by L. L. Muir
Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow
Book One of The Angels of Somerled
By L. L. Muir
AMAZON KINDLE EDITION
PUBLISHED BY
Lesli Muir Lytle
www.llmuir.weebly.com
Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow © 2012 Lesli Muir Lytle
All rights reserved
Amazon Kindle Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. The ebook contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, or stored in or introduced into an information storage and retrieval system in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This ebook 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, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art © 2012 Kelli Ann Morgan / Inspire Creative Services
Formatting by Bob Houston eBook Formatting
ABOUT THE BOOK
Jamison is crushing on the new girl next door. Bad news—the neighbors are Somerled cult-members killing off their own. Worse news—she’s next in line for sacrifice. Jamison will have to rise above the coward he thinks he is to get to the bottom of it all. Only the bottom...goes all the way to the top.
Something is terribly wrong with Skye. She’s experiencing emotions like the mortal teenager she’s pretending to be. When she finally asks the right questions, she finds answers that will rock the Somerled world...
...and none of her options include Jamison, the boy who has stolen the heart she was never meant to have.
Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow is the first book in the Angels of Somerled Series. Book Two, Freaking Off the Grid, will be available Spring 2012. For more information, go to my website at www.llmuir.weebly.com.
DEDICATION
To my children,
Tyson, Lyndsi, Logan, Dylan, and Cameron...
for letting me see the world through their eyes
every day.
CHAPTER ONE
“You’re such an idiot.” Jamison shook his head.
Ray grinned as he watched his paper airplane glide out the glassless window and into the darkness. “You love me.”
Jamison didn’t know whether it was the glow of white paper or his imagination that his eyes followed, arching off to the right, then lodging in a corn stalk twenty feet below the old tree house. He itched to turn on the flashlight, to see if it had landed where he thought, but that would screw up their little stake-out.
The tree was enormous, nearly five feet in diameter, and the ancient clubhouse was so insanely high people forgot it was there. Built thirty or forty years ago, before people knew better than to pound railroad stakes into living trees, a dozen three-foot boards were nailed to the side of the trunk, creating a ladder. Not realizing it had been mortally wounded, the tree hung on to those boards like a dutiful soldier. The gaps between the rungs stretched with each year and little kids could no longer use them.
Not that they would want to; even Jamison hated being up so high.
Another page was loudly ripped from a dusty tabloid.
“Dude!” Jamison groped for the magazine in the dark and pulled it away from the childhood friend whom he’d barely recognized two days before when Jamison had returned to his grandpa’s farm. “I didn’t freeze my butt off ‘til three o’clock in the morning just so you could give us away.”
“Oh yeah. Okay.”
Behind them, Burke began to snore.
“Hey. Hey, wake up. It’s almost time.” Ray thumped on the guy until he stopped snoring and dragged himself over to join the party.
“This better be good, man.” Burke rubbed his eyes and set his chin on the two-by-four window frame. There was no moon, but in the eerie blue light from the stars, the skater beanie hanging off the back of his head made his profile look like an alien’s.
Space was tight, with all three of them looking out the rectangle opening, but at least Jamison was warmer. Colorado in the fall was like Siberia to a guy who’d spent the last five years in Texas.
A door spring creaked from the left, then creaked again, as if the neighbor’s old porch screen had slowly opened and then shut even slower.
“Holy crap,” Ray whispered. His legs started bouncing.
“Relax.” Jamison tried not to get too excited. So someone was up at three a.m. just like Ray had promised. They still had no clue what was planned, only that it was a secret, and maybe a cult thing.
“It’s not that. I have to piss.” Ray’s legs still shook.
“You’ll have to hold it,” Jamison ordered.
“No way, bro. My Dew just hit.” Ray stood up. “I’m going down.”
“Me too.” Burke stood up. “I gotta go too.”
A chill shot up and down Jamison’s spine. If he got busted spying on the neighbors, his mom would kill him. Heck, he’d die of embarrassment all by himself if that hot girl heard about it; either way, he’d be dead. When he started school tomorrow, he wanted to be able to look her in the eye again, not hide from her.
“Just find a bottle,” he pleaded.
“No way. It would overflow.” Ray shuffled toward the exit in the corner of the floor. “I’d arc it out the window, but I might hit my skateboard.”
Burke snorted.
“Okay. But if you’re going down, be quiet. And hurry.”
A few seconds later Jamison was alone. He pulled his hoodie over his head but held it out from his ears, listening for Ray to make too much noise.
A breeze disturbed the field below.
At first, he worried it was his friends, peeing over the fence. Why else would the tree leaves not be moving too? But the rustling came from the ground and grew louder, as if tons of people were walking through the dense drying field.
Jamison turned back to the window.
Tons of people. Holy crap.
Suddenly he’d have given anything to be tucked in bed, completely oblivious to what his grandpa’s freakish neighbors did in the middle of the night. Maybe if he, too, would have needed to pee, he could’ve snuck back into the house instead of sitting in the front row of what he hoped wouldn’t be some sort of ritual sacrifice.
They made movies out of this stuff. A boy witnesses a murder. Boy reports the murder. There is no body. Soon...there is no boy.
Not daring to sit front and center in case the moon suddenly showed up, he stood and moved back, content to watch only what came into view. He tugged harder on his hood, to hide his blond hair, folded his arms, and tucked his cold hands into his armpits, grateful for the thick soft cotton of his new sweatshirt.
Small glowing lights moved among the plants, headed for the center of the field. As Jamison shifted from foot to foot the specters spread into a circle about fifty yards out from the tree. At first, he thought someone was going t
o burn the field, but the lights were as steady as the robed people carrying them.
But they weren’t actually carrying them. The light came from under their white clothes as if each person wore a single, battery-operated Christmas light on one shoe. He would have laughed at the costumes if he hadn’t just noticed that the neighbors were standing in a ring, in the middle of...of...a crop circle!
He, Ray, and Burke had climbed up pretty early—around eight o’clock. They’d looked over that field for an hour or so before it got dark. They would have noticed a freaking crop circle!
Come on. Come on. If those two didn’t hustle, they’d miss it. They’d never believe him if the circle somehow disappeared by morning. He’d never believe it. They’d also never believe the lights—coming from...wherever.
They’d believe the robes, though; this group wasn’t just eco-friendly, they were eco-nuts. Calling themselves Somerleds, they lived like the Amish or Mennonites—kinda keeping to themselves, living simply—only instead of wearing black all the time, they wore white. Ray told him they wore only raw wool and raw cotton, and as far as his friend knew, they only ate raw food as well. No meat. Strictly vegetarians.
At least if they were sacrificing something, or someone, they wouldn’t be eating it afterward. For some reason, that put Jamison a little more at ease. He still stayed back from the window, though. Who knew what might light up next and clearly show the Somerleds the face of their new neighbor/spy?
The circle of lights and bodies settled. Nothing else moved through the field; all were contained in that deep bowl of drying husks, the sides towering over the tallest of heads, the tassels waving in the breeze like flags above a circus tent.
Very clever; no one in that flat county would notice the meeting place unless they were flying overhead...or perched in one of Granddad’s windbreak trees. They would never get away with this closer to the mountains.
But just what were they trying to get away with?
Movement.
A taller one—had to be a man—moved around the circle, stopping at each person for a minute. When he stopped near a small figure, the two hugged. For just a second that hot girl’s face was lit up over the man’s shoulder, her hair spilling down the guy’s arm, and Jamison was hit by an invisible Mac truck.
She was there. She was part of it. He’d fallen for a circus freak.
Jamison moved to the side of the window, wanting a better look, but more afraid of getting caught than before.
“Just show them a little respect for the good neighbors they've been to me,” his granddad had asked in his letter.
Jamison had never been so near Somerled people before. For the last two days he’d tried not to stare and had done a pretty good job, he’d thought. He was a good actor, just like most kids in big city high schools; you had to walk a thin line between ignoring the dangerous people and showing them enough respect, and do both without drawing their attention. He’d managed to live a pretty invisible life in Texas and treating the Somerleds like dangerous gang members had been a good plan...
Until a girl his age had pulled up in a green BMW and caught him with his mouth hanging open. Her clothes marked her a Somerled, but her car was anything but simple. What was up with that?
He wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had a look that said one of these days she’d be beautiful. Her nose was kind of cute and boxy on the end. Her eyes were so dark you couldn’t tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. There was something warm and melty about those eyes, like chocolate in the bottom of a black cup.
She styled her brown hair the same as every other American female did—long and straight. It swung like a heavy drape when she walked.
And she wasn't overly hot, or at least he'd never be able to tell with all her white layers of clothes. Her pants looked like white jeans. She wore an off-white t-shirt that showed in the V of her same-colored sweater. Her rough-looking coat was the color of pencil lead. Her boots looked like moccasins and matched the fringe of her scarf—pale and bumpy like the inside of an orange peel. A She-eco-nut. Just like the rest. Just like you’d find all over the world.
But she wore plain pretty well. Whether it was the confidence in her walk, or her steady gaze when she’d finally noticed him, he couldn't say. One thing was for sure, though. She’d gotten his attention and he was never going to get it back.
Especially when she teased him with crop circles and secret meetings in the middle of the night.
The tall one finally moved away from her and walked toward the center of the circle. His movements were slow, deliberate. Bent corn stalks tugged at his robes as he passed over them, but he kept going until he reached the center.
Jamison was relieved there wasn’t an altar in sight.
The Somerleds cleared their throats, then began...singing...kind of. It was more like the sound an orchestra makes when the musicians are warming up, only with voices.
A choir? Some stupid kind of choir practice at three o’clock in the morning? Something that couldn't be sung in a building somewhere, but in a crop circle?
Jamison smirked. How lame. Oh, he was going to kill Ray.
The noise sharpened, the voices blending better. He'd stay and watch for another minute, then he was going to bed. Ray could live until morning when they met up at school. If this was his idea of a joke, he’d be dead before first period.
Jamison glared out at the scene, disgusted that he’d lost sleep for this. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping to see, maybe a body being buried or some blood-drinking ceremony, but not this. Okay, the crop circle was pretty cool, but that was it.
He was about to turn away when the man in the center suddenly started getting taller and taller. Only he wasn’t growing—he was rising in the air!
With the lights from the far side of the circle it was clear there was nothing lifting him up!
But then, twenty feet in the air, nearly straight out from the tree house, he...exploded.
Fiery pieces of him flew in all directions and disintegrated, like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. But there had been no sound. The singing had stopped short when the guy exploded.
Holy crap! They blew him up!
“Holy shit!” Ray's voice rose through the drop door and none too quietly.
Immediately, light hit the tree house—not small lights but more powerful beams, like cop flashlights. The Somerleds started moving back into the corn, heading not in the directions they came from, but toward the trees! Some started to run.
Jamison's heart splashed into his bladder and he thought he'd piss his pants. He hurried to the hole and leaned over.
“Get out of here!” he hissed. “They're coming.”
But Ray had already noticed. He was nearly sitting on Burke's head as the two climbed down as fast as the awkward rungs would allow. If Jamison tried to follow, he'd get to the ground just in time to welcome the neighbors to his back yard.
Crap!
Would they come looking in the tree house?
He peeked out the window. Long robes didn't seem to be slowing anyone down. They looked like a search party after escaped convicts and they didn’t appear concerned about the fence, either. Did they expect to run right through it?
Hell yes, they'd come looking in the tree house.
Suddenly he remembered the other trap door, but this one opened onto the roof. Jamison had “remodeled” when he'd inherited the hideout. Although with no handholds of any kind, and nothing to keep him from falling off the roof, the opening had only been used to hide contraband when Grandpa started huffing and puffing his way up the tree.
Jamison moved beneath it, thankful to still be deep in the shadows where the flashlight beams didn’t reach him.
No go. Crap crap crap. He’d remembered the hole being so much larger.
The side window was barely big enough, but he wasn’t complaining. He thrust one leg through and found a fat branch for his shoe. With a bit of maneuvering he found enough footholds to make his way
to the roof and ease himself onto it, flattening as best as he could. The wood was cold and would have been smooth if not for decades of bird droppings, leaves, and sap sealing out the elements as well as shingles would have.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The taunting voice came from far below. The clubhouse was over six feet tall, so now that Jamison was on the roof his mind did the math and he froze. He was too high. He would die if he fell.
“Please, God, help me!” Ray wasn't acting. He wasn't joking. He sounded terrified, but Jamison couldn’t help; he couldn't move. His mom would have to call the fire department in the morning and they'd come after him with a cherry picker, like a stupid cat.
All he could do was listen.
A deep laugh rumbled up to the canopy of dried leaves that waited for just the right breeze to pry their grasps from the high branches. “Don't you just love Desperation Prayers?”
“Oh yes,” a woman answered. “They're like dessert, like the cherry on top. I bet I’d like cherries.”
“Get your hands off me!” It was Burke’s voice. “Let me go, you mother—”
“Now, now. Is that any way to talk? We're going to help you, son.”
“I don't need help, you sick—”
“Stop that. You'll only feel worse for it in the end.” The woman's voice and Burke's were moving away.
“Yes, and you have enough to repent over already, don't you think?” The deep voice laughed again. “Come along, Ray. Do you mind if we call you Ray?”
Ray couldn’t be fond of cops, not with the candy store in his pockets he’d shown off to Jamison that day. Maybe that was why he sounded so terrified. Maybe he thought he'd be arrested.
But that wasn't right. They weren’t trespassing. They were on Jamison’s property, or at least they had been. If the Somerleds called the cops, Jamison would set them straight. They had no reason to arrest anyone. If anything, the neighbors should be charged with kidnapping.
But Jamison couldn't defend anyone stuck in a tree. He wanted to get down—he was freezing—but there had been so many of them. Some could still be waiting for him to show himself.
