The Grave Winner

by Lindsey Loucks

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Grave Winner Trilogy

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  What Now?

  What Gifts She Carried ~ Sneak Peak

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  © Copyright Lindsey R. Loucks 2013, 2015.

  Editor: Rebecca Hamilton

  Cover Art: anpet2000 / bigstockphoto.com

  Cover Design: Rebecca Hamilton

  Formatting: Wyrding Ways Press

  (Print) ISBN-13: 978-1515348375

  (Print) ISBN-10: 1515348377

  www.lindseyrloucks.com

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  Ebooks/Books are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an

  infringement on the copyright of this work.

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied

  in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.

  Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is

  entirely coincidental.

  Books in The Grave Winner Trilogy:

  The Grave Winner

  What Gifts She Carried

  The Trinity Bleeds

  Other Books by Lindsey R. Loucks:

  Mad Flashes

  Dedication

  For my sister

  Dad, Darby, and I stood rooted in place at Mom’s burial. The weight in my chest threatened to suffocate me if I looked at the lid of her gleaming casket any longer. Instead, I focused on the black birds cutting across the sky in a sharp V formation. They pressed on until the tops of the trees took them from me.

  The preacher had stopped talking a long time ago. People still crowded around us, heads bent, smothering their sniffles with tissues. Someone patted my back, and I wished they would stop. No attempt to comfort would help.

  The white-haired old man hovering back by the fence hacked loudly then puffed on a cigarette with a dirt-spattered hand. When we arrived at Heartland Cemetery, I’d seen him preparing another grave for a casket. He bounced on the balls of his feet, probably anxious to get the body in the ground.

  Mom’s body.

  Once the ground swallowed her, her death would be final, and that guy wanted to speed things up. He probably wanted to get to his coffee break or something. Heat flashed through my gut. I took a step toward him.

  Dad grabbed the collar of my dress and yanked me back. I opened my mouth to say something, but the words died in my throat when I saw the tears slipping down his cheeks.

  Darby had her head buried in his side. She looped her small fingers around my plaid belt, the one Mom got me for my fifteenth birthday. I grasped Darby’s warm hand and closed my eyes against the pricks of hurt inside them.

  The people closing us in shifted and began to wander away. The old man inched closer to Mom’s casket, but Dad tightened his hold on my collar. I gripped Darby’s fingers and glared at the man.

  The few people remaining gave us consoling looks and said empty words before they drifted off. One was the woman who’d seen my funeral attire earlier and clucked her tongue in disapproval. Mom had loved my black eyeliner and these combat boots, though. She’d said I reminded her of herself when she was young.

  “It’s time,” Dad said.

  A choked cry forced its way out of my mouth. No, it wasn’t. If we left, the old man would lower Mom into the ground. It would be final, and I couldn’t stand it.

  “Why?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  Dad just shook his head, hugged us both to him, and turned to leave Mom with the old man.

  I wriggled free and ran.

  “Leigh?” Dad called.

  I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing. But I needed to be away—away from that stupid man who wanted to put the final punctuation mark on Mom’s life. Away from the unfairness of her death.

  My breath came in quick, sharp gasps as I weaved around crumbling headstones. The sun threw bright rays on the maze of white, rocky paths and made my eyes tear up. I pumped my legs harder until I became nothing but movement. The untied laces of my left boot whipped my bare legs. Grass and mud muffled my steps until my boot flew off my foot and landed with a thwack in the middle of a cluster of trees.

  I leaned over to catch my breath, unsure if I wanted to laugh or cry. Several yards behind me, Dad and Darby stood and waited. I waved them on to the gates and went to retrieve my boot. There seemed to be no one around except the trees and me. The leaves murmured to each other while the wind swayed the branches. Heartland Cemetery had more trees than the rest of Krapper, Kansas, and they all whispered and danced for the amusement of the dead.

  A sudden breeze brushed over my arms and sent a faint smell of rotten hamburger past my nose. My stomach rolled. What was that? That didn’t smell like the usual slaughtered cow stink that came from the other side of town. I shoved my foot into my boot and hobbled away.

  The breeze and stink faded to nothing as quickly as they had come. I bent to tie my boot, but a crackling behind me made me pause. A cloud cast long, dark shadows over the headstones and chilled my skin. The hairs along my arms prickled.

  The crackling came closer, and I turned my head slightly. In the corner of my eye, inky black darkness crawled up the bark of a nearby tree.

  I gasped and shot to my feet. The black ink crept to the tips of the branches and ripped away its leaves, leaving it empty and naked. More darkness pooled at the bottom of the trunk and inched along the grass toward me. Every green blade curled in on itself with that awful crackling sound, dying. The darkness reached straight for me.

  A shudder raced across my shoulders, and I stumbled back. My gaze caught on blackened footprints that led to the tree. Someone was doing this? But how? This wasn’t possible.

  I glanced back at Dad and Darby, but they’d gone on without me. This couldn’t be real. None of it. I shook my head hard, trying to wake myself, but nothing changed.

  Something dark fluttered from behind the dead tree. Whoever was doing this stood behind the trunk.

  I dug my nails into my palms, pressed my lips together, and took a step back. A branch snapped under my boot, louder than the crackling. I froze. My heart jumped.

  Scraps of muddy fabric flapped around the trunk, followed by a girl.

  My flesh crept up and down my bones. Sweat trickled along the zipper at the back of my dress. That rotten meat stink kicked my stomach, forcing me to clap a hand over my nose and mouth.

  The torn fabric that hung from the girl’s scrawny frame looked like a prom dress. Mud and grime covered her entire body. Her mouth sagged open in a silent scream. The darkness pooled underneath the dangling hem of the girl’s dress and spread dangerously close to the toes of my boots, but I couldn’t move.

  The girl raised her t
ucked chin and looked at me. The whites of her eyes blazed behind the mud caking her face. Her open mouth held the same black gloom that dripped at her feet. A grimy tiara perched on the side of her head.

  My muscles stiffened. I gasped as recognition hit me.

  I knew the girl. Or knew of her. Her social circle was my social nightmare. Her name was Sarah, the popular cheerleader who committed suicide a week ago.

  But how could she be here when she should be in the ground? I had to be hallucinating. My grief, the stress from the day, it was all making me see things.

  Jumbled whispers swirled through the air. Was Sarah trying to tell me something? Because I didn’t want to hear it. My feet finally got the message to move just before the killing darkness touched my boots. I ran.

  “Mom,” I called without thinking. Mom.

  The old man cranked a lever that lowered her into the ground. A dull pain stitched my side, and a sob welled in my throat. I couldn’t watch.

  “Dad!” I raced for the cemetery gates. He and Darby stood just outside. When I neared them, I breathed, “Something’s wrong.”

  Because what else could I say in front of Darby? If she’d seen what I saw, it would be too much to handle in one day. I stood so I blocked her view of anything behind me and resisted the urge to flip the glasses off her face.

  Jo, my best friend, put her hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed she was there. “What is it, Leigh?”

  I took giant gulps of air and risked a glance behind me. The trees looked normal. Black death wasn’t dripping everywhere. Everyone was in their graves.

  That fact made me wince. “Nothing.”

  Remember the no shoes rule. Mom’s playful voice echoed in the silent house.

  We stood on the tiled squares inside our back door, and all of us had our muddy shoes off. I gripped my boots so tight, my fingers hurt. My heart’s quick knocks hadn’t slowed because every time I blinked, dead Sarah lurched behind my eyelids.

  Should I tell Dad what I thought I saw or pretend everything was normal? But how could I do that when nothing was?

  The house wasn’t even normal because everything reminded me of Mom. The kitchen sink where she danced and did dishes at the same time, the curled seedpods she kept in a glass on top of the piano in the living room, the recliner she always sat in when she peeled off her hose after a day at work. All these objects seemed dead, too, and they seemed deader after the finality of Mom’s funeral. The heart of the house had stopped beating, and we were expected to live inside an empty shell.

  Dad and Darby shuffled their socked feet. All of us huddled by the door, brushing up against each other. Then Dad cleared his throat and braved the first step toward the living room.

  “Dad?” Darby called.

  He turned in slow motion. “Yes?”

  Darby’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

  Dad attempted a smile, but his chin quivered as if he was fighting more tears. “I have to change clothes.” His voice wavered. He tugged at his tie and disappeared around the corner.

  Darby looked up at me, blue eyes huge behind her glasses. Neither of us moved.

  “Leigh?” she whispered.

  I planted a kiss on the top of her blonde head. “Go change your clothes.” Somehow the words squeezed through the knot clutching my throat.

  She nodded, took a breath, and stepped toward her bedroom. A second later, I followed down the hall.

  The silence in the house was too much. I needed noise, something to drown out the deafening hush. Even my chaotic bedroom, which Mom rarely entered since she’d given up cleaning it, felt empty. Her old Gibson guitar leaned against a wall in the corner. Punk rock band stickers from the seventies and eighties covered the blue finish. She was teaching me to play. Had been. Had been teaching me to play.

  I dropped my muddy boots on the floor and dug my mp3 player out from under a pile of clothes and Stephen King books. The Lunachicks soon drilled into my head through my earbuds. Still wearing my black funeral dress, I collapsed onto my bed. The weight in my chest anchored me there.

  I let my eyes close while the rebellious melody drifted into another rowdy song.

  Bad idea. There was dead Sarah. Her mouth hung open, revealing the same gloomy black shadows that followed her. Her hands reached out to me.

  I snapped my eyes open, but hands still reached for me.

  “Oh, God!” I bolted upright. “Dad,” I said, all breathy as I tore out my earbuds and looked up at him. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. I was calling for you, but you didn’t answer.” He sank next to me, now wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

  I held up my mp3 player. “I’m progressing my inevitable hearing loss.”

  “Hm.” Another attempted smile. “Are you hungry? There’s lots of food.”

  “I know, Dad. All of Krapper brought food over.”

  He actually did manage a small smile at my nickname for our boring town. “We won’t ever have to go grocery shopping again.” He flinched at his own words as if they had ricocheted off the air and back into his mouth to choke him. Grocery shopping with Mom had been the highlight of every Saturday since she could make even the monotonous thrilling. He swallowed. “Who could eat anyway?”

  That was quite a thing for him to say. He was always hungry because he had the metabolism of a hummingbird. He looked like the real life, grown up version of Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, and his name really was Ken. But right then, he didn’t look normal since his eyes were bloodshot and his face was locked in a frown.

  Half of Darby appeared in the doorway. This was her way of asking me if she could come into my room. Maybe that was so only half of her would get rejected. I waved her inside.

  “Can Merlin read to you guys?” she asked.

  I could only nod. Merlin had always been a Darby-Mom thing, though I would listen in while I did my homework. I scooted over to make room for her and her fat Before Merlin’s Beard book.

  Dad tossed aside the pile of clothes on my armchair. “Do you remember where you left off?”

  She hadn’t read any since Mom died. But then again, they’d read the entire series together three times. Darby should have the whole thing memorized by now.

  “Mm-hm,” she said, plopping next to me. “The spiders told Merlin the fountain of youth was inside the wardrobe.”

  She opened the book to her purple mermaid bookmark and tossed her hair over her shoulder as if to prepare for a role in a Before Merlin’s Beard movie. Her shoulders rose and fell with shaky breaths while she studied the place where she and Mom had left off. After a long moment, she began reading, and Darby wasn’t Darby anymore. She gave each character a distinct voice and knew when to slow down or speed up at the suspenseful parts. The movies had nothing on her. She didn’t quite have the British accent down, but hey, she was only nine.

  Dad and I sat back and listened, him in my armchair, me in my bed. We were immersed in the story for who knows how long, but Dad’s eyes couldn’t fight gravity. His soft snores interrupted a dragon fight.

  Darby stopped reading, marked her place with her bookmark, and rested her head on my shoulder as if her inner light bulb had gone out. She was Darby again. Her warmth made me drowsy, but I wouldn’t close my eyes. Instead, I rested my cheek on her head and listened to Dad’s snores.

  Another storm rattled my window. Typical Krapper. The weather here was just as random as cards falling in fifty-two card pick-up. One minute was sunny and almost tranquil. The next, a tornado could rip through the front door. The nonstop wind made me want to punch someone in the face, just like I punched that kid in third grade when he introduced me to the stupid card game.

  Wind mingled with Dad’s snores to create a strange song while the light outside my window dipped into twilight. Between the broken harmonies of the coming storm and the snoring, there was another sound. Whispering.

  I righted my head to hear better. Maybe it wasn’t whispering. It sounded garbled, yet urgent. Whatever it was, it definitely w
asn’t the wind. The wind here didn’t whisper before a storm. It shrieked.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  The sound came from the window above my head. My heart jack-hammered.

  Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

  I refused to look up so I buried my face in Darby’s hair. How could she still be sleeping with the tapping and the whispering and my crazy heartbeat?

  Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap. And more whispering.

  My body was as rigid as the giant tree in my front lawn. The tree that was far enough away from my window that it couldn’t possibly be its branches reaching for me.

  Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

  Could it be dead Sarah, her muddy face pressed against the glass, looking down at me, Darby, and Dad? Why hadn’t I closed the stupid blinds?

  Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

  I pressed my lips together so they would catch my scream.

  I imagined the whole thing.

  That’s what I told myself the next morning after a night without sleep. I didn’t see dead Sarah at the funeral. It was just the wind outside my window last night. I repeated this to myself like a ticker tape running across the bottom of my TV screen.

  The rest of yesterday was real. The heaviness pinching my lungs proved it.

  Just to make some kind of noise in the eerie stillness, I bounced out of bed to hear the box springs protest in short, loud squeaks. Then I made my bed, which was something I never did. Darby and I would have to help Dad pick his jaw up off the floor when he saw my completed masterpiece.

  On my way to the refrigerator, I found Darby sitting at the kitchen table. She just sat there with her elbows on a placemat, hands tucked under her chin, staring into space.

  Trying to ignore her, I reached over all the casserole dishes and chocolate desserts we might never eat, grabbed a can of breakfast, and popped the top. Carbonated greatness fizzed down my throat and helped revive me.