Bone Dance by Martha Brooks Read Free Book Online

God, Alex, we’re not talking about a religious relic. It was just an ordinary pen.”
    â€œIt was his pen,” said Alex icily, “that he wrote with. He wrote his last grocery list with that pen.”
    â€œGrocery
list?” Serena wrinkled up her pretty nose. “Did you keep that, too?”
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” said Alex, angrily turning away, shoving books, papers, binders into her backpack. The grocery list, in a very shaky hand, said
bananas, eggs, six muffins
. It was still pressed between the pages of the last paperback book he ever read.
    Serena heaved a big sigh. “When are you going to stop all this crazy stuff and get on with your life?”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    â€œI can’t talk to you,” said Serena. “And you obviously don’t want to talk to me, so I’m out of here.”
    â€œFine,” said Alex. “That’s absolutely fine with me.”
    They didn’t talk to each other for three months. And then Serena came back into her life. She arrived at her front door with an apology in the form of a bottle of cola, a bag of chocolate creams, and a double-cheese pizza.
    And they never again talked about the pen.

7
    They were colorless and odorless. Lonny sensed them pressing against his bedroom window. Or standing in the darkest part of his room. Once, before waking up, he felt something heavy on his chest. When he opened his eyes, he discovered that he couldn’t move. Not his arms or legs or even his head. He lay there, pinned by their weight. Sometimes he felt as if a column of darkness had entered his body.
    He was eleven years old.
    Pop asked, “Are you sad?”
    Of course I’m sad. I’ve killed my mother.
    Pop would sit like a lost man at the edge of Lonny’s bed, a sandwich in his big hand. It would drip ketchup onto the floor, and neither of them would bother to clean it up.
    Whenever Lonny thought back to that time, the image of Pop and his sad midnight sandwiches haunted his memory. That, and the ghosts of the Ancients that lurked between the smells of burned toast and unwashed clothing and growing dust. Theywere silent when he was awake. But he grew to be afraid of sleeping.
    He would hear water gurgling. He’d stand, in his dreams, on the LaFrenière homestead, a place he’d stopped visiting in his waking life. At his feet, an old spring would bubble up, the water trickling through a clearing in the woods all the way down to the lake. He’d drop down and lie on his stomach and drink thirstily from the spring, from the golden water that came from its source deep in the dark earth.
    But always their voices came in the wind, pulling him away from some unnamed longing. “Sorrowwww,” they whispered through the pretty poplar leaves.
    When Lonny turned twelve, the ghosts went away. He wasn’t exactly sure what made them do that. He woke up one morning and was aware of a happy feeling for no special reason.
    â€œDid you sleep well, son?” Pop asked, pouring hot chocolate out of a battered pot into Lonny’s mug.
    â€œYep, I did.” Lonny bent his head over the mug, slurping the hot liquid. He was trying to remember his dreams of the night before but found that he couldn’t. They were, somehow, blocked. This, he decided, was a good thing.
    The shadowy figures left the house. He imagined them floating back to Medicine Bluff, light and free. Occasionally, with a flicker, like a match struck in a moonless room, he thought about them and panicked. But he found that he could then push them away. Lock them out. And dream of nothing in particular.
    Earl’s death shook him. The dreams began full force again, but different this time. Always it was his mother, coming to him again and again in his dreams. She became less human and more spirit. She’d land delicately at the side of his bed, all snow and ice and feathery white fringes. She’d blow on his face as