Scorched Grounds (Normal Alabama) Read online

  PRAISE FOR DEBBIE HERBERT

  Cold Waters

  “A compelling story filled with evocative description, deeply drawn characters, and heart-pounding drama.”

  —Elle James, New York Times bestselling author

  “Herbert’s haunting language, gothic tone, and vivid portrayal of small-town southern life add layers to this intriguing suspense. I was hooked from the first word!”

  —Rita Herron, USA Today bestselling author

  “Herbert delivers a fast-paced mystery where nothing is quite what it seems. Family secrets and a cold-case murder are at the heart of her compelling novel, where the author masterfully paints the canvas of a sedate southern town with intriguing characters and a crafty plot. Readers won’t soon forget the chilling thrill of Cold Waters.”

  —Laura Spinella, bestselling author of the Ghost Gifts novels

  “Small towns hide the darkest secrets, and Normal, Alabama, is anything but in this southern gothic thriller that will keep you turning the pages until the very last. A twisted southern gothic family drama that will stay with you long after you’ve closed the book. A stunning, deftly written journey through the dark corridors of the human heart.”

  —Sara Lunsford, author of Tooth and Nail

  “Cold Waters is an unforgettable suspense story steeped in decaying old houses, dark family secrets, and rumors in a small southern town.”

  —Leslie Tentler, author of the Chasing Evil trilogy

  “A southern gothic mystery dripping with atmosphere. Cold Waters will leave you breathless.”

  —Amanda Stevens, author of the Graveyard Queen series

  OTHER TITLES BY DEBBIE HERBERT

  Cold Waters

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Debbie Herbert

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542005869

  ISBN-10: 1542005868

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  To my husband, Tim, who has always believed in my wild dreams. And to my parents, J. W. and Deanne Gainey, for their love and support in my life.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 DELLA STALLINGS

  Chapter 2 DELLA

  Chapter 3 DR. IRA PENNINGTON

  Chapter 4 DELLA

  Chapter 5 DELLA

  Chapter 6 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 7 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 8 DELLA

  Chapter 9 DET. NATHAN WHITT

  Chapter 10 DELLA

  Chapter 11 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 12 DELLA

  Chapter 13 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 14 DELLA

  Chapter 15 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 16 DELLA

  Chapter 17 DET. NATHAN WHITT

  Chapter 18 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 19 DELLA

  Chapter 20 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 21 DELLA

  Chapter 22 DELLA

  Chapter 23 DET. NATHAN WHITT

  Chapter 24 DELLA

  Chapter 25 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 26 DELLA

  Chapter 27 DR. PENNINGTON

  Chapter 28 DELLA

  Chapter 29 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 30 DELLA

  Chapter 31 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 32 DELLA

  Chapter 33 THE CORRECTOR

  Chapter 34 DELLA

  Epilogue IRA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  Niggles of noise pierce through the fuzzy haze of sleep. I burrow into my Hello Kitty comforter, making a nest of warmth, a baby bird seeking safe shelter. But the noise grows louder. I recognize the distinctive edge of words, and the sound becomes familiar.

  Mom’s shouting voice. She and Dad must be back at it.

  I wiggle deeper into the pink cheer of cartoon kitty cats. Maybe they’ll stop soon. I’ll fall asleep, and when I wake up in the morning, it will all be over. Dad will be at work, and Mom will smile and point to breakfast on the table—bacon and grits and orange juice. Then it’s off to Normal Elementary School. Just another day, same as before.

  Jimmy’s door creaks open across the hall. Bad move. My brother, only four years old, pads his way across the upstairs landing. I know what he’ll do, what he always does: jump between them and beg them to stop. As if that ever did any good. All it will land him is a sharp thump on the rear from Dad.

  Should I try to stop Jimmy? That usually doesn’t work, although sometimes he’ll crawl in bed with me and go back to sleep. I lie there for a second, considering. It’ll be really cold if I get out of bed. Jimmy might not mind me. Then Dad will get all red in the face at both of us when he spots us on the stairs. I think of his belt.

  Reluctantly, I throw back the comforter. I’d rather get whooped with Jimmy than lie in bed and do nothing. I’m not a great sister, but I’m the oldest, and certain things are expected. I hurry to my bedroom door. The moment of hesitation has cost me. Jimmy has already made it to the bottom of the stairs. A great wail resounds through our house.

  “Moooommy!” he screams.

  There’s something about that scream. It chills me all the way inside, so deep my tummy hurts. Something is really, really, really bad. My mouth dries, and I can’t move, can’t make myself walk down the seven steps and see whatever Jimmy sees.

  Another scream—but this time, it’s Mom. Moaning rumbles through my chest, and I stand rooted. I press my fingers in my ears, but I can’t completely block the screams.

  The police! The answer flashes in my brain like lightning. Dad will be super mad, but I have to stop this. I race to Mom and Dad’s bedroom and dial 911 on the phone by their bed, just like I’ve been taught in school. I tell them to come. To hurry. I give them the address, my name, my parents’ and brother’s names.

  The screaming stops. It’s over! The nice lady on the phone asks if I want to talk to her until the police come. I want to so badly. But if Dad comes up here and finds me on the phone . . . “No,” I tell her, hanging up. I’ll jump back in bed and get under the covers. I leave their bedroom, then pause at the top of the stairs. Listening. Waiting.

  The dead silence begins to frighten me as much as the screams had done. Did they all go outside? But why would they? A footstep echoes on the hardwood floors below. A faint tinkling of bells cuts the silence.

  I ease down the wooden steps, avoiding the spots that creak the loudest. The den’s overhead light is on, and I see a man is dressed all in black, including gloves and a ski mask. His back is toward me, and he’s scooping something up from the floor. This doesn’t make sense. Is it Daddy? If so, why is he dressed like a Halloween monster?

  And then I see them. Mom. Jimmy. On the floor, not moving. Dark red seeps from their bodies, forming huge pools of crimson. The same shade of red is splattered on the back wall. Like the weird paintings we’ve seen in art class. Abstracts, Mrs. Moody called them. The blood seeps into the rug in ever-widening arcs. An endless red-on-red-on-red that blinds me. I feel dizzy, and a trembling seizes my body. I can’t look away
from the blazing liquid. I know it’s blood, but my brain is slow and thick and doesn’t want to accept what that means. More wails break through the night. With a start, I realize they are coming from me. The man in black stiffens and begins to turn his head.

  Danger! My brain finally catches on, and my body leaps to action. I race back up the stairs and to my room. Footsteps pound behind me. I slam my bedroom door shut and turn the lock. Maybe he’ll go away now. I strain my ears, hoping to hear a police siren. The monster slams a fist on the door. Over and over. The cheap pressed wood splinters and cracks. Soon, he’ll explode through the flimsy door. There is no one to save me but me.

  I grab my Hello Kitty comforter and fumble with the window sash. The cracking behind me grows louder, and I dare not look back. I fling the window open and then punch at the screen until it breaks and pops off. The winter air is bitter and cold, a slap against my face. One of the few Alabama nights that will hit freezing.

  He’s almost broken through the door. If it’s Daddy, it’s a scarier, meaner version of him than I’ve ever seen and that I want no part of. I don’t even hesitate as I climb out the open window and stare at the second-story drop-off to the frosty ground below. I jump.

  A freefall of air, and then thump, I land on my right side, my ankle twisted beneath me. Pain burns and travels up my bare leg. My gaze rises to the window. The monster leans out over the sill, backlit by my bedroom light. He’s staring down, searching, then seems to look straight at me, although it’s too dark, and he’s too far away for me to know for sure. He suddenly disappears, and I cry in relief . . . until moments later, when the back door swings open.

  I scramble to my feet and limp toward the rear of the property. The wooden tree house looms before me, as though offering a safe hideaway. But no, that would be too obvious. I keep running, my bare feet slick on the frost, and I feel like I’m half running, half skating to the tree line.

  Tears ice my cheeks and the front of my neck. Another look back, and I see the man headed toward me. Moonbeams flash on something silver in his gloved hand. He’ll never stop chasing me. I choke back sobs and run past the first copse of pines. The woods are scary, but that man scares me even more. I body-slam fully into the trees, and branches slap and claw into every inch of my chilled skin. I might as well be naked for all the warmth of my flimsy pink nightie.

  Can’t think about that now. Keep moving.

  Dead leaves and twigs snap and crunch from behind. I blindly press forward, lost and confused. All I know to do is to keep going.

  I’m tired, so very tired. There’s a stitch in my side I can no longer ignore, and my right foot burns with pain. I lean against rough bark and pitch forward, clutching my tummy. My lungs are on fire, and my breaths form little puffs of smoke.

  Where is he?

  I try to breathe more quietly and focus. I hear nothing. I’m going to rest now. I violently shiver and then realize I’m still clutching my comforter. Quickly, I throw it over my shoulders and sink to the ground. I stare up at the crescent moon and wait. I shut my eyes and again press my fingers in my ears. I can’t run anymore. If he spots me, if he’s still out there in the darkness, then I don’t want to hear and see him the moment he catches me.

  Darkness settles on me, as thick and heavy as the comforter. All I hear is the blood pounding in my ears. Beneath my eyelids, red explodes—an ocean of hot crimson that threatens to drag me under and suffocate the air in my lungs.

  The unexpected scent of smoke fills my nose and mouth. My eyes pop open, and I stumble to my feet, leaning against the tree to keep the weight off my right ankle. Orange and red flames shoot up in the air like the firecrackers we watch every year after the Fourth of July parade downtown. It takes me a minute to realize it’s our house burning. The sky is scorched with the blaze.

  I can never go back now. Not ever. Nothing is left of my old life. Mom. Jimmy. Dad? All gone. My mind floods with images of red—the fire and the blood that destroyed my world.

  Chapter 1

  DELLA STALLINGS

  Eighteen Years Later

  The graveyard shift at Normal Community Hospital held a lulling quiet, yet underneath, it thrummed with a taut pulse from a skeleton staff and over 200 patients. A quick glance at my monitor showed that we currently housed 232 patients, of which 97 were in the residential substance abuse program. Another 38 unfortunate souls were in the psychiatric ward. The rest of the population suffered from various diseases and emergencies of a physical nature.

  If it were up to me, I’d choose physical over mental suffering any day. Those with physical problems were treated and released with relatively short stays. But those with mental health issues took much, much longer to heal. Of course, in both cases, the diseases could be chronic or fatal.

  I shrugged off my musings and checked the time: 3:18 a.m., which left me nearly two hours to kill before my shift ended. Now that my work in-box was clear, I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the polystyrene-tiled ceiling, pleased with the familiar certainty of its monotonous square grid. I loosened my eyes’ focus and allowed the random textured pockmarks of the tile to form patterns that rendered unique and strange faces that stared back down at me.

  It had been a good night so far. No accidental run-ins with people, which was mostly the whole point of my choosing to work such odd hours at the medical data-entry job. The Human Resources manager was a kindly older lady who had once worked with my mother at this hospital and was willing to accommodate the peculiarity of Mary Stallings’s only surviving child.

  Out of my purse, I dug the plastic baggie that held the lotion I’d made for Libbie Andrews, a nurse who worked in the cardiac unit. I’d say she was my friend, but that was claiming too close a relationship. To put it another way, she was one of the few people whose company I could tolerate. As a nurse, her hands were often chapped from constant handwashing, and my lotion helped ease the red soreness. A faint scent of chamomile wafted from the bag, a welcome change from the hospital’s undernote smell of bleach and formaldehyde. I wrote Libbie’s name on a sticky note and attached it to the bag. With any luck, neither she nor any other employee would be seated at the nurse’s station when I dropped it off.

  I peeked out my office door before venturing out. The coast appeared clear, so I walked down the long, deserted hallway slick with wax. My ears buzzed with the background hum of machinery. Occasionally, a ping resounded from elevator doors opening and shutting.

  I’d been here before during the day, when the place was electric with people rushing about. And as comforting as it was for me to operate in the lonely dark hours, there was also something a little creepy in the atmosphere. The redbrick building had once accommodated nearly a thousand patients in its heyday as a regional hub for veterans’ services. Over the years, funding had slowly shrunk until the county had finally taken it over and extended services to the general public. Only the substance abuse and psychiatric beds were still used much by veterans. This left lots of empty rooms with old signage, such as the now-defunct tuberculosis ward and smallpox quarters.

  Despite upgrades and the pristine cleanliness in which the hospital was maintained, there was no denying that it was old, old, old. Aunt Sylvie would say it was haunted by the ghosts of its former occupants. I didn’t believe in that nonsense, but I also didn’t rule out the notion that the place might hold an energy from contained memories of misery.

  Just as I rounded the corner by the elevators, one of them sounded a familiar ping that warned someone approached. Probably a janitor or one of the lab techs. I quickly slipped into the stairwell before the elevator door opened. The concrete stairs were steep but sturdy. Muted light cast eerie shadows on the walls. Like everywhere else in the hospital, there was a timeworn solidity in the structure. Ugly, serviceable, and clean.

  As was my custom, I pumped my legs and began running up the four flights. My legs hardly burned anymore, thanks to this regimen and my private martial arts classes. Only my right ankle twinged, more unc
omfortable than painful. The ligaments had never properly healed from the window fall when I was eight, leaving me with an almost unnoticeable limp.

  Physical fitness was one of the few areas of my life where I maintained discipline. You never knew when you might need to outrun somebody, so you might as well be prepared to give yourself a fighting chance. Aunt Sylvie would have preferred I’d chosen some new age practice like yoga, but even when I’d first arrived at her home as a scared and scarred little girl, I’d been insistent on learning self-defense.

  Three and a half floors up, I was caught by surprise at the sound of heavy footsteps descending. I lifted my gaze from the gray concrete stairs and spotted a pair of hot-pink, glittery sneakers. My head jerked up, and I stared straight into cat-green eyes shot through with a yellow starburst around the pupils. Those startling eyes were wide and stricken. The woman appeared about my age or slightly younger and as equally surprised as I was at the sudden encounter. Her shoulder-length brown hair was messy and highlighted with Kool-Aid shades of pink and purple.

  Was she a late-night visitor? A mental health patient who’d slipped out of the ward? Occasionally, over the past six years at my job, I’d spotted a handful of the substance abuse residents sneaking out for a cigarette or alcohol—or stronger mood enhancers. I’d never run into a patient who’d managed to slip out of the psychiatric lockdown unit, but there was always a first. I slid my thumb along the edge of the cell phone gripped in my right hand, prepared to call security.

  “Uh, hi there,” she said uneasily, her voice pitched high and brittle. It rang with a false note of forced cheeriness.

  My bullshit meter was fully activated.

  “Didn’t expect to run into anyone in the stairwell.” She gave an uneasy chuckle and glanced over her shoulder.

  “Running from someone?” I asked, giving her a wide berth as I reached the fourth-floor landing.

  “What? No, of course not.” Another forced laugh, and she eyed me warily.

  I had the impression that she viewed me as a threat more than I did her. My heart, which had been hammering painfully in my ribs, began to slow its wild, erratic beat.