Skeleton Song: The Hollows, #0

By Angela Kulig

Drowning might not be the way most adventures start, but it is the only way at Skeleton Lake. When Death is your only companion, darkness is always on the horizon.

In the prequel to SKELETON LAKE, Cassie chooses the wrong brother. That leads to a series of events that take all of her choices away. In a world of beautiful bones and false flesh, life after death is killer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Kulig
• Release date: Mar 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201553142

Book preview

Skeleton Song

A Hollows Novella

Angela Kulig

Copyright © 2022 by Angela Kulig

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

End

Acknowledgments

Love Magic Excerpt

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

About the Author

One

The water was darker than the starless sky above, and far more ominous. I gazed at it, like I hoped to see the heavens lurking there instead of blackness. But that night, God was nowhere to be found.

I didn’t even know if He existed, and I had heard hundreds of sermons in my short life. There was only a bloodless lump behind my heart, where that kind of love should have been, and in another three steps I would be just as dead to him as he was to me.

Even though I was only three years old, I could swim, but it was far too cold for that sort of thing. My nose and fingers were numb. I hadn’t wanted to go into that murky, bottomless lake, where I knew that I’d swim forever, or be killed. Or maybe both.

The whole thing seemed to hum, like the electric fence in my first family’s yard. Thinking of my parents made something stir behind that immovable lump, but I doubted I had ever loved them, even at such a young age. I had already been told I would never see them again. I can’t remember if that hurt, but I don’t think it did.

So I glanced back at my new family instead. I didn’t love them either. Nor did they love me. If they had, they would have never made me go in that water. They wouldn’t have had that man walk toward me like he’d take me away from the fear, only to throw me into the abyss and into the belly of the beast.

They would have let the disease take me. That’s what love would have gotten me—an easier death.

The splash came before I was ready. Like the prick of a needle to draw blood on every inch of my skin. No one jumped into save me, so I burned. The water swished below my arms and feet, like it should, but it seared like fire.

The little eyelet dress that I had arrived in burned away. After the dress, my skin. The water smelled like burning hair, and it made me gag between wails. I knew I should have been dead; but somehow, I could still hear my screams. They went on and on, long after I could no longer tell I was smoldering.

Finally, it was over.

Strong arms took me from the water and sat me down on the dock. That short moment of flight was the best feeling of my entire existence. Only the arms weren’t arms at all. They were nothing but green bones in bags that were the shape of limbs.

The appearance of the man should have shocked me, but my own body was far worse.

I had expected there to be blisters and blood when I emerged from the lake’s fire, but there was nothing there but x-ray like bones and the same transparent skin.

Though drowning isn’t the way that most adventures start, it is the only way at Skeleton Lake.

---

Raiden and I were alone with the smell of weathered wood and the summertime. I’m glad I can’t remember it, he said. It was a lie, just for me. I’d known he was lying for years. Drowning isn’t something you forget. Even if eventually the lake and the memory stopped eating away at you, it stayed inside your bones.

I let him change the subject with a kiss. Mouths were better used for kissing than bringing up painful memories, and Raiden tasted like taffy and the best kind of daydreams.

His hands wandered, learning my body with skin and clothes. He counted my ribs, though he could see them whenever he wanted. He tugged on my waist, until the space between us was nothing but a memory. His hair caught the light, like it was made of it, and his arms were addicting.

Raiden was smiling when he leaned in to kiss me again, and I was ashamed to admit I hadn’t realized I had stopped. An errant thought had sprung to mind and refused to release me, like thorns that had dug into my flesh.

I couldn’t believe the boy, that I was once too afraid to touch, was kissing me a third time, tasting me like I was always at the tip of his tongue.

We were thirteen, and it would have been easy to say I had always loved him. It also was untrue. Through most of our childhood, Raiden Mast had been an ass. Sometimes, he still was, but it was easy to forget on days where it seemed like our whole life would be filled with clear skies and endless summers. When pain was nothing but a distant memory.

The whole reason I was at Skeleton Lake was to be with my soulmate, and Raiden was mine. But there was some disagreement on that point. The day I found out who I had been left on this Earth for, Conrad took it worse than anyone else. Even me, and I had a fantastic meltdown.

Of course, if Raiden was a bit of an ass, then his brother was seated firmly in the dictionary next to complete douche-bag. And that was the least of Conrad’s faults.

Though with time I grew into the idea, there were moments when I still didn’t know why I had been chosen for Raiden, and I despaired in it. Those were the days that Conrad found me, pulled me close, and kissed me like he had no right to do. He couldn’t even unclench his teeth, but I knew what he meant.

Two

"W hat the hell are you doing?" Raiden asked. He must have said that to Conrad ten times a day, so to Conrad’s credit, he didn’t even flinch.

What does it look like I’m doing? Conrad shot back, never looking up from his crinkled sheet of paper.

It was another day, another season, and another disaster away from complete destruction. I had been lounging in Raiden’s room, pretending the light blue walls were the sky, while trying to tune out the heavy beating of raindrops on the roof.

Raiden’s bedroom had been painted that way since he had come to Skeleton Lake, and I hoped he would never change it. I wished for lemonade, anything to bring back the summer. He left to bring me orange soda, and that had been when Conrad had slid into the room.

He didn’t say anything while climbing into Raiden’s desk chair with pencil and paper. He hadn’t even looked at me, and that bothered me more than it should.

It was that day that something changed.

It could have been Conrad with his dark eyelashes, deeper in thought than I had ever seen him. Or maybe it was Raiden, who chose the wrong moment to watch me, watching someone else.

But it was me. I didn’t understand until after Raiden left a foot-sized dent in his lovely blue walls before storming out. I held my breath until the door slammed behind him.

What’s his deal this time? Conrad asked, without looking up.

Me, I admitted with a sigh.