Bone White Read online

  Bone

  White

  Tim McWhorter

  PlotForge, Ltd.

  Copyright

  Cover Design by Tim McWhorter

  Copyright © 2015 by Tim McWhorter

  Published by PlotForge, Ltd.

  1650 Lake Shore Drive, Suite 225

  Columbus, OH 43204

  www.plotforge.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Bone White

  ISBN: 978-1-937979-16-4

  Library of Congress Control Number:2015944946

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events portrayed are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Rendered in the United States of America

  About the Author

  Tim McWhorter was born under a waning crescent moon, and while he has no idea what the significance is, he thinks it sounds really cool to say. He lives just outside the bustling city of Columbus, OH, with his wife, a few children and a couple of obligatory pets that seem entirely too attached to him. Bone White is his second book and his first full-length novel. Find out more at http://timmcwhorter.com/

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Rick and Gary. I couldn’t have picked two better friends with whom to share the early chapters of my life. If you look closely throughout this book, you will notice some tips of the hat to those days.

  Even though time moves on, and sometimes it seems that all we have left between us are memories, I will cherish and look back on them with a smile for as long as I live.

  May our children experience the same level of friendship.

  Much love and appreciation goes out to the early readers of this effort. Without their feedback, positive reinforcement, and at times, harsh criticisms, this book would have been much different. And not for the better.

  Thank you.

  I would also like to thank Terri-Lynne Smiles and the fine people at PlotForge, Ltd. for not only their belief in me and my work, but their enthusiasm for it.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Dedication

  PART I

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  PART III

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Epilogue

  Blackened

  PlotForge, Ltd.

  PART I

  Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.

  - Proverbs 12:10

  Prologue

  10 Years Ago

  “Sheriff, you’re gonna want to see this.”

  Deputy Whitaker struggled to keep his voice calm as he spoke into the two-way radio attached at his shoulder. It was like nothing he had ever seen, enough to make his hands tremble. As he stood beside his cruiser, one foot up on the open door jamb, he wiped sweat from his forehead with the red paisley handkerchief his girls had bought him three Christmases ago. Perspiration ran off his face like he was sitting in a sauna, and it wasn’t even hot out. When he’d gotten the call to meet with the pastor of the New Congregational Church out on Leads Road, the meteorologist on the early morning news was saying it was going to be the first true day of Autumn-like temperatures. In fact, it couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees that stark Monday morning. Yet, even Whitaker’s underwear was feeling a little soggy.

  “It’s a real mess, Sir.”

  *

  Ten minutes later, Whitaker was sitting in his cruiser with his feet firmly on the ground and his head in his hands when he heard the sound of tires crunching on gravel. He had already lost the cream of wheat, toast and two cups of coffee he’d had for breakfast, and with that caustic taste of vomit lingering in his mouth, had already determined he would be skipping lunch. With a deep breath, Whitaker pulled himself to his feet and watched as Sheriff Stettler’s cruiser made its way into the church’s parking lot. Another cruiser identical in both color and detail closely followed.

  After a wary glance back toward the church, Whitaker walked over to where the Sheriff’s car had come to a stop. He had already filled his boss in on what he’d discovered over the radio, but Whitaker knew he’d have to do it all over again. The Sheriff was a stickler for corroboration, even when it came from the same person. The more times you told him a story, the more likely he was to believe and trust in it. And the less likely he was to drown the evidence in a quagmire of reservation.

  “Sheriff,” Whitaker said, greeting his boss with a nod.

  “So, Dick, a real mess, you say?” The Sheriff put on his hat, nestling it down into the indention that had been molded into his thick, greying hair over the years.

  “The cellar, sir. Fucking disgusting.”

  “Well, let’s hear it.”

  “For the last couple weeks,” Whitaker started, repeating exactly what he had told the Sheriff ten minutes earlier, “the parishioners have been complaining about a foul odor in the church. After doing some investigating on his own, the pastor narrowed its source as coming from the cellar. Coincidentally, the same cellar that’s always kept locked by the church’s custodian. Apparently, no one goes down there but him. Insists upon it.”

  “And the custodian’s name?”

  “Barnes, sir,” Whitaker said. “Corwin James.”

  “And did you run a preliminary check on this Corwin Barnes?”

  “Yes, sir. Came up clean.”

  “So,” the Sheriff started, before taking a moment to spit on the ground, “an all-around upstanding citizen, huh, Dick?”

  “Not quite, Sir. Not according to what I found after busting the lock on the cellar door.”

  Once Deputy Munroe had finally joined them beside Stettler’s car, the three officers started the fifty-foot trek across the parking lot toward the church, the soles of their patent leather shoes grating over the gravel.

&
nbsp; “Pastor’s name is Martin Underwood,” Whitaker continued. “Claims Barnes got extremely agitated yesterday when he confronted him after all the church members had gone. Said it would have probably gotten physical had the pastor not walked away. Said Barnes was that agitated.”

  “So the pastor literally turned the other cheek?” Munroe chimed in from behind. This tickled the Sheriff’s funny bone.

  “Guess so,” Whitaker said, his brow taking on wrinkles. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, and had to remind himself that the only reason Munroe and the sheriff were able to make jokes was because they hadn’t yet seen what was in the cellar.

  “He didn’t know what his rights were,” Whitaker continued. “Regarding breaking into the cellar. So he called us.”

  “And, what did we tell him?” Stettler asked.

  “My unofficial answer was, ‘it’s your church, isn’t it?’ So I retrieved my bolt cutters from the trunk and we went in. That’s where we found it. Or, I guess I should say, where we found them.” Whitaker’s stomach once again turned sour at the thought. Luckily, there was nothing left to come up, so that made it easier to fight off the urge to vomit a second time.

  “And where’s this pastor now?” the Sheriff asked.

  “Inside. Sitting at the top of the stairs. Praying.”

  When the three lawmen were about halfway to the church’s entrance, the double front doors suddenly crashed open with a loud bang, and an older, white haired gentleman burst forth.

  “Officer! Officer!”

  The pastor rushed down the steps, taking them two at a time before eventually collapsing onto his knees in the narrow strip of manicured grass beside the concrete walkway.

  Without hesitation, the three officers rushed over to the hysterical man, with Whitaker arriving a split second earlier than the other two. Kneeling down beside the pastor, Whitaker put a calming hand on the gentleman’s quivering shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  “My God!” the Pastor cried. The palms of his hands rubbed his eyes as if to erase an unsavory image before it had a chance to imprint itself forever on his brain. “There are three of them!”

  Chapter 1

  Present Day

  Just before my fishing line went taut, I noticed the piece of cloth floating in the pool of shimmering sunlight, reflecting on the water like gold foil. Drifting about fifteen feet off the bow of the boat, it rode the lake’s gentle currents without any clear destination. Floating aimlessly. Just lost.

  Kind of how my father would describe me.

  I cranked the handle on my new Shimano reel a couple more times and watched the end of my fiberglass pole arc farther downward with each turn. The arc only bent sharper when I tried to pull up on the rod. Like a plucked guitar string, the greenish-tinged monofilament line only vibrated, cutting short jagged slices through the water’s surface. It didn’t matter whether I cranked or pulled; the line remained firm and unrelenting. Whatever was on the other end, it was certainly not a fish. There was no independent movement. No fighting back and forth. Only solid, unchanging rigidness. Whatever it was, it wasn’t about to budge.

  “What’s up, Luke?” Garrett asked through pursed lips, his own fishing line held between them as he tied on a new hook.

  “Don’t know,” I answered. “Guess I’m snagged on something.”

  “Alright, gimme a sec.”

  The early light of the day was still chasing the mist from the water’s surface as we floated about thirty feet off a rocky shore, hovering over a well-known drop-off in the lakebed. It was a lazy Saturday, and according to the fish finder, there was supposedly nothing below us but a few fish. Nothing I should be hooked on.

  But the fish finder had been wrong before.

  I gave the line another tug or two before scrambling to my feet for better leverage. Pressing my knee against the side of the aluminum boat, I steadied myself against the roll and sway, which promised to only get worse the more I fought the line. As any experienced fisherman knows, when you get a snag, there’s a fine line between pulling just enough to free it, and pulling so hard it breaks the line, so I pulled only as hard as I dared.

  Garrett appeared with a wooden oar in his hands, like he was prepared for battle. He struck a pose for either a camera or a group of girls, neither of which was anywhere in sight. Then, laughing it off like he meant to look like an idiot, he plunged the paddle end of the oar into the water and jabbed at whatever he could make contact with. The oar bumped against the line from time to time but it wasn’t creating any slack. After a couple of minutes of poking and prodding, I was just as snagged up as when he started. I glanced over to see if the piece of cloth was still there while I waited. It was. It could be a shirt. Maybe blue.

  “It’s not giving at all,” Garrett said, bumping it again with the oar. “I just hope it’s not a, you know, dead body or anything.”

  I knew he meant it as a joke, but the comment hung in the crisp, early morning air, both of us knowing its reference all too well. On the ride to the lake the night before, I counted road kill passing through the truck’s headlights when I was awake. But, when I dozed, I dreamed about Megan Bradshaw and Hannah Rogers, the two girls missing from our high school, disappeared without a trace.

  Just gone.

  “I think I can feel the bottom,” Garrett said as he continued to jab at the water, arms elbow-deep, ass in the air. “Fairly shallow right here.”

  “Maybe try and dig at it.”

  Missing teenagers were something new around here. Something our small town of 1,600 had never dealt with before. And no one could tell us exactly what to do, or how to act. Suspicion became the norm, and we saw shadows where there were none. Pieces of trash along the roadside became dumped bodies just waiting to be discovered. Anything out of the ordinary turned our thoughts in the direction of the missing girls, trying to determine if there was a connection. And that was reason number one why I hadn’t just cut both my losses and my fishing line by now. A four-dollar lure wasn’t worth the amount of time and effort we were spending on what was normally a routine snag. But, like everything else that was no longer routine, we both wanted to know what had ahold of my line, what rested at the bottom of the lake. It was a stretch for sure, thinking that maybe I had snagged onto a dead body. Chances were really good that it was anything but. However, like I said, suspicion had become the norm.

  Garrett got to his feet and put all his weight onto the handle of the oar, plunging the wide end into the muddy bottom of the lake until the oar was almost completely submerged. Bubbles in various shades of brown began rising to the surface like volcanoes erupting from the deep.

  My hands were starting to cramp from keeping the line tight, and I took a moment to flex one hand, while still holding firm with the other. Despite not yet knowing what was down there in the murky water, I found myself nearing my “screw it, just cut it” point.

  “Maybe you should jump in and feel around,” I taunted.

  “Maybe you should kiss my ass,” Garrett said. The look he gave me said it was the stupidest suggestion I had ever made. He was just worried about what he might bump into in the water, because honestly, I’d said things that were far more stupid. I was sure of it.

  I looked again at the piece of cloth riding the ripples given off by the listing boat. It was closer now and a shirt for sure. Dark blue. And it gave me the chills. Despite my best efforts to ignore the discarded garment, my imagination spewed forth questions. What was a shirt doing floating out in the middle of the lake anyway? A rag, maybe. A handkerchief, I could see. Hell, even a jacket would have made more sense. But, a shirt? Most people would notice they’d lost a shirt. Unless of course, that someone had had no say in—

  A sucking sound jolted my back straight. I felt it as much as heard it as the pressure on the rod eased. My heart pounded as I knew we would soon see what had held my line hostage for so long. The arc of the rod grew less severe. Less of an arc, and more of a slight bend for the first time since I’d
gotten the snag. Like an opportunistic used car salesman, I immediately started reeling in the line.

  “Yes!” Garrett said, sitting back and taking a breather. “Finally.”

  The line was coming up alright, but coming up slowly. There was still enough tension on the line for the reel’s drag to occasionally make its clicking sound. I was working hard, too hard for the little amount of line I was bringing in.

  “It’s comin,” I said, “but it feels like there’s something heavy on the other end. Somethin’ really heavy.”

  Like dead weight.

  We exchanged a quick glance, and I was glad I hadn’t voiced my thought. Still, the look was enough to tell us we knew what the other was thinking. I couldn’t stop my mind from delving further toward thoughts I really didn’t want to have. And conclusions I didn’t want to come to. I rushed to come up with other possible scenarios, anything else my line could have hooked into besides a dead body. But, it was too late. The image was already in my head. So all I could do was brace myself for whatever was to come and just keep cranking.

  Garrett scowled and cautiously knelt beside me. Proving he was still braver than me, he leaned over and put his face down near the water to get a better look, rocking the boat slightly as he did. Unfortunately, all the digging he had done with the oar had churned the mud and turned the water a murky brown.

  I slowly cranked the handle on the reel, bringing the line in little by little. The seconds ticked by at the pace of minutes as we waited impatiently for whatever was on the other end of the line to show itself. For the lake to reveal what was on its bottom. To give up its secret.

  Click…click…click…

  The surface broke as a long, thin hand reached up toward Garrett’s face. Its flesh was gone, leaving behind only twisted, black bones. When the fingertips brushed his cheek, Garrett leapt backward with an audible shriek. Landing ass first on the floor of the boat, an errant elbow sending my tackle box tumbling. Hooks, weights, spinners and plastic worms of every color scattered all over the worn grey carpeting of the boat.