Among Us: A Supernatural Novel written by Carver Edlund

Uprising

Floodlights, mounted in the scaffold canopy above a small stage, stabbed through the stormy gloom. Douglas-fir trees and hawthorn shrubs quaked in the strong winds, throwing crazy shadows up the rugged sides of the towering rocks. Rows of wooden bench seats rose in steps from the foot of the stage. They gently curved to fit the wedge of sloping land between the monoliths, fading into the darkness beyond the reach of the stark white floodlights. An enormous pentagram marked with runes and sigils ran from the stage at one end to the huge rock walls on either side and then vanished in the darkness near the highest seats. From ground level, the pentagram didn't look like much more than a bunch of random, disconnected lines, but it was a masterpiece that had taken nearly a full day of precise measurements and a whole team of demons to complete.

Lightning flashed, a long, drawn-out dance across the low-hanging clouds. An answering flash of light rippled inside the pentagram's outer circle. With each twin flash, blue-white above and red below, the seats and the rock beneath them went transparent, like a skin of shellack.

Beneath the skin, something languidly stirred. Something darkly, putridly green. Something enormous. Something that probed the underside of the ground with pallid limbs.

Not yet. The path wasn't open yet.

But it was so hungry.

It could smell them. Souls. So many. Gathered. Trapped.

The thunder rolled. In eerie harmony, a growl, sounding like a pained groan from the Earth itself, rumbled through the amphitheater.

..::~*~::..

The range rider, who had introduced himself to Julia as Marshal Whitley, stepped to the edge of Red Rocks' small stage.

Standing next to him, Julia hugged her elbows. She used to love coming here for concerts, Film on the Rocks, church services, or just to spend a sunny morning participating in an outdoor yoga or step class. Now . . .

She looked down on the house from the stage, past the red-painted railing, numbly watching the thing roll around underneath the seats like a bloated, whale-sized cockroach in murky water.

Marshal shook his head. "I been around a long time. I like my privacy. A lot of us do. If I hadn't heard about you talking to that young lady who helps people like us, I wouldn't have answered you. But this . . ." He gestured with his empty shot glass at the surreal light show. "Ain't never seen nothin' like this. This feels downright evil to me. I don't like it one bit."

"Will you help?" she asked. "Can you explain this to the others trapped here?"

Even though spirits were usually tied to places or things, or, occasionally, living people, according to Marshal, they'd been called to the park from all their various haunts by an outside force. Now, they couldn't leave.

"I will. To those who still retain their senses of self, anyway. Plenty are too far gone to understand." He caught her confused look. "We call 'em death echoes. The kind of ghosts responsible for most of the hauntings in the world. They replay the moment of their deaths over and over, forever. May God have mercy on their souls."

That could have been me, she thought, feeling a little sick as she remembered that moment on Aya's bedroom floor. It would have been, if not for her.

The dual lightning flashed again.

"Folks ain't too happy about the situation," he said. "Especially since that girl has been brought into it. Few can do what she does. Reapers don't get involved, won't answer a question to save their own hides, but that girl, she takes care of the dead and the living left behind. Me, I ain't got a pony in this show. I got no one left. Lots of others do. She's needed. They'll help. What exactly do you want us to do?"