I Am Chosen

Return to Shady Acres

"So what happened when you were holding the rock... was like some kind of dream?" Hollis was behind the wheel of his Taurus, looking utterly confused.

Kacey replied, "Dude, it was a like a bunch of weird vines playing through my head."

"Vines?"

"Six second videos?"

Silence. Blank expression.

"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Nope."

"It was like some insane bad trip. Crazy and weird as hell. Like Teletubbies. You ever watch that freakiness?" Kacey shuddered. "Talk about heebie jeebies."

Hollis shook his head and sighed. "I'm just glad I convinced Jack to not go into detail about what he saw last night... and, not to mention me. We rehearsed his story twenty times at least before I dropped him off."

Would that be enough? Kacey hoped it would. From what Hollis had said, though, she wouldn't be surprised if Jack cracked and started spilling what would no doubt sound like the rantings of a lunatic. At least Hollis hadn't told Jack his name. And luckily, the officer who had been assigned to Jack had been called away on a nearby robbery when the attack happened. Kacey had no doubt that the officer might have wound up dead otherwise.

Hollis pulled up alongside a woman in a Subaru Outback just as she hung up her phone. As Kacey watched, she could see the tension in Hollis' posture ease. He had driven at Kacey's insistence, though at the time she hadn't said why.

It was because of the stone.

The stone... still sitting in the trunk of her Daytona. Last night, even with that rock out in her car, parked on the street, she had felt a kind of invisible force... weak, but she swore it was there, trying to draw her to it-to hold it once again, gaze into the core of it... and when she had finally slept, she had dreamed of a featureless, all-engulfing void; of black, oily tentacles slithering like cobras, searching, grasping...

Looking out the open window, she drove those thoughts away. The wind was picking up and it was starting to smell like rain. Thus far the thick clouds overhead had merely looked threatening. "There's something about that rock," Kacey said. "It was like Declan was using it on that kid in the hospital... same as I think he tried to use it on me, on the ferry."

"So the rock has some kind of special powers?" The old coot actually had the gall to sound skeptical.

"You tell me you got chased by Dead Rhonda White, trying to impale you with some Queen of Blades bone-hand and you have trouble swallowing that the stone might have powers?"

Hollis took a moment to answer. "Yeah, you're right. I've reached a point both in my life and in this case where nothing surprises me anymore."

Damn right, Kacey thought as they pulled into Shady Acres cemetery.

Burt, the caretaker, looked like something a cow had chewed on for several hours and then spit out. His brown curls popped off his head like broken mattress springs as he squinted into the light coming through the open door of the caretaker's house.

"A policeman came through already," he croaked. "Earlier this morning right after I called it in."

"Just following up," Hollis said. We won't take too much of your time." Burt closed one eye, scratched his head and said "lemme get my hat."

Two minutes later they were standing in front of Rhonda White's grave. The soil had been upturned, similar to what had been done at Declan's... how long ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

"I didn't hear nothin', you know, I was asleep," Burt said.

Asleep, or passed out drunk?

"Guess you wanna see the other one?" Burt asked.

Hollis and Kacey shared a questioning look.

Other one?

After a short walk they found themselves at another grave site, this one also violated. Here, however, the dirt had been piled to one side. Unlike Rhonda's grave, which truthfully looked as if she had dug herself out, this one gave the appearance of someone-or something-having dug their way in.

"Lid to the burial vault did look like it was moved," Burt said. "Coffin was intact though."

"Is the body missing?" Kacey asked.

Burt shook his head. "Nope. Still there."

"Did it look like anything... had been done to it?" Hollis enquired. Burt scrunched his face. "Like what?"

"Did the body appear to be disturbed in any way?" Kacey attempted to clarify.

Burt shrugged his shoulders. "Not that I could tell."

Kacey stared down at the burial vault. What the hell was this new craziness? The fact that they didn't know who dug into it or why was bad enough; what made it worse was who the grave belonged to: it was a person both Hollis and Kacey knew. She hadn't attended the funeral, because, as with Declan, she believed it would have been in poor taste... poor taste because, also as with Declan, she was directly responsible for this person's death.

The grave belonged to her ex-boyfriend and once-fellow officer, Ron Hanson.

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I was serious about the Teletubbies. Whoever's responsible for that show was on some serious drugs. See you all in one week.