Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (46 page)

This was good, he wagged his tail.

“It's okay Onyx.”

“Doesn't seem like your dog likes me much,
Hart,” Bry said.

“Nah...
just sizing ya up,” I said because I knew.

Tiff said, “Hey Caleb.”

“Hey.”

Jonesy broke the ice on the awkward turtleness.
“Let's get going,”

I looked at my watch, almost nine already. Looking
at the sky, Venus shone faintly in sight, the sky a brilliant
sapphire.

Bry came over and I tensed, Onyx omitting a soft
growl. “We're cool,” he said, giving me the guy clap on the back.
Not the kind guys did to let you know they could kick your ass. The
one they did when they wanted to hug you but that was totally not
okay, no-homo, right?

The group relaxed, Bry setting the tone for the
night. Cool, I instinctively liked him for setting it to rights.

The Dog understood the male and his Boy would
not fight. That was good; thunk, wag, thunk.

We hiked up a steep knoll, Jonesy leading the pack
and John, with his LED strapped to his side, following closely.

Sophie had arrived late, giving a coy glance to
Jonesy, which oblivious-him, hadn't noticed. She was taller than
Jonesy, what a weird pair they'd make.

“Ya know, you didn't need to bring a murse with
all your safe crap,” Jonesy said, eying up John's satchel-thing.

“What's that?” Bry asked.

I was an authority “A purse for dudes.”

“It doesn't look like a purse,” Bry said,
eying it.

Jonesy turned. “Listen, if it has a strap and
hangs off your body, it's a purse.”

Bry said, all humor, “Jock-straps hang off your
body.”

We laughed and John said, “But those are
mandatory.”

He had a point.

Sophie let a lone giggle slip.

“Anyway,” Jonesy said, drawing out each
syllable, “John has the,” he paused, “contingency crap in case
something happens.”

“What's gonna happen? We're here to see some
ghosts, right?” Bry asked.

“
Well...
ya see, it's Friday the 13
^th
...
and...” Jonesy began. I waved him quiet.

“You remember Scenic, right Bry?” I quizzed.

“Unforgettable, my brother,” he said.

“Right, stuff like that.”

Sophie said, “It's okay, there aren't any more
Caleb relatives here.”

“Like that's going to matter?” John said.

“I don't know, Gran seemed pretty...”

“Enthusiastic,” Jonesy finished.

“Yeah,” Tiff agreed.

“Huh,” Bry said.

We
all looked up at the cemetery. I put my feelers out, there were some
old
dead here. They called to me like a satellite come to orbit, my teeth
humming in response.

John looked down from his twenty feet away. “Hey
Caleb,” he said, just short of yelling, “how's your signal?”

“Fine, why?” The buzzing of the dead a dull
roar in my skull.

Then... suddenly, a well-like silence filled the
void where the dead had occupied. I looked up sharply at John.

“You doin' the whammy on me?”

“I am,” John said.

Jonesy
nodded. “..
.
nice
John.”

I turned to Tiff. “Do ya feel that?”

“Not anymore,” she said.

I turned to Jade, our hands locked together. “...
and you?”

“Wonderful silence, nothing.”

“Let go of my hand; touch Tiff.” Jade moved
away and touched Tiff. She shook her head. No Empath stuff there.

John watched us. “She a blank too?”

Jade nodded.

Well...
damn
.

Bry was around the base of the knoll, about
twenty-five feet. Reconnaissance I guess.

“Hey Bry!” I shouted.

“Shhh! Don't be an idiot, remember, radar.”

Bry said, “Yeah?”

“Jade's gonna come over there and see if she can
get a read on you, see how far John's whammy extends.”

“Ah... okay.”

I turned my face back up to John, who by this time
had his skinny ass leaning against a crooked tombstone, glowing like
a soft beacon of whiteness in the dark that was closing in. “You
still narrowed in on me?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay Jade.”

Jade walked over to Bry while I crushed a spark of
jealousy.

She put a hand on his forearm and said, “I get
something but...” she looked at John, “it's an echo of normal.”

Okay, so we were working with maybe fifty feet.

“Are you fully juicing us John?”

“No, almost though.”

“Give us all ya got,” I commanded.

John made a strained face, I could see him
struggle in the low light. He settled on a point between where Jade
and Bry stood, about halfway around the base of the knoll, a loose
arc.

Jade touched Bry again. “Nothing this time.”

“Kill it John.”

“Yeah, don't keep all amped-up or we won't have
any cool shit happen,” Jonesy huffed.

John visibly relaxed and the white noise of the
dead rushed back in like waves to the shore. This close to the
graveyard, it was a constant thing.

“I hear them a lot,” Tiff said.

“Yeah, kinda hard to miss that whole group at
the top of the hill,” I said.

Tiff rolled her eyes at that.

Jade joined us with Bry.

Jonesy was impatient up there next to John.

“Let's do it,” I said.

I half-pulled Jade up behind me as we laughed and
talked about the baseball game.

“Jonesy got that last home run, right?” Sophie
remarked.

“Yeah he did.”

“Brett did too,” Jade said.

“He'd be a really good athlete if he wasn't such
an ass,” John stated.

“It's too bad,” Jade said.

“Come on, don't feel sorry for him. Look at what
just happened at the hideout? I'll tell ya something. If either one
of those jerks comes near you,” I said, putting a finger under her
chin, “they'll get a reckoning.”

I wasn't doing forty pushes before bed for
nothing.

Jonesy heard and said, “Yeah, I'm itching to get
old pyro and Brett. That would be great!”

Nice to count on the Js.

We took a rest at the top, surveying the
surroundings. The small hill overlooking Highway 167 had cars
whizzing by, their progress creating constant noise. At least there
wasn't the horrible auto smells anymore my parents described from
when they were young. Pretty much, we were surrounded by a bunch of
buildings with just a small oasis of trees adjacent to the graveyard.
Which looked, well, untended.

Bry said, “My grandparents used to come here to
make-out.”

“
Are
you kidding? They
told
you that?” Sophie gasped.

“Yeah, they've been married forever and thought
they could just, ya know, talk about everything.”

“Wow,
awkwardness,” Jade said.

“Not a lot of privacy,” I remarked, looking
around.

“It was different back then. There was just the
highway down there,” he jerked his head in the direction of the
cars moving on the ribbon of concrete. “And nothing was here but
those houses up by Panther Lake. Small neighborhoods, nothing more,
from the 1960s and a few farmhouses.”

We tried to envision the Kent of sixty or seventy
years ago; it didn't seem real. We moved forward into the center of
the cemetery, looking at the tombstones, seeing that many of the
etchings had worn away, only a few letters left.

Jade bent over to survey one, hair sweeping
forward, her pert nose the only thing visible from the side. “Why
is this one speckled?” she asked, running her hand over the
polished surface, pressing a finger into a corner divot, worn smooth
from many seasons.

I looked closer, some of the speckles seemed to
sparkle in the pale light. I looked around me, there were similar
tombstones with that speckled look. Small flecks caught the light,
winking.

Night had descended, a velvet glove encasing our
group while the moonlight speared through the trees, caressing a
stone marker here and there, illuminating the areas between.

“I think it's granite,” I said.

“No... pretty sure those are marble,” John
said.

“No, the all white ones are marble. My dad told
me these were granite.”

“He gives you the graveyard know-how?” Jonesy
asked.

I laughed. “No, he knows some stuff about
geology.”

“I didn't think your dad did rocks and stuff.”

“I thought your dad was bio-chemistry,” John
said.

“He is. But he had to study all kinds of
sciences and I remember he told me once. They don't use granite like
this as much anymore. They're using that recycled glass stuff now, ya
know, the stuff that looks like quartz.”

“It's pretty,” Jade said.

I thought so too, but not out loud.

“Moving on... let's blow this Popsicle stand.”
Jonesy walked away in the direction of the shack.

We made our way carefully through the long,
hay-like grass where the markers appeared to be stranded and
drowning. Onyx's tail appeared like a shark's fin through the grass.

“Good thing it's a full moon, not a lot of need
for the LED's,” John said, slapping the one bouncing at his hip.

Jonesy was quite a ways ahead and held up a finger
while still walking. “It adds to the vibe-of-creep I've been trying
to establish, boys and girls!”

Tiff gave Jonesy a good natured middle finger
salute, and without even breaking stride he said, “I saw that!”

Sophie giggled while Jonesy navigated the land
mine that was the graveyard. Bry reefed his knee right into the
corner of a tombstone and swore.

“Pull up your boxer briefs, bro,” Tiff said.

“Put a cork in it,” Bry replied, bringing up
the rear with a small limp.

A broken fence marked what appeared to be one side
of the cemetery, the slats of the fence crooked, standing up like
swords. My sense of foreboding increased.

Jade whispered, “I have a bad feeling about
this.”

“We picked The Place for the scare factor.” I
looked around; I wasn't getting caught with my shorts down.

She didn't say anything but clung a little tighter
to my hand, which I squeezed, the small bones moving under the
pressure. She was fragile, such an interesting mix of girlness and
toughness. I vowed to be hyper-aware of stuff around me, she was the
one that needed protecting.

“There it is!” Jonesy whispered fiercely.

It was utterly different than I'd expected. For
one, it was bigger. Jonesy said shack, but it was actually a small
house.

It was super old-fashioned, a wide front porch
that ran the length of the facade. The posts were square and stout, a
bevel running up all four sides, softening the stern lines. One
corner of the roof was drooping from post-collapse. It had an
interesting window located dead center above the roof line in the
gable peak, that looked like a dark unblinking eye. Not a happy
architectural feature, that. From here the door looked like a gaping
mouth, teeth unseen.

John, Jonesy, Tiff and Bry went forward. Jade and
I lagging behind them and Sophie nervously bringing up the rear, her
curly hair shoved behind her ears, the rest a cloud behind her.

“Hey, shouldn't we like, bring out the LED now?”
Sophie asked, a bare tremor of fear coloring her voice.

“Not yet,” Jonesy said, hesitating on her face
for an extra second.

Interesting.

Jonesy put his foot on the top step and it
shrieked in protest.

We all jumped a mile.

“Holy-hell!” Jonesy stumbled back.

“It's a creaky step, brave one,” Bry laughed.

“Okay, smart-ass, you tromp up there.”

“Okay,” Bry replied, all man of the hour.

“Wait,” Tiff said.

Bry turned with a question on his face.

“Why don't you let us AFTDs check it out,
hot-shit,” Tiff said.

Bry
crossed his ample arms. “Fine,” putting his hand in front of him,
palm extended,
go
ahead.

I moved away from Jade... changed my mind and took
her with me. I didn't like her standing out here exposed. I was still
remembering the hideout and how Carson and Brett had popped up like a
couple of pieces of toast.

As Dad said,
valor
was sometimes masked as caution.

Jade moved in close, her torso following mine like
a puzzle piece, to the side and slightly behind.

Tiff, on the other side turned. “Can you sense
anything?”

“Nada.”

We both looked at John.

“Oh! Yeah...” he gave us a sheepish look.

Suddenly, our senses came back online like a river
covering stones.

Tiff turned to me and nodded.

We stepped forward, that feeling of naturalness
with the dead and open door. A thought occurred to me. “Don't touch
my skin, Jade. Just in case.”

“Right,” she nodded. That would be great to
get her all deadified on accident.

“Do you know what's gonna happen?” Tiff asked.

“Just what I read in the papers John brought
over,” I replied.

“What did they say?”

“
That
not all AFTDs could
do
ghosts.”

“I can. I hit for that,” Tiff said. “They
call me a two-point with a potential three.”

I
made the hand motion,
tell
me more.

“Remember Jade found me with the bird outside
school?”