The Acadia Killer

Chapter 19

The gentle rumble of the dishwasher running in the background was the only sound humming through the beach house. It was almost midnight, and as per what was quickly becoming the usual, Blake was already fast asleep, and I was staring wide eyed out the window once again.

With my mind unable to stop racing and another concussion induced headache on the horizon, I felt the need to do something with my time. Staring at the moon wasn't a productive way to pass time. Honestly, I'd never been good at passing the time. I think my brain didn't know how to let me. That was probably my biggest quirk compared to the average person. Even on vacation, I was still finding an excuse to work. That's why I could never call a vacation a vacation. Everything had to revolve around my productivity, or it just didn't get done.

The more I thought about it, I was starting to realize that my job had become a coping mechanism. Every move I made in life had become carefully calculated by my subconscious. It was all one big coping mechanism. And that was exactly why I was climbing out of bed at midnight, leaving the arms of a handsome man, to do... laundry – I needed to keep myself busy. Staying busy was coping for me, whether that was healthy or not.

I tiptoed down the stairs, pulling the string to light up a floor lamp, and turned the T.V. on, keeping the volume to a whisper in hopes it wouldn't wake Blake. I retrieved the basket of clean laundry I'd pulled from the dryer earlier in the day and set it beside the couch. Flopping down on the cushions, I started collecting garments, folding them, and putting them in their separate piles. Michelle had washed all the bath towels when she'd stopped by before I got back from the hospital, but she hadn't had time to dry them. I'd ended up washing one load and drying two later in the evening.

So there I sat at midnight, folding hand towels and washcloths, exhaustion nagging at my muscles to go back to bed. Given that the dishwasher hadn't finished its cycle yet and I didn't have that much laundry to fold, there wasn't anything else for me to do except work, but I wasn't motivated to work on my website blog and I'd finally run out of photography to edit. I debated cooking something, but what would I make at that ungodly hour? Cookies or pancakes were the only logical thing, I thought, but I wasn't really in the mood.

Putting away the laundry basket, I sat back down on the couch and began flipping through channels, hoping to land on a sitcom rerun that would put me to sleep. Fraiser was always reliable for that.

As I scanned through the channels, nothing was jumping out at me. There was a hurricane barreling toward Florida. Nothing new there. Some infomercials about a bathtub drain cleaner. Riveting. Right before settling on Cheers, I landed on a rerun of the local ten o'clock news. I felt the impending headache come on full force all the sudden. Now I knew what all those cop cars had been about on our way back from the hospital. It had happened again. The Acadia Killer had murdered again.

"...and this is now victim number four, we regret to report tonight," the blonde news anchor said with a glum look. I turned the volume up a couple notches to hear better. "The so-called 'Acadia Killer,' police say, is still on the loose, assumed to be hiding out in or near the boundaries of Acadia National Park. Park rangers have yet to make a comment to news stations at this time, but a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, the parent of the National Park Service, informed national media outlets this afternoon that this has officially become a federal manhunt."

She went on to say the usual spiel about staying safe and continuing to watch their station for updates. I turned the T.V. off and immediately glanced around the house to make sure all the curtains and blinds were closed. I knew all the doors and windows were locked. I'd been diligent about checking that daily, especially before I went to bed, but a little reassurance was going a long way for me these days. I honestly wouldn't have been shocked to turn around and see some dude in a Scream costume staring at me at this rate.

A creak in the wooden stairs nearly had me jumping out of my skin until I realized it was Blake standing at the top of the staircase, looking down at me with concern. He was half asleep and had some serious bedhead, but he looked pretty damned amazing in his white T-shirt and boxers.

"What are you doing up, Mackenzie?" he asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Is everything okay?"

A part of me wanted to yell at him and demand why he didn't tell me about the fourth murder. Surely, he'd already known. But I wasn't in the mood to argue. We were both too tired for that and it wouldn't solve anything. I knew if Blake didn't tell me something, he had a reason, and I was pretty sure in this situation the reason was that he didn't want me to be overwhelmed with more bad news after my hospital stint. I couldn't really be upset over that. He cared about me, and that was enough for me to give him a pass, at least this time.

"Everything's fine," I said with a yawn. "I just couldn't sleep."

"Do you want me to come sit with you? We could watch a movie or something," he suggested, leaning his forearms on the banister.

I shook my head and reached up to turn the lamp off, the lack of light making everything go black until my eyes adjusted. The cloud diffused moonlight streaming in through a skylight was enough to guide me to the stairs and I slowly padded my way up until I reached Blake. He pulled me into his arms and wrapped them around me. It was sweet, comforting. I needed that right then more than I thought I ever had before. So much for catching feelings for this man. That had already happened. Now I had to worry about falling in love with him before I got the hell out of Maine.

We slowly sauntered back into the bedroom, both of us struggling to keep our eyes open along the way, and flopped back into bed together. Blake snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me close, my back against his chest, and it wasn't long before I heard his breathing change. He'd already fallen back asleep. I was still having a rough go of it, yawning but not yet able to submit to sleep. I couldn't get my brain to shut off.

Blake's arm around my body gave me the extra dose of comfort I needed to finally relax, but I was starting to wonder if insomnia induced by trauma was going to become a regularity in my life. If this was a post-traumatic stress symptom, I was going to be pissed. I made a mental note to Google P.T.S.D. symptoms later and learn more about what I probably needed to seek therapy for once this nightmare had concluded.

Forcing myself to shut my eyes again, I tried desperately to think of any way to get to sleep. Counting sheep and all that nonsense you hear about wasn't doing the trick. Eventually, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and put in my earbuds, turning on some quiet piano music. I hoped the peaceful noise would help me tune out the rest of the world around me. After about an hour of listening to The O'Neill Brothers, the piano music finally put me to sleep.

But I wasn't in my bed when I woke up. And Blake wasn't beside me. I was in the middle of the woods – in a dark, menacing forest with an ominous haze shrouding the tops of the trees. Everything was so dim, like the life had been faded right out of every organism. There was absolutely no noise. There was complete silence to the point that you could hear a feather drop on the muddy ground. No wind moved the tree branches. The usual rushing of a nearby water source had been stifled. I looked down at my body and saw that I was still wearing the clothes I'd had on when the paramedics transferred me to the hospital, and every shred of material was caked in muddy water soaking through to my skin. I didn't recall being covered in mud. I knew I had fallen, but only on my back. How had my entire front become muddy?

It was so dark, it looked like nighttime, but I knew it wasn't. I reached for the nearest large low hanging branch and attempted to pull myself up, my arms and legs suddenly feeling very limp. I struggled to climb out of the indention my body had created in the mud, almost as if something was pulling me back down like quicksand. And then I saw him. I couldn't see his face, per usual. He was always hiding behind that dark ensemble in the trees. This time, in the blackness with no sounds around or help in sight, he looked that much more ominous. I felt like I was staring down a demon as he stepped towards me, knife in hand.

A glimmer – the smallest shred of light – caught his ring this time, recalling me back to the episode in the hospital when Blake had placed the item in his pocket. I'd never asked him what he'd done with it after that. I'd assumed he'd turned it in as evidence found near the crime scene. How had this man gotten his ring back?