Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers by JeanNicole Rivers Read Free Book Online

at the Rusher home and her mind was beginning to wander.
    How would Lola’s parents react to seeing her?
    What had her family been going through since the body was discovered?
    Lola’s home was a couple of long country blocks from her own, but the streets were wide and lined with animated trees and she took comfort in the certainty that the neighborhood overall would make for enjoyable scenery. Another block still lay stretched out in front of her when she heard a crackling behind her; thebreaking of a thin switch underfoot. The girl stopped and turned around to face the gray gloomy street. For a moment she felt the eerie sensation that came with the realization that one may not actually be alone when they assumed that they had been. Goosebumps emerged on her arms in intimidating numbers. She wished that she had dressed for the weather that she was coming into instead of the weather that she had left behind. The rain had never come but a sporadic drizzle kept the air moist.
    After scanning the street and rubbing her arms to create a friction that would relieve the chill, she turned and continued to her destination.
Nothing to be afraid of
, she thought,
just ghosts
.
    As she walked, she could feel the eyes; someone was watching her, they could see her, but she could not see them. Regina slowed her pace as her instinct directed until she was completely still.
    “Lola,” her heart stopped for just a beat when she heard someone call out to her. Regina looked around and pinpointed an arm waving wildly.
    Mrs. Landcaster.
    “I mean Nikki …” Mrs. Landcaster sputtered. “I mean, Regina, is that you?” after several failed attempts, she was able to match the correct face with the name. Regina remembered how Mrs. Landcaster always used to call out at least three or four names before she could fish out the right one for the person with whom she was speaking. For many years now, the older woman had been planted on her porch. Every afternoon and evening, the old woman sat there sipping steaming hot coffee. Regina wondered how she could even blink, let alone sleep at night when she drank coffee until evening every day. In fact, it had been a running joke that Mrs. Landcaster didn’t sleep because she was on her porch as soon as the sun came up and she was always there when it set. The woman had always claimed to love the fresh night air and it was possible that she did, but it hardly seemed a coincidence that she started spending all of her time outside the house after her husband left her years before. Some people said she hated being in the home where they had spent their happy years together, while others speculated that the trauma sparked some severe hoardingbehavior that made her house unlivable; nevertheless, it was well-known that it was more than the night air that she hoped to encounter every evening as she sat outside. Mrs. Landcaster was a mix between the Black Water news and neighborhood watch. She saw everything that happened on her block and had a photographic memory about every car that had driven up and down the block, at what time, and everyone who was in it, but somehow still regularly misplaced her keys and had trouble remembering where she parked when she went to shop on Main Street.
    Regina jogged up the stone walk so that she could greet the older woman. Mrs. Landcaster was wearing fitted denim jeans over her slim body; she wore a white T-shirt with a long-sleeved denim collar shirt over it. Her hair was short and brushed back and several gold bangle bracelets ornamented her wrists. The woman that, Regina guessed, was in her mid-sixties always wore the same set of gold rings on her fingers, between which she usually clamped a cigarette.
    “I am sorry; you know that I know your name, but I just get them all confused sometimes,” Mrs. Landcaster said. “Besides, you girls used to be so close it became difficult to tell you apart, except that you look nothing alike.” Mrs. Landcaster spoke with a laugh