Blood Secrets
Paranormal/Mystery
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Excerpt:

    When they arrived at the top of the hill, Sara saw the little cemetery buried in deep snow. A cloudless cobalt sky hung overhead, and her mood had improved immensely. "Look over there. You can see the fence sticking up a little above the drifts," said Sara, pointing in a direction above and to the left of the barn. "Can you see it?"

    "Yes, but I need a little breather before we go any further. I'm pooped." Lotty's calf muscles screamed from the long walk through the woods. "I thought I kept myself in better shape. Walking on these beaver tails takes a lot more energy than I have, I'm a fanny sitter." Lotty arched her back and tilted her head upward; a surge of excitement seized her. "Look, Sara, look up behind the barn. More stones--up there!"

    A breeze made the branches of a pine tree behind them sway and powdery snow spilled to the ground as wavering shadows cast across the dazzling white ground in front of them. Sara moved forward past Lotty, spreading her hand in front of her eyes against the sun. "Yes," she whispered, "I see them." Sara's face didn't change expression, but Lotty saw something in her eyes becoming darkly excited. "I believe you've discovered the rest of my ancestors."

    If one could pinpoint a split second in time when obsession replaced colossal curiosity, at this moment framed by the enormity of the landscape around her, Sara's determination to find her place in this family deepened to a fixation of which even she was not aware. Here also, Lotty began to realize how numbed she had become to the intervening strangeness of Sara's behavior.

     They made their way up the hill, unable to see the erosion that lay underneath the deep snow. They grasped exposed tree roots and spindly bushes to help pull them along and finally reached a second cemetery, although it was in fact, the first cemetery. Barely aware of the ornate iron fence that surrounded it, Sara entered through an opening past a post with a rusty hinge hanging unfastened except by one wobbly corroded screw, where many years ago a gate used to be. Lotty hung back and watched as Sara brushed snow from first one grave then the next until she had uncovered five or six burial places. Then Sara stood back motionless and studied the tombstones as though eyes stared back at her through them from beneath the earth.

    Lotty's skin prickled, but not from the cold, or the silence of the day, this place, and Sara's reaction to the family plot made her uncomfortable. Lotty didn't say anything for a while; her voice became thicker than usual when she finally spoke. "Let's go down and have a look at the barn."

    Sara looked up at Lotty with wide-eyed bewilderment and asked, "What should I do now?" Although the sun shone bright and broad strokes of clear cobalt blue painted the sky, a cold breeze had picked up. Sara's gaze moved downhill toward the other little cemetery. "Look down there, are those shadows? No. Aren't they mourners gathered around a casket at one of those graves?" She asked the question as though it would have been the most natural thing in the world to see people hovering around down there. "Aren't those mourners at Amy's grave?" Lotty heard Sara's words echo off the red cliff behind the barn. Amy's grave… Amy's grave... grave… grave.

    Lotty followed the line of Sara's fixed gaze, and thought she felt the blood flowing through her veins. It wasn't fear because nothing about the scene she saw at the cemetery threatened either of them. Nothing there except trees, shadows, and snow. Nevertheless, the fact that Sara saw something… well… it was irrefutable.

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