Free If She Should Die by Carlene Thompson Page B

Jeremy said fretfully. “I hate it when you don’t listen.”
    Christine mentally shook herself. She had come here to help her troubled brother, not indulge her own guilt. “This place just seems kind of strange to me and I got distracted,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    Jeremy appeared to think this over before finally muttering, “Okay.”
    “Thank you. You asked if I wanted to go. Do I want to go where?”
    “This summer when everything dries up, Streak said we could go over and look at the mounds.”
    “Jeremy, I know you’d enjoy that, but I don’t feel comfortable about your going to the peninsula at night.”
    “It doesn’t have to be night,” Streak said.
    “You mean you’d go out in the
day
?” Christine asked in surprise.
    “I’m not a vampire, Chris,” Streak said in mock reproach. “I won’t burst into flames if a sunbeam hits me.” Jeremy, whose favorite show was about vampires, laughed out loud, and Christine felt relief. Laughter was a good sign that Jeremy was getting his anxiety in check. “Ican go out in the day,” Streak continued. “I just usually choose not to. But I’d go over to the mounds with Jeremy and you.”
    “I haven’t been over there for a few years,” Christine said. “I guess I could tag along with you guys. In the
day
. No power on this earth could get me over there at night.”
    “ ’Fraidy cat,” Jeremy teased. “But we can go in the day if you want. Maybe we could even have a picnic.” Christine couldn’t think of a place she’d less like to have a picnic, but she would do it to please her brother. “And we’ll look for more Indian graves.”
    “I draw the line there,” Christine said. “Absolutely no grave hunting.”
    “We wouldn’t move the bones or anything,” Jeremy assured her. “Even though they’re not scary. Dara said the ones she saw a long time ago weren’t scary.”
    “Maybe they weren’t scary to her, but they would be to me,” Christine said faintly, unable not to link the idea of Dara with skeletons. The body washed up from the river had been badly decomposed. . . .
    A few minutes earlier a mist had risen and now it curled through the undergrowth, giving the surroundings a hazy, dreamlike quality. Something about the atmosphere felt ominous to Christine, almost as if the mist were trying to grab hold and drag her down into the dark earth that smelled of rotting leaves and stagnant water. A cold tingle quivered through her. She felt as if malevolent eyes crawled up and down her body. She glanced nervously around, sensing some kind of presence. A
presence
? In spite of her dislike of this place, she was really letting her imagination run wild, she thought in annoyance. The only presences around were those of animals. Squirrels. Opossums. Perhaps even a fox. But a fox wouldn’t attack a human unless it was rabid, in which case it wouldn’t have stayed quiet and watchful for so long. She was beingridiculous. Still, the feeling of being watched persisted. The hairs on her neck tickled.
    “Jeremy, your sister looks tired.” Streak’s interruption sounded entirely normal, although Christine guessed she looked worse than tired. She felt jumpy and deeply apprehensive, and Streak didn’t miss much.
    “I really would like to leave now,” she said. “I’m sleepy.” Another lie. “Are you ready to go, Jeremy?”
    “Yeah, I guess,” he said reluctantly. “But I thought we were gonna have an adventure. Standing on the creek bank isn’t much of an adventure.”
    “We’ll save the adventure for our picnic.” Christine smiled. “I might even get up my nerve and help look for graves. How about that?”
    Jeremy smiled. “That sounds like lots more fun!”
    “Grave hunting. My idea of a good time,” Christine muttered, then looked around and asked Jeremy, “Where’s Rhiannon?”
    “Prob’ly hiding. I’ll go find her.”
    Streak stared as Jeremy walked away through the brush, his gait easy and coordinated again.