Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1)

Death
Whispers

Book One of the Death Series

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

Death Whispers

Copyright
©
2010-2011 Tamara Rose Blodgett

http://tamararoseblodgett.blogspot.com/

ISBN
978-1461058663

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All
rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of
1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system without the prior written permission of the
publisher.

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used
fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is
entirely coincidental.

All rights are
reserved.

For Joshua

Edited by Stephanie T. Lott

PROLOGUE

I am Caleb Hart, son of the first scientist to map
the human genome back in 2010. Now, fifteen years later, all us kids
(during puberty because we're so lucky) get to draw what's equivalent
to a winning lottery ticket. What paranormal power would we have,
would I have? It could be anything as benign as Empath, Telepathy,
Pyrokenesis, Astral-Projection, and the real
creeper
,
Affinity for the Dead, AFTD. New abilities kept cropping up, like an
untended garden. The paranormal ball had begun to roll and it was all
downhill from here. As long as I didn't get anyone's attention, I was
down with that. I
should
think Science is the bomb, but it's not, it's a bomb alright, right
on my head.

In eighth grade, we're required to take
pre-Biology. My teacher is enthusiastic, so there's never a dull
moment.

Especially with me fainting all the time.

That's how it happened the first time. The frogs
came in and I went out... like a light.

At least that was the first time I hadn't been
able to ignore it anymore.

Xavier Collins had reined in his ranting about
bees becoming extinct and other huge rage-topics on the environment,
to delight in telling us our next experiment would be dissection.

I didn't have Mark “Jonesy” Jones in this
class but my other best friend, John, was here, so not a total loss.
Jonesy kept school in balance, making jokes at the expense of the
teachers (very wise). John countered with keeping Jonesy from getting
us in trouble (not always happening). The drag of it was the two kids
that hated my guts in a steaming pile
were
in Biology
.

Carson Hamilton and Brett Mason sat next to each
other, never giving me a moment's peace about anything. Carson had
everything anyone could want, money, looks (he's a mirror-lover) and
parents that didn't care about anything he did. My parents had not
caught the disease of indifference yet. Brett didn't have it so hot,
but he was as miserable as Carson.

John sat down next to me with two pencils up his
nose while Collins was at the whiteboard, discussing how to pin the
frogs down.

Nice.

“Did ya make sure the erasers were in there
first?” I asked him.

“Yeah, duh.” The pencils bounced as he spoke.
For a smart guy, he had some weird ideas about self-entertainment. It
was very “Jonesy” of him.

“You still buzzing?” he asked.

I looked at John. “Yeah, it's on and off.” I
felt kinda defensive about this part, I was avoiding thinking about
it myself, and didn't really want to talk about it.

“I've been thinking about that,” he said.

How he could think with pencils up his nose? A
mystery, “Yeah?”

“I think you have the undead creeper, like that
Parker dude,” John said.

That would be bad.

“He's the one that could corpse-raise, right?”
I asked.

John nodded.

Hadn't I just been thinking about how much that
ability sucked? However, the rareness of corpse-raising might come in
handy. Not likely to happen though.

“It would suck for you.”

Nice, John
restating the obvious. Yeah, it would suck. I mean, what's so great
about communicating with the dead, locating the dead? Any of that...
ah,
no
. Nothing in it
for me but weirdness.

“Government took him. Bye-bye... gone.” John
made a fluttering motion with his hand like a bird flying away. The
pencils kept bouncing in a distracting way.

I'd heard about that. Corpse-Manipulation,
rare-much. Jeffrey Parker was the only recorded case.

“Why do you think?” I was interested for once,
sometimes John would lose me on a tech-rant and it was all over.

“
Are you
shitting me? Dead people... come on.” I got an image of zombies
with M-60s, interesting
.

“No, think about it.
They could get people raised and force them to do stuff. From a
distance, they could look like they were alive, important people.”
He raised his eyebrows.

“Presidents?”

“Rulers or whoever,” John said. “He was a
five-point. He could do the whole tamale. I think the government
exploits whatever they can; using whoever they can.”

I laughed.

“What?” he asked.

“I can't take you seriously. You look like a
dumb-ass.” The pencils dangled indignantly inside each nostril,
humiliated.

John pulled them out, checking the ends for gold.

Huh.

I'd been wondering why my head was buzzing. Now
memories surfaced. When had the buzzing started exactly? What
triggered it? Could John be right?

“Okay people, zip up here and pick up your
trays. Your sterilized utensils should already be at your desks,”
Collins said.

John went for our trays, minus the attractive
pencils. I stared out the window, the splatters of rain causing
rivulets that looked like gray streamers marring the glass.

I shook my head, clearing fuzziness. I couldn't
shake the buzzing, a dull noise that ebbed and flowed. I felt it
today the strongest. As soon as I entered class, the buzzing
increased, like whispers.

“Here you are. One frog for the both of us.”
John plunked down a frog that had once been green but was a bone-gray
now, staking pins gleaming under the LEDs.

That's when the screaming started.

The whole earth felt like it was swiveling on its
axis, and I was on top. The whispering grew in volume until images
flooded my head. There were marshes and swamps. A frog, in the bloom
of its life, shiny with amphibian iridescence, leaped to a log,
hoping to fool a small water moccasin close enough to take it.

(NO!)

Right behind you I
shouted in warning. But I couldn't be heard, these were images...
memories.

A motor boat was
closing in on the frog, getting ready to take it with a metal pole
and loose net on its end. Caleb heard the frog's thoughts,
strange
predator must seek cover... noise... hurts...

(NO!
NO!!!
)

It wasn't the only frog with memories. Every cut
my classmates made, a new flood of memories came. I realized through
some dim sense that I was on my back on the Biology floor. Carson and
Brett in the background wheezed with laughter.

“He fainted over a frog? Seriously?” Carson
ranted.

Brett, not to be outdone caterwauled, “He's a
woman!”

Collins was moving his hand in front of my face,
holding up fingers, but I was caught in the grip of the death
memories, absorbing my consciousness. The last thing I remember was
John's anxious face taking turns between telling the dumb-ass duo to
shut up and seeing if I was gonna live. My vision became gray at the
edges, a pinpoint of black expanding to clear my mind of everything
and I knew no more.

CHAPTER 1

Trees
surrounding the cemetery danced in the languid breeze of the mild
spring night. I looked behind me at the pair of eighth grade boys
who'd come to egg me on. They had discovered my secret: that I knew
the dead,
heard
the dead.

Headstones glimmered as loose teeth in the
moonlight, the whispering there like white noise, a steady thrumming
in my head. My hands grew clammy thinking about what may happen.

“Caleb, show them you're not a frickin' poser,”
said Jonesy.

“I don't
pose
.”
My thoughts raged against each other in contrary purpose. Proving to
Carson and Brett that I had AFTD wouldn't keep them off my back
completely, but it'd notch down their stupidity to something me and
my posse could manage. That's where it was, managing their shit
behavior.

I took a step through the high, Victorian-style
gate, my foot touching its reluctant toe on hallowed ground.

The feeling of being forced pressed uncomfortably
against my mind.

Crossing the threshold of sanctified ground, the
whispering turned into voices. One voice whispered to me the
strongest. I stopped feeling tentative and like an invisible string
pulled, was drawn toward one of the gravestones, standing sentinel
near the middle of the cemetery, glowing softly in the moonlight. I
came to stand in front of the headstone which read:
“Clyde
Thomas, born 1900, died 1929.”

“
Wake me
...”
it said.

“
What?” I
whispered
.

It speaks.

“
Wake me
...”
it repeated.

“Caleb, who are you talking to?” John asked,
lack of understanding clear on his face.

My head swung in slow-motion as if through
quicksand, moving in his direction, blood rushing in my ears and my
heart beating thick and heavy in my chest. Everything became
crystallized in that moment. John's frizzy hair and freckles stood
out like measles. A microscopic chip on the headstone shone in stark
contrast to the white marble.

Something... something... was building, rising up
as if underwater, rushing to the surface. I was supposed to finalize
something, but what? The whispering of the corpse in the earth so
loud it drowned out John's words. John's mouth was moving but no
sound was coming out.

What-the-hell? He was arguing with Jonesy, his
teeth a pale slash against his dark face.

Flailing, Jonesy's hand suddenly connected with my
face. My teeth slammed into my tongue and the taste of copper pennies
filled my mouth. I leaned over and a drop of blood hung tremulously
on my bottom lip, falling to the grave like a black gem.

Everything clicked into place, vertigo spinning
the graveyard on its axis as if it had been waiting for this moment.
The ground rushed toward my face and I threw my hands out to brace my
fall, fingers biting into damp earth. A clawed hand broke through the
ground like a spear through flesh. Searching, it grasped my wrist,
the bones pressing in a vise like grip that captured my breath, the
intense coldness of the grave lingering on its dead flesh.

The head of the corpse broke free of the ground,
its shadowed gaze meeting mine, the hand releasing me. I scuttled
backward, standing up, swaying, overcome with, excitement? Fear? I
had done this thing and now, didn't know how to undo it. The corpse
moved with purpose, pacing me as it used the undisturbed ground to
leverage itself as another drop of my blood fell and landed with a
dull plop on the corpse's forehead.

The zombie's gaze fixated on mine, it put a hand
on its knee and began to push itself upright. Dull, lank strands of
hair hung loosely from a scalp strung together by a tight mask of
rotten sinew.

Jonesy had long since
run out of the cemetery and was at a “safe” range from what the
ground had disgorged.

He better get his
ass back here. He couldn't get away with whacking me
and
not helping me with corpse-boy.

“
Why have you
awoken me?” The words sounded garbled, (maybe there was
some
tongue in there).

It asked me
to wake it.