Echoes of the Dead Read Free Page A

trace.
    “Hey, Kels? Where are you?” Brit asked. She’d been Kelsey’s friend since high school and still wore her dark hair past shoulder length. Kelsey had always thought of Brit—short for Brittany—as pretty, but in a vaguely Eastern European and mysterious way.
    “Sorry,” Kelsey said. “Sorry… Just thinking.”
    Brit flashed her news-desk-perfect teeth. “You need more booze, girlie.” She pushed a plastic cup filled with bright green liquid across the table. “This isn’t the time for thinking. It’s the time for drinking and getting stupid.”
    Kelsey looked at the cup. The drink, whatever it was, glowed like radioactive Kool-Aid in a bad science fiction movie. Her eyebrows rose.
    “Chill out. It’s a Midori Sour. Tastes like a Jolly Rancher but numbs the worry center.” Brit’s forefinger tapped her temple. “You’ve got way too much on your brain, sweetie. I don’t know why you’d want to stuff your pretty little head with all that psychobabble anyway.” 
    “It’s not that.”
    Brit nodded. “Right.”
    She shook her hair, and long black strands flopped over her shoulders. Her eyes—almost as dark as her hair—drilled through bone, mining Kelsey’s secret thoughts. At least Kelsey felt she was. They’d been friends for a long time, true, but Brit hadn’t gone on the ski trip. Brit hadn’t clutched the door handle in Johnny’s SUV while the vehicle spun out of control and landed in a ditch. She hadn’t felt the brutal, numbing cold from the snow, the endless white blanket which plagued them to the porch, which forced them inside. She wasn’t the one to find the dead man, wrists splayed open in his bathtub. She didn’t lose Jared.
    “Earth to Kelsey. I’ve lost you again. Go on and take a drink.”
    Kelsey touched the cold plastic cup.  She brought it to her lips and took a drink. The alcohol was cool and sweet and sour as it washed over her tongue.  It warmed her chest as it slid down her throat. Maybe she did need to loosen up and get, as Brit so eloquently said, stupid . Maybe she needed to bury the past and try and forget Jared, forget the house, and forget the dead man. Just dreams… Dreams and bad memories. She closed her eyes and took another sip. It did taste a bit like a Jolly Rancher.
    “Watermelon,” Kelsey said.
    “You like?”
    Kelsey smiled. “I like.  Let’s dance.”
    Bodies shook and cavorted on the dance floor, all awash with flashing lights.  Throbbing music—a pop tune with relentless, pounding beat—swayed arms and legs in unison. Kelsey followed Brit to an empty corner, and both joined the frenzy. Kelsey’s eyes roved the crowd. Even at twenty-seven, she was toward the upper age limit at Tremors. Some faces looked like children—a few might have been students from the abnormal psychology lecture for which she was the teaching assistant. 
    Three men— boys , Kelsey thought—in matching silver silk shirts made their way through the crowded dance floor. Each carried a plastic cup and faux-danced so as not to spill. Sweat slicked their faces so each sparkled under the bright, flickering lights. Kelsey watched them as she shuffled her feet. Some malaise and inhibition sloughed from her skin as she let the beat take her body. She hated the club, but Brit was right about one thing. She needed to let loose, get stupid. She hated the club, but dancing felt good.
    She leaned close to Brit. “Those three are on the move.  I think they’re looking for wounded members of the herd.”
    Brit laughed. “The lead is cute. Kind of. But his nose.” She scowled and shook her head so her hair spun from side to side.
    “It’s huge,” Kelsey said.
    “You know what they say about boys with big noses.” Brit ran her hands down her body, rolling her eyes in mock ecstasy.
    As they both laughed, Caitlin, the shortest of the three, joined them. Kelsey felt Caitlin had the best body, busty but lithe with just enough ass to shake.  Her blue eyes were