Diary of the Gone

Diary of the Gone

Ivan Amberlake

Breakwater Harbor Books,
Inc.

Scott J. Toney and Cara Goldthorpe,
Co-Founders

www.breakwaterharborbooks.com

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.

The book may not be reproduced in whole
or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission
of the author. Making or distributing electronic copies of this
book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the
infringer to criminal and civil liability.

Copyright © 2013 by Ivan
Amberlake

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Cover by Yannis Karatsioris

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I’d love to thank my
wife who encouraged me to finish this story. Your interest in it
rekindled my inspiration to write.

I’d love to thank Yannis
Karatsioris, a great friend of mine, whose help and support cannot
be underestimated. Thanks for your time spent on reading my
chapters and providing great feedback. And, of course, thanks for
the fantastic cover.

Also, I really appreciate
BHB authors’ support. I’m proud of being part of you.

And last but not least, I’m grateful
to Ted Cross, Claire C. Riley and Melissa Simonson for their great
advice on “Diary of the Gone”.

To Mom and Dad, for always
being there for me

Chapter 1

Entry #4

January 8

I step inside a Shadow.
It’s a black-and-white movie with no sound. I watch those who have
only a few moments to live. While the rest of the world passes by
with blind eyes, I see them dying, screaming into silence, and I
just stand and watch death taking them.

The Shadow lasts for only
a few moments, and then the movie is over. Color bleeds in around
me, but I know the people I saw will soon be dead.

I was making a sandwich when there
came a knock on the door. The sound was so sharp I winced, and the
knife bit into my index finger.

“
Son of a bitch!” I let go
of the bread. The knife clattered into the sink.

Blood trickled from the deep wound,
leaving splotches over the kitchen counter.

That wasn’t the way my day should have
begun.

Not to spill any more drops, I put my
finger into my mouth. The coppery taste spread over my tongue, my
empty stomach rumbling in displeasure.

The
knock-knock-knock
came
again. The source of my severe cut and pain throbbing through my
finger.

I crossed the small kitchen to the
front door and wrenched it open to find my best friend Nathan
standing on the porch.

“
Hey, Nate,” I mumbled,
still feasting on my finger. “Come on in.”

Though we were the same age, I had to
look up to see his blue eyes and lopsided smile.

“
Hey, what’s
up?”

“
Just cut my finger,” I
said, my head swimming a bit.

Nathan followed me to the kitchen,
where I returned to the counter with my lunch half ready and
bloodstained.

“
Mmm, looks yum,” he said,
eyeing my ruined attempt at making a burger.

I scoffed, relieved that the blood had
stopped flowing.

“
Your mom and sis home?”
he asked, taking a seat on one of the stools.

“
Nope. Out of town for the
day.”

“
Good,” Nathan said. “I
want to show you something.”

“
What is it?” I opened the
freezer to get some frozen French fries, tore the pack open and
poured some into a glass bowl.

Nathan knew how to pique my
interest—well, more often than not whatever he had to show was
terrific, but today I decided to stay cool not to give away my
enthusiasm.

“
Can’t tell you. And it’s
not here.”

“
Where is it
then?”

“
In the Swamps,” he said
as I put the bowl into the microwave oven and turned it on. Nathan
picked up a leaf of lettuce and started munching it, looking me
right in the eye.

The Swamps. The least desirable place
apart from the graveyard and the school I’d attended for nearly a
month here in Olden Cross.

“
Of course it’s in the
Swamps. Can it be anywhere else?” I said, trying not to show my
apprehension, but the casual nod he gave me was proof he knew how I
felt.

“
So you’re afraid of going
there, Cal?” Nathan’s lopsided grin only became wider. “I wonder if
you’re more scared of your mom or the Swamps? Or maybe it’s your
sister?” He shoved the rest of the lettuce leaf into his
mouth.

“
What about my sister?” I
demanded. “I’m not afraid of her. You know what? Let’s go. I only
need to grab my parka.”

Nathan chuckled as I scooped the hot
fries with a napkin. “Do you know you just owned to it?”

“
To what?”

“
That Mom and Bev scare
the bejesus out of you.”

“
Go to hell, Nate!” I
said. “Are we going or not?”

“
Sure.”

I put on my old dark-red parka,
scooped the keys from the bowl, and we left.

The wind whistled its mournful song as
purple skies loomed lower, grim and forbidding. From what I knew
about Olden Cross, the skies were always like this here.

We trudged through the mush of fallen
leaves for about a half hour, the ground a mosaic of vibrant red
and yellow. Trees swayed their skeletal branches while sponge-like
moss shriveled under my feet.

Now that we were approaching the
Swamps, my cut finger started throbbing again.

As I took another step, icy water
trickled into my new sneakers.

“
Dammit!” I jerked my leg
up, but the sneaker was already soaked.

“
C’mon, Callum,” Nathan
urged, rolling his eyes. “We’re nearly there.”

He still hadn’t told me what he wanted
me to see. Did I have any other choice but to follow him? As we
threaded our way through the darkening swamped forest, I wondered
why I listened to him and went wherever he wished.

“
How
much farther are we
going
?” I asked.

He pointed ahead with his index
finger. “It’s there.”

I hadn’t been to the forest very often
during the day. I didn’t know why, but each time I approached it,
goosebumps popped all over my arms and back, and today was no
exception. My heart raced like mad, warning me that we’d encroached
on someone else’s territory. Someone we shouldn’t have
disturbed.

Nathan turned his head left and right,
then said in a hushed tone, “Wait.”

He looked down and I did the same. At
first I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, but when I looked
at the withered grass at my feet more closely I saw it was flecked
with blood. I gulped, cold fear sliding down my limbs.

“
What the hell is that?” I
muttered, but Nathan wasn’t in the mood to answer any of my
questions today.

“
Let’s go,” he just
said.

The farther we followed the trail, the
more blood there was.

“
This is not the worst
part,” Nathan said, a maniacal glint in his eyes.

“
What? Are you kidding
me?”

Both of us took cautious steps
forward.

“
Are you sure we should go
on?”

Nathan nodded without saying
anything.

“
What is going on here?” I
kept firing questions.

“
You’ll see.” Nathan waved
at me to keep following.

The feeling of someone watching us
persisted, and I didn’t like where this was going. A low buzzing
soon filled my head, with a sickly sweet smell tickling my
nostrils. The trail led behind a tree, and something told me I
wouldn’t like what I would see there.

We made a few more steps, and then I
gagged at the most horrifying sight I’d ever seen in my
life.

There in the grass, in a pool of its
own blood, lay a deer, disemboweled, a swarm of flies feasting on
its carcass.

The fetid odor hit my nostrils,
churning my stomach. I covered my nose and mouth with my sleeve and
turned away from its lackluster eyes.

“
Gawd!” I moaned, taking a
few steps away from the poor animal. “What the hell is
this?”

Nathan backed away as well, but kept
staring at it, then turned to me. “Cal, the question is what is it
doing here? By the looks of it, it’s been here awhile. And all the
animals left the Swamps years ago. How come this one ended up
here?”

Whatever Nate was talking about, I
didn’t care.

“
I don’t know, man. I hope
that’s all that you wanted to show me ’cause I really feel like I’m
going to throw up,” I said, still covering my nose not to breathe
in the putrid stench.

A stick snapped a few yards to the
left of us, and the world lost the little color it had. It was the
worst thing that could happen to me, my gift and my curse—the
Shadow.

A dark-haired boy with a thin, pale
face stood staring at me. A deep gash ran down the left side of his
face, his neck bruised to a dark purple. As he wheezed, fog escaped
his cracked lips.

I looked around, and to my horror
there was no Nathan, no animal rotting under the tree. No one
except the boy.

As he extended his hand to me,
lacerations started showing on his skin. Circles, triangles and
numbers came out, as if there was someone invisible hurting him.
Tears beaded his dead eyes as he sobbed.

Then he opened his mouth wider and
shouted, “Run!”

What made it more frightening was that
he shouted in Nathan’s voice. The colors returned, together with
the stench. Someone yanked me by the sleeve, dragging me
away.

Where the boy had been stood a woman
I’d seen once before. Mrs. Palmer. The school librarian.

Dressed in long, black clothes, she
reminded me of a raven that had taken human form and forgotten to
shift back.

I knew that we’d better get the hell
out of there. Raw instinct to survive spurred me to run. We
sprinted away, no longer caring about the pools of water in our
way. Spray of droplets scattered in all directions as our sneakers
pounded the ground. I jumped over a fallen tree, and my foot stuck
in the mud. I dropped onto the mossy ground, staining my jeans with
green.

“
Oh, crap!”

Nathan helped me up, and I tried to
rub the dirt off, but only made it worse. Panting, we rushed
towards the edge of the wood; trees seemed to close in on us, and I
thought the wood would never end.

Finally we made it, exiting a few
hundred yards away from my home.

“
Holy crap! What the hell
was with you?” Nathan asked, then coughed.

“
I don’t know,” I said,
air whooshing out of my burning lungs. “It was so
weird.”

“
She just appeared out of
nowhere. And you stared at her without blinking. You two scared the
hell out of me!” he said, taking a look back.

I looked back as well, glad to see
only the skeletons of leafless trees, and no Mrs.
Palmer.

“
Do you want my advice,
pal?” Nathan said. “Never approach that woman. She’s mental. I
wouldn’t be surprised to find out it’s she who kidnapped
Greg.”

Greg. Greg Thornby.

I remembered the story well. Greg
Thornby had gone missing a few days before Mom, Beverly, and I
arrived at Olden Cross. After a few months’ search his body hadn’t
been found, and the inquiry still continued.