Death Whispers (Death Series, Book 1) (18 page)

Mom was a big one for the No-Lawns Act that was
passed; mental eye-roll. Don't even get started with the Indigenous
Plants Proposal.

Walking deeper into the rows of houses, my sense
of foreboding came on line. Jade's mouth made a little “O”.

“You feel that?” she asked.

“I
feel something.”

I sure wasn't needing anything besides the AFTD.

“Don't worry, it's probably me, spilling on
you.”

“Spilling?” I quizzed.

“Yeah, sometimes when Sophie and me hang, I can
'leak' some of the stuff I pick up onto her. She says it's major
creepy.”

Okay.
“Why do you feel...” I struggled here, not wanting to sound dumb,
but thinking the adult words my parents used might sound weird, “...
anxious?” There, better than foreboding
.

“Anxious?” she giggled.

My lip jutted out, I did pretty good with that.
She saw my semi-pout, putting her hand over her mouth, stifling more
insensitive giggling.

I frowned. “You've been laughing at me a lot
today.”

“Oh come on, Caleb, you can be really funny!”

Yeah, hilarious.

She began to slow in front of an especially gross
house. Paint peeled like ribbons of decay off the trim. Once white,
it was now a grim shade of bone-gray. The lawn, if you could call it
that, started from some underground place near the house which teemed
with a riot of overgrown bushes and became one with the sidewalk. It
was a dirty brown, somewhere between poop and mud. Strange mounds of
dirt were sprinkled all over it like big pimples in an ugly face.

“This is Brett's house,” Jade said quietly.

Oh.
I didn't really know what to say. The thought that it looked like an
unhappy, lonely place did cross my mind. I couldn't help but compare
it to my house. The atrium, backyard and the comfort smells of my
home seemed like a dim light, shining a mill on miles away when faced
with this.

We heard raised voices.

Jade grabbed my hand. “Quick, hide!”

I whipped my head around looking for a spot but
she knew right where to go and dragged me to an overgrown hedge that
we hid behind. Our sides were pressed together, eyes peering forward,
seeing only silhouettes.

A
booming male voice was screaming words, bad ones. The F-bomb was
flying, with some accuracy. Jade flinched each time an “F” flew.

“You worthless turd. You wouldn't know sense if
it knocked your dumb teeth out. Get the fuck outta here.”

I saw Brett, I assumed it was him, he was shorter
than the monster that stood opposite him.

“Don't hit mom!” Brett screamed. Even through
the hedge I could see that his fists were clenched, definitely a
Mason family theme. Hell, the dad was beating on the mom?

The dad raised his fist up and I knew he was gonna
clock Brett, and I just couldn't not do anything.

Jade grabbed me. “No don't,” she begged.

I shook my head. I couldn't stand cowards. He'd
have to beat my ass too. In that moment I didn't care that it was
Brett. The whispering that was always there grew in volume and a
dull, static roar filled my head. It felt good, throbbing with my
heartbeat.

“Stay here,” I told Jade, never turning.

She watched me clear the hedge as Brett's dad's
fist connected square with Brett's chest. It made a meaty thumping
sound, Brett staggering back. The dad came right after him with
purpose.

Brett was making alarming wheezing sounds, trying
to recapture air that had been knocked out.

“Hey!” I yelled, startling them both.

Brett turned toward me, still wheezing, arms
flailing, the elder Mason with a comical expression of surprise.

He recovered with a wonderful, “Who the fuck are
you?” in a snarl.

Ignoring his question, saying more calmly than I
felt, “You're not supposed to be beating on people.”

Brett gave a spastic shake of his head, holding
his chest with both hands, almost catching his breath now, looking at
me with clear warning. There was no love lost between the two of us
but he thought I was insane to take on his dad.

Me too.

The Dad turned to face me, Brett forgotten. He was
tall like my dad. Clearly, when he was younger he may have been
athletic, but it was submerged underneath the hundred pounds he had
on me. His fists were loosely clenched but ready for action, his gut
hanging over stained blue jeans with a matching T-shirt, equally
disgusting.

A prize to be won.

I let that thing that was always curled tight
inside me out. I didn't mean to, but like a caged animal let loose,
it responded to my distress signal. I was in trouble with no plan
whatsoever except that I didn't want to watch some kid my age, even a
dickhead like Brett, get the shit beat out of him by his dad.

He stalked toward me, all shadow and menace. Then,
all the little dirt mounds in the lawn exploding, dirt geysered like
miniature volcanoes erupting; raining back down on all of us.

Brett's
arms fell to his side and he sorta landed on his butt right where he
was. The breath I was holding slid out of me in a long line of
relief.
The whispering had stopped and the lawn had blown up and... I was
feeling...
fine
.

I heard a noise behind me and it was Jade.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” I asked, clearly
vexed that she was in sight now! Double-duh!

“Look.” She pointed.

All around the lawn, moles (big ones) were
standing at attention, there reflective eyes like small suns, staring
at me. Brett's dad just got angrier.

“I killed all you,” he shrieked at them.
“You're dead!”

Priceless,
of course they were dead, you dolt. I could hear their thoughts,
waiting for me to tell them something, a directive I intuited.

Before I had time to do anything, the dad switched
his attention from the Army of Moles, to Jade.

“Aren't you that upstart LeClerc girl? The one
that gave her daddy all the trouble with them cops?” He glared at
her and she shrank away behind me.

The slug started making his way to where Jade and
I were standing at the edge of the split and cracked sidewalk. Moles
stood vigil, their collective eyes watching me.

He was almost on us and Brett gave one more effort
to deflect what he saw as a Big Problem by shouting for us to run. My
heart was a jack hammer in my chest. I wasn't gonna run from this
guy.

Jade's hand clenched and bunched on the back of my
hoodie, a lifeline.

“Sounds
to me like you two are in my boy's class; losers,” he said with
certainty. “And I know how to take care of that, yes indeedy I do,
I'll clean that attitude right out of ya both.”

He
moved forward as if to grab the two of us, and I let a little juice
funnel through the moles, which looked exactly like big-ass rats with
pointy faces. Wait a second, these weren't moles I thought: as they
literally
swam
across
the grass as one unit, their fur a slick and deep chocolate tipped
with a smoke-gray against the vomit-lawn. These were... I searched
for the name,
gophers.

Jerked out of my reverie by a hand clenching my
shirt together with my hoodie and my toes clearing the sidewalk, I
didn't struggle but hung like a dead weight as Jade squealed and
pulled me back. I appreciated her efforts but this guy had the manic
strength that only the truly drunk have. I was betting he would be
hella sore tomorrow, but for beating up teenagers, he was about
inebriated enough to make a go of it.

A gopher sailed across the remaining two feet
flying like a bat with wings, landing on the vulnerable back of the
neck area, making a tight “C” shape with its body. He bit The
Dad's neck as it made purchase.

Brett's
dad dropped me like a box of rocks, trying to do a quick release by
jerking the gopher off his neck with his hands. I could feel its
mind, with solitary purpose:
to
protect me.
All
it
knew was that I was master and it would be torn asunder rather than
allow harm.

I turned. Like an invisible string my power slid
down that line, finding eager recipients, the remaining gophers
launching themselves at various parts of The Dad. He did a little
dance, round and round he hopped trying to divest himself of the
troublesome gophers. They were single-minded, biting, nipping and
defleshing Mr. Mason.

I stood swaying, feeling like I held a great
baseball in my hand with the absolute knowledge that the perfect
pitch was within reach. Jade's hand was pressed against the small of
my back, the gophers making satisfied mewling sounds as their teeth
connected with flesh.

“
Caleb...
stop
it
,”
Jade said, voice raised above the crunching and gnashing of teeth,
“you'll kill him.”

Instead of being filled with the expected horror
of The Dad's death at the hands of my gophers, there was a distinct
satisfaction. I knew that his life hung in the balance of my action
and it wasn't worth it.

Brett was suddenly beside me. “Please,” he
said, one hand still on his chest where his dad had hit him, “he's
bad but he's still my dad.”

Brett the poet.

I
felt the power leaking out into and through all the gophers and made
the ginormous effort to rein it in. For a moment...nothing happened.
I was suddenly scared that this thing I had was bigger than I could
manage, unwieldy
.
Then something clicked into place and I was in control again. The
gophers looked at me, some of their teeth glistening wetly black with
The Dad's blood.

Rest
,
I thought, and gave a mental shove of “juice” that felt like
turning off a big, humming battery.

The
gophers,
my
gophers, swung their heads to consider me one last time before
swarming back to their mounds, sinking into them, like water finding
a cleft in a rock.

Jade,
Brett and I walked over to where Brett's dad lay, groaning. Blood
pooled around his body, pretty much everywhere. I stood, without
sympathy, the lingering emotion of wanting to end his existence still
there, still waiting.

I knew that I could call them back.

“Thanks,” Brett said in an hollow voice.

“What do you think, Caleb?” Jade asked.

“He'll live,” I said.

I looked at Brett, all out out of words. Jade and
I walked off together.

I turned around just as we were almost out of
sight and saw Brett standing there, over his dad's body, staring at
me as if he'd seen a ghost.

CHAPTER 13

I woke up naturally, that means no-damn-alarm.
Throwing my hands behind my head, a long sigh escaped me. Oh joy, the
weekend was here and I didn't have a thing to do today. Okay, not
true, I did have some ridiculously insignificant homework.

Last night came crashing down on me a minute
later. Brett, his psycho dad and the gophers. I'd pulse the Js
later, update them on the newest mess. Did this change things for
tomorrow? Maybe that was the bigger thing.

I heard Mom-sounds coming from downstairs. I
glanced at my suspended monitor, the glowing numbers read ten-forty.
Huh, I didn't sleep in too late today. I stood up too fast and
swayed, dizzy. Pancakes were the cure for that!

I stumbled over to my door, kicking the clothes
out of the way so it would open.

Mom looked up from the griddle as I rounded the
corner.

“Hey pal,” she greeted.

“Hey.”

Mom gave me a sideways glance. “Little rough
today?”

I smiled. “Yeah.”

“So how did it go last night?” I knew she
meant about walking Jade home.

Dad walked in, wearing pajama bottoms that looked
a lot like mine.

He plopped down opposite me, resting his head in
both hands. We looked at each other and he gave a chuckle. Family
telepathy, I guess.

“Yes,
how did things go?”

I threw out what happened. “Brett's dad was
beating on him and I got in the middle by raising an Army of
Gophers.”

Mom put the plate of pancakes in front of me
without a word. I poured hot syrup over the top, then passed it to
Dad.

The parents considered me, I stared back. They
didn't look shocked anymore, maybe they had passed on to the numb
stage. I bet they wished they had a kid that had low level
psychokinesis. Ya know, somebody that could shut a door that was left
open or some random thing. But they had me instead.

I told them everything, we'd have to deal with it.
The obedience of the gophers intrigued Dad. Mom was a little shocked
at my indifference about Brett's dad's life.

“Why should I care?” I asked, unruffled.

“You've been raised to think of others, Caleb.”

“Mom's right. We cannot condone willful sabotage
of life Caleb.”

Here comes the but.

Dad looked at Mom for a long moment. She sat down
at the kitchen table, resting her elbows on its beaten surface.

“I understand you intervened because your friend
was in trouble.”

“He isn't my friend,” I clarified.

“Yes, true, but, he was someone that was in
danger. I commend your,” Dad paused here,“...bravery in the face
of danger.”