AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m fine. Just enjoying some time in the sauna.”
“Why don’t you come out of there before you pass out and I have to drag you out by your boots?”
“Sounds a little kinky.”
“You won’t enjoy it, trust me. Come on. Let’s get paid and get rid of these squirrels.”
Cody rolled to his side then got to his hands and knees and crawled out the half door into the equally hot room beyond. Once downstairs, Demmy collected a check from the woman whose white hair was combed back from her forehead and cut short. Add to that her small, cold blue eyes that could have been chipped off a glacier, and Cody definitely thought she had the potential to be some kind of relation to Jordie the sadist.
Outside, they both sighed as they peeled off their sweaty coveralls. The squirrels scrabbled around inside the carrier as Cody secured the coveralls inside an old duffel he once used to cart his football uniform between school and home. Over two decades worth of his funk was inside that duffel, and now Demmy’s was being added to it. Pretty much a perfect description of their relationship that, for some reason, had him halfway hard. Huh.
Once behind the wheel, he gave himself a moment to enjoy the blast of the air conditioner, then looked over at Demmy.
“Usual spot to let the squirrels run free?”
Demmy nodded as he wiped sweat from his forehead. “I think so, don’t you?”
“I’m too overheated to form an opinion.”
“Cody Bower without an opinion? I’m making a note of this date.” Demmy tapped at his phone.
“You know what?” He tried to think of a comeback and gave up with a feeble wave. “Forget it, I’m too overheated to even sass back.”
Demmy tapped at his phone again, apparently making another note.
“Keep it up, funny guy,” Cody said, easing the truck away from the curb. When he turned onto Main Street there was little traffic. Not that their small town of Parson’s Hollow ever dealt with much in the way of traffic, but he had noticed a difference lately.
“Weird not having to worry about her,” Demmy said.
It was, of course, as if Demmy were reading his mind. Cody had been thinking about the Widow Monroe. She’d died—twice, if he were to get technical about it—just before the Fourth of July, and she had left Cody her behemoth of a car. Without that Cadillac peeling away layers of the ozone as she either sped or puttered down the street, depending on how she was feeling, the town just seemed to be any other small Pennsylvania town.
“Yeah. Who’s going to drop in out of the blue and save us from monsters?”
“You say that as if you’re expecting us to find another monster case,” Demmy said.
Cody glanced at him. “You say that as if you’re expecting we won’t find another monster case. You know what kind of luck we have.”
“Bad,” Demmy said with a sigh.
“The baddest.”
They were quiet after that. The tires hummed along the asphalt as the road took them out of downtown through the neighborhood of small homes built before the war, some before the first World War. Their home—or, rather, Demmy’s Aunt Amelia’s home which she had offered to them a few years ago—was in the mix of houses, and Cody liked the warm and comfortable feelings brought up by the thought of it.
Main Street turned into Route 118. This stretch of road, though still considered Parson’s Hollow, was maintained by the county, and therefore a little more rough around the edges. The hum of the tires shifted to something more like a whine, but Cody didn’t mind. It was a familiar sound that spoke to his body, gave him a sense of place.
He and Demmy had yet to speak, and Cody enjoyed the comfortable quiet. It was the result of decades of friendship which had built into a love so much deeper than Cody had ever hoped to find. Sometimes, thinking about them like that helped him understand why he’d been so slow to see it for what it was all those years ago.
Cody slowed and turned onto Morley Trail, a one-time logging road used by a lumber mill gone out of business long ago, and which was now a single lane dirt and sand trail that wound through stands of hardwood and pine trees. Morley Trail meandered around Parson’s Pond, coming back to join itself just before the connection with the paved Route 118. The pond was, in actuality, a small and rather deep lake, but nobody had ever called it Parson’s Lake because that didn’t roll off the tongue like Parson’s Pond.
He drove slowly along the trail, navigating the familiar ruts and dips, until he reached the customary spot with enough room for him to pull the truck off onto firmer ground. The squirrels chattered and cried, and Cody was anxious to be rid of them. The dust from the attic felt as if it had mixed with his sweat to create a kind of paste that clogged his pores and left him feeling even warmer.
“I feel gross,” Demmy grumbled as he lowered the tailgate.
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Cody said. “And now that I heard myself say that, it kind of turns me on.”
“There isn’t much that doesn’t turn you on.”
Demmy hopped up into the truck bed and knelt to release the bungee cords holding the carrier in place. The squirrels ran around the confines, making a sound that was like a combination of a grunt and a scream as their claws scritch-scratched across the plastic surface.
