Read Reveal (Cryptid Tales) for Free Online Page B

briefly to see my left leg totally gnarled up next to my body. My dark red blood soaking the freshly laid snow that had silenced my footsteps just seconds before. The rust taste filled my mouth and as I panicked, I saw my dad’s horrified face. I see his face every time I see or hear about blood now. It makes me feel like my whole body is about to cave into itself. The pain from my broken leg was nothing compared to the look on his face; that look has haunted me ever since. It impacts me every time. I once passed out in elementary school when Olivia scraped her knee. I actually cried last time I got a paper cut and I’m eighteen freaking years old, an adult, I mean really?
     
    I turn back to Wendy, she’s looking at her hands laying in her lap.
     
    She mumbles, “Shay, please help me.” Then she slowly turns to look at me with those big blue eyes.
     
    What can I do? I have to suck it up and help this little ghost; why else would I have this ability?
     
    I sigh and as I suck a deep breath back in I make a decision, “Ok Wendy, let’s do this.” I’m surprised at how confident I sound.
     
    We get out of the car and I run to the house to try to stay semi-dry while Wendy floats around looking for her father’s grave. She thinks it’s near the lake so she’s headed that way, though I can hardly make out her semi-translucent figure through this rain. I walk through the front door of the blue house and decide I might as well look around. I enter in a hallway with a seating area to the right and a dining room to the left. It appears as though a chandelier fell through the floor in the dining room at some point so I avoid the dark open space left behind. It looks as though it could suck me into it. Instead I walk to the back of the house and find myself in a huge kitchen. It goes the entire length of the back of the house. The pantry alone is as big as my bathroom at home. Come to think of it, this house is at least twice the size of mine. I start exploring the cupboards, who knows what I’ll find in them or what I am looking for, but the opening and shutting of the doors is calming me. I find some old vintage tins when Wendy shows up. She has an apprehensive smile on her face, “found it” is all she says and I know it’s time to go to work.
     
    We walk out of the back door of the house or what’s left of it. A screen door blocks most of the doorway and I have to give it a good shove to get it open. Wendy hardly notices it as she floats right through the screen. I notice the rain has lightened up significantly as I put up my hood. It’s more of a drizzle now, which I really appreciate. Wendy moves in front of me, leading me to her father’s burial site. We move toward the lake across the wet, slippery grass. I notice a half sunk wooden rowboat tied to a fairly stable looking dock.
     
    “ We used to fish off that dock, you know. I caught a big bass in that pond the year before, well before I left.” Wendy looks nostalgic.
     
    “ Hey Wendy, can I ask you something?”
     
    She snaps back to our current reality. “Sure.”
     
    I pause, rethinking my question but decide to go for it anyway, “How did you, you know, die?”
     
    “ Well that’s easy Shay,” she says with a sad look in her eyes, “I killed myself.”
     

Chapter 10
     
    She turns to look out over the churning black water. It’s been disturbed from the rain and as it drizzles the water continues to move. I put my hands in my front sweatshirt pocket to keep them warm.
     
    I can see her slipping into her past. She seems to get a dazed look whenever she’s back in her time. She continues to look out over the lake and takes a deep breath to begin.
     
    “ It was summer and I liked to swim. I thought I could reach the bottom of the lake if I tried hard enough. I filled my lungs with air and swam hard to the bottom. I brushed the silt floor with the tips of my fingers. When I approached the surface I saw my daddy paddling around in our