Grave Shadows (7 page)

Chapter 23

I ran toward Dylan with Hayley right on my heels. What would I
tell Mom about his clothes? When I got to him and saw how deep he had sunk in the mud, I forgot about the clothes.

“Hang on, Dylan!” I screamed, slipping on the bank. I went down hard, then scrambled up again.

Dylan was pale, his eyes huge, big tears running down his cheeks. He flailed, and the mud inched toward his chest.

“Don’t move!” Hayley said. “Stay really still and breathe.”

Dylan cried harder.

I jumped into the mud to try to yank him out, but I sank past my knees. When I tried to move I sank farther, still a few yards from Dylan.

“Take this!” Hayley said.

She reached the metal detector to me, careful to stay on the bank. I tried to lift my left foot, and my shoe came off. I creeped forward enough to get the metal detector to Dylan’s hands, but suddenly I was up to my waist in the quicksand.

“Grab it!” I yelled.

Dylan reached and pulled and the detector went under. He sank farther.

“Stop!” Hayley shouted. “Don’t move any more or he’ll go under.” She hurried toward the road.

Dylan whimpered and tried to stand straight. I let the metal detector sink and moved slowly toward him, but the muck was so thick it sucked my right shoe and sock off.

My heart raced and I tried to calm down. “Why’d you come out here?” I said.

“I saw a shiny thing,” he said. “Ashley, I’m sinking.”

“Just stay still,” I said.

The longer I was in the mud, the more desperate I felt. The stuff looked like the clay you play with in first grade, only it didn’t smell good. I inched forward, sinking even more, until I could reach Dylan. He lunged, missed my hand, and sank farther. I made one last attempt and grabbed his hand. I pulled him up, but that made me sink to my armpits. Dylan came out without shoes, socks, or pants.

“Hang on, Ash!” Hayley said, running back toward us with yellow jumper cables. A young woman came over the hill behind her. As soon as she spotted us she said a bad word, and I knew we were in big trouble.

Hayley stood on the edge of the bank and threw one end of the cable to me. It slopped in the muck and I snatched it. “Get him out first,” I yelled, wrapping the cable around Dylan’s chest.

Hayley and the woman pulled him across the top of the mud, his little behind jiggling as he bounced along. If I hadn’t thought I was about to die, it would have been funny.

I was so relieved when they pulled him onto the bank, but the mud was up to my chest now and pushing on my lungs. I could hardly breathe. I quit moving, quit trying to get a better foothold. I was slowly sinking.

Please, God. I don’t want to die this way.

Chapter 24

I was about to leave Jeff’s house
when the doorbell rang. It was Denise, one of our classmates. To say Ashley and I didn’t get along with her is like saying David and Goliath weren’t pals. She had lied about Ashley in band and had almost hurt her at an amusement park before the end of school.

“Oh,” she said, glancing at the address on the house like she was at the wrong place.

I said I was just leaving and that the Alexanders weren’t home.

“Well, could you put this in their fridge?” She handed me a casserole dish with foil on top. The thing weighed about 10 pounds.

She turned to leave, but I asked if she knew anything about Jeff’s collection.

“Sure. Everybody’s heard about it, but I’ve never actually seen it. Could I take a peek? I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“Sorry,” I said. “The room’s locked, and I don’t have a key. Maybe next time.”

Chapter 25

Hayley and the woman tossed me the jumper cables,
but if they managed to pull me out, would the mud tear my clothes off as it had Dylan’s? I was glad no one else was watching.

I grabbed the muddy cables, but when Hayley and the woman pulled, my hands kept slipping.

“Tie it around you!” the woman yelled.

I finally got it around me as the mud sneaked toward my shoulders. I kept praying as they tugged with all their might. At first nothing happened. Then the cable bit into my skin, and I inched forward. It felt like a vacuum cleaner was sucking me down. I wanted to hang on to my shorts, but I knew if I let go of the cable I’d sink.

Dylan clapped as they pulled me, and once I knew I was going to be safe, I saw his towel fall off and I laughed. Soon I was crying with relief as they dragged me across the mud like a wounded turtle.

Someone appeared at the top of the hill talking on a cell phone. A siren wailed in the distance.

As soon as I reached the shore, Hayley gripped my hands and helped me up. The woman threw me a towel. I draped it over me and sat next to Dylan, crying and exhausted.

The siren stopped, and a police officer rushed down the hill. The woman offered to give Dylan and me a ride, and I liked that idea a whole lot better than going home in a police car.

Before she pulled out, I heard the police officer saying something into his radio. I rolled down my window. “Tell the county we need a fence around this place,” he said. “These two just about didn’t make it.”

That sent shivers down my spine. Then he added, “There’s something under the water in the deep section of the lake. I think it’s a car.”

Chapter 26

Ashley burst through the door carrying Dylan,
both covered in mud.

“Looks like you guys had fun,” I said.

She glared at me, then spilled the story. Boy, did I feel like an idiot.

“Get Dylan in the shower,” she said, heading upstairs. “Then you and I need to get back to Hayley at the lake.”

“Why?”

Ashley told me what the cop had said. “I have to see if this is Gunnar’s Jeep and if he’s in it.”

A little later she came down with wet hair just as Leigh walked in. She’d been looking for a summer job for a couple of weeks, and I could tell by her face she’d had no luck.

Ashley asked Leigh if she would watch Dylan until Mom got home, and Leigh agreed only after Ashley promised her twice as much as Mom was going to pay her for the whole day. Leigh may not be much of a sister, but you have to admire her business sense.

By the time we got to the lake, a tow truck had backed up to the edge of the hill and a guy in a wet suit was in the water. A few minutes later the truck pulled a yellow Jeep Cherokee from the muddy lake.

Hayley covered her mouth, and Ashley put an arm around her.

“That’s his Jeep,” Hayley said.

Grime covered the windshield. The policeman spoke to the tow-truck operator, and the man said it didn’t look like the vehicle had been underwater that long. “Maybe a couple of weeks.”

Others had gathered, and when the SUV was at the top of the hill, the officer asked everyone to stand back. Some pointed and whispered about Ashley being one of the stuck kids, and it made me want to leave, but we couldn’t take our eyes off that yellow Jeep. Could Gunnar have plunged into the water? Was his body still in the SUV?

When the cop opened the door, water poured out, along with fish and crawdads.

“I can’t stand this,” Hayley said, stepping behind Ashley as if to keep from seeing something she didn’t want to see.

The Jeep was full of mud and the seats were waterlogged, but I didn’t see a body.

The officer opened the back. “Vehicle’s clean,” he said into his radio. “The plates match the missing person, but there’s no one inside.”