Happy Thanksgiving!!
On a day when I should be spending time with family and friends and wolfing down a plate of home-cooked meal, I’m sitting alone at my place working on a practice chapter about children who have ventured to a cemetery a town or so removed from their own when they should be a sleepover (..I know – but keep prayin’ for my over-the-top imagination (..lol!!).. Nonetheless, if you’d like to read what I’ve done with my left-field life this Thanksgiving (..ha!!), please – be my guest:
Rae ambled to a crumbled gravestone and lifted her cellphone flashlight to its face. “’E. Claire Hildegard’,” she said. “I wonder what the ‘E’ stood for…”
On a footpath behind her, two girls stood. One of them shrugged. “From the looks of her stone, it probably stood for ‘evil’.”
Rae shook her head. “Not everyone who dies is evil, Codi.”
“Well, you could’ve fooled us, right Catherine?”
Catherine swept an auburn curl out her eye and glanced over her shoulder into shadowy trees. “I don’t know. But are we about done?”
“Done??” Codi said. “We just got here. What—are you scared?”
“No, I just think we should get back to the sleepover, is all.”
Codi threw an arm around her. “Catherine, don’t you remember who we’re with?” With an opposite arm, she gestured toward Rae. “We’re with the great and powerful Lady Houdini. She has only to snap her fingers, and poof—all three of us are back at your pad in Somerville.”
“I know. But that new sitter my mother hired would knock on my bedroom door at the-drop-of-a-hat.”
“Well none of us are wearing a hat are we, and anyway: I’d locked your bedroom door…so she can knock away.”
Catherine sighed, shook her head.
Rae stood-up. “Catherine’s right—we should head back.” She peered down a narrow path which meandered through a forest to a squat brick building and pointed. “But first…”
Catherine glanced and gasped. “Oh, please spare us, Rae. Isn’t it bad enough you’d brought us fifty miles south to a cemetery in an abandoned town?”
“Abandoned?” Codi said. “Edgerton’s not abandoned…there are plenty of axe murderers who occupy rundown structures down Main Lane.”
“Murderers??”
Rae flicked her light off and then marched past gravestones and atop their wide footpath. “Edgerton’s a ghost town. Only squirrels and crickets live here. Now, let’s have a peek at that building.” She gestured for Catherine to walk toward the narrow path but watched her fold her arms. “What??”
“‘That building’??” Catherine said. “You’re not telling it like it is. That’s a crypt, and I’m not taking one step closer to it than I already have.”
Rae stepped toward her. “Come on, Catherine.”
Catherine folder her arms.
Rae sighed and glanced at Codi, and Codi nodded. Suddenly, Rae seized Codi and Catherine’s arm, and out of the blue, for a split second, an explosion rang in their ears, a wind gusted past their bodies, and ground beneath them fell away and returned. Each of them staggered backward. But when they stood upright, they found themselves surrounded by shadowy trees and beneath an even starrier sky.
Catherine turned around and then shrieked. The brick building stood a dozen paces before her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a narrow footpath meander through the forest and back to the wide path which bypassed the gravestones they’d just stood beside. She gnashed her teeth.
“Rae, teleporting me without my consent is nothing short of wrong.” She scanned the area. “Rae?”
“Shush!”
Catherine turned, saw Codi peeking out from the building’s furthermost corner, finger to her lips, and dashed there.
Both of them rounded the corner and crouched in shadows.
“Another thing short of wrong is not staying together,” Codi said.
“Then where’s Rae?”
Codi pointed beyond the rear of the building, and hunched behind a tree, Rae waved them over.
“Come on,” Codi said.
Both girls darted alongside the building and filed themselves behind her.
“Rae,” Catherine said. “What are we looking at?”
Rae stepped aside. “Have a look yourself.”
Catherine stepped to the trunk, leaned around the trees, and saw a two-story house with an illuminated second-story window. She gasped.
Codi nodded. “Well, at least we’ve found axe murderer number one before he’d found us. Can’t speak for the others though.”
“Oh my gosh,” Catherine said. “Rae, get us out of here.”
“Codi, will you stop scaring her…there’s no axe murderer here… it’s obvious it’s a temporary residence for a grounds-keeper.”
Codi scanned the window, saw a silhouette slink pass, and shook her head. “I beg to differ.”