True believer - Nicholas Sparks [77]
Who else would he be thinking of? Jeremy wondered.
“Okay, how’s this?” Nate was going on. “We open with the legend itself, sort of setting the scene. Misty cemetery, a close-up on some of the graves, maybe a quick shot of a black raven looking ominous, you talking in voice-over . . .”
The man was the master of Hollywood clichés, and Jeremy glanced at the clock again, thinking it was way too early for this.
“I’m tired, Nate. How about this? You think about it and let me know later, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I can do that. That’s what I’m here for, right? To make your life easier. Hey, do you think I should call Alvin?”
“I’m not sure yet. Let me see the tapes first, and then I’ll talk to Alvin, and we’ll see what he thinks.”
“Right,” he said, his voice rising in enthusiasm. “Good plan, good idea! And this is great news! A genuine ghost story! They’re going to love this! I told you they were hot and heavy about the idea, didn’t I? Believe me, I told them you’d come through with this story and that you wouldn’t be interested in talking about the latest diet fad. But now that we have a bargaining chip, they’re going to go crazy. I can’t wait to tell them, and listen, I’ll be calling you in just a couple of hours, so make sure you keep your phone on. Things could be moving quickly . . .”
“Good-bye, Nate. I’ll talk to you later.”
Jeremy rolled back onto the bed and pulled the pillow over his head, but finding it impossible to fall back to sleep, he groaned as he got up and made his way to the bathroom, doing his best to ignore the stuffed creatures that seemed to be watching his every move. Still, he was getting used to them, and as he undressed, he hung his towel on the outstretched paws of a badger, thinking he might as well take advantage of the animal’s convenient pose.
Hopping into the shower, he turned the water as far as it would go and stayed under the single jet for twenty minutes, until his skin was pruned. Only then did he begin to feel alive again. Sleeping less than two hours would do that to a person.
After throwing on his jeans, he grabbed the tapes and got in his car. The fog hung over the road like evaporating dry ice on a concert stage, and the sky had the same ugly tones as it had the day before, making him suspect that the lights would appear again tonight, which not only boded well for the tourists this weekend but also meant that he should probably call Alvin. Even if the tapes were okay, Alvin was magic with a camera, and he’d capture images that would no doubt make Nate’s finger swell up from making frantic calls.
His first step, though, was to see what he’d caught on camera, if only to see that he’d captured something. Not surprisingly, Greenleaf didn’t have a VCR, but he’d seen one in the rare-book room, and as he drove along the quiet road that led toward town, he wondered how Lexie would behave toward him when he got there. Would she go back to being distant and professional? Would the good feelings from their day together linger? Or would she simply remember their final moments on the porch, when he’d pushed too hard? He had no idea what was going to happen, even though he’d devoted much of the night to trying to figure it out.
Sure, he’d found the source of the light. Like most mysteries, it wasn’t that hard to solve if you knew what to look for, and a quick check of a Web site sponsored by NASA eliminated the only other possibility. The moon, he’d learned, couldn’t have been responsible for the lights. It was, in fact, a new moon, when the moon was hidden by the earth’s shadow, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the mysterious lights only occurred in this particular phase. It would make sense: without moonlight, even the faintest traces of other light would become that much more obvious, especially when reflected in the water droplets of the fog.
But as he’d stood in the chilly air with the answer within reach, all he could think about was Lexie. It seemed impossible that he’d only