Haunted Waters (7 page)

Chapter 20

While Sam went for a walk with Dylan,
Bryce and I tried to find a movie on the satellite. I found a good one about a girl whose horse gets hurt and she has to help it get better so it can race again. Bryce wanted to watch a cheesy show about a bunch of kids who are hired by a spy agency. There were lots of dark outfits and teens climbing things, being sarcastic, and pulling stuff out of their noses. We fought for a few minutes. Then I stormed upstairs to the smaller TV.

The light faded over the mountains, and there was an orange glow shining through the front window. The valley looked like some golden painting you see in museums. Somehow that view made me want to talk to Mom and get the whole Hayley thing out in the open, but I turned on the TV instead.

I clicked around until I found the horse movie. I was at the predictable part where the vet shakes his head and says it’s no use and that they’d need to put the horse down when the phone rang. With one eye on the TV I backed to the phone. “Hello?”

Just someone breathing. I heard a car passing in the background.

“Mom?” I said.

Silence. Then a click—not the phone hanging up but another sound. A click. I had heard that before. Where?

“Who is this?” I said.

Now I was afraid. I looked out the window for Sam, but he wasn’t there. I wished I could send some piercing sound through the phone. “Is that you, Boo? How’d you get our number?”

The line went dead. I put the phone down and slowly walked to the couch. I was standing, staring out the window, when Bryce came to the top of the stairs.

“Who was that?”

I flicked off the TV. “Bryce, I’m scared. They didn’t say anything. There was just a clicking sound”

“Maybe it was a wrong number.”

“No, they just listened to me. I think it might have been Boo.”

“Why?”

I told him about the e-mail and a sick look came over him, like a black cloud rolling over the Front Range.

“Don’t tell Sam,” Bryce said. “And if it rings again, let me get it.”

Chapter 21

The TV show had almost made me forget about Boo,
but Ashley’s telling me about his e-mail brought him back. I could see myself in a body cast, drinking buffalo burgers through a straw, and typing with one toe. The tooth fairy would have to work overtime when Boo got through with me.

“You want to radio Sam and find out where he is?” Ashley said.

“I don’t want him to think we’re sissies.”

Ring.

I jumped two feet off the floor.

Ashley grabbed my arm, trembling. We both looked at the phone, as if that would do any good. The phone didn’t have caller ID like the one at home.

It was almost dark. Shadows filled the room, and I turned on a light.

The phone rang again.

“Why don’t they leave us alone!” Ashley said.

“Call Sam on the walkie-talkie.”

Ashley ran for her jacket. When she pulled out the walkie-talkie, I picked up the phone and pressed the Talk button. “I d-don’t care wh-who this is or wh-what you want, b-but you’d b-b-better stop now!”

There was a pause. “Well, if you don’t want to talk with me, I’ll hang up,” my mother said.

“Mom!” I shouted.

Relief came over Ashley’s face.

“What’s going on up there?” Mom said.

“We just had a prank call.”

“Where’s Sam?”

After I told her, Ashley took the phone into the other room. She yelped, so I went to see what was wrong. Ashley put a hand over the phone. “Leigh backed The Creep’s car into a post and bent his fender.”

“She’s had her first accident,” I said. “How romantic.”

Ashley went back to her conversation.

I wished Sam would return, but I didn’t want to call him on the walkie-talkie. I don’t care how scared you are—there are just some things guys don’t do.

Then I had an idea. I pushed the Transmit button. “Sam, it’s Bryce. Mom’s on the phone if you want to talk to her.”

I waited, then heard a click. “Gotcha.” Sam sounded out of breath. “We’ll be there in a couple minutes. Out.”

Chapter 22

Dylan’s eyes drooped
so I knew he was ready for bed. I carried him upstairs to the loft, put him on the chaise, and covered him up. He started to get up, so I sang his favorite songs—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Hush, Little Baby,” and “The Wabash Cannonball,” which he calls “the train song.”

When I got back downstairs, Sam was making popcorn and Bryce had found some board games. The three of us decided on Sorry. Bryce and I ganged up on Sam, and he made a big deal about being sent back to his circle. As we played and drank sodas, Bryce and I had a burping contest, and Sam gave us points for the loudest and longest. Mom wouldn’t have appreciated that as much as we did, and to be honest it was kind of gross, but it felt good to laugh. It was something our real dad would have done with us.

Finally, Sam said he had to go to bed. “But there’s one thing I have to say before I go.”

“What?” Bryce said.

Sam stood, spread his arms dramatically, then opened his mouth and won the contest. It was the deepest, longest burp in the history of burpdom. It sounded like a minute-long growl of a wounded lion.

Bryce and I looked at each other, dazzled, then laughed till I thought I’d never breathe again.

“No fair!” I said. “You were holding that all this time!”

At the top of the stairs, Sam turned. Bryce and I held up two signs that said 10 and he smiled. “Get some sleep. I have some fun stuff planned for tomorrow.”

Chapter 23

My sides still hurt from laughing
when Ashley and I went downstairs to watch more TV before going to bed. We found a classic movie channel showing
The African Queen
. Our real dad had shown it to us when we were little, and it brought back memories of snuggling with him and closing our eyes when Humphrey Bogart came out of the water with leeches all over his body.

“Remember watching this with Dad?” Ashley said.

I nodded. “I feel kind of bad for having such a good time with Sam. It’s almost like we’re betraying Dad.”

“I was thinking the same thing.” Ashley sat up and looked out the window. The room was dark, and the television reflected in the window.

“What is it?”

“Someone’s out there,” she whispered.

“You’re trying to scare me—”

“No, seriously. I thought I saw somebody.”

I turned the TV off. The lower floor was only slightly underground, so we could easily see outside. Sam had left the outside light on, and it was snowing softly. A couple of inches had fallen already. The light shone a few feet from the house, but the rest was pitch-black.

“If somebody’s out there,” I said, “they could go right over the side of the cliff.”

“There!” Ashley pointed out the side window. “See that orange glow?”

I couldn’t see anything.

“Now I know what I heard on the phone!” she said. “Remember I said I heard a clicking sound during the phone call?”

“Yeah?”

“It was a cigarette lighter. You know, the big metal kind Uncle Terry used?”

Uncle Terry had lived back in Indiana and was a chain smoker. He had died the year before we moved to Colorado. Every time we visited, we had to sit outside so we could breathe. He was a wonderful uncle, always inviting us to the farm to pick pumpkins or corn or whatever was in season, but hugging him was like embracing an ashtray. I remembered his big cigarette lighter with a dragon on the front of it. The smell of it fascinated me. He said it was butane, whatever that is.

I saw a glow near some trees at the side of the house. It grew orange, then died, then grew orange again.

Whoever was out there was smoking, and whoever it was had his eyes on us.