Moonlight Cruise

By Craig L. Andrews

Fiction, Completed, 82,000 Words

Synopsis

After twenty years Darin Alexander finally collected enough courage to return to his hometown and confront the person he believed responsible for his brother's death. Over the years, the wound from his guilt for not saving his brother has festered. Upon arrival, he meets two extraordinary ladies, bumps into a freelance writer, learns of the town's twenty-year history of unexplained deaths, and he encounters an unsettling presence permeating part of the town. The visiting freelance writer is the only person willing to discuss his curiosity about the strangeness in the south part of the town. Day by day Darin descends into the mystery of the dark influence crawling over the town, until it eventually entraps him.

Darin Alexander left his Michigan hometown in 1975, the summer his brother, Dean, and his brother's girlfriend, Lilith Blackmer, were tragically killed. It had been a strange school year. Prior to his brother's death that summer, Darin and the high school's star athlete, Jack Hodges, had both dated the wild and sparkling, Lilith Blackmer. Then, late in the year she generated more jealousy by dating Darin's brother, Dean. Since Lilith and that summer, Darin's guilt for not warning his brother about a wild and drunken Jack Hodges has caused his failed marriage and sent his life on an emotional roller coaster.

Darin's first night back in town he bumps into the writer, Stuart Kramer, and learns they have a common interest, the writer's research topic, the town's history of unexplained deaths and its peculiar silence about the problem. Inconceivable to Darin, he meets two ladies in his small hometown with whom he becomes romantically attached. One of them, a warm single mother whom he had dated in high school. The other lady is a new acquaintance, a poised delicate creature of fantastic beauty, whom he can't resist.

Day by day Darin falls more in love with each of the women, and is pulled further into the mystery of the town. A belligerent town cop and the wealthy old mayor, who seem intent on keeping the town's cancer a secret, harass Darin and Stuart Kramer. Eventually, through an unexpected source Darin learns that the one person who can shed light on what has been happening in town is the person he originally came to confront, Jack Hodges. If they could only persuade him to talk. Meanwhile, unaware of the web that is slowly being woven over Darin, even after being warned, the town's evil entraps him.

Darin Alexander is stretched from the sublime moments of love to the blackest horror he could imagine, and has his conventional beliefs shattered. In the process of learning the truth behind his brother's death, he learns that forgiveness is sometimes within ourselves.

Excerpts from the Book

When reached the passenger side window his night lady turned slowly to him in her time-stretching way, greeting him with her wonderfully subtle, yet seductive smile.

"How lovely it is to see you," she purled. "Please get in and be with me. I missed you. Last night wasn't as I would have liked."

"Good-evening," he said, barely hearing himself and barely holding his voice under control.

Immediately he was drawn to the curl of her mouth, and thought she was pleased to see him. He slid in on the passenger seat, not wanting to tear his eyes from her for one moment. Her dress was light colored, perhaps white, and draped barely over her knees. It matched the hazy image of her in his memory, and as the dress a flirted with the smallest wisp of air, he saw the shape of her slender legs.

The car started down the street. He heard no sound from the road or the engine, and only watched her. He loved the way her long eyelashes descended and then opened with leaden heaviness not unlike that of a debutante exhibiting fastuous boredom.

"Did you miss me?" she murmured, not looking from the road.

"Yes . . . yes I have missed you." His own words made electric pulses ripple through him.

In her patient manner, as if in a silent film, she turned to him. He saw in her cameo face, a willingness that held promise of what was to come. Her eyes and mouth looked eager for him. He moved nearer to her, until their lips came together. Within a moment his head started feeling strange, a sensation unlike any he'd experienced before, except with her. It disgusted him, but he had little recourse. At first, he thought to fight the lightness in his head, to pull away from her and feebly massage it away. However, he decided to fight it, else she might perceive him an unworldly fool.

Perhaps he had caused his own strange feeling, by becoming so entranced by the taste and scent of her. When their lips parted a fire burned in him hotter than any he had ever felt. It seemed an insatiable hunger, almost an obsession.

"Would you like to park out by the lake again?" he asked, his head clearing a bit. "I want to hold you in my arms all night."

As his eyes gathered her in, her long raven hair, the gentle line of her cheek, her smoothly descending nose, he thought he could see the start of another subtle display of pleasure as she looked back to the empty road stretching silently ahead.

"I too, want to be held in the warmth of your soul."