Bone White Page 8

  “No!” she screamed, as if we had brought her worst nightmare to life. “You’re not supposed to be here! You’re not!”

  Garrett and I exchanged the same glance. What the hell?

  As always, Garrett took the lead by putting his hands out in a calming fashion.

  “Are you okay?” he asked the girl, taking a single step in her direction. Her face tightened further. She looked at us in horror as she took a step back, rising up onto the step behind her.

  “Who are you?” I asked, not knowing what else to do. The back part of my brain was telling me what we should do, screaming it, actually. It was demanding we do what we should have been doing all along. Unfortunately, my feet wouldn’t comply.

  Garrett raised his hand higher in an attempt to assure the girl we wouldn’t harm her. As he did, the rigid fear seemed to drain from the girl’s body like air escaping a punctured lung. As the muscles in her taut face relaxed, a quiet resolve seemed to come over her features as quickly as they’d appeared. Now she stood defiant, looking at us like we hadn’t really scared her at all, like our encounter was all part of some grand plan. The transformation was as strange as just about anything else I’d seen since stepping foot in the church.

  “Who are you?” Garrett asked, restating my question.

  “His daughter,” she said matter-of-factly. Too much so for my taste. Like we were supposed to know who the hell she was referring to.

  “His daughter?” Garrett repeated. He shot me a look of uncertainty. Then, when all I could do was shrug my shoulders, he turned back to the girl. “Whose daughter?”

  It was as if she were already growing tired of dealing with the two of us. Her gaze shifted from us to something farther back in the church. A faint smile pulled at her lips, and her arm came up stiffly at the shoulder. With a subtle twitch of her wrist and a full-on smirk, she pointed.

  “His.”

  I didn’t have time to turn around. I didn’t have time to see what or who she was pointing at. In fact, I’d barely heard the whooshing sound of something flying through the air before the sudden thump at the base of my skull caused everything to go black.

  Chapter 22

  Her heart was beating so fast, she thought she would pass out. Her face was flushed and she felt like she needed to sit down. She dropped onto the edge of her mattress, sat with her legs stretched out on the floor and tried to breathe. Lips quivering, she hummed her song. Hummed and hummed, bouncing her leg so fast, it threatened to throw off the tempo of her tune.

  Neither the humming nor the bouncing helped. She laid back, arms at her sides, and stared at the intricate spider webs flanking the corners of the ceiling. Inky shadows played across the walls, created by the pale 40-watt bulb of the small lamp on the dresser she shared with her father. It wasn’t really a dresser at all, but an old lectern podium that was hollow in the middle. Her father had built shelves into the center of it, calling it a dresser, which worked just fine since the bedroom wasn’t really a bedroom.

  She closed her eyes, blocking out the only light Father allowed with any regularity, and tried to concentrate on the tapping of the rain against the lone window of the loft. She was rarely allowed to leave the premises, and her imagination was well-honed from spending so much time alone. Using her creative skills now, she could almost decipher a calming melody inside all the tapping. If she listened closely. Could just make it out. She concentrated on the music of the rain, added it to the humming of her song and breathed. And after a couple of minutes, she finally felt herself start to relax.

  She did not scare easily. Not anymore. She was only frightened now because her father had looked scared. And he didn’t scare easily, either. In fact, this was probably the first time she had ever seen him that way. In her life. Not even that morning when her mommy had given him a ride. Taken him to the place with the barbed wire. Prison. She hated that word. Didn’t like saying it. All the kids at school told her it meant bad things and was for bad people. She was very young at the time, but she remembered it. Remembered the day. The day another daddy went away.

  Thankfully he had come back for her. Wanted to be together. She hoped it was forever this time, but now she was worried.

  “I’m not going back,” he’d spat before ordering her up to her room. “Ain’t never going back.”

  And the look in his eyes. She’d seen it. Something that she had seen in eyes before, just not in her father’s. It was the look in her mother’s eyes when her father had returned from that word she didn’t like to say. Fear and dread. Almost like the eyes could see the future and knew something was coming.

  Something bad.

  Chapter 23

  The back of my head throbbed. That’s what I noticed first and foremost as I came out of the fog. It literally felt like I’d been hit with a shovel. Maybe I had. The second thing I noticed was the pressure under my arms. And a sense of movement. I was gliding across a hardwood floor, albeit not willingly. I was being dragged. The heels of my tennis shoes would bounce when they encountered a loose board or the edge of a hymnal wedged against a pew. I blinked a couple times and shook my aching head until my senses started to clear.

  “Dude,” I said, wincing when the back of my ankles cracked against something hard. A step maybe, but my head was spinning too much for me to make much sense of my surroundings in the dark. “What happened?”

  When Garrett didn’t answer, I looked down at the fingertips sticking out from underneath my armpits. The nails were black with dirt, grime and who knew what else. Cracked and raw knuckles swelled like knots at the bone joints. They were the rough and calloused hands of someone who used them to earn a living. Beyond that, they were the largest, ugliest fingers I’d ever seen.

  They weren’t Garrett’s hands.

  When I struggled against their grip, the pressure only tightened. Before I could do much in the way of struggling free, I felt myself being hoisted into the air. Looking down, my already dire circumstances worsened. The black hole of the coffin, its lid now propped open, waited to swallow me up. A candle had been placed at the head of the coffin, and in its murky light I could see clothes, drab and threadbare, mounded in piles along the edges of the wooden box’s interior.

  Without even a grunt, the large hands twisted me in the air and threw me in the coffin like a bag of laundry. I landed face down, my chest absorbing most of the energy. Before I could turn myself over, the lid slammed shut, almost crushing my leg. And for the second time in only a few minutes, my world went dark.

  Chapter 24

  Her heartbeats had finally slowed by the time she rose to pace the floor. The wooden floorboards between the mattresses were loose and felt rough on her bare feet. What had just happened? Who were the two boys? What were they doing here? No one had entered the church in months. Not since she’d been here. Not voluntarily, at least.

  Father always warned her about strangers, and what might happen if someone were to ever come snooping around their new home. They’d take him away from her, he’d said. Again. She looked over at the dark green canvas bag, packed and sitting beside the dresser. Just in case. Father always said they had to be ready, just in case. An uneasy shudder ran through her and she tried to shake the thought from her mind. She liked it here. It had taken some time, but she had gotten used to the isolation of the church in the woods. Liked it, even. It finally felt like home. She did not want to leave.

  A sharp sound came from outside, different from the droning clamor of the storm. It wasn’t a loose shingle flapping in the wind this time. It wasn’t a limb from the big, ugly tree out back slapping against the side of the building. This was a loud bang. Loud enough to be heard clearly through the wind and rain.

  She tried to resist but within a couple of seconds, her curiosity had already gotten the better of her, and she switched off the lamp. On her hands and knees, she crawled over to the only window in the loft and pulled the black curtain to the side, but, only a couple inches. Just enough. It was all she dared. The windo
w had been given a thick coat of black paint, but she’d managed to scrape a small hole with her fingernail awhile back. She didn’t like going against Father’s rules. She knew she’d be punished if he found out, but just this one thing. Just a small hole. The size of a penny. On her knees, she put her eye to the opening and looked out at the dark world.

  The light mounted on the shed spotlighted her father in the weak pool of light. He was dragging something, and it didn’t take long for her to recognize one of the boys as the something he was dragging. It was the one in the red jacket and the sound had been the shed door slamming open. Her father walked backward into the outbuilding, pulling him inside until the red jacket disappeared. The boy’s legs laid in the mud for a moment, long enough for her to begin wondering what sorts of things awaited the boy in the shed. She slid her tongue across her rough bottom lip as she thought. Surely her father planned to harvest him, but which tools would he use? She had her favorites. After a moment, the boy’s legs were swallowed up by the shed’s mouth, followed by his feet until ultimately, he was gone from the night altogether. With a shrug, she allowed the black curtain to drop back into place.

  Whether it was the constant pitter-patter of the rain, or the fact that all she’d put in her stomach that day was a bowl of chicken broth and several glasses of water, the insistence of a full bladder made itself known. Urgently. As if she’d been holding it for days. She needed to use the bathroom, but doubt clouded her mind. Father had sent her upstairs with strict orders to shut the door and stay put. She didn’t know if she was allowed. Disobeying her father led to punishment, and she remembered each of the times he’d had to punish her. Remembered them well. Her eye, she was sure, would never be the same. But surely he didn’t mean that she couldn’t use the bathroom. Surely that was allowed.

  Quietly, she slipped over to the door and placed her ear against the cool wood. No sounds were coming from the other side. Other than the effects of wind and rain on its outside, the inside of the church was still. Making as little noise as possible, she twisted the tarnished brass knob to the left until she heard a clicking sound, then pulled open the door ever so slightly.

  As she peered down the darkened stairway, she scolded herself for going so slowly. She knew she didn’t have much time. Her father could be returning very soon, so she had to hurry. She had to pee so badly. And even as the question entered her mind, she assured herself that her eagerness had nothing to do with her curiosity about what had happened to the other boy. About what Father had done with him. Nope. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 25

  Cat urine. The overwhelming stench of it permeated my consciousness, and I was suddenly alert – to the stench, to where I was, to the circumstances I’d so abruptly found myself in. I’d seen stories on the news of people in harrowing situations. Stories where people would say, “I thought I was gonna die.” I’d never understood the concept: to think you were going to die. Yet, here I was, trapped in a coffin thinking I was going to die. It was a strange sensation. Not at all what I imagined it would feel like. But, now I understood what the people on the news understood. I was calm, not anxious. Thoughtful, not frantic. Hell, for all I knew I was still suffering from the groggy aftereffects of being knocked over the head. My knowledge of coffins was limited, but what I knew for sure was that I wasn’t in a hurry to be in one. Yet here I was.

  I struggled to maneuver myself inside the oversized litter box. I was sharing the coffin with numerous piles of old clothing. At least, I assumed they were old. The mustiness was the one smell I could detect over the cat piss. Though the tight space made it difficult, I inched my body around until I was lying flat on my back.

  In the absolute darkness, my thoughts jettisoned back to the empty grave we’d seen in the old cemetery beside the driveway. The image of the open grave loomed before my eyes, so real I could touch it … or fall into it. That image, along with the knowledge of where I was lying, sent shivers through me and brought bile up the back of my throat. This coffin had recently been buried underground with a dead body in it. For nearly a hundred years, it had been buried and all that remained now were the clothes. What happened to the body? The remains. Why would anyone want it? And why the hell was the once buried coffin sitting in a church?

  As each question entered my mind, my heart rate escalated. My skin prickled like millions of phantom spiders were crawling all over my body. The growing fear drew tears to the corners of my eyes. I fought to stave them off as I lay there on my back, ironically in the same position as the corpse that had occupied the coffin before me. But, what I couldn’t fight off was the next thought that entered my head. Was this my coffin now?

  The calm I’d felt earlier had officially been shot to hell. Still, with my eyes squeezed shut, I tried to compose myself. I willed my breaths to come slower. My heart rate to decelerate. It took a few minutes, but eventually, I was cool-headed again and could think.

  The first clear thought was that I needed a plan. One thing that I’d learned from years of both successful and not so successful fishing was that all my success came when I had a good plan. And each step of the plan was as important as the others. The first step in catching a fish was to determine what kind of fish you wanted to catch. Once that was decided, you had to figure out where the best place to catch that fish would be, and focus on it. What time of day, what type of weather would lend itself to greater success? Once all of that was figured out, it generally came down to gear. What tackle or bait would attract the elusive fish? What would it be in the mood for? And at the end of the day, if you executed each step successfully, there was a good chance you’d be having fish for dinner that night. You might even have enough to invite a few friends over. The plan was everything.

  I needed a plan.

  The first strategic step in my new plan was to open my eyes. It was dark. I couldn’t see anything. But after a moment, my eyes adjusted, and inside the blackness, the thinnest sliver of light slid between the lid and the bottom of the coffin. The wood must have warped in the decades it spent underground, because these things were usually sealed up pretty tight. The crack in the wood wasn’t large enough to shed any real light. It was just enough to notice.

  The next step that came to mind wasn’t exactly ingenious, but it was the most natural move for someone in my situation to make. I pressed my hands firmly against the lid and pushed with everything I had. Under the strain, my arms – hell, my entire body quivered, violent and painful tremors wracked my head. The large tendon in my wrist pulsated and threatened to snap, but the lid didn’t open. It didn’t even budge. I slammed an elbow against the lid in frustration. I hadn’t expected it to do the trick either, and I wasn’t proven wrong. The only thing I got for my efforts was a resounding thud that echoed inside the hollow confines. No doubt the lid was locked or secured somehow.

  I considered checking my cell phone for service, but waved it off as soon as the thought entered my mind. I’d used the phone in the mudroom and there was no signal then. There wasn’t any reason to believe that I’d have one inside this wooden box. If anything, there was less of a chance now.

  I exhaled firmly and willed myself to think. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in the coffin. I wasn’t sure if I’d blacked out. The shot I’d taken to the back of my head hurt pretty bad. I’d probably been struck hard enough to black out, but not hard enough to cause any memory loss, or forget where I was. I knew exactly where I was: in a hellish, stinking coffin cloaked in a nightmare. What I didn’t know were why I was here, who had done it and what the hell had happened to Garrett.

  Chapter 26

  Tap.

  The knock against the coffin’s lid was faint, yet resounded enough to jolt me nearly upright. My head banged on the coffin lid, sending me back into the moldy, dank cushion of the old clothes. I laid there, motionless. Except for the rising and falling of my chest, everything in my world was still.

  “Who’s there?” I asked the silence, but no answer followed. My mind raced thro
ugh the possibilities, Garrett being the obvious one or at least the one I most hoped for. Could it be one of the missing girls? Doubtful. Other than their names on the drawings, there was no evidence that the missing girls had ever been here. The young woman from the stairway had probably drawn them, and could have very well heard their names from the news. So what the hell was she doing here? And who else was in the church with her? The questions tumbled through my head until the tapping came again. This time twice.

  “Garrett?” I asked, fingers crossed. But like the first time, I got no response. The silence made me restless, adding even more uncertainty to an already strange situation, and that didn’t sit well with me. They had to hear. Someone was toying with me, and once again, my heart rate started to increase. Any early hope that it was Garrett tapping on the lid had faded. He would have responded after realizing it was me inside the coffin, and I’d be well on my way to getting out by now. At the very least, he would have answered.

  “Who are you?” I shouted, making absolutely sure I was heard, not that I doubted that I was earlier. “Why are you doing this?” As the echo of my words faded within the casket, the silence outside it grew. It was in that quiet that my fear started to change. Fear wasn’t doing me any good. Fear hadn’t changed anything. Anger was rising inside me now, fighting back the tears and threatening to take over. Anger might not get me anywhere, either, but it felt a whole hell of a lot better. Liberating. The transformation surprised me, but pleasantly so. In fact, I was about to shout again, rage against whoever was out there, when a faint and muffled voice entered through the crack in the wood.