It’s gone. My phone is not in either pocket! I stop completely now, frantically sticking my hands into my jacket, slapping my jeans, my hopes draining. My phone is gone.
How will I reach him?
I spin around, hearing the crack of a branch … somewhere. I don’t know where. It’s too dark to get my bearings. I know enough to nestle deeper against a tree trunk and stand very, very still until I can figure out what to do next.
Who was that man?
Of course, I know who it was, but I can’t accept it. I don’t believe in ghosts any more than I believe in curses, but I know Jarvis is dead. Or is he?
They never found his body.
I shake my head, forcing anything out that won’t help me strategize how to escape and be safe. I listen to the sounds of nature, suddenly all so threatening.
Is that a possum wandering about … or a killer on my heels?
Is that the hum of crickets and cicadas … or the catch of a gun safety?
Is that the breeze fluttering the leaves … or the steady breathing of someone taking aim?
I can barely hear against the hammering blood in my head, but I try anyway. I can’t see anything; all I have is my sense of hearing.
And smell. I sniff, turning toward a sudden strong and acrid scent that I know. It smells like the field behind school or a car in the back of the junior lot. It smells like pot.
Hallelujah, I found them. I follow my nose toward the pungent scent, working my way more slowly now through the trees. I try to swallow against my bone-dry throat and it makes me want to cough, so I cover my mouth and just let my eyes sting until it passes.
The first low strain of voices reaches my ears, barely audible. They’re whispering. A laugh, then the shush of someone hushing them.
Silence for a while, and the pot smell is dissipating, so I move more slowly, hugging some oaks, still looking over my shoulder in case Jarvis Collier makes an appearance.
I hear that laugh again. Dena. I gather up a breath to make a run toward the sound just as I hear something behind me, definitely alive, definitely human. My whole being tenses, waiting for the whoosh of a knife, the crack of a gun, the end of my life.
Nothing.
I tiptoe forward, listening for the threat but waiting for Dena’s laugh. Or just a whiff of pot to guide me in the right direction. I get both and I know I have them, but then I hear another voice, coming from my far left, a completely different direction.
Female laughter on my right, male voices on my left.
If they’ve separated for some reason, I want to be with the girls. Can I tell them who I saw … what he said? Shannon will go full tilt with her ghost theory.
I hear a voice, deep and authoritative, about a hundred feet away. I can’t make out the words, but I instantly recognize Josh’s tenor and inflection. Okay, not Levi, but at this point, phoneless and desperate, Josh is my only hope for safety.
Should I tell him about … his father?
I take a few more tentative steps, cringing when I crack a small branch underfoot. I freeze for a second, waiting; then I move toward his voice.
“… that little prick is our only hope.”
I stop dead and listen. What did he just say?
“They’re working on it,” someone else says. “He’s been paid, lured, and followed. We’ll get him soon enough.”
What the heck is he talking about?
At least two other voices reply in low rumbles I can’t catch. I hear what sounds like Tyler with his baritone, dude-peppered language. I’m still walking very slowly, only slightly less concerned about the threat behind me, but fully intrigued by this conversation.
“So it’s decided.” I don’t recognize that voice, but then I didn’t recognize some of the guys who were in the driveway. “I have the car covered,” someone else says.
“I have the note in place.” Yet another voice.
“All we have to do is make sure he’s arrested as a murderer for any one of these accidents, and they’ll stop.”
My knees weaken. Levi? They’re going to blame these deaths on him?
“You think they’ll stop,” one of the boys says.
“They’ll stop,” Josh insists. “That’s how the curse works.”
He believes in the curse, too?
“Hey, you guys!” A female voice cuts through the night, and I instantly step back into shadows when a