A Dark Autumn Read online

  Dedication

  For Angie. Maybe you shouldn’t read this one.

  Chapter One

  The radio was mostly static with only fragments of “China Girl” fading through, so Michelle Hopkins shut it off. Now that she was higher up the mountain with dense woods and rocky hills on each side of the car the reception had gone bad and would continue to get worse. She’d been listening to an eighties station and enjoying it, but it would be a more soothing drive if she rolled the windows down, letting the breeze nip at her face, and smelling the rich autumn air.

  Too bad Britt won’t get to enjoy the weekend with us.

  They’d been planning the trip all month, a long weekend at her parents’ cabin in Mountain Rock. They’d picked the first weekend of October, when it would be chilly at night, great weather for cuddling, and with warm days, which was good for hikes and swims.

  It would have been perfect. Romantic. Would’ve been. Instead, she was making the drive solo. After Britt learned yesterday that he would have to work this weekend, delivering parts for his father’s auto shop to a service garage in Raleigh, Michelle improvised, changing her plans spur of the moment.

  Now the weekend would be a reunion of sorts with the old gang.

  Michelle had recently run into Lucy at Wal-Mart. She hadn’t seen her in over five years, but there she’d been, looking for vitamins, and had spotted her doing the same. She’d tried to track Lucy down on Facebook, Twitter, and she’d even used a website that had promised it could reunite her with high school friends, but found nothing.

  A quick trip to Wal-Mart had changed everything. They’d exchanged phone numbers with a promise to get together.

  Yesterday Britt delivered the bad news while they were eating lunch at Blanch’s Diner. As she was driving back to work, depressed and tempted to stay home all weekend, the idea to call Lucy popped in her mind. Michelle assumed Lucy would decline, but Lucy surprised her by saying yes, and not only that, she would see if Helen and Amanda would tag along.

  Just like old times.

  The road leveled out as she took the exit for the Blue Ridge Parkway. A longer route, but the countryside was beautiful and worth the extra time. Normally, she would pull off at the Seven Devil lookout, sit on the hood of her car, and stare at the vast array of sloping woodland. She checked the clock in the console, and seeing it was already past nine, realized she’d have to skip it for now, but would definitely stop on the way back. This was her favorite time of the year, and the Seven Devil lookout had the best view.

  She wasn’t going to miss it.

  The wind whipped through the open windows as Michelle rounded a sharp curve, slapping her long hair in her face. She put on her hat to help keep her lashing hair out of her eyes. She was surprised by how empty the parkway was. Not that it was ever crowded, but being Friday she figured at least one car would be trailing her in the distance, or she’d pass a few bicyclists, maybe even some motor homes. So far she’d passed neither, nor had she spotted a car in the rearview mirror. It was odd, but she reveled in it.

  “I wish Britt could see all this,” she muttered.

  Lucy Wallace packed immediately. Sure, it was the weekend and a short notice invitation, but she had nothing else planned. Her parents were still in Milwaukee visiting Aunt Glenda. And Roy had dumped her to go back to his wife in August. Since she couldn’t afford their apartment’s rent without him, she had to move in with her parents until she got back on her feet. She’d quit her job at the newspaper as copy editor when Roy moved in so she could get his daughter Jenny to and from school, help with homework and have dinner waiting for him when he got home from work. She’d been so consumed with those wife-like duties that she hadn’t noticed him beginning to act oddly and texting on his phone when she wasn’t looking, or the sneaking out in the middle of the night, because she was so exhausted in the evenings that she was normally already asleep at eight.

  Lucy had never considered Roy had been secretly seeing his wife again, and that while she was doing the job his wife should have been doing, they were devising a way to get back together on the sly. One Saturday she’d gone to visit her parents for the day and when she’d come home that afternoon was greeted by a half empty apartment.

  A note left on the counter had explained everything.

  So, other than watching movies on Netflix and drinking plenty of beers, she had nothing else to do to this weekend. But thanks to Michelle, she suddenly had plans, fun plans, and a long weekend at Michelle’s cabin to look forward to.

  The last time was following high school graduation, when they’d spent the entire week in the mountains. Hiking, swimming, canoeing, it’d been the best time of her life. Then they’d run across a group of men camping, and had given them the best time of their own lives.

  Thinking back on it, she couldn’t believe how rambunctious she used to be. How she could do anything spur of the moment and not think twice about it. She never used let her weight be an issue or an inconvenience. But these days, she lingered less on the possibilities of life and more on its penalties. As she skulked closer to thirty, life had seemed to become stamped with a warning label of dos and don’ts.

  Not this weekend though, she thought.

  Nope. She would not let her life fuck up this weekend.

  It wasn’t just that she was thrilled to be with Michelle at the cabin. Helen and Amanda were going to be there too. Amanda had moved to South Carolina two years after high school, and sadly they’d lost touch. She blamed herself for it just as much as she blamed Amanda. But this weekend would be a chance to rekindle the bond they’d had since grade school.

  Nervousness and excitement were bubbling in her gut.

  Helen had gotten pregnant in college and married Roger—whom Lucy had given the moniker of sperm donor—then dropped out to raise their children. Roger went on to become a very successful lawyer as she became a stay at home Mom.

  She wasn’t able to adapt very well.

  Roger’s drinking grew from casual to abusive and eventually so did his relationship with her and the kids. One night she apparently fought back, and when the brutal confrontation was over, Roger was dead. Their two sons were taken from her custody, and Helen spent some time in an institution, but was released soon after. She never served a prison sentence and Roger’s death was ruled self-defense. But after nearly two years, she still hadn’t regained custody of Jarrod and Randy.

  That was all Lucy had ever learned of what happened. She’d been told Helen hadn’t taken it very well, but really, who would have? It was hard for Lucy to imagine Helen being a mother, let alone a housewife. But it was even harder for her to picture her killing someone, even in self-defense. A trip away from it all would be good, an opportunity to leave it all behind for a few days without having to worry about her everyday life.

  Hell, she thought, might do us all some good.

  Chapter Two

  Ricky Myers finished typing the sentence, leaned back in his swirling chair, and exhaled a satisfied breath. He had already finished writing chapter two, and the clock in the corner of his laptop’s screen showed he’d done so sooner than expected. He was tempted to continue straight through chapter three, but decided to wait and carry his enthusiasm into tomorrow, saving the cram sessions for later when he was nearing the deadline.

  Tonight he’d do some light editing on the two chapters he’d already written and start the next one tomorrow.

  Ricky’s stomach grumbled. He felt as hungry as if he’d just finished a long day of writing. Something usually happened to him when he sat slouched over his laptop, hammering his fingers across the keys. There were fingerprint smudges across them, and the white letters printed on the small squares were fading. Writing invigorated him, but at the same time,
it left him feeling completely famished and often sweaty.

  The day was nearing ten. He wanted to eat something big, and not just some kind of snack, so he stood up and stretched. His muscles pulled, tingling as they thanked him for allowing the proper flow of blood.

  He crossed the room to the bay doors that opened onto a deck over the backyard and when he saw how lovely of a day awaited him through the glass, he decided to have lunch outside. Summer was over, and gone with it was the heavy, humid heat, but the day looked crisp and warm.

  Ricky removed the wig he wore when writing, a lengthy mane of red, and brushed his hand back and forth through his own sodden hair. Wearing the wig, and sometimes special clothes, helped him to write better stories than if he tried to work without them.

  He returned to the card table he’d assembled as a writing desk and set the wig beside his laptop. Leaning over, he put a finger on the CTRL button and another on S and simultaneously pressed them to save his file. He was sure he’d done so already, but did it again anyway. After he’d lost a nearly completed novel in a hard drive crash, he now took every precaution he could think of to ensure his work was safe. Each USB port was occupied by a flash-drive. He always made sure he backed up his files multiple times.

  Which he now did one more time, for safety.

  Deciding to print his pages, he clicked the Print icon. The laser printer he’d set on the floor hummed as the toner began heating up. Then it started spurting out pages. While it printed, he walked into the small nook-like kitchen on the opposite side of the living room and poured himself a glass of sweet tea. He liked to make it from scratch, but on the way to the cabin a couple days ago he’d stopped at McDonald’s and purchased four gallons of their tea instead. It was easier to pour and chug, but he was already down to two jugs. Drinking that much tea while sitting at a computer typing was an easy way to gain weight.

  He glanced through the window above the sink at the allure of color in the woods. A walk after lunch would be nice. It was a good way to enjoy the surroundings and also get some exercise. His back would thank him for it after being confined to a cheap office chair for two days, and with more to come.

  Plus, it would distract him from how alone and lonely he was out here.

  It’d been his idea to come to the sticks and work on the new book, isolating himself in the hope of catching something special. So far, it had worked. He was excited about that, but couldn’t escape the realization that he was miserable without Ted. But I’ve made Ted pretty miserable the last several months… He’s probably enjoying my absence. He’d been supportive through it all and Ricky felt he didn’t deserve someone as wonderful as him.

  His ruin started with the emails. When they’d stopped coming in wanting to read his work, he began to stir, thinking he’d already slipped so early on in his career. Writing under the pseudonym Laura Kelly, he’d become—or rather she’d become—a sensation. The first novel, Lust Mirror, attracted publishers and readers like flies to shit. Her second one, Lust in Peace exploded onto the Erotic Horror scene.

  Laura Kelly’s books depicted graphic scenarios, usually supernatural, that consisted of multiple partners engaging in kinky sexual activities. The stranger the better; he’d learned Laura’s readers liked it that way. So, with each book she made sure to include one scene that stood out amongst the bundle where guys would be with girls, girls on girls, and then more importantly, guys on guys. The seriousness and respect Laura treated each love scene with was not overlooked by her fans. They never felt as if they were reading cheap trash.

  But it had taken longer for Laura’s third novel, Lust Redeemer, to be finished and released, although Ricky felt the wait had been worthwhile and it was probably her best piece. The sales and numbers were good at first, but they’d quickly dwindled in the following weeks. Then suddenly his and Laura’s inboxes were empty. The traffic to their email accounts had been steadily declining, and one day it had all just halted. That first day he saw zero messages in the inbox, he nearly cried.

  It was as if the entire publishing world, as well as his fellow author buddies, had forgotten he even existed. So Ricky began a workload that consisted of website interviews, magazine interviews, publishing free short stories on his/her own website, and even blog tours to keep Laura alive. It wasn’t until they self-published the eBook Lust in Space that Ricky felt Laura had returned. It was an instant hit on all the eReader websites.

  The majority of the reviews were wonderful and kind, not all of them of course, because no one can escape the internet troll who enjoys posting negative comments and criticisms on message boards and Amazon even if that loser hasn’t read the material they’re reviewing. It was always easy to disconnect those guys from the legitimate reviewers. Usually you just had to check their spellings, lack of capitalization and poor texting-style grammar.

  After the success of Lust in Space, Laura Kelly’s old publishing house got in touch, pretending nothing had happened, and eagerly anticipating Laura’s next manuscript. That had angered Ricky more than their ignoring him. Plenty had happened. He’d started drinking again, and much heavier than he had before quitting years back. He began seeing a therapist, and worst of it all, he could feel Laura Kelly’s disappointment. She was the one who had been the driving force all along, who picked him up and brushed off his failures, giving him a pat on the back and sending him back out there to try again. Without her, he would have perished. Ricky had become a wreck, an absolute horror to be with, and even worse to live with.

  And Ted had become the emotional punching bag during his drunken binges. But on the day the publisher came crawling back to him, he took a gut-chance and severed all ties with the house. Then, with Laura’s support, he came out of the closet about being Laura Kelly. The buzz was huge. Suddenly, people were talking about him again. His parents couldn’t believe it. He’d even learned his own mother and most of his aunts were fans of his/hers, which he found to be odd considering the erotic fiction on those pages could fluster a gimp. He’d debated coming out of the sexual closet as well, but wasn’t brave enough yet. Other authors had admitted they were gay, and the sales of their books had plummeted afterward. Movie deals became stale. And Ricky had heard rumors it even affected those authors’ creativity and personal well-being. He was finally at a point that he felt comfortable as a writer, and his emotional state was teetering on the positive side.

  He didn’t want to risk jeopardizing that.

  Nor did he want to put Ted through anymore bullshit. So he’d decided to keep it hushed for now, and when the time was right, he’d announce it to the world.

  Maybe after Fear and Lusting in Las Vegas, the next book in the Lust series, was released with a new publishing house, a new editor and, hopefully, many new fans. Perhaps that would be the right time to come clean about his sexual preferences. But for now, he would keep going about things as normal. It was no one’s damn business anyway.

  He made a ham and cheese sandwich with a side order of low-fat saltine crackers. He carried the plate and sweet tea with him out on the back deck. Then he sat at the table and ate while watching the lake’s water gently ripple as it licked the shoreline.

  A cool breeze brushed across him, stirring his hair. He could smell the forest, sweet and clean.

  He could not wait to go walking.

  Chapter Three

  Michelle parked her Honda at the front of the two-story cabin in her usual spot, a rectangle-shaped blemish that had once been luscious green grass, but was now browned and frail under the old oak tree. She and her brother Glen had spent many summer days climbing that tree. It was gargantuan in size to her even now, but as a child, Michelle had thought it reached all the way to heaven. And maybe it could, she’d never been to the top of it.

  She sat behind the wheel, staring at the cabin with her car door open and the engine off, enjoying the drifting air, and smelling the sweet scents from the woods. Pine, leaves old and new, wood and dirt. She wondered why no one had ever been able to acc
urately capture the scent in a candle.

  The cabin looked as if it had been placed there amidst the trees by God’s hand. The lawn was made up of a small, clean patch of grass in the back and around both sides. The front was nothing more than a gravel driveway that blended in with the yard, and the woods enclosed the property like a wall. The lake was within walking distance on a path through the woods, and all the hiking trails that traversed through the thickest parts of the woods could be accessed right from her backyard.

  And of course, there was the camping area where they’d met those campers the last time they’d been here together.

  Michelle studied the cabin. The plants hung from under the eave, where they’d been for as long as Michelle could remember, swaying this way and that. They were still lively and green, although it must have been Fourth of July weekend since they’d last been watered. She should probably water them at some point today. But not right now. She was enjoying the calm way too much to do anything. She found herself almost regretting that she’d invited the girls out. This would be the only moment like this for the rest of the weekend. That was fine, though, because she would probably grow pretty bored in a day, but the girls being here would help her appreciate solitary moments like this.

  But, like all good things, it must come to an end. They’d probably be here soon. She had to get the cabin prepared, open the windows and doors so the four month old stuffy air could be fanned out. She wondered if she should cut some wood for the fireplace, but figured there was probably plenty behind the shed already. It’d be old, but it would burn like any other tinder.

  Michelle climbed out of the car, stretched and kicked the door shut with the heel of her shoe. I’ll get my bags in a minute. She wanted to get inside and get started.

  On her way to the front door, she contemplated taking a quick walk if the others hadn’t arrived by the time she was finished inside. And, if they hadn’t, then she would do just that.