by Ellery Fenn
The movement continued, jostling the papers over top it, pushing some out of the way. It got closer to the edge of the pile, moving slowly toward the last bare spot of floor. Only one paper was still on top of it. Whatever it was, it was bigger than a cockroach.
I lifted the paper off. I only had a second to recognize it as one of my old toys, a Michael Myers action figure, before it flew into my face.
“Agh!” I smacked it across the room onto my overturned dresser. My eye watered where it poked me. “What the hell?”
The dresser shuddered, knocking the figure back and forth over the wood. I stepped back.
It shook wildly and threw the toy to the floor, but it didn’t stop there. It rose, wobbling back and forth, revealing the clothes underneath.
I stumbled backward and tripped over the bed frame, falling to the floor.
The dresser shook harder. Rose even higher, gaining inches over the clothes and drawers beneath. I scrambled to the wall behind me, the edge of the bed frame digging into my back.
The dresser floated, inches above the ground, then feet, until it hovered, shaking in midair, halfway between the ceiling and floor.
I blinked. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be possible. Things like this didn’t happen.
It fell and broke into a million pieces. Shards of wood scattered across the floor, bouncing off the walls. It didn’t move. It looked like it had never moved.
But the broken pieces did. One floated up, a sharp wedge of splintered wood, the pointy end facing me. Like a dagger.
It shot forward. I dodged. It missed me by inches and shattered on the wall. Splinters rained onto the floor.
There was movement in my side vision, and I turned just in time to see another piece coming for me. It moved fast. I couldn’t move fast enough. All I could see was a knife of wood racing through the air toward me. It was being fast forwarded, but I was on pause.
My heart pounded like the time I went to a horse race with Dad and the horses were running and they wouldn’t stop running and they never stopped running.
The wood collided with my arm. Pain. It broke, sending splinters away from me, splinters into me. Like slow motion I watched one long shard dig itself into my forearm, piercing the skin like it was nothing, and embedded itself deep into my flesh.
I screamed and clutched my arm. My fingers shook as I grabbed the end of the giant splinter. I pulled it out as fast I could. It didn’t come smoothly, but left tiny slivers all inside the wound.
Blood poured from the hole in my arm. I threw the shard away from me. It hurt like hell. Like hellfire.
I squeezed my hand around my arm, trying to quench the flow of blood that oozed from between my fingers. My chest fluttered with shallow breaths.
Blood soaked into my dark denim jeans.
Chapter Twenty-four
Corrie
I reluctantly left the deer sometime after finishing my meal, full past comfort and drunk with blood. Every sound and smell whirled in a symphony. I hoped there would be some left when I returned, but I knew I wouldn’t be that lucky. Carrion was in high demand.
I leaned against the hollow tree and watched as sensations floated across my awareness. I could hear everything, smell everything, feel everything, and it didn’t overwhelm me. It invigorated me. It thrilled me.
I smiled at the sky. Decomposition would be pleasing, but life after death was glorious. I sat for several hours, noticing every twinge as my body digested the putrid meat, funneling it straight into energy, into muscle and sinew and bone. I was alive without living.
It was midday when I heard someone walking toward the clearing. The footsteps were familiar. I searched my brain until I recognized them. Clarisse.
“Corrie!” She jogged into the clearing and stopped short when she saw me. “Holy shit. Why are you literally drenched in blood?”
She flinched from a smile that was meant to be reassuring. “Deer.”
“Ah. Where’s Lisa?”
I shrugged. The reminder of what I’d lost cut through me like teeth through skin.
“You haven’t seen her?”
“Last night.”
“That’s not good.”
I summed up a novel of contemplation into two words. “She’s mad.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded.
“Well, it’s lunch hour right now so I came by to give you guys the news. You’ll just have to tell her when you see her later.” If I ever saw her again. “I gave a copy to just about everyone, including the staff. Everyone’s talking about it and gossiping. And Doug’s not in school today, so that makes him even more guilty according to the collective consciousness of Lake Oswego High.” She grinned. “It’s perfect.”
I stood with a forced smile, blood sloshing in my stomach. “Good.” It didn’t matter that Lisa wanted nothing to do with me. I would finish the job for her.
“Yeah, it’s pretty rad. I’d give you a hug, but you’re literally vile.”
Her disgust couldn’t bother me today.
She raised a bag. “I brought makeup and a sewing kit. I came straight here, so I’ve got like-” She checked her watch. “Thirty minutes.”
“Okay.” I enjoyed my coarse appearance today, and my heart sunk at the thought of changing that, becoming more respectable, easier on the eyes. But I had to put the welfare of revenge over my own desires.
“You got to get clean first.” She pointed to the creek.
I splashed into a deep spot in the cool water and sank below the surface. I scrubbed my scalp, face, and arms, cleaning every flake of dried blood, every deer hair. The water flowed against and around me, a constant rippling pressure on my skin. Something connected in my brain and I remembered swimming as a child, relishing the feel of the water on my arms. My skin remembered more.
This wasn’t the first body I’d enjoyed this sensation in. I had bathed and swam in many forms. I watched as the water rushed by in perpetual motion, pushing onward to the sea. It was perfectly clear. I could see every moss-covered rock in precise definition, feel their smooth surfaces slip away from my touch.
I was only one being, so how had I ever been more than this? Why could I feel water on my skin layering in my mind, different flesh in different water?
I rose to the surface, warm air blanketing me.
“Thought you weren’t going to come up,” Clarisse said casually. She set her makeup out on a rock.
I waded to the shore.
“You do know your shirt’s covered in blood too, right?”
I struggled with the top button, but my clumsy wet fingers couldn’t grasp it. “Help?”
“Um.” She edged toward me and quickly unbuttoned. I shrugged off the shirt and pinned it in the creek with a rock, trusting that the motion of the water would clean it, and faced her again. “Whoa. You could’ve warned me.”
I glanced at my torso. I forgot that humans were shy around breasts. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’ve seen them before.”
“Why?”
She patted the ground in front of her seat. I dropped cross-legged to the hard earth. “We’re best friends. Modesty doesn’t really matter when you’re that close with someone.” She cut a length of thread. “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you, but I was actually her first kiss.”
My mind blanked. “What?”
She threaded her needle. “It was at summer camp, the year we met. She had a crush on me.” She laughed. “That went away when she got to know me. But she asked if I wanted to kiss, so we did. Didn’t do anything for me, but she was very quiet the rest of the day.” She angled my face toward her and stabbed the needle into the skin of my forehead. “If you tell anyone I’ll literally kill you. Or, well, kill you more.”
I couldn’t picture the scene she described. They must’ve been very young.
She sighed as she stitched along the wound. “I guess I won’t have any more stories like that now.” Her eyes were heavy.
“This one,” I
said.
“What?”
“This story.”
She slowed. “I guess you’re right. I’ve just been preparing myself, ‘cause I don’t know if you guys are going to be able to stay around, you know? I mean, you could rot away, and Lisa, well, I don’t know. Do you think you’ll be able to stay?” Her voice was even, careful not to reveal the emotions that showed in her eyes.
I couldn’t give in to the temptation to lie. “No.”
“Oh.” She knotted the thread and smoothed her hand over my skin. I poked it gingerly. It felt strange, unnatural. She touched the wound in my cheek. “This one’s gross.”
I felt into the cavity and dug out every maggot I could feel, crunching them in my mouth when I was done.
She gagged, her face tinged slightly green. “I wish I could bleach my eyeballs.”
I chuckled. I felt, selfishly, as though we were almost real friends. She sewed my cheek.
There was a flash of silver in the corner of my eye. My systems were instantly on high alert, straining toward it with every muscle.
“Damn you Corrie,” Clarisse muttered, turning my head straight. “I’m going to stab your eye if you do that again.”
“Hey guys,” Lisa said.
Clarisse jumped, and the needle went into the hole where my nose had been. My spirits soared. Lisa! She was back, here in front of me. The anger was missing from her face.
“Sorry.” She sat on a rock and rested her chin in her hands. “What’re you doing here?”
I yanked the needle from my flesh.
“Recovering from the heart attack you just gave me. And I have news.”
“The journal entries and the school. I know. Mrs. Allan got a call about it.”
“Really?”
“I’ve been there all morning. They’re kind of freaking out about it. They think the police are coming to get Doug for questioning, so they’re having the lawyer meet them at the station.” She smiled faintly. “Doug was already freaking out before the phone call, thanks to a little bit of amateur haunting.”
Clarisse laughed. “You didn’t.”
“I did. It was very satisfying.”
“Clarisse,” I said in a low voice. Lisa seemed more dismal than angry, almost resigned. She’d accepted the truth. I clenched my jaw. But she wasn’t happy about it.
“What? Oh yeah.” She continued her sewing.
“Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?” Lisa asked.
Clarisse shut my jaw when I began to answer. “Seriously, don’t move. She got into a deer and was absolutely soaked in blood, so I made her take it off. Where’d you put it?”
“Creek.”
Lisa glanced at the rushing water. “Yeah, I see it.”
Clarisse snipped the tail end of thread. “That should be good. I can’t do anything about your nose, but you look at least a little more put together. You ready for makeup?”
I steeled myself and nodded.
“You’d better hurry,” Lisa said. “You should probably be at the school when it hits the fan.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get there.” She smeared cream on my face. “Let me just get her people-colored.”
“How was your deer?” Lisa asked civilly.
“Good.”
“She looked like she was high when I found her. I might have to try that rotting meat thing if it makes you feel that good.”
“I’m not sure it works like that.”
Clarisse exchanged smiles with her over my head. It was only a few minutes before she set down her tools. “There. All done.”
I gingerly touched my face.
“Don’t rub it or it’ll come off. You want that to last. What do you think, Lis?”
I stood and faced her. Her wide eyes were glued to my chest.
“Of her makeup, dork.”
She dragged her eyes up to my face, her cheeks luminous with blush. “Y-yeah. It’s good. Actually, really good. I didn’t know you could do normal makeup.”
“Can I see?”
“Oh shoot, yeah.” Clarisse handed me a compact mirror.
The girl that stared back was rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, her expression unreadable. If I overlooked the nose, she was pretty, with nothing else to indicate she wasn’t alive. I didn’t recognize her.
“What do you think?”
I swallowed against the discomfort rising in my throat. “Good.”
Clarisse smiled. “I’m glad. I’d better get headed. I parked a couple streets down.” She swung her bag over her shoulder. “See you later.”
“Bye.” Lisa waved.
I retrieved my shirt from the creek and dressed myself in silence. My mind raced as I grappled with the buttons. Perhaps the makeup would make Lisa forget that I was dead, that I was her body. Perhaps we could be friends again, with nothing holding us back.
With the shirt was on, I turned from the creek. Lisa was gone.
Chapter Twenty-five
Lisa
I sat next to the TV in the Allan’s living room, moving the dial incrementally back and forth to annoy Doug. He tapped his foot so fast it sounded like a hummingbird. He held his arm. Long sleeves covered his bandage. Pain still flickered over his face.
As fun as his distress was, I couldn’t get my head away from the clearing by the creek, away from the long expanse of Corrie’s back. My back. And yet it looked completely different. The butterfly wings of her shoulder blades, the bumps going down her spine, the gray coloring. It was like a piece of art. And that’s not even mentioning when she turned around.
Mr. Allan stormed in. “Your mother got a phone call.”
“I know. She told me.”
“Do you know what this could do for your case?” he asked. “Adam’s meeting us at the station.”
Doug nodded.
“Why’re you so jumpy?”
He shivered and shook his head. “The case. Just the case.”
“This is on you, idiot. Who wrote these lies about you?”
“They’re not lies.” Doug shut the TV off. I turned it back on. He pressed the button harder.
“What?”
“I can’t be sure till I read it myself, but it sounds like it’s from my journal.”
Mr. Allan grabbed his son’s arm and pulled him up. I winced for Doug. That had to hurt.
“Your what?”
“Don’t worry.” He pushed himself out of his dad’s grasp, gasping in pain. He held his arm stiff at his side. “I already hate myself for it.”
“Who did you show it to?”
“You think I’m that stupid?”
“I know you are.”
“I didn’t show anyone. Someone stole it.”
“What?”
“It’s gone. Missing.”
Mr. Allan ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to Adam. We’ll sort this out. And you aren’t going to say a word.” He jabbed his finger at Doug’s chest.
“I know, I know.”
Doug ran to his room and grabbed the same wrinkled suit as before, darting in and out as quickly as he could. He changed in the bathroom. The bandage was soaked through, so he replaced it.
I followed them numbly through the house and out to the car. Haunting was fun, and it recharged me a little, but I wasn’t very hopeful about the outcome of this new change.
Mr. Crocker was waiting in the lobby when they got there.
He whispered in Mr. Allan’s ear. “Just let me handle this. It’s not as big a deal as it seems.”
“I sure hope you’re right.”
“Right this way, please.” They were led back down the long windowless hall. Yesterday’s investigation room was sealed off with caution tape.
“Come in, come in.” The new room looked the same as the last. “I’m sorry you had to come down again so soon.”
Doug gingerly sat down and placed his arm in his lap. Mr. Crocker shook the detective’s hand.
“It’s alright. We’d just like to get this cleared up.”
“No.”
The detective handed him a sheet of paper packed with words. He read in silence for several minutes before handing it to Doug, who barely glanced at it.
“Do we know who did it?” the lawyer asked.
“No one’s come forward. We’re checking all the printing places in town.”
“Good, good.”
“What do you think about this, Doug?” the detective asked.
He swallowed. Sweat was beading at his hairline. “I think someone’s trying to get people to hate me.”
“This paper claims to be straight from your journal. Is that true?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? This is very serious. Do you keep a journal?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Yes.”
Mr. Crocker and the detective exchanged glances.
“Who had access to it?” the lawyer asked.
“No one! It was hidden.”
“Was?” the detective said.
Doug nodded. “It’s gone.”
“It went missing?”
“Yes. Someone had to have stolen it.”
“That’s a pretty serious claim.”
“I know.”
The detective nodded and wrote in his notes. “Do you have an idea who could’ve done this?”
“I used to keep a journal, but I swear, I never wrote any of that.” He pointed at the paper with his good arm.
“I got that. The question was ‘Do you know who might’ve done this?’”
“The only one I can think of is Lisa’s friend, Clarisse. If Clarisse helped her plan the whole thing with me, then maybe this was just part of the plan. Write all this and then steal my journal so I can’t prove I didn’t write it.”
“That’s very interesting.”
The lawyer dragged his hand over his face.
“It’s just what makes sense.”
“I see. We’ll look into it. We’ll get Ms. Wilcox’s side of the story, and get this whole thing straightened out, okay?”
“Thank you.” Mr. Crocker wiped his sweaty palm on his pants.