Tiff and Bry had on hoodies—the Weller uniform. My stomach clenched when I caught sight of him. Our last encounter had ended badly. He was John's height, but he had fifty pounds on my friend—definitely a jock. I swallowed nervously.
Onyx lowered his head, and I thought, It's okay, Onyx.
The Boy has put the good sounds in the Dog's head, but there was a nervousness that is not typical of the Boy. The Dog became watchful of the new people, a foreign pack.
The Dog approached the big male and sniffed his hand. Then, he moved his nose to the female. They were pack, but the others... not. He backed away cautiously, knowing he must maintain his rude eye contact when his Boy was nervous with the pack of two. The Dog understood when the big male looked away that the Dog was dominant.
That was good. The Dog wagged his tail.
“Doesn't seem like your dog likes me much, Hart,” Bry said.
“Nah. He’s just sizin’ ya up.”
Tiff gave me a little salute with her fingers. “Hey, Caleb.”
I nodded back at her. “Hey.”
Bry came over, and I tensed. Onyx omitted a soft growl.
“We're cool,” Bry said, giving me the guy clap on the back.
Everyone seemed to relax, including Onyx. Cool. I instinctively liked Bry for putting stuff to bed.
***
We hiked up a steep knoll, Jonesy in the lead and John, with his LED strapped to his side, following closely.
I caught Sophie glancing at Jonesy, but he didn’t seem to notice. 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 announced, eying up John's satchel-thing.
“What's a murse?” Bry asked.
I chuckled. “A purse for dudes.”
“It doesn't look like a purse,” Bry said, staring at John’s bag.
Jonesy turned. “Listen, if it has a strap and hangs off your body, it's a purse.”
Bry laughed. “Jockstraps hang off your body.”
Everybody let loose on that one for a minute.
“Anyway,” Jonesy said, “John has the contingency crap in case something happens.”
“What's gonna happen?” Bry asked. “We're here to see some ghosts, right?”
“Well, ya see, it's Friday the thirteenth, and—” Jonesy began.
I waved him quiet. “You remember Scenic, right, Bry?”
“Unforgettable, my brother,” he said.
“Right, stuff like that.”
Sophie said, “It's okay. There aren't any of Caleb’s relatives here.”
“Like that's going to matter?” John smirked.
We all looked up at the cemetery. I put out my undead feelers. There were some old dead there. They called to me like a satellite come to orbit. My teeth hummed in response.
John had continued about twenty more feet. “Hey, Caleb,” he called, “how's your signal?”
“Fine, why?” The buzzing of the dead was a dull roar in my skull.
Suddenly, a wall rose in my brain, instantly silencing the dead. I looked up sharply at John. “You doin' the whammy on me?”
“I am,” John said, rocking back on his heels with a grin splitting his face.
I smiled, turning to Tiff. “Do ya feel that?”
“Not anymore,” she said.
I looked at Jade. “And you?”
“Wonderful silence. Nothing.”
“Let go of my hand and touch Tiff,” I told her.
Jade moved away and put her hand on Tiff’s. She shook her head.
Bry had gone around the base of the knoll, about twenty-five feet away.
“Hey Bry!” I shouted.
John scowled. “Sh! 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. We need to know how far John's whammy extends.”
“Ah... okay.”
I turned back to John, who was leaning against a crooked tombstone that glowed like a soft beacon in the dusk. “You still narrowed in on me?”
“Yeah.”
Jade walked over to Bry while I crushed a spark of jealousy.
She put a hand on his forearm. “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?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, almost though.”
“Give us all ya got,” I commanded.
John made a strained face. I could see him struggling, even 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 said.
John visibly relaxed, and the white noise of the dead rushed back in like waves to the shore.
“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. Jade joined us with Bry.
“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.
I nodded. “Yeah, he did.”
“Brett got one, too,” Jade said.
“He'd be a really good athlete if he wasn't such an ass,” John said.
“Yeah, that’s too bad,” Jade said.
“Come on,” I said. “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, they'll get a reckoning.” I wasn't doing forty pushes before bed for nothing.
Jonesy said, “Yeah, I'm itching to get old pyro and Brett. That would be great!”
We took a rest at the top. Cars whizzed by on Highway 167, creating constant noise. At least there wasn't that horrible auto smell anymore that my parents had described from when they were young. We were surrounded by a bunch of buildings with just a small oasis of trees adjacent to the graveyard, which looked untended.
Bry said, “My grandparents used to come here to make out.”
Sophie gasped. “Are you kidding? They told you that?”
“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”—Bry 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.”
I tried to envision the Kent of sixty or seventy years ago. It didn't seem real. We moved into the center of the cemetery. I looked at the tombstones, seeing that many of the etchings had worn away with only a few letters left.
Jade bent over to study one. Her hair swept forward, leaving her pert nose the only thing visible from the side. “Why is this one speckled?” she asked, running her hand over the polished surface. She pressed a finger into a corner divot, worn smooth from many seasons of weather.
Some of the speckles seemed to sparkle in the pale light. Nearby were similar tombstones with that speckled look. Small flecks caught the light, seeming to wink back at us.
Night had descended, a velvet glove encasing our group while the moonlight speared through the trees, caressing a stone marker here and there and illuminating the areas between.
“I think it's granite,” I said.
“No. I’m pretty sure those are marble,” John said.
I shook my head. “No, the all-white ones are marble. My dad told me these were granite.”
“He gi
ves 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,” John said. “I thought your dad was bio-chemistry.”
“He is. But he had to study all kinds of sciences. I remember he told me once that 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 I wouldn’t say out loud.
“Moving on. Let's blow this Popsicle stand.” Jonesy walked toward the shack.
We made our way carefully through the long, hay-like grass where the markers appeared to be stranded, drowning. Onyx's black tail appeared like a shark's fin in the ocean of yellow.
“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, quite a ways ahead, said, “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.
Without even breaking stride, he said, “I saw that!”
Sophie giggled. Bry rammed 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, limping away.
A broken fence marked one side of the cemetery, the slats crooked and standing up like swords. My sense of foreboding increased.
Jade whispered, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Great.
“We picked the place for the scare factor.” I looked around; I wasn't getting caught with my shorts down.
Jade didn't say anything, but she clung a little tighter to my hand. I squeezed. She was fragile, such an interesting mix of girlness and toughness. I vowed to be hyper-aware. She was the one who needed protecting.
“There it is!” Jonesy whispered fiercely.
The shack was utterly different from what I'd expected. It was actually a small house. A wide front porch ran the length of the façade. The posts were square and stout, and a bevel ran up all four sides, softening the stern lines. One corner of the roof was drooping with an interesting window located dead center in the gable peak, that looked like a dark unblinking eye. Not a happy architectural feature, that. The door posed as a gaping mouth, teeth unseen.
John, Jonesy, Tiff, and Bry went forward. Jade and I lagged behind, and Sophie nervously brought up the rear. Her curly hair was 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 like rockets.
Jonesy stumbled back. “Holy hell!”
Bry laughed. “It's a creaky step, brave one.”
“Okay, smart ass, you tromp up there.”
Bry rolled his shoulders and loosened his neck. “Okay,” Bry replied, all man of the hour.
“Wait,” Tiff said. “Why don't you let us AFTDs check it out, hot shit.”
Bry crossed his arms, exhaling in a rush. “Fine.”
I moved away from Jade then changed my mind. I didn't like her standing out there, 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. She grasped the back of my jacket and walked up the steps behind me.
On the porch, Tiff asked, “Can you sense anything?”
“Nada.”
We both looked at John.
He gave us a sheepish look. “Oh! Yeah...”
Suddenly, our senses came back online like a river covering stones. Tiff turned to me and nodded. Jade and I stepped forward, that feeling of naturalness with the dead a constant.
A thought occurred to me. “Don't touch my skin, Jade. Just in case.”
“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. Remember when Jade found me with the bird outside school? Well, I kinda freaked out. I sensed what the bird, the dead bird, had been feeling, knew where it was. So the guy—”
“Who?”
“Later. Anyway, he told me that I had a wrapped ability. That means the abilities overlap or some crap.”
“What does that mean right now?”
“It means that I'm not a full two-point or three point... that I have...”
“Elements of both,” John said.
“Okay while all of this is just fas-cin-a-ting,” Jonesy said, “can we see what the frick is in the shack?”
Ignoring Jonesy, Tiff said, “Anyway, as the five-point we all know you are, well... there's a lot of possibilities.”
Bry started to ask a question, and Jonesy made an exasperated sound, “I know Jones-my-man, hold on to your jockstrap,” he looked at me. “I never got the full scoop out of my sis, but what are all your points? It's not like I memorized it. I'm going to Kent Lake.”
John said, “I'll fill you in.”
Jonesy slapped his thighs. “Well, hell,” he muttered, walking back inside the fence and plunking his butt onto one of the tombstones. He put his elbow on his knee and cupped a hand on his chin.
“Did you read all those papers?” I asked John.
“Well, yeah.”
“Huh, that's a lot of reading,” I said, impressed.
“Yeah. What did you read?” John asked.
“Just the AFTD parts.”
John grunted.
“Anyway, there are five points possible for each, documented ability. Or, for a few... levels.”
Jonesy interrupted, “Okay already, just throw out the AFTD stuff so we can get to the spooks.”
We ignored him.
John ticked them off on his fingers. “Cadaver manipulation, spirit control, communion with the dead, victim location, and zombie control. Zombie control and cadaver manipulation are two points that sorta overlap,” he added. “Then there’s life spark.”
“Life spark?” Jonesy asked.
I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen Onyx in a few minutes. A burst of panic started crawling up my throat. Highway 167 was way too close.
The Dog felt the Boy's fear. There had been very interesting smells surrounding this old structure. Bad smells too. Fear smells.
Onyx bounded out from behind the shack. A wave of relief flooded me. Maybe Onyx should stay home next time.
“Good boy, stay here.” I petted his head.
“Life spark?” Jonesy asked.
“Yes, it's that thing that happened with Onyx. It's where an AFTD can...” his hand clasped his chin for a second, “call,” he snapped his fingers, “that life spark back when death is close.”
“So some people can find bodies?” Tiff asked.
“Yeah, there are some AFTDs on the police force, and they find murder victims or traumatic death vics.” John understood, turning to me. “It's a given, Caleb, that if you're raising zombies, you can do the other stuff.”
“They don't really know, though,” Jonesy began. “I mean, we've only been having the shots, what, ten years now? Uh-huh, there's gotta be more abilities, things they haven't thought about. What about mutations?”
Jonesy could sometimes astound.
“Jonesy's right,” Sophie said. “They can't know everything. I'm A-P and they don't have all the levels figured out.”
“True,” John said. “Astral projection is about distance.”
“I think they're figuring it out as they go and acting like they have a handle on it,” Bry said.
Jonesy stood. “Okay, what I get from this is dead stuff can't get us with the freak duo here.” Jonesy nodded at Tiff and me. “And possibly, my man Caleb can find some violent corpses.” He grinned.
John sighed. “That's not exactly accurate. Caleb is… some kind of anomaly.”
“A what?” Jonesy asked.
“Something that doesn't meet normal patterns,” Sophie said.
Jonesy sighed.
“Perfect.”
Tiff ended the conversation, wrapping her hand around the oval doorknob hanging askew from its cradle. It glowed like a dirty golden egg in the failed light.
“Ya scared?” she asked.
I nodded.
Her shoulders fell a little. “Me too,” she whispered. “That's why we gotta do it.”
She turned the knob. The door swung open silently as if inviting our motley crew inside. Onyx shot past us to do some dog reconnaissance. Jonesy, John, Bry, and Sophie followed us into the house.
Bry said, “It's a caretaker's cottage.”
John asked, “What's that?”
“Back in the day, you know, a hundred years ago, they used to have these little houses for the dudes that would take care of these cemeteries.”
“They lived here? Right here, next to all the dead bodies?” Sophie asked with an involuntary shiver.
“It is a cemetery. That's where dead bodies go,” John stated.
“Quiet neighbors,” Jonesy said.
“Okay. Yuck! Go on,” Tiff said.
“Anyway,” Bry said, “They would water the flowers people left at the graves, mow the lawn, paint the fence, you know, maintenance stuff.”
“Right,” Sophie said slowly.
“Watch out,” I said, looking around. “This place is a dump. There could be holes in the floor.”
“Let’s stay in pairs or groups,” Bry said.
I held out my hand to John. “Dude, I just can't see that great. Give me the LED.”
John slapped the light into my palm. I turned it on, and a brilliant swath of light slashed a path through the room, illuminating the base of a staircase. The steps were narrow and tall, like a ladder.
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