Slinging the backpack over my shoulder, I asked my mom to save dinner for me on a plate in the fridge. I expected her to have a fit, but the guy in the soap opera with the washboard abs was just about to kiss the gal with long blond hair and red pouty lips and she just said, “Sure. Sure. You making friends, Shade?” without even looking away from the TV. Her voice sounded far away, like her brain was in the soap opera and her mouth was moving with a mind of its own, kind of like a pod person in the old sci-fi movies where there’s really an alien inside the body and they’re doing their best to fit in with the human race. Yeah, like that. That’s how she was with me most of the time. Unless, of course, she was drunk or stoned. Then she was even less engaged. Well, at least she was sober.
I said, “Yeah, I am making friends, actually—quite a few. I had Newspaper Club today.”
She smiled automatically for like a millisecond and said, “That’s great! I knew you could do it.”
Yup, that’s me. People can like me if given half a chance.
I slammed the front door, as if by accident. She hated that.
Kai was happy to see me, although she seemed awfully nervous. She was pacing back and forth outside my door, creating a path in the desert dirt. As soon as she saw me, she said, “OK, let’s get going.”
I replied, “Yes, ma’am!”
She didn’t think that was funny.
We walked in silence for exactly half an hour. I know because I felt uncomfortable and looked at my watch. Once we left our trailer park, we had started following the same path I’d taken through the desert the evening before. At the half-hour mark, Kai pointed to a raven waddling around a cactus. She said, “Look at that sucker! It’s huge.”
It was huge, about the same size as your average cat. It kept walking around the cactus, poking at the ground every few seconds with its beak.
Kai smiled, all excited about the black-feathered creature. She said, “I bet it found a rattlesnake or mouse and is waiting for it to pop out of its hole again.”
I wasn’t as thrilled about this as she apparently was. I stopped for a second to gauge how close we’d come to the raven on our current route. I said only one word: “Rattlesnake?”
Kai laughed. “Yeah, rattlesnake. You live in the desert now, Shade. There are all kinds of creatures out here I bet you never saw before.”
We passed pretty darn close to that raven. Thank God, we never saw a snake. As we got close enough to grab it, the bird spread its large black wings and took off for the sky.
Kai said, “Man, I’d give anything to be able to float on the wind like that! How much fun would that be?”
As we watched, the raven swooped back down to the ground, no doubt in search of prey it had spotted from up high.
Another half hour and we reached the cave. I had no idea I had hiked that far the day before. I had been somewhat possessed to find the source of the crying and hadn’t noticed the distance. I shivered to think about the bats that came out of that cave and how many rattlesnakes I might have only barely missed in the dark on my way back home.
I asked Kai about the bats. She said, “They’ll be sleeping now. They hang upside down, like little chandeliers. You barely know they’re there till dusk.”
Oh, no, I’d totally know they were there.
I suddenly realized I was starving. Lunch at school had been greasy pizza. I think I had all of three bites. When I asked Kai if she wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she suggested we have a picnic inside the cave.
I stared at the opening. It wasn’t immense, or anywhere near as large as all the famous caves I’d ever seen pictures of. Much smaller than Carlsbad Caverns, which was only about an hour and a half from where we were. The mouth of the cave was only a little bit over our heads at its highest point. Anyone taller than us would have to stoop to get in there.
Kai led the way. She turned her flashlight on before entering. I did the same. When we got inside, the cave opened up. The ceiling was easily at least twice as high as a tall adult. I felt dizzy. I realized I was clenching my hand around the flashlight. I’d probably been hyperventilating. I took a few deep breaths, made myself breathe in and out slowly, and tried to relax.
I saw a few narrow paths snaking off in different directions, some with a “ceiling” only a couple feet above the floor. There was one opening almost as big as the entrance, but it was pitch-black. Kai pointed to it. She said, “We’re going in there.”
I said, “Oh, that’s good.” Apparently, it was opposite day because that’s the exact opposite of how I was feeling.
She hopped over rocks and boulders, nimble as a cat. I stumbled along, stubbing my toe a number of times. I strained my ears, listening for the hiss or rattle of a snake, the flutter of bat wings, or anything else that would give me a legitimate reason to flee.
As we stepped through the pitch-black opening, our flashlights lit up walls covered in crystals. They glittered and danced like faeries in the sweeping arcs of our light.
Kai sat down on a flat rock. She said, “Let’s eat here.” The rock was dry, unlike the walls that looked slippery and wet.
I sat next to her. We laid our flashlights down carefully, so they wouldn’t go skittering away.
Damn! I’d forgotten to unroll the ball of twine, so we could find our way back! I quickly sketched a map in my head, memorizing landmarks. A large boulder ... A small boulder ... The place where narrow paths with low roofs had branched off.
While I ate my sandwich, Kai enthusiastically chatted on and on about caves.
I took a few gulps of soda. Then I said, “Hey, Kai, I’m going to tie one end of some twine I brought with me around a rock here, then tie the other end around one of my belt loops, then let the twine unroll behind me as we explore.”
She looked at me for a few seconds, then just said, “’K.”
At that exact moment, the back of the cave lit up. Oh my God, someone else was in there! The light was bigger than the beams coming from our flashlights. It swept through the cavern. Back and forth, like someone was looking for something.
I wanted to scream.
Kai put her hand over my mouth. She said, “Shhhh ... Don’t scare it off. Shhhh ... It’s why we’re here.”
She pushed her hand harder against my mouth. Oh, my God. I was a freaking loser! This is why we’re here?!? I pictured Kai and a gang of kids from the trailer park attacking me right then and there. What did I really know about her? Nothing! Absolutely, positively, freaking nothing! I had walked into a trap!
Just when I decided to bite her hand, before I actually did it, the light swooped into our section of the cave. It had turned into a glowing streak, pulsating with energy and continuously changing in size and shape. Suddenly, it exploded. Blue sparks crackled like fireworks all around the explosion.
Then a little girl appeared, made of light.
Kai spoke to me in a near whisper. She said, “This is why you’re here. I know you’re a ghost whisperer. I sensed that about you. This little girl has been trying to talk to me for days, but this is the first time she’s taken distinct form. She’s never spoken to me. I’ve only seen flashes of ghostly light and heard crying and murmurs that I couldn’t understand, and it made me feel like I had to bring you here to sort it all out.”
No ... no ... no ... no ... no! I did not want this! Meeting Brandon and his grandmother and other members of his family who had passed away was a one-time thing. I had moved into a haunted house. I had helped Brandon. He had moved on into the afterlife. That was it. End of story. He might visit again, his grandmother had said, and that would be nice. I thought of him as an old friend. But I did not want to ever meet any other ghost for as long as I lived. I was in a new house (well, a trailer home) and a new school in a new town. I didn’t want to be the crazy girl who saw ghosts again. I was starting over.
The little girl sat down on a rock. Actually, she hovered above it, but she was in a sitting position. She put her face in her hands and started to sob.
Kai pushed me by the shoulder. I started slipping off the rock, but caught myself. She whispered in what sounded like a hiss, “Go! Talk to her!”
I hissed back, “No!”
Our conversation went back and forth like this for a while:
“Yes! Talk to her!”
“No!”
“Yes! Do it!”
“No!”
Finally, Kai pushed me forcefully off the rock. As I fell and scraped my knees, the little girl wrapped her arms around me and lifted me up. I levitated off the ground a few inches, then landed on my feet.
A cool wind passed through me.
The little girl dried her tears. She looked at me with a pouty face and said, “I’m Saffron. Won’t you help me?” Her voice had music in it; I can’t explain exactly how.
I felt overcome with sadness. I asked, “What do you want me to do?”
She turned around. She pointed at a space between a pile of rocks and the wall. Then, with an explosion of light and sparks, she disappeared.
Kai said, “Whoa, did you see that?”
I said, “No, I’m blind, Kai.”
She looked hurt. I probably shouldn’t have snapped at her like that, but my nerves were on edge. She walked with me to see the spot the girl had pointed to.
There, nestled between the rocks and the wall, was a small human skeleton, the size of the girl.
I sucked in my breath and gasped.
Kai stayed calm. She said, “It was my job to lead you here, apparently. She must be lost wherever she is, not at peace. I’m guessing she was murdered. We have to go to the police.”
I took her by the shoulders. I looked into her eyes with as much intensity as I could possibly muster. I said, “Look, Kai, I don’t want to report that skeleton, but someone obviously has to do it. In my last town, I got involved with saving people; but it turned out some of them had gotten messed up real bad. They were saved, but they weren’t the same. My best friend ... Well, never mind ... It’s really hard for me to talk about it ... I think I have PTSD or something. I need time. I became a big hero in my old town, and I didn’t like the attention. I desperately need privacy right now. Can you report this to the police all by yourself and take the credit? You led me here, after all. It would be fine if you got the credit.”
Kai said, “Yeah, but I couldn’t see her shape or hear what she was saying until you came out here with me. You’re the ghost whisperer.”
I said, “I don’t care, Kai. You can take the credit. I’ve already been a hero once. I don’t want that again. And, besides, no one believes in ghosts, just skeletons.”
Kai got a faraway look in her eyes. She said, “I’ve never been a hero.”
My thoughts raced, in survival mode to defend my newfound privacy. I said, “See, Kai? I think the universe is speaking to us. It’s your turn to be a hero.”
A smile flickered briefly across her face. Kai said, “I’ll do it. I better go to the police right away. This little girl’s family must be in agony.”
It seemed Kai was a good person. At the moment when she got to be a hero, she thought only about other people. She was quite the optimist, though. For all we knew, someone in the little girl’s family had murdered her. I’d read too many disturbing news stories to rule that out.
We stared at the little girl’s bones. Before we had a chance to pull ourselves together to leave the cave, there was a sound like the crackling of electricity a little bit further on.
I wanted to run, I was so afraid the murderer was somewhere in that cave.
A glowing translucent shape flew by us, about a foot from where we stood. Again, a chill passed through me. The hair on my arms stood up with a prickly sensation. I shivered.
Once again, it was the ghost of the little girl.
A loud whisper bounced off the crystal-coated walls: Come with me! Pleeeease, come with me! I need your help! Then, the eerie sound of crying echoed off the hard surfaces all around us.
Kai grasped my hand. She looked at me knowingly. She said as quietly as she could, “We shouldn’t mess with this. We need to follow her!”
I knew she was right. I ordered my feet to move.
As the ghost passed through the cave, the walls lit up and sparkled. It wasn’t like normal illumination, though. The visible light coming from the girl was white. The walls sparkled in a variety of colors that didn’t seem to be coming from her or from our flashlight beams: pink, purple, yellow, blue, turquoise. Shadow shapes danced around on top of the illuminated sections. Every time I tried to focus on a specific shape, I started to sweat. My mind flooded with a sense of dread.
Finally, the girl stopped. She pointed at an area closed off by a ring of boulders.
Kai scrambled up a boulder, placing her feet in its indentations, to get a better look. I followed her. When we looked down, we discovered a campsite. Someone had placed a sleeping bag there. There were a few burned logs where someone had lit a fire, some dirty dishes and a frying pan.
The little girl spoke, once again, in her loud whisper. She said, “Go down there! Find it! Find it!”
Kai had the nerve to ask, “Find what?”
The girl shrieked in a voice poisoned with horror. It went right through me, much worse than fingernails scraping against a blackboard. “Find it! Find it! Find iiitttttt!”
I jumped down off the boulder and started searching around. I lifted up one thing after another and showed it to the girl. Everything brought the same response: “Noooooo! Find iiitttttt!”
In that moment, I hated my life. I hated me. I hated who I was, what I was. Why did I always have to attract such weird stuff into my life? Who lives like this, other than freaks of nature?
As I filled with despair and self-pity, I happened to notice a couple of pillows—regular bed pillows with dirty white pillowcases on them—thrown against the wall. At least it looked like they had been thrown there. I wondered why they weren’t with the sleeping bag.
I didn’t want to touch them for fear of getting bedbugs or some kind of disease. A friend of mine in elementary school had gotten bedbugs in her house. They were nasty. The bites all over her stomach and arms had gotten infected. It was horrible.
Kai followed my gaze. She walked right over and grabbed the pillows. Underneath, there were three velvet bags—a gold one, a silver one, and a royal blue one—each tied closed with a drawstring. The gold and silver ones were about the size of a wallet. The blue one was bigger, about the size of a small purse.
I was curious, but I still didn’t want to touch them.
Kai said, “Do you hear music?”
I said, “Nooooo!” All I heard was the ghost girl shrieking whenever she got upset with us.
Kai said, “OK, good. I have synesthesia. Usually, I see colors when I hear music. This is all backwards, I guess. I started hearing music when the cave lit up, and now I’m hearing it again looking at these colored bags.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never heard of synesthesia. I seriously wished I could hear music over the ghost’s banshee wailing.
I asked, “Do you hear the girl’s shrieking when she gets upset?”
Kai said, “Ohhh, yeah. I’m not deaf.”
As if to get back at us for talking about her, the girl whispered right against our eardrums with a force so powerful, I thought my eardrums would rupture: “Open them! Open them! Open themmm!”
Kai and I reached for a bag. I took the gold one; she took the silver one.
My hands shook. Kai screamed, then started crying. Inside the gold bag were bloody teeth. A whole freaking bag of bloody teeth! Kai showed me her bag. It contained bloody fingernails! I almost threw up. Every fingernail was painted. There were all kinds of colors and even some with designs: pink, orange, purple, green, flowers, polka dots and stripes. And they were all stained with blood! Some had dried skin on them. It was like they had been ripped off the victims’ fingers!
I fought the nausea in my stomach. If I threw up, I’d leave evidence for
the person who did this that I’d been there in their hideout. I couldn’t do that. My knees shook. I thought I’d pass out.
Kai opened the blue bag. Inside were pieces of jewelry: necklaces, earrings, rings.
The little girl spoke in a calm, quiet voice that once again had hints of music in it. I wondered if there really was music in it, or if synesthesia was contagious and now I could sense music where there really wasn’t any. She said, “Thank you. Please, please take the bags to the police. I can’t go on to the place I’m supposed to go in the afterlife until my case is solved here on Earth. I can’t let go of my life here until then. I don’t want the man who murdered me doing that to anyone else. I’m sorry to drag you into this, but someone has to help.”
I wanted to ask if she had seen Brandon in whatever place she’d gone to after dying, but her form disappeared with a Pop! like a balloon bursting.
We were plunged into darkness.
Kai yelled, “No! No, no, no!” I heard her stomping around in the dark. After making a lot of noise, she found her flashlight and turned it on. Then she grabbed the bags. She shoved the blue one at me, took the others and said, “Let’s get out of here!”
That was the best idea I’d heard all day.
CHAPTER 4
The next day, Kai was a hero.
She went to the police the night before. I walked her to the station and hung out at a pizza place across the street until she finished filing her report.
As she crossed the street to meet up with me, five police cars raced out of the station—sirens wailing, blue and red lights splashing emergency colors all over the black tar road.
I asked Kai if she wanted a slice of pizza. She said, “Nah. I’m not hungry.” She glanced out the window at the station. “I was so nervous in there, I thought I’d puke.”
I closed the lid on the pizza box. The guy at the counter stared at us in a pissed-off kind of way. I guess he wanted Kai to buy something. I said, “Yeah. Sure. Let’s get outta here.”
We walked home, which was good because we both had a lot of nervous energy to burn off. I asked Kai if the police had taken the bags we found.
Shade and the Skinwalkers Page 3
