April 19, 1775
John Whiting sat in his father's workshop, looking up at the night sky through the open door. It was a clear night, the blue-blackness filled with stars, and he looked for the ones his father had taught him to recognize, the pinpricks of light making out patterns in the night as surely as his father's chisels etched patterns on stone.
His father liked stars, liked carving them on his gravestones, and one of John's favorite border designs was the one with the little starbursts along the edge. His father used stars in various ways as ornaments and John remembered when he'd realized that his father found inspiration for his work everywhere around him — the leaves he brought back from his walks in the woods, the summer flowers John's mother collected from the fields and placed in pots around the house. Even seashells and the very waves of the ocean. All of these things ended up on the grave markers made in the workshop of Josiah Whiting of Concord.
John knew that his father was one of the best stonecutters in the area. He knew this because of the way people talked about his work, and because his father was always busy. Lately, it seemed he'd hardly had time to complete one order before another came in. He'd joked to John that people must be dying in greater numbers than usual, for he never seemed to have a moment to spare.
"Once I have you trained, once the sign on the shop reads 'Josiah Whiting and Son'— then we'll be able to take on even more work," he'd said only a few days before. Josiah had been training John, but John knew it was only wishful thinking that they'd be able to take on much more work. It was true that there were things he could do in the shop, the fine carving work and some of the lettering, but stonecutting was hard, back breaking labor, and with his bad leg, there was no way John could be much help. There were days when the pain was so bad he could barely stand.
He shifted in his father's chair, feeling the leg groan at him. He'd learned to handle this kind of discomfort. The best thing was to keep moving, so he lifted himself out of the chair, found the cane his father had carved for him leaning up against the wall, and hobbled out into the night air.
As he passed the stable, he heard Monteroy whinnying nervously in his stall and the anxiety he'd been feeling ever since the horse had come barreling into the yard that afternoon, still wearing his saddle and saddlebags, the reins trailing and muddy, returned in force.
Where was he? He should be back by now. It must be nearly midnight and his father had been gone since almost this time the night before. The alarm had been raised that the redcoats were on the march and all of the men from the Minuteman companies were to meet at the tavern to take orders. John had watched his father as he'd dressed by the fire. By all rights, he should have gone too. He was 16, more than old enough, but he wasn't able to fight anymore than his six-year-old sister was.
"You take care of things, John. I'm depending on you," Josiah had said as he'd slipped out into the night. He'd taken John's hand and held it for a moment, a strange, sentimental gesture, and then he had been gone.
They'd heard news of the shooting on the green in Lexington, and then had heard the shots fired at the bridge. John's brother Daniel had run down through the woods and seen shots being fired. He said he'd even seen a dead redcoat lying on the ground and the Minutemen chasing the regulars out of town, shooting at them from behind trees and stone walls. But he hadn't seen Josiah, he said.
John tried to calm himself. His father was an excellent marksman, one of the best in Concord, and he was surely with John Baker, his closest friend, who John himself had been named for. Nothing bad could happen to Josiah if John Baker was there. But then where was he?
John heard a rustle in the trees and he hobbled out on to the path. "Father?" he called into the darkness. There was only silence and then a short "yip" as Jack, the family's spaniel came hurrying up, his tail wagging, and his tongue lolling.
Beyond him, there was only the black and empty night.
Chapter One
Sunday, Oct. 10
Sweeney St. George had just found another example of a gravestone by the elusive round skull carver when the late afternoon peace of the cemetery was broken by the sound of gunfire.
"Crack! Crack! Crack!"
Without looking to see where it was coming from, she hit the ground, her arms covering her head, her heart slamming against her ribcage, all of her nerves going nuts as she heard another series of shots come quick and fast.
"Crack! Crack! Crack!"
"Don't worry. It's just pretend," said a voice behind her, and Sweeney turned to find herself facing someone who at first appeared to be a short man with a high, girlish voice. His bald head glinted in the sun and he looked up at her with huge eyes in a pale face.
But he wasn't a man. He was a boy, a completely bald boy of about 11 or 12, and as Sweeney looked into his intense brown eyes, which gave him the look of a young Ben Kingsley, the boy flushed and looked away. He reached down quickly for a baseball hat lying on the ground, and put it on his head. "It's a reenactment. Up at the Old North Bridge."
"You mean, like Civil War reenactors and all that?"
"Yeah. Except it's not the Civil War. It's the Revolutionary War." She almost expected him to finish up with a "Duh."
"Oh yeah, we're in Concord, aren't we?"
She had come out to Concord in order to find some more examples of the work of the 18th century stonecutter Sweeney had come to think of as the round skull carver. Sweeney, who studied gravestones and other funerary art for a living, had been after the round skull carver for months now, ever since she'd seen one of his stones in a Lexington cemetery and been intrigued by his unusual border designs, and his oddly shaped death's heads. They were very human death's head, she thought. That was the best way to describe them, with their round skulls and almost cheery expressions. She had found five stones she was positive had been made by the same carver and after a doing a bit of asking around, discovered that no one knew who he was. So she had done what she normally did when looking for a carver's identity and checked the Middlesex County probate records for the names of the people buried beneath the round skull carver's stones. The records often stipulated payment to this or that gravestone carver for the deceased's stone and it was one of the only ways of finding a particularly elusive carver. She hadn't had any luck yet, but now that she had found one of the stones in Concord, she could try again. And Edward Martin's stone boded well because it was large one, with elaborate carving on the side borders. It had cost a nice sum when it had been made in 1740 and since Edward Martin seemed to be a man of means, there was a good likelihood that he would have a probate record stipulating where his worldly possessions would go after death.
And here, in the South Burying Ground in Concord, it hadn't taken her long to find another one. It was all there, the distinctive shape of the skull, the delicate wings at its side, the odd, unnaturally twining plants in the border design, the cramped lettering the carver had used to write "Here Lyes the body of Edward Martin."
The boy looked down at her notes. "What are you doing?"
"I'm taking notes on this gravestone. I'm trying to figure out who made it."
The boy sat down next to her and looked at the stone. "You don't know who made it?"
"No, it's not signed, but I've found a whole bunch of stones around here that I'm almost positive he made and now that I have Edward Martin's name, I can see if his will lists the name of the person who made his stone. It's kind of like being a detective." Another shot sounded and Sweeney started. "That didn't sound pretend," she said.
"Well they don't put any bullets in the guns," the boy said. "They're not allowed to. And the ones up at the Old North Bridge, they're not even allowed to point the guns at each other. So it's kind of stupid. They just, like, shoot them up in the air. My grandfather has reenactments up in his field, though, and up there they can pretend they're really fighting because it's not National Park property. They did Battle Road at the last one, which is also stupid because it's not even the right time of year."
Sweeney didn't say anything, but clearly more explanation was needed and he went on.
"Well, you know, the Old North Bridge and the shot heard round the world, that whole thing, that was in April." He looked around at the orange, red and yellow trees and, as though he were breaking something to her, said gently "This is October."
"That was when we shot back at the British, right? I kind of forget my Revolutionary War history."
He looked up at her, his face swollen and puffy, then said condescendingly, "The British regulars were on their way out to Concord because they were going to take all the guns and stuff from the provincials. So the minutemen and everybody stood on the green in Lexington and the British shot at them and killed a bunch of them. No one thought they would actually do it. Then they came to Concord and we thought they were burning houses down. So the provincials decided they'd had enough and they went up to the North Bridge. No one really knows who fired the first shot, but we got a bunch of them. The Redcoats had to run away back to Charlestown and the minutemen hid in the fields and behind the walls. They never knew what hit 'em. That was called Battle Road."
Sweeney remembered a bit of Longfellow, something her father used to recite. She quoted, "'You know the rest. In the books you have read/How the British regulars fired and fled...' Do you know that one?"
The boy picked it up. "'How the farmers gave them ball for ball/From behind each fence and farmyard wall/Chasing the redcoats down the lane/Then crossing the field to emerge again'" Here Sweeney remembered the rest and she joined in again. "'Under the tree at the turn of the road/And only pausing to fire and load.'"
He smiled up at her. "Of course, Longfellow kind of added stuff. You know, like, to make it sound better. But that's how we won the war," the boy said in an authoritative way. "The British liked to fight in the open field and we knew how to fight guerrilla style."
"So what, did you write a book or something?" Sweeney sat down on the ground and leaned her back against the gravestone, wrapping her arms around her knees. It was October and though they'd had a few nice days last week, there was no denying it was getting cold.
"No. I just read a lot. My Mom is director of the Minuteman Museum, so she knows about all this stuff. And my Dad likes it too."
"Yeah? What does he do?"
"Oh," he said disinterestedly, reaching up to scratch his scalp under the baseball hat. "He makes gravestones."
Sweeney studied him for a moment. The puffiness of his face made him seem younger than he must be. Studying his eyes she decided he was closer to 12 than 10.
"That's a coincidence," she said. "I study gravestones."
"That why you're here."
"Yeah. I'm an art historian. Do you know what that is?" A nod. "So, I study gravestone carving over time, the different art that was used. That's why I'm out here actually. I'm working on a paper about 18th century gravestones."
"You mean like for school?"
"Kind of. I don't have to hand it in to a teacher, though. It's going to be published in a journal."
He didn't say anything for a moment and she was anticipating the usual bewildered response to her odd livelihood, when he stood up and, gesturing her to follow, led her over to a stone near the back of the cemetery. "That was made by one of our ancestors," he said.
She studied the stone. It was a tall, slate headstone with elaborately carved shoulders and a rounded tympanum, giving the stone the "bedboard" shape that had become common among early New England stonecutters.
The strange death's head at the top of the stone was about the size of an actual human face. The skull was shaped like a lightbulb, with wide set, rounded eyes, complete with pinpoint pupils. The mouth was a crude box, filled with lines that approximated skeletal teeth. But what its creator had carved above the figure's head was the remarkable thing. The skull had a Medusa-like head of hair, thick tendrils that rose above it in an electrified halo. In contrast to his hair, the skeletal face stared out blandly from the stone, seemingly unperturbed. She read the name on the stone, Abner Fall, and the dates of his life and death, 1721 to 1760. In the thin light, it was impossible to make out the very faint epitaph at the bottom.
"So what was this ancestor's name?" Sweeney had seen some similar stones near Plymouth, but the medusa heads were unusual for the Concord area. She was intrigued.
"Josiah Whiting. He was like my great-great-great-great-great grandfather or something. A lot of greats."
"How much do you know about him?"
"Well, he made gravestones. And he fought in the war." He clarified. "The Revolution. He was some kind of hero or something. My grandpa's always talking about it. He's a member of the Concord Minutemen. Josiah was a member of them too."
"Is your Dad a reenactor too?"
"No. He was in Vietnam and he says that he doesn't like war, even pretend ones. He won't even go to them. But I like the ones where you can see people die, or pretend to die. It's interesting. It's like a play, kind of, it's like you can see what it might be like."
"So you said your Dad makes gravestones. Does he own a monument company?"
"Yeah. Well, I guess the family really owns it. My grandfather."
"What's it called?"
"Whiting Monuments."
It was one of the big ones in the Boston area. "I'm Sweeney St. George by the way." She offered her hand.
"Pres Whiting." He shook her hand seriously, looking up at her for a minute with those dark, huge eyes and then looking away. "I never heard of anybody studying gravestones before."
"Well, I spend a lot of time in cemeteries, taking pictures, tracing the work of different stonecarvers, and sculptors. I usually teach too, so, you know, I spend a lot of time with my students, helping them and stuff, though I'm not teaching right now." She hoped she didn't sound bitter about it. A lowly assistant professor, Sweeney hadn't been assigned any classes for the fall, so she was using the time to work on some of her own research.
Pres reached up to scratch his head again, then gave up and took the hat off. Through the thin skin stretched over his skull, Sweeney could see snaking blue veins, a few burst blood vessels. She saw a vein twitch on his temple and he seemed a shade or two paler. But maybe it was just the light.
"Yeah, I like cemeteries too. I like to sit in them and read the stones. A lot of the kids at school think I'm weird because of it. But then they pretty much just think I'm weird. Even before this." He pointed to his head. "Now it's even worse. It's because of chemotherapy," he explained suddenly, as though he was afraid she would think it was something else.
"I'm sorry." She didn't ask why he had to have chemotherapy, even though she wanted to know.
He looked sad for a minute. "Did people ever, like, think you were weird because you liked to go to cemeteries?"
She smiled. "Oh, yeah. I was so weird when I was a kid. Weirder than you probably. How old are you?" Sweeney asked him. What she really wanted to ask him was how sick he was and if he was going to be okay.
"Twelve." He pulled a fleece jacket out of his backpack and put it on, zipping it up to his chin. "How old are you?" But she could see he was just asking to be polite. Anyone over 20 probably just seemed old to him.
"I just turned 29, last week."
"Oh. What did you get?"
"Nothing much. It's different when you get older. Too bad, really."
"Yeah." He looked off into the distance, then closed his eyes for a moment and Sweeney felt a flash of concern. He was pale. She could see it now. He looked the way people looked before they threw up. When he took a deep breath, she could hear the air in his lungs.
"Are you okay?" she asked him.
"Yeah. I'm just tired. I'm going to walk home."
"Can I give you a ride?"
He looked horrified. "I'm not supposed to get in cars with strangers." He stood up and waited for a minute before hoisting his backpack on to his shoulder.
"How far do you have to go?"
"Just up to my grandparents' house. They live up by the North Bridge." Sweeney had walked past the Old North Bridge yesterday. It was a good three quarters of a mile up Monument Street.
"Do you want me to walk with you?"
"No."
She hesitated, not sure what to do. "Okay, well it was nice to meet you. Maybe I'll see you around."
He studied her for a minute. "Yeah, I like to go to cemeteries."
"Okay then. Bye." She watched him walk off, making his way slowly along Main Street. He walked like an old man, his steps slow and cautious as though each one hurt him. Sweeney gathered up her notes and slung her bag over her shoulder. And before she knew what she was doing, she was walking along, keeping the top of his head in view. She could follow him for a little bit, just to make sure that he got there okay. She'd be able to stay out of sight and that way, if something happened, if he collapsed or got sick, she could call and get him some help. If he caught her, she could just say she was walking up to the Old North Bridge.
Up ahead of her, Pres Whiting walked slowly along Main Street, then turned left and walked across Monument Square. She thought about how there were certain people who you met in life, people who stuck with you, who you were willing to take care of, and how once you had taken responsibility for them, it was hard to give it up. It was dangerous to take that responsibility at all. You never knew where it was going to lead. I'm just making sure he gets home okay, she told herself. That's all. And Sweeney, who did not pray, found herself saying a prayer for him, a prayer that he would be okay.
Chapter Two
The woods were lovely, dark and deep.
He'd heard that somewhere before. In a book or something. But it was true, it was almost as though he'd thought it up himself. The woods were lovely, dark and deep. Pres Whiting could hear his shoes crunching on the ground and when he stopped and breathed deeply, he felt like he was the only person in Concord. The trees seemed to go on forever. He breathed again. That was good. He felt better now.
Usually, he didn't like coming out here when it was almost dark, but he didn't really have any choice. If he walked along the road, there was a chance that Gramma would see him or if not her, one of her friends who would tell her. She'd dropped him off at the school that morning, to play basketball with some of the boys in his class. He'd promised her that one of their mothers would drive him home and had managed to stop her from waiting around to be sure.
"Mom said I should try to keep a sense of normalcy. Well, this is something normal. You all have to let me be a kid," he'd argued. She hadn't been able to say anything to that so she had given him her cell phone and let him go.
The thing about letting him be a kid he'd gotten from a book he'd found in the drawer of his mother's bedside table. The book was called "It's Just Not Fair: Caring For Terminally Ill Children" and it had a picture of a bald kid on the front. Pres had been nervous as he looked through it, in case his mother came in, but she hadn't and he'd read a whole chapter about how you were supposed to let your kid do regular things, even if you were worried about their health. She must have read the book, he decided, because lately she'd been letting him do a lot more stuff, though she always looked scared when he left.
It had been okay at first, at the basketball court. There had just been a couple of kids there, Jeremy and Keegan and a kid from another class who was pretty nice. They had played HORSE and he had gotten a couple of baskets. But then, just when he'd been thinking about going home, Rachel Martino and a couple of other girls from their class had walked across the soccer fields and sat down to watch them play. Pres had only talked to Rachel once, when they'd been sitting next to each other at a stupid assembly about going for your dreams and he'd whispered to her that probably the only thing the stupid guy on stage had ever gone for was a pizza. She'd laughed and they'd almost gotten in trouble, but ever since then he watched for her in the halls, hoping to talk to her again.
He hadn't been able to leave the basketball court once Rachel showed up, even though knowing she was there made him feel sick and unhappy. Then Mike Farmer and a couple of other older kids showed up and they wanted to play Three-on-Three. Pres was starting to feel tired and during the first game he'd stumbled and tripped over Keegan's foot. His baseball hat had fallen off and he'd felt them all staring at his head.
"If you can't keep up, you should get off the court," Mike Farmer had said. Everyone had been looking at Pres and he'd said the first thing that came into his mind, something he remembered his Mom saying to his Dad just before his Dad left.
"Screw you!" he'd shouted. Then he'd picked up his hat and his backpack and taken off across the soccer fields. Once he was out of sight, he'd sat down behind a tree, trying not to cry. It hadn't worked very well, but after a little while he'd felt better and he'd taken off for town, where he thought he could kill an hour looking around the cemetery and then walk back to Gramma's. But then he'd met Sweeney in the cemetery. He'd never met a lady who looked like that before. She was almost as tall as his Dad and her hair was so red it looked like a Popsicle. And she had been nice. She had talked to him like he was her age, rather than just a kid who didn't know anything. He liked Sweeney, he realized, though it wasn't the way he liked Rachel Martino, it was the way he liked Lindy Harris, who had been his babysitter until she'd gone away to college. It was the way he had liked Mr. Babyak, who had been his fourth grade teacher.
He was almost to the clubhouse. He always knew because of the big maples that grew together in a circle along the path. They made a kind of bowl in the middle and in the summer and the early fall, when the leaves were still on the trees, you could go in there and lie on the ground and look up at the leaves, and it felt good there, like it would be a nice place to live.
Passing the maples, he kept walking into the darkening woods. Most of the houses in Concord were right up next to someone else's, but his grandparents had owned their house forever and so they didn't have any other houses next to theirs, just the woods, which was where the clubhouse was.
The clubhouse had been built by his Dad and some of his friends when they were in high school. It wasn't very big — just one room that had a couch and a table and a few other chairs in it. The furniture was old and it reminded Pres of the kind of furniture you saw on old TV shows and the one window had these funny curtains made out of brown material that was the same as what they made towels out of. Someone had sewn green pom-poms all around the edges. It was pretty ugly, but Pres realized that he wouldn't want to change it. It was how the clubhouse was. It was special.
Pres' Dad had once told him that they built it as a place to have parties, but Pres didn't see what was so great about having parties — his mother had parties and they weren't a lot of fun, just a lot of her friends standing around. He did like the idea of a secret place to go where nobody could find you. You could have a club there and only let in the people who you liked and who you wanted to have in your club.
He rested for a minute and then kept going, and pretty soon he could see it up ahead, just a little bit of brown and a flash of silver through the trees.
Pres had once asked his mother if Gramma and Grampa were rich because they had a big house and the woods behind it, but she said that they weren't rich, it was just that they had owned their house for a very long time and so that was why and that if they wanted they could sell it for a lot of money, but they were probably never going to do that because they liked their house and it was close to Pres and his mother's house and also to Daddy and Lauren and Noah and Rory. "Your Grampa likes having all that land behind him," she'd said. "There are people in town who'd pay millions for it, but he's too stubborn to do anything but what he wants to do."
As he got closer to the clubhouse, Pres stopped and listened. A breeze rustled through the trees, making a soft, whispering sound. Even though he knew what it was, Pres shivered. It sounded like voices, talking to him, scolding him. "Liar, liar, liar," it seemed to say.
The breeze was what made him notice the smell. It was coming from the direction of the clubhouse but Pres was confused for a moment, thinking that he'd stepped in something, or something had spilled on his shirt. He checked and found nothing. When the breeze died down, it was fainter, but it was still there, a rotten kind of smell, like when his Mom left chicken in the garbage, or the time a rat had died in their wall and Grampa had had to come with his saw and cut a hole in the living room wall to get it out.
It was almost dark now. The light seemed to have been squeezed out of the woods, with just a little line of deep blue sky showing somewhere beyond the trees. The breeze picked up again and he started walking faster.
He'd never been in the woods when it was completely dark before and where they had seemed lovely and private only a few minutes ago, they now seemed a little scary. That smell, for one thing. And the breeze was blowing louder; the voices were more urgent now. He'd just quickly check at the clubhouse, make sure everything was okay, and then he'd go right home.
He was fifty or so yards from the clubhouse when he heard the noise. Pres stopped and listened, his back rigid underneath the backpack. At first he thought he'd imagined it, but then it came again, tap-tap-tap. It wasn't a sound he could identify, like footsteps or someone opening or shutting a door. And it was coming from the clubhouse.
He was frozen now. The air was murky and the night was coming on fast. He could just see the clubhouse up ahead of him, but when he turned around, the woods behind were a blur of reaching, skeleton branches, of spindly trunks and shadowy shapes. Something made him walk forward, his heart thudding so hard in his chest, he thought it might jump out.
There was a sudden movement, a quick rustling of the leaves and then someone was jumping out from behind the clubhouse, slamming against him, knocking him down. He screamed and shut his eyes, feeling the strong arms pinning him to the ground, the hot, wet breath on his face. It seemed to go on forever. He could hear breathing and the weight of the body on him, scratching at his face and neck.
And then came a bark. Pres opened his eyes and looked up into the brown eyes of the McClintocks' golden retriever, Buster. He had jumped off Pres and was standing there watching him and wagging his tail.
"Buster!" Pres dragged himself up and brushed the leaves and dirt off his pants and jacket. His backpack had fallen off and he retrieved it and put it back on. "Bad dog! Naughty Dog!" It was what he had heard Mr. McClintock yelling at Buster when he came to get him in the woods.
But Buster didn't respond. He wagged his tail again and turned around, trotting around the far corner of the clubhouse. The sound came again, "tap-tap-tap" and Pres realized what it had been: Buster's tail wagging against the boards on the side of the building.
Pres followed him, worried about Buster might be doing. Could he have gotten into the clubhouse...No the doors and windows were all closed. It must be something else.
He came around the corner and saw Buster rooting around in the dirt. Or maybe it was garbage, because there seemed to be some kind of cloth there. As the fact registered, he realized too that the smell was stronger than ever. And as he stepped closer, he realized what it was and he felt the sourness rise in his throat until he could no longer keep it down and he turned away, knowing he was going to be sick.
Pres knew about vomiting. He had done so much vomiting so far in his young life, that he knew exactly how many times he was going to be sick. He knew that this sickness was caused by what he had seen, not by something in him, and he knew that after he threw up once he'd probably be okay. He let the sour liquid go and stood up, wiping the sleeve of his jacket across his mouth and taking a deep breath.
He was terrified, his heart pounding, his head wracked by a dull throbbing he thought was going to make it explode. But he turned around to look at the body. The man was dead. There was no doubt about that. He lay on his back, one arm splayed out, the other curled toward the stomach, as though it were clutching at its wound.
In fact, the whole middle of the man was a mass of dried blood and leaves, as though he'd rolled around in the dirt after he'd gotten hurt. Parts of the cloth looked like they had been torn away. Pres forced himself to look at the face. It too seemed torn, but he could see a nose, oddly bent, and a bushy brown beard. Somehow, he couldn't find the eyes. There was a lot of dark mess where they should have been.
And, he realized slowly — everything sluggish, taking its own time — the man was wearing a soldier's uniform, a Revolutionary-War soldier's uniform, just like the ones he'd seen at the reenactment. Pres turned away and sank down to the ground. He should run, he should call Gramma on the cell phone and tell her to get an ambulance. Except he knew that the ambulance wasn't going to help the man, whoever he was. And thinking about Gramma reminded him that he had done something bad. He had lied to her and he had walked through the woods by himself. She would be mad. And if they came, if the police came, they might think the man had something to do with the clubhouse. He couldn't let them go in the clubhouse. He couldn't. He turned around again to look at the body. Maybe he could move the man away, and then he could call the police. But as soon as he leaned down, he knew he couldn't touch the body. The smell was too strong for one thing, and the body looked a little mushy, like it might not stay together if he tried to drag it. Besides, he thought he remembered seeing something on TV about there being laws to stop people from moving bodies. He didn't want to get arrested. There were laws about telling if you saw a dead body too. He was pretty sure about that.
No, he had to tell someone. But first he could look and make sure that everything was okay. Then maybe they wouldn't go in there. He forced himself to look away from the man and walked very slowly around the side of the building. He looked under the rock for key, but it wasn't there. As he walked closer he realized that the door of the clubhouse was open very slightly, the key still in the padlock. He looked inside. It was empty.
Pres locked the door again and instead of replacing the key under the rock, he put it in his pocket. He was about to turn to run toward his grandparents' house when he looked up to find Sweeney walking toward him. He blinked, not sure if it was her. But then she said, "I'm sorry, Pres. I was worried about you," and started walking toward him. He didn't know what else to do, so he put a hand up, the way the crossing guards at school did to stop cars.
"No, don't go there," he said quickly. "There's a dead man there." He pointed to the side of the clubhouse.
"What do you mean?" She looked at the clubhouse and then back at him. She sniffed the air and he saw her eyes get very big.
"There's a dead man there. I just found him. I was just walking home." She blurred in front of his eyes, as though she'd melted. He took a step back.
"Pres," Sweeney said, taking a step toward him. "Are you okay? We should call someone. We should get help."
"I don't think anyone can help him," he said, watching her green eyes watch him as he felt the woods pitch and the trees ran together and then everything went dark.
Reprinted from Judgement of the Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor.
By permission of St. Martins Press.
Copyright © 2005 by Sarah Stewart Taylor.
All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.