“No! No, no, no!”
Those words echo through Grace Gardens, between the trailers and modular homes and RVs parked in their spots. This place has residents who live here permanently—like Max and I—but also people who rent pads from the owner for a season, or a month, or just a couple of weeks sometimes. Mrs. Grace Howard is a lovely old woman who opens her arms to anyone who needs a place to stay, no matter how long.
And that’s her we just heard shouting no!
“Do you think she’s all right?” Max asks me. He stands up on his tiptoes, and looks over in the direction of the shouting we just heard, as if he would be able to see over the tops of the homes around us. No chance of that.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” I say, “but she doesn’t sound like she’s happy. I’ll go check. You should get Mikey. I don’t want to leave him alone.”
He nods. Neither of us want to say it, but we’re both thinking of the time not that long ago when Mikey went walking on the edge of the hillside behind Grace Gardens and very nearly fell off. The thought of him dropping like a stone to the beach below, where he could have broken any number of bones in his body, was just as upsetting to me as it was to his father. We’ve both made sure to keep a closer eye on him ever since.
“I’ll get him back in the car with me and take a drive around. When I find Grace I’ll ask her what’s going—”
“Nooooo! You can’t be here!”
This time when we hear Grace shouting, it sends chills up my spine. Something is definitely wrong.
I’m already dropping my brushes to the ground and running that way as Max tells me he’ll meet me there. He takes the steps to my place in a single leap, calling out to Mikey, both of us in a rush. I don’t wait for him. Most mornings—like today—my daily routine includes a jog along the beach, so I’m in very good condition, physically speaking. Maybe I’m no Usain Bolt, but I’m pretty fast when I want to be.
If my Italian grandmother could see me now, she’d say the devil himself was after me. Either that, or that angels were carrying me on Heavenly wings. My nonna kind of went back and forth about which was the bigger motivation in a person’s life—the love of Heaven, or the fear of Hell.
The paved pathways through Grace Gardens are laid out in concentric half-circles, coming off US 101 at the entrance and arcing back around to the highway again at the other end. That’s how Vicki Rayne found my place earlier for her painting. The paths are how all my clients get to me, actually, but mostly it’s just the people living here who drive through every day. It’s not unusual to see a motorhome ambling through, making use of the parking pads and gray-line hookups available to residents for a monthly fee.
So when I come around the curve still moving at a full sprint, I’m not surprised to see a tan and black motorhome parked in the middle of the way. The brand name DynaQuest is written in bold letters across the cabover compartment, above the windshield.
What I am surprised to see is Mrs. Grace Howard standing in front of the motorhome, in a flowered sundress and fuzzy slippers, her arms spread out wide like the wizard Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings in that scene where he’s shouting You shall not pass!
The motorhome is not stopping. It keeps inching forward, closer to Grace. Maybe the driver has never seen those Peter Jackson films with the Hobbits.
I can see the driver through that windshield as I get close enough, both hands on the wheel, looking down at Grace with kind of a glazed look in his eyes. He’s a short man, and a receding blonde hairline makes his wide face look even wider.
There’s blood on his forehead. I can see streaks of it running down almost to his eyebrows.
That can’t be good.
It’s hard for me to put my finger on it, but something about him makes me uneasy. It’s not just the sight of blood, either, which is never easy to look at. No, this is something else. Something about his eyes. They’re unfocused. Dazed would be the word, I think. It’s like he’s looking Grace, but isn’t really seeing her. He’s inching that big vehicle forward like he’s going to drive it right through her—like she isn’t really there.
But Grace isn’t budging.
I stopped in my tracks when I saw why Grace was shouting. A lot of our neighbors are outside their homes as well, watching and pointing with mouths hanging open. Nobody was getting too close. I think we were all too shocked to do anything more than watch at first, but I can see what’s going to happen. If somebody doesn’t step in things are going to get very bad, very quickly.
So I jump forward again, racing to Grace, taking her by the arm and pulling her over to the closest lawn, out of the way of the motorhome’s grill just before it would have made contact with the sunflowers in her dress.
“Land sakes,” she exclaims. Hands on her fists, her weathered face burning hot pink, it isn’t hard to see how mad she is. “Well, I never! I just don’t believe this. Maddalena, whyever did you do that?”
“Why did I…?” And just like that it hits me, that the one she’s mad at…is me! She’s angry that I took her away from her pointless attempt to stop a thirty-foot long, twenty-thousand pound class C motorhome. “Grace, are you kidding me? That guy would have run you down where you stand if I didn’t help you!”
She stamps one slippered foot. “He wouldn’t dare! I told him he can’t be here. There’s something wrong with that man and I do not rent my lots to people like him. I don’t want trouble in my place! He’ll leave if he knows what’s good for him!”
Grace is a small woman, short and stocky, and tougher than any eighty-year-old woman has a right to be. Her hair is gray and still set in curlers she didn’t have time to take out before confronting the motorhome. She’s not exactly frail but she is most certainly a senior citizen, and the idea that she thinks she could stop that hulking machine with nothing more than a nasty glare…well I have no words for that one.
I mean, that thing is like a miniature bus, but with just one window along each side and a cabover area above the driver’s head, long and square, sitting on a dual axle at the rear. On the grill, sitting there incongruously, is a blue teddy bear tied on with wire by both arms. Its mouth is just a line of heavy black thread but I can almost imagine it screaming as that big vehicle keeps inching its way forward. Again, I don’t think he was going slow to avoid hurting Grace. He didn’t see her at all. I just think the driver has no idea where he’s going.
“We have to stop him!” Grace says again. This time, a hint of pleading rings through in her voice. “He already ran over my prize hydrangea bushes when I told him he didn’t have a reservation here. Lord knows what other kind of mischief he’ll get into if we don’t…oh, no! There he goes again!”
Following her pointing finger, I see that the guy isn’t inching forward anymore. Now he’s lurching the DynaQuest down the path several feet at a time, squealing his brakes hard enough to make the motorhome rock wildly, and starting off again. Brake, gas. Brake, gas. His right front tire drops off the pavement. Apparently, he doesn’t need roads where he’s going.
I can see him shouting now, too, and swearing like he’s in an R-rated movie. Not that I can hear him clearly, but I get the gist. He doesn’t seem to be shouting at anyone in particular. He’s just…shouting.
He’s moved past us now. Behind the motorhome I see shadows collecting themselves into pools of darkness, squiggling along the edge of the pavement, reaching out to attach themselves to the tires…
My gift doesn’t just show me the goodness of color and light. I can see the bad things around me as well. I can see danger, sometimes, and where there’s danger there are always shadows.
Grace is right. I don’t know why this man is driving so crazy—or why he has blood on his face—but there’s definitely something wrong here.
We have to stop him, but I don’t know how. Maybe if I got up on the sidestep and into the front passenger seat I could…what? Talk him down? Put the gear shifter in park? That might work, but only if the doors are unlocked and the guy doesn’t see me as a threat and turn violent. I’m only one woman, after all.
The motorhome angles further off the pavement. A mailbox is in the way now, and the front bumper edges up against its wooden post, pushing it down, down, slowly down.
That could have been a person. It could have been Grace, or me, or one of my neighbors. That man behind the wheel is in no condition to know the difference. I’m going to have to do something, and do it now, regardless of how dangerous it might be.
Just as I’m pumping myself up to be a hero, I see Max’s car coming around the pathway.
Relief absolutely flushes through me. I’m not some damsel in distress who needs a man to save her…but I’ll always take help from a friend. Facing down the deranged driver of a huge rolling vehicle of destruction honestly sounds like more of a two person job. Maybe two people, and a tank.
Max doesn’t have a tank. What he does have is a Subaru Forester, just a few years old, slate gray and missing one of the rear hubcaps. He parks it right in the middle of the path, facing the motorhome, their bumpers just a few feet apart.
Not a bad plan, actually. This way, the man in the DynaQuest can’t move forward. Not without swinging wide and plowing across front lawns and over a little wire garden fence and through a short-bed pickup truck.
When he sees Max parked there, the guy squints down at him real hard, like he can’t understand what he’s looking at.
Then he lurches the DynaQuest forward several inches.
I’m already running up the path when I see Max jump out of his car, carrying Mikey with him. He’s a good dad. No way will he leave his son in there, in the path of this crazy man. He takes a second or two to hand the boy off to one of the neighbors watching all of this unfold, and then he’s running just like me, right for the motorhome.
I get to the front passenger door just as Max reaches the driver’s side. We open them together, and Max grabs the driver’s hands, holding him still. The guy’s knuckles are bloodied but his grip on the wheel is too strong to break.
While Max holds him there I reach in and take hold of the keys, twisting them to the left to turn the engine off. With the vehicle in drive they won’t come out but at least I’ve stopped our forward momentum. The motorhome crawls to a stop, bumper to bumper with Max’s car. I call that good enough.
The driver presses his foot down on the gas, over and over, scrunching his eyebrows down hard when nothing happens. He’s obviously confused. It’s more than that, though. He looks…lost.
He twists his head around to look at me, and then turns the other way, to look at Max. It’s like we just popped out of nowhere for him. Like he’s only just now noticing us.
The blood on his face is garish up this close.
“Um. Hi,” he says. “Can either of you tell me where I am?”
Motorhome Mayhem: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Mystery (The Seaside Psychic Book 2) is available for pre-order at all retailers now. If you would like to reserve your copy or read more about it please click the link below.
