What Lies Beneath (8 page)

“It’s a paranormal communication device. I bought it online for two hundred dollars. I know, that is a lot, but you can’t find these just anywhere. I actually have it in my car and if you want we could use it sometime. It’ll be perfect for Halloween.”

He smiled down at me and I couldn’t help but smile back. There was something about him, I was fascinated by him, but not the way I thought I’d be. My heart still needed mending, and even though I thought I’d be fine, I knew it was going to take time before I could let a guy in again.

“That would be cool, but how does it work?” I asked. I didn’t want to seem too interested in hanging out with him. I just didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, or false hope.

“Well you… how about I show you?”

“Show her what?” my dad suddenly appeared in my bedroom doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He had his eyes on Tate like a cougar ready for a meal.

“He’s into the paranormal stuff. He wanted to show me this device. It’s called a ghost box.” I knew there was no way in hell my dad would let him take me anywhere, but it would be nice to get out of here.

“I’ve heard of that, you can hear voices from the radio frequencies,” my dad relaxed his arms and I saw a hint of a smile on his face.

“It’s awesome sir, I have one and it actually works. I was going to show Blair how it works but I take it she can’t leave.
But
maybe some other time,” Tate explained to my dad. My dad’s eyes glazed over, as if he had been watching a whole hour of white noise on the TV.

“Where exactly were you going to take her?” my dad asked.

“The Cemetery by the elementary school,” Tate replied. I watched them stare into each other’s eyes and finally my dad nodded.

“Can you have her back by seven?”

9

I watched Ben talking to my dad in the car door mirror as Tate and I drove away. I couldn’t believe that my dad let me go off with a boy I barely knew and that my mom was okay with it too. She looked at my dad, as if he had lost his mind, but then she said okay and went into the kitchen. She still didn’t seem better, but for some reason she was letting
me go with Tate and something didn’t feel right about them being okay with it.

Maybe they were giving up on trying to keep me a prisoner. They probably felt like they were depriving me of my life by keeping me home and letting go was the best they could do. You’d think with all that was going on, they’d chain my ass to my desk chair. But no matter where I was, something was still after me.

The whole ride to the cemetery we listened to music I’d never heard of before. It was like a mixture of rock and techno and I liked it. I had changed into a black
Florence and the Machine
t-shirt and some jeans for our trip. I looked down at my converses, still a bit caked with mud from the lake when I saw Caroline. I wondered why she hadn’t shown up since the lake.

We were driving down Grover Street when someone popped into my mind. Max. This was his street and as we passed his brown bricked house, I saw his car parked in the driveway. But I knew he wasn’t there or with his aunt. I just hoped he wasn’t dead.

I turned back to look at the road and saw a girl, tall and willowy, standing in the middle of the road, her arms stretched out as if she were trying to reach for me. Her long dark hair was blowing around her like rabid snakes and was soaked with water to the bone. She tilted her head back and screamed so loud that it made my ear drums rumble. I responded with a scream of my own that sent Tate swerving his car across the road and stopping on the side of the road in front of someone’s driveway.

“Are you okay?” he asked. I was nearly melting into the passenger seat with embarrassment. I probably looked like a mental case screaming out of nowhere. But that girl, she was new, and I’d never seen her before.

Caroline was one thing but now I was seeing two different girls who were around my age but were both dead. I decided against telling him about Caroline and this new girl, I didn’t want to freak him out too soon.

“I’m fine. It’s just I thought I saw something in the middle of the road. You probably think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I tried laughing it off but inside I was still freaking the hell out. Why was I seeing these girls? Who were they to me?

“No, I don’t. This is a pretty ghost active town, Blair. I think it’s actually pretty cool. But are you sure you are okay?” he looked at me as if he were trying to pry into my mind, a phantom of a smile on his face.

“Thanks for being kind about it. And I’m fine,” I explained, fixing my seat belt so I didn’t look so tense. I turned back to him and smiled.

“You promise?” the words set off something in me and all of a sudden I wasn’t staring at Tate anymore. I was staring at Dylan.

The boat was uneasy and my stomach wasn’t agreeing with it. I should have just asked Dylan to take me home. I didn’t feel like having a picnic on a boat at night and he had scared me with all the talk about dying with him. Just thinking about it sent chills down my spine as I watched him untie the rope from a wooden spike and toss it into the boat.

In the middle of the boat was a wicker basket full of stuff he packed and I could smell the chili pepper sandwiches his mom loved to make. He sat down and stared me, fixing me with a loving gaze.

I didn’t feel right being there with him but I didn’t want to challenge him at the moment. He rowed the boat away from the shore and didn’t say a word to me for a good ten minutes. He stopped us in the center of the lake, and I could feel the cold water from beneath my feet.

“You’re never going to agree with what I asked you before, are you?” his voice made me jump, the soothing, silky voice that I loved now sounded dark and unnatural.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now-”

“We are going to talk about it! Do you love me or not?”

“Yes, I love you-”

“Then why won’t you do this for me?”

“Dylan, are you out of your fucking mind?” I yelled. I had never yelled at him before and I wanted to crinkle up and float away with the way he looked at me, seething with hatred instead of love.

“No. I am not but you are just like the rest of them. You don’t really love me, Blair. If you did then you’d do this for me.”

“That’s not fair, Dylan. I love you, I love you so much. But you are asking me to do something awful. I will not kill myself for you. Do you understand? Take me back to shore and drive me home.” I looked around to see if there were any boats around us, and in the distance I saw headlights coming through the trees.

“I’m sorry, Blair.” I could hear the creaking of the wood as the weight shifted on the boat. I turned to say something to Dylan, but before I could utter a word, he snatched me by my hair and yanked me upward. The boat rocked back and forth severely and I couldn’t see his face.

I screamed as loud as I could and tried to pull my hair out of his grip. What was he doing to me? I told him to stop, screamed as loud as my vocal chords could handle. But he punched me in the stomach and I fell overboard and into the freezing black water.

My eyelids fluttered and I was now staring at Tate again, and he was staring at me, worried as anyone could look. It was another vision and this one caused goose bumps to grow all over my body.

“Maybe I should take you back home,” he said.

“No. it’s okay. I need to get out of that house and I’m sorry I keep flipping out around you. It’s not like me really. Let’s just go to the cemetery and act like this never happened.” I turned back to the road and swallowed hard.

Why did Dylan want me to kill myself? Nothing was making any sense and it was bugging me more than anything. He was accusing me of not loving him enough and he tried to kill me for not wanting to die for him. I didn’t understand, but I knew of one person who could maybe help me. Pearl.

“Okay, as long as you
promise
that you are okay.” I turned back to him and put on the fakest smile I’d ever used.

“I promise.”

The cemetery was dreary and cold as we passed through the rotted iron gates, two stone guardian angels glaring down upon us as Tate held the ghost box in his hand. It looked like a handheld radio turned inside out. It was odd and I couldn’t wait to see what would happen.

Just for now I had to get everything off of my mind and tomorrow I’d find a way to get to Pearl and
make
her help me this time around. I was seeing these dead girls, getting scary gifts, having visions of the night Dylan tried to kill me, and my best friend was nowhere to be seen.

She had to help me now. I was glad that I now knew what Dylan wanted from me, but I still didn’t know
why
he wanted me to do it.

We walked down the cemetery trail, the scent of rain getting stronger. We didn’t have much time and we’d be soaked soon. I watched Tate mess with the dial on the radio, tuning it to different stations of annoying white noise. He seemed very focused on the ghost box, his eyes set on only that until we came upon a tomb.

I stopped in front of it, taking in the crumbling stone and the strange gargoyles that sat on top of the four gray pillars, their deep set eyes staring down at me. For a moment I swore they were about to take flight and shoot down at us for disturbing their peace.

“Is there someone here?” Tate’s voice startled me as I turned to him. For a long while I waited for a voice to appear in the white noise. But there was nothing. He tuned it again and waited, digging the heels of his shoes into the loose dirt.

“Maybe they are all resting,” I joked. He laughed and turned the dial all the way to the left, the white noise growing louder by the second. Something was messing with it now as the soft sound of music came through the noise.
You belong to me…
I took a giant step backward and gripped a pillar with one hand, trying to steady myself. Why couldn’t this all just leave me alone for a while?

“Are you okay?” Tate asked, coming toward me, the music increasing in volume as he stopped directly in front of me.

“No. That was mine and Dylan’s song.” I gritted my teeth, my heart rising into my throat. He speedily turned the dial, cutting off the music. “I don’t think this was a good idea after all.” Behind him, standing near a tall headstone was the girl from the road. She was staring at me with such intensity that I felt as if my brain were about to burst. I closed my eyes for a moment and then opened them, exhaling. She was gone.

“I’m sorry, Blair. I thought this would get your mind off of everything. Come on, I’ll take you home before it starts pouring. We’ll do this again another time when you feel better.” He turned off the ghost box and I could tell he felt bad for bringing me out here. But it wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t even my fault. It was all of this crap.

I told him it wasn’t his fault and that we’d do this again sometime. But I had a feeling it wouldn’t be for a long while. I followed him back to the car, still shuddering with fear.

I had to face that none of this was ever going to go away unless I listened to Caroline. There was something I had to figure out and hopefully with Pearl’s help, I’d at least get one step closer to grasping the truth.

“Blair, I know this might seem worse but would you like to go with me to the Halloween carnival tomorrow night?” Nearly the entire town turned up for that. Everyone would be there, everyone would see me. It would be too crowded for all of this to mess with me, wouldn’t it?