The Funtime Show by J. L. Bryan

Author:J. L. Bryan [Bryan, J. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: jlbryanbooks.com
Published: 2023-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

“What do we do?” Stacey whispered. “Kid plus shovel plus graveyard in the woods adds up to one seriously troubling word problem. Right?”

“I'll go over and stick close to her,” I said.

“But you're not going to stop her?” Stacey asked.

“It depends on what she's doing.”

“I should go, too.”

“Stay here and keep watch over the rest of the family. And make sure nothing sneaks up behind me.”

Stacey was plainly about to protest, but I hopped out of the van and closed the door before I had to hear it.

As I started through the bushes, I turned on my headset and tuned in to Stacey's continuing complaint, already in progress. “…and also, there was the time you almost got thrown off that balcony by that poltergeist girl, and maybe I could have stopped her—”

“It's fine, Stacey. You're like twenty feet away.”

“And getting farther away with every step you take. This is just like the time—”

I turned down the volume to tune her out as I made my way toward the clients' back yard. My night vision goggles portrayed everything in shades of green.

Maeve crossed the strip of clover-filled lawn to the stand of woods in back, their house's portion of the common woodlands running around and through the neighborhood. She followed the path we'd cut open, inadvertently making it easier for her to do the entity's bidding tonight.

I kept my distance, taking advantage of the wide, mossy trunks of old-growth trees to conceal my presence from the little girl. Maeve had no idea who I was, or that anyone was here watching her house. Any attempt to reach out to her would have to be balanced against the possibility of terrifying her with a sudden threat of stranger danger in what she probably believed to be in her perfectly safe back yard.

Sneaking closer, I spied her carefully tucking Polly Patches into the crook of a tree limb so the puppet sat there in seeming comfort, watching over Maeve's activities.

Those activities proved unsettling, because Maeve's next move was to kneel at one of the cairns, the one where the skylight wraith had been seen to appear and disappear.

The little girl began removing the rocks one by one, working with the exuberant energy of the ultra-young, singing to herself as she took apart the cairn.

I turned up my headset volume. Surely Stacey had given up her tirade by now and moved on to other things.

“Hello?” she whispered. “Are you seeing this or not, Ellie? Maeve is digging into that cairn like a dog that just remembered where it left its favorite toy.”

“I'm watching her,” I whispered.

“Ellie, what if she turns up something awful?” Stacey whispered. “Something that scars her for life, like bones or a skull, or an undead thing that reaches up and grabs her—”

“Yeah, you're right.” I typed a quick text to Iris: Your daughter is digging up a cairn in the woods. “You're like the little angel on my shoulder tonight, Stacey. Reminding me to do the right thing.”

“Then who's the devil on your other shoulder?”

“Don't need one.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.