Read Online The Gravesavers by Sheree Fitch - Free Book Online Page A

then upstairs. With the skull in my hands—like a dead weight, which it was—I followed.
    She cackled. “I call this the bone closet.”
    Just as I feared and always suspected. There
was
something secret and deadly behind that locked door. Great, I was thinking, she’s a vampire witch and I’m in the middle of a horror movie.
    But at first, it was nothing spectacular. A small storage room. I smelled mothballs and cedar and stifled a sneeze. There were books and boxes everywhere. Herbs hung upside down in bunches. She reached behind a neat stack of shoeboxes and chocolate boxes and scooped up bundles of dirty old tea towels. Cradling them in her arms as if she was carrying a baby, she placed the five bundles on a steamer trunk.
    “Unwrap them,” she instructed. The creepy feeling slithered into my belly again.
    “No,” I whispered.
    She laughed. “They won’t bite.”
    “I’m telling Dad,” I said.
    “What?”
    “That you’re scaring me.”
    “You’ve got yourself worked up, is all,” she said and laughed again. “Your imagination’s far worse than the truth. Unwrap them.”
    So I did.
    I let a yelp out of me that travelled to Katmandu and back. Sure enough, there were more bones and partial skulls.
    “Calm down,” the witch was snorting. Laughing! “Don’t look so terrified. It’s not like I ever killed anyone!”
    I had to plug my nose for fear of upchucking right there on the floor. I started to back out of the closet.
    “No you don’t, get back here. It’s not pleasant but it’s a fact. I figure this here was a man, this one a woman, this child, maybe four, five years old. You found a baby this morning. See?”
    She put her glasses on and rummaged through a wicker basket. From a rat’s nest of trinkets she produced a measuring tape and proceeded to measure the baby’s skull.
    “Not more than two months old, I’d say. God bless her little soul.”
    “Nana, what’s going on?” The room was starting to wobble in front of my eyes, like heat rising from hot pavement in summer.
    “Out!” she hissed. She didn’t have to tell metwice. She locked the door behind her. “Put on some boots. I’ve got someplace to take you.”
    “I didn’t bring any.”
    “There’s an extra pair of rubbers by the door.”
    She grabbed the keys to her truck. I didn’t even have time to untie my sneakers, just threw them off and stepped into boots miles too big for me. I clomped after her as fast as I could. She was already in the truck with the motor gunning by the time I caught up with her.

— GRAVE SIGHTS —
    “It’s only five minutes from here.”
    “What’s five minutes from here? Where are you taking me?” She had a wild-eyed look about her. Crazy, I kept thinking, my whole family is bonkers now.
    “You’ll see when we get there.”
    She sped like a demon down the main highway, then turned onto a dirt road I’d never been on before. It was narrow and cut through dense forest of fir and pine. We were in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen a house for at least a mile. Nana honked suddenly.
    It was a squirrel. The truck hit the soft dirt on the shoulder of the road and fishtailed until she finally got control. And she just kept on going!
    “Nana!” I screamed.
    “Relax,” she said, “I’m a very good driver.” Compared to who? I wondered.
    After a few more hair-raising twists and turns, she parked. We got out of the truck and she looked around, almost as if she was sniffing for danger.
    “Hold still,” she said. I turned in time to get showered with bug spray. She just missed my eyes.
    “The no-see-ums are buggers this time of year. They get me every time.” She doused herself with the musky stuff, dabbing it behind her ears as if it were perfume from Paris. From the cab of the truck, she pulled out a stick and some bells.
    “Never seen a bear in these here woods, and never want to neither. Just in case, though, this’ll scare them off.” I think she thought it was a good joke.