Raven's Rest Read online

  The woman with the pin proclaiming she was the town witch sat down at the table next to me. On her tray was a small coffee and a large order of french fries. No burger. She sat and immediately popped a fry into her mouth. As she chewed, she eyed me suspiciously. She swallowed slowly and then leaned forward.

  “I know you, don’t I?”

  I shook my head. “Just arrived in town yesterday.”

  She didn’t seem convinced. “Nevertheless, I know you.”

  Maybe the counter girl had been correct in her assessment of this woman’s mental state. “I don’t think so,” I said.

  She shrugged as she ate another french fry. “Maybe not. I’m Jesenia, by the way. Jesenia Maupin.”

  “That’s a lovely name. I’m Michael Cook.”

  Jesenia narrowed her eyes at me. “Always Michael, isn’t it? Never Mike.”

  It was true I preferred Michael, but that didn’t prove she had psychic powers. I smiled and said nothing. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to get into a conversation with this woman.

  She didn’t seem deterred. “I’ve seen you before, though. Maybe not in this life. But your aura is familiar.”

  I chuckled. “Hopefully it’s a nice aura.”

  “It is.”

  I was done with my meal, so I stood and gathered up my trash. I had to pass her table to get to the waste receptacle, so I bowed slightly and said, “It’s been good to meet you, Jesenia Maupin.”

  She sipped a little coffee and motioned for me to stop. “Let me see your hand.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I need to see your hand.”

  I should have kept on moving, but she intrigued me, so I set my tray down on her table and showed her my left hand.

  “The right one, please.” She turned it palm upward.

  “You’re a palm reader?” I asked.

  “I’m many things,” she said, tapping her Town Witch pin with her free hand. She held my hand closer to her face and frowned. “Long life line. That’s good.” She ran a finger across my skin. “You’ve faced hardship. Recently. There’s a split here.”

  Well, that was interesting. I didn’t put any faith in palmists or psychics or pretty much any New Age malarkey, but I had to admit she’d hit a nerve there. “What else do you see?”

  “There’s love in your future. A good love, not like the one you’ve known.”

  A chill ran down my spine. How could she possibly know that my relationship with Kevin wasn’t a healthy one? It couldn’t be in the lines on my palm. She had to have picked up on my body language or something. Some subtle hints my facial expression gave, or the way I stood, or whatever. Still, I hoped she was right. I immediately thought of Trey Ramsey.

  “Is there a name written there?” I asked her jokingly.

  The hint of a smile played on her lips. “If only it worked that way.” Her face grew grave as she examined my hand further. “There’s danger for you in the near future. Someone is going to try to kill you.”

  I had been wondering when she’d wander off into the land of dramatics. I pulled my hand away. “So now I’m supposed to get scared, and you’ll offer to read your tarot cards for me or gaze into a crystal ball. For a fee, of course. And I’ll be a few dollars poorer and none the wiser. Sorry, Mrs. Maupin, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “Jesenia, please. And it’s Miss Maupin, anyway. But for your information, Mr. Cook, I don’t charge for readings. Ever. It’s a gift I sometimes share with those I like, but I never profit from it. If you would like to learn more—for free—I believe that a tarot reading would be useful. Here, take my card. You may have use for it.”

  She fished a business card out of her pocket and handed it to me. It was black in color with white lettering. A full moon was depicted on it, overlooking a barren landscape. Jesenia Maupin: Psychic, Palmist, Tarot Reader.

  Not wanting to cause a scene, I shoved the card into my back pocket, fully intending to toss it into a trash can later. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “I’m not really a witch, Mr. Cook,” she said. She waved a hand toward the McDonald’s employees. “That’s just what the kids in town call me, but I’m certainly not a Wiccan. Wiccans don’t believe in the devil. I do. I know for a fact that he exists. Evil exists, and it resides here in Banning.”

  Okay, creepy. I had no doubt that she was sincere, though. I didn’t get the vibe that she was a charlatan out to make a quick buck. And in a weird way, I liked her. She was strange, but she seemed genuinely concerned over my welfare, a man she’d just met minutes ago. “I have the feeling we’ll meet again, Jesenia,” I said.

  “We will, Michael. May I call you Michael?” She smiled when I said yes. “I think we’re going to be friends. Keep my card with you. You’re going to need it. Don’t throw it into the trash in your room at the Raven’s Rest.”

  “How did you know I was staying at the Raven’s Rest?”

  Jesenia Maupin grinned. “The first word after my name on the card, Michael. Have a good day.”

  Psychic. I walked out of the restaurant deep in thought, pondering my chat with Jesenia. She’d certainly been right about a few things, but they could just as easily have been good guesses. The part about someone trying to kill me was ludicrous, however. I knew practically no one in Banning, and Kevin, for all his many faults, wasn’t the killing type. Controlling, manipulative, demanding, yes, but physically dangerous? No.

  Not paying attention to where I was walking, I nearly barreled into someone in the parking lot. The older man was just getting out of his car and had to back up suddenly to avoid colliding with me.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and I started to walk on, but the look on his face stopped me in my tracks. The man was maybe in his sixties or early seventies, with a jowled face and grizzled black hair liberally sprinkled with gray. There was shock in his eyes, more than you might expect from someone you nearly bumped into.

  “You,” he said in awe.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, somewhat confused. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  The man shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s just that—” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me. “You remind me of someone I used to know. Your last name isn’t Finn, by any chance?”

  “No, it’s Cook.”

  Some of the worry went out of the man’s face. “My mistake. Sorry.”

  He turned and made his way into the McDonald’s. At the door, however, he glanced back at me. I could tell he was still perturbed by our encounter.

  “Maybe,” I said to myself as he disappeared inside, “I picked the wrong town to settle in.”

  BACK AT the inn, Lonnie was in charge of the front desk, and he grinned at me as I came in. “Mr. Cook, how are you doing today?”

  “I’m good, Lonnie. Yourself?”

  “Peachy. Been out seeing the sights of Banning? All two of them?”

  I nodded. “Not exactly a booming town, is it?” The inn seemed quiet, and I noticed that the solarium and the common room (as I’d dubbed it in my mind) were empty. “The business people all out at their conference?”

  Lonnie shook his head. “They’ve all checked out. It’s just you and a couple of other people right now. We’ll have a few more joining us this weekend, though.”

  “That’s all right. I like quiet.” And I believed I did. I just wasn’t used to it. I stopped when I got to the bottom of the stairs and looked back at him. “What’s a good place around here for dinner?”

  “Alfanso’s, if you like Italian.”

  “Alfanso’s it is, then. And I don’t suppose you know of any apartments that are available for rent.”

  Lonnie smiled. “Tired of us already?”

  “Well, I’m thinking of settling here in Banning. I’ll have to find a place to live if that’s the case.”

  “The Jefferson Apartments are pretty good. They’re right up the road on—”

  I laughed. “On Jefferson Street.” I�
��d already figured out that most of the roads in Banning were named after presidents.

  UP IN my room, I was pleased to find that the chairs placed before the fireplace weren’t as uncomfortable as they looked. I sat in one, enjoying the feel of the gas fire, and immersed myself in the world of Harry Potter.

  I had just turned the page to begin chapter seventeen when I realized several things. One was that Rowling was such a good writer that I hadn’t thought about Kevin for over an hour, nor had I fretted over my decision to leave him. The second thing was that it was getting late, and I was hungry. The sun had set, but I’d turned on several lamps in the room to dispel the shadows. I shut off my tablet and set it on the table next to me, then removed my glasses so I could give my eyes a good rub. Just as I retrieved my spectacles from my lap, I heard a whisper coming from behind me.

  “Bryan.”

  Certain that someone had somehow crept into my room without my knowledge, I twisted in my chair to look. There was, of course, no one there.

  But I’d heard the name. It hadn’t been the wind outside, or a creak of a floorboard, or water rushing through pipes in the wall. It had been a voice, a desperate voice, full of longing and misery.

  “Hello?” I said to the empty room.

  It didn’t answer.

  Feeling slightly foolish, I tried again. “My name is Michael. Michael Cook. Are you looking for someone named Bryan?” My heart was beating fast, but I wasn’t scared. Excited, yes. Intrigued for sure. But I felt no threat.

  I got no verbal response, but the air around me seemed to get colder. I shivered and rubbed the goose pimples on my arms. As I did so, the lights dimmed in the room. Just enough to be noticeable. Something or someone was trying to get my attention.

  “I’d like to help you, if I can.” My voice was hushed, partially from the sense of unease I was feeling, but also because I didn’t want to alarm my unseen visitor. Although, truth be told, they were alarming me. Suddenly I felt the need to urinate, but my legs didn’t seem to want me to rise out of my chair.

  Then I saw the figure. Well, a partial figure. It was mostly a white mist. I put my glasses back on to get a better look. A white fog, vaguely human shaped, was hovering near the door to my room. Inside the mist, I could see a face, there one moment and gone the next. When it was at its most defined, I could tell it was a young man, late teens or early twenties. He had sad eyes (the colors were too muted to be able to see if they were green, blue, or whatever) and long blond hair. Strangely, his eyebrows were the most distinct feature I could see. They stood out, dark blond against misty white skin that was there and not there at once. There was just the hint of a smile on the lips when I could see them, an unhappy smile. Wishing for things that maybe had been but never would be again.

  When I looked into those eyes, I felt a sorrow that made my heart feel like lead in my chest.

  “Please tell me how I can help you,” I said, my voice shaking.

  For an answer, the figure seemed to melt into the door.

  I took a deep breath and tried, unsuccessfully, to calm my nerves. Part of me wanted to scream. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck bristling, and my gooseflesh threatened to have gooseflesh of its own. As frightened as I was, though, I felt the figure wanted me to follow it out into the corridor.

  I got to my feet, my legs shaking a little. The lights had come back up, but I barely noticed as I walked over to the door. The doorknob, when I twisted it, was ice cold.

  Out in the hall, I found the lighting had been muted once more. Perhaps the ghostly figure was drawing energy from it. I found the corridor eerily silent, and my hopes that someone else—anyone else!—would be wandering out of their room so they could see the specter as well were immediately dashed. The Raven’s Rest was deathly quiet.

  The figure was now standing outside the room that Lonnie had told me was the Raven Suite. It appeared to be waiting for me to join it, but when I took a few tentative steps, it vanished completely.

  I froze, uncertain as to what I should do. I considered yelling for Lonnie so I could tell him what I’d just witnessed, but something told me that my experience was not over yet. The figure wanted me to go into the Raven Suite. I don’t know how I knew that, but the sense that I should go inside was overwhelming. Slowly, I approached the room’s door.

  Once again, the knob was cold to the touch. I turned it slowly, wondering if the room was occupied.

  The door shouldn’t have opened, of course. I didn’t have the proper key card, and the tiny green light that told a person that the lock was disengaged wasn’t lit. But the door slowly creaked open.

  I stepped inside and entered another world.

  That was how it felt, anyway. It was almost like I was entering a dream, but not my own. The room was entirely different from mine and seemed furnished not as a room in an inn but as someone’s bedroom. There were posters on the wall, and a writing desk piled with books and papers and an old electric typewriter. Clothes were littered on the floor, and I could see into the open closet, which was filled with more clothes hanging from the rod. On the floor under the shirts and pants were several pairs of shoes: mostly big, bulky basketball shoes. I noted that one of the posters was of Boy George, the words Culture Club written across the bottom in big bubble letters.

  The bed was unmade, and there were two people on it, squirming and writhing on top of the sheets. I could see them clearly, although they seemed unaware that they were being observed. The guy on top was my blond specter, and he was bestowing desperate kisses onto the lips of the other guy, who was mostly in shadow. Both were naked, and I could see the blond guy’s erection pressing against the leg of his companion as they made love.

  The blond suddenly broke off the kissing and raised his head so he could gaze into his companion’s eyes. Breathlessly he said, “I want to fuck you so badly.”

  “Should we be doing this?” the other man said. The voice seemed strangely familiar. “What if your dad—”

  “Dad won’t be home for hours. We’ve got time. Come on. I want you so fucking bad.”

  The other guy smiled. I sensed the grin more than saw it, as his face was still shielded from view by the pillow and the shadow the blond guy’s face was casting. “Yeah,” he said. “How bad?”

  The blond snarled jokingly and buried his face in his companion’s neck. He made noises as if he was gnawing away at the tender skin there. The two of them giggled. “Bad. Really bad,” the blond said when the guffaw had died away.

  “You’re sure it’s okay?”

  “I’m sure.” The young blond man sat up, and now that I could see him clearly, I saw that he was gorgeous. His eyebrows were nearly brown, leading me to wonder if he was a natural blond. His face, however, could have been painted by Botticelli, it was so angelic. Skin like porcelain, soft green eyes, and perfect red lips bent into a slight smile. “Turn over, Bryan. If I don’t fuck you soon, I’m going to burst.”

  With a muffled laugh, his partner twisted around so that he was lying on his stomach. There was some shifting as he grabbed a pillow and placed it under himself so that his buttocks were raised. “Just be gentle, Cole. At first, anyway.”

  The blond, Cole, chuckled. “You like it rough, and you know it.”

  Bryan turned his head so that his face was away from my view. “Once we get going, yeah.”

  I wanted to retrace my steps, leave the room, but I was frozen in place. Whatever I was seeing, I was meant to see it. I felt, however, like a weird voyeur, spying on two people who thought they were unobserved.

  But they weren’t really there, of course. I was having some sort of vision. This room didn’t exist, not like this. Not anymore. I was witnessing a scene from the past.

  The one called Cole brought out a container of Vaseline from the nightstand next to the bed and proceeded to grease up his erect penis. He then straddled his friend’s legs and got a big glob of the stuff onto his fingers. “I love you, Bryan,” he whispered.

  “I
love you too, Cole.”

  Cole rubbed his Vaseline-smeared fingers along the crack of Bryan’s ass, a sly smile on his handsome face. Bryan shuddered as one of the fingers found its way into him.

  I tried to look away. I couldn’t. “I don’t need to see this,” I said aloud, hoping the spirit, ghost, or whatever it was that had led me to this scene was listening. My entreaty went unnoticed.

  On the bed, the two men repositioned themselves so that Cole was perched over Bryan’s recumbent body. Bryan shifted the pillow beneath him to raise his ass even higher. When Cole’s cock entered him, Bryan hissed and his head jerked up, finally allowing me to see his face.

  It was my face.

  This Bryan, whoever he was, looked a hell of a lot like me. The same unruly brown hair, although his was a bit longer than mine. The same bright hazel eyes. Same mouth. And now I knew why his voice had sounded familiar. It was the voice I’d heard when hearing recordings of myself.

  Bryan—last name unknown—was me. Or at least the resemblance was strong enough that we could be twins. I looked on the nightstand. A pair of glasses had been placed there. I assumed they were his. These weren’t similar to mine, as they had black frames and were of a conventional size, but I wondered if I put them on if the prescription would match mine.

  Cole and Bryan’s lovemaking was brief but passionate. Cole drove himself into Bryan’s rear slowly at first, but soon he was fucking him with a fury driven by lust. The two were pretty vocal, and it was obvious that they’d been lovers for quite some time. They knew how to pleasure each other, knew what made the other moan and squirm. When Cole came, Bryan was no longer able to hold back his passion.