Free Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes by Jack Lewis Page A

didn’t look like the kind of man to spill them.
     
    I put my hand to my mouth. I puffed
up my cheeks and bent over a little.
     
    “Jesus, I’m going to be sick,” I
said, and bent over even more for effect. I looked up at Peter, and I hoped my
face was pale. “Can I use your bathroom?”
     
    “I want you to leave.”
     
    “Oh my god, I’m going to spew.”
     
    I made a gagging sound as if vomit
was building in my throat.
     
    “For Christ sake, use the bathroom
and then get out.”
     
    I sprinted passed him and up the
stairs with such urgency  that I almost convinced myself that I was sick. I got
to the landing, took a left and ran into the spare room. My pulse fired and a
shiver ran through me. I stood in the centre of the room and the feeling of
dread took hold of me again. It felt like I shouldn’t be here, but I couldn’t
turn back. There was something here, but where was it?
     
    I walked to the wardrobe, but that
didn’t feel right. I took strides over toward the bed, but the feeling
lessened. Then I looked at the floorboards, and my heart leapt. In the centre
of the room, one of the floorboards looked an centimetre out of place.
     
    Footsteps sounded on the stairs. They
were the heavy treads of Pete’s boots, and he pounded up them with urgency. My
heart rate spiked. I bent to the floor and gripped the floorboard. It looked
sturdy enough, but it came away with the slightest of tugs and revealed a
cavity underneath.
     
    In the darkness under the floorboards
were dust and cobwebs,  but there was also a shape. I reached in, expecting
something in the depths to tug at my hand and drag me down. I closed my eyes
and dug further, and my hand closed on a square object. I pulled it out and
looked at it in the pale light that filtered through the window. It was a book.
Written on the front, in writing that looked too  adult, were the words
‘Emily’s Diary’.

 
    13
     
    As we walked into the village square
Jeremiah took long strides beside me, glancing from time to time as if he
expected me to say something. I walked on without saying a word. I felt the
nervous energy coming off him like he was like a kid waiting to unwrap a
Christmas present. Maybe I was being childish, but I enjoyed the feeling of
having something over him. There was a tension between us as we walked, as
though he were always on the verge of saying something but stopped himself.
     
    Finally he blurted out: “So are you
going to tell me what you found?”
     
    “Let’s find a place to sit.”
     
    The village square was more of a box.
Concrete rectangle flags covered the ground, and moss grew in the ridges
between them. There was a statue of a woman with a sheep next to her. She was
middle-aged, and her eyes stared out into the distance as though she were
looking at the woodland that lay beyond the village. Her mouth was half open,
and her eyes looked sad.
     
    We sat on a bench under an oak tree.
The leaves were bare but the branches seemed to twist as if they were limbs
grabbing for us. I had the weird feeling that they wanted to reach out and take
the diary from me, as though it were a secret that the village wanted to keep
hidden. Jeremiah sat beside me, a fiery ball of energy.
     
    “Aren’t you going to congratulate me
on my acting?” I said.
     
    “Sidney Poitier doesn’t have anything
to worry about,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
     
    The wind threw the clouds around the
sky like clothes on a washing line. Despite being midday there was an overcast
feel to the air, as if darkness were always straining to tear through. There
was a curious lack of people milling nearby. I knew that the village was small,
but I expected at least some people to be in the square. The wind whistled
through the tree branches and somewhere a crow shrieked. It felt like the
village at the end of the world.
     
    Jeremiah tried to grab the diary from
my hands. I pulled it back out of reach.
     
    “Nope, mister. Not yet.