Whispering Pines

by Heidi Lang

  “What are you really doing?” he asked. “This isn’t a spell for seeking. It’s a summoning spell.” He indicated the mirror, the candle, and the ring of salt his mom had poured around both of them. It was as if his mom had deliberately set up a beacon so anything out there could find her. With her blood augmenting the signal, it would be very powerful.

  Her lower lip trembled, her black hair tumbling loose around her face and shoulders. At thirteen, Caden was already a few inches taller than her, and for a second he felt almost like their roles had flipped. Like she was the child. “I am seeking,” she said. “I just… I need to find him.” They both knew she wasn’t talking about Peter anymore. She took a breath that sounded dangerously close to a sob.

  Now it was Caden’s turn to look away. He had told his mom what he saw happen to his brother… He had told both his parents. But since he still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d seen, it didn’t help much. And it wasn’t information the police believed either.

  And there were a few details he’d left out too. Like why his brother hadn’t come back.

  His eyes trailed over the protective salt circle, meant to keep the spell—and the things it might call—contained. It was smudged, a small gap in one side. Caden’s heart clenched like a fist, but he forced himself to relax. His mom had probably broken the circle when she stood to turn on the lights. It was nothing.

  But he remembered the feel of those ghostly fingers in his hair, that laugh, and hunched his shoulders.

  His brother was gone. He knew Aiden was gone.

  But he didn’t know if it would be forever. He was afraid Aiden would somehow make it back.

  And when Aiden did, Caden was sure he’d want revenge.

  5. RAE

  After dinner Rae made a beeline for her room. She checked the time—a little before seven—and sat down at her desk. They’d sold most of their furniture when they moved and bought new things out here, but Rae had begged and pleaded to keep her same desk. It wasn’t just that it was the exact right size, or that she liked the faint piney smell it still gave off, or even how solid it seemed, like it would be able to survive an earthquake with barely a scratch. She did love those aspects, but mostly she loved how easy it was to hide things inside it.

  She studied the corkboard attached to the back of the desk. Even though she’d finished unpacking most of her room, her board was still pretty sparse. She used to have tons of photographs of her and Taylor, and a few of their other friends, but she’d ripped those into the smallest pieces she could long ago. Now all she had up was a photo of Ava dressed as a pirate, and another of her and Ava with their mom and dad standing in front of the Grand Canyon, their last big family trip together. Aside from those, she’d pinned up a couple articles about running, and a picture of baby foxes she’d cut out of a magazine because they were just too cute.

  She glanced at her closed bedroom door, then ran her hand along the cork backboard. Her fingers found the hidden latches on the sides, and with a soft click, she slipped them down and pulled the board free, setting it aside on the floor.

  Her real corkboard stared back at her now, cluttered with articles that had nothing to do with running.

  Rae believed that any good, solid investigation needed a paper trail. Articles online could vanish; computers could be wiped clean. Or worse, her mom could decide it was time to snoop through her files again. So Rae was careful to erase her browsing histories, and she kept a hard copy of anything important hidden away here.

  Like the article detailing the disappearance of two engineers last year from a small northern California town. Engineers who had both been assigned to the same contract, working on a project called Operation Gray Bird. The article wasn’t clear what, exactly, their objective had been. No one seemed to know.

  Rae knew, though. Her dad had talked about it, probably more than he was supposed to.

  He told her they were working on something top secret, some kind of aircraft, trying to reverse-engineer its technology. Specifically, her dad’s team had been in charge of figuring out its energy source, trying to see if they could take it apart and replicate it. But something had gone wrong, and her dad went from being very excited about the project to abruptly deciding he needed to quit.

  Rae had her theories about why. Just as she knew what had happened to him afterward, even if she couldn’t prove it. Yet.

  Can you even believe what Rae thinks happened to her father? She’s, like, some kind of conspiracy freak. I always knew it. She’s so weird.

  I heard her father ran off and found himself a new family. I would too, if I were him.

  So, so weird.

  But Rae knew what she’d seen.

  She looked at that article, and all the ones she’d found that were at all related. Rumors of unidentified flying objects, of abductions, of bizarre phenomena. Stories of people vanishing from their homes and lives. Accusations of government cover-ups and secret military technology. These were the stories she cared about. Her secret obsession.

  She might be a new Rae out here, but that didn’t mean she was giving up on her quest to eventually find her dad. She’d never stop searching until she did. She only hoped that if her dad found his own way back, he’d be able to trace them to Whispering Pines.

  She looked at the single photograph pinned to this board: a picture of her standing with her dad, his arm around her shoulders. They were both smiling, but not like a posed, camera-ready smile. More like they’d been sharing an inside joke. Her dad was wearing his favorite shirt, the ugly green-and-purple plaid that Rae and Ava had picked out for him together a year before he disappeared.

  There was another picture pinned behind it, but even here, in the safety of her room, she didn’t dare pull it out. It was the only proof she had. Instead, she thought of Brandi. Brandi, who liked strawberry ice cream and owned a ferret and planned to be a pilot when she grew up so her family could travel wherever they wanted. Brandi, with her chapped lips and her gap-toothed smile and her warm brown eyes. Brandi, who was missing.

  But missing did not mean gone for good. Rae had to believe that. She might not be able to search for her dad right now, but she could search for Brandi.

  She didn’t know enough about this town yet to know where to look, so she started her search with the day’s paper.

  The front page had a feel-good piece about Green On!’s donations to a homeless shelter and an animal rescue agency. Beneath that was an article about a local playground closed on account of squirrel activity, which seemed weird. And then a whole write-up on the local university basketball team, the Malamutes, and how they were already gearing up for the new season. Rae flipped to the next page, and stopped on one of the strangest articles she’d ever seen. And that was really saying something.

  SERIAL EYE SNATCHER IN OUR MIDST?

  Whispering Pines, CT. Three months ago, four children, ages 10, 12, 13, and 14, were playing an innocent game of hide-and-seek when they were viciously attacked. Someone targeted the oldest child first, removing her eyes before moving on to the others. Only the 10-year-old escaped unscathed. Although she claimed to have seen the attacker, she was unable to provide credible information, and authorities are no closer to discovering the cause of this brutal and unexpected assault.

  While only the eyes were taken, the mental trauma has been so great that none of the victims have been able to give any information that would help identify the perpetrator either. Doctor William Anderson, who gave an initial assessment of the injured parties, stated, “Eyes are the windows to the soul, and I’m afraid both of those were taken from them.”

  This isn’t the first attack of this nature. Six months ago, the same phenomenon struck three other children. For now, all those affected are being treated at a private lab owned by Green On!, where it is hoped they will eventually make some sort of recovery. However, despite the company’s history of excellent medical and scientific achievements, there are some, like Doctor Anderson, who believe these victims should be
treated elsewhere.

  “We have no idea what they’re doing with these kids up in their labs,” claims Anderson, who has a history of opposing Green On! and the good work they are doing for this community—good work like providing free, clean energy to any Whispering Pines resident willing to take part in their energy monitoring system.

  Alan Dietrich, head of PR for Green On!, had this to say: “There will always be those few misguided individuals who don’t understand or appreciate what we are trying to do. But that’s fine. We know that most of the citizens of Whispering Pines are behind us.”

  Meanwhile, local law enforcement will be implementing a strict curfew for everyone under eighteen. “If it’s getting dark, you need to head inside,” says police chief Paul Moser. “And honestly? I’d recommend those over eighteen stay indoors too.”

  When asked who or what he believes is doing this, Moser had no new insights at this time.

  Rae carefully cut out the article and pinned it to her board, then continued through the rest of the paper. There were several other articles of note, like one about a sinkhole that had opened over the summer behind Dana S. Middle School. She skimmed through it, stopping on the quote in the middle:

  “It appears to be bottomless,” claims one source who refused to be named. “I’ve been throwing my garbage into it every day since it appeared, and so far no one has noticed a thing. It’s great.”

  Rae shook her head and flipped to another article, this one about the strange unreliability of cell service near the Watchful Woods. Several townsfolk had complained. There was a petition to get to the bottom of it.

  Rae cut that article out too, and pinned it to her board with the others.

  Eye snatchers, bottomless sinkholes, and missing students. Just what kind of place was this?

  Brandi had been the first person to be nice to Rae in a year, and Rae was determined to help find her if she could. But now the first hint of worry crept in with her resolve. Because Brandi wasn’t just a friend. She was also her next-door neighbor. Her next-door neighbor who had been taken from her home.

  Rae sat back in her chair and stared out her bedroom window at the trees just visible outside, and felt like they were somehow staring back.

  6. CADEN

  Dinner that evening was an exercise in torture for Caden, with his family acting like everything was totally normal. His mom pretended she was the perfect housewife, serving him and his dad a slightly burnt casserole, while his dad pretended to be the perfect working stiff, rambling about some boring programming problem he was having, and how the guys at work wanted him to come golfing with them this weekend. And Caden pretended to care, and pretended to eat, and counted down the moments until he could escape back to his room.

  Later, he did some of his homework, but his thoughts kept drifting back to Aiden.

  He used to adore his older brother. Smart, good-looking, talented. Aiden had been everything Caden wanted to be. Everyone in school admired him. The teachers loved him, the other boys all wanted to be friends with him, and he’d started dating by the time he was thirteen. Those relationships never lasted, but that didn’t really matter to Aiden.

  That was the thing that Caden hadn’t realized at first. None of it mattered to his brother. He didn’t care about the people at his school, about his so-called friends or girlfriends, his grades, nothing. All he cared about was the magic. The power.

  We are so much better than all of them, he’d say. These sheep, they have no idea what’s out there. But you and me? We get it.

  It made Caden feel like he didn’t even need friends. He had his brother, and both of them were better than the others. And someday the two of them would take over the Price family business together.

  But everything changed when Caden got to middle school. His brother was in eighth grade, the top of the school, and Caden was in fifth, the bottom. And he did see all the things he’d expected to see around his brother: Aiden’s adoring fans, the students who followed him around, his amazing basketball wins. But Caden also noticed the whispers, the fear. The rumors that bad things happened to the people Aiden didn’t like.

  Like when Vanessa Sanchez broke up with him… and that afternoon the brakes in her mom’s car stopped working on the way home from school, and they ended up plowing into a snowdrift and almost dying. Or when Mark Peterson got in a fight with Aiden over a pickup basketball game… and his house caught fire that night.

  Gossip. Lies. Caden was sure of it. All of those things were just coincidences. There was no way his brother had anything to do with any of them.

  But then there was the incident with Zachary Mitchell.

  Caden hated thinking about it. Even now, two years later, he burned with humiliation. After first grade he hadn’t bothered trying to make friends, even when the rumors about his mind reading faded and his classmates started inviting him to play on their teams at recess again. By then he’d decided he didn’t need any of them; he preferred to do things by himself. So people learned to leave him alone.

  But Zachary Mitchell was different. He’d moved to Whispering Pines in the summer before fifth grade and had taken an instant dislike to Caden. Zachary didn’t believe in ghosts—his grandfather had been a famous skeptic—and he told everyone often and loudly how Caden’s family was taking advantage of people.

  Caden dealt with Zachary’s subtle taunts, his attempts at tripping him, his jeering looks. It wasn’t that big a deal, and mostly Caden ignored them.

  But Aiden had noticed. And one evening, after Zachary caught Caden in the face with a well-timed soccer ball, Aiden had cornered Caden in his room. At first Aiden hadn’t said anything, just looked at the bruise on his brother’s face.

  It’s nothing, Caden had insisted.

  And Aiden had been furious. That worm hurt you. That’s not nothing. So what are you going to do about it?

  I don’t know.

  Let me give you some advice, Aiden had said. If someone hurts you, you don’t just take an eye for an eye. You take the whole head.

  Caden had shrugged that off. And then a week later, on a cold November morning, he’d heard people yelling and laughing down the hall. When he’d turned the corner, there was Zachary, slapping himself in the face.

  It had been funny. Everyone was laughing. Even Zachary, at first. But then he kept going. It was like his hand had been possessed; he couldn’t stop. Each time, the hit was harder, the sound echoing down the hall as the students around him grew quiet.

  Caden put down his pen.

  He didn’t want to think about it, but the image of Zachary’s face floated in his mind. Puffy and bruised and red, like raw hamburger, his eyes swollen shut, his lip split. He’d been sobbing, begging someone to stop him. And standing nearby, smiling, was Aiden.

  Aiden never admitted that he was responsible. But Caden had known. Somehow his brother had done it, because he could do anything.

  Part of Caden had been happy, because Aiden had done this to protect him. But Caden was ashamed of that part, and sickened by the gleeful way Aiden had dispensed his version of justice. It finally made Caden see his brother for who he really was. And when Aiden started talking about another dimension, and how he wanted to tear a hole into it and steal its energy, Caden had known he’d be able to accomplish that, too. Just as he’d known his brother should never be given more power.

  Caden sighed and pushed his books away from him. He wasn’t going to get any homework done tonight. His thoughts were too distracted. He’d be better off getting some extra sleep and tackling the work in the morning.

  He left the desk lamp on and checked that his windows were shut and locked. Then he crawled under the covers, closed his eyes, and drifted to sleep.

  * * *

  Caden walked down a long, dark wooden stairway. He hugged the walls, trying to still his noisy breath. Why was his breathing so loud? And painful, each gasp wheezing from his ragged lungs. His legs shook as he took a tentative step down, hoping there was another exit—a d
oor or an unboarded window—even as he feared there would be nothing there but darkness and a dead end.

  Creeeeak.

  His heart hammered against his rib cage, sweat trickling down his spine. He knew he shouldn’t look, but he had no control over his body, and he turned anyhow. A shadow stood at the top of the stairs, outlined by a trickle of dim light filtering in from above. It didn’t move, and Caden shrank lower against the wall, praying the darkness of the stairwell would hide him. He tried holding his breath, but tiny gasping wheezes still slipped out.

  Please, please, he thought at that shadow, just walk by. Don’t come down here… He reached a shaky hand for his protective talisman, but it wasn’t there, his hand closing on nothing. Shock rippled through him. It felt like he’d tried to take another step, and missed the stair.

  “I know you’re there,” the shadow said, seeming to grow larger until it blocked the whole top of the stairwell. “You can’t hide from me any longer, Rae.”

  Rae?

  * * *

  Caden sat up in bed, sweat soaking his T-shirt. He fumbled for the pendant sitting warm against his chest, his fingers closing over it gratefully. “Just a dream,” he whispered. “A dream.”

  But it wasn’t. Not entirely. Caden had prophetic dreams only occasionally, but he recognized one when he had it. They ended when he noticed that he was in someone else’s perspective. And the dreams were always a warning.

  He blinked in the darkness of his room before realizing how that was wrong too. He’d left a light on. He always left a light on. It must have burned out in the night. He closed his eyes and opened them, trying to blink away the darkness, but the shades blocked out all the moonlight.

  “Caden.”