The Silent Ones

Chapter 7

Heat beat down on Lilly as she swung on the swing set in the park across the road from the high school she went to. She had worn a white shirt so she didn't get too hot as she silently chatted with a little boy as Henry swung in the empty swing beside her.

The little boy around the age of seven laughed and talked to her since she was the only living being that could hear his silent whispers. His body passed through a tree as he ran around the park giggling, enjoying how her eyes followed him.

The old rusty playground in the park was slowly coming apart, but Lilly found it more entertaining to hear the creaks and moans of an inanimate object than the dead that wandered the earth. Most ghosts avoided the park since Bale High School brought so many living humans near.

A short nineteen year old girl and her boyfriend walked down the sidewalk to the small Italian diner. They stopped at the edge of the park where they had scratched their initials inside a heart on the trunk of a pine tree. They hugged onto one another studying their handiwork from years before.

A slow and quiet moan filled their ears, chills crawled down their spines like spiders spinning a web. Fears raced through their bodies as ice filled their veins and goosebumps rose on their arms even though it was an extremely hot day in the late spring nearing summer. The couple turned their eyes ever so slightly to see her, a living ghost on the swing set.

The pale girl wore a white shirt and jeans, her red hair shone the color of fresh blood in the sunlight and she talked silently to herself with a creepy smile touching her lips, eyes following nothing but the wind. The empty swing swayed beside her as it began to pick up speed and yet no wind rustled the grass and trees.

The boy and oldest of the two grabbed his girlfriend's hand and shot towards the diner in a full sprint dragging his girlfriend with him as she covered her mouth in a silent scream.

Lilly didn't care that they were gone, in fact she felt more comfortable. She didn't like to restrain herself around Henry. To Lilly's slight disappointment, another living being began to approach her and her dead companions.

Lilly looked up as Henry moved from his seat,telling her that the boy had come to the leg of the swing set, specifically looking at her. Her green eyes shifted up to meet his. Electric blue eyes gave life to the slightly tanned boy that looked near Lilly's age, blond hair sat messily atop his head like he had just woken up. His breathing was heavy and slight marks of sweat as well as the near empty water bottle he was holding told Lilly that he was out running, she didn't realize it was hot out as she sat beside her dead friend that chilled the air around him.

He stared. The boys eyes didn't break their contact with Lilly's as he froze, nothing coming out of his mouth as it hug slightly ajar. Finally his brain began to work again as he stuttered out,

"Ummm... h-hey, I... was jogging and a... noticed that-umm-you were alone... and I... was just..." Lilly smiled sadly at the boy, she hadn't been alone. The smile felt weird at first since it had been so long for her to smile at another living being, Henry being her only friend, but the warm feeling it gave her wasn't bad.

Henry stood protectively between Lilly and the stranger. He watched the boy as he tried talking to his only friend as a streak of jealousy struck him. Henry moved slightly closer to the boy's right as the boy smiled back at her and a light blush touched his cheeks. Lilly of course remained oblivious to the blushing boy, mistaking the red tint as the cold coming off Henry's dead form.

"My name's Jay Grenly, what's yours?" The boy seems to gain confidence as he watched the girl smile at him, her lips pressed together to keep from showing her teeth that she was now oddly self-conscious about.