Diary of the Gone by Ivan Amberlake Read Free Book Online Page A

where he is. I can
help you,” I said.
    “ You need to rest,
Callum,” he said. “It’s not safe out there at such an
hour.”
    “ You don’t understand.” I
clenched my fists. “You won’t find him without me.”
    “ I have the best people
here. They know the Swamps well. You just have to tell us which
direction to take, and we’ll search the perimeter.”
    I didn’t listen to him. Shoving the
blanket off, I stood up and said, “I’ll be ready in a
minute.”
    Mom entered the room, worry lining her
forehead. Chief Coleman stood up and came over to her, while I
scurried past them to my room to find the flashlight that I used
when making notes in my diary.
    The diary. That’s when I remembered
it. Should I write about Greg then, so that he wouldn’t show up in
my nightmares? I was short of time. What if they leave without me?
I grabbed the flashlight out of the top drawer and made a mental
note to return to my writing later. I leapt like a gazelle down the
stairs; the chief was still there waiting for me.
    “ Be careful, Callie,” Mom
said, her eyes glistening with tears.
    “ We’ll take care of him,
Mrs. Blackwell,” the chief said with a confident nod.
    Mom stroked my back and let me
go.
    As we exited I saw the chief had
brought an impressive team of scene techs with him. Some of them
had portable lights while others carried flashlights and kits. Two
of them had spades, their sight making me dizzy. One more held a
stretcher. All of them had grim expressions of furrowed brows and
eyes filmed over with inevitability.
    By the time we’d reached the forest,
it started drizzling, moisture clinging to my face. We walked in
silence without switching on the lights, even though the darkness
was so thick we probed our way with caution. Occasionally, I
tripped over a stone or a root.
    As we entered the mossy labyrinth,
narrow beams of light came to life one by one, bouncing up and
down, ripping through the gloom to the left and right of me. The
chief walked nearby, occasionally asking me for directions. Whether
he wanted to take my mind off the matter at hand or not, he asked
if my sister was doing okay at school (his son and Bev shared some
classes), if the headmaster’s son had stopped bullying me (probably
everyone already knew about it), to which I nodded my head without
saying anything. Questions that would make me cringe on a regular
day, but tonight I just told my well-rehearsed lies, unable to
erase the image of Greg’s limbs sticking out of the loose
soil.
    It was going to be a third time this
week I’d visit the Swamps. An unbidden guest at first, I already
had an affinity with this place.
    It was raining a bit harder, as if
nature was chiding us for our intention to bother its child
sleeping restlessly in his shallow grave, buried without respect by
some morbid-minded jerk.
    Cold fear slithered down my spine at
the realization that the killer might still be here, a few paces
away, lurking in the shadows and watching us get closer to Greg’s
body.
    Water squelched under my boots, the
farther I went. Men’s shouts sliced through my brain. Perhaps some
of them still thought I’d lied about the body. I wished that were
true. But with each step my hopes faded replaced by
despair.
    Even in the dark I could discern the
familiar shapes. Nothing had changed since my last visit to this
place. The fallen tree that I’d jumped over and sprained my ankle.
Then the blood, the leaves and the loose soil. And the smeared
trail leading to the impromptu grave.
    I halted, pointing my flashlight where
the body lay.
    “ It’s here!” the chief
called, waving frantically for the others to go our way. All the
torchlight beams merged with mine, and I squinted at the intense
flaring. The hand and leg sticking out of the ground cast haunting
shadows over the wet leaves. I stood rooted to the spot as everyone
bustled around me.
    Donned in plastic gloves, the scene
techs and medical examiners did their jobs with swiftness