Creed (4 page)

The graveyard where the Hoopers’ child was buried had granite headstones with intricate carvings, names, and dates, and benches and permanent flower holders. Here they had nothing but some rotted wood held together by moldy string.

“Maybe it’s a military cemetery,” Mike offered up. “There are dozens of these markers and they’re identical, so what else could it be?”

I surveyed the crosses. Half of them were crumbling and everything smelled like wet dirt. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
I was freezing, and this place was creeping me out. “Let’s go and check the shed.”

I made it just three steps before Luke slowed to a crawl beside me. “Check that out,” he said, motioning to something clear across the yard.

“What is it?” I asked. Trying to make out the faint glow was useless. I put my hand in Luke’s and pulled him along with me as I inched closer.

The tiny orange flame danced behind the branches of a willow tree, the tree’s slender limbs whipping toward us as the wind gave them life. Beneath it was the dim flicker.

“Is that a candle?” Mike asked.

“I think so,” I said, wondering how it was staying lit in this weather. I moved toward the light, my feet sinking deeply into what looked like a freshly dug grave.

“Watch it!” Luke yelled. He grabbed my elbow and yanked me back. “That’s bad luck. Really bad. Walk
around
the graves.”

I laughed nervously and pulled my shoe out of the muck that was attempting to swallow it. Luke didn’t buy into traditional superstitions like black cats, broken mirrors, and ladders, but the few things he did believe, he stuck to
hard-core. Given the fact that my feet were sunk ankle-deep in a freakishly primitive graveyard where they probably didn’t even use coffins, I figured it couldn’t hurt to follow his lead and be overly cautious.

“Can we forget the candle and stick to the shed?” I asked as I pried my other foot free.

Luke tucked his hand deeper into mine and we edged away from the grave, refocusing on the shed. His fingers were cold, frozen into slender ice cubes, but comforting nonetheless. He winked at me out of the corner of my eye and I couldn’t help but grin. If I had to be stuck out here in this hell, I was lucky to be here with him.

The shed was old, its sides worn from the weather and its roof sinking in the middle. I groaned as we stepped up to the door. My mood was already black, and the padlock staring back at me was making it worse.

“Locked,” Luke said as he turned to face me, a hint of resignation in his voice. His eyes flickered with frustration, and I shrugged.

I was fully prepared to turn around and forget about the shed and its promise of gas when the first crack of metal rang through the night air. It was deafening and I screamed, my entire body convulsing in fear.

Luke pried my hands from my ears, his mouth turning up in a grin. “You honestly thought he’d give up that easily?” he asked, gesturing toward Mike. “The guy that drank gasoline? C’mon, Dee.”

The dim moonlight glinted off of the object clenched in Mike’s hand. I looked closer, recognizing the tire iron we’d brought with us from the car. Up until then, I’d forgotten we had it.

“Another couple good hits and I think this will break,” Mike said as he swung at the padlock again. The sound echoed like a million pieces of broken glass, the contact sending sparks of metal flying.

“Uh, Mike? Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked as I swung my head around, scanning the area for people. The last thing I wanted was to get busted for some kind of sick vandalism. Not to mention that Luke was heading for college in the fall. Desecration of a grave wasn’t exactly an appealing thing for schools to see on his record.

Plus, I only had six months until I was legally free and could no longer be considered a ward of the state. Add a crime like vandalizing the dead to my already sketchy past, and I was sure social services would find a way to hang onto me a bit longer.

“Best idea I’ve had all day,” Mike replied. “Especially since it was your boyfriend who made the
let’s-get-off-the-highway-and-take-the-creepy-backwoods-road
call.” He chuckled as Luke flipped him off.

Actually, it’d been my call. I didn’t want to be late for the concert, so Luke had done what he always did … he tried to fix the problem and make me happy by finding an alternate route.

Mike stepped back, widened his stance, and swung the tire iron again. The lock broke, the vibration of the metals colliding traveling through the ground.

“Yes!” Mike shouted, dropping the tire iron. He tossed the broken lock aside, a muted thunk coming from somewhere in a nearby shrub.

Luke stepped in first, sputtering and brushing cobwebs from his face. “I can’t see a damn thing,” he said, his arms outstretched in the darkness.

“Here.” Mike tossed him the flashlight we’d taken with us from the car. “Use this.”

A small beam of light illuminated the dark room. “Gas can, gas can … there’s gotta be something useful in here,” Luke muttered to himself.

I flipped open my cell phone and used the light from my home screen to navigate the edges of the room. Hooks lined the walls, most of them supporting yard tools. Hedge trimmers, weed whacker, leaf blower. Pickaxe. “Pickaxe? What would somebody need a pickaxe for?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe they use it in the winter when people die and the ground is frozen,” Luke offered.

I turned to glare at him, not even remotely thankful for his insight. Mike ignored us and continued rifling through some large plastic bins lining the wall, cursing as a large cardboard box toppled over onto his feet.

Papers spilled out and Luke bent down, casting the beam of light across the mess. Dozens of names handwritten in pencil lined the sheets. Next to each name was a date. I reached down and picked up the first sheet I touched. It was a newer one, dated November 5th … two days ago.

“James McDonald, age six. Margaret Elizabeth Cunningham, age fifty-four. Sadie Calbert, age twenty-two,” Luke read aloud. He inhaled sharply and began stuffing the papers back into the box. “These are … I think these are death records.”

“I can beat that,” Mike chimed in. “Check this out.”

Luke turned his light in Mike’s direction, slowly scanning it upward until a sign came into view:
Purity Springs. Population 152
. He moved the sign aside; another one, nearly identical, was behind it. “ ‘Purity Springs. Population 151,’ ” Luke read before shuffling yet another sign aside.

“And looky here,” Mike said. “This one looks pretty new, not a scratch on it. Says ‘Population 149.’ That’s messed up.”

Luke shook his head, grumbling something incoherent under his breath. I stepped aside, forcing myself to focus on the search for gas as opposed to the archaic death records scattered across the floor.

My mind flashed back to the grave we’d passed on the way here. It was new, and I couldn’t help but think there was a sign hanging on the side of the road somewhere that read
Purity Springs. Population 148.

“Finally,” Luke called out from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see his body, but I could hear the sound of his knuckles rapping against the thick plastic of what I prayed was a gas can.

I used the light from my phone to scan the shed and found Luke in the back corner. He shook the can, its contents barely sloshing around.

“Crap,” he ground out.

“What?” I asked. “It’s gas, right?”

”Oh yeah, it’s gas.” Luke sighed as he unscrewed the cap and took a whiff to be sure. “But from the weight, my guess is it’s almost empty. Doubt we’d have enough to get that leaf blower over there started, never mind a car.”

Mike took the canister from Luke’s hands and gave it one hard shake. “You’re right, it’s empty,” he said, then dropped the canister to his feet. “Town with no people. Gas station with no phone. Now a maintenance shed with no gas. What kind of messed-up place is this?”

The kind that scares the crap out of me
, I thought to myself as I sank to my knees and prayed they were both wrong, that there was enough gas not only to start the car, but to get us far away from Purity Springs.

FOUR

We hurried back through the cemetery, weaving around the graves and keeping our voices to a whisper. Between the death records, the messed-up population signs, and the ghost candle, none of us wanted to stick around there any longer than necessary.

The edge of the neighborhood we’d passed through earlier came in to view and I exhaled a breath of relief, excited at the prospect of getting help. I wanted to get back on the road. At this point, I didn’t care if we headed to the concert or back to Mrs. Hooper’s pot roast. I’d be grateful either way.

“Which street? Which house?” Mike asked. The streetlights cast enough light for me to catch the flicker of indecision in his eyes. I knew what he was thinking: it didn’t matter. It was a total crapshoot either way.

I stared down the street in front of me. Black mailboxes lined the side of the road, and perfectly straight brick walkways led to the front doors. Also black. I counted twelve houses on that street, then turned in a half-circle and counted twelve more on the street to my right. I didn’t bother to check the last one; my guess was there were twelve, eerily identical houses lining that street as well.

Apparently, in this town, your choices were limited. You either got the standard three-bedroom white cape with the black shutters and a black front door, or the standard three-bedroom white cape with the black shutters and a black front door. Even the flower beds looked the same, artistically curved around the base of each mailbox, each one planted with the exact same shade of nearly dead yellow and burnt-orange flowers.

Stripping off my gloves, I blew hot air into my hands. The houses lining the streets didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. In fact, they had me wondering what kind of dull, repressed people lived here.

Something about this whole neighborhood felt wrong. Horribly wrong. My senses hadn’t been this jacked up in years. Not since that first night in the group home when I realized the girl bunking below me kept a makeshift knife tucked into the springs of her mattress. I’d spent my entire two-week stint there trying to avoid falling asleep, and I had a distinct feeling that if we didn’t get out of here soon, I’d spend tonight doing the exact same thing.

“Holy house farm. They even have the same landscaping, right down to the flowerpot on the front step,” Luke said.

“You think we’ll get lucky and find a house key under one of those pots?” Mike asked.

“From the looks of it, I bet one damn key opens every house,” I replied.

“Probably right. Let’s go to that first one. I’m already halfway to hypothermia here,” Mike suggested, only pausing when he noticed Luke counting the houses. “No. Don’t even go there.”

“House number three. We need to go to house number three.” Luke grinned at me, no doubt preparing to take another verbal lashing over his idiotic fascination with triples. He played both football and lacrosse and insisted his uniform number be three. He’d applied to three colleges, and each one had to be within three hundred miles of home. He was even born on March third.

“Oh God,” I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. “Here we go again.”

“Hell no,” Mike said. “We’re going to the one right there.” He pointed to the house closest to us. “Screw your lucky number obsession. I can’t feel my legs anymore, and my nuts are already the size of raisins.”

Luke smirked, undeterred by his brother. “It’s not an obsession. It’s lucky. I won big on it last week!”

I held my hand up to stop him. “That was a pee wee football ticket you bought from your cousin, and you won two tickets to a movie we’d already seen.”

I was only half joking about my annoyance. The fact was, Luke had always favored the number three. Last spring he had it tattooed onto his middle finger. He claimed it was his own personal lucky charm. I’d laughed and told him
I
was supposed to be his lucky charm. I smiled whenever I thought about that tattoo, knowing full well he didn’t choose that finger randomly. And I was fine with his little obsession back home, when it meant nothing more than watching the third movie in our Netflix queue rather than the first.

“Come on, guys. It’s not like I’m asking for much,” Luke said. He kissed my cheek, his dark eyes begging me to approve. “It’s just two houses farther; we can see it from here. Plus, I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. “But if I end up with frostbite because of this, you aren’t getting any for a month.”

“Fair enough,” Luke said as he came up beside me. “And I promise, Dee, I’ll make it up to you later.”

I grumbled under my breath. His hushed words left little to the imagination. Usually that tone would have left me feeling warm and buzzed, looking to ditch his brother at the nearest curb, but not tonight. Tonight was quickly turning into one giant bag of suck, and thoughts of being alone with Luke had died the second we hit that cemetery. There’s nothing like the heel of your shoe sinking into a freshly dug grave to ruin the mood.

“Well, here we are,” Mike said as we approached Luke’s chosen house. “Should we try knocking?”