Withering Bones Read online

  Copyright © 2019 Karli Rush

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Karli Rush

  License Statement

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Please note this book is intended for mature readers 17+ due to adult content.

  Note from the Author

  If you have read The House, you’ll understand this is book two in the series. I would like to warn you that this story is not a fairy tale. The town of Deadwood has many secrets, dark and twisted secrets. In order to tell Mary Jane’s entire story, it has to be told as a whole. With that being said, I truly hope you enjoy the madness that resides deep inside the town of Deadwood.

  “We loved with a love that was more than love… With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven coveted her and me.”

  - Edgar Allen Poe

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Part 1

  The Beginning

  There’s nothing more destructive in this world than a child losing hope. All thoughts of love and protection vanish like a bug hitting a bloodstained windshield. The only thing left is smeared dreams and broken wings. I was taught that from a very early age, children should be only seen but are never allowed to speak unless they are told to speak. Seen but not heard. These words resonated with me for years and years. Until, one day, I became so isolated from the real world I forgot how to connect with anyone.

  But… one day, one fateful day, I was shown that if you look through the darkness, there is a light. A bold, bright light that can shine so beautifully at the end. My story is certainly not a fairy tale. It’s not a Cinderella story where she goes to a ball and meets her prince charming, moves into a glamorous castle and they live happily ever after. No, this is the story of how one sees the unthinkable and experiences the unimaginable and learns what love truly is…

  Now, if you’re prepared to read my story, a ghost story then sit back, turn the lights down and step inside my world where monsters hide and dreams are broken and resurrected.

  ___

  The steady August sun heats the sidewalk like a blistering toaster oven, melting the crayon marks each time I make a design. I pretend it’s part of my masterpiece. With each stroke I color in the horse I’m drawing. Different shades of brown blend in with the cracked, hot cement when the tip suddenly breaks off. In a desperate attempt I quickly try to use it. If my grandmother sees that I’ve broken my crayon, I’ll never get another box. Which would be more important? A box of damn crayons or TV dinners? I know the answer, so I make the best with what I have.

  I find myself lost in my own imaginary world, riding off on the horse I just created, slaying dragons and searching for buried treasures in a far-off land somewhere. I slash through the air with a stick-sword, dancing across the green clovers in our front yard when I hear her.

  “Mary Jane!”

  “Coming Grandma…” I answer, rushing back to the crayons, carefully placing them back in their rightful places inside the worn, yellow box. By the time I reach the front porch, I see her waving a reused, tattered envelope in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. She takes a puff before she says, “It’s the first of the month, the rent is due.” She hands me the old envelope stuffed with the rent money and points toward the tree-lined road. “Take it, and don’t come back without a goddamn receipt, ya hear?”

  “But… I was…” I start to explain, but she glares hard at me through her dark-framed glasses. A wordless warning that I had better not press my luck. My shoulders slouch and my head droops and all the wonderful, imaginary adventures I had planned out disappear. I gently slide the envelope from her hand and start to walk away.

  “And take that crap off your head, you don’t want damn bugs in your hair!” Slowly, I reach up and grab the daisy crown I had made off my head and toss it to the ground. I tread a path toward the landlord’s house. I cast a glance a time or two at his backyard, at the pool, the basketball court, and the countless flowerbeds. I imagine what it would be like to swim in a pool, to float around on one the round inflatable things drifting along the water. What would it be like to jump from the diving board or just have my feet dangle from the edge?

  As I approach the two-story house, I softly graze my fingertips over the flowerbeds, barely touching each flower, and visualize how they would look as beautiful crowns. Red and white rose crowns to soft lavender and even orange marigold ones all nestled around like diamonds shimmering in the sun. I take care not to disturb anything and ring the doorbell.

  A few seconds later the landlord swings the door open. A wide smile appears, aged wrinkles sprout around his grey-haired features. “Oh, Mary Jane,” he says. “Come inside, it’s too hot to be standing outside.”

  “I just came to bring you this,” I reply and hand him the money.

  “Oh, well, come in. I don’t have the receipt book with me,” he urges and takes a step back. The gust of cool air swirls around me, tempting me to come inside the airconditioned home, but I shake my head. I can wait outside while he writes a receipt out for my grandmother. Besides, I have every intention of getting back to saving a kingdom and uncovering lost treasures. And I know the perfect crown I’ll wear, the wild, sweet honeysuckle one with twisty vines. It will be exactly what I need. I glance back down the road as if the honeysuckle had suddenly abandoned the fencing, but I can see it’s still there, waiting for me.

  “It’ll take me a bit to find the receipt book, won’t you come on in and I’ll get you a cold glass of fresh lemonade?”

  “Ah,” I hesitate, not sure what I should do. He’s a member of one of the churches in town, donates money to local charities, an upstanding citizen. Anyone and everyone practically knows of him, but I still shuffle my feet nervously and wonder why I feel so anxious. But then, I know if I don’t bring back the receipt my grandmother will be furious with me. So, I plaster a smile on my face and say, “Okay.”

  I step past our landlord and catch an overbearing scent. Cologne? Why would an old man like him need so much cologne? It doesn’t smell anything sweet like my grandmother’s Avon perfume. “Hey, I really like the little sundress you have on…” He closes the door behind us.

  All my dreams of saving imaginary worlds and crayon stained sidewalks ended the moment that door to the two-story house on Eastwood Street closed. All my naivety and innocence were gone, stolen.. I ran home that day with tears streaming down my face, hoping my grandmother would protect me somehow. The moment I told her what had happened, she shook an angry finger at me, disgust overriding her voice as she questions, “And where do you think we’ll live if word got out?” I plead and beg not to ever return to that house, but her word
s are far from soothing. “Do you want to live out on the streets? Do you?!”

  “No.”

  “Then that’s what will happen to you if you ever tell anyone.” Her voice carries no emotions, no tenderness, nothing in her demonstrates that she has a care in the world for what had just happened. I stop searching her eyes for any remorse or an inkling of compassion because there’s no emotion, none. Instead of aiming my rage at her, I turn it internally and begin to hate what I’ve become. I try to scrub my body with bleach and steaming, hot water hoping it will wash away him. Hoping it will remove the memories and the fear I clung to when I walked inside that house.

  But it never washes it all away since I’m forced to go back every month. To pay the rent. Month after month it’s an endless struggle, an endless attempt to even think I could save myself. Not to hate myself for being so weak and so powerless. My grandmother is the only family I have left. My dad left me pretty much on her doorstep as an infant and never came back after my mother died. I used to pretend what it would be like to have a family, a big family, a true family with brothers and sisters, a mother and a father. Sometimes, I would sit my yard-sale dolls around my small, lonely room and talk to them as if they were real. I would even play Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable on my old record player and dance with them like I saw on the TV. Now they’re all stuffed inside some childhood suitcase with faded kid stickers. The thought of doing anything I used to do changed, the young girl I was, the one that once saw horses in the clouds, flowered crowns, wore pigtails and sundresses curled up and just died.

  ___

  As the years progressed, I learned quickly to take a different path every time I walked to the school bus, a different road to take far from the house. Eventually, I dropped the whole riding the bus to school thing and walked the four miles to school every day. In the rain, in the snow and even on the days there was no school. I avoided the honeysuckle vines that outlined the fences, the rose bushes, and marigolds that seemed to overflow down the streets. Their once sweet scent brings back too many memories for me, and I just want to keep them locked away. Too many nights I have stayed awake watching the shadows creep across my bedroom walls. Some seem bigger than others, some that I believe crawl inside my closet, pushing the door farther open, watching me. A hanger suddenly sways back and forth like someone or something moves by it, another hanger moves. I drag the sheet closer to my face. The bone-chilling darkness quickly consumes my room like a monster waiting inside. Waiting for me to come close the door, waiting for my feet to touch the cold, hard floor, just waiting…

  I can’t sleep.

  I can’t sleep with the creak here or the crack there.

  Creeeeak…

  Crack…

  Creakkk…

  My eyes squeeze tightly together as my heart pounds louder than a drum; my fingers grip the sheet like it’s a makeshift shield of some sort. Maybe it will protect me from whatever’s in the room with me, but the more the shadows move the more afraid I become. I can’t take it anymore, and I make a brave move and run straight to the living room.

  “Grandma, there’s—there’s something,” I ramble trying to catch my breath. My heart is still hammering, and my hands shake, I practically trip over my nightgown trying to reach her. She narrows her gaze at me like I’m a cockroach that just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Instead of slapping me away she smashes her cigarette out; her glass ashtray overflows with ashes and cigarette butts, but she still manages to squish one more in.

  “What the hell, Mary Jane? Can’t you see I’m watching TV?”

  “But, Grandma, there’s something in my closet… can you just—,” I plead, my voice sounding unbelievably small and frail. My fingers cling to her ragged stained armchair in desperation as I look back. The long dark hallway leading to my room whispers and creaks like a beckoning ghost in the darkness, making me even more petrified. My eyes stay glued toward the hallway. I don’t even realize she’s moved from her chair until she touches me.

  “Goddamn, Mary Jane! You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?!” she bellows out in a tone I know all too well. I quickly regret asking her for help. Without another breath wasted I’m hauled down to the very thing I’m terrified of, my bare feet wrestle against the cold linoleum floor. I barely have enough time to stand. Suddenly, I’m tossed onto my bed.

  “Grandma… please, I—I just want you to sit with me till I fall asleep, I’m scared of what’s inside the closet,” I whisper. My fingers grip the bedsheets tighter and my whole body shakes. The moment I see that angry look in her eyes and the way she slams the closet door I know the real monster doesn’t live inside my closet… no, the real monster is standing right in front of me. And I’m afraid I won’t make it through the night, by the time she’s done trying to suffocate me with my own pillow, she finally walks out of my room without a single, solitary word.

  Chapter two

  I never ask my grandmother for anything ever again. I stay outside whenever I can, eat whatever she tosses on the table and try my darndest not to piss her off. On certain days I can tell if it will be a good day or a bad day. While I make my bed, I tuck in the faded, tattered gray sheets and listen. The sound of her house slippers softly pacing back and forth in the old, creaky kitchen, the scent of brewing coffee lingering throughout the rooms and I know it’s going to be an okay day. I rush around my room getting things ready for school. My hands fumble, but grab a beaten, used math book, the pages barely cling to the spine. I don’t understand most of my subjects. It’s not because I haven’t tried. But whenever I have asked her for help with my homework… books, just like the one I hold in my hands, have been thrown across the room.

  “Mary Jane!” she yells. “You better get your butt out of here. I don’t have money for a cab to take you to school if you’re late!”

  I race by her. I don’t make eye contact, and I make a beeline for the front door. The tension starts to slip away from my shoulders as soon as I walk to school, but it never truly goes away because the second I head back home it all comes back. What if I do something wrong? What if I say something wrong? What will I do today that will set her off? I don’t have any friends, no one I can talk to. I would never dare to bring a classmate from school home. Because my grandmother would never approve of anyone I picked for a friend. She used to smash her lit cigarette on the pictured faces in my yearbooks.

  “She looks like a slut,” she scorns. In the next picture, she taps her long, yellow-stained nail and stares. “None of these kids look like they’re worth a damn!”

  “But… that’s Amy. She’s really nice,” I quietly mutter, keeping my head down. I watch as she takes the yearbook and crams it inside the trash can. My heart sinks even lower when I realize I’ll never be able to go to any of Amy’s birthday parties. I don’t even ask because I already know the answer. I keep the pretty pink invitation hidden inside my locker for the entire year. I’ve sat each day in class and listened to how she has the best parties ever. I’m like a ghost to everyone around me, seen as shy, dumb and standoffish. My grades are bad, but my attendance is good. School is an escape for me to get away from my grandmother and not be around the landlord or his house.

  The school finally decided on two things for me since my grades weren’t getting any better. One: I needed glasses and two: a tutor. After school twice a week I have Miss Bray help me understand dividing, fractions and eventually the basics of Algebra. I could read and see well enough without the glasses the school had provided, but it was Miss Bray that taught me what I needed to know. Pretty soon the boys in my class started asking me who she was, she was beautiful, smart and she became someone I considered a friend.

  “Okay, Mary Jane, today I brought this for you.”

  I reach out and take the book. Flipping through the pages, I ask, “What is it?”

  “It’s a book,” she says, tapping the cover. “It’s Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.”

  “Oh,” I mumble back. “What’s it abou
t?”

  Her perfect smile appears as she leans in closer. “It’s about love. Romeo, this boy falls madly in love with this girl named, Juliet. Fate brought them together like two star-crossed lovers, it was written around the mid-1590s. It’s a play. Now, once these two fell in love, it was unbreakable, but their families did not approve.”

  “So, what happened?”

  She shakes her head adamantly and grins. “You tell me. Read the book and find out,” she states and then closes the book and slips it inside my bag. My curiosity is running wild inside my mind and I’m excited to learn what happens to the ‘star-crossed lovers. I’ve never read anything that sounds so compelling before. I thank her for the book and once we head outside, we both frown at each other.

  “Rain,” we both say at the same time. It’s pouring down so hard you can’t even see the school parking lot.

  “Hey,” she gently says brushing my cheek. “No upside-down smiles, okay? I may have just the thing for us.” And with that, she dashes off. I tighten the strings on my bag, hoping I won’t get the book Miss Bray just gave me wet when she quickly dashes back. “I found an umbrella for us!” She hands it over to me. I stand motionless not even sure what to do with it.

  “Ah…” I mumble, gripping the umbrella nervously. I’ve never had an umbrella, so I don’t even know how to open it. I stand like a doofus just staring at it like it’s going to attack me or something.

  Miss Bray softly chuckles, “Mary Jane, it’s not going to bite you.” She opens the door and takes the umbrella from my fidgety hands. She slides the small silver piece to the top making the umbrella expand outward. The rhythmic rain bounces and rolls down the slick, black material. “Come on, get underneath it,” she says, smiling. With a gentle nudge she ushers me underneath. I watch as she locks the school doors while she holds the umbrella in one hand, shielding us from the downpour. And in this stormy moment, I feel safe, completely protected from everything. Not a drop of rain runs down my face or down my shoulders and I stare at the silver metal rods stretching outward. It reminds me of a hideaway, a small, secret hideaway safeguarding me from all the dangers beyond.