Spooked by Tracy Sharp

slowly and carefully through the woods, I reached out with my mind, opening it up, exploring gently. People were on either side of me, and I was hyper-aware that the person who had taken Eliza and Kerry was taking part in the search, not only to make themselves look innocent but for kicks. He knew where they were, and we didn’t. He was likely smiling inside, getting a rush out of knowing where they were while we looked for any scrap of evidence that would lead us to them.
    Sending out my psychic fingers, I probed lightly, listening, watching in my mind for any thought fragment that might tell me who the abductor might be.
    Nothing. Maybe he was as good at blocking his thoughts from others as I had been at blocking the thoughts of others from me.
    Then I heard it. A faint whispering. The whispering of a young girl. I couldn’t tell her age. I strained to hear what she was saying. Wind lifted the edges of my hair and caressed my face. I still couldn’t make out what she was trying to tell me. Was she directing the whispers to me or did she whisper all the time, her hushed voice being carried away on a breeze?
    An urgent voice cut through the air. “We’ve found something!”
    My heart froze.
    We all stopped moving.
    Mr. Peppin, my math teacher, held a black object high into the air.
    A shoe—the style unmistakable. I’d seen those shoes countless times over the past two months.
    Kerry’s Doc Martens.
     
    ***
     
    But they hadn’t found Kerry yet.
    Relief and disappointment battled in me. I kept thinking that Eliza and Kerry could still be alive. Maybe they were being kept somewhere. But maybe being dead was better.
    On the way to the parking lot, heading to Mick’s car, a black shape slid past the corner of my eye. I stopped in my tracks, looked around us. The shape was gone.
    “What is it, Lore?” Mick said, touching my arm.
    I stood for a moment, trying to look everywhere at once.
    “Lorelei?” Mick asked, his voice edged with uneasiness.
    I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought I saw something.”
    “Like what?”
    “A black shape. Like a silhouette, or a shadow. Moving really fast. When I blinked it was gone.”
    He said nothing as we got into his car. When he had slid behind the wheel he said, “I think the stress of Eliza and Kerry being missing is getting to you.”
    I shrugged. “Maybe.”
    “Want to go hang out?”
    “Sure. Where?”
    “Saint Claire’s.” The cemetery.
    It was beautiful and quiet, for obvious reasons, and there was a road, big enough for cars to drive on, which wound around the cemetery.
    I always thought I was morbid for liking to walk through the place. But it was peaceful. “Sure.”
    The fact that it was the last place anyone had seen Kerry was disconcerting. Anyone except her abductor, that was.
    We parked in the cemetery parking lot and entered the place through the tall, ornate wrought iron fence. No other cars were in the parking area. It seemed that no one was visiting deceased friends or relatives.
    We walked slowly down the path in silence. I marveled at how beautiful the stone angels were.
    “Do you have anyone buried here?” Mick asked me.
    I shook my head. “No. I’m not actually from here.” I winced inwardly. I wasn’t supposed to tell people that.
    “Really? Where are you from?”
    “Just away from here. I don’t really want to talk about it, if you don’t—”
    My eye caught the sunset shine of auburn hair at the edges of a tall gravestone.
    I stared, waiting for the face to appear. But the coppery hair had disappeared behind the stone. “There’s someone behind that gravestone.”
    “Really? I didn’t see any other cars but mine. They must’ve walked.”
    I turned my head as we walked, keeping the gravestone in sight. By the time we could see the other side of it, no one was there. A thick, swirling mist moved through the stones, seeming to have a life of its own.
    “There isn’t anyone there, Lorelei,” Mick said. He stopped, stepped in