Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid Book 1) Read online

  “Well, I’ve already done some of the favors,” she said. “The money, for instance. That’s taken care of. And I have the address you asked for.”

  Again, she reached into her purse. This time she took out a plain white envelope and slid it over to Cooper. She slid it behind the basket of popcorn shrimp and Cooper’s fish tacos so none of the other patrons would see. Cooper took it and didn’t even bother looking inside. He trusted Stephanie and knew she would have done as he had asked.

  “Thanks,” he said, stuffing the envelope into his back pocket.

  “That bank account only has about five thousand dollars in it,” Stephanie said. “Well, now that I withdrew that five hundred for you, it’s less than that. How are you going to get by without a real job?”

  “I have some extra cash. I took advantage of people thinking I was dead and had my friend help me sell some stuff online. My old journals, equipment, stuff like that.”

  “That’s fiendish of you,” she said, but couldn’t suppress the smile. “How much?”

  “About eleven grand.”

  “It might sound like a lot, but it’ll be gone before you know it.”

  Cooper grinned and rested his hand on the book that still sat on the table between them. “Well, if things get tight I always have this to fall back on.”

  “Writing? About your usual stuff?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t see you ever using a pen name,” she said. “You’re too full of yourself.”

  He grinned, but the comment stung. The Cooper she had known had been entirely too full of himself. He really wanted to let her in on the kind of man he was now—about how he had changed. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened to him, but now was not the time. She had agreed to help him with a certain set of tasks that he knew might work out only to blow up in his face. When he knew for certain that what he had planned was going to either succeed or fail, then he’d tell her.

  Or so he told himself.

  “Things are different now,” was all he said.

  “Am I allowed to ask how?” she said.

  He shrugged and sipped from his beer. “I want to help other people,” he said. “All of the things I know, I want to try to put it to good use.” He nodded towards the book as he said this.

  “Helping others while still grasping the fringes, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the first people you want to help are here in Kill Devil Hills?”

  “Yeah. You said you got the address, right?”

  “Yes. It’s in the envelope. You mean to tell me that you haven’t even called them?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re just going to drop by?” she asked. “You’re just going to tell these people that you found a newspaper article about them and you think you can help. Is that about right?”

  “That’s it, exactly.”

  “Going in confident with guns blazing,” Stephanie said. “Some things don’t change, it seems.”

  “Guilty,” he said. “Hey, how long are you staying here at the beach?”

  “Two days. Then it’s back to work.”

  “You want to grab dinner tonight?”

  She eyed him skeptically. “Let me think about it.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said. “Now shut up and eat your lunch.”

  He laughed and had to look away from her. It hurt him to realize that he may have missed his opportunity with Stephanie Owens. It made him wonder what other opportunities he had missed while chasing a ridiculous career and trying to be larger than life.

  He took another gulp of his beer and looked out to the ocean. He watched the waves rolling in and then glanced to Stephanie. She was looking at him like she used to, with a cute sort of curiosity but an underlying skepticism.

  It felt nice. It felt familiar.

  And for now, that was all Cooper could ask for.

  3

  With two beers and a large order of fish tacos in his stomach, Cooper pulled his car into the small dirt driveway in front of the Blackstock residence. There was another car in the driveway, a good sign that there might be someone home. This is where Stephanie’s address had led him and the moment he saw it, he knew it was the right place.

  The residence was a cozy beach house located about a quarter of a mile away from the last of the year-round rentals outside of Kill Devil Hills. Their driveway was bordered with crossties, decorative driftwood, and the scraggly beach weeds that seemed to grow on most every small dune on the east coast.

  He parked the car and stepped out, trying to imagine what it must be like to arrive home every day and see a limitless expanse of ocean from your driveway. He felt inside his pocket, making sure he had the article he had printed out. He doubted he’d need it, but it made him feel better prepared for the awkward encounter that was just moments away.

  As he walked to the front door, he studied the exquisitely maintained house. In comparison to the rentals he had passed on the way here, it was radiant. Even the small wooden porch was finely polished and clean.

  He knocked on the front door which was adorned by a small wooden sign in the shape of a sand dollar. The word BLACKSTOCK looked to have been written by a child’s finger in the sand.

  Cooper was admiring this when a woman answered the door. She looked sleepy and in a hurry. She gave Cooper an inquisitive stare and subtly inched back behind the partially opened door.

  “Hello?” Jenny Blackstock said. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Cooper said, realizing that he wasn’t quite sure how to approach the topic he needed to breach.

  “Ok…,” Jenny said.

  “I’m actually here because I think I might be able to help you,” Cooper said.

  Wow, that sounded cheesy as hell, he thought as he watched the woman inch back even further. He figured he probably had only five seconds and one more comment before she closed the door in his face.

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “That was a terribly stupid thing for me to say. Let me try again. Is that okay?”

  The woman said nothing. She only nodded slowly, not really afraid, but awkwardly curious. Cooper knew that there was nothing immediately threatening about his appearance. At just under six feet tall and with cheeks that always appeared slightly pudgy despite his well-maintained frame, most people assumed that he was friendly by nature.

  “Are you Jenny Blackstock?” he aksed.

  “Yes. And you are…?”

  “My name is Cooper Reid,” he said. “I was hoping I could talk to you about the weird events you’ve been experiencing in your home.”

  Her curiosity shifted into shock. She pushed the door closed a bit more but still did not shut it. She remained quiet and Cooper used her hesitation to his advantage. He reached into his pocket and took out the two articles he had printed out five days ago. He unfolded the first one and showed it to Jenny Blackstock. He held it out to her with caution.

  “This is you, right?” he said.

  She looked to the article and her cheeks flushed with red. She looked up from the article, titled A Haunted Beachfront Home, and into Cooper’s face.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “The internet. The site isn’t very well known. But the guys that write for it do great research.”

  Jenny was clearly mad now and was having no more of it. She shook her head, and looked to the floor. “Please leave,” she said as politely as she could while closing the door.

  Dumbfounded, Cooper looked at the door and then down to the article. He folded it up slowly and then placed it back into his pocket. He had been expecting his initial conversation with the Blackstocks to be awkward, but not a straight-out failure. He hadn’t expected this at all.

  He still held the other folded article in his hands, not wanting the two articles to be connected, but somehow certain that they were. And now the one solid lead he had on either of t
hem was refusing to speak to him.

  This made no sense. He had known to come here. In many ways, he had been asked to come here—although the Blackstocks clearly knew nothing about that.

  Not sure of what else to do, Cooper leaned forward and rested his hand on the front door, just below the little sand dollar ornament. He closed his eyes and focused on the texture of the wooden door beneath his palm. He tried to get a better sense of the place without the aid of sight, being guided by only the feel of the door beneath his hand.

  The porch smelled of sunlit wood but was almost entirely overpowered by the smell of the ocean behind the house. He took all of this in and listened to the muted roar of the sea, the crying of gulls nearby and, somewhere a few blocks over, someone cranking a motorcycle to life. His focus kept going back to the ocean and the slow yet hectic rhythm of the waves as they crashed along the shore.

  Hearing that, Cooper got what he needed.

  He pictured the waves at dusk, colored an aquatic golden green that no painter could ever get quite right. He saw this and he heard screaming in his head. He saw the image of a boy standing along the edge of the sea, looking out and pointing. He was wearing a pair of swimming trunks with a cartoon shark grinning widely and giving a thumbs-up. The boy was saying something as he pointed out to the ocean, but Cooper wasn’t sure what it was.The boy had tousled black hair and a slight scratch along his right temple.

  Cooper saw all of this with eerie definition, as if the boy were standing directly beside him on the Blackstock’s front porch.

  Then, in a flash, the boy was gone. More screaming followed as the vision or whatever it was dissipated. The screams were the terror-choked wails of a woman, and—

  Cooper opened his eyes and looked to the Blackstock’s front door. He touched the sand dollar ornament gingerly. His heart was hammering and he could still hear the ghost sounds of the beach—not the same waves he was hearing right now from behind the house, but the crashing waves of some other time, some other afternoon long ago.

  With his stomach in knots, Cooper raised his hand and knocked on the door again. Twenty second passed and he had no answer. Cooper knocked louder, this time leaning against the door.

  “Mrs. Blackstock,” he called loudly, not in a shout but loud enough to be heard through the door. “I think I really need to speak with you. I think I can help you with your problems. And I think I can help you learn about what happened to Henry.”

  Henry, he thought. Where the hell did that come from?

  He knocked once more and as he was rapping against the wood, the door opened. Jenny Blackstock stared at him with fury in her eyes.

  “What does that article say about my son?” she asked. “What does it say about Henry?”

  Cooper retrieved the article from his pocket again and handed it to her.

  “Nothing,” Cooper said. “That’s something I picked up on my own.”

  “Where? How?”

  Cooper winced at the question and did his best to give her a smile. Instead, it felt like his face was crooked. “I can explain it as best as I can if you can give me just five minutes of your time.”

  She considered this for a moment slowly folding the article back up. “You know about Henry?”

  “I think so.”

  She said nothing and once again, Cooper handed her second article, unfolding it for her. She took it slowly, not trusting the stranger at her doorstep.

  “Have you heard about this?” he asked, indicating the article.

  The headline read LOCAL 11 YEAR OLD BOY DROWNS. The first few sentences summed it all up: eleven year old Kevin Owens had drowned two months ago. It had been quick—so quick that his parents weren’t entirely sure what had happened.

  “Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?” Cooper asked somberly.

  Jenny nodded as a tear spilled from her left eye. She looked to Cooper as if he had just smacked her across the face.

  Still, she stepped aside and let him through the door.

  “Five minutes,” she said. “But you don’t start until my husband gets home.”

  4

  Cooper sat in the Blackstock’s well-decorated living room, sipping from a soda that Jenny had given him without asking. She had called her husband at work and informed Cooper that he would be arriving in about twenty minutes. They spent that twenty minutes with Cooper sitting in a recliner in the living room while Jenny stood at the bar in the kitchen, reading and re-reading both articles.

  “Do you know the people that wrote this article?” she asked. “The one about my son, I mean.”

  “No, not personally.”

  “How do they get their information?”

  “Lots of ways,” Cooper said. “Anyone that you have spoken to about what’s going on in your house can be a source. Cops, ghost hunting teams, church members, stuff like that.”

  “Church members?” Jenny asked.

  “For exorcisms and things like that. In your case, though, based on the site I got the article from, I can almost guarantee that they got the information from a paranormal investigation team. Have you guys had anyone like that in your house since this all started happening?”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said in a tone that indicated it was a decision that she regretted. “About four months ago.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “No. They tried to blame most of it on how the wind comes through the eaves on the back porch.”

  “Do you mind if I have a look?” Cooper asked.

  “Not until Sam gets home.”

  Cooper nodded. He wasn’t about to push the issue. She understood that she wanted her husband home not only so they could both hear what he had to say, but just in case the man she had never met and had invited into their home turned out to be insane and tried to hurt her. He had no doubt that was why she was standing at the kitchen bar while he sat down. She was standing roughly two feet from the large wooden block that held all of the knives, perched along the end of the bar and the kitchen wall.

  When they heard the front door open and close, off of a small hallway and the foyer which could not be seen from the living room, Jenny dashed across the room and out of Cooper’s sight. She didn’t say a word or even glance at him. But seconds later, he could hear the Blackstocks whispering softly to one another.

  It was a peculiar feeling, but he felt like was a child in school that had been sent to the principal’s office. The whispered voices behind him could have easily been a teacher and the principal trying to determine his punishment.

  A few seconds later, Sam and Jenny Blackstock came into the living room as a unified force. They were actually holding hands when they sat down on the couch across from the recliner. Sam Blackstock wasted no time, leaning forward and looking directly into Cooper’s eyes. He looked furious.

  “The fact that I have no idea who you are and that you came here today talking about my son does two things to me,” he said. “First, it pisses me off. And second, it creeps me right the hell out. So we’re going to give you your five minutes. And if you say anything to upset my wife or anger me, you and I are going to have problems. Am I understood?”

  “Yes,” Cooper said.

  Sam Blackstock was about the same size and build as Cooper. Of course, Sam didn’t know that Cooper had several years of FBI training under his belt. Cooper had never been the most physical of specimens, but he was more than capable of handling himself in a fight. During his time with the bureau, he’d taken down men much larger than Sam Blackstock. Still, he was not about to underestimate the strength and determination of a man that had lost a child.

  Cooper began the only way he knew how. As he started, he hoped the old writer instincts would kick in and he would be able to get the right words out.

  “My name is Cooper Reid,” he started. “Once upon a time, I was pretty well known for some work that, looking back on it, was pretty ridiculous. Before all of that, though, I worked as a field agent for the FBI for a few years. I was recruited out o
f the FBI and into another organization that was overseen mostly by the CIA with some support from the Department of Homeland Security.”

  “Do you have ID?” Sam Blackstock asked.

  Cooper grinned nervously. “I don’t. I am quite fortunate to not work for the government anymore. But if you have any doubts, a simple Google search will show you that I’m telling the truth. I got into some hot water with just about every government organization I ever spoke to because of a book I wrote. It was a blimp on the news a few years back.”

  It was clear that the Blackstocks knew nothing about the Cooper M. Reid controversy that had hummed beneath the headlines three years ago. But neither of them made a move for the laptop that was sitting on a small desk on the far side of the living room, either. Cooper took the opportunity to continue. He did so with caution, knowing that this would be the tricky area.

  “My line of expertise was in the paranormal. Only, the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security never called it that. At one time, I had a good reputation with the FBI. It was so good that I was approached by a ghost organization that I don’t think even exists anymore. I had a degree in astrobiology and was an expert in the field of parapsychology.”

  “Parapsychology?” Jenny asked, looking as if she was absolutely not buying the story. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “You mean like mind-reading and making things float with your mind?” Sam asked.

  Cooper nodded. “The organization that hired me was deep into that sort of thing. They sent me around to investigate some very strange cases. Some were crime-based but many were simple occurrences of the paranormal. Things like haunted houses, UFOs, demonic possession and things of that nature.”

  “I thought those things were bullshit,” Sam said, his doubt thick and pronounced in his voice. “You mean things like MK Ultra and Project Blue Book, right?”

  Cooper shrugged. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, really. And it’s also straying from my point.”