Brian Freeman - In the Dark aka The Watcher

At the plate, Gunnar Borg punched a ground ball past the pitcher that took a jagged leap as it bounced off a half-buried rock in the field. Stride bounded to his right and scooped up the ball. He yanked it out of his glove and prepared to toss it to Nick Parucci at second for the out. Then he saw stars. Peter Stanhope ran over him, slamming Stride’s body into the dirt with his right shoulder and jarring the ball out of his hands. Stride recovered quickly and grabbed the ball out of the grass again, but by then, Peter was standing on second base, grinning, and the other runner was at first.

Stride’s right side was black with dirt. He felt as if someone had hit him with a shovel.

“Don’t mess with me, Stride,” Peter called.

Stride fired the ball back to the pitcher, turned on his heel, and marched back to first base. Gunnar Borg laughed.

At that moment, the sky finally opened up.

The wind blew in, and with it, the rain bucketed down. The pelting drops felt like needles. Lightning came, like flashbulbs popping, and the boys sprinted for the cars parked haphazardly in the weeds. Stride ran, too, but in the opposite direction, toward the woods and the lake. Toward Cindy. The field was already sodden, a river of mud. Stride saw beer bottles, a fallen baseball glove, and empty bags of chips. Peter Stanhope’s aluminum bat lay where he had thrown it as he ran for first base. Stride heard shouting a hundred yards away and then the roar of car engines. Headlights streaked across the field. Horns honked.

The downpour followed him into the forest. Rain beat down on a million leaves. His long hair was plastered against his skin. He ran, but it was too dark to see where he was going on the path, and he put a foot wrong and stumbled, cutting his knee. It stung, but the rain washed away the blood. He wiped moisture out of his eyes and pushed through the branches where a bent tree hung over the trail. The spindly twigs slapped back and scraped his face.

He smelled scorched wood and thought that part of the woods close by might be on fire. When the next flash of lightning struck, he could see the orange streak reflect on the surface of the water and see the silvery curtain of rainfall beyond the trees. The lake wasn’t far. He hurried.

Then Stride heard something strange.

Whistling.

It was so close that someone had to be standing almost at his shoulder. He turned and pushed his way through the brush lining the path and broke through into a tiny clearing. A campfire had been built there. A few warm embers remained, throwing up smoke where the rain had doused them. That was the burning smell he had noticed. He didn’t see anyone in the clearing, but then a shadow large enough to be a bear detached itself from one of the birch trees and approached the dying fire. Instinctively, Stride retreated. The man didn’t see him at first. He was a huge black man, at least six foot five, with dreadlocks down to his shoulders and an oddly colorful beret of red, green, and gold. His limbs were as thick as some of the larger tree trunks, with well-defined muscles. He wore a white T-shirt and loose-fitting black pants that had the same tricolored stripe as his hat.

Stride recognized him. They called him Dada. He was one of the vagrants who hung out near the railroad tracks during the warmer months. Dada was whistling, not like a nervous man in a cemetery, but like a cardinal at winter’s end. Free. Loud. Stride backed up silently, but Dada saw him. Their eyes met. The music from his mouth stopped. Stride saw the man’s lips curl into a smile, revealing white teeth against his coal skin. Dada didn’t look afraid or surprised. He laughed as Stride made his way back to the trail without saying a word. His laughter lingered in Stride’s ears, growing fainter as the storm drowned it out.

He continued toward the lake, making his way by feel as he slogged through the trees. Water streamed down his face. Mosquitoes harassed him, and he squashed them with his fingers. He didn’t know how many minutes passed before the path opened onto the sandy clearing and his eyes could see what was ahead of him.

He found Laura first. She had taken cover under one of the older pine trees, its outstretched branches forming a green roof over her head. Her clothes were soaked. She clutched her backpack against her chest and gazed across the dimpled water. In the inch of skin between her shirt and her jeans, he could see the colors of her butterfly tattoo. She looked bottled up and anxious. When he touched her shoulder, she screamed, then clapped her mouth shut.

“It’s just me,” he said.

“You scared me to death.”

“Where’s Cindy?” he asked.

Laura pointed. He looked out onto the beach, and there she was. She had taken off her shorts and was in her bikini, dancing in the rain. That was Cindy. A water sprite. A free spirit.

“Hey,” Stride shouted.

Cindy stopped when she saw him and bounded up the beach in her bare feet. “Hey, you.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Her skin was wet and soft. Her long hair fell across his face.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked her. “We weren’t counting on a storm.”

“No, no, let’s stay,” she insisted.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Really. I want to, Jonny.”

Laura slung her backpack over her shoulder and put her thumbs in the pockets of her jeans. She gave the two of them a strange smile. “You guys be good, okay? I’m going to go.”

Cindy looked torn. She bit her lower lip. “No, you better not, Laura. Not by yourself.”

“I’m fine, little sister.”

“Stay with us. It’s okay.”

“You two don’t need a chaperone. Not tonight. I told you I’d leave when Jon got here.”

“We’ll go with you,” Stride said. “All of us.”

“Yes, we’ll all go,” Cindy said.

Laura hugged Cindy hard. “You two stay. Don’t worry about me.”

“No way. How will you get home? You can’t get a ride now. I’m sure everyone left when the storm hit.”

“I can hike up to the highway and catch a bus.”

“No, no, no, that’s crazy. Come on, we’re all going.”

Laura detached herself from her sister and put a hand on Cindy’s chest. “Look, I’m not being noble. I love you, but I have to go.”

“Not alone,” Cindy repeated. “I won’t let you go alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” Laura said.

“Not alone?” Serena asked. “She was meeting someone?”

Stride nodded in bed. “That’s what she told us.”

“Who?”

“Peter Stanhope said it was him. He told the police that he and Laura were dating.”

“Did you believe him?”

“His story fit the facts, but Laura told Cindy she had broken it off with Peter because he was pressuring her for sex. Tish told me the same thing.”

“Unless Laura didn’t want anyone to know that they were seeing each other.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“What happened next?” Serena asked.

Stride listened to the waves outside the window. The old house rattled in the wind. “I don’t know. That was the last time I saw Laura. Something happened to her in the softball field, where her shoe was found. But that’s not where she was killed. She took another trail from the field and wound up on a beach on the north side of the lake almost a mile away. That’s where Cindy found her.”

“So Peter’s bat wasn’t found in the softball field where you last saw it?” Serena asked.