The Waiting Booth: Whispering Woods, #1

The Waiting Booth

Brinda Berry

Sweet Biscuit Publishing

Contents

Acclaim for Brinda Berry

Also by Brinda Berry

Copyright

Dedication

1. Mystery

2. Regulus

3. Caught Again

4. Seeing is Believing

5. The IIA

6. Regulus

7. School Daze

8. Slips

9. Date

10. Regulus

11. Plea for Help

12. Friendships

13. Trap

14. Dead Slips

15. Secrets to Portal

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Whisper of Memory

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Also by Brinda Berry

About the Author

Acclaim for Brinda Berry

Ms. Berry’s clean, engaging writing style and talent for creating characters who burst from the page are just as addicting as the deepening mystery surrounding the disappearance of Mia’s brother, Pete.

—Sarah Ballance, Best-Selling Author

"Fans of The Host by Stephanie Meyers and Lauren DeStefano’s The Chemical Garden will want to get their hands on Brinda Berry’s Whisper of Memory."

—Kristen of Seeing Night Reviews

Berry brings us colorful and unique characters...I have added Brinda Berry to my authors to watch list.

—Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer

"Whispering Woods has become one of my favorite series this year!"

—Yiota of Splash of Our Worlds

Also by Brinda Berry

Adult Novels

Chasing Luck (A Serendipity Novel, #1)

Tempting Fate (A Serendipity Novel, #2)

Seducing Fortune (A Serendipity Novel, #3)

Serendipity Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

The Beauty of Lies (A Stand By Me Novel #1)

The Fiction of Forever (A Stand By Me Novel #2)

Fit for Love (A Stand By Me Novel #3)

And Then He Kissed Her: A Contemporary Romance Boxed Set

(Sweet Romance)

Young Adult Novels

The Waiting Booth (Whispering Woods #1)

Whisper of Memory (Whispering Woods #2)

Watcher of Worlds (Whispering Woods #3)

The Waiting Booth Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

Wild at Heart II (An Anthology)

Lore: Tales of Myth and Legend Retold (An Anthology)

For release news, subscribe at http://www.brindaberry.com/mailing-list.html

Website: www.brindaberry.com

Copyright Warning

EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/

).

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Najla Qamber Designs

First electronic publication: July 2011 by Etopia Press

Second electronic publication by Sweet Biscuit Publishing LLC: October 17, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-9916320-6-0

For my sister Audrey, who read it first and never let me doubt.

Chapter 1

Mystery

My new life began on a Saturday. It was a life that chose me, which shouldn't have been surprising. A real shocker would be gliding through my senior year without one more thing to label my life dysfunctional. Most seventeen-year-olds would have called the events a head-on collision. For me, I was merely sideswiped in the journey to find my missing brother.

Saturday mornings were always my favorite. Dad cooked pancakes for the two of us and that day the vanilla-laden smell wafted up the stairs and tugged at my stomach. I bounded downstairs in my shorts and Geek Chic T-shirt, sliding around the slick corner reminiscent of the way Tom Cruise did in Dad’s favorite old movie, Risky Business. And he looked up, spatula in hand, with that same welcoming smile full of comfort and familiarity.

I inhaled deeply. Yum. I sat down and picked up my fork in anticipation. A golden-brown stack waited on the serving platter.

My dad pulled on my ponytail before taking a seat across from me. He stared at the empty chair to my right. I concentrated on my plate.

We both helped ourselves to generous mounds of pancakes, and then I drizzled enough maple syrup to drive me into a sugar coma. The only sound filling the kitchen was the smacking and fork scraping that indicate true culinary delight.

As usual, my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I shook my head woefully at the butter- and syrup-laced masterpiece I was abandoning. I rose and cleared my plate from the table.

Hold up. You in a hurry? Dad asked.

Gotta go get my memory cards out of the cameras outside and see if I got anything recorded, I answered in between licking my sticky lips.

I slipped on my tennis shoes and went for the door.

Leaving Biscuit here? Dad looked down.

My cairn terrier sat expectantly at Dad’s feet. Biscuit wagged his stubby tail when he heard his name. I grinned at his pitiful face, black button eyes hopeful for a few stray crumbs. Yeah, I’ll be right back. He can stay with you. Biscuit looked from Dad to me before settling his chin on his paws.

I ran out the door and hopped into the old golf cart that sat in the garage. Even though I had gotten my license last year, I still preferred the golf cart for these errands. The aging motor started immediately and then I was off. I puttered down the long gravel driveway toward the highway.

The early morning air was crisp, and the sun hadn’t risen high enough to warm the areas beneath the canopy of oak trees. Enjoying my time alone in the woods, I breathed in the fragrant air. The smells of pine and cedar and the sounds of stirring intensified all the green colors of the leaves. But that was how I always saw things. The doctors had diagnosed my older brother as also having synesthesia. They quoted statistics of the number of people who experienced the same condition. And Pete never gave me away.

I wasn't happy about being like Pete. I didn't care if Mozart, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and a lot of other talented people belonged to the synesthesia club. The famous ones had obviously figured out useful talents for the strange way we viewed the world. I didn’t feel gifted. Cursed was more like it. My sensory perception overlapped and hit me like a Mack truck every day.

The words on my homework invited my eyes to revel in their watercolor loveliness. The chalkboard became a living, breathing Matisse canvas. Music class exhausted me in the efforts to appear as bored and sleepy as my classmates. Each note enveloped my senses in vibrant greens, reds, and blues. I wanted sounds to be sounds and not a rush of colors invading my brain like a psychedelic avalanche.

The birds chirped and frissons tingled down my spine. Squirrels stirred the brittle leaves. I concentrated on the task ahead and ignored the symphony. It didn’t take long to drive around and retrieve the memory cards from the outdoor cameras and replace each with a blank card.

I went back inside the house and returned to the sanctuary of my room. The morning light streamed through the window. I sank onto my bed, closing my eyes and breathing deeply of silence and stillness. I huddled beneath a soft cotton pillow over my head. Dark, cool, nothing.

Thirty minutes later, I got out of bed and stuck the first memory card in the slot of my computer. To my surprise, there were a total of forty-five pictures. Yes! I pumped my fist. I opened the first file and my photo software displayed a clear picture of two cute raccoons eating from the plot across from the mounted camera. Cool. I’d been prepared to be a little disappointed, but I had already scored.

Scrolling through the rest of the pictures, I made notes in my logbook of the current moon phase. I noted the time lapse and approximate feeding time recorded as well as listing raccoon, deer, and birds as the animal subjects. My photos displayed a virtual Discovery Channel scene down there.

I examined the second memory card marked b with a black Sharpie pen to indicate the location. This particular camera had recorded the activity at the waiting booth, my favorite childhood haven, still sitting at the end of the driveway. I inserted it into the card slot and drummed my fingers on the desk. The files opened with fewer pictures recorded by the motion-activated camera. I scrolled through the first three pictures and really couldn’t see anything. Dang.

I wondered what had activated the sensor to begin taking pictures. I hit the arrow key to continue scrolling through the files. Third picture.

Nothing.

Fourth picture.

Nada.

I sighed, already bored and wondering who might be online to chat. I quickly tapped the arrow key several times in quick succession.

Whoa, I said and sat forward, nearly slipping off the edge of my seat.

I squinted to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. A guy stood at the right edge of the photo. The image resolution was clear; nevertheless, I zoomed in to take a closer look and could see that there were actually two people. I clicked the forward button to display the next photo.

Nothing.

The twelfth photo was the last on the memory card. I hit the back button. Why in the world was someone near the waiting booth in the middle of the night? I looked again at the photo to see if I recognized the person. I know everyone in Whispering Woods High School. With a school population of three hundred, that was pretty easy. This guy was definitely not someone I knew. He looked like he could be my age or older. Maybe he was a college student. There were literally thousands of students attending Whispering Woods U.

I called Austin. I was glad to have an excuse to call. We hadn’t been speaking since he had blown a fuse because I couldn’t go to GameCon. I didn’t like holding grudges.

Hi.

Hey, I thought you might be mad at me. I shouldn’t have said that about your dad.

Forget it. I know you didn’t mean it, I answered, although I was sure that he did. I rolled my eyes, glad that he couldn’t see me through the phone.

After a silence during which I imagined him thinking of a way to invite himself over, I said, Listen, I have some pics from the camera down at the booth, and there’s a guy in one. Actually, I think there’re two guys. I think they’re guys…

Silence hung like a thick fog while Austin absorbed what I had said. Because my dad and I lived on approximately one hundred acres of woods, we rarely happened upon people wandering around on our land. The waiting booth sat at the end of the long drive near the public road, but that still didn’t explain the presence of a person in the middle of the night.

You’re messing with me, right? Chainsaw murderers hanging out at the waiting booth? Austin then started humming the music from the Friday the 13th movies. I’m coming over. Don’t go down there without me.

I smiled because he couldn’t be mad if he was ordering me around. Sure, Austin. I’ve been down to the camera already to get the memory card. I mean, you know that they’re long gone.

I’m on my way, Austin said in an excited voice. The call clicked off.

I looked back at my computer screen. My dad is fine, I said to the machine when I remembered Austin’s last comments to me when we had talked last night. I had known that he would be aggravated, but he had crossed the line in dissing my dad. Maybe you’re the one who should get a girlfriend, I said as if Austin could hear me.

The problem was that I think he wanted me to be that person. Ever since Austin had awkwardly tried to kiss me about a week ago, I had been weirded out. I’d turned my head so his lips had met my cheek, but I sensed that he’d planned the kiss differently. I shook my head to shake the image.

The mid-morning light in my room was bright, and I closed the blinds to see images on the screen clearer. The profile of the guy in the picture would be difficult for Austin to identify. The camera took infrared photos, everything in black and white.

Wearing jeans and a jacket, the first person looked like half of the people my age in Whispering Woods. Actually, the weather was too warm for a jacket at this time of year, so that told me that he wasn’t from around here or he was dressing that way to look cute for somebody. Either way, he didn’t have good sense. Arkansas was hot in September and wearing those clothes would make you melt like a toddler’s ice cream cone.

The picture was a side profile shot. I started doodling notes on my pad: 1. medium length dark hair, 2. taller than the second person, 3. carrying something. He probably didn’t even realize that his picture had been taken. The second person was partially blocked, so there wasn’t even enough to scribble a note about him or her.

The thought of someone lurking at the end of my road made a shiver of cold dance along my spine. Jeepers creepers. Had I looked in the garage to see if thieves had taken something? No, of course I hadn’t. Maybe they’d been driving around and for some reason had gotten out of their car.

Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang. I yelled, Coming, as I ran down the stairs. I could see my dad opening the door.

Hi, Mr. Taylor. Mia here? Austin entered without waiting to be invited in.

My dad stepped aside and looked up at me expectantly as I was taking the last few steps. I hoped that Austin wouldn’t breathe a word about what was on the pictures. I sure didn’t want my dad to be paranoid about leaving me alone during the week while he worked out of town.

Dad, Austin’s helping me with my science project. Come on up.

My dad had always liked Austin. If he ever found out that Austin had hit on me, that would change in a heartbeat. For crying out loud, I even thought about Austin like he was a brother. That he’d tried to kiss me sent the ick factor into the stratosphere.

We bounded up the stairs as quickly as possible without alerting my dad to some urgency in the air. I closed the door behind Austin and proceeded to move my computer mouse to bring the screen back in view.

Austin looked at the picture as he sat at my desk chair. And this was the one at the end of your driveway?

Yeah, I answered, hoping he would tell me he knew the guy, and he wasn’t some ax murderer roaming my woods.

Pretty good pic, Austin muttered. He clicked to zoom in on the face. Still…it’s hard to make him out.

Do you recognize him or not?

Nope. Can’t say I know him. It’s not like I know everybody. It’s a big school. And he might not even be a college student. I can barely tell anything about the second person. Austin clicked the forward and back buttons in the photo software program. Why are they only in one frame?

I guess they’re really fast. I have the timer set to take a picture every six seconds after motion activation.

He nodded. Let’s go down and take a gander. Maybe they dropped something. Or maybe we can figure out why they were down there.

Austin led the way out of my room while I covertly studied him. If I tried to forget that he was like a brother to me, I could see that he was good-looking. He was a little on the lanky side, and that made him look younger to most people. His dark hair always hung into his eyes, which made him seem a little derelict. His new sword tattoo covered about two inches of his right forearm. I had tried to talk him out of it, but he had grinned and said that I’d want one exactly like it.

He looked back at me as I stood there and smiled a I just caught you checking me out grin. I wasn’t really looking at him like that, but I felt myself blush and quickly found something else to focus on as I followed him out the door.

We left the house and took Austin’s car to the waiting booth. He drove an old black Jeep that was still minus the shell since the weather was warm enough. We jumped out to examine the area. On the same side of the drive as the wooden structure, saplings tangled with briars and brush as far as the eye could see. In the years before I was able to drive myself to school, my dad had kept the area fairly clean and bare with the aid of a tractor. Now, this area had become overgrown and weedy.

In the middle of the stalks of high grass, a circle of flattened brush marked where the people in the photo had been standing. Holy cow, you’d really have to be dragging something heavy to make this dent in the ground. I gasped, suspecting that the marks were new and the people in the photo had created them.

Austin walked around the flattened circle. This is too weird. See how the grass swirls in a pattern? Maybe that dude had set something down here.

He wasn’t dragging anything in the picture. Maybe I need to look at it again. I estimated the diameter of the circle to be about five feet across. I caught my breath as I felt a reverberating tickle pluck my spine like a tightly wound cello string. Avoiding the circle, I walked into the brush past it to see if I could find more evidence of the intruders. Nothing.

The weather had been fairly dry with no rain this month, but I bent to look for footprints. I started feeling silly, because even if I found footprints, I wouldn’t be able to tell anything from them. I shivered, trying to rid myself of the willies.

They walked this way. Austin pointed at a place the brush was parted in a small area.

Wow. I was impressed. I rose to follow him, relieved to leave behind the vibrating sound that filled my ears and set my nerves on edge. Austin seemed oblivious to my discomfort.

Cool. I didn’t know you were such a Boy Scout. I said with genuine admiration.

Babe, I have skills you don’t even know about, he said. I could see his head swelling.

Oh, really, Boy Scout… Lead on, I said with a smile. And Austin, don’t call me babe.

Austin stumbled over some low-lying brambles that had caught his shoe. I followed as he made his way through the gap that seemed to be obvious now that he had discovered it. I carefully walked past a briar bush that threatened to snag at my legs, bare below shorts. Austin had on jeans and tennis shoes, so he stomped through trying to enlarge the path for me.

The thicket suddenly opened to a small clearing. Looking down, Austin nodded and pointed at the ground. Tire tracks. The thin tire marks in the soft ground ran parallel and led eastward.

Motorcycles? I asked as I looked at Austin for confirmation. I knew they didn’t walk in. But why would they hide them? I said to myself as much as to Austin.

Austin was staring at me. You’re not telling your dad, are you. A statement, not a question. We both knew that my dad would freak out if he thought someone had even been on our land without his permission. My dad worked as a computer security analyst and had recently taken on a new government contract. The more successful he became, the more he had to leave our house.

No way.

After Pete had disappeared, Dad had become protective though Pete had been labeled a runaway. We knew that wasn’t true. My dad had spent over two years searching online and through nearby cities for a clue to Pete’s whereabouts.

I was kind of freaked out earlier, but it’s not a big deal, I continued. I have the alarm system on the house, and it’s probably nothing.

I don’t like it, Austin set both his hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. I want you to call me if anything spooks you.

I disengaged myself from his hold. You know I will. I steadied my emotions and took a deep breath. I didn’t like being told what to do, even by my friends. They probably stole the bikes and hid them here until they could come back for them. Or something like that.

I didn’t even believe that story, but I really had no reasonable explanation that would put Austin’s mind at rest. Come on, I need to look at the rest of the memory cards and work on my project, I said. You can hang for a little while if you want to. My dad won’t care.

We drove back to the house in silence. I tried to come up with plausible explanations for the guys in my woods and the motorcycle tracks. The more I thought about it, the better my fabricated explanation sounded.

Austin spent the morning on my desk computer while I browsed through the rest of the photos on my laptop. Periodically, he would glance over to see what photos had been taken as if half expecting the two mysterious strangers to show up in some more footage. I logged my results with satisfaction, copied the photos onto my hard drive, and formatted the cards to replace the next ones I switched out to view.

Finished with my tasks for my science project, I lay across my bed and tucked a pillow under my chin to watch Austin play Quest of Zion. Ignoring me, his attention to the screen was intense as he maneuvered his avatar across the wooded terrain of the playing environment.

A beep alerted me that a text had arrived on my cell. What u doin? said Em.

Hangin out with Austin. Wanna come over? I replied with the speed that comes with hours of texting.

B there in half hour.

Austin leaned back in my computer chair, his socked feet resting