She needed to stop him. “Omar?” Rosie called loudly. He turned in her direction.
Something snapped up ahead of her in the trees and her eyes barely caught the white 44. “Hey!” she shouted. But whoever it was disappeared into the thick forest.
Chapter 12
“Stop!” Rosie yelled and ran after him. “Jack, is that you?”
She pushed the button on her flashlight and held the bright beam pointed in front of her. She ran after the numbers all the way to the end of the graveyard, to the sharp bend in Zumbay Road until the dark figure disappeared . . . right over the cliff.
“Jack!” she screamed and ran to the guardrail. Her heart pounded as she stepped to the edge of the road and shined the beam down. But the jutting limestone cliffside was empty. She’d lost him.
Rosie looked down at her phone. It was 11:58. She needed to get to Omar before midnight! Panting, she turned around and sprinted back to the graveyard.
Omar stood, staring into the woods, holding the now empty chalice.
“Omar,” she said as she rushed up to him.
He held up a hand to block the bright beam of her flashlight. A line of dark red liquid ran down from the corner of his mouth and a slight smile formed on his face. He’d drunk it, whatever was in that cup. Rosie was too late to stop him.
“Why?” she asked. Omar nodded to the tombstone.
A note lay on the gray granite under the small candle. She picked it up and read: “Drink from this chalice and you will take Mackie’s place.”
Omar turned to look at Rosie with tears falling down his check and said, “It’s all better now. I drank it.”
Rosie grabbed the glass and sniffed. “What did you drink?” The faint tart smell was familiar. A cry escaped Omar’s lips and he moaned as he collapsed over Mackie’s headstone. “You forgive me, right bro? You forgive me. It’s all okay now.” He wound his arms around the stone as if to embrace it.
“Omar,” Rosie said and pulled at his sweatshirt. “Omar, what did you drink?” But he only grabbed the stone harder.
“You were right,” Jack said, standing up from behind an ornate gravestone a few feet away.
“It was you?” Rosie cried, pointing her finger at him. “You did this? What did Omar drink?”
“It was just cranberry juice. It won’t hurt him. I just . . . I had to know,” Jack said and took a few steps forward. He shoved his hand onto the front pouch of his red hoodie. His eyes softened as they went to Omar’s face. “Looks like he really would change places. I guess he’s not the one sending the texts . . . the other messages.”
“Of course not.” Rosie moved between Jack and the weeping Omar. “I told you that.” She dropped the flashlight down at the base of the gravestone and leaned close to Omar’s ear. “It’s okay Omar; it’s all over.”
“It is?” Omar asked and let out a sob.
“Yes.”
“I just didn’t know who could be doing that stuff to me,” Jack said. His eyes flashed to Rosie’s.
“I was wrong. I’m sorry, Omar.” Jack took another step and gently put his hand on Omar’s back. “Omar, it’s all okay now.” He pulled at Omar’s shoulder.
“It’s okay?” Omar asked and leaned back from the tombstone.
“Yeah.” Jack held out his hand to help Omar stand. He turned to Rosie, “Help me get him to my car. I’ll drive him home.”
“I can’t believe you put him through this.” Rosie grabbed Omar on one side as Jack put Omar’s arm around his shoulders and led him through the dark graveyard.
Rosie stopped at the edge of the grass. Jack had parked across the road. How had she missed his car? Jack opened the passenger door to help Omar in and then shut the door.
“Was it you from the beginning?” Rosie asked as Jack walked around the front of the car. “All those horrible pranks?”
Jack shook his head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You call this not doing anything?” She spread her arms open.
Jack nodded. “Okay. I did do this. But you came to the hardware store and told me he was going to be here, that he was meeting Mackie. If he was meeting my brother, I wanted to be here too. You said he would change places with Mackie, and now we know it’s true. Now we know it was an accident and that Omar wasn’t the one doing that crazy, freaky stuff to me.”
“What stuff?”
Omar slumped forward in the front seat.
“Go to him, go to him, it was driving me crazy,” Jack said as he walked around the car. “But I guess he was just wracked with guilt, like I was. I just needed a sign, some proof, that’s all. And now I got it.”
Rosie stopped and shivered, suddenly cold. If Jack was really getting those messages too, then why would he be doing the same thing to Omar? So who was sending them and doing all of the other crazy stuff that had happened? At the lunch table, at the movie theater, at Omar’s house?
Omar raised his head and looked out the window. “I did it. I put his soul at rest. Mackie’s okay. He didn’t take me with him.” He smiled. “I know, Mackie. I did what you said. You were right. I went to him. We’ll be all right now. That’s all you wanted, wasn’t it? For us to be together again. To be friends again. Thanks for telling me, Mackie. Thanks for making sure we would still be there for each other even after you were gone. You can go.” Omar was rambling, staring at a spot just behind Jack and Rosie.
“I’ll take him home,” Jack said. “He obviously needs some rest. Do you want a ride?”
Rosie shook her head so Jack got in his car and drove off.
Rosie started following the car down Zumbay Road. Jack had sure worked hard to set this up, running through the woods in the jersey then circling around and changing into a red sweatshirt. Rosie took a few steps down the path that led to her house, squinting ahead.
As she tried to make her way through the dark, Rosie remembered her flashlight. She turned back to the graveyard.
The mist rolled in and for a moment the graveyard was shrouded in white. The candle went out as if someone blew on it. Rosie strode through the grass, batting her hands in front of her so as to avoid tripping on a tombstone. The cold, wet dew hit her ankles and sent a chill through her whole body. She sighed as she glanced at the red chalice on the ground. It was probably from the Halloween display at the hardware store. As she made her way to Mackie’s grave, Rosie was still feeling uneasy. Suddenly, something moved behind her and she stopped.
“Hello?” she called softly. Her voice seemed to echo in the empty churchyard.
She scanned the gravestones to see if Jack and Omar had come back. The wind moaned as it blew through the cracks in the church walls, and the mist dispersed, revealing an empty graveyard. But she could swear someone was there, moving closer to her.
Rosie stepped up to Mackie’s tombstone. A pungent pine smell hit her nose.
Something small sat near her flashlight at the base of the tombstone, gently rocking back and forth, as if someone had just set it there.
She bent and picked it up. The football was old, worn, and dirty, but the three names on it were still clear: Mackie Blackwell, Jack Blackwell, Omar Arglos.
“Mackie?” she said.
The dark trees rustled and a whisper hissed through them, “Goodbye, Rosie.”
About the Author
J. Fallenstein likes to freak herself out by constantly asking “what if?” She writes sometimes-scary stories that answer that question. You can find her at midnight in the Midwest wide awake wondering what that noise was.
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The Witching Hour Page 5
