Bobby’s tall friend appeared behind me without warning and locked my arms behind me in one of his, pressing his other hand across my mouth. I looked at Jordan, and Bobby and his other friend already stood on either side of him. Where had they come from?
Bobby smiled wide. “Could not have asked for a better place, a hole already dug for you.”
“What are you going to fill it with, dipshit?” I asked.
“Bodies,” Bobby said, as though I’d just asked what color the sky was. His friend pushed me in front of Bobby and let go of my arms. Bobby shifted the gun from hand to hand, playing with it as though it were a toy.
The gun didn’t hold my concentration though. Darkness crept from behind him towards the pit, low and sliding across the forest floor. No one else noticed.
“Hey, man,” his taller friend said. “You’re not that good of a shot. Wait till we’re behind you.”
They walked backwards out of the pit, keeping their eyes on gun. For the first time, I got a good look at both of them.
“Donald.” It took me a few seconds to notice, as he stood there smiling like he won some big prize, but his hands shook. Bobby scared him, but I recognized him, and that might be more frightening. He was the boy from the yard. The one that had been there the night Dad ran out with the blowtorch. “You dated my sister.”
“Holy fuck, she knows your name,” the taller one said.
“Shut up, Perry,” Bobby said.
“Little Meg, all grown up,” Donald said, his voice sarcastic but shaken. It probably wasn’t a good idea I’d admitted to knowing who he was. He wouldn’t want us to get out, now that I could point blame at him. Behind him, the darkness moved closer.
“Did you see something in the woods that night, Donald?”
“What?” He shifted his body away from me.
“Something in the woods, before my dad—”
“Shut up!” Bobby yelled, obviously not happy to have the attention off of him.
The darkness reached Donald and Perry, running between their feet like a river. My body hummed as the darkness reached for me, waking little bits of me up. Our feet were hidden under the dark river at that point, but I was still the only one who seemed to notice anything strange. vines and weeds grew thicker and crawled toward us. It wasn’t the first time I had seen those damn creeping, crawling, breathing and living vines that whispered my name. The four men craned their necks to look around at the woods for whoever had spoken; they had heard it too.
“Jesus,” Jordan said, leaning into me.
“Do you see the ground moving too?” I asked, but no one answered. I looked around us, but it was no longer just the floor moving. Dozens of creatures made of earth, rocks, and twigs walked toward us from between the trees. The men shrunk in closer to me.
“I’m not seeing things,” I said, relieved through my terrified state of mind. I laughed. “Finally. You motherfuckers see it too.”
“This happens?” Jordan asked, looking at the ground. The fog filled the pit up to our shins. “Like, it actually happens? Out here? Not just in your head?”
“No, not this.” I leapt, full of energy, the pain gone. “Usually there’s just one dirt person.”
He smiled weakly back at me.
“What the hell are you freaks doing?” Bobby asked. His voice sounded like a child pretending to be brave in the face of a barking dog.
“Turns out I’m not a freak,” I said. “And this sure as hell ain’t me.”
Though, the closer creatures came, the louder the hum inside of my body grew. I recognized the feeling, it was a drawing down. No. A calling. Was I calling them? Or them calling me? Jordan turned his back to me, watching as the figures lined up on one of the sides.
“Are they going to come in?” he asked.
“Stop this.” Bobby’s face was within inches of mine, his breath rancid and eyes full of hate. I wanted to push him into the darkness on the ground, let it eat him up. I wanted him gone.
The shotgun fell to the ground, swallowed instantly. I thought Bobby might lean over and search for it within the swirling fog, but he wrapped both hands around my neck. He wasn’t going to take a chance with his piss poor aim anymore; instead he would do this right. The Tonka truck pressed into my shoulder as he pushed me against the tree. He squeezed his hands tighter at my neck, lifting me from the ground. The world around me slipped away fast.
“Stay.” The word slid around me as it had earlier, holding me up. My breath returned even as Bobby closed my airways.
“Let go of me,” I said, clear as though I didn’t have ten fingers wrapped around my neck.
“How are you breathing, bitch?” he asked, through gritted teeth.
A large vine tumbled from the top of the tree he pinned me against and fell over his shoulders. Bobby tried to shake it off, but the vine twisted around his shoulders, rolling and bending as though giving him a massage. He looked down, the terror on his face enough to make me feel for him, but only for a second before he slammed me back against the tree. My head bounced hard off the Tonka. He let go, and I fell to the ground. The darkness slipping into the tree.
The tip of vine disappeared, slithering down his back. Bobby screamed over the sound of zzzip. I sat in shock and disbelief. He fell to his knees, revealing a slit in his skin starting from the top of his skull, ending at his tail bone. His body bucked as he vomited between gurgled screams. The vine worked its way into the slit, as several more feet of it fell from the tree. It moved inside of him, creating the sound like a hunter pulling skin from a fresh kill.
A bubble formed inside of Bobby as more vine worked in, pulling and popping its way through the whole of his body. Unexpectedly, the vine snapped back out, spraying blood around us. Then, like a hand, the vine grabbed Bobby’s skin and yanked it from his body, leaving a convulsing bloody mess on the ground.
Bobby’s skin dangled in front of me, held out by the tree like a gift; a Bobby flag. Surrender. The vine slid up the tree, stiffening and transforming back into branches.
The earth moved, and I pushed back against the tree, not sure where to go. Where was safe? Dozens of bowling ball sized dirt clumps crawled toward me like spiders, using weeds and sticks for legs. When they reached Bobby, they crawled over the pieces left of his body, snapping tendons, popping bones, cradling organs. They collected all the pieces, then scuttled away from us into the depths of the forest.
In less than a minute, the sounds of dismembering had diminished to the sound of Bobby’s empty shell, flapping in the wind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“What did you do?” Donald asked, looking at the Bobby flag.
“I didn’t—” The dirt people crumbled and fell back to the earth.
“We saw you. What did you do?” he said again.
Jordan stepped over to me, absently nodding and seeming to agree with his attackers. But when he made eye contact with me, I could tell he changed his mind. “She moved, that’s all. She moved at the same time, she was trying to get away. Not… empty him.”
“It was more than a move,” Donald said. “She put her hand out and yanked up, and his skin flew off. His skin.”
Perry moved away fast, between the trees. “Come on, dude. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Wait. You can’t—” My words were slow and messy leaving my mouth. My hand shot up, telling them to wait. Donald fell on his butt and kicked back from me, moving out of the pit.
Donald said, “I never did anything to you, I swear.”
Jordan smacked my hand down and muttered, “Don’t do it again.”
“Do what again? I’m not doing—” My fingertip sparkled and sizzled like bacon in a frying pan. “What?”
My body hummed, and I knew my blood connected to the world around me. The ground sighed, and the trees stretched. Ants crawled through my skin, prickling my nerves. I looked at my arm, half expecting the skin to bump, bubble and move. Would I crack open like Bobby? Luckily, my skin remained in one piece.
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“What is happening?” Jordan asked. He stared at my arm like it were a snake, not sure yet if it was poisonous or wandering through the woods looking for rodents. Perry and Donald shot through the forest, and my stomach cramped. “They’re going to the police.”
“I don’t know. They came here first.” Jordan pointed at his face. “They attacked me.” He reached for my arm, then dropped his hand before it touched me. “We need to go to Ken. We need to tell him… something.”
“I killed him? Did I? Didn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan said, the words scarcely out of his mouth before something moved under our feet. The trees shook like an earthquake had hit the land, and the far side of the pit tumbled inward. “Are you doing this?”
“No.” If I had killed Bobby, I might have been making an earthquake. “I don’t know what’s happening any more than you.”
“I don’t believe that.” He rubbed at his forehead like he had a headache. “You have to know.”
We ducked at the unmistakable sound of a large tree falling to the ground.
“Hey, Jordan,” I said. “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a noise?”
Another snap and a tree fell straight across the pit behind us.
“Megan.” Jordan grabbed my arm. “Stop this.”
“It’s not me,” I insisted, believing my words. “There was some kind of energy earlier, with Bobby. But there isn’t anymore.” Mist popped out of my finger and surged into the ground. “Okay, a little. I guess.”
“Why are the trees falling, Megan?” he asked, jerking back as my hand sizzled again.
“I don’t fucking know.” A shock of electricity ran from my finger to a pile of leaves. “I didn’t kill Bobby, and I’m not knocking trees over.” It had to be truth. We stared at my sparking hands. I thought about Cecelia and her words at the trailer. Witches.
Call Dee down. That’s what Cecelia had said.
I cleared my throat. “Aunt Dee?”
Jordan ducked as a stick flew by his ear. “What are you doing?”
“Aunt Dee?” I yelled louder that time. The Bobby flag flapped in a gust of wind as it blew through. “Aunt Dee? Please, I need your help.”
“Holy shit!” Jordan yelled. He stumbled back, falling on his butt as he cried out, pointing behind me.
I turned around, knowing she’d be there before I saw her. Aunt Dee. Soggy and stretched out, ripped cheeks and thin, pale lips. Her smile tore from ear to ear, her skin, bloated in places, and threatened to fall off her bones.
“Megalorsaurus,” she said with a gravelly voice, unmistakably Aunt Dee.
“Aunt Dee, I need your help.”
“Ask.”
“What—” My voice stuck in my throat. Little Meg. Mama said my name, and I looked around. “Mama?”
“You won’t see her,” Aunt Dee said.
Little Meg, ask your questions while we are here.
“Can you make this stop?” I asked. Before she could answer, more questions flowed. “What’s happening? Are you the only person I’ve been seeing? Is Mama really here too? How? She’s dead too, isn’t she? Why are you here?”
The smell wafted off of her like dead fish left too long in the sun. She stood still and quiet.
Jordan’s hard breathing cut through the sparking noise coming from my fingers.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“It’s okay,” she said. When her mouth opened, we could see her tongue was a giant beetle. “I held it all back from you. When I died it was released for you to use.”
“What was?”
“Your magic.” Her smile spread larger, the tear lashing almost to her earlobe. “You would have had a large awakening sooner, but your father—” Her smile dropped, the tear in her cheeks still visible. “The fear of him held the magic down in you, afraid to come out.”
“Is it happening to Angela?” I asked, thinking about my niece. “My brothers?”
“Only you.” She looked to the woods. “For now.”
“Why me?” I raised my hands forward, a sparkling mist traveled from one to the other.
“Geraldine passed on a special gift to you when she gave you life a second time. It was only you that needed it, and only you that has it. The others have gifts they can awaken, but their abilities are buried deeper and will need a greater sense of belief and understanding before they can use them. You are able to use your gifts without strong knowledge because you are never truly without your mama’s guidance. Geraldine is always with you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me ask you; do you ever feel like a book flapping in the wind, not knowing what page to settle on?”
“What?”
Jordan made a noise from the ground, as he sat cross-legged with his face lowered, rubbing his temples. Aunt Dee looked at him. “It’s so good to see the two of you have made up. Adolescence is a silly time. Lots of mistakes are made on all sides of family and friends. I would have been sad to never see you two friends again.”
“How can you see us be friends at all?” I asked. “How the hell are you here?”
“I’m connected to Geraldine, and until she is gone, I’ll still be here.”
My heart leapt. That meant... “Mama’s still alive? Then how is she talking out here? If she isn’t like you?”
Aunt Dee’s head tilted from side to side. “Your father killed her, but she is still here.”
My heart sank into my gut. I always knew, but I had held onto hope that Mama was hiding somewhere. A body had never been found.
“No,” I said. Jordan stood at my side, stunned out of his frozen stupor by the information, keeping me calm at this realization. “He didn’t. She ran away.”
Aunt Dee brushed her hair away from her shoulders. “She would have, one day. But not while you children were at home.” She reached out for my face, and a worm wriggled out from under the loose fingernail on her index finger. “But no. He killed her and split her body to pieces in his shop. Spread her bones and skin all over this land, bringing an end to the work your mama and I had been doing to return the once great and beautiful magic the mountain held.”
I choked, unable to think. It couldn’t be true.
“That wasn’t his true self. He turned wicked in West Virginia when my husband – his brother – died. Funny things will happen to a leftover twin. It took years to see the depth of his darkness.”
“If she’s dead, why were you talking to her?” I asked. “Is she like you?”
“Not like me.” Aunt Dee opened her hand and a large black scorpion stretched across her palm. “For Geraldine.”
Jordan and I looked at each other. Great. I raised my eyebrows, and he returned the gesture. We had ourselves a dead magic woman, who was a nutcase.
Jordan asked, “If she’s dead, what do you mean, when she’s gone?”
“She still lives. In our Megan.”
When she said it, the humming in my body picked up speed, as though I might actually lift off the ground. Hands pressed on my shoulders again, an invisible comfort. Mama?
“When you say she lives in Meg, is that a figurative or literal statement?” Jordan asked, and we both glared at him. His shoulders hunched. “What? It’s a good question.”
“Pieces of her live on. Some in the—” Aunt Dee paused and rotated her hand three hundred and sixty degrees, pointing at the surrounding trees. “—ethereal way that we live on in nature. Some in the way that she is very much alive in Meg. Blood made from blood. Blood given to blood.”
“You sound like a shitty Hallmark card,” I said. The hands slipped away, and I lifted my sizzling fingers. “How do I make it stop? I don’t want to be part of this. How did I... Did I kill Bobby?”
I cast a nervous glance at the tree Bobby hung from — a balloon trapped and deflated.
“That wasn’t completely you, and it wasn’t completely Bobby.”
“Look, Yoda,” Jordan said. “E
ither Meg killed him or you did. Because I don’t see anyone else standing around here. Or anyone else with freaky magic powers popping out of the dirt.”
Aunt Dee closed the space between her and him quicker than anyone else I’ve ever seen move.
“Take her hand, lead her home and clean her up. When the police come, and believe you me, they will, do not speak of this.
“You will tell how those boys brought you out here and then battered and abandoned you as a threat to Meg. Bobby left with the rest of them. Never confess to anyone what she did. You owe her this. You were set on each other’s paths for a reason. Some bonds are stronger than blood, earth or romance. And that bond grew between the two of you.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and a small brown beetle crawled out of her mouth and onto Jordan’s brow. He swatted at his face as she turned, placing her cold hand on my bare upper arm. “Child. Take care, take a breath. Go up to the house. Make dinner. Sit and relax on the porch with Jordan. Shower. Drink a beer. The longer you still yourself, the quicker you will steady your hands.”
She squeezed my arm.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, my voice rising. No longer afraid of Aunt Dee, as I had been in the dark hours, but afraid of my hand and my own powers I knew nothing about using. “How am I supposed to still myself if I have fucking magic jumping out of my fingertips?”
Goosebumps raised over my body and sparks shot from more than just my fingertips, from my hips and toes as well. Jordan edged away, but Aunt Dee did not move.
“Trust me,” she said.
“Trust you?”
“Megalorsaurus, if you don’t trust me, you’ll never find peace. You’ll never find a way to calm yourself and become a constant source of fear and pain. Not only for yourself, but for others too.” The air stilled. “I have to go, little one.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked. The ants under my skin moved faster as my panic rose. “I have more questions. What if it happens again? What if someone makes me mad? Am I going to rip their skin off?”
“I told you, that wasn’t all you. Some of that was Geraldine. And she always said I was the dramatic one. Goes to show.”
Going Home (Cedar Valley Hauntings Book 1) Page 25
