Better Left Buried

BETTER LEFT BURIED

Copyright © 201
4 Belinda Frisch

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

KINDLE EDITION

3/31/14

All rights reserved. This e-book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2014

ISBN-13: 978-1497461703

ISBN-10: 1497461707

CreateSpace

7290 Investment Dr.

Suite B

North Charleston, SC 29418

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.  If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer:

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental.

ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR:

Payback
, A Strandville Zombie Series Short

Cure
, Strandville Zombie Series Novel #1

Afterbirth
, Strandville Zombie Series Novel #2

The Strandville Omnibus

Fatal Reaction

Special thanks to fellow author Matt Schiariti for
making
Better Left Buried
the best book it can be. Matt is a talented author, an eagle eye reader, and a great friend who also writes about ghosts. His support makes me a more confident, much less frazzled author. I can’t thank him enough on all accounts.

“Ghosts of Demons Past”, Matt
Schiariti’s debut novel, is available in e-book and paperback formats and was one of my favorite reads of 2013.

“Well, Mr. Gabriel. What do you know about … demons?”

For most people, that’s a question that never comes up. Medium Seth Gabriel isn’t most people and for him, it’s another day in an abnormal life.

It’s bad enough that his love life has seen better days, but his personal problems are only the half of it. Seth’s ghost hunting business hasn’t seen a client in weeks and he’s desperate for a paycheck. Things look up when two potential clients seek him out.

Courtney Reeves hires Seth to investigate a paranormal disturbance in her home. On the surface, it’s a run of the mill cleaning job, but when you deal with the dead for a living, there’s no such thing as routine. The close of the case is the start of even bigger problem and Seth finds out that, while there’s nothing to fear from the dead, the living are another story.

When the nervous and persistent Evan Gallagher enters his life, Seth sees the promise of a big payday. There’s only one catch. The wealthy lawyer thinks his wife is possessed by a demon. Seth doesn’t believe in demons … not anymore, but the money is too good to turn down. Is Evan crazy or is he one hundred percent sane? As Seth digs deeper, he’ll ask the same question of himself.

For a guy who’s coasted through life on not much more than Greek takeout, tequila, and attitude, Seth’s going to have to dig deep to survive what will turn out to be a very bad week.

For Brent,
always
.

Autumn leaves bring with them
Incomprehensible cold-weather conversations
As I walk down the Ave
To a place in my life
That I'd rather not go
Challenging death
Sparse leaves stand proud
And Dream of April's rain
As life suspends
Amidst this frost that is my breath
I hold his hand for one last time
Embracing life
Before I succumb
To the plague of this season

-
Belinda Frisch

Harmony rolled onto her side and draped
her leg over Adam’s. Sweat plastered her long brown hair to her face as she turned her head back and forth against her pillow, trying to block out the heavy footfall she heard in her sleep.
Work boots.
She couldn’t see them, but the
clip-clop
sound was unmistakable.
A porch swing creaked.
A door slammed.
The smell of smoke filled her nose, transporting her to the dark place that, a year earlier, had pushed her over the line toward suicide. Had her mother not found her, she would’ve been dead. Drifting further into the dream, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her.

“There’s my girl.” A gruff voice breaks through the haze and Harmony turns on her heel. A smiling man crushes out his cigarette in an ashtray on the arm of the porch swing and reaches for her. He has a gentle way about him, but he is blurry. Her memory does its best to recreate something long-forgotten, but she is seeing him as if looking through someone else’s much-too-strong prescription glasses.

She runs toward him, her pigtails catching the wind and flapping behind her. He feels like safety and she rushes up the few porch steps to fling herself at him. He
catches her. He always catches her, and this time is no different. He pulls her close and blows raspberries on her cheek, the stale beer on his breath familiar and strangely comforting. She throws back her head and laughs, but her giggling is cut short by the storm clouds gathering in the sky above them. Before she can ask what’s happening, she is ripped from his arms and dragged through time to a ruined version of the same scene where the house is dark and the porch swing sways empty.

A raging bonfire dies to a shower of dan
cing embers that rains down on her like volcanic ash. The cold night air burns her throat and she coughs as the tendrils of smoke work their way into her lungs. She walks toward the boarded-up house wearing only a band tee and a pair of black underwear. She’s no longer a little girl. Dread tightens every muscle.

An
icy breeze cuts through the thin cotton, making her shiver.

“
Hello?”

No
one answers.

The front door is
locked.

She wiggles the handle and pounds the heel of her hand against the jamb.
The cold makes it hurt but she keeps at it, listening to the scuffle of feet inside. There’s a struggle. Someone she loves is in trouble. She runs around the side of the house, past the tire swing in the tree and the fire pit, to the back screen door and screams to be let in. She beats her fist against the wooden crossbeam, noticing red droplets leeching through the tiny gray squares.

“Help.”

A crimson slick coats her hand, bringing her back to the night she tried to end her life.

Panic sets in, the fear of being back on the bathroom floor of her mother’s shitty trailer, bleeding and in pain.

“Help. Someone, please help me.”

She claws at the screen, her fingertips searching for a weak spot or tear, but it’s impenetrable.
There is no help. Only when she works up the courage to wipe her forearms clean does she realize the blood isn’t hers.

“Harmony, wake up!” Adam’s voice drew her back. She inhaled like a drowning victim breaking water, grappling to get a hold on him. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” He rocked her against his tattooed chest, stroking her hair. She could scarcely catch her breath. “It’s only a bad dream,” he whispered.

But
even three-quarters asleep, she knew it was more than that.

Brea Miller woke to the sound of her mother, Joan, shouting for her to answer the phone. She had hit the snooze button so many times that she was a half-hour late, exhausted from having been up half the night texting with Harmony.

“Brea, come on. Pick up. Your father wants to talk to you.”

Her father, Kurt, had moved to Peach Springs, Arizona fourteen years earlier and had only come back once, for her grandfather’s funeral. Two weeks before her fifteenth birthday, he hadn’t even remembered to bring a gift. He spent two hours at her house, shuffling birthday cake frosting across his plate and sipping cold coffee between whispers to her mother. She could say that it was sadness for the loss of his father, but his head-down melancholy wasn’t depression, it was guilt.

Brea wanted to believe it was
for having left her and her mother—who still wore her wedding ring, kept her married name, and slept in her now ex-husband’s favorite sweatshirt—but that wasn’t it. Whatever turned her father from the smiling, fun-loving family man she vaguely remembered was something he’d rather be hated for hiding than ever admit to.

Brea studied her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door and sighed at the sight of her pale freckled skin and near shapeless body. Other girls
, especially Harmony, had come into their own two years ago while she could barely fill out a sports bra. She raked her fingers through her tangled auburn hair, delaying picking up the phone in the hopes of her father hanging up.

“Brea, come on. I mean it
.” Her mother was coming up the stairs, still on the phone—
still talking about her
. “She’s running late. Yeah, she was probably talking to
her
again all night.”

“
All right, all right. I get it.” Brea picked up her cordless as her mother appeared in her doorway.

“Be nice,”
she mouthed, holding her hand over the receiver.

“Hang up, Mom.”
Brea held the handset between her ear and shoulder and worked a pair of knee-high socks over her calves. “Hello.”

“Brea?”

“Yeah, Dad. It’s me.”

“How
have you been?”

No matter how
she answered, he’d be dismissive. “Fine. You?” She waited for the real reason he’d called, suspecting her mother had put him up to it.

“I’m glad to hear it. Listen, I’m making plans for summer vacation. I thought you’d like to spend some time out here, a couple of weeks or a month, maybe? We could go to the zoo.
You love that place.”

“
I loved that place when I was five, Dad.” That was the last time her mother forced her to make the trip. “Zoos are cruel.”

“
How about we just catch up on old times then?”

“We don’t
have
any old times. Why don’t you save us both some time and tell me why you’re really calling.”

“I
don’t want to fight, Brea. I thought it would be good for you to take a break, get out of town. Mom says you’ve been hanging around Harmony again and I … we … need to talk about that.”

“It’s
not ‘again’, Dad. It’s ‘still’. Feel free to tell Mom that the next time she puts you up to calling me. I have to go. I’m gonna miss my bus.”

Brea’s parents rarely collaborated
except for when it came to Harmony. They were determined to keep the two of them apart, but she wasn’t worried. Her father was too far away to set boundaries, and her mother didn’t have the man power to enforce them.

It was still dark outside
when Harmony stepped out of the steam-filled bathroom wearing a pair of Adam’s sweatpants and a t-shirt. She swept her dripping hair into a towel on top of her head and rubbed her tired eyes.

The
kitchen light turned on and she listened to the sound of the coffee pot percolating for a minute before heading toward it.

“Adam, what are you doing up?”

Adam stood, bent at the waist with his head resting on his arms on the counter and his eyes closed. His back rose and fell with each heavy breath. When she wrapped her arms around him, he startled awake.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“What time is it?” He squinted at the clock on the microwave they’d gotten for free because the display was only half visible.

“Five-thirty.”

Adam groaned, took two mismatched coffee cups down from the cupboard, and filled them. The small one-bedroom was furnished in secondhand furniture, but was a step up from the by-the-hour motel room he’d been staying at after he left home. It was a time in his life he didn’t care to talk about. She didn’t care to ask. He pushed the sugar bowl toward her and rinsed off his spoon.