Bone White Read online

  The fishing pole began to slip from my grip as I reared back to escape the ghoulish menace when just as quickly, it changed into something less so. As soon as it emerged further, the bony hand transformed into its true form; a simple tree branch, black with age and algae. Submerged for who knows how long, its gnarled and crooked limbs vaguely resembled the charred bones of a skeleton. The small twigs branching out at the end took on the illusion of fingers, all the way down to the knobby knuckles. If I hadn’t still been in shock, I would have busted out laughing. No tree branch in history had ever looked so sinister, or instilled so much fear. But, as it was, all I could do was stand there processing, surprised at the quickness with which we’d jumped to conclusions.

  I looked at Garrett. The first thing I saw in his eyes was recognition. Then, a welcome relief spread across his face like a tidal wave, bringing with it an awkward grin. Meeting my gaze from where he sat, legs in the air, I’m sure he saw the same on mine. Like I said, having two girls missing from the area made you skittish. It caused you to jump to conclusions, even when it seemed like a ridiculous notion afterward. I’m sure it didn’t help that we’d also seen too many horror movies. At least that’s what my mother would have said. And she would know. She knows everything.

  Once our testicles had dropped out of our stomachs and we’d finally had a good laugh about it all, we went ahead and cut the line. We watched in silence as, slowly, the tree limb sank back down and returned to its resting place under the murky water where it had resided for who knows how long before being disturbed. I looked across the water, and the blue shirt too, was gone. If that’s even what it was. Now, I couldn’t be sure.

  The sun had risen over the horizon during our battle with the branch, the mist was almost gone and the world around us was gradually coming into focus. We’d been fishing all night and the gods had been good to us, so we decided not to be greedy. Besides, we were running out of space in the cooler.

  “Next weekend?” Garrett asked.

  “Definitely.”

  Garrett turned the boat in the direction of the launch ramp and his awaiting truck. After haphazardly tossing the spilled gear into the tackle box to be sorted later, I kicked my feet up on the bow of the boat for the ride back. With the sun now blazing down upon us, I pulled my hat down over my eyes, but not before glimpsing a trio of vultures circling high in the blue sky above, their long, black wings spread wide against the ice blue backdrop.

  I had once read that the site of vultures circling overhead was regarded as a bad omen, but I didn’t consider it one at the time.

  But, maybe I should have.

  Chapter 2

  The next week was mostly normal. School during the day, working my job in the evenings, and filling the in-between time with more of the unwavering tension between my parents and me regarding my plans for the future, or the lack thereof. We were like broken records. I would tell them that I didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school, and my parents would lecture me on the dangers of idle hands. In other words, that week was no different from the ones that had come before.

  Well, with the exception of Becca Lewis disappearing.

  Chapter 3

  New Paris, Ohio, is a dual stoplight town situated just inside the Ohio/Indiana border, no closer to a big city than it has to be. It’s the kind of town where the population of the cemeteries exceed that of the living, and the gap seems to widen every year. We have a McDonald’s and one of those Summer, roadside ice cream stands that sells things like pizza burgers and deep fried mushrooms, things you can’t get anywhere except places like that. We have a rundown carwash, more churches than bars, and a post office that’s only open when our local postmaster can pull himself out of the latter. It’s a place where families go back several generations, and the chaotic world we see on the nightly news might as well be on another planet.

  It’s not the kind of town where disappearances occur.

  But, in a matter of six weeks, three teenage girls had gone missing. I knew each of them. In a town the size of New Paris, everyone pretty much knows everyone else. Rumors flew through the air the way pigeons scatter in the movies when couples stroll through the town square. Meaning, there were a lot of them flying in all directions, and you just had to try and stay out of their way, all the while covering your head and trying not to get shit on. The rumors morphed from one telling to the next, always growing the way rumors often do.

  One rumor I’d heard had the girls belonging to a suicide cult that planned a suicide every other week until there were no girls left in New Paris. While not exactly a far-fetched notion, in my mind at least, this theory didn’t actually explain the physical disappearances of the girls. But, that didn’t seem to matter to the individuals spreading the rumor. They just gave me a dumb look and walked away when I pointed it out.

  Coincidentally or not, all three of the missing girls were part of the elite clique, and yes, even small towns have those. The pretty rich girls who weren’t necessarily snobs, but had the DNA to be one if the mood struck. That gave wings to another rumor flying around suggesting they’d all run away for the bright lights of Los Angeles or New York or Nashville. Led off into the dark night, guided only by the stars in their eyes.

  I’d even heard a rumor that all three were chained up somewhere in the bowels of the high school, kept there by our 7-fingered school janitor who may or may not have served time in prison at one point. As time went on, it seemed like each rumor offered a more outlandish explanation than the last.

  As for me, I didn’t know what I believed.

  *

  The mood was somber at lunch on that following Thursday as Garrett and I, and a handful of others gathered on and around his tailgate, a bag of cheeseburgers between us in the crowded McDonald’s parking lot. We were all thinking about the same thing. The missing students were all anyone around town could think about. Sometimes we even caught ourselves looking at girls in the school hallways, wondering who would be next. Which one of them was going to off themselves this week? Who had their bags packed and a bus ticket in hand? Or, who wasn’t taking an alternate route to their classes in order to avoid walking past the janitor’s closet?

  “Maybe they’re all just playing a trick,” Cricket said, breaking a silence almost five minutes long, which among a group of people my age is a long freakin’ time. “Like a hoax, or something. To get themselves on television.” His real name was Sukhraj Singh, but we called him Cricket. We told ourselves it was because the baseball-like sport was all he ever talked about after his family moved here from Mumbai. But, admittedly, it was also a whole lot easier to pronounce than “Sukhraj” without sounding like we were mocking him. Cricket held the distinction of being the only Indian kid in our high school. In fact, his family was practically the only non-white family in town. The PC officers of the world wouldn’t exactly call New Paris ‘multi-cultural.’ Cricket’s family moved to town two years ago when his father was given the responsibility of heading up some kind of rehabilitation program at the prison on the other side of the county. Not sure what he did exactly, but it had something to do with helping the convicts transition better into society after they were released. Something with an acronym for a name. He’d joined up with Garrett and me pretty quick and had been hanging with us ever since. Cricket that is, not his father. Cricket never went fishing with us, though. Couldn’t pull him away from YouTube and World of Warcraft long enough. But, he was a good guy. And his mother made some really tasty food that was a whole lot easier to eat than pronounce.

  “Really?” Garrett asked him with more than a hint of sarcasm. He was on edge as much as any of us, if not more. He had a sister who was a freshman this year. Of the three missing girls, two were seniors and one was a junior. Still, you never know. “Do you really think they’re just playing a trick?”

  The look on Cricket’s face told me he’d taken Garrett’s sarcasm too personally. The corners of his mouth turned downward a bit. His light dimmed.

&
nbsp; “Well, no,” Cricket said, his eyes down at his feet as he slurped his milkshake. “Just tryin’ to stay positive, I guess.”

  Cricket looked up at me for solidarity sake, and I gave him props with a nod. Staying positive was something very few people in town were succeeding at, so I had to at least give him credit for trying.

  “The cops have practically nothing,” Garrett continued. His aunt was married to one of the four deputy sheriffs in New Paris, so we knew he spoke the truth on that topic. “Even the FBI hasn’t made any headway. What are we supposed to make of that?”

  His question was met with modest shrugs and bowed heads. None of us had any idea what we were supposed to make of any of it. So we just stuffed our faces with cheeseburgers, fries and milkshakes in the hopes we wouldn’t be asked our opinions directly.

  “Annabeth Wilson wasn’t in History this morning,” Claire eventually said, before tossing a couple of fries into her mouth. Claire was the token “one-of-the-guys” girl in our little group, what my mother called ‘a tomboy.’ She wasn’t into fishing, but she was a very good basketball player, a so-so volleyball player and served time on both teams in school. Claire hung with us instead of other girls, basically because a lot of the other girls thought she was a lesbian, and just like with diversity, acceptance wasn’t our town’s strong suit. But, the girls at school were wrong anyway. I knew this because Claire and I had made out more than a couple times. But, no one else knew about it, and we were generally content to keep it a secret. Not like it would have mattered to the rest of our group either way. Gay or straight, she was just plain cool.

  “Anyone seen her?” Claire continued.

  The shaking of heads silently confirmed that none of us had seen Annabeth. More than likely, she just had a headache, stomachache or at worst, a case of mono. Really, there could have been any number of reasons why she wasn’t in class. Maybe she simply had an exam that day and hadn’t had a chance to study. So instead of getting a bad grade, she just chose to skip. Who knows? Kids had skipped classes for a lot less. But, that’s how it worked lately: if a girl wasn’t in class, we held our breaths until she showed up somewhere.

  And that’s how Garrett and I spent the rest of the week; holding our breath, fearing the worst and looking forward to our weekend of fishing just so we’d get a break from it all.

  Chapter 4

  Just before the final Friday bell, the principal came on the loud speaker and wished us all a good weekend. After reminding us of the school board’s decision to go ahead with prom that was two weeks away, he signed off with his usual “Can’t wait to see everyone on Monday.” Only this time, he made a point of telling us to be careful, that he wouldn’t want anything to happen to any more of “his students.”

  In any other school across the country, that would have seemed like an awkward thing to say. Normally, when the principal or a teacher made a seemingly odd statement, I rolled my eyes or smirked. Maybe mocked them outright in order to get a laugh. This time, I let it go. I gathered my books and walked quietly out of the classroom as the bell rang through the hallways for the last time.

  Incidentally, Annabeth was back in school that day. A simple 24-hour stomach virus had kept her home the day before. Rumor had it, though, that she’d eaten some bad Mexican food the night before and it had given her the squirts. But, that’s how rumors go, and hers was just one of many flying around.

  Chapter 5

  Friday nights, it was usually assholes and elbows for Garrett at the steakhouse where we both worked as dishwashers. I’d have been right there with him had I not thrown a fit awhile back and said my mom was threatening to report them for making me work too many hours at my age. From that point on, I had my Friday nights free. Unfortunately for Garrett, I’d thought of it first.

  But, by some grace of God, or just dumb luck, Garrett didn’t have to work that night. The steakhouse had hired a new dishwasher, and, finally, Garrett had actual seniority over someone. That meant we could get a much desired early start for the lake. Even though we usually fished mostly at night, it was easier to launch the boat and get out on the water while the sun was still up. Adding all the tension in my house with my parents, and the all-around uneasiness running rampant through New Paris, I was all too eager to make myself scarce. Besides, the lingering rain that week only added to the melancholic atmosphere that hovered over New Paris with all the subtlety of a zeppelin on fire. Getting away for the next twenty-four hours was just what we needed, and we couldn’t get out of town soon enough.

  This is what Garrett and I did. We fished. Loved it. It’s what we lived for, and what made us different from most the kids we knew. When the rest of our senior class made plans to spend their Spring Breaks in Myrtle Beach or Daytona, Garrett and I headed northeast. We packed our gear and spent the week trout fishing up in the Allegheny National Forest in northern Pennsylvania. My father, for one, thought we were crazy for choosing trout fishing and a rundown cabin in the woods over bikinis and sand, but what can I say? There’s just something about the freedom and being in nature that draws us in. When Sunday evenings came along and Garrett’s blue Chevy truck smelled like mud, fish attractant and spilled Mtn Dew, we considered it a good weekend. If the cooler happened to be full of bass, catfish or a whole mess of perch, then we considered it a very good weekend.

  That Friday, Garrett swung by my house wearing the faded green Master Baiter t-shirt he’d found online a few years back. The picture on the back showed a small, but muscular, guy in shades wrestling a monster worm onto a hook. It was classic Garrett. He rounded out his angling “uniform” with cargo shorts and old tennis shoes. Basically, it was the same thing I was wearing except for the shirt. My grey t-shirt had a simple Bass Pro Shop logo on the pocket. Nothing fancy.

  We pulled out of the driveway around 5:00, about twenty minutes before my parents would be home, robbing them of the chance to ask a ton of questions the way they did when they thought I spent too much time doing something useless, and not enough time doing what they thought I should be. I left a simple note on the fridge telling them we were going to siesta at the lake overnight and not to expect me home until sometime the following afternoon. I wouldn’t be getting away scot-free, though. My mother always insisted I called at some point in the evening, anytime I stayed somewhere overnight. So, I had that to look forward to.

  *

  I’m not sure if it was the stress of the week or the prospect of a good catch on account of the rain, but Garrett was more excited than usual to get the hell out of Dodge. He pushed the old truck just a little faster. The engine roared like a beast, and I felt the vibration of a much needed wheel alignment under my feet. In the side mirror, I saw the trailer bouncing along behind us, jumping the tiny dips in the worn out back roads the way I’d seen boats do when they raced on TV. With Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” appropriately coming at us from the truck’s tinny door speakers, our moods that afternoon were starting to lighten. We could breathe. The week was finally over. We were free for two whole days, and New Paris, with its growing paranoia, was in the rearview mirror, shrinking in the distance with every hill the old pickup rambled over.

  We were at the launch ramp, removing the canvas covering from the boat, when Garrett brought it up – the topic of my parents and the pressure they’d been putting on me. He knew I didn’t want to talk about it, but that’s how Garrett was. Always looking out for me. Always trying to help.

  “You know they’re right,” he said, coiling the yellow nylon rope between his hand and elbow. “Graduation’s in a few weeks. Then what?” It was easy for Garrett to side with my parents; his future had been planned out the minute the red Hoover & Son sign went up over the old auto garage on Bishop Street. Garrett was just five years old at the time. He was gung-ho about it though, and had sole-proprietorship stars in his eyes. His decision or not, that was his future. Mine, as my parents had been reminding me lately, was still up in the air. What was I going to do after high school? College? I was
already long overdue in checking into any schools. Work? The discussion was like the astronomical layout at night, perpetually the same. It usually started with my mother, only she wouldn’t come out and say it. She would start with, “Luke, your father and I…” But, it was part of her routine to stop somewhere around there and let her words hover in the room. At some point, my father would eventually notice the hanging silence from behind his laptop screen and recognize it as his cue. He’d bluntly, if not eloquently, finish my mother’s sentence with, “you need to get your head out of the clouds and start making some decisions. Take charge of your life.” But, it wasn’t that I hadn’t been thinking about it. I truly didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. Who knows? Maybe Garrett would hire me to turn wrenches at his garage.

  Rolling up the grey nylon tarp we used as a boat cover, I felt the first breath of a cool, damp breeze. It wasn’t a full-on gust, but just enough to bristle the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. I used it to my advantage. An opportunity to change the subject.

  “Better grab our jackets,” I said, just before a shiver rippled my back. Twice.

  Forgetting the previous conversation, momentarily at least, Garrett cast his eyes skyward while tossing the coil of rope into the bed of the truck. “Yep. Looks like something might be blowing in.”

  And it did. While we spent the next half hour cruising around the lake looking for a good spot, or at least what the fish finder told us would be a good spot, the wind picked up considerably, and the clouds moved in. Dark, menacing clouds, the color of gunmetal, rolled across the sky in a slow moving wave, blanketing it from one horizon to the other.