Dark and Shallow Lies(15)

OUIJA BOARDS

You know. The kind of stuff everybody keeps in storage.

I move the boxes one by one until I can see behind them, to the spot where the trunk should be. And I’m not surprised when it isn’t there.

“You huntin’ somethin’?” A deep voice echoes in the almost-dark just as a shape moves into the open doorway, blocking out the dying light.

I whirl around fast, knocking over one of the boxes and sending Christmas ornaments spilling across the dusty floor.

The shape in the doorway is huge and silhouetted against that little bit of light from outside, so I can’t make out any facial features. There’s just an empty nothingness.

étranger. The stranger.

I take a step backward, pressing myself into the boxes behind me. Then there’s a flash of light. The smell of sulfur. A glimpse of dark red hair.

Case holds the lit match up near his face, and the featureless monster disappears.

He takes a step toward me, and that’s when I notice what he’s holding in one hand. It’s a long pole with four barbed prongs on the end. Sharp. Deadly. A frog gig. They’re illegal, but some people down here still use them for hunting in the shallows.

“Heard you was home,” he says. Then he looks around the shed and repeats his question. “Lookin’ for somethin’?” His eyes sweep the floor, searching the shadowy corners.

“No,” I lie. “Just putting something away. For Honey.” I bend down and scoop up the scattered ornaments. I don’t know why my hands are shaking.

Case is my friend.

The match goes out, and we’re left in the dark again.

“Case,” I say, and I try to make my voice sound even. Calm. But he doesn’t let me finish.

“I didn’t do it, Grey. Whatever dey told you I done – whatever Hart said – I never laid a goddamn hand on Elora.” There’s something hurt in his voice. Something real. Something that reminds me I’ve known Case my whole life. “Shit. I know ya know dat.” I hear his Cajun accent bleeding through. Rough as he can be, Case always sounds like music when he talks. There’s a long pause, then, “Jesus, Grey. I loved ’er.”

“She loved you, too.”

Dammit.

I correct myself. “She loves you, too.”

“Bullshit.” Case shakes his head and leans against the doorframe. “Don’t play dat game, Grey.”

“What do you mean?”

He laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that’s splintered around the edges. Like a thing that’s been dropped. Or stepped on. “Elora was in love, yeah, but it sure as shit wadn’t wit’ me.”

“Who?” It’s the only word I can choke out.

Case strikes another match, and for a second I see his eyes. They’re green, like mine, but in the match’s orange light, they glow hard and bright like the night shine of some nocturnal animal.

“No clue,” he says. “I figured if anybody was to know, it’d most likely be you.”

But I don’t have any idea, and right now, the fact that Elora might finally have been in love – really in love – and I didn’t know anything about it is just one more deep wound.

“How do you know there was somebody else?” I ask, and Case laughs again. Then he turns his head to spit behind him into the mud.

“Didn’t take a fuckin’ psychic to see it. Trust me.”

Suddenly I’m thinking back to last summer. How Elora started pushing me away, almost as soon as I got here. I was suffocating her, she said. She needed some space. Time alone. Things she’d never wanted before. At least, not from me. And I’d been angry. Hurt and ugly. So I’d latched on harder – refused to give her what she needed – instead of taking the time to figure out what might really be going on with her.

What if she’d been hiding a secret romance?

“I don’t know anything,” I tell Case. He blows out the last match, and darkness sweeps over his face again. “I need to get back inside. Honey’s waiting for me.”

Case steps out of the doorway, and I move to squeeze past him. But just as I’m about to step out on to the boardwalk, he grabs me by the arm and jerks me back. Hard. He moves like lightning, raising the frog gig and bringing it down with a stabbing motion in front of my feet. I gasp and try to pull away, but when Case lifts the gig, there’s just enough light to see a thick black snake squirming on the end of it.

“Whoa dere,” he says. “That’s a cottonmouth, sure.” And I recoil like I’ve been bitten. “Gotta be careful pokin’ round out here in da dark.” His voice is thick and slow as bayou mud. “Dat sucka nearly got ya.” Case shakes the dying snake off the gig into the long grass beside the boardwalk. “Careful where ya steppin’, chere.”

Chere. Pronounced like sha. It’s a Cajun word. A term of endearment. Like darlin’. Sweetie. Sugar pie. Nobody ever calls me “chere” in Arkansas. Only in La Cachette, and usually it makes me smile.

But not tonight.

“T-thanks,” I stammer. My heart is beating ninety miles an hour. I look back down at the boardwalk, and I can make out a trail of ooze and mud standing out against the fresh white paint. Marking the places where the snake has touched.

When I look back up, Case has vanished into the dark. Silently. Like he came.