Bentley Little - The Burning

The four of them had made over twenty dollars that summer.

"Want to know something freaky?" Leslie asked as they passed by the picket fence. "I've heard shit from there." She glanced quickly at Skylar. "Stuff, I mean. I've heard stuff. Sorry," she told Jolene. "I didn't-"

"It's nothing he hasn't heard from his father," Jolene said. She looked at Skylar. "But that's still a bad word, right?"

"I know, Mom."

"Okay."

"Anyway," Leslie said, "I know you're not going to believe me, but every once in a while I walk by here- and it's not even night, sometimes it's in the middle of the day like now-and I hear ... I don't know, like, mumbling or something. Chanting. The first time, I thought it was the wind or sound carrying up from the street, some sort of aural illusion. I even thought it might be a trick, some kid's high-tech version of our haunted tour; I thought there might be a hidden speaker with a tape loop or something. But the second time, I was brave, and I walked over and ..." She took a deep breath. "It was definitely coming from one of the graves. I couldn't tell which one. I just ran."

It was not hard for Jolene to believe. She looked to the left. Even in the daytime, the grave site exuded an aura of dread, and although she was a grown woman, she felt the same way she had as a child and as a teenager, experienced the same sense of irrational foreboding. She'd forgotten that feeling, and she wished now that they'd driven, that Skylar had not seen the grave site. She glanced down at him. As always, his expression was unreadable, serious, grave.

Grave.

"How many times have you heard things?" she asked.

"Four," Leslie admitted.

"And you still walk this way?"

"Yeah. But it's been a while since the last one. And it's not all that scary after the first few times. You kind of get used to it."

Still, they were silent until they were past the site, until the square of white pickets had been swallowed by bushes and weeds and could no longer be seen behind them.

"Who paints that fence?" Jolene asked. "Did anybody ever figure that out?"

"Good question," Leslie said. "I don't know the answer. Maybe someone does, but it's not general knowledge." She smiled. "We should set up a camera with a motion sensor on it."

"Cal always used to ask about that, remember? He thought it was some long-lost relative, a witch who lived in town disguised as a normal person."

"A witch?" Skylar said anxiously.

"Just a joke," Jolene told him. They definitely should not have come this way.

The path sloped down, passed through an empty field grown high with meadow grass, then ended on Bluebird Lane. Ahead down the narrow road, Jolene could see the white steeple of the

Presbyterian church peeking out from between the pines.

"Almost there," Leslie said cheerily.

Her house was a small log cabin set back against the trees. In front was a vegetable garden ringed by a border of wildflowers. That surprised Jolene. Businesswoman she could see, but gardener? People changed, she realized, and though she and Leslie still had an easy rapport and seemed to have instantly fallen back into their old roles, she recognized that she no longer really knew her friend.

It was a sobering thought.

The cabin was bigger than it looked. Inside, there was a large sitting room, a decent-sized kitchen and three bedrooms. One was Leslie's room, another was her office, and the third was a guest room. "I've never used it," Leslie admitted. "In the three years since I bought this place, I've never had an overnight guest." She caught Jolene's raised eyebrow. "That kind. So if you two wanted to inaugurate the room, it's available."

Jolene looked over at Skylar, standing next to the window and looking out at the garden. She was going to have to make some decisions about their future ... and pretty quickly. He was supposed to be in school right now. She'd yanked him out when she left Frank, and she hadn't even called the school to explain. They'd no doubt called to find out why he'd been absent for the past week, and she just hoped that Frank had taken care of the problem.

If she really was planning to stay in Bear Flats for any length of time, she had to get Skylar enrolled. And since it was the beginning of the school year, it would be better to do it now. It wasn't good for a third grader to miss too much class time; he'd fall behind. Besides, for a boy as shy as Skylar, each day that went by would make it harder for him to make friends and fit in.

Life was so damn complicated.

She looked around the cabin. Honestly, she would much rather be living here than with her mother, but making that transition wouldn't be easy. No matter how carefully she finessed it, her mom would end up hurt and angry, and she might even take it out on Skylar, cutting him out entirely. The boy couldn't handle another emotional loss right now.

The best thing to do would be for her to find a job and get her own place, rent an apartment.

The expression on her face must have betrayed her emotions, because Leslie walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right," she promised, smiling sympathetically.

Jolene patted her friend's hand, looking over at Skylar by the window. "I hope so," she said.

Skylar didn't like Bear Flats. There was nothing to do here. The town was boring and way too small. Plus all these trees and the fact that it was in the mountains ...

He missed the desert.

He didn't like his grandma much either. Oh, she was nice to him and all- most of the time-but even when she was on her best behavior, there was something unstable about her, something unpredictable, something that reminded him of Dad.

He didn't miss his father. He felt guilty about that, but deep down he knew that he and his mom were better off by themselves. Only he wondered what came next, what they were going to do. Were they going to stay in this place and live here forever? Was this just a stop on their way to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or some big city? Were they going to wait awhile and then go back home to Yuma?

He didn't know because his mom wouldn't tell him.

He hadn't exactly asked, but the way he saw it, he shouldn't have to. It was her job to explain what was going on.

And she hadn't done that.

He rolled over on the small cot, turned from his back to his side to his stomach, uncomfortable in every position. As bad as the cot was, he'd had no trouble falling asleep until tonight. Whether it was the altitude or the stress of being here, he'd been tired at the end of each day and was out like a light the second his head hit the pillow. This evening, though, he'd tossed and turned, unable to stop his brain from thinking about spooky stuff.

Those graves had really freaked him out.

Skylar flipped onto his back again, then sat up against the wall. He'd been thinking about that grave site all day long. His mom and her friend had acted like it was nothing, especially afterward, but he saw through that. They were scared of it, too. All afternoon, he'd found himself obsessing about those graves, wondering who was buried there. In a way, he wished that they'd stopped and he'd been able to get a closer look. He might not have been brave enough to do more than take a quick glance, but he still would have known what the gravestones actually looked like instead of relying on his overactive imagination. For, in his mind, there was a large stone marker and a small one, both weathered by time, the words Mother and Daughter chiseled in spooky horror-show letters. He imagined that nothing grew on top of the graves, the cursed ground bare of even a stray weed, and that wild animals instinctively avoided the site, afraid.