Eyes on her, p.1
Eyes on Her, page 1
Eyes on Her
Synopsis
Hoping to leave her past behind after ending her emotionally abusive relationship, Cally Pope moves to Halesbrook, a sleepy town in Gloucestershire. Content with her plans to open a glamping business in the forest and live a quiet life, she’s sworn off any kind of romantic entanglement.
Laurie Flanagan has lived in the forest all her life and has her dream job working for the forestry commission. She longs for the kind of relationship her parents have, but she hasn’t met someone who fits the bill. When she meets Cally, she feels an instant connection, only it seems Cally doesn’t feel the same way at all.
When increasingly violent acts of sabotage threaten to derail the opening of Forest Glamping and put Cally in grave danger, Laurie is the only one who believes the violence isn’t random. Together, Laurie and Cally try to figure out what’s going on, but the closer they get to answers the more Cally can’t shake the feeling her ex, Jules, has something to do with it. But Jules is dead. Isn’t she…?
Praise for Eden Darry
Quiet Village
“Quiet Village by Eden Darry is a creepy, small town horror with a supernatural element, and I loved every word…The chemistry between Collie and Emily was hot, the reason for them not being together was believable, and I loved the back and forth pull and the realistic little omissions of truth between them…If you love monster horror, being scared, lesbians in a creepy village, then this is the perfect book for you.”—Lesbian Review
“Scary as hell, and I am not a lover of horror, the paranormal or anything, but in a way I do enjoy it and this was no exception. Eden has delivered a perfect scare with Quiet Village , and honestly I wasn’t sure I could be any more scared than I was when I read The House , but Eden succeed in terrifying me to the point I couldn’t put the book down. I wanted to finish it but I loved the sensations and thrill of being scared by this story.”—LESBIreviewed
Z-Town
“The premise of the story is brilliant…The characters are well-developed and the good guys, at least, are easy to connect with. The bad guys (and there are more than one) are also well done…This is a wonderfully horrific, campy, gory, and romantic tale that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.”—Rainbow Reflections
“Darry has a fantastic knack for spinning tales. The world building, character motivations and clear writing style kept me excited to read this book.”—Lesbian Review
The House
“Eden Darry is on my to-watch list. I am eagerly anticipating her new release because I adored this one so much. The pacing was excellent; combining the thriller stalker with the haunted house was a stroke of genius causing threats from both sides and really putting the pressure on…If you have loved The Shining , The Haunting of Hill House (TV show), or The Amityville Horror then you should absolutely get this book. Eden Darry wrote a wonderful horror. It was exciting, captivating and had me on the edge of my seat with anticipation.”—Lesbian Review
“For a debut novel, Eden Darry did really well. This book had everything a modern-day horror novel needed. A modern couple, a haunted house, and a talented author to combine the two. The atmosphere was eerie and the plot held a lot of suspense. The couple went between love and hate, and if only they had talked to one another! And the reader just kept turning those pages.”—Kat Loves Books
“This is why I hate old houses! This was an extremely good debut novel, and it creeped the hell out of me, yet I felt compelled to read on and couldn’t put it down. There were many elements that built up the horror of this whole story, but it was such a thriller. The way the suspense was built up and Eden used the other characters, to build the tension was so clever.”—LESBIreviewed
“A solid debut that is creepy and intense.”—Lez Review Books
Vanished
“Vanished by Eden Darry is a postapocalyptic horror that I thoroughly enjoyed. If you love stories where people have to survive against huge odds, postapocalyptic, end of the world kind of stories, then this is a must-read. If you love stories where something bad is lurking in the background being just sinister enough to make your skin crawl, then this is an awesome read.”—Lesbian Review
“I really do like Darry’s writing—she creates a great ominous atmosphere in her narrative. The initial chapters with the storm perfectly set the stage for what is to come. There’s also a suitably unnerving and creepy feel as Loveday begins to realize that there is no one else in the village and a nice bit of tension while she and Ellery are searching houses.”—C-Spot Reviews
Eyes on Her
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By the Author
The House
Vanished
Z-Town
Quiet Village
Eyes on Her
Eyes on Her
© 2024 By Eden Darry. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63679-215-6
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: January 2024
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Ruth Sternglantz
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design by Tammy Seidick
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
For my wife and 4AA
Chapter One
Cally Pope murdered her wife. She turned this apparent truth over in her mind as she ran, poking at it like a sore spot in her mouth.
She burst out of the trees and back onto the path, her feet beating a steady thump, thump on the hard packed dirt, she murdered her wife ticking like a metronome in her head, feet keeping steady time. She, thump , killed, thump , her wife .
Cally stopped suddenly, a fierce stitch flaying open her side. She bent double and dragged the cold morning air into her lungs. The ground beneath her doubled for a moment, became two paths, then swam out of focus, came back. Her skin prickled hot and cold. Now her lungs itched, and she wanted to reach inside her body and scratch them until there was blood under her nails.
When she knew she wasn’t going to pass out, Cally stood up, bent her back, felt it crack, and almost enjoyed the way her head buzzed and her ears roared with the whoosh of blood. She checked her watch: 0715. Still time. Only halfway done, though she wouldn’t last much longer at this pace. Cally took a quick drink from the bottle she had clipped to her running shorts, hooked it back on, then took off along the path that led down to the lake.
Her legs wobbled for a moment, muscles wanting to betray her and bring her down low. She fought against collapse, picked up the familiar rhythm, forced her feet to pound the earth again.
Down at the lake she finally stopped. This was the place. This was where her ticking mind finally stopped. Sweat ran down her body and cooled instantly as the freezing morning air touched it. A cold wind was blowing off the lake. Cally watched the kayaker out in the middle, their paddle beating a familiar rhythm on the water. She, thump , killed, thump , her wife .
Cally sighed and finished the water in her bottle. Her legs spasmed and almost buckled and she went to the bench and sat down before she ended up face down in the dirt, and wouldn’t that be ironic. Stupid. She still had another five miles to go to get home.
Cally leaned back on the bench and followed the steady progress of the kayaker as they made their way back around the lake.
She wondered why today, of all mornings, she was back on the murdered your wife jag. Cally had never been tried in any court of law for it, but the Great British Public had judged her all the same and found her guilty. The truth didn’t matter, just the will of the tabloids with their lurid headlines, their brand of truth screaming out bile made of thick black ink and puking it onto the pages for everyone to slurp up.
The nation’s sweetheart was dead, and Cally Pope had killed her.
Cally sighed. It didn’t matter. Some stupid story in an idiotic online gossip rag printed on cheap paper and posted through her letterbox yesterday morning, big redirect label on the envelope. The postage mark was stamped in London just like always. Cally knew who had done it—well, not exactly who , but someone who must, at this point, qualify as a pen pal if nothing else. The same person who sent the letters. Religiously. They could always be relied on to remind Cally about what happened, about what she did, whether Cally wanted to remember or not. It had been going on for a while now.
Nine months. Time enough to have a baby or have your whole life pulled out from under you in some crappy game of fate. People she was convinced would stand by her disappeared like wisps of smoke. Cally sold everything and left London. More grist for the mill. An absolute sign of her guilt—if any more was even needed. She’d fled abroad—trying to avoid arrest no doubt, the papers said. Cally went to Greece, for fuck’s sake. And when the arrest never came, it didn’t matter. She’d been guilty for six months by then, and public interest had started to wane just like Na than—her solicitor—promised it would.
The nation had turned their judging eyes to another poor fucker, and Cally skulked home. Quietly—like any guilty person should—at night on the last flight, and she’d come here to Halesbrook to try to start again. She’d gone back to her maiden name. Not that it would be hard to tie her to the late, great Jules Kay. Not for anyone who still gave a shit about the evil bitch who’d got away with murdering pillar of the community and champion of the disenfranchised, the one, the only, Saint Jules of—
“Fuck,” Cally said out loud as the heavens opened with a crack of thunder, and the rain poured. A fierce wind whipped itself into a frenzy and made the trees around her groan and creak. She glanced across the water at the kayaker, who was now struggling to make their way over to the bank of the lake where Cally was. The rain was really coming down, and Cally was soaked through. The rain washed the sweat away but in its place left a maddening itch, one that began at her lungs and radiated out, up and down her legs and across her chest.
Cally stood, meaning to run home. But when she looked across at the kayaker, she could see they were struggling in the rain. The kayak rolled dangerously to the left, and Cally watched the woman—she could see it was a woman now—flail her arms out. A gust of wind caught her paddle and sent it tumbling into the water.
Cally walked out to the shore. The water in the lake looked like someone had reached in with a giant whisk and given it a stir. Of course it was the wind, which seemed to be getting stronger. Water bounced off the kayak, rolling it like a toy in the waves the wind created. The kayaker was in trouble, no doubt about it. She started to wriggle out of her seat. Without her paddle, she probably decided she’d have to swim for it. Bad idea.
Cally stepped into the water and gasped as its icy fingers lapped at her ankles. She called out to the kayaker, but her voice was carried away in the roar of the rain. Cally walked in further, up to her thighs. Her poor abused muscles cried out. She waved her arms, hoping to catch the kayaker’s attention. The kayaker was still struggling to climb out when the boat rolled again and nearly capsized. It was still too far from the shore for Cally, a county swimming champion in a previous life, to reach it without swimming out, and looking at how rough the water was, Cally wasn’t sure she’d make it.
Just then, the kayak rolled all the way over, its shiny bottom facing the sky ominously. Cally waited for the kayaker to right it. She waited. And waited. The shiny bottom rocked restlessly. Cally waded further out, the water up to her chest, and she could feel the current pulling at her, tugging gently as if to say come on in, the water’s fine . Cally knew better. But still, that boat bottom bobbed. The kayaker wasn’t coming up on her own.
Cally sighed. She started to swim. She pumped her legs as the current tried to drag her sideways and the wind battered her back. If she could make it to the kayak, maybe she could pull the woman out. She was confident she could get her back to shore if the woman didn’t fight her, and it was possible she would and drown them both in the process. Cally sighed. She couldn’t just leave her out there.
The rain continued to beat down on her head and fill her mouth. Her muscles ached and stung and screamed. She kept swimming. After what felt like an age but was only a minute at most, she came to the kayak. Just as she reached out to touch the boat, she felt the water clutch her waist like a possessive lover and pull her under and away.
She opened her eyes and could barely see anything. The water was murky brown, and God knew what detritus floated past her. She could make out the kayak ahead of her, and inside it, the kayaker. Cally reached out, kicked her legs as hard as she could, and at last felt the water release her. She surged forward and up and broke the surface of the lake. Her lungs screamed out as she dragged air into them. Cally surged forward once more and felt the cold slippery solidity of the kayak. She found purchase on its edge, got her shoulders under it, and tried to push the kayak over.
It rolled once, twice, then crashed back down, shiny side still up. Cally felt her strength draining. She had maybe one more go in her. She went below the surface of the water, pushed her arms straight up, and heaved. She pistoned her legs and shoved with everything left in her, firing herself out of the water. The boat flipped back over, rolled to the left dangerously, then—praise be to God—righted itself. The kayaker flopped inside the boat like a rag doll.
Cally wasted no time. She swam to the back of the kayak and pushed it to shore. Now, the rain stopped. The water, maybe on seeing it had lost this battle, lay back down and went to sleep. Sunshine leaked from behind the clouds as Cally forced the kayak forward. The kayaker coughed once, groaned, then was silent.
The boat scraped on the pebble shore, and the kayaker flopped uselessly in her seat. When she was sure the kayak wouldn’t slide back into the water, Cally used the very last of her strength and dragged the woman out of the boat. Cally loosened her life vest—fat lot of good that had done her—and felt the pulse in her neck. Thready but there. She tried to remember anything she knew about CPR, came up blank, and rolled the woman on her side, sure she’d seen that once somewhere.
Cally slapped the woman’s back, at a loss for anything else to do. That seemed to do it, though, because the woman gasped, coughed, then spewed brown lake water all over the shore. Cally fell backwards, her legs finally giving out. She watched with relief as the woman puked again, then struggled onto all fours. The woman’s breathing was ragged. Cally wanted to speak to her but couldn’t find any words. Now it was all over, Cally was shaking and shivering and couldn’t stop. She just couldn’t stop . And now that familiar dirge filled her head—Killed…Your…Wife —in time with the woman’s breathing.
Cally closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the woman was staring at her. A lock of brown hair half covered her face, but Cally could see how pale she was. She wondered if she looked the same.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked.
Cally thought that was a strange question. After all, Cally had swum out into the lake because she was drowning. Hadn’t she? Wasn’t that what happened?
“Your teeth,” The woman said. “Chattering. And your lips. They’re blue.” The woman staggered to her feet and searched in the kayak for something. She pulled out a coat, a thick winter coat, and Cally realised now she was freezing. The cold had settled in her bones and taken hold, and Cally wondered if she’d ever be warm again.
Then the woman was draping the coat around Cally’s shoulders, pulling it tight. She sat down next to Cally, and Cally saw she had something else in her hand. A phone. She had a mobile phone.
Cally leaned against the woman and closed her eyes. She listened as she made a call to someone, asked them to come right away. Cally opened her eyes, and the woman was looking at her expectantly.
“What?” Cally asked and sat up straight.
“Do you need an ambulance? Shall I call them? Or my dad, he could take us to the hospital.”
“No, I don’t need an ambulance,” Cally said. What she wanted was to go home. Go home and get in the shower and drive this terrible cold from her bones.
“You’re shaking. You can’t stop shaking, and your lips are blue,” the woman said.
“You don’t look so great yourself,” Cally said, and then the funniest thing happened. The world started to spin. She tried to focus on the woman, but her face kept shrinking and shrinking until it was just a pinprick. Just a speck of something floating in the universe, floating in that brown, murky lake that was actually a grave, nearly her grave, nearly their grave.
Just then, the pinprick that was the woman’s face went out, and Cally felt herself falling.
Chapter Two
One year ago
Cally watched Jules pace up and down their living room, which had been painfully fashionable until about ten minutes ago. Now it was a mess of broken ornaments and furniture. The beautiful and expensive flowers Jules bought Cally the day before were stamped and crushed into the Persian rug. The shiny parquet floor squeaked and crunched under her feet as she trod broken glass into the wood Cally had painstakingly sanded and sealed by hand.
