off the fumbling
attempt to break the ice. “It’s fine.”

Mara paused and took a long look. She
gazed at Samuel, and he saw electricity pass through her face.

“Oh my god,” she whispered.

Samuel sat still. He lifted his mug to
his lips until the coffee singed his bottom lip.

“What am I doing here?” she asked.

Without waiting to confirm her
revelation, Samuel explained. “I know I’m asleep. Dreaming. Maybe you are, too.
Even if you’re not, I think we can communicate this way. I did with Kole.”

She froze, as if that name slapped her
across the face. She looked around at the bluesman, the punk lovers, the
bustling barista.

“I don’t know,” she said. Mara looked
at her hands, holding shiny, red nails up to her face. “It feels so real.”

“Most dreams do, until you wake up.”

She nodded in agreement. “How can we—
What should—”

Samuel laughed as Mara’s brain struggled
to process what was happening. “I don’t know. The dream scenario I had with
Kole was, well, not quite as comfortable as this one. Why don’t we enjoy our
gourmet coffees and talk?”

Mara looked over each shoulder as if
the authorities were about to break down the door in an FBI raid.

“I think we’re good until I wake up.
Scone?”

She smiled and leaned back in the
chair. “I miss this,” she said, twirling a strand of hair around her slim
fingers. “I miss my hair, the fragrance of my body wash, insignificant things.”

“Funny how life’s little pleasures
escape your notice until you lose them all,” Samuel said. “I miss my music.”

He turned to face the man in the
fedora. The melody changed. The key changed. However, the faceless guitar
slinger continued to jam those comfortable, familiar chords.

“Tell me about you,” Samuel said.

Mara blushed and passed a hand in
front of her face.

“Sorry. That sounded so bad. Didn’t
mean to embarrass you.” He shuffled in his seat and moved his mug from one hand
to the other.

“It’s okay. I’m not very good around
guys.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, leaning
forward. “Guys at your school must be tripping over you.”

Mara shook her head. “Dropped out
second semester sophomore year and never went back. I commuted, anyways. Didn’t
really buy into the whole college experience.”

Samuel left it at that, sensing the
scab on that wound never entirely healed. “I get it.”

“What was college like for you, you
know, back in the day?” she asked with a wide smile.

Samuel leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
“It was hard carrying all the clay tablets back and forth to class. We didn’t
even have the wheel back then.”

“I didn’t mean it that way—”

Samuel took a turn at dispelling the
clumsiness. “I know.”

Mara sipped from her mug. Samuel loved
the way she cupped her long, slender fingers around it on both sides. If she
had a scarf, she could be on the cover of one of those trendy catalogs for
European kitchen gadgets.

“You’re kinda cute for an older guy.”

Samuel blushed. The bluesman stopped
playing and was shuffling through a handful of papers while holding the guitar
on his lap.

“Tell me your story,” Samuel said.

“Can’t we just sit here and drink
coffee and leave it at that?”

He sensed reluctance in her voice, but
felt a pressure to force the issue.

“I don’t think that’s why we’re here.
I think I’m getting these dream opportunities for a reason. It must have
something to do with the reversion.”

The last word made her shudder. It
pulled the curtain back on the coffeehouse façade, which Mara had convinced herself
was the new reality.

“Fine,” she said, a new coldness
emanating from her face.

Samuel waited. He drummed his fingers
on the table as the notes spewed forth from the guitar again. The punk rockers
brushed past with a mixture of leather, espresso and jasmine incense.

“We didn’t have much. My dad worked
the factory. He turned a nut on rods, or some bullshit like that. We never
really knew exactly what he did, but it kept him at sixty to seventy hours a
week. He’d work a full eight-hour shift on Sunday and be home by noon.”

She let the statement hang and gave
Samuel time to do the math.

“Didn’t leave much quality family
time. My mom babysat, which made me and my brother feel even less special. On
any given day, ten or twelve kids would be running through the house. My
dad would come home after a twelve-hour shift and the chaos would eat at him. I
swear you could see it in his face.”

The guitarist shifted into a
down-tempo shuffle that reminded Samuel of “Stormy Monday.” He thought of the
dark cloud propelling the reversion forward, and the title of the song, before
pushing it from his thoughts.

“I’m telling you this because it had a
lot to do with me leaving school. My mom got sick and couldn’t watch kids
anymore, and the factory started losing contracts to overseas companies, which
meant my dad lost hours and eventually his job. I took over parenting for my
younger brother, and I couldn’t do that and keep up with my studies at the same
time.”

“I wonder how many other women have
been in that same situation.”

Samuel meant the comment as a token of
empathy, understanding, but Mara simply shrugged and continued.

“Tommy, my little brother, was late
that night. I was going to pick him up from hockey practice because my dad was
already asleep and my mom had taken too many of her ‘little sleep helpers’ to
even consider getting behind the wheel. I remember thinking how crazy it was
for a twelve-year-old kid to be at hockey practice until eleven o’clock on a
Friday night. They don’t call Detroit ‘Hockeytown’ for nothing.”

Hearing the name of the city ignited a
synapse in Samuel’s dream brain. He felt an ache behind his forehead, trapped
in a place where it would gnaw and fester.
And you let him out there

“I think it was December. It had
already been dark for like seven hours and a heavy, wet snow had been falling
for the past two. Detroit was in dire shape. They couldn’t afford to put police
officers on the street, let alone rock salt or sand from a plow. If you live
there, you accept it.

“So I was on my way to get Tommy,
cranking some killer metal on the car’s CD player.”

Samuel nodded. Then he held up his
hand, flashing Mara the devil horns, an international sign for heavy metal.

“I don’t think Dio started that, but
it’s fine if history thinks so.”

Samuel raised his eyebrows and smiled.
His mind flashed to a Judas Priest concert he attended as a teenager, and he
couldn’t remember any fans that even remotely resembled someone like Mara. He
would have gone to many more if they had.

“Yeah. So the car is really warm and
the music is really loud, two things that wouldn’t be happening in our house.
My time in the car was as much of an escape as I could manage. I guess it’s why
I never complained too much about chauffeuring Tommy around. It gave me time
alone to think and listen to metal.

“He was waiting for me on the curb
with his stick held like a sword in one of those high-fantasy movies. I
remember him being the only kid sitting out there on top of his hockey bag. He
came running over to the car toward the trunk. I pulled the latch, and it rose
like the opening jaws of a monster. He swung all of his weight around to get
the bag to clear the bottom of the bumper. He pushed the rest of it in and then
shoved the stick on top. I heard the muffled thump of the trunk shutting. Tommy
yanked on the handle of the passenger side door, and I shook my head. He was a
skinny kid and not heavy enough to sit in the front, you know, with the airbag
laws and stuff.”

Samuel nodded. The more Mara talked,
the more he shifted in his seat. The delicate strumming of the bluesman started
to erode his patience.

“Tommy climbed into the backseat and
started immediately yapping about practice. I turned the music down to let
Tommy have his say. It’s not like Mom or Dad was going to ask him about
practice when we got home.

“I made a right out of the parking lot
and eased on to Route 24. The four-lane cut right through our hometown. Strip
malls and used-car lots straddled it with an occasional stoplight thrown in to
allow greedy idiots out of the big-box stores with their plastic crap.”

Samuel smiled. He wiped a bead of
sweat from his forehead and began shooting glances about the room. The patrons
continued on their individual pursuits, and the notes coming from the guitar
strings felt like death by a thousand cuts.

“Like I said, it was December, dark
and cold. With snow. But that wasn’t really a factor in it.”

A wheeze escaped Samuel’s lips.

“I passed through a busier section of
24, closer to the stretch with the car dealerships. They were all closed, but
there was an Italian restaurant across the street from one that always served
dinner late. We were driving at about forty-five, keeping the limit. We had
some old-school Metallica jamming. Pretty sure it was
Ride the Lightning
, probably “Fade to Black.” Tommy
and me, we loved that song. The dynamics are brutal.

“There weren’t many cars on the road,
but enough to keep the headlights dancing in the mirrors. Tommy shifted into
the center area of the backseat, finding some way to do that while keeping the
seatbelt fastened. He knew I’d friggin’ flip if he didn’t have it on.”

Mara shifted in her seat and drew a
breath. She had doled out as many of the inconsequential details as she could,
and now it was time to tell Samuel what he wanted to know.