Texts From The Great Beyond

 

 

Leon didn’t look up at Tabitha and me as we climbed the tree. All of his focus was on chewing a hunk of tree bark like it was a delicious bone.

He’s kind of a weird dog.

Strange winds blew loud and strong. They pushed and pulled the oak tree’s limbs as Tabitha and I climbed higher. Hands trembling, we clutched a long limb extending over Peak’s backyard. One wrong move and we’d fall onto his fence spiked with rusty barbed wire.

From our vantage point we could survey nearly all of Peak’s property. There was his parked truck, a couple half-collapsed sheds, piles of old junk everywhere, and two tall mounds of shoveled dirt. I sure hoped I wasn’t gazing at our future graves.

Ping.

Another supernatural text. I checked my cell. The blustering winds forced me to cling to the branch.

“Well, what does it say?” Tabitha whispered, a few feet behind me.

“It says ‘Bring him to hospital.’ ”

“Bring who to hospital?” Tabitha asked.

Before I could read the rest of the text, we heard the tortured scrape of metal on metal. Looking up, we saw Peak opening an upstairs window. The sight of his evil darkness caused me to instantly look away. And, much worse, to drop my phone.

I lunged forward as my phone fell into empty air. Against all odds, I caught it. Unfortunately, I also fell into empty air. Elbows over butt, I tumbled from the oak tree toward the barbed wire fence below. I had time for just one quick thought: I’m dead.

WHAM!

I hit something, another tree limb below. Bouncing off of it, my sunglasses flew, and I fell onto Jack Peak’s property, narrowly missing the fence.

I landed on a dirt mound. Wind knocked out of me, I heard Peak shouting something.

I’m dead, I thought again. But then I realized he wasn’t yelling at me.

The mound blocked me from his line of sight. Peak threw a handful of bones into his backyard. I couldn’t tell if they were animal bones or people bones, but they were definitely bones.

As I hugged the mound and said a prayer for protection, my cell vibrated. Expecting to hear Sandra Morton’s voice, I answered. It was her daughter instead.

“Oh, my God, Bertie, are you okay?” Tabitha asked.

“Yes. My face broke my fall.” I saw Tabitha perched in the tree above me.

“Don’t move,” she said. “If you do, the creepy axe murderer will see you. He’s looking that way.”

“Okay…”

“Oh, no! Your sunglasses are on top of the mound. Quick, grab them.”

“You just said don’t move!”

“Do it! If Mr. Peak spots those glasses you are so dead. Hurry!”

I blindly reached my hand atop the mound.

“No, Bertie, more to the left,” Tabitha said.

I searched more to the left.

“Your other left, idiot,” she said, chuckling.

Finally, I found my sunglasses. During the fall, one of the arms had snapped off. I tried them on to see if they still worked. They did. In the corner of my eye, I noticed a dozen little stars orbiting around me. Great, I have a concussion, I thought.

Then panic. They weren’t stars, they were honeybees with silver auras. And they were flying into a huge beehive attached to the mound I had landed on.

“Tabitha, is Peak looking at me?” I asked in a rapid-fire panic. “I’m sitting near a giant beehive. I’m totally allergic to bees, and I have to get out of here now!”

“Can you make it to the rear of his truck?” she said.

Getting up, a sudden sharp pain shot through me. My left arm was bruised and aching. Still, I had to get away before I got stung. Dashing from the hive and the mound, I zigzagged between various junk piles. Peak’s truck was roughly twenty yards away. Over the cell, Tabitha gave me directions from above. “Washing machine, hide behind it.” Or “Stop, duck down, he’s looking.” Or “Run to the woodpile. Go-go-go!”

Finally, I reached the Dodge. I had an escape route to Peak’s front gate. All I wanted was to leave that dark and miserable hellhole. But something caught my eye in the backyard. At first, it was hard to see through the property’s swirling dark aura. It was like looking through a black sandstorm. Amid the roiling swell of dust and darkness, I spied a tiny dot of gold. It was faint and hidden behind carcasses of rusted snowmobiles.

All at once, my head cleared. Everything made perfect sense. From finding the glasses, to the Girl Scout cookies, even falling out of the tree. Everything that had happened up to now led me to this moment, gazing at Jack Peak’s backyard.

“Tabitha, I see something,” I reported.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Hope. A speck of hope.”

“What does that mean? What are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you that I know what we have to do. And why we have to do it together.”