A Haunting

Excerpt: "Shh, shhhh, darling. All will be well. Everything's going to be just fine."

Soft lips pressed against Jake's temple.

Something really stunk. His eyelids fluttered open, sight hazy, brain cloudy, until his vision came into focus on the corpse staring back at him.

Jake flinched, rolling onto something brittle that ground beneath his shoulder. Craning his neck to see what it was, Jake found himself on top of another skeleton. Small. Child. Dressed in those old-fashioned shorts and frilly shirt they used to force young boys to wear. Gulping, he turned back to the other corpse, recognizing the fifteen-year-old girl that had gone missing only last week.

Jake frowned. He lay between two murdered children in . . . he took in his surroundings. Small tight dark cramped space. Pointy, like a triangle. Ambient light slashed in from some kind of stained glass window way way up at the point of the triangle. No doors or other windows. Like someone had mortared up their own hidey-hole. No way in or out unless you got dragged in by the poltergeist express.

Jake sat up, grimacing at the sudden bout of dizziness.

"Don't be afraid, sweetheart. It will be over soon." A cool hand rippled across his brow. The ghost flickered beside him like a TV on the fritz, her knees melding through the dead girl's chest like transparent gelatin.