The Shelf (Dead-End Ave) Read online

  ‘In fact, I don’t even want to talk period.’ Somehow, she had ended up at the very back of the group, with the last stragglers down the hill at least ten feet ahead of her. ‘Good. They can go,’ she thought. Spying a lonely trail to her left, Bri abandoned the group. She wasn’t in the mood for history anyway.

  She followed it until she came to a low stone wall and perched on it. Behind her was the open air of the cliff, a foliage covered drop over the edge of the mountain. Bri closed her eyes.

  “How could she die? Eighteen year-old girls have everything to live for, they shouldn’t be dying.” She sighed. “I thought they said she was getting better.”

  Bracing her hands on the edge of the stone, Bri leaned backward over the drop as far as she dared. She wasn’t trying to fall, just seeing what it felt like to be on the edge of death. As Aeryal had been. Her friend had come to terms with her upcoming death and made peace with it even. If Bri sat here on the brink of the cliff long enough, would she make peace with death as it approached? Maybe….

  There was something else, too. There, hanging on the fringes of her consciousness, was the dark presence. Heavy and cloying, it pulsed there, slowly tugging her down, under, further into herself. A paralyzing fear gripped her and Bri wanted to scream, needed to scream, but couldn’t. It was pulling her deeper in, and she would no longer be herself-

  A rough hand clamped onto her forearm and yanked, dragging her off the wall. Cut stone sliced into Bri’s thighs, left bare by the shorts she wore and her eyes flew open with a yelp. A mouthful of grass stifled her cry as she landed. Rolling over indignantly, she glared, waiting to see who had manhandled her like that.

  Korey Parsons stared down at her, his handsome face scowling. “Are you loony or something? Were you trying to kill yourself?”

  His blatant hostility threw Bri off-balance, and embarrassment rose quickly to the surface. ‘Excuse me? I’m the one who should be pissed! What’s his problem anyway?’ “NOT that it’s any of your business, but no, I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I was just sitting there.”

  His scowl grew. “Uh huh. If you call leaning backward over a cliff, sitting, then yea, that’s what you were doing. But for the record, I don’t buy that. I think you’re crazy.”

  Anger mixed with irritation surged in her. Bri scrambled to her feet, pointedly ignoring the cocky hand that he extended. Instead, she busied herself with brushing grass blades and pebbles from her clothes. From the corner of her eye, all she could see was his folded arms, tight muscles peeking from below his sleeve. ‘Stop looking at me.’ She could feel him watching as she dusted herself off and it unnerved her. Just him standing there unnerved her.

  “Look, can you shut up now? You don’t even know me.” She walked away from him, back towards the main path.

  “Maybe not, but I know when a person is doing something to hurt themselves.” From the sound of his voice, he was following right behind her. For some reason, that both irritated and excited her.

  “Whatever,” she muttered, not caring if he heard.

  They were silent all the way back to rejoin the group, Bri lost in her own thoughts, and making a point to ignore Korey’s scowl.

  ****

  Most of the kids had somehow disappeared by the time the bus arrived back at the school, Shanice, Deanna and Chas being among them. “Must’ve have been that stop at the mall for food,” Bri muttered, still marveling that the teacher had even fallen for that. It was literally the oldest trick in the book. Any teen worth their salt knew to skip out during the field trip food run.

  Unfortunately for Bri, she had stupidly left her bag in her locker, so she was at the mercy of the bus driver and Mrs. Francois’s continuous rant about student truancy.

  Even more irritating was the fact that Korey was one of the students still on the bus. So she had to endure his jerky company all the way back to school. Of course, he wasn’t actually saying anything to her, since he was about five seats ahead with earbuds stuck in his ears, but still.

  ‘It’s the principle of the matter,’ she pouted, still smarting from the way he had treated her.

  They finally pulled into the near-deserted school parking lot, and Bri breathed a sigh of relief. She was nothing if not ready to head home. Waiting her turn to slide out of her seat and off the bus, she tapped her fingers impatiently. Giving in the urge she had been fighting for the last ten minutes of the ride, Bri stole a glance at Korey’s back as he moved up the aisle to get off the bus.

  He was definitely a gorgeous guy; that was totally obvious. But there was something else about him, something more that attracted Bri to him. There was something in the way he looked at her, as if he could see right into her. As if he could sense her attraction. Not to mention that he was bold. Even watching him descend the stairs to exit the bus, she could almost see the confident, devil-may-care demeanor radiating off of him. Dangerous.

  “See you tomorrow, class.” Mrs. Francois announced once the few remaining students had vacated the bus. “Plus, all of you that came back to the school yard as you were supposed to, will get extra points on your next test.”

  Bri rolled her eyes as the other students guffawed and sniggered. Stealing a quick, sidelong glance at Korey, she noted that he hadn’t even cracked a smile. He just stood there, listening, until the class was dismissed, and then sauntered away.

  Hating herself for being curious about him, Bri couldn’t resist looking to see where he would go. Surprise drew her brows skyward as she watched him leap into a sporty black jeep with monster tires. Definitely dangerous….but hot.

  “Jerk,” she huffed. Figured that Mr. Korey I’m-the-finest-guy-and-I’m-smarter-than-you, would be too good to walk home like she was. With another eyeroll, she shifted her backpack and started for home. And she made sure to firmly squelch the little desire to have him offer her a lift.

  CHAPTER

  5

  As she walked, wishing that she had been smart enough to skip out like her friends had, her cell phone rang. A quick search through her bag revealed the phone tucked away in an inside pocket. “H’lo?”

  “Bri?”

  She frowned. Who was it? “Yes? Who’s this?”

  “Oh good, Bri, this is Aeryal’s housekeeper. How are you?”

  Automatically, Bri straightened up. The housekeeper? She hadn’t spoken to Greta since weeks before Aeryal died. When Aeryal had first gotten sick, she’d always been at Aeryal’s house and saw the housekeeper just about every day, but that had changed since the death. Greta had practically raised Aeryal, ever since Mr. Swan had abandoned his daughter to a lonely house. Which in itself was crazy. When Aeryal had first explained her that she lived alone, Bri had been stunned. Honestly stunned.

  What father rented a second townhouse for his teenage daughter to live in with only a middle-aged housekeeper for company? Apparently, Aeryal’s did. Somehow, Aeryal’s ‘incidents’ had been too much for him to deal with, and on top of that, his new girlfriend couldn’t get along with Aeryal, so he had a separate home where Aeryal and Greta lived. ‘Incidents’. Which was what he called the fact that Aeryal had a regular streak of disabling accidents.

  Aeryal never seemed to mind; for her, it was just another problem in her life. Now Greta, the woman who had lived with and raised Aeryal for four years was calling Bri. And of course, as Aeryal’s best friend, Bri should have at least called Greta once after the death. But she hadn’t. So now, of course she was feeling more than a little nervous about why Greta wanted to talk to her.

  “I’m fine, Greta. How about yourself?”

  “Hanging on, that’s all I can do. Every day is easier than the last, but still not easy enough, if you can understand that. It’s attending to all the little details that keep me going. Which is why I’m calling you. Bri, sweetheart, can you do me a favor?”

  “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

  She sounded a little hesitant to speak. “It’s Aeryal’s things. I never picked them up from the hospital and I just received a
call saying that they will dispose of her personal effects if they aren’t picked up by the end of the week. But I just can’t bring myself to look at them, Bri, I still can’t look at the things she wore on that day.” Greta took a breath and then continued shakily. “Do you think maybe that you could go to the hospital and grab them for me? Maybe go through them for anything of value?”

  “Uh, yeah sure.” Bri released an inaudible sigh of relief. That she could do. She’d been worried that Aeryal’s caretaker would ask why she hadn’t come over to visit after the funeral. Guilty stuttering about being busy with school would be really immature.

  At least, Greta’s errand would keep her from moping around the house, doing nothing.

  ****

  Ringing the doorbell over and over did nothing. No one was home.

  “Great, just great,” Bri muttered, slumping against the front door, the bag with Aeryal’s possessions clutched in her hands. It wasn’t a very big bag. It was sad, really, how at the end of the day, a person’s life was reduced to just a Ziploc bag with a name sticker. Even the yard showed the simpleness of life and death. In the one week that the house had been empty, weeds had grown wildly in thick patches around the covered porch.

  “You know what?” Something had occurred to her. She knew where Aeryal had kept her spare key. Going to the side of the little flowerbed, Bri slid the key from below a fake rock.

  Key in hand, she was inside within seconds. As she figured, the house was empty. It felt odd to be in the house with no one there, and Bri wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Heading up the stairs to Aeryal’s room, she tried to avoid looking at the school pictures of her best friend lining the stairwell and pushed open the darkened room that she knew so well. Shadows clung to everything, obscuring the familiar furnishings and leaving creepy humps in their place. Absolutely no sound broke the still of the room, and even her breathing seemed to be muted by the eerie quiet.

  Wondering if she should just leave the bag on Aeryal’s desk and go, Bri exhaled slowly and peered around. Everything was the same as if her friend had just stepped out for a slice of pizza. Yet she couldn’t shake the sense of something being amiss.

  A sudden urge came over her and Bri frowned, but followed her feet to the bookshelf. The metal box was back in its place. Taking it down, she pulled out the broken-heart pendant and stared at it. Her fingers roved over it, exploring curiously. It wasn’t like any other she had seen; inscriptions covered the backside, written in an unfamiliar language. A strong sense of wanting slid over her and she shook her head, intending to put it back in its place, but instead found herself slipping the pendant into her jeans pocket.

  Bri frowned. She didn’t want Aeryal’s jewelry obviously, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to return it. Unwillingly, she let her fingers slide over the aged wood of the bookshelf. Something about it seemed….alive. Beneath her fingers, it felt warm, almost like skin, and Bri shuddered. She’d never touched anything that felt so alien and evil.

  Even so, she could not stop running her fingers over it, slowly tracing the whorls and patterns along the grain. Oddly enough, there seemed to be shapes cut into each level of the shelf, and Bri frowned, remembering how the pendant had sank into one of those grooves. As she touched each, a tiny whisper sounded and grew louder, until the air around her was humming.

  Mildly freaked, Bri muttered, “Time to leave,” and jammed her hands in her pockets, making sure the pendant still there. With a sigh, she left the room. Clearly, Greta wouldn’t be home anytime soon, and Bri did have things to do at home. She headed for the stairs. The first step creaked miserably under her weight, echoing loudly through the lonely hall. Suddenly, a blast of frigid air swept over her, numbing her where she stood. Frost appeared on her arms, white ridges harsh against the brown. She could feel goosebumps rising beneath the ice and she shivered violently.

  ‘Why can’t I move?’ Hysteria filled her brain as her feet refused to work, refused to move her out of place. It was as if she was frozen where she stood.

  Overhead, darkness swirled until it settled into one large mass and two red eyes popped open in the midst of it. She knew it wasn’t her imagination that the eyes looked pleased.

  THERE YOU ARE, hissed in her brain.

  ‘What is that thing?’ her brain screamed. She struggled against the crippling cold, fighting to at least move something, one arm even.

  All of a sudden, she was able to rip herself free from the horrible, icy grip and Bri pitched forward down the stairs. Landing at the bottom in a crumpled heap, she hauled herself up and raced toward the front door. As she ran, the chill kept up with her, only a hair away from freezing her again. Shivers ran up and down her spine.

  The icy fingers were almost closing on her neck as she yanked open the door and threw herself out. And hit the sidewalk running. And stayed running.

  Bri was all the way home when she remembered that she was still clutching Aeryal’s plastic bag. There was no way she was going back to return it; Greta would just have to wait until tomorrow or whenever Bri could make it back over there.

  Her fingers were shaking. Sitting on the edge of the couch, she fingered the plastic over and over. What had she run into in Aeryal’s house? A ghost or something? Chasing her for taking Aeryal’s things? Lifting the bag to eye level, she checked out the contents sliding from side to side inside.

  Wristwatch. Cell phone. Lip gloss. Mascara. Folded sheets of paper. Debit card. Keys. Everything that Aeryal had with her the day she’d died was in that bag. Bri nestled the bag in between her and the arm of the couch, unable to move the bag far away from herself. It was as close as she could get to her friend at the moment, and currently, she needed a friend.

  Something jabbed her in the butt and she slid the remote out from beneath her. Snapping on the TV seemed like a good idea. Anything to take her mind off of Aeryal, and the horrible thing living in her house.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Bri sat, head down, over one of her textbooks. Wasn’t it weekend? Why was she studying? Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out which textbook she was reading. Suddenly, the outline of someone fell across her book. Bri glanced up sharply. The person’s clothing was familiar, the lime green T-shirt almost as recognizable as if it were in Bri’s own closet. Her eyes leaped up to meet Aeryal’s pretty brown eyes.

  “Bri.”

  Her friend was sitting in the window seat as she had always done. And as always, Aeryal’s thick curls flopped over her eyes as she lounged in the seat.

  “Aeryal!” Bri gasped. It was her. Then a thought gripped her. “Oh, God, this is just a dream. You died days ago.” The hurt that swamped her at that realization was almost too much to bear.

  The dream Aeryal laughed, the sound tinkling merrily as it had in real life. “You ARE dreaming, silly. But I’m real.” As she said the last bit, her laugh stopped and she was serious again. Not unhappy, Bri could see, just serious.

  Gosh, it even sounded like her! Bri bit her lip. She was dreaming, definitely dreaming, but even so, she felt like Aeryal was really there with her.

  “Silly. I told you. I AM here,” Aeryal’s tone was impatient this time. “Yes, we both know that I’m dead, but I came to talk to you right now, while you’re sleeping, so please just talk to me. Or at least, listen.”

  Shaking a bit, Bri raised her head from where she had dropped it on the desk. Swallowing back a pang of sadness, she once more looked her dead friend in the eyes. “Where are you?”

  Aeryal didn’t need an explanation of what she meant. “With the others that have died. My mom is there, so is my grandmother. They’re so much like me, Bri.” The enthusiasm beamed on her face. “Plus they know so much about me, it’s crazy. My mother says that she has been watching over me since the very day that she died.”

  Bri knew how much something like this meant to Aeryal. Aeryal’s mother had died a few months after she was born, leaving baby Aeryal in an unfamiliar world by herself. She
had never known her mother’s love. The same thing had strangely happened to Aeryal’s own mother with Aeryal’s grandmother. She had also died after the birth of her child.

  It had to be the best thing in world to find out that both of the women you had missed in life had been watching over you constantly. Bri reconsidered. Well, maybe not the best thing, considering that you had to die to find this out.

  Aeryal winked. “I’ve been watching you, and I see that I’m not the only one who’s having a good time.” Without waiting for Bri to ask, she continued. “So who’s the hottie you were hanging out with at lunchtime?”

  Bri felt herself grow hot. “Korey? He’s a new student. He sort of started hanging out with our group. It’s no big deal.”

  “Yeah, but you LIKE him. Even from up here, I can see that.” Mischievously, Aeryal grinned and asked, “So when are you going to ask him out? You know you want to.”