Authors: Jerry B. Jenkins,Chris Fabry
Tags: #JUVENILE FICTION / Religious / Christian
Grave Shadows
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Grave Shadows
Copyright © 2005 by Jerry B. Jenkins. All rights reserved.
Cover and interior photographs copyright © 2004 by Brian MacDonald. All rights reserved.
Authors’ photograph © 2004 by Brian MacDonald. All rights reserved.
Designed by Jacqueline L. Nuñez
Edited by Lorie Popp
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Scripture quotation are taken from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jenkins, Jerry B.
Grave Shadows / Jerry B. Jenkins, Chris Fabry.
p. cm. — (Red Rock mysteries ; 5)
ISBN 978-1-4143-0144-0 (pbk.)
[1. Bicycles and bicycling—Fiction. 2. Christian life—Fiction 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Family life—
Colorado—Fiction. 5. Colorado—Fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Fabry, Chris, date. II. Title.
PZ7+
[Fic]—dc22 2005005292
Contents
Chapter 1
My friend Jeff Alexander was dying.
We all knew it. I prayed God would perform a miracle, but I’m not sure I believed it would actually happen. When Jeff mentioned going to the graveyard near the haunted house, it made my skin crawl.
The hardest part of any cemetery is looking at the graves of kids. Did they get sick? fall down a well? The only thing you know is that they’re sleeping with angels or in Jesus’ arms—that’s what the tombstones say.
That summer started out like most. Ashley and I were glad to be out of school and going into the eighth grade. She’s my twin sister and likes to tell everybody she’s older, but it’s only by a few seconds. We can talk about everything but age.
Instead of just watching TV all day or bugging Mom for extra chores to make money, I told Jeff I’d ride with him on a bike hike. It was the least I could do since he has cancer. Sometimes he looks really good, like he’ll live longer than us all. Then he has bad days.
Imagine a 200-mile bike ride. Made my butt numb just thinking about it. But it was for a good cause. Every mile meant more money for cancer research, and it was a chance to spend time with Jeff.
The plan was to start in Vail and ride through the mountains all the way to Colorado Springs. It wouldn’t be easy, but my stepdad, Sam, says nothing really good in life is easy. I guess our family should really be good, because it’s not easy living with two new people who don’t believe the way you do. Sam and his daughter, Leigh, aren’t Christians, and my mom and sister and I are. We have a little brother too, Dylan.
Sam’s wife and younger daughter died in the same plane crash our dad died in. Sam met my mom at a memorial ceremony, and they fell in love. That was before Mom became a Christian. We moved from Illinois to Colorado, which is probably the biggest change in scenery imaginable. Instead of everything being as flat as a paper plate, there were mountains all around, thin air, animals, snow in April and May, and no Cubs games. It was a shock, but Ashley and I got used to it.
The bike trip was a week away when Jeff suggested the graveyard trip. Ashley and her friend Hayley said they wanted to go too, and I figured the more the merrier.
That’s when things got interesting.
Chapter 2
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Hayley said as we pedaled up a hill behind Bryce and Jeff. They were riding a tandem, a two-person bike. Hayley and I were on separate bikes. It was getting really hot and hard to keep going.
“You mean dead people coming back?” I said, trying to catch my breath.
“Yeah, people who haunt you.” She let out a “Woooooooo!” then said, “I saw this TV show where they recorded an actual ghost walking through a room. There were a couple of kids asleep in bunk beds, and through the dark you saw this misty green thing move past them, stop, then walk right through the wall.”
Bryce and Jeff were so far ahead they couldn’t hear us. They were going really slow, like they might have to stop any minute.
“It was probably just special effects,” I said.
“No, they put a camera up and didn’t touch it the whole night. I couldn’t sleep for a week after I saw that.”
The story gave me goose bumps, or maybe that was just my body shutting down. We were in the third mile of a five-mile ride to the end of Red Lake Canyon, a dirt road that winds around the side of the mountain until it flattens at the top. Bryce and I had never actually been to the very end, and we were both excited to see the haunted house.
“There are no such things as ghosts,” I said. “When you die, that’s it. You don’t come back and hang around little kids in their bedrooms.”
“Then what did I see on that show?”
I hit my brakes and stopped by the side of the road. Empty Mountain Dew bottles littered the washed-out rut, along with a Sonic Styrofoam cup and an old tire. Colorado’s a pretty state and people usually take care of things, but I guess when they get this far they forget where they live.
Hayley had been to our church a few times, but I was sure she wasn’t a Christian. And I didn’t want to just spout stuff my mom told me. “All I know is that the Bible never says people who die come back and haunt us.”
Usually when I mention the Bible or Jesus, Hayley gets quiet or changes the subject. Lately she’s seemed more interested.
“What does it say then?” she said.
“That we only get one chance. We don’t come back as a frog or a tree, another person, or a ghost. After we die, God judges us, and the most important thing is what we do with Jesus.”
Jeff let out an exhausted yell from in front of us. “I have to stop.”