Instinct by Jason Hough (ebook reader web TXT) 📗

storefronts that have actual tenants are all dark, even though it’s only 8:00 p.m. Most have been closed since five. There’s the flower shop, Petal to the Metal, which experienced quite the burst of sales for the Johnny Rogers funeral. What a strange business that must be, I think. A few doors down is the quaint bookstore, Tales Well Told. The owner, an appropriately bookish man named David Acaster, sits hunched at his desk near the window of the cramped space, illuminated by a single lamp. Before him is one of those magnifying glasses mounted on an articulated arm, and he’s very intently focused on a tiny object held in one hand as he dabs paint on it with a brush held in the other. The magnifying glass makes one of his eyes look six inches around. I wave at him, but he doesn’t see me.

I round the corner and come upon the diner, which as far as I know is actually named Diner. Greg calls it The Greasy Spork, more to annoy its owner than anything else. It’s a great spot—1950s chic, with stainless-steel outer walls and those porthole-style windows. Inside, the booths are clad in red leather and there’s a jukebox at one end filled with classic records of the era. None of it is in what you’d consider pristine condition, but compared to most places here it’s damn well kept.

A few people are inside eating. Viewed in profile from out here on the sidewalk, their presence gives the place a wholesome vibe that is straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Walking by, my nostrils fill with the wonderful odor of Clara’s freshly fried onion rings, the house specialty, and even my pizza-filled stomach emits a yearning grumble at the prospect.

Clara’s just visible through the narrow opening between the counter seating and the kitchen. She waves at me as I stroll past. I wave back, grateful for her help today. Kyle’s help, too. Even Doc’s. At least I’ve won three of them over, and soon maybe Barbara Rogers can go on that list. Just six hundred-ish to go.

“Six-hundred-ish. Right,” I say to myself, picking up my walking pace. I know exactly how many people live here, because when I moved into my cottage I heard the number a dozen times or more: I was resident number 666. Some thought that amusing, but some gave me dark, superstitious glares. It didn’t exactly help ease my arrival. But now, with Johnny’s passing, we’re back to 665. No one’s mentioned that yet, at least not to my face, but I’m willing to bet it’s a topic of conversation.

Past the diner the storefronts are all dark. Not as in closed. These are entirely vacant. Dark alleys run between some, but they’re not like the alleys Oakland had. Those were home to the homeless, or to the hoods dealing drugs. These are simply dark, yet somehow just as menacing. I get the feeling some haven’t been explored in years, except maybe by raccoons.

Abruptly the row of buildings ends and so does the sidewalk. I trudge through fallen leaves, no sound but my soft footsteps and a mild breeze that whispers through the branches. As the sun finally sets on Silvertown, my thoughts are all over the place.

Some part of my brain keeps lingering on what Kyle said, about climate change messing with the bear’s instincts. I wonder now if there is actually a connection between what happened out there and what happened to Johnny Rogers. Perhaps he’d seen the same bear, only instead of standing still he’d run and, in the process, tripped and fell into the ravine?

I get that twitching of my mouth again. This time I try to focus on it. There’s something to this, I just can’t see what.

The dead hiker. His girlfriend, asleep in a cell.

Johnny Rogers, and his poor mother.

Something about their grief that is, I don’t know, wrong, somehow?

I shake my head at that. Wrong path, Mary.

What, then?

A hiker who is terrified of animals fails to run from a bear.

And Johnny, the screen-addicted boy who never left his room, suddenly decides to go hiking? If nothing else, they were both acting out of character, at least according to their loved ones. But that doesn’t mean there’s any connection.

Still, I can’t shake the thought. Something about this is off. “It’s Silvertown, Mary,” I can hear Greg telling me. “There’s always something off.”

“What a day,” I mutter to the pavement. And just think, only seven more to go before Greg returns.

Far ahead, just before a bend in the road, a pack of coyotes emerges from the trees.

I stop dead, instantly on alert, watching.

As a kid growing up in San Luis Obispo, years before we moved to Oakland, my nights were often shattered by the sudden wild braying of coyotes. Around age eight my father explained to me that they weren’t laughing, as I’d thought, but celebrating a kill. That every time I heard that noise, I was actually hearing the result of one of our neighbors’ cats or dogs being torn to shreds.

My dad’s a bit of an asshole, but that’s another story.

It’s been years since I’ve heard, or even thought, about coyotes. I had no idea they were even up here.

One by one they cross the dark asphalt, eyes glowing as each looks at me in turn. I wait there at the side of the road, hand on my pistol, until they’re long vanished into the undergrowth.

Not five minutes after entering my house I find myself staring at the bathroom mirror, glass of water in one hand and the sleeping pill Clara gave me in the other. On any other night I wouldn’t give a sleep aid like this a second thought. But tonight? After the day I had? I think maybe it’s a good idea. Otherwise I’m likely to lie in bed, staring at the ceiling as my wired brain tries to process everything going on. I’ll get my second wind, and be up half