Whistling Past the Graveyard Read Online Free

was less and less often now, her words were a junk-drawer jumble of nonsense, half-sentences and wrong word choices. Bethy found it interesting and she wished she could read minds. She bet that a mind-reader could make sense of what Millie was trying to say. Mind-readers didn’t need actual language, she was sure of that. Then she wondered if a mind-reader could read an animal’s mind, and if so, could they translate the thoughts into human words? Would an animal’s thoughts change as they died, especially if they realized that they were dying? She hoped she would find out one day.
    Maybe she could ask Doctor Nine. She was sure that he was coming tonight. She was sure that she had seen him out there, driving in a big car that was the color of night. When she looked at the window she could see that there were dark birds lined up on the sill and on the power lines across the street. The birds belonged to him , she had no doubts.
    “B…Bethy…?”
    Hearing Millie speak now—very clearly except for a purely understandable hitch—broke Bethy’s reverie.
    “Yes?” Bethy asked, utterly fascinated by anything Millie would say at this point. She pulled her diary onto her lap and picked up her pen.
    “I don’t feel…” Millie lapsed back into silence, her eyelids flittered closed.
    Hm. What did that mean? I don’t feel . Feel what? Bethy wondered. Was Millie losing her emotions? Did they die first before the rest of the body?
    No, she didn’t think so. She’d read about dying confessions, which was guilt; and about dying people saying nice things to comfort the people sitting around a death bed, which was compassion. Weird, but there it was.
    Then she got it. Millie was trying to say that she didn’t feel good. Or maybe that she didn’t feel quite right. How…ordinary.
    “It’s okay, Mils,” Bethy said. “It’s just the medicine.”
    Millie’s eyelids trembled, opened. There was a spark of something there. Confusion? Bethy could recognize emotions even if she didn’t have any. Or, at least she could recognize emotions that she didn’t share. She saw fear there, and though she didn’t understand it she enjoyed seeing it.
    “I’m…not sick.” With a furrow of her brows, Millie whispered, “Am I?”
    “Sick?” Bethy replied with a comforting laugh. “Oh no, honey! You’re not sick.” She patted her hand the way Aunt Annie sometimes did. “No need to worry.”
    She saw relief in Millie’s eyes and Bethy took a taste of it.
    “Not…sick…?”
    “No, sweetie…you’re just dying,” Bethy said, and wondered if teasing this way was being greedy, and…was that okay?
    Millie’s eyes snapped wide and she tried to move. Bethy estimated that it took every ounce of her strength to move as much as she did, but all she could manage was a flap of one hand and a slight arch of her body. Then she collapsed back onto the pillows they’d brought down from the bed.
    Bethy wrote a quick description of it in her diary.
    The clock ticked, Mr. Whiskers’ eyes flicking one way, his tail swishing the other. Bethy counted seconds. She got to one-hundred and sixteen before Millie’s eyes opened again.
    “Why?”
    Just the one word, and it was clear that it cost her to get it out. Bethy wondered how many words Millie had left to spend.
    “Because, Mils. It’s for me. And for him.”
    Millie looked confused. Her lips formed the word ‘who,’ but she could not afford the breath to say it aloud.
    “For him. For Doctor Nine.”
    There was another flare of expression—mingled confusion and fear. Nice. Again Bethy wished she could read minds, though she was pretty sure she knew what Millie was thinking, how she would be sorting it out. Doctor Nine was the boogeyman. Bethy’s imaginary friend. Something she and everyone else laughed about behind her back. A dream, a nothing.
    Even before Bethy had started experimenting with Aunt Annie’s pills she had wanted to kill Millie for that—though strangely, and