The Grave Shadows

2. The Girl

Another morning brushed across Everett's cheeks. Warm rays filtered through the frames of wavy black silk, shimmering on his naked chest. The glare frustrated him out of the soothing linen. He ran his fingers along the edge of the bed. Not now. His hand slipped and swept up to his temper.

Last night, Everett broke up with two girls he had dated at the same time without the decency to get their names right. The damsels were humiliated, although they should expect such endings from someone without a soul.

Consequence steered clear of the Watts boys, the one with Crowley as his middle name more than others. Crowley was Bill Watts's father, so the other boys once nicknamed Everett Grandpa. From a portrait in the family library, Crowley was far from being a wobbly antique, so Everett never minded the tease. Nevertheless, the inherited greatness was on his shoulders.

Hearing about Crowley Watts, Everett was fortunate to miss the old grace. But at times, the tale of his other grandfather intrigued him. Everett had never met that grandfather either. Gladly, Mary said, her father smiled back when Everett stared at a mirror.

Nobody cared about Mary's father, though. The one who mattered was Bill Watts's. These days, Everett had other names. Girls in town found him a more suitable attribute—soulless.

People in Colt warned one another about Everett Watts. Whoever came into contact with him ended up with either a broken body part or a heartache. They called him Black Sheep, and when they were girls, they added that little adjective. A piece of cautionary advice never stopped anyone. Girls, especially, refused to stay away from such a defective creature.

While Everett was sliding in a pair of jeans, a giggle seeped out of the stone wall. He ran a hand through a nest of his brown hair that needed trimming, massaging frustration inside his skull. Lately, Luke had been purposefully loud. Feeling numb, Everett forsook the urge to remind his kid brother to keep obscenity within the cell.

Cheap laughers from Luke's room were the spirits in the Watts Estate, whereas the family cemetery rested behind a conservatory in the north. And fortifying a shooting range was a thick forest. Perhaps Everett should be glad that they still had visitors.

The Watts Mansion crouched in a cocoon of oaks and cedar elms, a home of three generations. It had more rooms than Everett could count, made of polished dark stone. The main floor boasted one extravagant library, the South Hall, the North Hall, a formal dining room, a less formal dining room, another dining room that was trivial than that, a casual dining room, a kitchen, a poolroom, a gun room, and many other rooms the occupants disregarded. The second floor was residential, the north hallway held by Bill Watts alone as his first two sons moved out many years ago. The south hallway immured the rest of his brats. Everett's room was the second from the stairs before the graves of other vaults. The topmost floor had a simple plan, divided equally for fencing and archery.

Like a hospital at night. One of Luke's guests had described the mansion.

This house should have been a hospital, an old sanitarium maybe, with three stories and four sick residents. But the entitlement stalled Everett here, making him incurious about the outside world. All of his brothers were the same. Even the freed ones who would return when summoned had to realize. The Watts boys cared less for exotic vacations. They ran around in the woods shooting foxes or got drunk in the poolroom, liking Colt because they were royalties here.

Bill Watts's Lamborghini glistening on the driveway cued Everett to hurry out the door. He slipped in a black Ford F-450, allowing its customized dark interior to encase him. Black leather, black dash, black vinyl floor, black hood like the night surface of the lake, black air, and silent music system rolled into a comforting void. Only the white of Dennis Lindley's Philosophy of Statistics on the passenger seat deviated from his theme. Everett tossed his leather jacket on it, but his mood had already shifted. He curled his fingers around the steering wheel, letting the engine's deep hum lull him back to gratification. He loved this truck. Two things felt like it, and none of those were girls.