Shiver Read Free

little farther, hoping for relief from the heat.
    Happy birthday to you…
    The wind seemed to sigh that damned funeral dirge of a song through the branches of the live oaks, causing the Spanish moss to shift as dusk settled deeper into the woods. Off in the distance she heard the rumble of a train. Closer in, at a neighbor’s place down this winding country road, she heard a dog barking and through the trees she watched the ghostly image of a rising moon.
    Her 35-millimeter camera was sitting on the counter near the back door and the dusk was so still and peaceful, so intriguing, she thought she might click off a few shots and kill the roll. The film inside the camera had been there for a long time as she used her digital more often than not. Leaving the wine on the counter, she turned on the camera and flash, then walked to the French doors off her dining room. Stepping outside, she positioned herself on the edge of the flagstones. Ansel, her cat, followed Abby outside and hopped onto a bench located under a magnolia tree. Abby focused then clicked off the last few shots of the tabby with the darkening woods as a backdrop. The cat faced away from the house, ears pricked forward, his eyes trained on the trees, his fur gilded by a few rays of a dying sun. “Hey, buddy,” she said, and the cat looked over his shoulder as she took the last couple of shots with the flash flaring in Ansel’s gold eyes. Why not have a few pictures of this, her thirty-fifth birthday? she thought as she turned to go inside.
    Snap!
    A twig cracked in the woods nearby.
    Her heart jumped to her throat.
    She spun around, half expecting to spy someone lurking in the deepening umbra. Eyes searching the coming darkness, she strained to see through the vines and brush and canopy of leafy trees. Her skin crawled, her pulse jack-hammering in her ears.
    But no human shape suddenly appeared, no dark figure stepped into the patches of light cast from the windows.
    Stop it, she thought, drawing in a shaky breath. Just…stop it. She’d been in a bad mood all day. Testy and on edge. Not because it was her birthday, not really. Who cared about the passing of another year? Thirty-five wasn’t exactly ancient. But the fact that this was the twentieth anniversary of her mother’s death, now that got to her.
    Still jittery, she walked into the house and called to the cat through the open doors.
    Ansel ignored her. He remained fixed and alert, his gaze trained on the dark shadows, where she expected a creature of the night might be staring back. The same creature who had stepped on and broken a twig. A large creature. “Come on, Ansel. Let’s call it a day,” she urged.
    The cat hissed.
    His striped fur suddenly stood straight on end. His ears flattened and his eyes rounded. Like a bolt of lightning, he shot across the verandah and around the corner toward the studio. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she could catch him.
    “Oh, ya big pussy,” she teased, but as she latched the door behind her, she couldn’t quite shake her own case of nerves. Though she’d never seen anyone on the grounds behind her place, there was always a first time. Leaving her camera on the dining room table, she made her way back to the kitchen, where the answering machine with its blinking red light caused her to think of Zoey again.
    Abby and her sister had never been close, not for as long as she could remember.
    Damn you, Zoey, she thought as she picked up her glass and took a long swallow. Why couldn’t Abby have had that special bond with her sister, that best-friends kind of thing which everyone who did seemed to gush on and on about? Could it be because Zoey and Abby were so close in age, barely fourteen months apart? Or maybe it was because Zoey was so damned competitive with her uncompromising I’ll-do- any thing to win streak. Or maybe, just maybe, their antagonism was as much Abby’s fault as her sister’s.
    “Blasphemy,” she muttered, feeling the chilled wine