CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
After what seemed like an eternity, Jess heard Gage and Bryan’s voices. Gage flicked a flashlight on and off, letting them know they were okay. She and Allison had been sitting quietly at the oak’s base, neither talking much.
Relieved that they’d returned, Jess got to her feet as they approached. “I see you didn’t have any problems getting the flashlights.”
Gage shook his head. “None. Brandt wasn’t in his room. The door wasn’t even closed.”
“Where was he?” Allison asked.
“We don’t know.” Bryan shrugged. “We never saw him. We just got in, grabbed the flashlights and took off.”
Gage turned to her. “Want to give us some direction?”
Jess let out a long sigh. They’d be forever if they went in by themselves. Or at least, longer than Jess was comfortable with. Who knew what else was out there.
She felt a chill despite the temperature. “I’ll show you. Just everyone stay close, all right?”
They each nodded.
Gage handed her a flashlight. “I’ll be right beside you.”
She silently chastised herself for going along with this. “This way.” She motioned for them to follow and headed for the woods, her heart pounding so hard her chest ached.
The woods looked every bit as eerie as it had when she’d last been here. Although the flashlights helped, their stark circles of light only managed to illuminate how much scarier everything looked in the dark. Shadows danced and shifted, giving Jess the illusion that whatever had been in her flashlight’s path a moment before had darted into the nearby darkness.
She stayed in the most open of areas, just as she and the girls had done. Twice, she doubted her sense of direction until finally Jess spotted a familiar, shorn tree trunk with a hollowed base in the middle of an otherwise empty path.
“Over here,” she said, taking a right. Wordlessly, everyone followed her another couple hundred yards. Jess stopped when she recognized the two small saplings whose limbs crossed the pathway in front of them like an arch.
It’s just ahead. Only a little farther.
Adrenaline coursed through her.
“Are you okay?” Gage asked, concern evident on his face. Behind him, Bryan scanned the area with his flashlight. Like Gage, he’d put on a brave face.
Jess let out a quick breath, willing her heart not to explode from fright. “Yeah. We’re almost there.”
Gage walked ahead of her, taking her slowing pace and choice of words as a sign that she wasn’t willing to lead any longer, although she wasn’t any more thrilled to have him walk into the area, either. She stayed close as he pushed onward.
“Here,” she said once they’d reached the spot. She scanned the area with her light. Leaves and twiggy debris covered the ground, but one area stood out the most—a cleared patch of upturned earth. A small, whitish item that, in this lighting could be anything—a pale leaf or a rock—protruded from the ground.
Or bone. She knew it was bone.
“There.” She wiggled the light, coming to rest on the object.
Gage knelt down to examine it.
“Is it a skull?” Allison inquired. She hadn’t ventured as close as the boys, staying a good distance away.
Gage brushed away some of the dirt. “No idea until we dig it up.”
The guys dug up the area, uncovering not one, but three bones, although one was nothing more than a long fragment. Rib? Part of an arm bone? Jess refused to get too close for fear she’d see the vision again—see Riley biting into Gracie’s cheek.
Bryan held the first bone under his flashlight for all of them to view, but it didn’t take much to know what it was—a section of skull.
Moving closer, Allison reached in to touch it, then apparently thought better of it. “Why did they leave behind some of their bones?”
“No idea,” Bryan replied. “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? We’ve just got to get them back to the gravesite and bury them.”
He and Gage collected the bones and they began to walk back. Allison hurried behind them. Not wanting to be last to leave, Jess quickened her pace. She hadn’t noticed it the first time she’d been here, but the place didn’t feel right. It felt…
Evil?
When she could see the clearing, it was all she could do to keep from running.
“We’ve been gone awhile,” she said as they emerged from the woods. “Do you think Brandt has been looking for us?”
“Probably,” Gage replied. “But we’ll worry about that later. Let’s get these bones buried before Brandt comes out here looking for us.”
He walked on, stopping in front of the padlock on the iron gates surrounding the girls’ gravesite. He reached into his back pocket and extracted a small Allen wrench and a modified paperclip and immediately went to work.
He gave the lock a quick tug, and it opened. He glanced at her again, a cockeyed grin on his face. “Always come prepared for the job.”
Jess laughed and smacked him playfully on the arm.
Bryan grabbed the two shovels they’d left leaning against the fence, pushed past them and swung the gate open. A gust of wind kicked up as they stepped inside, and Jess recalled the figure pointing toward the graves and back to her.
Had this been what he’d meant? Were they doing the right thing?
Bryan and Gage began digging up a patch of earth at the base of the monument. Gracie and Emma’s statues had taken on an eerie glow in the moonlight and Jess shivered. It was as though the girls were watching them from their carved pedestals. The sound of the shovel seemed louder than what she’d expected. Brandt had to hear them out here. She glanced at the house, but no lights came on.
After a while, Bryan hit something with the tip of the shovel. They all exchanged glances.
“It’s got to be the casket,” he announced.
Gage shone the flashlight into the hole. “Hardwood. Probably mahogany or something like it, seeing as the Silers were wealthy.”
“Which grave?” Allison asked. “Is that Gracie’s or Emma’s?”
Gage glanced up at the monument. “No idea. Maybe Gracie’s. Of course, we don’t know whose bones we have, either.”
“Now what?” Jess asked nervously. She hadn’t thought about that part. “Can we just bury the bones on top or do we…”
…break open the coffin?
From the looks on everyone’s faces, they were wondering the same thing.
Bryan leaned on the shovel. “Unless someone has a manual for this kind of stuff, we’re just winging it. I mean, we don’t know whose bones we’re even burying here. Unless we open up both caskets and can figure out who’s missing a rib or whatever that is, and part of their skull, it’s a crap shoot.”
Gage pitched the handle of his own shovel from hand to hand. “In or out of the casket, it doesn’t matter. We’re only going to bury the bones on top. Which means this one is as good as the other. Mind handing them to me, Allison?”
Allison shook her head and took a step back from the bones resting at her feet. “I’m not touching them.”
Gage shot her a hard glance, tossed the shovel down and picked up the bones. Jess understood both sides here—Allison’s reluctance to touch the bones, and Gage’s irritation after he and Bryan had been digging in the August heat while she and Allison merely watched.
“Aside from not knowing who’s missing what, is there a reason we’re not putting the bones back in the coffin?” Jess asked.
Using his forearm, Gage wiped sweat from his forehead. “Because, for whatever stupid reason, I paid attention to some crap on TV once—about burials. We have no way of knowing if the girls were embalmed with arsenic or not. It was common around the turn of the century. I can’t remember an exact year, but Gracie and Emma were buried close enough to the timeframe that I’m not willing to take any chances.”
He carefully set the bones on the coffin’s top, then picked up his shovel and started tossing dirt back onto the coffin. “Hell, for that matter, I have no idea if this stuff leaches into the soil.”
Bryan scoffed. “You’re kidding, right? It’s probably mahogany like you said. You think arsenic might have seeped through the caskets and into the soil?”
A sheen of sweat covered Gage’s muscular arms. “Sorry. Can’t answer that. I’m not a mortician. I’m not a chemist, either, but I don’t think coming into contact with a poisonous substance at a haunted house is a good thing.”
Jess watched as the bones disappeared beneath the spray of orange earth.
“Should we say something?” Jess asked.
“Like what?” Bryan asked.
She shrugged. “A prayer?”
She recalled the first time Gracie and Emma had shown themselves to her, their faces so frightened and pale. She thought of how young they were when they’d died. How they had promised to help her.
How they creeped her out at times.
As Gage continued shoveling dirt onto the gravesite, Jess recited a childhood prayer. It was the only prayer she could think of.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” She paused. The next part didn’t fit.
If I should die before I wake…
Jess knelt once Gage had thrown the last of the dirt onto the grave. “I hope you two are at rest now. I hope you’re free of Riley and this place. Take care, Gracie and Emma.”
Allison handed her some flowers she’d picked nearby and Jess placed them on the broken earth.