The Shelf (Dead-End Ave) Read online

  The SHelf

  Some people are born into a family fortune. Bri has just entered into a family curse…

  …I don’t want to die…was what Bri’s best friend said only days before. Never having believed in curses, Bri dismissed Aeryal’s claims and assured her friend that she would live. Assured her that all the near-death incidents were just coincidence.

  Then came her funeral.

  And then come the attacks on Bri’s life, attacks that are eerily similar to the ones on Aeryal. Without warning, she’s running for her life from a demonic being that only she can see, and in the midst of it all, not one, but two gorgeous guys are suddenly vying for her attention.

  The thing is, mysterious artifacts snuggled away on her best friend’s bookshelf might prove that one of her boyfriends isn’t as innocent as he seems.

  “The Shelf is what would happen if Pretty Little Liars met Sleepy Hallow. I was immediately held captive by its intrigue and chilled by the paranormal phenomenon.”

  -Dormaine G, Author of the Connor series

  “Gripping from the very first page.”

  -Pamela Cash, Author of the Chausiku series

  "Creepy and sometimes shocking, but although the suspense is real, I find myself reading more because I love Bri than for the scare factor."

  -R.A. White, Author of the Kergulen Series

  Kish Knight

  The SHelf

  To my loving and supporting family,

  for all the encouragement and pushing.

  I appreciated it.

  For Michael,

  who still walks with the family, but

  from above now

  www.TintdTeen.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The Shelf

  Copyright © 2014 by: Kish Knight

  Cover Design by: Cheryl Parsons

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For further information:

  www.TintdTeen.com

  CHAPTER

  1

  She and Aeryal had always been able to talk about things, private things that they could not talk to the other girls about. Around the others, Bri always had to pretend as if being barely five feet tall didn’t bother her, had to act as if she was just as confident as they were. Deanna and Shanice didn’t have time to listen to a lot of self-pity, and not only that, even if they were tolerant enough to listen to her woes, they couldn’t relate. It was pointless to try. Besides Aeryal, both of Bri’s besties were tall and athletic, slim and gorgeous, with a steady stream of handsome guys chasing after them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t like that for Bri. Or Aeryal for that matter.

  Thinking back to that last deep conversation they’d shared, Bri Brewley smiled grimly.

  They had been at Aeryal’s house, in her bedroom. Aeryal had stretched daintily against the headboard of her bed. Then she adopted a grave expression, her narrow face solemn. “I’m scared, Bri.”

  Alarmed, Bri had glanced up sharply from the stretching exercise she’d been in the middle of. With her five-foot-one frame bent perfectly in half, she frowned. “Of what?” A thick mass of jet-black curls sprung free and slapped her face. Her hair was her pride and joy, but she was also tired of replacing snapped elastic bands, like that one. Sighing, she straightened and pushed her hair away. Though she wasn’t in the exercise mood, she tended to do her stretches whenever she had a chance. Her favorite fitness blog guaranteed that daily stretching could increase a person’s height by at least two inches. For that purpose, Bri did them every day.

  “I’m going to die soon.” Aeryal said it slowly, and then paused, as if the weight of the words were just sinking in to her. “I’ve never had a boyfriend, never had sex, never done any of that stuff. I’m going to die without ever doing it.” She smiled ruefully and shook her head when Bri started to protest.

  “You don’t know-,”

  “It’s true enough. I’ve already accepted it. You know, there always seemed to be time. Before, when I was sixteen, I never even thought about having a boyfriend, but it seemed like something that would just naturally happen later. Then I got sick, and I spent the whole of my seventeenth year just withering away, dying. Now, I am going to die at eighteen. I’ve never had love. In fact, I’ve never even had anyone truly close, not even a sister to share secrets with at night.”

  In the face of Aeryal’s frankness, Bri could think of nothing else to say but, “I’m a virgin too.”

  Aeryal smiled her beautiful smile and wound a finger through her own unruly curls. “Two peas in a pod, aren’t we?”

  “Do you want to be blood sisters with me? I know it’s not much, but if we share our blood, then a part of you will always be with me. And whatever I go on to experience in life, then you’ll experience it too. Ok?”

  Bri was worried that her friend would shut the idea down, but instead Aeryal grinned. “Ok. I’d like that.”

  They pricked their fingers and held the bleeding pin pricks together for a few seconds. Their brown skin blended, the same sweet cinnamon tone. It was ironic that their skin tones were so exact, as if the universe had known how close they would become. But the similarities ended there. Where Aeryal was all of a slim, athletic build, with wide brown eyes that always shone with playful curiosity, Bri was petite and small, with a round face and nose. Her hazel eyes were tiny, and without careful makeup, made her appear to be closer to thirteen than the seventeen she actually was. “There.” Bri rubbed her finger on a discarded napkin. “Now you have a sister.”

  “Now, I do.” Aeryal had smiled. “Nice.”

  “We might not have men-,”

  “-or health or wealth,” Aeryal chimed in.

  “-but we’ve got each other,” Bri finished.

  Giggling, Aeryal eased her legs over the side of the bed and stood carefully, resting heavily on her walker. Bri tried not to stare at the slow shuffle that had replaced a carefree teenage gait. Shuffling to her bookshelf, Aeryal pulled down a small metal box and opened it. Smiling at the contents, she turned back to Bri.

  “Look.”

  Bri crossed the room quickly, so that her friend didn’t have to drag over to her. Inside the little box was a broken heart pendant nestled in cotton. It was just the one side, one half of the heart. The kind where two people shared the pendant and each kept a half of the heart that would fit when they finally came together.

  “There was a guy once,” Aeryal said, handing the pendant to Bri, “when I was thirteen, before I moved to this town.” Smiling a little, her eyes roved to the window and she gazed into the air with a faraway expression. A wistful smile played at her lips. “He was my best friend.”

  Bri held it gingerly. “Does he have the other half?”

  “Yes. We had our first kiss together and he gave me this pendant, but then I moved away and I never saw him again. Never heard from him, nothing.” Sadness shadowed her face and Bri felt like tossing the trinket through the window for a moment, but then Aeryal perked up. “Oh well, that’s the past, so whatever!”

  Both girls laughed and Bri rested the pendant back on the bookshelf, not where she’d seen Aeryal take it from, but instead on a lower shelf. To her surprise, the chunky metal slid easily into a sunken groove in the wood. She stared a bit longer, and then dismissed it.

  As their laughter died down, Bri noted that her friend was still staring more out the window than inside. Without even looking back at her, Aeryal state
d, “But I’m still going to die.”

  Letting out an exasperated breath, Bri huffed, “You’re not going to die!” Then she softened. “I know what happened to you was horrible, really, I do. But it’s not going to happen again.” The attack that had happened to Aeryal had been a random, horrific incident that had occurred as she was walking home from school, and had left her hospitalized for six months. Her attackers had forced her to drink acid, of all things, suffocated her, and left her lying in an abandoned park.

  They had never been seen or caught.

  Bri could understand her friend’s fear that it would happen again. After all, it had been an unprovoked attack. Who was to say that it couldn’t happen again? Bri, that’s who.

  Taking her best friend’s hands, Bri looked her solemnly in the eye. “It won’t happen again, Aeryal.”

  Hope shined in her friend’s eyes. “Truly?”

  Bri nodded. “Truly. I wouldn’t lie to you. We’re sisters, remember?” The instant the words left her lips, she felt it: hot, heavy breath grazing the back of her neck like an angry stalker.

  Whirling, she came face to face with….the plain air of Aeryal’s room. There was nothing….no one behind her. Still standing at her side, clearly confused, her friend asked, “Something wrong?”

  “No,” was Bri’s faint answer. “Everything is just fine.” Aside from the fact that she was 100% positive that, less than a minute ago, someone had been standing behind her.

  CHAPTER

  2

  As she turned the most perfect pirouette ever, Bri’s dance instructor nodded approvingly and Bri preened under the attention. Then she moved skillfully into the next routine, fully aware that there was a room full of scouts watching. Waiting to snap her up for their prestigious dance institutions. It was the first day of the rest of her life.

  Just one last turn….

  There was a touch on her shoulder, light enough to just have been a whisper of breath, but startling enough to make her stumble and fall out of formation. A groan of disgust rose through the onlookers, and she watched in dismay as, one by one, the scouts began to file out.

  Opening her mouth to call after them, she was surprised when no sound at all came out. And then the temperature of the air in the room dropped sharply, until she could see her breath coming out in quick puffs. As she watched, horrified, a figure formed in the frigid air, features indistinct save a pair of hideous, horrible, glowing red eyes….

  Bri screamed….as her phone rang.

  Deanna’s loud sniffling over the line was enough to snap Bri right awake. “Oh God, Bri! Wake up! Wake up!”

  “What?” she asked groggily. “What time is it?” She fumbled from underneath the covers to find her watch.

  “It happened again. Aeryal got attacked again!”

  The watch, finally located on the nightstand, hit the floor as Bri froze in shock. ‘No…’

  CHAPTER

  3

  “Yo, Bri, snap out of it!”

  Shaking herself briskly, she looked around to find Chas Elliot staring at her. “Hhmm?”

  “I’ve been calling you for the past few minutes. The ceremony’s over.”

  That’s right. She’d been watching in disbelief as a polished box containing her best friend’s body had been sealed into a tomb. Everyone else had sung hymns as the concrete slab was cemented in place, but Bri hadn’t.

  Songs wouldn’t bring Aeryal back. As she stood there, gazing at the lonely, miserable structures that housed body after dead body, Bri shivered. A chill snaked up her spine, as though an icy hand had settled there and stayed. Cold enveloped her, and even though she wore a light sweater over her clothing, the warm fabric wasn’t enough to protect against the bleak of death. She shivered again.

  The funeral was held on a Saturday. The oddest thing was that she had stood by the coffin and stroked Aeryal’s limp hand for as long as she could, even running her fingers up along the inside of Aeryal’s forearm. There had been something there, a raised scar or welt or something. But the thing was, Aeryal didn’t have anything like that on her arms when she’d been alive. It would have been too awkward for her to try and pry the arm out of the tightly fit coffin to see what it was, so Bri left it alone.

  Chas put an arm around her and steered her toward the parking lot, where the rest of their friends waited. Deanna, Shanice and Rob leaned against Chas’s car, looking somber.

  ‘At least they have the decency to look serious,’ Bri thought, though she didn’t miss the quick caress Rob gave Deanna’s butt. Or the high-pitched squeal that escaped from Deanna’s lips. Clearly, those two were already moving out of the grieving mode and back into the horny teen mode.

  Shanice caught Bri’s irritated look. “Ignore them,” she said loudly, taking over from Chas with her own arm around Bri. “Let’s go get something to eat. It’ll make us all feel better.”

  With a sigh, Bri nodded. “You’re right. I could use a change of scenery.” She followed Shanice into the car, but not before taking a long lingering look back into the graveyard, where her best friend lay.

  ****

  Fruit smoothies didn’t exactly erase the pain of death, but they certainly took the edge off. As the five of them crowded around a table sipping frozen drinks, Bri found that she hadn’t thought about Aeryal in almost ten minutes. They had ended up in Fantasy, a popular ice cream joint that also sold pizza, fries and smoothies. Just what the doctor ordered on a day like this. Rob and Chas kept them busy with funny stories from school, and Bri could almost imagine that everything was normal; there was no death.

  Until Rob caught her eye. “You still taking those pills?” he asked.

  Bri followed his gaze to her purse where the cap of a pill bottle was visible. Before she could cover it up, Rob’s hand slid down and snagged the bottle, then held it up for inspection. “No more than 2 per day,” he read.

  “So?” she shrugged, more to cover her embarrassment than anything else.

  “So, I don’t think you should be taking these things, that’s what.”

  Their eyes met in a silent challenge, until he finally shrugged and dropped the bottle unceremoniously back into her purse. “It’s your life,” he declared.

  He didn’t get it; she couldn’t stop taking the sleeping pills. She had to take them. It was the only way to ensure that she wouldn’t be tormented by images of Aeryal’s dead body all night as she slept. And even worse, the fear that she couldn’t share with anyone: she was terrified of the possibility that her friend’s spirit would come and try to talk to her. Rob, one of her more logical friends, definitely wouldn’t understand.

  “No worries, Bri,” Chas nudged her, “I’ve got my stash here too.” He patted his pocket with a grin and everyone, including Bri, broke up laughing at his self-satisfied smile. Chas was a health nut, everyone knew; his ‘stash’ was probably a packet of multivitamins. Still giggling, Shanice pushed away from the table. “Restroom,” she announced. Bri scrambled to untangle herself from the mess of chairs crammed together at their small table.

  “Wait up, I’ll come with you. I can use a freshen-up.” One hand self-consciously patted the fat bun she had managed to scrape her hair into. If she knew anything about her hair, by now it was probably ready to spring free from the ponytail holder and dozens of hair pins. Usually, Bri wore her thick, back-length curls loose around her face, as had Aeryal. Today though, in light of the occasion, she couldn’t bear to enjoy the hairstyle that she and her best friend had made popular at school. Resting her smoothie cup on the table, she fell into step with Shanice. Together, they headed to the restroom, talking about little things all the way.

  “Hey Bri!”

  She whirled. From across the room, a hand waved excitedly at her and Bri raised her own hand, but couldn’t place the face. “Who is that?” she muttered.

  Whoever it was, was hastily making their way toward her through the tables.

  “One of your many admiring fans,” Shanice giggled. “Probably a freshm
an.”

  “Shut up!” she hissed, even as her hopes were dashed. She’d been hoping a cute guy was the one calling her, but it turned out that Shanice was right. Approaching them, was Gerald Johnson, a lanky ninth-grader that she’d tutored briefly last semester.

  Shanice pushed her way into the restroom. “While you hob-nob out here, I’ll go ahead.”

  “Sure, just leave me out here, will you,” Bri muttered under her breath. It wasn’t that she thought she was too mature to talk to freshmen; not at all. There were some real mature ninth-graders out there. But Gerald was not one of them. To begin with, he was a total sweetheart, really nice and cute too, and if Bri could find a nice girl that would appreciate him, she would. Someone who was not her. ‘Nice and cute’ was not what she was looking for. Exactly what she was seeking, she didn’t know. Danger, maybe.