Dirty Secrets

Part 62

Lyla threw open the door and dove onto the back seat, the drone in her hand. Hopefully, the driver was too far away to have spotted her. Jack started the car.

"Don't let him see me," she wheezed.

"You know this guy?"

"That car. Keenan's mom was in that car." Her mouth had gone dry.

The Cadillac slowed.

Jack peered into the rearview mirror. "Looks like a big dude driving. I don't see anybody else with him." He opened the door and got out.

"What're you doing?" she called in a hoarse whisper. Her phone buzzed. She yanked it out of her pocket and muted it.

He walked around the car, looking underneath. She heard the heavy car pull up beside theirs and then the familiar baritone voice.

"Car problems?"

"Got lost."

"GPS won't do you much good out here, pal."

"I was looking for someplace to turn around and felt like I ran over something." Jack crouched, checking beneath the car. "Looks okay. Thanks for stopping."

The Cadillac chugged away. When the car was safely out of view, Lyla crept into the front seat.

"Did he have a ponytail?" she asked.

"Yep. And he called me pal. Pal? Who says that?"

He got back into the car, struggling with the seatbelt. With only one arm to work the gearshift and the steering wheel, Jack had a difficult time turning the car around.

"Want me to drive?" she asked.

He answered with a disapproving glance then drove back toward town with the sun slipping lower in the gray sky.

Holding the drone in her lap, she let out a disappointed sigh. Someone had probably heard or seen the drone flying above the graveyard and summoned the guy in the Cadillac. No way was that a coincidence. The graveyard was probably under surveillance. They now had confirmation that the task would be every bit as problematic as she'd imagined.

"So," she began. "What are your thoughts?"

"My thoughts? We were there for maybe what, ten minutes before somebody showed up? Even if we could get up there with salt and gasoline and shovels all the other shit we need, how long do you think it would take to burn him to ashes?"

His response didn't raise her spirits, and when his phone buzzed and Carissa's name popped up on his phone screen, she felt even worse. He held the wheel with his slinged hand and answered the call. "Hey," he said cheerfully.

She could hear Carissa's velvety, flirty voice.

"I'll be back in about an hour," he said. "Call you then. Kay?"

"Bye-yee," she purred.

Lyla didn't want to look at the expression on Jack's face so she turned toward the window.

My life is an endless suck train.

She thought about the way he looked at her when they had succeeded in putting Keenan in the ground. She'd won his admiration. Together they had achieved the impossible and for a few short days, she had been rewarded with his affection. But that was before her breakdown, before she had been institutionalized. Since then his main concern was how much information she had disseminated while under the doctors' care. 

She stole a look and focused on his lips. How she longed to press her lips to his. But the heartbreaking truth was those days were over. Lyla and Jack were together again, but only because it was a painful necessity. 

Her phone buzzed again. When she yanked it out of her pocket to check Darcy's messages, her hands trembled.

"Something wrong?" Jack asked.

She showed him the texts.

Keenan: GET OUT!

Keenan: GET OUT!

Keenan: GET OUT!

Keenan: GET OUT!

Keenan: GET OUT!

........

As the sun drew a luminous saffron line over the horizon, she hustled out of Jack's car and started toward the porch, Ryan watching from the open doorway.

"Darcy get a new car?" he asked.

"Jack gave me a ride," she said as she squeezed past into the house. Her dad closed the door, watched Jack drive away, and followed her into the kitchen.

"Jack? What's that--"

"Working on a project," she said rummaging through the pantry. "Something for school."

"Really?" he asked with a heaping helping of skepticism. He opened the refrigerator and presented a covered bowl from the shelf. "How 'bout some leftover spaghetti?"

"That sounds good." She smiled and headed for the stairs.

"Where you going?"

"Bathroom."

She bounded upstairs and into her room, dropping her backpack onto the bed. She grabbed her laptop and flipped it open. She unzipped the bag, reached inside, and pulled the SD card from her drone then inserted it into the card reader. She sat on the bed viewing the footage on her laptop.

The image quality was far superior to what she'd seen on her iPhone screen while the drone was flying above the Ames' graveyard. The trees had begun shedding their foliage affording her an improved view of the sturdy-looking metal fence enclosing the plot. She observed a padlocked chain securing the gate. Jack was right, it appeared to be a fresh marker that had been placed at a new grave, no doubt, Keenan's resting place.

She was about to close her laptop when something caught her eye, something she hadn't noticed. It looked like a faint wisp of smoke had appeared, drifted slowly then dissipated. Concealed within the cloud, there seemed to be a hazy suggestion of a form, a mere flash of what appeared to be a face.

Lyla rewound then advanced the footage frame-by-frame. A thin veil of vapor materialized near the new headstone where it hovered for only a moment, for just a frame or two, and then it was gone. She froze the image and zoomed in. Her heart hammered as her mind raced for an explanation.

The optical illusion must have been the result of an artifact created by lens distortion or by a bizarre reflection of the light hitting the metal fence. What she saw couldn't be real. There was definitely a face but not the face of a human being nor was it entirely animal. Wide sockets with dark eyes were set in the face of something that resembled a grotesque version of a lizard-like being.

She scanned the footage slowly, frame-by-frame. Two frames later it was gone. She advanced the footage one frame-at-a-time until she found it again. A cloud had drifted upward toward the fence where the creature appeared. Short, stubby claws protruding from its feet hooked the top railing. It glanced up at the drone then toward Keenan's grave. When it turned, she lurched backward in horror onto her bed, her laptop toppling to the floor. A row of protrusions ran down the creature's spine. She gasped at the thought of it. The thing had a tail.