The second picture was of her, her mother, and her father. She was eleven and had braces, which was why she wasn’t smiling as bright as she would’ve had her teeth had been shackle free. It went on the other side of the bookcase.
The third picture frame she took from the box drove a spear of melancholy straight through her heart.
It was a picture of her, Catherine, and Layne.
They were sitting at a table outside a Sonic. Layne’s arm was around Cat’s shoulders, his head against her head. They both wore carefree smiles.
Amy set the frame in the center of the little arrangement and forced herself to look away from it as a tear came to her eye.
Forget… just forget.
As Dr. Massie said, victims of trauma tended to force themselves to forget in order to escape the pain. But Amy couldn’t. She remembered everything and always would.
Her ghosts would haunt her to the grave.
She pulled her stuffed rabbit, Romeo, from the box and lay down on the creaky bed of springs that dug into her bones, like a splinter of memory into her brain.
“Please forgive me,” Layne had said as he stood by her hospital bed. “I tried to stop it.”
She knew he wasn’t really there, and had she reached out to touch him he would have dissipated like smoke, a phantom of her imagination. But she wanted to believe he was there, in the flesh and alive. Not dead in the county morgue as she was told.
“I know,” she told the phantom. “I forgive you, Layne… and I love you. I’m sorry I hurt you like I did. I didn’t mean to—”
Before he could respond, a nurse barged into the room with her tasteless dinner. The ghost that was Layne vanished.
He returned briefly, however, on the day of his funeral. She saw him beyond the sun-kissed tombstones in the shade of a magnolia tree. The November wind brushed back his hair as he smiled and winked his eye goodbye.
“I love you, too,” she heard him whisper.
And now she had to move on, just as he moved on, just as everyone else moved on.
Well, almost everyone.
A month after that nightmare evening in October, Michael Knight committed suicide. Amy never found out why and didn’t much care to either.
She didn’t care about a lot of things after what happened. By December, she completely withdrew preferring the comforting cocoon of solitude, the company of books and music to that of social gatherings and friends. She didn’t want anything to do with the outside world. She ccouldn’t trust it. She preferred the purple sanctuary of her bedroom, where no one could do her harm.
Squeezing Romeo to her chest, Amy sniffed and curled into herself on the bare mattress.
She promised Layne she would move on from that night and not let it keep her down.
I will rise above it. Layne. I will find the strength to carry on.
Amy wiped away a tear and slid off the bed. She had a lot of unpacking to do before settling into her life as a college student.
But first she put one of the CDs Layne made for her into her stereo. She rummaged in a box for her old journal— the resting place of yesterday’s skeletons— and found a pen.
As Dr. Massie suggest she always do, she wrote down her feelings, thoughts and memories.
Never bury them. Never forget.
It was the only way to keep those unquiet bones at rest.
About the Author
Dean Harrison is a longtime fan of horror fiction. Though he’s spent time in the “real world” working as a shoe salesman, a security guard, an investigator, a loss prevention detective and a journalist, he’s consistently returned to what he loves doing most— writing horror stories. His published work can be found in the anthologies FEM-FANGS, FELL BEASTS and TWISTED TALES FROM THE TORCHLIGHT INN. More is to come. He lives with his family in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, a city rich in ghost stories.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part One
The Nightmare Man
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part Two
Family Matters
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Part Three
Kissing Cousins
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Epilogue
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part One The Nightmare Man
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part Two Family Matters
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter
39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Part Three Kissing Cousins
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Epilogue
About the Author
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part One The Nightmare Man
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part Two Family Matters
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Part Three Kissing Cousins
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Epilogue
About the Author
These Unquiet Bones Page 18
