by Sara Clancy
Whispering Graves
Banshee Series Book 2
Written by Sara Clancy
Edited by Emma Salam
Copyright © 2017 by ScareStreet.com
All rights reserved.
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Welcome,
Sara Clancy
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
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Chapter 1
The small round dining table made it impossible for Benton to ignore the corpse that sat in the chair across from him. Death had claimed its eyes, hiding both the color and pupil under the milky film, but it didn’t weaken the weight of its gaze. Sitting on either side of him, his parents continued their conversation between mouthfuls of the Chinese takeout that had already gone cold and soaked through the paper containers by the time it had arrived. Benton flinched each time their cutlery scraped against their plates. Familiar aromas clung to the warm air of the living room and filled his nose.
And the corpse kept staring at him.
“Benton,” his mother said softly.
Benton didn’t respond. Instead, he kept his eyes locked on his dinner plate, one of the few places he could look where the corpse wasn’t visible. His mother’s perfectly manicured hand crept into his field of vision and tapped the edge of his plate.
“It’s getting cold, sweetie.”
He could feel the weight of his father’s gaze as it shifted onto him. And with that, Benton now had the full attention of all three people seated at the round table. Clutching his fork until his fingers lost feeling, Benton forced his eyes up. With his parents sitting on either side of him, there was nothing to disrupt his view from the dead man before him. Sixty years had passed since Oliver Ackerman had been buried in a shallow grave, and only a month since Benton had dug him up.
It hadn’t been an intentional thing, at least not consciously. Benton and his parents had moved into the house hoping for a fresh start, and on their first night, while sleepwalking, Benton had found the mangled corpse in their barn. The whole event had seemed to fit right in with the long progression of twisted nightmarish happenings that constituted his life. People liked to tell him that it was just bad luck or a coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. He knew that there was something about him that wasn’t quite right.
But no one ever really believes a teenager when he says that he feels he’s different. It didn’t stop him from feeling it; like an alien body under his skin. Something growing. Something that had strengthened the night he had found Oliver, and evolved the day a demonic spirit had tried to kill him.
That attack had forever shifted something within Benton, and Oliver had marked the occasion by making his first appearance. He had begun almost timidly. Standing at the foot of Benton’s bed as he slept, or lurking in the shadows only to disappear when Benton turned a light on. He wasn’t so timid anymore. Now he liked to be seen, but only by Benton, and always appearing undeniably dead. Oliver was as bloated and festering as a fresh corpse, nothing like the brittle, discolored remains that had been pulled from the earth. Each time he saw him, Benton could smell the lingering stench of decay. As soon as Benton locked eyes with Oliver from across the table, the scent of rotting meat grew until he gagged.
“Are you feeling okay?” his mother pressed.
“Yeah,” Benton said after swallowing down his bile. “I’m fine.”
His mother talked across him, her attention focused solely on his father. “He looks pale.”
Benton jumped when his father pressed a hand against his forehead.
“Relax, Chey, he’s not warm.”
“Really, I’m fine,” Benton assured as he let his eyes drift back down to his plate. The broken eye contact didn’t distract him from the ghost’s attention. It only intensified it, until Benton could almost taste the putrid smell in the back of his throat. Oliver never took his eyes off of him. “I’m just not that hungry.”
“Well, you need to eat something,” Cheyanne said. “You can’t keep expecting Constable Rider to pay for your meals.”
His father scoffed. “Don’t be so dramatic. We let the Constable’s daughter eat our food when she’s over.”
“It’s hardly the same, Theo,” his mother shot back. “He’s been having at least one meal a day over there. That adds up. We don’t want her thinking that we’re taking advantage of her hospitality.”
What neither of them was taking into consideration was that Constable Rider’s daughter, Nicole, was a force of nature, like a hurricane of bubbly energy and glitter. When she decided that something was going to happen, she didn’t give up until she made it happen. Whether it was making Benton agree that they were friends, or hunting down and slaughtering a serial killing demon, she put the same amount of energy into both tasks. While Benton had decided that he needed to get out of the house, somewhere far away from his parents, and Oliver, it was Nicole who had declared that he would spend that free time over at her place. And, somewhere along the line, it just sort of happened.
The stench grew stronger, ripping Benton from the safety of his thoughts and thrusting him back into his meal with the dead. As subtly as he could, he pressed the back of his hand against his nose and breathed through his mouth. He could feel the traces of airborne fat coating his throat and making his eyes water.
With renewed determination to ignore Oliver, Benton stabbed at a hunk of pork. The crimson sweet and sour sauce swelled around the prongs of his fork. It appeared to thicken as he watched it, darkening until it looked like blood oozing out from the slice of meat. His stomach churned and he forced the morsel off his fork. Instead, he quickly shoved down a bite of honey chicken before Oliver could play any mind tricks with it.
The mouthful was enough to satisfy his parents and they resumed their previous conversation, chatting happily, unaware of the corpse only inches from their sides. They didn’t see him, didn’t feel the weight of his dead eyes upon them, but they did feel the shift in the air. It was a small comfort to see them shiver and watch as his father went to check the thermostat. But it was still a comfort. It was a slither of proof for Benton that he wasn’t crazy.
Forcing himself to swallow the mouthful, Benton glanced up at Oliver. He was closer. Sitting perfectly still, his hands on his lap and his spine straight. The specter had drifted forward, entering into the solid wood of the table. Benton’s heart hammered as a cold sweat bristled his skin. He blinked and Oliver was an inch closer. Staring. Silent. Benton lowered his gaze and felt the shift, the press of frigid air against his skin as Oliver drew closer. Benton looked up, and Oliver was halfway through the table. This time, Benton didn’t take his eyes off of the ghost, but he couldn’t quell his need to blink. Each time his eyelids flicked down, Oliver leaped forward until his decomposing face swallowed Benton’s vision. His sunken, cloudy eyes held Benton’s, while the stench of death gushed from him like a physical force. Benton felt drenched in it. His clothes grew heavy with festering vapor and he could almost feel a thick putrid mucus covering his arms and face. Oliver lurched forward again. Close enough now that the decaying fle
sh of his nose pressed, wet and weeping, against Benton’s own.
“Benton,” Theodore said from somewhere now unseen. “Eat your dinner.”
***
Nicole shuffled in the driver’s seat of her jeep, tucking in one leg and pressing her side against the back of the seat, making it very clear to Benton that he now had her full attention. The night surrounded the jeep with deep shadows that the weak overhead light could barely fight off. It wasn’t hard to get out of town in a place like Fort Wayward. All you had to do was drive for fifteen minutes, in any direction a dirt road would allow you, and it was as if civilization ceased to exist.
Benton normally only called her at night when he needed to escape into that kind of oblivion for a bit. His parents were still dead set against him having a driver’s license, and since walking blindly into the dark plains surrounding his ranch house wasn’t the smartest idea, she was his only ticket out. And she was always happy to help. When Benton had hurled himself into her still moving car, she had expected a long tirade about something. He was a fan of suppressing his emotions until they exploded out of him like some kind of verbal volcanic eruption. But he had remained silent for most of their trip and responded to her attempts to start a conversation with the most minimal word usage possible. At his uneasy silence, Nicole had swung the jeep onto a new path, crossing through the lush Alberta plains before climbing up to the tip of a Buffalo Jump.
There were a few sheer drop-offs scattered around Fort Wayward that had once been used by local First Nations tribes during buffalo hunts. The animals had been coaxed into a stampede and herded over the edge to plummet to their deaths, earning the location the title, ‘Buffalo Jumps.’
Nowadays, they were more commonly used for tourist attractions and for their breathtaking views. It was possible to look for miles in each direction and see nothing but untouched beauty. And at night, with nothing to compete against, the stars seemed like a blanket that covered the world, spread so thickly that they even sparkled along the horizon. Nicole liked that. She adored how the view could make her feel both larger than life and absolutely tiny within the same instant. It always helped her to put things into perspective, and she brought Benton here the first time he had begged her to ‘just drive.’ He hadn’t gushed poetically about the sight, but he had smiled and relaxed into the passenger seat. It had taken her a few extra trips to learn that, for Benton, loose easy smiles were pretty much his version of extravagant praise.
As they sat, with Benton constantly skimming across the radio stations, Nicole was partly hoping that he was in the mood to discuss the life altering fact that he was a banshee. It had been almost a month since Nicole had been forced to realize how little she actually knew about the world, or even just her own sleepy little corner of it.
When she had first been told that Santa wasn’t real, Nicole had spent days learning everything she could about where the legend had come from and how it had grown to the point that she had believed in flying reindeers. She had the same impulse now. To throw herself into discovering everything there was to know until she could feel certain of the world again. But she was nowhere near ready to begin researching the monster that had murdered her friend. The wounds were still too raw. She needed time to reconcile what had happened before she faced it again. And she could take as much time as she wanted where that particular monster was concerned. After all, she had chosen the spot for its unmarked grave. It was a patch of earth in the middle of nowhere. No one would ever find it. Only she and Benton knew where it was. So it could wait for her, rotting in the earth as she mourned, and she would study what was left.
She was, however, ready to start exploring Benton; a real live male banshee. She had a thousand questions and a million things she wanted to try. The problem was, every time he seemed to be on the verge of agreeing, she got way too excited and ended up bombarding him with too much, too fast. Overwhelmed, he would change the topic and that would be that. But not tonight.
As Benton leaned forward to, once again, search through the radio stations, Nicole took a deep sobering breath and reminded herself of the plan. She had spent some time going through her list and had arrived at a first request that would be simple and non-threatening. She wanted to try and get his banshee wail on tape. She had only ever heard it twice before, and, since they were fighting for their lives on both occasions, she hadn’t thought to record it. If she could just stick to that one request tonight, Benton would have his distraction and they would have finally taken their first step into exploring a world beyond their understanding.
She smoothed her hands over her long hair, licked her lips, and forced on her most charming smile. Benton froze instantly, hand still on the radio, and turned to face her. His normally stormy eyes looked almost silver in the dim light as they studied her face closely.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything,” she said with a whine.
“You’re giving me your Lady Frankenstein look and I’m not up for it tonight.”
“I do not have a Lady Frankenstein look,” she grumbled. “I had a simple request.”
“Nope.”
“Fine. So we’ll talk about you.”
He scrunched up his nose. “Are those my only options?”
“What options? You already made your choice. But don’t worry, I came prepared,” Nicole said.
He jerked back slightly as she flung her torso between the two front seats and began to grope along the dark back seat for her bag.
“You came prepared for a conversation?” he asked, lingering behind her as he tried to see what she was doing.
She had leaned in so far that she almost head-butted him when she swung back into her seat, hefting the bag onto her lap.
“I don’t think you realize how taxing you can be,” she said.
Ignoring how his eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he mouthed ‘me’ to himself in disbelief, she unzipped the bag and whipped out two baseball mitts. She victoriously brandished them, holding them closer to the shadows to better display the glow sticks she had taped along their seams. The effect was vaguely reminiscent of a big, cartoonish hand outlined by a multi-colored halo.
Benton blinked owlishly as she pressed one of the mitts against his chest. “What is this?”
“We’re going to play catch,” Nicole declared as she retrieved a clear ball from the bag. She tapped it against the dashboard and the globe lit up with a flurry of flashing lights that changed color in rapid succession.
“I can talk about my feelings without the crutch of sports,” Benton said. The sharp tone he was aiming for faltered as he tried to keep himself from smiling.
“I know,” she shrugged. “I just thought that it might be fun. But if you think it’s silly we can put them away.”
His fingers tightened on the mitt against his chest, the squeak of the leather giving him away. “It is stupid. But you went through so much effort.”
“Not that much,” she said, only to be ignored.
“And I don’t want to hurt your feelings …”
“Seriously, I just sticky-taped them on.”
“You owe me,” he barely got the words out before he thrust open the jeep’s door and happily fled into the crisp night air.
It was a new moon, with only the stars to see by, leaving a thick layer of darkness clinging to the world. It was possible to make out the outlines of some shapes, but they would always disappear when she tried to focus on them. Through the windows, she watched as Benton, now only a colorful mitt swirling about, shook his hands until the light bled across the air to form an unstable streak.
With a large smile, she switched over the internal light so it would work when the door was ajar and took the keys with her. By the time she had reached the back of the jeep, she had patted her jeans’ pocket at least ten times to reassure herself that the keys were still tucked safely within it. She was still a bit anxious every time she left her car unlocked. It wasn’t that long ago that she wouldn’t have though
t twice about it. But, after Victor stole her keys, keeping them trapped so he could hunt Benton down, she had developed a certain amount of paranoia.
“It’ll look better with the lights off,” Benton noted.
She wished that she could see him. It sounded like he was now wearing her favorite smile. The one that made him look like a giant goof. But it was too dark. She wouldn’t even be able to tell where he was if he hadn’t been holding his glowing mitt.
“Yeah, but I want to be able to find my jeep later. Plus it’ll be a good marker so we don’t run off the edge of the cliff.”
“Good point.” His voice was laced with the beginnings of unease. “How far down is this jump again?”
“Around this area?” She gave it some thought as she watched his mitt follow her further from the jeep, swinging loosely with his stride. “I’d say around thirty-six feet. So, a bit under two and a half floors into solid earth.”
They kept walking until the gravel gave way to soft tuffs of grass. It wasn’t that far from the jeep, but they were already well beyond the reach of the light. She waited until she heard him punch his fist into the soft leather of his glove. When she was sure he was ready, she tapped the plastic ball against her thigh. The sudden burst of flashing color hit her like a strobe light as she tossed the ball to him. It streaked like a comet, leaving a multicolored arch across the ebony until it hit his glove. The light was all but smothered as the ball was passed from his mitt to his hand, but it exploded across the night once again as he sent it back. She made sure to give the ball a good thump every time she had it, ensuring the timer didn’t run out as she waited for him to gather his thoughts and break the silence.
“Thanks for picking me up. I couldn’t handle Oliver tonight.”
“He’s still not talking?”
“Nope. Just being creepy and completely disregarding well-established laws of personal space. I’m used to the nightmares, as much as I can be, but I don’t know what to do with a ghost.”