Deep Dark Secrets (The Spiritwalkers Book 1)

by Sarra Cannon

  And how was I going to explain these drawings?

  I cropped out one of the clearer versions of the symbol and uploaded it to Google’s image search, but it came back with no results. I chose another and repeated the process, but there were no matches.

  I shook my head, not sure what else to do. I wasn’t exactly a skilled private investigator.

  My fingers hovered over my keyboard for a minute before I finally typed ‘strange symbols and drawings on the wall of a closet’ into the search engine. Most of the results were either from fictional books or articles on the web about children who were believed to be possessed by demons.

  Demons?

  My mouth went dry as I clicked through to some of the articles on the first couple pages of my search. I didn’t want to believe that there could be something supernatural at work here, but what other explanation could there be? Snakes didn’t usually bite you in a dream and leave a mark that carried into real life.

  I didn’t see any of the symbols I’d seen in Hailey’s closet in any of the articles, and my eyes were tired from staring at the screen for so long.

  I closed my laptop and lay back on the bed, trying to make sense of it all and figure out where to turn next. If I approached anyone about this symbol, they’d want to know where I saw it, and I wasn’t ready to explain that to anyone.

  My phone buzzed with a text message from Troy. He had sent several, trying to apologize for the other day, but I ignored him.

  Other than my sister and Nicole, I didn’t really feel like I had anyone I could talk to lately. They all thought I was crazy or unstable.

  Dr. Millner had warned me that I might have trouble separating reality from illusion, and I was scared to death that all of this was in my head. But I had the note and the pictures to prove it. I wasn’t making that up.

  I closed my eyes, exhausted to my core. I thought I’d never feel more alone than I had during those days in Longview, but I was wrong. I was more alone now than ever.

  At some point, I must have drifted off to sleep, because when I woke up, the sun was shining through my curtains and my mom was knocking on my door.

  “Are you awake, Marayah?” she asked. “School starts in half an hour. I’ve got to run, but I’ve got breakfast started for you downstairs. Honey?”

  I sat up, my head throbbing from sleeping in a strange position all night. I winced and shook the pins and needles out of my arm.

  “I’m up,” I said. “I’ll be down in a few.”

  Mom opened the door a crack and peered in at me.

  She frowned when she looked at my clothes and the laptop and notebooks strewn across my bed. I quickly slid my notes under my Calculus book.

  “Did you sleep in your clothes?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I guess I fell asleep doing my homework last night,” I said. “I just need to brush my teeth and change real quick.”

  “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” She stepped into my room and placed the back of her hand on my forehead. “If you want, I can stay home with you. I just need to make a few phone calls first and move a couple of meetings.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I’m fine, I promise. I was just really tired, that’s all.”

  She seemed to think about it for a minute before finally giving in. “Okay, if you’re sure,” she said. “I have a pretty busy day lined up, but if you need me, you just call. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  When she left, I quickly brushed my teeth, threw on a fresh pair of jeans and the first t-shirt I could find, and ran downstairs to devour my breakfast.

  “Let’s go,” I told Kimi, rushing her toward the car.

  “Whoa, what’s your hurry,” she said. She grabbed a banana from the bowl on the counter. “We’ll be fifteen minutes early.”

  “I know,” I said. “There’s someone I need to talk to before the first bell rings.”

  17

  My Anger

  Coach Silver sat in a metal folding chair behind the small desk in her office, staring intently at her computer. She was one of the younger teachers here at Twin Rivers High, and she could have passed for a student herself.

  Her long blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She blew across the top of her Styrofoam cup and took a small sip of coffee.

  I knocked lightly on her door, and she jerked back slightly, so startled she nearly spilled her coffee.

  “Miss Freeman,” she said, standing quickly and motioning for me to take a seat across from the desk. “What can I do for you this morning?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” I said. “About Hailey.”

  She made a strange face and glanced back at her computer screen as she sat down.

  “Well, come on in and have a seat,” she said, obviously anxious about whatever she was working on. “I only have a few minutes, but I’m happy to help however I can. It’s such a shame what happened to Hailey. She was so talented.”

  I sat in the cold metal chair and set my bookbag down on the floor at my feet, but kept my hands on the straps. I didn’t plan on staying long.

  “I just wanted to ask you about the week she died,” I said. “She ran a 5k that week, didn’t she?”

  Coach Silver leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, after school on Thursday,” she said. “It was our last run of the summer league, and we’d been training pretty hard for it. I knew Hailey had a shot at getting the top time in her age division, but…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her coffee.

  “But what?” I asked, confused. “I thought she won.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, she did win,” she said.

  She leaned forward and set her cup down, worry lines etched into her forehead.

  “I’ll never forgive myself for not reaching out to her after that run. I knew something was off with her, but I was so busy that week with school starting. I had just gotten engaged, and we were planning to meet with the caterer that evening after the meet. I meant to catch Hailey after the race and talk to her, but I lost track of her and forgot. I figured I’d see her at school on Monday and maybe pull her into my office for a talk, but I never got the chance.”

  I swallowed a lump of fear in my throat.

  “What do you mean something was off with her? How?”

  “You knew Hailey,” she said. “She was bright and positive and always worked hard. She was dedicated to her running. More so than any student at the school. I saw a lot of myself in her, and I thought she had a real chance to make something of herself. But that day she was different. I don’t really know how to describe it. She was flippant about the whole thing.”

  “Flippant?” I asked, not totally understanding what she meant.

  “Yeah, like she couldn’t care less.” She shrugged. “She showed up twenty minutes late and almost missed the start of the race. She had circles under her eyes like she’d been up all night partying. She refused to do any of her stretches or warm ups, and when I tried to talk to her about why she was late, she snapped at me and told me it was none of my damn business. She’d never spoken to me like that the whole time I’d known her.”

  She was right. That didn’t sound like Hailey at all.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “How did she still win if she was in such bad shape?”

  She frowned again and stared at me. “You were there,” she said. “Don’t you remember what happened?”

  I shook my head. “There’s still a lot about that week I can’t remember.”

  She nodded. “Right,” she said. “I guess I’d heard you were having some trouble after the accident. I’m sorry.”

  “Coach, what happened at that race?” I asked again.

  She sighed and leaned forward.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said. “I’d been working with Hailey and the rest of the summer league for months and the fastest she had ever run a 5K was around eighteen minutes. That alone proba
bly would have been enough to win it or at least get in the top three. But that day, she finished the entire race in sixteen minutes flat. She shattered the record I had set seven years ago when I was a student here, and she’d barely broken a sweat. There’s just no way someone makes those kinds of improvements in their time overnight. It just doesn’t happen.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head again.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She looked straight at me, and for the first time, I could see just how much Hailey’s death had affected her over the past year. Her face was different. Older than her twenty-five years, as if guilt and sorrow had seeped into her bones.

  “There was no way she could have run that fast without something in her system,” she said. “I knew she was into something bad, and I just let her walk away without saying a word to her or her mother about it.”

  My shoulders dropped. “You mean drugs.”

  She nodded. “I can’t help but wonder if I could have made a difference, you know? Like maybe if I’d mentioned it to her mom or sat down and had a heart-to-heart with Hailey that day after the race, I could have convinced her to seek help. Get herself straightened out before it went too far. But that was the first time she’d ever done anything remotely like that. I thought I had time to discuss it with her, and I was so busy.”

  “You said that already,” I mumbled.

  She cleared her throat.

  “I don’t know what the two of you were into together, but as her friend, you had a responsibility to her, too,” she said. “You could have died right alongside her, Marayah. Now, I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of lectures from your doctors and your parents, but I hope you realize now just how dangerous that type of behavior was.”

  I clutched the straps of my bag tighter. Was she really blaming me when she’d just admitted that she’d failed her, too? I couldn’t bring myself to respond.

  “Well, thanks for the information,” I said, standing.

  “Wait,” she said. She got up and met me at the door. “That didn’t quite come out the way I meant. What I wanted to say was that if you ever need someone to talk to, I want to be here for you. If you get messed up in that stuff again, don’t be afraid to get help, okay?”

  I raised an eyebrow. This lady was clueless.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I should get going.”

  I walked out of the gym just as the first bell rang. Someone bumped my shoulder and nearly knocked me over. He mumbled an apology over his shoulder as I stumbled a few steps and finally regained my balance.

  Angry, I narrowed my gaze at the back of his head as he walked away.

  The guy stopped suddenly and grabbed the back of his neck. He turned to look at me, a mix of fear and confusion in his eyes as he quickened his pace.

  My mouth dropped open.

  Had he literally just felt my anger? What the heck was that all about?

  Unsettled, I hiked my bag higher on my shoulder and hurried into the main building. I barely made it to class in time and Mrs. Hanahan shut the door behind me just as the final bell rang.

  “Cutting it a bit close today, Miss Freeman.”

  A few people turned to stare, including the new guy, but I just kept my head down and went straight to my desk. I had better things to think about than their stupid whispers.

  Whatever was happening to me was getting worse. Fast.

  I was running out of time.

  18

  Steer Clear Of Him

  I had a hard time concentrating throughout the rest of the morning, but luckily most of my teachers were cutting me some major slack. I guess almost dying in a major car accident bought you enough sympathy to stare into space during class.

  I was still lost in thought when Nicole appeared next to my locker.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “How’s it going?”

  “Hey.” I managed a half-hearted smile. “I don’t know. Pretty good, I guess. For school.”

  “You love school,” she said. “You just have to get back into the swing of things.”

  “I guess.” I shrugged. The old me used to love school. This new me? I was still trying to figure out who the heck she was.

  “You’ll feel better after lunch,” she said. “There’s something I’ve been dying to talk to you about.”

  I changed out my books for my afternoon classes and followed her to the cafeteria. We’d both brought our lunches, so we skipped the line and grabbed a couple of bottled waters from the cooler.

  I was grateful when she bypassed our old table, complete with my ex and his new girlfriend, and steered us toward an empty table near the windows.

  “What’s this you’re dying to tell me?” I asked.

  She unwrapped her lunch and looked around, then leaned forward.

  “I heard Maggie Pearson tell Shakema Watson that Troy and Lena had a huge fight last night in the parking lot after football practice,” she said.

  “And that’s worth hiding out in the back of the cafeteria to tell me?”

  “That’s not all,” she said. “They were apparently fighting about you.”

  I glanced toward their table and saw Troy looking at us. He quickly looked away.

  “Why would they be fighting about me?” I asked.

  “Is it true he’s been texting you?” She had a gleam in her eye.

  I looked down at my sandwich. I wasn’t really in the mood for gossip today, but I guess this particular piece of gossip did interest me a little bit.

  “Not really,” I said.

  Nicole laughed. “Yeah, right. Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t seem important.”

  Her eyes got wide, and she shook her head. “It didn’t seem important? What’s he been saying to you?”

  “Nothing much,” I said. “It’s only been a few texts here and there, and I never respond.”

  “You have to give me more than that,” she said. “I’m dying here.”

  I laughed. “Why do you care so much?”

  “Look, I know you weren’t around, but I was completely shocked when they started dating,” she said. “Not to be crass about it, but you were literally on your deathbed when they started going out. He owed you more than that.”

  I shrugged, even though I’d felt the same way myself when I first saw them together. “He didn’t really owe me anything,” I said. “I wasn’t around and no one knew if I was ever coming back.”

  “Sure, but jeez, take a few months to mourn your absence, you know? Have some respect.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “So?” she asked. “What’s he been saying?”

  “Mostly just apologizing for being an asshole,” I said. I glanced back toward him, but this time it was someone else who caught my eye.

  The new guy had just walked out of the lunch line and was coming straight toward us. For a second, I thought he was actually going to come sit at our table, but he stopped a couple tables away and sat down, only briefly glancing my way as he took his seat.

  I looked away as fast as I could but couldn’t help looking back to see if he’d noticed I’d been watching him.

  He’d noticed.

  His eyes met mine, and he nodded toward me ever so slightly, his long hair loose and falling over his shoulder. My cheeks burned, and I looked away, pretending to be extremely interested in my bag of baby carrots.

  “What?” Nicole asked, following where my gaze had been.

  Damn, that girl didn’t miss anything these days. I didn’t remember her ever being quite so nosy or observant.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. When I glanced back at the guy, he’d looked away, but I could still feel this strange tension between us, as if I knew he was thinking about me.

  “Do you know that guy?”

  I kind of tilted my head in his direction, hoping Nicole wouldn’t completely turn and stare at him. Which is, of course, exactly what she did.

  A dark look crossed her face. “Who? Th
e new guy?”

  “Yes. Don’t stare,” I hissed.

  “His name is Jordan,” she said.

  “So he’s new? He wasn’t here last year at all?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’d never seen him before school started,” she said.

  I frowned and bit the inside of my lip.

  “Do you know anything about him?” I asked. “Like when he moved here or if he used to go here before and maybe just moved back or something?”

  Nicole took a deep breath and then turned to stare at him again. She gripped her water bottle so tight, I thought she might crush it. Not exactly the reaction of someone who had never seen that guy before. What wasn’t she telling me?

  “I don’t know anything about him,” she said. “Just that he apparently moved here sometime this summer and he never talks to anyone.”

  “Now you’re the one holding back,” I said.

  She turned to look at me, relaxing her shoulders. “What do you mean?”

  “You know something,” I said. “You were looking at him like you hated him just now.”

  She made a face and refused to meet my gaze.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “Why are you so interested in him, anyway?” she asked, completely ignoring my question.

  “I didn’t say I was interested in him,” I said. “I just didn’t recognize him, and I wanted to know who he is. You were the one who seemed to have a physical reaction to his presence.”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing big, but I heard some pretty nasty things about him,” she said. She leaned forward again, in full secret-mode. “I heard he moved here because he got kicked out of his last two schools for being suspected of dealing drugs to younger students. Really nasty stuff, but they apparently could never quite prove it, so all they could do was expel him. He got moved around from one family member to another until he ended up here. If I were you, I’d stay far away from him.”

  “Who’d you hear that from?” I asked.

  “I just heard it around,” she said. “From everyone, I guess. I think it’s common knowledge.”

  Sure, common knowledge, just like Hailey and me doing drugs the night she died.