Page 4 of Starlight

If he wasn’t dead, he was going to die. People who saw him died.

“Where is your phone?” The monster started patting him down. Cole didn’t manage to answer before Mothman pulled his phone out of the pocket in his track pants. “You weren’t there. I didn’t know you were in the car.”

What did that have to do with anything?

Mothman crouched next to him. “Tell them you’ve been in an accident. If you mention me, you’ll die before they arrive.” He dialed emergency services and held out the phone as if expecting him to talk.

Cole’s eyes widened. The monster was helping him? The operator asked again if he needed assistance. “Yes. The car I was in rolled. I need help.”

She asked where he was, and he couldn’t remember what the road was called. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the important details, but all he could see was those red eyes staring at him.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was red and blue lights that filled his vision, and he was being loaded onto a stretcher. Everyone was talking, and he couldn’t focus on any of their words. Mothman’s threat echoed it his head: If you mention me, you’ll die.

Why had it let him live?

CHAPTER ONE

Cole loaded up the truck with enough food for four days.

“You shouldn’t be on your own this weekend,” Mom said. She’d said the same thing for the last two years. She hated that he’d bought the block of land and took off on his own whenever he could. She hated it more when he left on the anniversary of the accident that had stolen the life he should be living and dropped him into the one he’d been trying to avoid, like he was supposed to replace both cousins in the family business.

“It’s better that I do. I don’t want to be around people.” Especially not family who would only remember the good things about Patrick and Chuck. No one wanted to hear that they’d been drinking and hunting and had picked him up late. No one had wanted to know that seven years ago either. Somehow, it had become his fault. If he hadn’t needed to be picked up, they wouldn’t be dead.

He didn’t know if what he’d seen that night was real or not, but he wasn’t about to start talking about stone jewelry, wolves, and red-eyed monsters.

“Cole…”

“Mom. As I’ve said before, the cabin’s pretty much done, and you’re welcome to join me whenever you want, but I’m not sticking around to reminisce about the accident.” He shoved his hand in his pocket, touching the rock and pretending that it made him stronger and braver and that it held some kind of magic. Maybe pretending was enough.

Her voice softened. “You’d tell me if you are having dark thoughts?”

He rolled his eyes. The first year, yeah, that had been rough. He’d had to learn how to walk again. The fractured pelvis and shoulder blade meant he’d never play professional football. It had been a big news story at the time. The school he had been going to had generously decided not to kick him out, but he hadn’t wanted to stay. It was easier to go to the local school. He’d managed to finish high school, but college was out of the picture, even though his parents wanted him to go to the local community college.

What was the point in taking on the debt?

The whole point of football and college was to get out of this miserable existence of barely scraping by. He’d never made another plan to get out beyond football and was now stuck. His aunt had died less than a year after the accident, and then his uncle had virtually stopped working as he’d been unable to function.

Everything had turned to shit.

It was still shit.

The only good thing in his life was the cabin. Saving up for the land, and then the supplies, and then building it had given him something to focus on. Now it was done. He wanted to enjoy it…but at the same time, he needed a new goal. Something else to think about, so he didn’t dwell on what might have been.

“Mom, I’m fine.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back on Monday night. Same as always.”

“I worry about you up there.”

He wasn’t worried about being at the cabin alone, even though he was sure someone else was up there. Of course there were other people up there. Plenty of people owned bits of land, and some of them had been built on. And if someone was living rough, they’d never bothered him. He’d never seen any signs of a break-in at his cabin, and nothing had ever been taken when it was nothing more than a building site.

“Please don’t.” She needed to worry less about other people.

Sometimes, if he was feeling particularly bitter, he blamed his aunt. After all, if they hadn’t moved in when she’d gotten sick, his life would look very different.

Most of the time, he tried not to think about the past; it was easier that way. Much like rehab, it was better to only think of one step at a time. However, only thinking of the next step also stopped him from thinking about the future.

The cabin had given him focus and something to do, but it had also been a safe non-plan because he wasn’t making any changes in his day-to-day life. He was still running the same mouse wheel. It was safe, and it was familiar, and he hated it.

But making a new plan was terrifying.