Free Skeleton Key by Jeff Laferney Page A

said, “I didn’t hear anything. What did you hear?”
    Clay clipped the picture back into the frame and leaned it against the desk before he said, “I heard a voice say, ‘I’m looking a dead horse in the mouth.’”
    Immediately, Clay heard, “I’m straight from the horses’ mouths.” He turned around again, assuming there was someone else in the room. “I’m straight from the horses’ mouths?” he said in wonderment. The room seemed to drop a few more degrees.
    “ I could be beating a dead horse…”
    Clay repeated what he had just heard to the others.
    “ Some sort of extra-sensory perception, Dad?”
    “ I don’t know…It seems different. And who would be talking to me? And what do horses have to do with anything? And why is the room so cold?”
    It didn’t seem cold to Erika and Tanner. Erika didn’t understand Clay and Tanner’s gifts, but she was certainly curious about what was going on. Tanner set the horse carving back on Erika’s desk, so Erika reached to replace the train and tracks. As she did so, she noticed that the picture of her and Logan was lying face down on her desk. She gasped. Carefully, she set the frame back up correctly, then looked at Clay and walked straight to the wall where the family picture usually hung. There on the floor beside the wall was the picture that Clay had been studying. It was also lying face down.
    When Clay saw the picture, he said, “How did that get over there? I just leaned it against the desk.”
    “ It just can’t be!” Erika said as she stared at the picture and the men stared at her. She looked back to her desk, and sure enough, the carvings were missing. She walked over to the wastebasket, reached in, and pulled them out. Erika said, “A ghost did it.”
    “ A ghost?” Tanner repeated. “This is so cool! Dad, can you hear ghosts?”
    ***
    Dan Duncan pulled into his garage, unlocked the back door, and headed for the kitchen for a late lunch. He looked out his back kitchen window as he was pouring himself a glass of V8 juice. What he saw was a squirrel squatting on one of his birdfeeders, eating the birdseed. He slammed his drinking hand down on the counter in anger, chipping his glass and splattering the red juice all over his police uniform. He yelled a couple of choice swear words toward the squirrel. Dan was a firm believer that the smartest, most talented and athletic squirrel on earth occupied his backyard. No matter what he did to try to discourage the squirrel, it somehow managed to continue to antagonize the police officer.
    Since fall had made its way to Michigan and many species of birds had migrated South, Dan filled his feeders in hopes of attracting black-capped chickadees, blue jays, dark-eyed juncos, white-breasted nuthatches, and northern cardinals. He loved watching birds, especially in the winter mornings when Michigan’s depressing gray skies and frosty temperatures threatened depths of discouragement. He’d had some luck attracting his chosen species, but he’d also attracted a squirrel that was determined to drive the bird-watcher crazy. After the six weeks of late October and the month of November, Dan was considering using his police revolver to put the pest into eternal hibernation.
    Dan had mounted new feeders on six-foot poles. His super-squirrel made the leap with ease. He raised the height of the feeder. The squirrel climbed the pole just as easily. He spread the poles with black auto grease. The squirrel tracked it all over his deck as if to mock the foolish man. He tried plastic baffles, but the vermin would adjust the positioning and climb over them anyway. When he went to metal baffles, the squirrel began jumping from a nearby tree. He cut off branches and the squirrel began climbing his house, leaving scratch marks all over his woodwork prior to each flying leap. He moved the poles and the squirrel jumped from a nearby fence. He tried safflower seeds because squirrels weren’t supposed to like them, but