Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (47 page)

“Yeah.”

Jade nodded , remembering.

“
Well,
I kinda freaked out, sensed what the bird,
dead
bird, had been feeling, knew where it was. So, the guy...”

“Who?”

“Later... anyway, he told me that I had a
'wrapped ability'. That means the abilities overlap or some crap.”

“
What
does that mean right now
?
”

“It means that I'm not a full two-point or three
point... that I have ...” she paused.

“Elements of both,” John interjected.

“Yeah,” she said, relieved of her burden.

“Okay while all of this is just
fas-cin-a-ting...” Jonesy began, “can we see what the frick is in
the shack?”

I
gave him a look and he just shrugged,
please
stop boring me.

Ignoring
Jonesy, Tiff said, “
Anyway,
as
the five-point we all know
you
are, well... there's a lot of possibilities.”

Bry started to ask a question, and Jonesy made an
exasperated sound, “I know Jones-my-man, hold on to your
jockstrap,” he looked at me. “I never got the full scoop out of
my sis, but what are all your points? It's not like I memorized it.
I'm going to Kent Lake.”

Math-Science, a mundane with an AFTD sister.
Genetics, weird stuff.

John said, “I'll fill you in.”

Jonesy threw up his hands, slapping his thighs.
“Well hell,” he muttered, walking back inside the fence and
plunking his butt onto one of the tombstones constructed with a
partial, flat “roof” on the top.

He put his elbow on his knee and cupped a hand on
his chin, reluctantly listening.

Wait. “Did you read all those papers?” I asked
John incredulously.

“Well, yeah.”

“Huh, that's a lot of reading,” I said,
impressed.

“
Yeah.
What did
you
read?” John asked.

“Just the AFTD parts.”

The girls rolled their eyes, John gave me The
Look.

What?

“
Anyway,
there are five-points possible for each, documented ability. Or, for
a few...
levels
.”

Jonesy
interrupted, “Okay already, just throw out the AFTD stuff so we can
get to the spooks.”

We ignored him.

John ticked it off on his fingers,
“Cadaver-Manipulation,” John nodded at me, I mock-bowed, “spirit
control (ghosts), communion with the dead,” he nodded to Tiff,
“victim location, and zombie control.”

“Zombie control and Cadaver-Manipulation are two
points that sorta overlap,” he added.

That made me think of Onyx. Where was he anyway? A
burst of panic started crawling up my throat. HWY one-sixty-seven was
close by...

The Dog felt the Boy's fear and found him.
There had been very interesting smells surrounding this old
structure. Bad smells too; fear smells.

Onyx bounded up from behind the shack. A wave of
relief flooded me. Maybe Onyx should stay home next time.

“Good boy, stay here.” I petted his head, that
felt too close.

“Life spark?” Jonesy asked.

“Yes, it's that thing that happened with Onyx.
It's where an AFTD can...” his hand clasped his chin for a second,
“call,” he snapped his fingers, “that life spark back when
death is close.”

“So, some people can find bodies?” Tiff asked.

“Yeah, there are some AFTDs on the police force
and they find murder victims, or traumatic death vics.”

I thought of Gale and how it might be bad to raise
murder victims.

John understood me. “It's a given, Caleb, that
if you're raising zombies, you can do the other stuff.”

“
They
don't really
know
,
though,” Jonesy began. “I mean, we've only been having the shots,
what, ten years now? Uh-huh, there's gotta be more abilities, things
they haven't thought about. What about mutations?”

Jonesy could sometimes astound.

“Jonesy's
right,” Sophie said. “They can't know everything. I'm A-P and
they don't have all the levels figured out.”

“True,”
John agreed. “Astral-Projection is about distance.”

“I
think they're figuring it out as they go and acting like they have a
handle on it,” Bry said.

Sounded like typical adult bravado to me.

“What if there's someone that has a completely
new ability or is a higher level or a sixth point? Jonesy's right,
they don't have it figured out. It's up to us now. The adults don't
have abilities. The ones that do are the first group from 2015, the
one Parker's in,” Jade said.

Look where that got Jeffrey Parker.

After
a minute or so I said, “Better to be mundane.” I felt I could say
that, Dad being a famous scientist. People always assumed that I
would be something too. I couldn't find my way out of a paper bag in
Math and Science.

Jonesy stood. “Okay, what I get from this is
dead stuff can't get us with the freak duo here,” Jonesy nodded to
Tiff and I. “And possibly, my man Caleb, can find some violent
corpses.” Jonesy's teeth were a pale slash in his face, grinning.

John
sighed. “That's not exactly accurate... Caleb is,” John wavered,
“may be some kind of anomaly.”

“A what?” Jonesy asked.

“Something that doesn't meet normal patterns,”
Sophie said.

Jonesy's teeth disappeared and he was just a bulky
shape at the edge of the fence, the moonlight slanting behind a
cloud.

“Something new, something rare...” John
expounded.

“A surprise!” Jonesy said, unfazed.

John just shook his head. “I don't know what
could happen, Caleb,” he turned to Tiff. “But we're in...” he
thought, “uncharted territory.”

“Perfect,” Jonesy breathed out in a sigh.

Jade gave him an unfriendly look, which thankfully
he missed in the dimness.

We went forward again, where yawning holes like
chicken pox littered the porch decking. We moved around those, as the
clouds cooperated by moving aside, a patch of moonlight lit the
corner of the door. It was a faded red, a large square of glass in
the middle, miraculously unbroken. Tiff wrapped her hand around an
oval doorknob with perimeter beading hung askew from its cradle,
glowing like a dirty gold egg in the failed light.

Our eyes met. “Ya scared?” she asked, all
bravado.

I nodded.

Her shoulders fell a little. “Me too,” she
admitted in a whisper, “that's why we gotta.”

I agreed.

Turning the knob, the door swung open silently as
if inviting our motley crew inside.

I'd forgot about Onyx who shot past us, starting
his exploration.

He was doing dog reconnaissance.

I cautiously looked around taking in a super-small
house, definitely not a shack.

Jonesy, John, Bry and Sophie had followed us
closely and Bry said, “It's a caretaker's cottage.”

John asked Bry, “What's that?”

“Back in the day...”

“When?” Jade asked.

“You know, a hundred years ago... or more...”

“Oh.”

“They used to have these little... houses for
the dudes that would take care of these cemeteries.”

“
They
lived
here? Right here, next to all the dead bodies?” Sophie asked.

“
It
is
a cemetery, that's where dead bodies go,” John stated.

“Quiet neighbors,” Jonesy said.

Funny.

“Okay, yuk, go on,” Tiff said.

“Anyway, they would water the flowers people
left at the graves, mow the lawn with this push-mower thing, paint
the fence, you know, maintenance stuff.”

“So... not a shack,” Jonesy asked.

“No, more like quarters,” John clarified.

We looked around, getting our bearings.

“Watch out, this place is a dump, there could be
more holes in the floor,” I said.

“Stay in pairs or more,” Bry said.

Tiff, Jade and I took a few steps more and I
turned to John. “Dude, I just can't see that great, give me the
LED.”

I could vaguely hear Jonesy in the back mumbling.
But, with only meager moonlight finding its way through the dirty
glass of the kitchen windows, it wasn't enough.

John slapped it into my palm, pressing my thumb on
the push-button switch (something that wasn't Pulse-activated!). A
brilliant swath of light slashed a path, illuminating the base of a
staircase. The steps were narrow and tall, like a ladder, not true
stairs.

I swung the light away from the stairs at the base
of our feet, the girls shoes dwarfed by our surfboards. “Stairs
last, let's check out the main floor.”

Jonesy gave a lingering glance at the stairs. It
was a democracy so he came along with the rest of us, but his
fascination lay elsewhere.

As the reluctant leader, the call of the dead was
a song in my soul, a resonating note which lingered. We explored.

We could've hear a pin drop it was so quiet.

“Ah hell, nothing's going to happen here,”
Jonesy said, dejected. He grabbed the flashlight out of my hands.
“Hey!” I yelled.

He planted it under his face and started making
the idiot grins people do under LEDs. Funny, he looked like the
ghosts we weren't seeing. It was just the thing that cracked the
group up, tension escaping like steam under a door.

Without warning, while Jonesy capered about, a
green luminescent shape rose up over Jonesy, hovering for an instant
above his head. Swooping down, it speared through his chest, Tiff and
I leaping forward, my hand reaching for the vague shape.

Jonesy shrieked like he was being stabbed, “It's
cold! It's a ghostsicle! Get it out off me!”

Tiff reached it before me, and I used the hand
that wasn't now latched on to Jade to grab that opaque emerald.
Instantly warmth bathed wherever I touched.

Tiff's eyes widened and held my gaze. “Pull!”
I shouted over the chaos. Bry tried to wrench Tiff away while John
and Sophie were reaching for Jonesy. My Empath girlfriend caught
between and as green as the ghost.

Tiff understood and wrenched the ghost through
Jonesy's chest where just a snippet of its form was. She wrapped it
in her fist, with my left hand around her balled hand, my right
wrapped around Jade. And we pulled, not with our hands but with our
combined power.

The ghost made a popping sound as it was extracted
through Jonesy like hot taffy, who collapsed on his butt. “It's a
brain freeze, but in the body!” John and Sophie crouched beside
him, but I had bigger fish to fry.

The ghost hovered about us, it looked like a man.
I looked down and a part of it was like a rope to where our hands
still held it. Tiff looked at me and we let it go. Like taffy, that
rope snapped back into the ghost's form, making a sucking noise like
water down a drain.

Onyx had been barking the whole time. “Quiet
boy.”

The Dog did not like this cold, dead-smelling
thing. The Dog knew the Boy was dominant and he did not have to
Protect, but the Dog did not like it.

Bry came up behind Tiff. “What is it?”

“A ghost, dumb-ass,” Tiff whispered.

Tiff, so delicate with her wording. Bry gave her a
glare, sibling love.

Onyx growled.

“Shh... Onyx.”

The ghost seemed to know what I was, gliding
forward.

My hand moved forward, looking up into the ghost's
semblance of eyes and moved my hand through its form. It felt like
bathwater, at once semi-solid and warm, right and good. Tiff tried,
her eyes widening as she gazed up at the tall figure, its color
shimmering in the ambient moonlight.

“So warm, like fur,” Tiff said.

Our eyes met. “Like bath water,” I said.

“It's the same, but different,” John said.
“You're AFTD but different people, your perceptions are different.”

“That damn thing is not warm! It's cold as
hell!”

“That's an oxymoron,” Sophie said smugly.

“I know what I felt!” Jonesy huffed.

“Everyone knows hell is hot, dope,” Bry said.

“
Whatever!
That thing is
cold
as hell!”

I turned back to the ghost and it swung its head
toward Jonesy.

I felt its agitation.

“I don't think it likes you,” I said to
Jonesy.

Jonesy backed up.

Jade leaned forward and I caught her hand. “Maybe
not.”

“I can't hide behind you all the time, Caleb.”

“I don't mind.” Leaning down, I kissed the tip
of her nose, which coincided with her whipping her hand out and
grabbing the ghost. It let out a shriek that reverberated in the
house, she took it by surprise. Tiff and I reacted to that, the ghost
jettisoning off straight up through the ceiling to the second floor.

Jade snatched her hand back, cradling it against
her chest. “Not smart Jade!” Tiff yelled.

“God, you could have been hurt! We don't know
what we're dealing with here!” I was scared, shaking her by the
shoulders, what had she been thinking?

“I was.”

“You were what?” I asked.

“
It
did
hurt me.”