Dark Secrets (Dark Heritage #1)

Dark Secrets

  Dark Heritage Trilogy #1

  © 2012 by Samantha Hoffman.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permissions of the author.

  Chapter One

  The dead guy walked beside me, and even though I’d seen him several times already, I couldn’t help but glance repeatedly at him out of the corner of my eyes. He was much taller than me, and broader, but he didn’t acknowledge me, or the others rushing by on the sidewalk. He just walked straight ahead, never moving out of the way. If someone was coming at him, he just walked right through them.

  I turned the corner and, unsurprisingly, he turned with me. He didn’t speak and he never made eye contact with me. This was the fourth time I’d seen him, and like always, he acted like he couldn’t see me, which was something I wished I could do. My life would be much simpler if I could just pretend that I didn’t see him, but I couldn’t, because I could see him. He was there, and I just couldn’t deny it, no matter how badly I wanted to.

  I ducked into an alley, and the dead guy followed me without hesitation. For a second, I just stood there with my arms folded over my chest, waiting for him to do or say something. He looked at me with cool blue eyes, but he didn’t say anything. For some reason, they wouldn’t say anything until they were good and ready. I guess if you were dead, time kind of lost meaning, and you could take as long to do something as you wanted.

  “What do you want from me?” I hissed angrily, looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody was looking at me like I was a freak. There had been some bad experiences in the past where people have caught me talking to a dead person. It was especially weird for them because they couldn’t see the dead people, and they didn’t believe me when I said they were real. I just got skeptical, wary glances and hushed whispers.

  Growing up, there was always been talk about mental facilities, medication, therapy, and the works, but it never happened. My foster mother couldn’t care less about me, so if I didn’t want to go to counseling, I didn’t have to go. The only reason they took me in was because they couldn’t have a kid of their own, but that changed after I’d been there for awhile. But the neighbors would have talked if they’d sent me back, and appearances were important to a woman like Susan Frederickson.

  Susan hated how nice I was because everyone knew I was a good kid. Nobody would believe my foster mom if she told everyone I was a moody brat that destroyed property or was a bad influence on their three and a half year old daughter. So she was stuck with me until I graduated two years from now, and then I could be out of their lives forever.

  “I want nothing from you,” the dead guy said, interrupting my thoughts. “At least…I don’t think I do. Can you help me?” He sounded confused and lost, and I understood that. He’d probably been wandering around since he died, and was just not sure how to move on. I didn’t know why he thought I could help him–they all did–but he had the feeling that I could give him closure or something.

  “What do you need?”

  “To say goodbye,” he said, looking around. “My girlfriend needs to know that I didn’t wanna leave her. I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The drunk driver took that from me.”

  Most ghosts stayed behind because they had loved ones to say goodbye to, or unfinished business they didn’t get a chance to complete. Sometimes I helped them by delivering letters, or doing something simple for them. Then they were enough at peace that they could leave behind this world and move on to the next.

  If there was a next. I wasn’t so sure.

  “What’s her name?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how I could get a message to her without coming across as either insane or hurtful, but I’d do what I could to help ease his worries.

  “Joanna Finch. Will you find her for me? I can tell you what to say.”

  I nodded. “I’ll try my best, but I can’t promise you anything. I can’t always find people, but I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

  “Thank you,” he said, disappearing in an instant. When I was sure he was gone, I fished a scrap of paper out of my sweater pocket, and I wrote down the name Joanna Finch so I wouldn’t forget it. When I looked back up, I froze. There was a homeless man in army fatigues sitting in a cardboard box, and he was looking at me with an expression of terror and also pity.

  It was a look I knew well.

  He met my eyes, before slowly backing away. “Sweetheart, you’ve got yourself some problems, and I think you need some professional help. You should consider talking to someone.”

  I flashed him a smile and saluted him. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

  He relaxed only when I left the alley, and I turned back onto the street. Nobody else gave me funny looks, so I just blended right back in with everyone, trying to act as normal as possible. And I almost pulled it off…until the cats started to follow me.

  I wasn’t sure why, but everywhere I went there were always cats watching me. I didn’t know why they followed me, but they did. They meowed at me, and they swarmed around me, always begging for attention. Most of the time people didn’t notice it, but eventually there got to be so many cats it was impossible not to notice. Once, when I was in the fifth grade, I had over two dozen cats following me home from school, and people stopped and stared.

  That was the first time I realized that something might have been wrong with me. It wasn’t until a few weeks later I saw my first dead person, or ghost, and it really freaked me out. I cried and ran home, trying to get my father to believe me, but he hadn’t. I knew that if my mom had been alive still, she would have believed me, but he just didn’t care after her death.

  When I refused to drop it, he gave up his parental rights, and I went into foster care after that. It had been almost four and a half years since I’d seen my father, and I really couldn’t have cared less. I was glad he was gone, because he never once believed in me, and that hurt. Plus, I knew deep down that I was better off without him, even if I was stuck with Susan, who didn’t actually want me anymore.

  I pulled my backpack up higher around my shoulders, and picked up my pace. There were six cats trotting along behind me, and I hoped to lose them before I got home. It was bad enough that all the strays in our neighborhood flocked to our front porch at night; I didn’t need to be bringing home more of them. Susan didn’t like cats, and I didn’t want to start another fight.

  By the time I got home, I’d thankfully lost the six strays, but I got a nice surprise when I found one waiting on the porch for me. He was small and incredibly thin from living on the streets, and his fur was a yellowish-orange color, and his front paws had a bit of white. The back legs had white fur up to the knees, and I smiled when I saw him waiting for me.

  “Hey, Two Socks.”

  He chirped at my feet, and I bent down to pick him up. Alan and Susan weren’t home yet, so I had some time to feed and pet him before they got back. They’d freak out if they knew I was giving him an excuse to stick around, but I couldn’t just throw him out. Sometimes cats came around a few times, but Two Socks had been waiting for me everyday after school for months, and I couldn’t help but feel that he maybe considered me to be his master or something.

  I headed upstairs to my bedroom, and I set Two Socks down on my bed before cracking open my only bedroom window. There was a giant oak tree outside the window, and I’d used it to sneak out a few times, just to get away from Susan. It was easy enough to step onto the thick limb that ran just beneath the window, make my way to the trunk, and then drop to the ground.

  I turned on my laptop, which
sat on the desk near the wall, and I snapped my fingers. Two Socks climbed eagerly into my lap, and I stroked him from head to tail, listening to his strange chirp that didn’t sound like any cat I’d ever heard. When my Lord of the Rings background turned on, I got the urge to look over my shoulder to make sure some hot guy wasn’t snickering at my nerdy screen.

  Then I took out the slip of paper with Joanna Finch’s name on it, and I typed her name into an internet search engine, and I clicked on the first webpage. I read through the first three paragraphs before realizing that I was reading about a ninety year old woman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I clicked out and tried the second link.

  That one looked more promising. There was a picture of a beautiful redheaded woman hugging the dead man from the alley, and they looked so happy that it took me a second to finally notice the article’s headline: Tragedy Strikes Young Couple. I read the short article, and learned everything about the happy couple.

  Including the events of the night they both died.

  A drunk driver smashed into their truck, killing her instantly. He died later at the hospital, without ever knowing that his girlfriend had died hours before him. He didn’t know then, and he didn’t know now. How was I supposed to tell a man that his girlfriend was already dead, just like him?

  She might be waiting for him…

  Suddenly, Two Socks dug his nails into my thigh, making me yelp. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Jonathon, my dead guy, standing in the middle of my room. He didn’t even give me a chance to speak. “Did you find her for me?”

  I took a deep breath before I started. “Jonathon, your girlfriend died the night of the accident. She isn’t here anymore. I think she’s waiting for you, you know, on the other side.”

  His features crumpled, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a grown man so close to crying before. He took a deep breath, and his shoulders started to heave with barely repressed sobs. “Jonathon, she’s waiting for you,” I said again. “Go to her.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t look happy at the thought of seeing her again. “I thought that even though I wasn’t with her anymore, everything would be alright, because she could move on and be happy again. I guess I was wrong.”

  He faded from view, leaving me alone in my room again, and Two Socks settled down on my lap again. I closed the browser on my screen, and closed my laptop. Suddenly, I was so tired that all I wanted to do was fall asleep and forget about everything, and that’s what just I did. I flopped down on my bed, burying my face in my pillows, and I fell asleep.