Secrets in the Dark (3 page)

We hid behind the largest
headstones and monuments as we moved further into the graveyard,
trying to be quiet. I don’t think we were totally successful. It’s
hard to be stealthy while your feet make disgusting squelchy noises
in the rain-soaked grass.

It was especially hard if
you were Olivia. I had to keep my eyes focused on my own feet. If I
looked at her, I was
going to laugh out
loud and give us away.

Olivia couldn’t stand
walking over a grave. After watching the original
Carrie
, she’d admitted
she was
terrified hands would reach out of
a coffin, grab her by the ankle, and pull her down under the
ground. Olivia was
the opposite of Faith.
She wouldn’t hesitate to take on a bully, but cemeteries and
zombies and flying monkeys totally freaked her out.

She tiptoed ahead of me in
a strange zigzag pattern, bent almost double to remain out of
sight. Occasionally she sprang sideways, making a quiet, strangled
sound in her throat when she realized she was
on a grave.

We kept moving deeper
inside, getting to the oldest part where you could no longer read
some of the names and dates on the crumbling tombstones. The sound
of voices stayed behind us, sometimes closer, sometimes farther
away, but always following. I’d been sure Andrew would wimp out
long before this. Now I was getting worried. We’d nearly reached
the far end of the cemetery, as far back as
we could go.

What’re we going to do
now?

We’d made Faith a Blood
Sister promise to keep her away from Andrew, but the back wall was
only a few feet away. There were no mausoleums or tall statues in
the old section to hide behind. The only cover was the huge old fig
tree, supposedly older than the town itself.

Its massive trunk grew in
strange thick folds covered with smooth grey bark. We weren’t
climbing this tree, the trunk was too smooth and the branches too
high to reach. And we couldn’t climb the cemetery walls, not if we
liked skin on our arms and legs.

Faith’s shoulders were
hunched and she had her hands jammed into her pockets. “Andrew’s
bound to turn back soon.” Her words sounded positive, but her voice
shook slightly, and she’d begun nervously chewing on her lip
again.

Olivia must have noticed
too. “Yeah. Andrew totally hates this place!” She snickered,
stifling the sound with her hand. She loved knowing there was
someone more creeped out by the cemetery than she was.

“
Actually,” I reminded
them in a whisper, “he hates the mortuary next to his dad’s garage
even more. He can’t stand any place that has coffins.”

“
Serves him right,” Faith
hissed. “Who tries to touch a dead body when you’re seven years
old?”

“
Come on, you know his
brother dared him,” I reminded her. “Then Jason turned off all the
lights and locked Andrew in. He left him there, with a Halloween CD
playing screams and growls and spooky sounds all night.”

Faith smiled weakly,
“Jason was in
so
much trouble!”

I grinned and whispered,
“Yeah, but his friends sure thought it was
funny. It was all over the school for weeks.”

Olivia murmured, “Remember
all the cops and firefighters looking for Andrew? Dad was
on the team that found him. It took
six hours
. All that
time, Jason kept telling everyone he didn’t know where Andrew was.
Big fat liar.”

She grinned at Faith.
“You’ll totally like this. Andrew was
hiding in a closet, crying like a baby when they found him.
He kept saying the dead body was talking to him. That it climbed
off the table and tried to kiss him.”

“
You never told us that!”
Surprise made Faith’s voice squeak.

Olivia made a shushing
motion before she continued, “I heard Dad tell Mom. He wasn’t happy
when he realized I’d heard too. I had to promise I wouldn’t tell
anyone. But you’re not
anyone
, you’re Blood
Sisters.”

Faith’s grin showed how
much she liked that story. But I felt almost sorry for Andrew.
Almost. No wonder he hated the cemetery. What would he do to us if
he caught us in here? We were running out of places to
hide.

How much longer could we
keep away from them? I pulled out my cell phone to check the time
and whispered to Olivia, “When do you have to be home?”

“
Mom wants me to help with
the kidlets at 1:00. Why?”

“
We should be okay, it’s
only 12:34 now.”

“
No
way
are we hiding in here until
1:00!” Faith’s whisper was probably supposed to sound determined.
Instead, it sounded like she was
begging.

I ducked behind the huge
trunk of the fig tree, relieved to be safely out of sight for the
moment. I leaned against the massive trunk just as
Faith and Olivia crowded in next to
me.

“
I just wish we had
somewhere safe to hide!”

That was the moment
everything
changed.

Chapter 5

Over the
Rainbow?

Through the Looking
Glass?

Down the Rabbit
Hole?

Well, not
exactly…

One moment, the three of
us crowded in against the huge tree. I felt the strange grey bark
that looked so smooth chafe against my fingers while
I desperately wished for somewhere
safe.

The next moment, I could no
longer feel the tree. Instead, the nightmarish sensations
began.

The horrible feeling of
having my face pushed through jello.

Being unable to breathe, or
hear, or see.

Robbed of my senses, my
imagination started going nuts. The darkness that surrounded me was
totally black. Like a raven’s eye, floating in a pool of black ink.
Blackness that took on a life of its own, thick and heavy.
Constricting around me like I was
being
smothered in a cold, damp cocoon spun from sticky black spider
silk.

That’s when the terrifying
feeling of plunging through space began. My stomach felt like it
was still twenty feet in the air above me. I thrashed around trying
to feel the sides of the tree. Trying to feel anything. What a
mistake! Was the sudden whirling sensation inside my head, or
was
my body actually spinning out of
control?

All I’d wanted was
to
help Faith. Why was this
happening?

I no longer knew which way
was
up.
I
struggled, yelling, trying to breathe. Trying not to
panic.

Could
I
die
in
this horrible place —?

Fortunately, my unsettling
thoughts were
interrupted by a sudden
flash of warmth and bright light. I tumbled into the dirt with the
huge fig tree at my back. I lay there, shaking and gasping,
completely disoriented.

A strange gurgling sound
made me whip my head around to the right.

What now!

Olivia and Faith were on
the ground next to me. I was so relieved to see The Three still
together, it took a moment to recognize what I was seeing. Faith
was clutching her stomach, her face a pale green. As
I watched, she made another soft sound and gulped
convulsively, one hand pressed to her mouth.

I had to clear my throat
before I could ask, “You okay?”

“
I…I think so.” The raspy
sound of her voice didn’t inspire much confidence.

Olivia scrambled to her
feet. “Just don’t puke on me!”

Faith got up shakily. “Oh
please! I haven’t done that since we were nine.”

“
Try last
year!”

I stood up too,
concentrating on brushing dirt off my pants. Trying to ignore the
two of them as they argued over the last time Faith had lost her
lunch. I jumped and bit my tongue when Olivia exclaimed, loudly,
“Oh, oh…shi—, I mean shoot!”

Faith’s eyes flew wide
with shock, and I whirled to stare at Olivia in amazement. Olivia
never used swear words. As
in
not ever
— her mom
was
death
on
swearing.

I glanced around to see
what upset her. My breath gushed out like someone had punched me in
the stomach. For a moment, it felt like someone had.

The cemetery was
gone. Just...gone! The scent of brine, ever
present this close to the ocean, was gone as
well. Instead, the air smelled sweet, like flowers. I glanced
up at the too bright sky. It was
a sunlit
blue rather than the grey, stormy sky of moments before.

“
Beam me up, Scotty!” I
blurted, and peered down at my feet. I did not want to see anything
else! Unfortunately, refusing to look didn’t help. It
felt
different
here,
warm and dry. I should probably be
too hot in my sweatshirt, but I wasn’t. I felt cold. That had to be
the reason my teeth were chattering hard enough to
break.

Faith must be cold too.
She was
shaking so hard she stuttered,
“Wh…where are we? What
is
this…this place?” She stepped back, shaking her
head in disbelief, and bumped into Olivia. They both shrieked in
surprise, then threw their arms around each other.

I glanced down where I’d
been absently rubbing my thigh. It was
getting hot.
Really
hot. From inside the pocket where I kept my
cell.

I pulled out my phone and
stared in confusion as the screen flipped from one app to another.
It stopped briefly on the main screen, but didn’t look right. I
didn’t have a chance to figure out why. I was way too busy moving
the phone to my other hand as
it started
to burn my fingers.

When I looked at the screen
again, the apps were changing so fast they were just a
blur.

What’s up with my cell?
And where are we?

Just then, my phone stopped
on the main screen and I tried to read our location. It should be
listed right under the time, which appeared to have frozen at 12:34
pm.

I shook my head, not
believing my eyes. The location was blank. The space where ‘Santa
Ramona’ should be was empty. Like my phone didn’t know where we
were.

The symbol for ‘no signal’
flashed at the top of the screen, which kept growing bright then
dim. While I stared in confusion, the time finally changed, but not
in a good way. It raced several minutes ahead, then spun back to
12:34, like it didn’t know what time it was either.

How can it not know the
time?

When it let out a sudden
blinding burst of color and piercing high-pitched whine, I almost
dropped it. I cringed and held it as far from me as possible. Then
it went silent and the screen went black. I pushed frantically at
the On button, but it was
dead. Totally,
completely dead. Like the Wicked Witch of the West, it was
really-most-sincerely dead.

Maybe Faith or Olivia’s
phone was
still working. “Hey, check your
phones.”

They stared at me like I’d
grown a second head. Olivia snorted. “You want us to look at our
phones? Now?”

“
Just let me see
them!”

With identical shrugs,
they held out their phones. Faith held hers carefully, touching as
little of it as
possible.

“
Yeooow!” Olivia looked at
me like I should have an answer. “Why’s my phone so
hot?”

I held my phone out and
said, “Mine’s dead.” I watched as they tried to turn theirs on. My
stomach felt like it was doing a long slow roll. “Looks like all of
them are dead.”

Faith shook her head. “No
way, I charged it last night.”

I could hear panic growing
in her voice. That was one thing to remember about Faith — although
the thought of monsters didn’t scare her, real life could really
freak her out.

Not that I could blame her
today. Not after dealing with Andrew at school. Worrying about what
his friends were going to do to us on the way home. Playing creepy
hide and seek in the cemetery. Going through that dark, disgusting
place after leaning against the tree.

Another shudder worked its
way up my spine. That made twice in one day.

Faith babbled, “What’re we
gonna do? How’re we gonna get out of here?” She held out her phone,
“We can’t even call anyone—”

Olivia interrupted in a
high sing-song voice, “Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!” I almost
stuffed my fingers in my ears. Olivia
really
shouldn’t sing. She couldn’t
carry a tune if someone gift boxed it for her.

I interrupted, “I’ve got a
better question.” I took a deep breath then raised my head, looking
only at Faith and Olivia. “How can
we
get
ourselve
s back?”