The Summer
Country
The Wildwood: Book One
by James A. Hetley
Copyright Information
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2002 by James A. Hetley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
eISBN: 978-1-937776-37-4
Also by James A. Hetley
The Wildwood Series:
The Summer Country
The Winter Oak
Stone Fort Series:
Dragon's Eye
Dragon's Teeth
Visit James online at www.JamesHetley.com.
Follow him on Twitter @JHetley.
Table of Contents
THE SUMMER COUNTRY
Copyright Information
Also by James A. Hetley
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Special Excerpt from The Winter Oak, The Wildwood Series Book #2
Author Bio
Dedication
To Merle, my "enabler," and the RECOG folks
who helped to polish this and patch the holes.
Chapter One
That man was still following her.
A gust of sleet stung Maureen's face when she glanced back into the night. Winter in Maine, she thought, you'd at least think the weather would have the decency to dump snow on you.
February had been a run of sleet and freezing rain, no damn good for skiing or anything--it just made the sidewalks into bobsled runs and the roads into skating rinks. People always pictured New England with those picture-postcard mounds of fluffy white stuff. Instead, most winters plastered the city with yellow-gray ice full of freeze-dried dog shit and dead pigeons.
She hated it. She ached to be out of it.
And that bastard had followed her through four turns to head right back towards the Quick Shop. He kept his distance, but he was still there. It wasn't chance. She hadn’t seen another person or even a car in the last fifteen minutes. What were her options?
The midnight streets vanished in a vision of green grass and trees, sunshine, warm breezes, and streams of peat-stained water the color of fresh-brewed tea. She breathed summer country, a cabin-fever dream she wanted so much she could smell the clover.
Wish, the whisper came, out of nowhere. Wish. And hard on the back of the thought came a memory of Grandfather O'Brian's voice, "Be careful what you wish for, my darlin'. The gods just might be givin' it to you."
The thought brought tears to her eyes, or maybe it was the sleet. She had been far closer to the old man than to her own father, and now Grandfather was fifteen years dead. Funny such a devout Catholic should talk of the gods in plural. Funny she should think about him, slopping through the dark streets of Naskeag Falls and thinking dark thoughts about the entire male race.
Maureen's nightmare still followed her, half a block back--a squat black shadow under the streetlights, framed by the double rows of dark storefronts and old brick office buildings. Everything was closed and silent, brooding over her search for someplace warm and dry and public.
The scene reminded her of a hodge-podge of old movies--Peter Lorre stalking the midnight streets with a switchblade in his pocket. For some reason, the movie image relaxed her. Maybe it made danger seem less real, the sleet turning the night into grainy black-and-white flickers on a silver screen.
Maureen pulled her knit cap down tighter on her head and went back to concentrating on the ice underfoot. She was reading her past into the future. No self-respecting mugger or rapist would be out on a night like this. The voices in her head could just take a fucking hike.
Besides, her mood matched the foul weather. She’d had a rotten evening at the Quick Shop, and the chance to blow some scumbag to hell carried a certain primitive attraction.
Maybe while she was at it she should put a slug through the carburetor of that damned rusty Japanese junk-heap that had refused to start and left her walking. And pop the night manager with the roving hands who had reamed her out and docked her pay for being late, before suggesting they could maybe arrange something if she chose to be a little "friendlier."
Hell, go big-time and shoot all the paper-mill cretins from upriver who stomped in for their six-packs of beer, steaming their wet-dog smell and dripping slush all over the place so she spent half her shift mopping up after them.
Definitely blow away the oh-so-precise digital register that had refused to tally when she closed out at midnight. She'd ended up putting in ten bucks out of her own pocket, just to get the hell out of the place. Two hours pay, before taxes.
CONVENIENCE STORE CLERK GOES BERSERK, MURDERS 20.
Again, Maureen checked on her shadow. He was still there, still half a block back. The way she felt, she almost wished he'd make a move.
She kicked a lump of slush and yelped when it turned out to be frozen into place. Adding insult to injury, her next limping stride found a pothole in the sidewalk, and she sank into ankle-deep ice water.
Screw this psychotic winter weather, she thought. Psychosis: a mental disease or serious mental impairment, a medical term not to be confused with the precise legal implications of the word "insanity." Psych. 101, second year elective for distribution requirements in the forestry program.
She had reasons to remember the definition, reasons for such a personal interest in the ways and means in which human minds deviated from the norm. Fat lot of good college was doing her now.
A snowplow growled around the next corner and headed in her direction, fountaining out a bow-wave that washed up over the curb and sidewalk to break against the dark line of buildings. Maureen ducked back into the entryway of the nearest storefront, trying to dodge the flying
