Spirit Mountain Read online

  SPIRIT MOUNTAIN

  A Novel

  by

  J.K. DREW

  and ALEXANDRA SWAN

  Other Books by J.K. Drew

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Heart of the Forest

  Magic Quest

  Spirit Mountain

  Little Wolf

  The Emerald River

  The Angel and the Gift

  Forever Silent

  THE ROBOT TWINS

  The Mystery of the Walking Statue

  The Secret of Stonehead Island

  The Mystery of the Lightning Cave

  KID QUEST ADVENTURES

  The Secret of the Sphinx

  The Gateway of the Sun

  The Treasure of Oak Island

  THE DISTANT WORLD TRILOGY

  Dare to Enter a Distant World

  Dare to Rule a Distant World

  Dare to Escape a Distant World

  YOUR CHOICE BOOKS

  Deep Sea Danger

  The Legend of Eagle Eye Mountain

  Playoff Pressure

  Spirit Mountain

  Published by J.K. Drew

  Copyright © 2016 by J.K. Drew

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Spirit Mountain

  Chapter One

  “Wait!” I reached out my hand to try to grab onto his. With brown hair, tanned skin and eyes as dark as the deep sea, he looked enigmatic. He looked about seventeen: my age.

  I’d had the same recurring dream for fourteen days straight. But tonight, as he’d reached for me, we’d locked eyes. Tonight, the boy in my dream had seen me. As surely as I knew myself, I also knew that in some strange way, we’d connected.

  Then he faded, but I wasn’t ready to let him go. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the boy in my dreams.

  A soft cushion hit my face, pulling me from my sleep. The snickers of my idiotic younger cousin frustrated me and without much thought, I threw the pillow back at him and pulled the covers over my face.

  “Get up, Beth,” yelled my cousin, Teddy. He fled from my room and back downstairs, taunting, “Mom, Mom, she won’t get up for the last day of school.”

  Oh, how I hated that brat. He was like the pesky vermin we had back in New York City. The kind that were big and annoying and difficult to get rid of. I’d never met my cousin until my mother had died and my father had taken a job in Europe. Dad couldn’t take me with him, so he’d shipped me off to relatives in a small, frightening town called Castleborough. I was still mad at him for missing my seventeenth birthday and couldn’t wait to remind him the next time we spoke.

  I placed my bare feet on the hardwood floor, shivering as I searched for my slippers with the tips of my toes at the edge of my bed. Finding them and dragging them out, I slipped them on. When I moved toward my closet, I stopped to stare at the snowcapped mountain that framed my bedroom window.

  “Beth!” my aunt called from downstairs. “Let’s go. You need to eat breakfast before you go to school.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m getting ready,” I called back.

  With a sigh, I dug through my closet for a fashionable outfit. Even in a remote place, some things didn’t change about a New York City girl. After perusing through countless choices, I settled on a yellow crop top and tight DKNY jeans. Too many minutes later, I finally chose a cute pair of boots to complete my outfit. “Voilà,” I said to myself, feigning a smile, “ready for school.”

  I ran downstairs to the kitchen.

  “It’s about time you got out of bed. I swear, kids today.” Aunt Vine glared at me through disappointed eyes. Aunt Vine’s eyes never showed any emotion except for disappointment. I knew she didn’t want me there. She’d told me several times, albeit subtly, but a kid knows when she’s not wanted somewhere.

  “Sorry, Aunt Vine. I was having a dream.”

  “Get your head out of the clouds, girl. Your mother’s head was always in the clouds and where did that get her? Dead!”

  “I don’t think a cloud killed her,” I whispered under my breath, irritated that she’d always find a way to drag my mother, her sister-in-law, into any negative conversation.

  “Don’t get smart with me, Beth Ann Abbott. Your father found a way to dump you on us while he tours Europe with some blonde hussy, leaving us to endure all the work of raising his kid.”

  Raising me? Oh, please. I’ve only been here for two weeks. Two very long weeks. I hated when she talked about my father, too. The blonde hussy she was referring to was Dad’s secretary, and somehow, to her, having to see me through my senior year of high school meant Aunt Vine was raising me. Now, I understood why my mother had forbidden us from ever visiting Aunt Vine and Uncle Ernie. “Yes, Aunt Vine.”

  “That’s more like it.” She turned to her son. “Teddy, sweetie. Don’t stuff your face. Leave at least one pancake for your cousin. We wouldn’t want her to go to school complaining that she was hungry, now would we?” Aunt Vine leaned in and kissed her son three times on the cheek in a weird, three-peck manner. Then, of course, she gave me the stink eye—another disappointed look for no darn reason.

  “I’m fine, Aunt Vine. Teddy can have my pancakes, too. He’s a growing boy. Plus, he needs all those carbs to keep him warm in this freezing town.” I smirked when I saw my aunt’s eyes narrow at me as she tried to decipher if I was being snide about his weight or being kind by letting her chubby son eat all eight pancakes that she’d made.

  Grabbing my backpack off the floor near the front door, I stepped out into the six-inch snowfall. Today was the last day of school before winter break and that alone should have been enough to make me smile. But what would I do in Castleborough during winter break?

  Before taking another step, I glanced up at the mountain. Maybe I’d spend my time finding out about that mountain and the boy who sought me out each night in my dreams. His eyes haunted me. I had to find out who he was.

  Chapter Two

  Castleborough had one high school and our graduating class had a hundred students. The difference between this school and my school in New York was like night and day. In New York, I could easily get lost in the hustle and bustle of it all, but here, the second I’d arrived in Castleborough, everyone had seemed to know I was new. I didn’t like that.

  But that was how I’d met Emmy and Hillary, two girls who had befriended me on my first day of school. We now sat in history class, listening to Mr. Smith, our teacher, rant on and on about the Holocaust and the tragedy of that era. When the bell rang, Emmy grabbed my arm.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said.

  “Okay. But I want to talk to Mr. Smith for a minute. I’ll meet you guys in the lunchroom.” I glanced from Emmy to Hillary. When the classroom was empty, I approached Mr. Smith’s desk.

  “What can I do for you, Beth?” Leaning back in his chair, his eyes remained fixated on a paperback book. He’d been reading it during class while we were taking tests.

  “That looks like an interesting book.”

  “Well, it’s not a book about the hottest trends, so I hardly think you’d be interested in it.” He glanced up at me with that Castleborough look—the one that told me I wasn’t wanted in this town—and then, he glanced back at his book.

  “Mr. Smith,” I ignored his last snide comment, “I have a question about that mountain outside the window.”

  I must have piqued his interest because he moved his eyes from his book to me, then to the mountain. He closed his book and sat up straight. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did something happen there?”

  He shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “It seems kind of... I don’t know, eerie? Like, is there a weird story about it, or maybe about something bad that happened there?”

  “So, you’ve heard of the legend?” He set the book on his desk.

  I could feel my eyebrows come together at the bridge of my nose. “I’ve heard subtle remarks about it, but…legend?”

  He nodded. “Yes, it’s a tragedy that has left Castleborough with some strange anomaly that no one will talk about.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  He smirked. “It’s not easy to explain. Go to our library and look up Spirit Mountain. There should be some information there. Once you read the legend, you can always come back here and talk to me about it. It’s part of our history and I know the legend well.”

  “Have you ever been to the mountain?”

  “No one goes to that mountain, Beth. It’s best left alone.”

  “But why?”

  He frowned, as if reflecting on a troubling memory. “All I can say is that mountain is bad news. Many believe it’s cursed and, in turn, has cursed Castleborough. I’m sure you’ve heard that the snow never melts here. It’s snowy and cloudy a hundred percent of the year.”

  Something told me I wouldn’t get much more out of Mr. Smith today. I nodded and said goodbye to him. On my way to the lunchroom, his words echoed in my ears. Many believe it’s cursed. What did that mean? Did someone die there? I had to know and I was determined to find out. Back in New York, some people thought I was stubborn, but I liked to think I was just persistent, which I believed was a good thing in certain situations.

  I punched in my lunch number at the school cafeteria cashier, grabbed my tray and made my way to t
he table where Emmy and Hillary sat.

  “What did you want to tell me, Emmy?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Next week, my parents are getting a new car and they’re giving me their old one.”

  “Sweet!” I said. “Does this mean the three of us can actually get out of this town and go see a movie somewhere?”

  “Definitely!”

  “So, what did you want to talk to Mr. Smith about?” Hillary asked, as her long fingers texted on her cell phone.

  “A question about Spirit Mountain.” I sat opposite the two girls.

  Both girls stopped what they were doing and stared at me.

  Emmy leaned forward. “Shhh. Don’t say that name out loud.”

  “Why not?” I took a swig of my chocolate milk. No matter what school it was, cafeteria food was always the same—bad.

  “It’s said, if you say the name of the mountain, then the kid who haunts it will visit you in your dreams and kill you.”

  I laughed, dismissing Emmy. “No way.”

  Hillary nodded. “Um, yeah. Trust us. Two kids from our school were killed randomly after they mentioned the name of the mountain.”

  “And you girls really believe that?” I munched on my greasy slice of pepperoni pizza.

  Emmy nodded. “It’s true.” She turned and sought out someone. When she found him, she pointed in his direction. “See that hot guy sitting alone at the table over there?”

  “Yeah, the one with dark hair?”

  “That’s him,” Emmy said. “His sister was one of the girls. She died twenty-one days after she spoke about the mountain by name. It happened earlier this year, this past spring. He used to be captain of our ice hockey team, but he hasn’t been the same after that.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Logan.”

  “Logan Hall,” Hillary chimed in.

  “And his sister’s name?” I couldn’t stop staring at him, watching him eat.

  “Ashlyn Hall. She was the captain of the cheerleading team,” Hillary answered.

  “Yeah.” Emmy nodded. “Gorgeous, too.”

  “How did she die?” I turned my gaze back to the two girls in front of me.

  “In her sleep,” Emmy whispered. “The authorities claimed she had some kind of a heart condition, but we know that wasn’t true. She’d been visited in her dream by the kid on the mountain for twenty nights straight. And on the day after the twentieth night, she told us that she’d reached for his hand and the tips of their fingers had almost touched. We suspect that on the twenty-first night, they must have touched, and that’s when he took her soul.”

  Rolling my eyes at the pair, I gasped. “No way. I don’t believe you guys. Who was the other girl?”

  “Her name was Madison McDade. She died in the exact same way as Ashlyn.”

  “And get this, Madison was the mayor’s daughter,” Hillary added.

  Emmy shrugged, grabbing her tray from the table. “You don’t have to believe us. Just pray that the boy with dark eyes never visits you in your dreams. And if he does, start counting because there’s something scary about the twenty-first night.”

  Hillary nodded with a smirk as she grabbed her tray, too. “See you in final period.”

  I couldn’t move. I sat at the lunch table, staring at Logan as I contemplated my own fate. I’d already been visited by the boy with dark eyes for fourteen nights. What did that mean? Did I only have six more days to live? My stomach ached with a desperate longing to know—an understanding of a legend that people, young and old, from Castleborough, believed to be true.

  And what if it was? What would happen to me then? With my appetite—and the remainder of the school day—an afterthought, I left my food on the table, grabbed my backpack and headed for the town’s only library—one that served the high school and the public—to research this legend of Spirit Mountain for myself.

  Chapter Three

  My fingers shook over the mouse as I read through the archived newspaper clippings from the past. So far, I’d learned about the two dead kids, each of whom had reported a recurring dream of a boy with dark eyes who was on his knees at the top of Spirit Mountain. Each had also claimed that the boy had reached out to them. Oddly enough, they were both girls, and their dreams had supposedly started when they’d murmured the words, Spirit Mountain, three times. At least that’s what the newspaper article had said.

  That was the one difference between those girls and me. I hadn’t mentioned the name of the mountain because I didn’t know the name of the mountain. Yet, on the first night I slept in my room at Aunt Vine’s, I’d dreamt of him. He wasn’t evil or mean. He just seemed lost and alone, as if he were summoning me to help him with something.

  That first night, I had awakened from my dream in a sweat and knew right away it was a mountaintop from where he’d beckoned me. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but it was during that night I saw the orb of light, a flickering ball of energy that I felt at peace with. The boy didn’t scare me and knowing he was there, staring into my room, reaching out to me in my dreams, actually gave me an inner calm that I hadn’t experienced since before my mother’s death.

  Every night after that, I went to bed waiting for him to visit me. I wanted to gaze into those rare eyes and reassure him that I was there, the way I felt he was there for me. That was what made this whole thing even more strange. I didn’t view him as a threat, nor did I view the mountain as a threat. I was curious. I wanted to know more about him, understand him, and yet, everyone else led me in the direction of fearing him. I had to know the truth. Why was he so misunderstood?

  Scrolling relentlessly through the archived articles brought up nothing. So, I finally decided to ask the librarian. “Excuse me,” I said, raising my right hand and leaning over the counter to get her attention.

  “Yes, dear?” answered a woman who appeared to be at least in her seventies. She had a shaky voice.

  “I’m looking for information on that mountain outside the town—the one that has a legend attached to it. But I couldn’t find any more articles on the mountain, the legend or the two girls who allegedly died because of it.”

  “Shhh.” The old librarian lifted a wrinkled index finger to her thin lips. “We don’t make those articles accessible, dear. The legend is dangerous and we’d rather keep people away from anything pertaining to that evil piece of land out there.”

  “Please, I’m doing a report on legends, not the mountain itself,” I lied. “Can you let me peek at the articles so I don’t get an ‘F’ in the class? This will determine if I go on to college or end up working in a beautiful library like the one you’ve got here.”

  I could tell she wasn’t sure if I was insulting her. I really wasn’t, but I needed that data because apparently, according to the legend, my life depended on it.

  After scrutinizing me through a pensive frown, she nodded. The old librarian got up and motioned for me to follow her. She led me into a back storage room full of cartons.

  “We keep the ‘legend’ articles in a box and off the Internet. So far, we’ve been lucky that no one outside of Castleborough has caught on to the legend. We’re a closed-off community, so most people won’t whisper a word of it. And therefore, it keeps thrill seekers out of our backyards. Besides, who wants to live in a town where it snows every day of the year?”

  “I understand, ma’am.”

  “This is the box. You can go through it, but don’t take anything, and try to keep it all in the same order.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When you’re done, close the storage room door and make sure it’s locked.”

  “Of course, ma’am. Thank you so much for your help.”

  She lifted her thin lips in a tight smile and strode out of the storage room, holding onto the shelving units to keep her balance.

  Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the box and sat on the cold cement floor, opening it to see yellowed newspaper articles and stories about Spirit Mountain. Folding my legs, I read the first article on top. The headline read: “Spirit Trapped on the Top of a Mountain Causes Another Death in Castleborough.”

  I was so engulfed in reading that headline, I didn’t hear the person walk up behind me from somewhere in the storage area until he spoke.