One Shot - Short Story Collection / Audiobook (Audio + Reads)

6: Full Moon at Lunasa - #TrialsOfLove - Round 1 Winner - Mystery

August 1995, Full Moon

"Kit!" Before his voice drifted away, I saw him, damp, shivering, trapped.

Tully! I threw aside the rug, sat up on the couch, and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

03:17 –– Felice and Spike sprawled in front of the tv, still awake, though worse for wear.

"Where's Tully?"

Felice shrugged, not taking her eyes off the screen.

"He went to crash out," Spike said. "Hours ago. After you fell asleep."

"We have to find him." I stood up and pushed my feet into my runners.

We try not to sleep when we're all together, because it's a waste of the month we've left before the summer ends, but Tully and I had broken the unwritten rules.

"Leave him alone," Felice said. "You're always running around after him."

Ignoring the reproach, I picked my way through the debris of popcorn kernels and empty beer cans. Neither of them stirred as I raced across the hall, upstairs to the small guest bedroom, expecting him to be there.

But he wasn't.

The bed was pristine, floral covers untouched, exactly the way the cleaner left them on Monday.

He must have gone to the large guest room, the one with the en suite bathroom. Out of character, but perhaps he hoped I'd join him there.

With a smile I turned the handle. Moonlight streamed in through a pair of french windows casting the empty room in an eerie light, twin beds sterile and discreetly apart, shadows in unexpected places. Outside, under the full moon, the lush Irish countryside stretched around us, nothing but fields of sheep and cattle, a wide river at one end and an ancient burial site at the other. The silence scared me. Anything could be out there and you'd never know.

I ran on to Felice's room. The door left ajar, floor strewn with jeans and black underwear, duvet in an untidy heap on the bed, Tully would hate this mess.

I couldn't imagine him in Felice's bed, but I yanked back the covers anyway.

Nothing.

That only left Axel's room. Passed out in Felice's dad's bed? Tully? Impossible.

I flew along the corridor, my heart beating as the panic rose within me.

Paused outside Axel's door. Checked inside. Just to make sure.

Empty.

Even the air was undisturbed. Nobody had been in there for days.

I was looking in all the wrong places.

"Found him yet?" Felice didn't budge from her beanbag, merely raised her eyebrows.

"He's in danger." As soon as I said the words, I knew it was true. "He's not in the house."

"Relax, Kit." She ground her cigarette into the ashtray. "There's nowhere else to go."

"Unless he's sleepwalking," Spike said.

The three of us exchanged glances as the thought entered our heads simultaneously.

The river.

"Can't believe we're doing this," Felice muttered as we grabbed our coats. The days were mild but the August nights held a damp chill.

"Take these." She found us each a torch and armed herself with a hiker's stick.

We raced across the lawn, through the gap in the hedge, into the field beyond. Above, the moon was pale in the dark sky. It was so bright we hardly needed the torches.