Crocodile Rock

By Julie Napier

After a horrendous incident they never speak about, resident New Yorkers Corey Thomas and her younger brother find themselves at their quiet grandmother’s farmhouse in Beechnut, Wisconsin. Corey, a dancer, finds a secret space and revels in the stolen moments of freedom she spends there. Lucas Walsh, deliberately awkward outcast, finds his direction when he sees her dance and forges the first-and only-friendship he will ever need. Ghostly figures in the fog, a nearly twenty-year-old disappearance, and dreams of the future beyond Beechnut guide them through the summertime in a winter place, before Corey’s unforgettable past crashes down around them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie Napier
• Release date: Sep 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311443526

Julie Napier

Julie is a writer, a runner, an artist, a baker and a wife and mother of four.

Book preview

By

Julie Napier

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 by Julie Napier

All Rights Reserved.

For Jeremy and Jason,

Always and forever my fellow adventurers.

I would have picked the two of you for brothers if God hadn’t already taken care of that ;)

Chapter 1

Lucas noticed the new addition to Old Lady Thomas’s household on the last day of school before summer break. He had lowered the window to try to catch a quick smoke as Wham! chirped over the bus speakers. The stiff spring morning breeze whistled through the window as his fingers skillfully popped a cigarette out of the pack and his eyes drifted to the pebbled asphalt driveway beside his own.

The bus driver screeched the brakes to a halt and the kids protested as they were thrown forward into the pleather green seats in front of them.

Put it out, Walsh, his grumbly, almost wheezing voice proclaimed above the shrieking kids. Put it out or walk.

Lucas sighed and tapped the barely lit nub against the outside of the window, his dark eyes sizzling in the rearview mirror against the driver’s ever present sunglasses below his blue Lions Club cap. The elderly man’s creased skin wobbled slightly.

He released the now dead cigarette into the sandy ditch and refused to meet Noah’s piercing stare. Instead, he gazed toward the red brick house that he rarely noticed, although he passed it at least four times a day on his way to and from chores.

That’s when he saw her. She must have startled at the loud shriek of the braking bus because she was frozen in place, about halfway between the road and the house. Her long brown hair cascaded around her perfectly straight shoulders. She was wearing a white blouse that rippled in the breeze, jeans that clung to her skinny legs, and shoes that had no place in central Wisconsin in late spring. Her eyes were bright and seemed to be staring right at Lucas on his perch in the back corner seat.

The bus roared to life, sailed over the hill, and the Thomas house and girl were out of sight.

Lucas tapped his finger against his knee and flicked his eyes toward his younger brother to see if he had noticed the new neighbor. But Noah was deep in conversation with Andy Brehmer, using hand gestures to describe something to do with baseball.

Boring, Lucas thought immediately. He watched the trees with their fresh spring green muting into smears with the black-and-white cows and soft brown mud of pastures. The hills were vague and he could feel them in his stomach even though the bus didn’t seem to rise or fall on the road. Then he concentrated on Total Recall coming to the theatre tomorrow night, wondering how he was going to get there when his old man found out that he had failed his senior year of high school and inevitably took his keys again.

Birds chirped through the open windows and Lucas ached for his lost cigarette. The bus only stopped twice more before they crossed the Beechnut City Limit, Population 243 sign.

Lucas thought about the wisp of a girl he had seen and wondered briefly if the number was 244 now.

* * * * * * * *

At least we don’t have to ride that, Corey said softly after the bus disappeared from view. She turned back to where Alec was sitting on the brick planter that flanked the garage.

Yet. He swiped a lock of greased hair back into its carefully constructed style. His bony wrists hung out of the turquoise dress shirt. Both still had gauze wrapped around them. He swung his legs clad in stonewashed jeans and oversized sneakers.

Corey exhaled and looked up at the pink-tinged blue sky. A few slinky clouds crossed it like static and the birds were so loud that they seemed to echo all around her. She wished she could form the words that they would be back in New York long before then, safe and cozy in their apartment with everything back to normal.

But she couldn’t. The truth was life had never been normal for her and Alec. Their apartment had never been safe, and to call it cozy would be a stretch for any realtor who was brave enough to take it on now. And New York City, with its lights, busyness, familiarity, Lance generously teaching Corey’s dance classes Pro bono, baby girl, because YOU are gonna make me a star! and the many people who served to make both Corey and Alec anonymous, was so far away from where they were now it might have been a separate planet. Even the damn parties that they used to pass through like unwanted ghosts seemed like a fading dream.

We could go back, you know, Alec said solemnly. It’s bunk after never being outside the city that we get stuck with some ridiculously old woman we’ve never met in the middle of nowhere. I swear, sometimes I think for sure she has crossed over when she’s sitting there with one of those unlit cigarettes…

Corey allowed herself the brief moment to consider that dream. The city. Anywhere in the city. Just a glimpse of the skyline would release the iron clenches over her lungs for a moment so she could breathe at last.

Lance would take us in. Or Dr. Mayne. Then he snorted. "On second thought, that British bastard would take you."

She shook her head, wishing she could stretch out her body and perform the choreography to the very last dance she had worked on with Lance. But the trailer across the street, the gray house down the way where the farm boys lived, and the rickety house that shared the driveway of the barn on the other side of them with that cranky woman and incontinent dog could be watching. Probably they already were watching.

Mouth, Alec. And Dr. Mayne only liked Ca— She stopped herself before saying the name aloud. Her eyes snapped shut and she felt the familiar clutches of pain shoot through her limbs that had been present since she opened the door of her home just over a week ago and was struck silent with the sight.

"Completely normal, the physical pain, the good doctor’s cultured voice had said. Part of the healing process."

But Corey didn’t want to be healed. She didn’t want a process. She wanted to go back to a week and three days ago and change the hand of Fate.

Come on, Alec coaxed. We’ll blow this Popsicle stand. Go back to New York. You know we’ll make it. Hell, you’ve been doing it for sixteen years now.

Tears prickled her eyes and a scream was tearing silently through her throat. Corey turned away from the road and started running back along the path that led to the white cow barn. She passed the bare wire skeleton building with a roof and dried corn cobs in it, the sheds, the half-moon shaped pigeon coop that warbled and cooed, past the fragrant garden that the old woman tenderly cared for hours each day, along to the darkened outbuilding that was nearly invisible beside its larger counterparts.

She popped open the door as the fine dirt in the air quickened its path along the sunlight. Slamming the door before Alec could find her, Corey crouched into the dusty driver seat of the old Jeep and muffled her sobs into the flesh of her arm. The one shirt she had that she had gotten new the weekend before her life changed forever was growing filthy in the dust and dinge of this forgotten shed.

Her body shook as images of the event overtook her vision. She couldn’t squeeze her eyes shut tightly enough to ward them off.

"Hold tight to the positives; look for the sunlight and you shall find it," Dr. Mayne had said.

The only positive was dancing. And there was no place for that here. Not in the small house, or the snowy white barn filled with foul smells, large wallowing beasts, and strangers. Not in the sheds filled with tractors and stale oil-smelling equipment she didn’t care to learn the names of. Not in the mud and manure filled pastures and crooked woods that she and Alec would run past during the sleepless nights.

After the tears had subsided, Corey wearily dredged herself up and made her way back to the red brick house. Each step felt like pulling herself out of a current of water that was much stronger than she was. Cutting through the patch of trees beside the clothesline, Corey could hear the cooing pigeons from their coop and saw Deirdre stepping hesitantly down onto the cement block and twisting the slab of wood with a nail in the center that held the rickety door shut.

The old woman met Corey’s eyes. Flat. Unsurprised. If she cared about the turbulent emotions waging through Corey’s troubled face, she didn’t say it. A breeze lifted the faded mouse brown hair from Deirdre’s ivory scalp and dwindled away.

I’m going to work in the garden today. Dinner will be at twelve. Supper at six.

The wild birds chirped merrily as the sun warmed the air around them, rose over the coos of the well-fed pigeons.

Okay, Corey managed. She vaguely remembered hearing the words before.

Deirdre’s eyes twitched behind her glasses and she set the empty tin pail beside the little shed. There are some bicycles in the shed with Pa’s old truck. Haven’t been used in years, but they should get you to Bernie’s if you want to ride down for a soda later.

She turned slightly to the right to indicate the weathered shed where the bicycles were housed. Then she hugged her narrow shoulders briefly, rubbing the sun-washed pink plaid fabric. Without looking back at Corey, she headed toward the path and the garden.

Alec approached Corey then and shook his head.

A soda? he said incredulously. Did you tell her to eff off?

Mouth, Alec, Corey said instantly.

It’s bunk, that’s all I’m saying. I mean, I’d punch her in the face if she tried to hug me, but thinking that a bike ride and a soda are going to magically fix things? It’s bunk!

Total bunk, Corey allowed.

Alec’s mouth creased into a grin at Corey’s slip.

Come on, hotshot, we’ve gotta find you a place to dance.

She resisted the strong urge to hug her brother. Instead, she walked beside him as they further explored the little buildings and facets of the farm.

* * * * * * * *

Corey startled awake as she heard the shuffled footsteps on the linoleum floor that didn’t quite reach the mark for the parquet wood impression it was going for. They stopped in the hall. Luckily she was facing away from the doorway and was able to keep still while the shuffler watched for several long moments. Corey gazed at Alec’s shoulder in the twin bed in front of her, identical orange and brown patterned comforter to the one she lay on that also smelled of dust and sticky lemon.

The footsteps retreated until they were out of hearing—most likely back up the carpeted stairs.

She sighed and rolled on her back, facing the popcorn ceiling. Little silver specks embedded in the popcorn shimmered as the late evening sunlight touched them. The constant heaviness that accompanied Corey these days fell over her like a fog.

It was difficult not to feel bleak here—forgotten, unwanted: the quiet; the almost mean-spirited cold that held steady in this partial basement; the flat and listless fields with their fuzz of pale green and strange rocks; the black-and-white cows that stared lifelessly at her while constantly chewing and drooling, their bellies caked with dried mud and worse.

Corey sighed and sat up in the heavy cool air. Glancing once more at Alec, she shivered as she went to the room she had been assigned to across the hall.

It was smaller, with a pair of windows wedged together in the corner that was level with the ground outside. She could see the roll of the yard, a wide field and past the small gray house where the farm boys lived. They were hulking, dark-haired boys who Corey had been able to avoid so far with some success. Though she was certain they had seen her from the bus the previous morning. Or was that a few days ago?

She shook her head and tried to focus.

The veneer dresser was perched on four tiny legs and held a mirror that leaned slightly forward from the wall. Corey rustled through the top drawer that held all of her clothes. There had never been any need for many clothes or a dresser in her life before. She absently wondered if most people had enough things to fill all of the drawers.

She glanced at the framed photos atop the shiny surface. Some were in black-and-white, some just faded. Most were of the old couple in Mexico, at Niagra Falls, at a clear mountain lake with no sign to identify where it was. The back of a mustard and cream colored camper was in most of these shots and though the man was grinning from one giant ear to the other, the slight woman had no more than a faint curve to her lips and her eyes behind large round glasses betrayed no emotion.

Like me, Corey couldn’t help but think. Since she was a child, she had never smiled for pictures. And she had even less of a reason to smile now.

There was also a small black-and-white photo in a frame of a young man with a sheepish smile and hair slicked back from his face, also with large ears. Corey felt her pulse quicken in her throat at his image. She pushed it a little farther behind a frame with the couple in it, until only half of one eye and his left ear were visible.

A model biplane, a red wooden Dala horse, a small nugget of pyrite, and a cartoonish, ceramic orange-eyed spider with a plush button on its back, when pressed, that played Fur Elise in chirpy notes, were the only other items on the dresser.

Corey changed into sweatpants and a few layers of t-shirts with a sweatshirt that she wore about as often as Alec did and bundled her hair on top of her head. Before she hadn’t been able to muster the energy. Today she would dance.

Using the pink-tiled bathroom as quietly as she could and checking that Alec was still sleeping, Corey grabbed her boom box. She passed through the hallway and green-toned utility room that held a table, some chairs, washer and dryer, an icebox, and a dormant, black, pot-bellied stove. Quietly she opened the door and slipped through the garage beside the shiny black Cadillac and the exterior door onto the pebbly-studded asphalt.

The whoosh of fresh, bracingly chilly air was as wakeful as it was heavy and depressing. The light was fading from the feathered blue sky, making the outlines of buildings meld together in their own sort of skyline.

Corey exhaled at the thought, slightly amused. Cows mooed as they took to the fields and forest for the night. Alec had wondered if they just showed up twice a day to be fondled or had to be summoned somehow. So, earlier that morning when sleep had eluded them anyway, Corey and Alec sneaked to the barn to find out. They watched from their bellies on a prickly bale of hay in the loft at the top of the barn through a wide crack in the walls.

The farmer’s flat voice rose as he whistled and hollered, Hi-oh!! Ooh-wee! Hi-oh!!

A wide smile had spread over Alec’s face and his eyes rolled upward as he pushed Corey to see how the stupid beasts responded to the ridiculous catcalls.

His playful shove caused her to retaliate. But the second push was stronger and caught Corey off balance, and she fell sideways between the plank walls and the stacked-on-end circular bales of hay, sliding downward until she was stuck. All of this happened silently and in seconds.

Alec’s scared face appeared in the light above her as she struggled against the tight fit, panic seizing her as she was basically immobile, held captive between the stiff, prickly bales and the equally ungiving walls.

Help me, she pleaded quietly.

Alec glanced around, and then tried to reach down his hand.

But she was too far. Struggling only seemed to make her drop down farther and made the hay and dust swirl around until it felt as though it was choking her.

Tonight, Corey stopped in front of the white barn as she drew a ragged breath and straightened her shoulders. A strange, distant bird call carried in on the night breeze was mournful. Corey’s fear of being stuck and forgotten and suffocated this morning was still fresh in her mind as she stared at the barn. Almost as much as what happened next.

She turned and followed the hard dirt path that rose as it led beyond the tall, circular structure attached to the barn and around to the entrance to the loft that had been her prison this morning.

Tonight, and every night after this one, it would be her salvation.

Corey slid through the door into the stillness of the pungent hay aroma, and the plank door gently padded against the building as it closed. There wasn’t much light, and Corey tucked the radio to her side as she struggled to climb the slippery bales of hay to retrace her steps from this morning.

I’ll get someone! Alec had exclaimed in alarm.

No, no! Corey’s voice rasped as it was filled with hay and dust and her eyes clenched shut. She pushed with all of her might and slid downward just a little more. If only she could right herself, climbing up two of these bales of hay using the boards on the wall wouldn’t be hard. If only…

Suddenly an explosion of sorts happened. There was a POP of sound and she crashed downward into openness where there was air that her lungs sucked in greedily. She coughed and swiped sharp pines of hay from her eyes as her body struggled to stand. When she could stand up, she tried to glance around.

The sounds of cows from below her, and the farmer’s faint voice urging them along, made the floor seem to rumble. And Alec calling for her from beyond the wall she had fallen through.

I’m okay, Corey hissed to him, not wanting to be discovered. She coughed again. It was wide and the ceiling was low; a single light bulb hung from the center. The wood floor was dusty and along the eaves a few smaller, rectangular bales sat. A square of light was at the far end.

Come down here, Corey beckoned Alec. The throbbing in her heart that had been fear was being replaced slowly by something she hadn’t felt in quite a while. Hope. The wall kind of opens up, like a loose board or something. Just slide down and push it.

The rumbling downstairs was just as loud, joined by a warbling radio playing bubblegum oldies. Corey softly crossed the dusty floorboards toward the far end of the space, her feet hesitating when she noticed a sort of door that was latched in the floor just below the light bulb.

The board hammered against the wall as Alec entered. Whoa.

Corey glanced back at him. What is it?

Um, Alec squinted as he looked around, a troll cave?

Corey walked around the floor door and continued the length of the space to the rectangle of light. It held a boarded X on it and a rusted latch. Gingerly, she jiggled it. Alec appeared beside her and together they managed to pop open the wooden window.

A whoosh of fragrant spring breeze hit them and countered the stagnant air of the secret room. They could see the metal tops of the outbuildings reflecting the pale pink morning sky. The wire crib shed, the garden, the black roof of the red brick house, the fields and woods beyond the grouping of buildings, and the narrow, straight road that t-boned another road on the way to the elusive Bernie’s that they had yet to patronize.

Two figures emerged from the gray house and started toward the path to the barn. Corey quickly closed and latched the door, her eyes adjusting back to the darkness within.

This…this could be something, she had told Alec that morning.

Tonight, Corey’s lips wobbled as she glanced down from the bale of hay that lay nestled nearly against the wall, the dark crevice evoking feelings of panic once more. Closing her eyes and clutching her radio, she slid downward.

The board gave a little more easily tonight as she stood up in the space and dusted the hay from her sweatshirt. There was only silence now: below her, above her, even outside. Corey breathed in the motionless air and crossed over to the light bulb, which flipped on and sent its spidery light over the tilted space.

It wasn’t tall, but Corey was slight and she would adjust. A glimmer of something sparked in her, coursing past the aches and the sadness and the closed-off bitter memories that were far too fresh for comfort.

Setting the boom box she had brought on a musty, prickly bale, Corey switched it on and felt tears warm her cheeks as Billy Joel warbled about his New York State of Mind.

It didn’t take long for Corey to forget the alien-bland countryside, the ever present pain, the strange and silent ticking house and quiet old woman, the endless and sleepless hours of this peculiar new life as her body soared through the routines. Her music churned on: Michael Jackson, Styx, Elton John, Madonna. Corey’s breath was short gasps of steam swirling around her like fairy dust.

You still got it. A gritty voice stopped her at last. She turned and drew in a deep breath as she saw the figure of her brother in the shadows.

Corey switched off the tape player, still heaving to the delicious aches in her muscles that had been dormant for too long.

I didn’t want to wake you.

Alec solemnly regarded her. I know. Do it anyway.

She nodded. Her legs were wobbly as she clicked off the light bulb and followed Alec back to the loose board in the wall. Climbing out in complete darkness was a little more difficult, but they managed it. Slipping between the plank door and into the night, they paused and looked up.

I have to hand it to Beechnut, Alec said in wonder. They do have a lot of stars.

A staccato beat of crickets chirping rose. The breeze was ripe with spring flowers and plants and the earth that had been plowed with a tractor pulling equipment by one of the farm boys that afternoon. The sky was inky and vast, stars packed into every inch. Some of them seemed to twist and sway, perhaps to the song of the night bugs.

NYC—6,745,894, Beechnut—1, Corey said faintly.

Alec snorted. Be fair, Corey. We’ve never had an actual bed before, even if the blankets smell like an old shoe. So that’s at least…1.5.

Her body ached and her heart was still throbbing with the movements of the music and adrenaline within her.

Mr. Sunshine tonight, aren’t you? Corey said. Go on, there’s got to be a few more positives than that.

They leaned against the barn door together and it creaked slightly as it settled. They looked up companionably at the stars.

"Three squares a day, an actual refrigerator with actual food. She is more like a zombie than a grandmother, but she doesn’t bother us much. And now, your leaning shack of a dance studio."

Corey nodded. That is definitely a positive. If it lasts.

Alec heaved a heavy sigh. He scratched at the bandages on his lower arm. The sound made Corey’s heart falter from the euphoria of dancing again.

It feels like we’re…puppets or something here. Remember that show at the park? Those weird looking puppets that were only faintly human-looking. The kids all laughed at them. That’s us. Kind of…hanging over life, but not our life, someone else’s. It’ll be different when school starts. Harder. Especially when they find out about that night in Soho.

Corey felt tears on her cheeks as she listened to her brother’s deepest fears. This was the first time he mentioned that night to her, the first time it had a title. That night in Soho… it sounded like one of the drunken party guests describing a night of debauchery and antics instead of the unthinkable nightmare come to life that it was.

Maybe they won’t find out, Corey said.

It happened, Corey. We were there.

She drew in a ragged breath and straightened her shoulders until they were practically concave. Her mind battled back the terror and memory of that fractured night. Firmly, she said, Now we’re here. And we’re going to have to come up with more than 2.5 reasons to wake up tomorrow. If we’re lucky enough to sleep at all.

"Atta girl, Corey. But you’re wrong again. You only