I’m tired, boss...tired of bein’ on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain.
—The Green Mile
Present Day, Honey Ridge, Tennessee
Brody hated Fridays.
He knew what would happen if he went home. So he didn’t. He hung out at the library until it closed, and then, wishing he had money for a hamburger, he wandered down to his spot on Magnolia Creek. It was a pretty good hike, a couple of miles out of town past the Griffin sisters’ peach orchard and through a hundred yards of tangled weeds, but at eleven, he was up for it. He could have run that far and not been out of breath.
When the night surrounded him and clouds gathered in the inky sky, he once more contemplated going home. He was hungry, but food wasn’t always worth the trouble. He wasn’t afraid of the dark or of being alone deep in the country. Home was a whole lot scarier.
Stretched out on the cool earth with his hands stacked behind his head, he listened to the peaceful night sounds, the sawing rhythm of katydids that sometimes grew so loud he felt as if they were inside him, and the splash of bullfrogs diving from the nearby bank.
A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. It was probably somewhere far off, clean over in the mountains. He wouldn’t worry about that. He didn’t mind a little rain. If he had to, he could hightail it past the inn to the abandoned gristmill, even though the place was kind of spooky.
The mill was probably haunted. That’s what his buddy Spence said. The last time they’d gone there to explore, Spence had heard something and freaked out, so Brody would rather not go to the mill unless he had to.
Would the old man be passed out by now? Or would he be waiting with clenched fist and a hankering to take out his hatred of life on the good-for-nothing son of the good-for-less woman who’d left them both so long ago the boy had forgotten her? Mostly. Somehow it was Brody’s fault that his mother had left, and the old man never let him forget it, though he never gave a reason. Brody was pretty much clueless about his absentee mother. His angry father he understood, but thoughts of his mother left him lonely and nursing guilt he didn’t understand. He must have done something really bad to make her up and leave that way.
A mosquito buzzed somewhere in the humid darkness. He listened close while the pest came in for a landing, waited until the sound stopped and then he swatted. A few bug bites was better than the alternative.
He didn’t like killing anything, even bugs, but as the old man would say, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Eat the dog before he eats you.”
Something about that didn’t sound right to Brody, but what did he know? That’s what the old man always said. A punk kid like Brody didn’t know nothing.
He sighed at the moon and closed his eyes.
Better catch some z’s and wait awhile longer. The old man was a bull, and once enraged, he had blood in his eyes. Clint Thomson was seldom anything but enraged on payday, especially when it came to his good-for-nothing son.
It was a dark and stormy night, a cliché Hayden Winters dearly loved. These broody, moody nights of lightning and thunder and violent wind fueled his imagination like no other. A man intent on committing murder...
The storm had moved in around midnight, interrupting his original plans to sleep. He could never sleep on a night like this. Didn’t want to, especially here in a house filled with memories and secrets.
Everyone, he believed, had a secret, and the South was filled with them. That’s why he’d come.
Hayden had a secret, too, a psychological cankerworm. One that was eating a raw, black hole in his soul. Not that he’d ever let anyone see inside to know that much about him. To the world, Hayden Winters was a winner, a success, a man who brushed problems away with a charming smile. He was a man invited to the best parties he seldom attended and who gave rare but coveted interviews. A man with a charmed life.
But on these dark, moody, broody nights the demons danced around the edges of his fertile mind. He wondered at his sanity, and he knew it was only by a merciful God that he was strong of constitution and could keep the demons in their rightful place. Most of the time.
So he killed people. Dozens of them. Books littered with bodies fed some perverse need in the populace and kept his bank account fat and happy.
In the elegant rented bedroom—the Mulberry Room—lit only by the glow of his laptop, Hayden rose, went to the windows to watch and listen as rain lashed the sides of Peach Orchard Inn with its silver-on-black fingers clawing to get in.
The view outside was far different from what it had been upon his arrival earlier today. An Australian shepherd, graying around the edges, had drowsed on the long and glorious antebellum veranda. Hayden had immediately envisioned himself on the wicker furniture, feet up on the railing with a glass of Julia Presley’s almost-famous peach tea and his imagination in flight.
The two-story columned mansion had shone in the sun, glowing in its whiteness with dark-trimmed shutters, flowers spilling everywhere and thick vines twining like great green arms around the oak trees. He’d driven down the winding lane of massive magnolias right into an antebellum past, far from the distractions and manic pace of the modern world.
Peach Orchard Inn, a simple name for a magnificent house, restored, he would bet, to better than its former glory. His assistant, who knew him better than most, though not well, had discovered the inn while on vacation and suggested he write the next bestseller here. Exhausted by the city bustle and another romance gone sour, he’d jumped at the idea. His ex should have taken him at his word. He’d told her from the beginning that he was neither husband nor father material. The reasons for this aversion he’d kept to himself, more for her protection than his. She didn’t know that, though, and had been hurt.
He hated hurting people. Other than in his books. And the latest episode had driven him deeper into himself. A man like him ought not to need other people.
He could work here, rest here, research small-town secrets for the next thriller. There were plenty of interesting places to commit murder.
Across the road, a single light glowed like a beacon in the storm. The source was the abandoned, dilapidated gristmill that had once been part of this farm. He knew this because he was ferociously curious and knowing was his business. Abandoned buildings provided perfect places to get away with murder. He’d be suitably inspired here among the hills and hollows of southern Tennessee.
A blue-fire javelin of lightning, fierce as a bolt straight from the hand of Zeus, slit the night like a fiery blade. Gorgeous stuff.
Hayden stretched, rolled his neck, considered a walk in the violence.
He’d be up most of the night during a wild thunderstorm of this magnitude. He could feel the yet-unformed story brewing in his blood, a bubbling cauldron of energy and creativity.
Coffee, and plenty of it, was a must. He wasn’t a Red Bull kind of guy. Something about it seemed addictive to him, and if there was anything he feared greater than losing his only useful resource—his fertile mind—it was addiction. Addictions came, he knew, in many forms.
Leaving the laptop curser to blink a blind eye, he let himself out of the luxurious Mulberry Room and made his way down shadowy stairs carpeted in bloodred, his hand on the smooth wooden banister, taking care on the creaky third