Chapter 23

“I’m Not Jennifer”

Jennifer halted her strange dance and opened her eyes. Her smile faded. She lowered the pennant to her side.

Corky ran, stopping before the first row of gravestones. “Jennifer—what are you doing?”

Jennifer’s eyes reflected the green moonlight as she turned to face Corky. “I’m not Jennifer,” she said, her voice husky, almost breathless.

“Huh? Jennifer—I saw you dancing,” Corky cried.

“I’m not Jennifer,” she repeated darkly, standing directly in front of Sarah Fear’s tombstone. And then she screamed: “I’m not Jennifer!”

“Jennifer—I saw you!” Corky insisted.

As if in reply, Jennifer lifted one hand high above her head and waved it as if summoning someone.

“Oh!” Corky cried out, raising her hands to her face as the grass flew off Sarah Fear’s grave, and the dirt began to rise.

Jennifer waved her hand high above her head, and the dirt rose up like a dark curtain, flying off the grave, flying high into the black sky.

And then the dirt was swirling around them both, thicker and thicker, until Corky couldn’t see beyond it, until Corky was forced to move closer to Jennifer.

Faster and faster the curtain of dirt swirled, until it became a raging, dark whirlwind, like a tornado funnel.

Covering her eyes with her arm, Corky staggered forward, forward—until she was standing face-to-face with Jennifer. Jennifer held her hand high as if directing the swirling dirt, her eyes aglow with excitement, the excitement of her power.

“Jennifer—what are you doing? Stop it! Stop it—please!”

Corky’s frightened plea was drowned out by the roar of the spinning dirt. The roar drowned out all sound, all thoughts. She could no longer see the moon or the sky, the graves, the trees.

Inside the dark funnel of dirt, she could see only Jennifer. Jennifer, her eyes glowing with an eerie green light, glaring at Corky, her expression hard, angry, her hand still raised high over her head.

They were alone, the two of them, trapped inside this frightening storm of graveyard dirt.

And then the roar faded and died as the dirt continued to whirl around them. And Jennifer’s throaty voice, a voice Corky had never heard before, rose in the fresh silence. “I am not Jennifer,” she repeated, glaring coldly at Corky. “Jennifer is dead. Jennifer died weeks ago.”

“What are you saying?” Corky cried, wrapping her arms around herself as if for protection. “What is happening?”

“Jennifer died in the bus accident,” the husky voice revealed, her eyes lighting up, as if the words were giving her pleasure. “She was dead that night in the rain. She died on top of Sarah Fear’s grave.”

“Jennifer—what are you saying?” Corky cried. Her eyes darted around, searching for an escape route. But the swirling black column of dirt offered no hope of escape.

“I waited so long, so long,” the husky voice said, deepening with sudden sadness. “I waited so long—and then Jennifer came along. . . .”

“I don’t understand,” Corky started. “I don’t—”

“Buried for so long,” the voice continued. “Buried down there for a hundred years with Sarah Fear. Waiting. Waiting.”

“You’re—you’re Sarah Fear?” Corky stammered, staring into the angry, glowing eyes.

“Not anymore,” came the reply.

Corky shuddered and hugged herself tightly.

This isn’t happening.

The heavy funnel of dirt from the grave continued to swirl silently around the two girls, blocking out all sound, all light, all evidence that the rest of the world existed.

“I—I don’t get it,” Corky stammered. “Are you some kind of ghost? An evil spirit?”

Again Jennifer threw back her head in laughter. “That is a quaint way of putting it,” she replied, sneering. She pointed down to the grave. “Nearly a hundred years I waited down there for a new body. And then Jennifer came along.”

“Please—” Corky cried, lowering her hands to her sides. “Stop. Let me go now, okay?”

Jennifer shook her head, her eyes lighting up with pleasure.

“No—please,” Corky begged. “Let me go. What do you want with me?”

A thin smile played over Jennifer’s lips. “It’s your turn to go down there,” she said, pointing into the grave.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 560