Diary of the Gone (2 page)

I’d never met the boy, but I suspected
it was him standing there with his hands stretched towards me. The
image still made me shiver.

What if Nate was right,
and it was Mrs. Palmer who killed Greg?

After a few minutes we slowed down a
bit, still breathless and shaking. I looked a real mess, with the
green stains and dirt all over my jeans.

Now I’ll have to
come up with something to tell my mom,
I
thought grimly.

My thoughts were interrupted by a
voice I hated more than the sound of nails screeching against a
blackboard.

“
Well, well, well, little
Callie’s got poo all over himself. Did you do it to him,
Rushmore?”

Cheering and laughter followed the
remark.

I turned around, my teeth clenched. A
group of thugs were closing in on us. Stan Crosby, the boy who
spoke, was in the center, flanked by four guys on either side.
During the short time I’d been in Olden Cross, Stan had given me a
couple of black eyes, tripped me whenever he saw me, and humiliated
me in every possible way. The son of the school principal, he
easily got away with it, and I didn’t feel like blabbering about
every one of his pranks to my mom. Just had to live with
it.

Nathan took a step towards the group.
“Back off, Stan, or—”

“
What? Are you going to
kick me?” Stan’s group produced another round of cheering and
whistling.

“
I sure will.” Nate balled
his fists and took another step.

I grabbed him by the sleeve and
whispered, “He isn’t worth it. You’ll only get another detention.”
To my relief, Nate didn’t argue.

“
Right, Rushmore, listen
to the loser.” Stan folded his arms, a smug smile playing on his
face. “You’re lucky we’re not in the mood to kick your sorry asses
today. But we will be next time.” He turned to his cronies. “Come
on, guys, let’s go.”

They rushed past us, Stan giving me a
hard push with his shoulder. I tried my best not to flinch, even
though the push hurt as if his shoulder was made of
rock.

As their silhouettes and voices
retreated into the distance, Nate and I stood watching
them.

First I step into a
Shadow, then bump into Stan. Nice!
I
thought. Though lightning never struck twice, something told me my
bad luck for the day wasn’t over yet. If bad things were bound to
happen to me, today would be the day.

“
Let’s go,” Nate said.
“Wayne and Audrey are waiting for us.”

*

Olden Cross was a small godforsaken
town, fringed for the most part by an ancient forest. The old
townsfolk said it used to be a village whose first two streets
formed a cross. As time passed, more people arrived and the village
turned into a small town. A few more streets appeared, but the name
stuck.

The two-story cottage where my mom,
sister, and I moved to belonged in a row of cottages that stood
closest to the woods.

Nathan and I veered off the road,
taking a turn away from my house and the forest. As the horrors of
the day played back in my mind, I decided to break the
silence.

“
Are we going to tell the
guys what happened?” I asked.

“
Sure. There’s something
weird going on, and we’ve got to find out everything.”

He offered me a humorless smile, a
sign he was being serious.

That was Nathan. Always dragging
himself and others into trouble.

“
Do you think she killed
that deer?” I asked.

“
Definitely.” He furrowed
his brow, his lips squeezed in a grim line.

I started tsking and snapping my
fingers, which I knew irritated Nate, but at least it helped me
distract myself from the haunting images of the boy in the
forest.

“
By the way, here they
are,” Nathan said.

Wayne and Audrey. Perhaps the two
people I envied most of all in the whole world. Only a year older
than me, they already held hands in public, kissed at the back of
our school, and did who-knew-what-other things that I, the loner of
Olden Cross, couldn’t. I’d never even had a girlfriend. For a
fifteen-year-old I had way too many things wrong about me, yet this
one made me probably the most miserable.

Everyone at school compared them to
Romeo and Juliet, and now that I saw them holding hands I wished it
was me with Audrey instead of Wayne.

“
Hey, guys!” Nathan
called.

I shot an uncomfortable look at
Audrey, mumbling a hardly audible hello, then looked down as if in
shame.

Well, did I mention I felt like a
total loser when girls were around? With Audrey I was a real mess.
She was special, a flawless angel with perfect auburn hair, and an
aroma of peaches around her. But what chance did I have to date
such a girl? Zilch.

Wayne looked us up and down, curiosity
twinkling in his eyes. “Where’ve you been? Looks like you had fun
today.” Both he and Audrey smiled.

“
We’ve got to tell you
something,” Nathan said enthusiastically, as if what we’d gone
through was something enjoyable.

“
Can it wait until we get
to the Underground?” Wayne asked, smiling.

“
Okay then,” Nate
replied.

“
Erm, sorry, guys,” I
said. “I just realized … I promised Mom I’d come home early.”
Though that was a lie, everyone seemed to believe it.

Nathan shrugged. “All right, man. If
you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

I nodded, turned around and ran home
as fast as my sprained ankle let me.

Chapter 2

Entry #15

February 12

I gave up on the idea of
interfering with the Shadows. It’s no use. Every time something
stops me: either I get a detention on the day I know someone will
die, or Mom takes me and Bev to town. There’s nothing I can do.
It’s as if they don’t want me to. As if they want me to stare at
their agony before they die.

I can’t. I just
can’t.

A strip of mauve tinted the sky where
it met the horizon. It was already dusk. Days in Olden Cross were
too short.

An old Ford Explorer stood next to the
garage and the windows on the first floor blazed with lights. Mom
and Bev had come back from town.

I hoped they wouldn’t notice my
anxiety, though I could barely control my heavy breathing. I would
probably have to sneak past them, then change my clothes and hide
the stained jeans under my bed.

Hurrying across the yard and up the
porch steps, I was glad today would soon become history.

As soon as I entered the house, a
voice chimed from the kitchen, “Sissy-pants is home!”

I appreciated my sister’s sense of
humor, only I wished she’d never have to exercise it on
me.

“
Stop it, Bev,” a
defensive voice—a lower pitch but still almost the same—said with
disapproval.

Mom was the only one who could make
Bev shut up, and that was what I needed right now. Both came to
meet me. Bev propped her shoulder against the doorframe, her pouted
lips and folded arms very much the usual form of greeting me. This
time she added rolling her eyes to her ‘I-Hate-Callum’
etiquette.

“
What’s with your
clothes?” Bev asked right away.

Only then did Mom notice.

“
Nothing,” I said.
Thanks, Bev, I’ll
pay you back some day!

“
Is it that Crosby boy
again?” Mom asked. “I promise I’ll give that ill-bred boy a
dressing-down when I see him next time.”

“
It’s not him, Mom. Please
let it go,” I said, rushing past them towards the stairs. “I just
fell off Nate’s bike, and by the way, it doesn’t hurt, thanks for
asking.”

Mom’s eyes bored into me, and I did my
best to stare back without blinking. As if she’d fallen for it, she
said, “Okay then. Change and go wash your hands. We’re having pork
roast, green beans, and creamed corn.”

Mom went back to the kitchen, leaving
me and my sister alone. Bev stared at me, her lips pressed in a
thin line. “And a pinch of rat poison for you, sissy-pants!” she
hissed. “I know that Nathan doesn’t have a bike.”

“
Bite me!” I said in a
hushed tone, and sprinted up the stairs.

*

For the rest of the evening I managed
to act as if nothing had happened. No carcass, no Shadow, no Mrs.
Palmer.

Mom chattered excitedly about their
drive to the city while I did my best to show that I was listening
by inserting ‘I see’ and ‘Great’ once in a while. As soon as I
finished dinner, I went back to my room and locked the
door.

The clock ticked on the
desk.

Moonlight flooded through the dusty
windowpanes so I could see everything without switching on the
lamps. Posters of Breaking Benjamin and Linkin Park hung on the
walls; clothes, school books and CDs were strewn all over the place
along with crumpled papers and my bag.

I limped across the room and collapsed
onto my bed. My leg still hurt from the fall. I massaged my ankle,
only causing it to hurt more.

In all my life, I’d never been so
scared of falling asleep. I’d seen Shadows since I hit nine, but
today’s Shadow sent shivers all over me.

I tried not to think about it, but the
harder I tried, the easier dark thoughts crept into my head. I
turned, pulling the soft blanket over myself. Doubtful protection
from nightmares. How naïve I’d been to think that my life would get
better if we moved to a place where nothing ever
happened.

Seemed like the
right place for me. Until today.
I
clenched my jaw tight.

Lying full-length, I stretched my hand
behind the headboard where I kept my secret. My fingers scrabbled
through dust and cobwebs before I finally got it. I crouched, then
took a flashlight from under my bed and shone it onto the thing in
my lap, whisking the dust off it. An old diary.

I had found it a few years
ago among the piles of books and magazines that cluttered our
basement back in Phoenix. Even though it had a few pages torn out,
it pulled me to itself as if by some mysterious force. Or maybe it
was because of my father’s name—Aiden Blackwell—that was written on
the back page. I’d never known Dad, and every time I asked Mom
about him, she usually stared at me with coldness, offering
non-committal replies that had me drop the subject. Dad must have
hurt her in some way ’cause she even took her maiden name back and
was Melanie Ford, not Melanie Blackwell.

If I don’t write
about the Shadow, he’ll come. The diary is the only thing that can
stop the dead
, I thought, and opened it to
the back page. Handwritten scrawl beneath my father’s name
went:
Callum Blackwell
. A bit lower the legend ran in smaller letters, in the hope
that anyone who might come across the diary wouldn’t see it:
Diary of the Gone
.

Back in Phoenix I’d
needed to do something—
anything
—to stop the Shadows, and
surprisingly writing about it had worked for me. With time I’d
realized writing gave me the calm I couldn’t get out of anything
else.

I took a ballpoint pen, well chewed at
the top, and turned several dog-eared pages filled with the same
illegible handwriting where I used to put down all the horror I’d
seen.

When I was about to jot my first word,
a blast of wind rattled the windowpanes, startling me out of my
wits.

Damn, what was
that?

With a trembling
hand, I scribbled:
Entry #153, October
27
.

Someone knocked on the door, and I
knew they had come for me. It wasn’t Mom or Beverly as there was no
shadow under the door. A soft, hardly audible tap-tap-tap came,
then the door knob turned a bit.

Why have they come so
early?

Freaked out, I focused on the diary,
trying to shut off my senses.

They are here again,
behind the door, trying to get in. It’s not like them. Why are they
breaking the rules?

The wind whistled outside, the
rattling of the windowpanes even more persistent. I bent closer to
the page, scribbling frantically.

Nathan found a corpse of a
deer in the forest. He showed it to me today. When we were standing
there everything turned to monochrome gray, and I saw a boy not far
from me. He had strange symbols appearing over his hands. I have no
idea what they meant. The Shadow was different this time. So much
different.

They didn’t go away. Writing about it
didn’t work. Why? Whoever was behind the door started scraping its
surface with nails that were definitely larger than Bev’s. I
clenched my teeth and pressed my hands to my ears, but the scraping
didn’t stop.