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  BETTER LEFT BURIED

  Copyright © 2014 Belinda Frisch

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  KINDLE EDITION

  3/31/14

  All rights reserved. This e-book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2014

  ISBN-13: 978-1497461703

  ISBN-10: 1497461707

  CreateSpace

  7290 Investment Dr.

  Suite B

  North Charleston, SC 29418

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental.

  ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR:

  Payback, A Strandville Zombie Series Short

  Cure, Strandville Zombie Series Novel #1

  Afterbirth, Strandville Zombie Series Novel #2

  The Strandville Omnibus

  Fatal Reaction

  SPECIAL THANKS

  Special thanks to fellow author Matt Schiariti for making Better Left Buried the best book it can be. Matt is a talented author, an eagle eye reader, and a great friend who also writes about ghosts. His support makes me a more confident, much less frazzled author. I can’t thank him enough on all accounts.

  “Ghosts of Demons Past”, Matt Schiariti’s debut novel, is available in e-book and paperback formats and was one of my favorite reads of 2013.

  “Well, Mr. Gabriel. What do you know about … demons?”

  For most people, that’s a question that never comes up. Medium Seth Gabriel isn’t most people and for him, it’s another day in an abnormal life.

  It’s bad enough that his love life has seen better days, but his personal problems are only the half of it. Seth’s ghost hunting business hasn’t seen a client in weeks and he’s desperate for a paycheck. Things look up when two potential clients seek him out.

  Courtney Reeves hires Seth to investigate a paranormal disturbance in her home. On the surface, it’s a run of the mill cleaning job, but when you deal with the dead for a living, there’s no such thing as routine. The close of the case is the start of even bigger problem and Seth finds out that, while there’s nothing to fear from the dead, the living are another story.

  When the nervous and persistent Evan Gallagher enters his life, Seth sees the promise of a big payday. There’s only one catch. The wealthy lawyer thinks his wife is possessed by a demon. Seth doesn’t believe in demons … not anymore, but the money is too good to turn down. Is Evan crazy or is he one hundred percent sane? As Seth digs deeper, he’ll ask the same question of himself.

  For a guy who’s coasted through life on not much more than Greek takeout, tequila, and attitude, Seth’s going to have to dig deep to survive what will turn out to be a very bad week.

  For Brent, always.

  Autumn leaves bring with them

  Incomprehensible cold-weather conversations

  As I walk down the Ave

  To a place in my life

  That I'd rather not go

  Challenging death

  Sparse leaves stand proud

  And Dream of April's rain

  As life suspends

  Amidst this frost that is my breath

  I hold his hand for one last time

  Embracing life

  Before I succumb

  To the plague of this season

  -Belinda Frisch

  CHAPTER ONE

  Harmony rolled onto her side and draped her leg over Adam’s. Sweat plastered her long brown hair to her face as she turned her head back and forth against her pillow, trying to block out the heavy footfall she heard in her sleep. Work boots. She couldn’t see them, but the clip-clop sound was unmistakable. A porch swing creaked. A door slammed. The smell of smoke filled her nose, transporting her to the dark place that, a year earlier, had pushed her over the line toward suicide. Had her mother not found her, she would’ve been dead. Drifting further into the dream, the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her.

  “There’s my girl.” A gruff voice breaks through the haze and Harmony turns on her heel. A smiling man crushes out his cigarette in an ashtray on the arm of the porch swing and reaches for her. He has a gentle way about him, but he is blurry. Her memory does its best to recreate something long-forgotten, but she is seeing him as if looking through someone else’s much-too-strong prescription glasses.

  She runs toward him, her pigtails catching the wind and flapping behind her. He feels like safety and she rushes up the few porch steps to fling herself at him. He catches her. He always catches her, and this time is no different. He pulls her close and blows raspberries on her cheek, the stale beer on his breath familiar and strangely comforting. She throws back her head and laughs, but her giggling is cut short by the storm clouds gathering in the sky above them. Before she can ask what’s happening, she is ripped from his arms and dragged through time to a ruined version of the same scene where the house is dark and the porch swing sways empty.

  A raging bonfire dies to a shower of dancing embers that rains down on her like volcanic ash. The cold night air burns her throat and she coughs as the tendrils of smoke work their way into her lungs. She walks toward the boarded-up house wearing only a band tee and a pair of black underwear. She’s no longer a little girl. Dread tightens every muscle.

  An icy breeze cuts through the thin cotton, making her shiver.

  “Hello?”

  No one answers.

  The front door is locked.

  She wiggles the handle and pounds the heel of her hand against the jamb. The cold makes it hurt but she keeps at it, listening to the scuffle of feet inside. There’s a struggle. Someone she loves is in trouble. She runs around the side of the house, past the tire swing in the tree and the fire pit, to the back screen door and screams to be let in. She beats her fist against the wooden crossbeam, noticing red droplets leeching through the tiny gray squares.

  “Help.”

  A crimson slick coats her hand, bringing her back to the night she tried to end her life.

  Panic sets in, the fear of being back on the bathroom floor of her mother’s shitty trailer, bleeding and in pain.

  “Help. Someone, please help me.”

  She claws at the screen, her fingertips searching for a weak spot or tear, but it’s impenetrable. There is no help. Only when she works up the courage to wipe her forearms clean does she realize the blood isn’t hers.

  “Harmony, wake up!” Adam’s voice drew her back. She inhaled like a drowning victim breaking water, grappling to get a hold on him. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” He rocked her against his tattooed chest, stroking her hair. She could scarcely catch her breath. “It’s only a bad dream,” he whispered.

  But even three-quarters asleep, she knew it was more than that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Brea Miller woke to the sound of her mother, Joan, shouting for her to answer the phone. She had hit the snooze button so many times that she was a half-hour late, exhausted from having been up half the night texting with Harmony.

  “Brea, come on. Pick up. Your father wants to talk to you.”

  Her father, Kurt, had moved to Peach Springs, Arizona fourteen
years earlier and had only come back once, for her grandfather’s funeral. Two weeks before her fifteenth birthday, he hadn’t even remembered to bring a gift. He spent two hours at her house, shuffling birthday cake frosting across his plate and sipping cold coffee between whispers to her mother. She could say that it was sadness for the loss of his father, but his head-down melancholy wasn’t depression, it was guilt.

  Brea wanted to believe it was for having left her and her mother—who still wore her wedding ring, kept her married name, and slept in her now ex-husband’s favorite sweatshirt—but that wasn’t it. Whatever turned her father from the smiling, fun-loving family man she vaguely remembered was something he’d rather be hated for hiding than ever admit to.

  Brea studied her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door and sighed at the sight of her pale freckled skin and near shapeless body. Other girls, especially Harmony, had come into their own two years ago while she could barely fill out a sports bra. She raked her fingers through her tangled auburn hair, delaying picking up the phone in the hopes of her father hanging up.

  “Brea, come on. I mean it.” Her mother was coming up the stairs, still on the phone—still talking about her. “She’s running late. Yeah, she was probably talking to her again all night.”

  “All right, all right. I get it.” Brea picked up her cordless as her mother appeared in her doorway.

  “Be nice,” she mouthed, holding her hand over the receiver.

  “Hang up, Mom.” Brea held the handset between her ear and shoulder and worked a pair of knee-high socks over her calves. “Hello.”

  “Brea?”

  “Yeah, Dad. It’s me.”

  “How have you been?”

  No matter how she answered, he’d be dismissive. “Fine. You?” She waited for the real reason he’d called, suspecting her mother had put him up to it.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Listen, I’m making plans for summer vacation. I thought you’d like to spend some time out here, a couple of weeks or a month, maybe? We could go to the zoo. You love that place.”

  “I loved that place when I was five, Dad.” That was the last time her mother forced her to make the trip. “Zoos are cruel.”

  “How about we just catch up on old times then?”

  “We don’t have any old times. Why don’t you save us both some time and tell me why you’re really calling.”

  “I don’t want to fight, Brea. I thought it would be good for you to take a break, get out of town. Mom says you’ve been hanging around Harmony again and I … we … need to talk about that.”

  “It’s not ‘again’, Dad. It’s ‘still’. Feel free to tell Mom that the next time she puts you up to calling me. I have to go. I’m gonna miss my bus.”

  Brea’s parents rarely collaborated except for when it came to Harmony. They were determined to keep the two of them apart, but she wasn’t worried. Her father was too far away to set boundaries, and her mother didn’t have the man power to enforce them.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was still dark outside when Harmony stepped out of the steam-filled bathroom wearing a pair of Adam’s sweatpants and a t-shirt. She swept her dripping hair into a towel on top of her head and rubbed her tired eyes.

  The kitchen light turned on and she listened to the sound of the coffee pot percolating for a minute before heading toward it.

  “Adam, what are you doing up?”

  Adam stood, bent at the waist with his head resting on his arms on the counter and his eyes closed. His back rose and fell with each heavy breath. When she wrapped her arms around him, he startled awake.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “What time is it?” He squinted at the clock on the microwave they’d gotten for free because the display was only half visible.

  “Five-thirty.”

  Adam groaned, took two mismatched coffee cups down from the cupboard, and filled them. The small one-bedroom was furnished in secondhand furniture, but was a step up from the by-the-hour motel room he’d been staying at after he left home. It was a time in his life he didn’t care to talk about. She didn’t care to ask. He pushed the sugar bowl toward her and rinsed off his spoon.

  “No, thanks. I’m taking mine black.”

  “We can’t keep going like this, Harmony. You know that, right? Neither of us has slept in a week—”

  “And you want to send me back, right?”

  In Harmony’s experience, people didn’t work on problems, they pushed them far enough away to not have to deal with them.

  “Send you back where? To your mother’s? No. Why do you always jump to that? I wouldn’t send you there if someone paid me. No food, no power half the time, not to mention her drunk and drugged boyfriends … there isn’t even a phone to call for help. Without the burner I bought you, your mother wouldn’t have even been able to call me that night.”

  That night.

  Some events are traumatic enough to be mentioned without specifics. Adam was talking about the night she intended to kill herself. She held up her hand, unwilling, as always, to talk about it.

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “You know, normally I wouldn’t, but you have no idea what you put me through and it’s about time you hear it. Your mother didn’t save you, Harmony. She was so high when I got to you she could barely keep her eyes open. She didn’t even call 9-1-1.”

  “She has authority issues, Adam. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “You needed lifesaving medical attention. I shouldn’t have been her first call. I was soaked in your blood, Harmony, doing everything I could think of to save you and I just kept thinking that without you, there was no reason for me to stay in this shit world. I prayed for you to live.”

  “That’s serious.” She needed to make light of the fact that Adam wasn’t the praying type to avoid talking about what happened—to keep from admitting she wished he hadn’t saved her. “I guess it wasn’t my time.”

  “It’s that cut and dry for you, isn’t it? I sat, alone, in a hospital waiting room for over fourteen hours, covered in your blood, wondering if you were going to make it. I didn’t care about the people staring, or the fact that your mother didn’t care enough to stay. I only cared that you came back to me.” There were tears in his eyes as he said it. “And I wondered what made you so desperate in the first place.”

  Harmony had almost no recollection of that night, having come to only once when she was being wheeled into surgery. She’d have explained the weight of a miserable life if she could, giving Adam a detailed list to hold on to, something he could fix, but the truth of it was simpler.

  “Even if there’s nothing after death, sometimes nothing is better.”

  Adam set down his coffee cup and reached for her hand. “You don’t still feel that way, do you?” She debated whether it was best to placate him or be honest, and knew she’d stalled too long when he started to panic. “Harmony, answer me.”

  “No, I don’t.” She pulled her hand away and chugged her rapidly cooling coffee.

  “You’d tell me if things got that bad again, right? If you needed—” The words were on the tip of his tongue, but she knew he wouldn’t say them. She had warned him she’d leave if he ever tried talking her into medication again.

  Three months on an adolescent psych unit cured her of ever taking behavioral meds again, no matter how bad things got.

  The Spring View Psychiatric Hospital was hell dressed in roses, the kind of place you’d die to get out of if they’d stop drugging you long enough for you to finish the job. On the outside, it was a respite. A clean, caring place to heal. The inside would steal your soul. Kids shuffled down the halls wearing the same pajamas for days and weeks on end, so sedated they couldn’t tell you where they were if you asked them.

  She hated the way the pills made her unable to feel, dead, from the inside out, and knew Adam would have her back there in a second if he thought she wanted to hurt herself again.

&
nbsp; “I’ll be fine,” she said. “We’ll get something over-the-counter to help me sleep and we’ll both feel better.”

  “You mean it?”

  No matter what she felt, she’d learned the right things to say. Adam would believe her because he wanted to.

  “Yes. I do.” She slid her empty mug across the counter and smiled. “Now refill me. It’s going to take more than one cup of coffee to get me through school today.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Brea waited in front of Reston High—a rural school about to graduate a class of one hundred fifty students in June. It had been a tough four years living in the kind of town that was too small to get lost in. She and Harmony had operated on the outskirts of a social experiment they had no place in, and were specimens beneath a microscope neither of them could get out from under.

  Rachael Warren parked her late model white Fiat. Several photo-ready clones filed out of the passenger’s side, each sipping their cup of designer coffee. Being on Rachael’s good side had perks.

  Brea was very much on her bad side, having inexplicably managed to catch the attention of Rachael’s on-again/off-again, current ex-boyfriend Jaxon Winslow. Rachael didn’t necessarily want Jaxon; she wanted the option of him. Brea, with her mother’s help, had somehow gotten in the way of that.

  Jaxon’s father owned a property developing firm that dealt with Brea’s mother for permits. Joan had all but forced the idea of dating Jaxon down Brea’s throat, insisting they weren’t that different. She had been homecoming queen all four years of high school and either wanted to live in denial that her only daughter was shunned, or somehow forgot not everyone could be popular. She threw Brea and Jaxon together at an end-of-summer picnic after his and Rachael’s most recent break-up.