Shallow Graves (The Haunted #1)

by Patrick Logan

touch, barely noticeable what with the pain from the torn nail and the slowly drying blood covering the wound. But when

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that she barely recognized it for what it was. But then it came again and the girl stopped chewing the gamey meat for a moment to listen. Could it be? The rat stopped moving. “They’ve gone out…I’m going to open the door now, but we have to be quick!” The girl swallowed and switched her grip from the dead rat’s body to its tail. Even though the words were clearer now, as if the person was speaking just from behind the door at the

opening, but her eyes still hadn’t adjusted and she couldn’t make out what it was. “Hurry! C’mon! They won’t be out long!” The girl rose to her feet and made her way to the bottom of the staircase, rat still in hand. “Oh…oh God…” the person upstairs murmured. The girl could hear something else now—rain. She could hear rain pelting the roof, the sides of the house. To her sensitive ears, every drop was like a ball bearing falling on tin.

figure in the doorway, a hand gesturing madly for her to hurry. But sitting on the dirt floor in a pitch-black cellar for days on end had rendered urgency a foreign notion. “Hurry!” The girl was on the fourth step when she heard the front door to the estate open loudly. Both of them froze. “No,” the figure at the top of the stairs whimpered. “Daddy’s home…” The girl’s grip on the rat’s tail tightened. ***

mentally prepared herself for what she instinctively knew came next. “Jump.” The voice was deep, gravelly. Authoritative. A voice that she knew she should probably listen to. But she couldn’t jump. “Jump.” Survival instincts suddenly took over, and she pivoted, intending to run back to the window, back inside. Away from the rain, the cold. The voice. But a hand reached out and grasped her soaking hair. It was a

traction on the slick roof. But the rain was coming down even heavier now, and her barefoot only caught the edge before she went flying over it. A scream caught in her throat, and the air roared in her ears. Somehow, during her fall, she flipped around and found herself staring at the flagstones as they rushed up to meet her. A split second before impact, however, they seemed to disappear. All of it—the rain, the house, the roof. Even the man that had thrown her off, her father. All of this was replaced by a frothing sea and a clear blue sky. She had never been to

place had a name, too, although it wasn’t one that she had ever heard before. The Marrow. A smile spread across her thin blue lips. But then the sky suddenly darkened and a crack of thunder ripped through serenity. The voice returned. “No, I’m not done with

print button. He sat back in his chair and ran his hand through his medium-length brown hair. Three months of work…once I press print, that’s it. Gone. Finito. Complete. His eyes skipped over the numbers that filled his monitor. Three months, then it’s gone. Into the accounting ether, never to be seen or heard from again. Robert always felt this way when he finished the accounting for one of the company’s larger clients. He invested his whole mind and body into the work, to the point that he felt as if he knew more about the company than upper management did about themselves.

feeling particularly down lately, and partly because of the revelation that at their current pace, Butter and Squash Produce wouldn’t be able to make it to year’s end without filing for bankruptcy. He shook his head, blinked twice, then pressed PRINT. Not my problem, he thought. This part, too, made him feel a little off. It wasn’t his problem—his job was only to crunch the numbers—but still. He had met the owners, Dawn and Maureen, several times, and he liked them. Nice women, trying to find a niche market for their organic produce, to carve out their little piece

of the cheap plastic swivel chair and stood. He placed his hand on his lower back and tried to massage the soreness that had built over the past few hours from being rooted in place, and then offered a weak smile. Part of him also liked the idea of having completed another task, of checking one more box for works completed. The office was dark, the other cubicles long since having been abandoned, the younger desk jockeys retired to their homes to suck back energy drinks and play video games online. Or so he imagined. He checked his watch and was surprised that it was only six thirty. His thoughts went to his family

Maybe I can catch them before they start, meet up with them. Or better yet, I can tell Wendy to grab a couple of steaks and meet me at home. It had been so long since they had had dinner—a real family dinner—what with his and Wendy’s busy schedules. I’ll call them after I hand this in, he reconciled, a small smile creeping onto his lips. Steak…steak would be nice. As if responding to his pondering, his stomach growled. Robert picked up the pace as he made his way across the empty office to the printer, which whirred away as it spat out page after page of sheets filled with numbers.

open. “Landon?” Robert asked, but when the man finally poked his head up, his thick black eyebrows rising up his expansive forehead, he hesitated. “Where’s Landon?” The man shifted a massive wad of gum from one pale cheek to the other. Gum…what kind of fifty-year-old man chews gum? One with chronic halitosis, that’s who. A skinny, bald man with arms like chicken legs and legs like chicken arms. “Landon cut out early, had some