Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) Read Online Free

phone. “Shit.” “What happened?”
    “I pinched my fucking thumb.” The bitter cold made everything hurt worse. I handed Ben my phone. “Call it.”
    Ben’s first attempt was with his gloves on. After a few unsuccessful tries he bit the thumb of his right glove, pulling his hand free.
    “I hear it.” It had bounced beyond the stones I’d just placed almost to the edge of the casket. The glow fell upon the flowers the women had placed on top of my thistle. I crawled toward the ring tone. “Holy shit.”
    “What is it?”
    In the glow of the tiny screen I could see that one of the nails holding the lid on had been pulled free. I searched for the next hole and saw that the nail from it, too, had been removed. “Ben, what the hell were they doing out here? Somebody had this open.”
    I stood up to hand Ben his phone. “Did you hear me?”
    “Shhh.” He was standing. In the light from the back porch I could see his head cocked, as if straining to hear. “Old Christmas is starting.”
    Leaving him to his redneck fantasy, I shook my head and pulled rocks from the pile myself. Cold sweat formed on my brow and against my back. “And you’re drunk.”
    “You don’t hear that?”
    “You didn’t hear what I said?” I continued working. More snow had begun to fall. “Tell me you can’t hear that.”
    “I don’t want to hear it. It’s been a long day. I’m burying my sister.” I climbed out of the hole.
    “Smell that?” He said, “Elderberry.”
    “I don’t smell anything but that hillbilly pop you been drinking all night.” Heavy snow looked like moths around a streetlight as it fell past the floodlights hanging above my pap’s back porch.
    “C’mon, man. Listen.”
    The only way to get him to shut up was to bite my own lip, so I obliged. Dogs barked down in Davis and the occasional lamb brayed over my pap’s barn. “I hear it.”
    “Really?” Ben smiled at being validated.
    “No. I’m going to finish now.” I sat on the edge of the grave. A stirring amongst my pap’s cattle stopped me from getting back into the hole. I brushed cherry blossom petals, not snow, off my shoulders.
    “And you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown. It’s coming,” Ben said. He walked past the other graves and toward the gate. “Let’s go.”
    The hinges squealed as he slipped past the fence. I lined the remainder of the stones on the lip of the grave so I’d be able to reach them from below. In the tree above, songbirds chirped an occasional exclamation. The air warmed with the scent of blackberry blossoms and hay-scented ferns.
    When the wind blew I heard the susurrus of summer leaves in the trees above instead of the thin whistling of naked winter branches.
    I could smell it. And I could hear it.
    I stood there, all of a sudden alone. From the edge of the forest a buck snorted, startling me. It was just like the ghost in the basement all over again.
    “Hang on, man.” I jogged to catch up with him.
    “Here.” Ben handed me the flask as I caught up, but I didn’t drink. Ben whispered, “Hay loft,” and ran ahead.
    A wheeze of cut hay and manure rolled out of the warm barn when Ben opened the door. We crept along the dry walls toward the ladder. Animals stirred in their stalls, creating an uneasy background of little noises. A bare bulb hung from a long wire, forcing naked shadows onto the old wormy chestnut. Dark stains clung to the splintered wood like long-eared bats.
    Ben grabbed the ladder and gestured for me to climb first. The top rung had been bolted to a cross post with galvanized brackets. The ladder twisted a fraction of an inch with each rung I climbed. Each tiny twist came with a squeak.
    I crawled along the edge of the loft, then watched Ben climb to the top. His flask was still in my pocket. I opened it, sniffed the barefoot whiskey—which reminded me too much of my dad—then set it on the ledge next to me. Ben crawled toward me, shuffling one hand at a time. He stopped a few