by Gayla Twist
“Oh, no,” I gasped. “They can’t make her do that. Can’t they just go by DNA or something?” My great grandmother had been mourning the loss of her sister ever since the night Colette disappeared. Grandma was eighteen at the time, and her sister was a year younger—the exact same age I was at that moment—seventeen. It seemed too cruel to make a woman in her nineties show up to identify a body at the morgue. On the other hand, Lillian Gibson had been tortured by not knowing the fate of her beloved sister for almost her entire life. Maybe knowing the truth would give her some peace.
“I’ll go with you,” I found myself saying, even though I hadn’t even fully formed the thought in my head.
“Would you?” Mom asked, catching at my hand. “I’m sorry to ask you to do this, but … You know how much you remind Grandma Gibson of Lettie and … I don’t know. I think it might somehow make her feel better if you were there at the morgue.” According to my great grandmother, I was the spitting image of her long-lost sister. Sometimes, when dementia had her in its foggy grip, she even called me Lettie, and we had awkward conversations with me masquerading as the dead girl.
I must have given my mom a horrified look because she quickly added, “Not to identify the body or anything, but just to comfort her if the person they found is Colette.”
I nodded, giving my mom another squeeze. Of course, I had to go. It was the right thing to do. The whole idea terrified me, but I also felt compelled to try to see Colette’s body if I could. It wasn’t just morbid curiosity or anything like that; there was actually a strong chance that I was somehow the reincarnation of Colette Gibson. Or at least part of me was. Or part of her was me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how the whole reincarnation thing worked. It all seemed pretty crazy to me, but it also seemed crazy that vampires existed, and I knew that they did for a fact. After all, I was dating one.
But the truth was, besides looking like Colette Gibson, I also shared some of her memories. I had always thought they were just bizarre recurring dreams that I’d had my whole life, but numerous conversations with Jessie had shown me otherwise.
I got dressed, and we both wolfed down our breakfast. Mom wanted to get over to the Ashtabula Home for Elder Care as quickly as possible. She didn’t want Grandma Gibson to accidentally find out without us there to comfort her.
On the drive over, I stared dully out the car window. The cold, miserable December day was doing a good job mirroring my feelings—such a sharp contrast to the previous night when I had been blissfully happy in Jessie’s arms.
Chapter 2
When we signed in at the retirement home, it was obvious that everyone in the building knew something was up. Several of the staff members were staring at us, speaking in hushed tones, and the woman behind the desk said, “Oh, thank goodness. Lillian is waiting for you.”
The door to Grandma Gibson’s room was open. Normally, whenever we visited her, she was seated at a card table she’d covered with a shawl, looking down at rows of cards she’d laid out in front of her. Until recently, I’d assumed she was playing solitaire, but it turned out she was more interested in trying to see the future.
This time when we walked in, Grandma was sitting very rigidly on the edge of her bed, waiting for us. She had on a wool dress that I’d never seen before, and she was wearing her hat and winter coat. She even had her handbag already hooked over one shoulder.
“Hi, Gram Gram,” Mom said, tentatively approaching her grandmother and kneeling down by her bed.
It was always a crapshoot whether Grandma Gibson was going to be in the present with the rest of us or if her mind had drifted elsewhere. The first few minutes of any visit were usually a little awkward as we tried to get a feel for how she was doing. But this time, Grandma looked her granddaughter directly in the eyes and said in a very composed voice, “Helen, I’m glad you’re here. Would you please take me down to the Tiburon morgue?”
“Of course, Grams,” Mom said. “That’s why we’re here.”
In a way, it was a relief not to be the ones who had to break the news about Colette to Grandma Gibson. I knew that sounded selfish, but we had to take her to the morgue, which was miserable enough. Who told her? I had to wonder. Was it someone on staff? Another resident? It was so weird that she seemed to know almost before my mom did.
“Aurora?” Grandma Gibson said, reaching out to me. “Would you please help me up?”
I hurried over to the bed, and Grandma got an iron lock on my elbow. “I need your help to get to the car,” she told me as she got to her feet. There was a fierceness in her eyes that I didn’t understand, but I could see pain behind it.
At first, I thought she wanted my help because she felt weak. But as we headed down the hall and toward the lobby, I realized that it was emotional support Grandma Gibson needed. Gossip flourished in the care facility like at any nest of office cubicles or knitting bee. My grandmother pretty much kept to herself, but still everyone knew that her sister had disappeared decades ago and that a body had been recently found.
The Germans have a word, schadenfreude, which means a feeling of pleasure derived from someone else’s suffering. That wasn’t exactly what was happening at Ashtabula Care, but it was close. Everyone was staring at us from wheelchairs and walkers. Everyone was practically drooling to find out the details of the murder. It was almost as if I could hear the residents thinking things like “I can’t wait to tell my niece the next time she visits.” They were all bright eyed and more stimulated than I had ever seen anyone in the home.
No one stepped forward with a comforting word or a reassuring smile. They all kept themselves at a discrete distance like photographers documenting a tragedy, waiting for the most acute moment of grief to present itself before snapping the picture.
I hated them. I wanted to hurl swear words at them and make obscene hand gestures to their pitying faces. They were like a bunch of vultures ready to pick over a carcass, wanting to feed off someone else’s tragedy. It wasn’t just the old folks and staff at the care facility who acted this way; I knew it was human nature—people always slow down to gawk at a car crash—but I hated them nonetheless.
I took my cue from my great grandmother. Where I wanted to cower, concealing myself from their glittering, pitying, thirsty eyes, she held her head high and kept her eyes forward, her expression resolute. She never glanced once to the right or to the left, just made her determined way toward the car. We rode all the way back to Tiburon in silence.
The morgue was weird. It was kind of like a doctor’s waiting room with lots of boxes of tissues placed strategically within hand’s reach no matter where you were sitting. Most small towns don’t necessarily have a morgue, or maybe they have a small facility that is really just a room in an out-of-the-way place in the hospital. But the Vanderlinds were a very generous family when it came to making Tiburon a pleasant place to live. They kept our police force well staffed and our hospital well equipped, to the point that even the recently deceased had a nice place to rest. I found it interesting that vampires were so concerned about the welfare of the dead.
Besides the clerk behind the counter, the waiting room was deserted. Mom and I were both hesitant about how to get started, but Grandma Gibson walked right up to the counter and said in a clear voice, “Lillian Gibson here to identify the body of Colette Gibson.”
I don’t think that many people came to the Tiburon morgue because the kid behind the counter was chewing gum and reading a comic book called The Martian Confederacy: Rednecks on the Red Planet. Surprised and a bit confused, he looked up at my great grandmother. “Uh …” was all he could manage.
“This is the morgue, isn’t it?” Grandma asked, her tone letting him know she was in no mood for incompetence.
“Um, yeah,” he said, putting down his reading. “It’s just, I’ve worked here for eight months and never had anybody come in before.” He got to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”
I tried to take comfort in the fact that not a lot of people had to c
ome to our local morgue to identify a body. That had to be a good thing. We’d barely had time to take a seat when a woman in a lab coat appeared. “Hello. I’m Doctor Kalla,” she said. “Are you Lillian Gibson?” she asked, addressing my great grandmother.
“Yes,” was her reply.
“I’m so sorry we had to call you here today,” the doctor said. She had dark skin, black hair, and a warm speaking voice, like she really did care. “I’m sure this is very hard on you.”
“Can’t you just do a DNA test or something?” my mother interjected. “Do you have to put my grandmother through this?”
“Of course, we will do a DNA test,” the doctor assured her. “I was just about to ask to do a cheek swab. That is the easiest way to get a good sample.”
“So all this is really unnecessary,” Mom said, gesturing toward the room.
“I want to see her,” Grandma Gibson interrupted. “I’m perfectly happy to give you any sample that you need, but I am here to see my sister.” There was no mistaking her determination as she got to her feet.
“Are you sure, Grams?” Mom asked, touching her on the arm.
Grandma Gibson ignored her granddaughter. She turned to the doctor and said, “Is it best to do the swab first or after?”
Dr. Kalla replied, “It’ll just take a minute. I think we should get the sample out of the way. If you’ll just follow me.”
“Aurora, I think you should stay here,” Mom said as we all moved to follow the doctor.
“No,” Grandma Gibson and I said simultaneously.
“I think Aurora should come with us,” Grandma said, clutching tightly at my hand.
I had the feeling that Grandma wanted me there for more than just moral support. She was the only person who knew the truth about Jessie, and she had done everything within her power to keep us apart. Colette Gibson had disappeared on the night she snuck out of her home to elope with Jessie Vanderlind, and my great grandmother was convinced that her sister’s death was his fault.
I knew Grandma was trying to teach me a lesson. It felt like when a parent catches a kid smoking a cigarette and forces him to smoke the whole pack. Catch your great granddaughter dating a vampire? Force her to look at a dead body. The idea terrified me, but I also felt compelled to see Colette. I didn’t know if I was somehow her reincarnation, but I thought that maybe if I could see her, it would clarify things for me. I felt like I had to see her.
“How old are you?” the doctor asked me. She gave a little frown, obviously unsure if it was suitable for me to be in the morgue.
“Seventeen,” my mom supplied.
“I’m going to be eighteen,” I told the doctor. It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had every intention of being eighteen one day, but my birthday was still a good ten months off.
“I guess it’s okay in this specific situation,” Dr. Kalla said. “As long as your family approves.”
My mom relented, and we followed the doctor down a hallway to a small examination room where a swab was used to scrape a few cells off the inside of my great grandmother’s cheek. I was surprised she even knew what DNA testing was, to be honest. It seemed to me that after a certain age, people just couldn’t absorb any more modernization.
After that, we followed the doctor as she yanked open an insulated metal door. It felt like we were entering the meat locker at a butcher shop. Grandma Gibson got a hold of my arm again in a very tight grip. The smell of spoiled meat and disinfectant assaulted my nose and made my stomach roil.
“This is a unique case for everyone here at the hospital,” the doctor said as we entered. “The body is very different from that of a victim of a car crash or something like that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well,” the doctor said, clicking the button on her pen up and down several times against a clipboard. “It’s more like a mummification. That’s as close as I can get to describing it. I’m sorry to have to phrase it like that, but I want you to be prepared.”
There were several gurneys in the room, but only one had anything on it. The body was covered with a sheet. The doctor walked over to the top of the gurney. “This can be very difficult,” she said to Grandma Gibson. “If you need a chair or want to step out of the room or anything, please let me know.”
As the doctor pulled the sheet down, Grandma Gibson gripped me even tighter, her nails biting into the flesh of my arm. “Lettie,” she said in a small gasp.
The body was curled in a ball; in her last moments of life, Colette Gibson had reverted to the fetal position. Her hair was dark and curly and wild, just like mine. She was wearing a tattered green dress with little white flowers, a dress I had grown to know well from my recurring dreams. Sometimes in my dreams, I wore the dress while in a field of flowers, but usually it was while I was being chased through the dark woods by a bloodthirsty creature.
The flesh on the body was shriveled, stretched tight over the bones. Even though her skin was dark and dry and cracked, the girl’s features were still discernible. It was like seeing a horrifying Halloween mummy dressed up to look exactly like you. I wanted to turn away, but Grandma clung to me too fiercely. Colette had died with her eyes open, staring into some unknown visage. I wondered whose face she’d seen as she gasped her last breath.
“Oh, my beautiful girl.” Grandma Gibson sobbed. “Why?” she wailed. “My poor girl. What did he do to you?”
“What was the cause of death?” my mom asked the doctor, her voice sounding a little wobbly.
“We’re still looking into that, but as far as we know, it was exsanguination,” was the reply.
“She bled to death?” Mom asked. “Is that why she … Is that why the body looks the way it does?”
“Precisely,” the doctor said with a nod.
“But I don’t see any wounds. She doesn’t appear injured. How could she bleed out?” Mom wanted to know.
“We’re still working on it, but so far it appears that, given the state of preservation, the body was somehow drained entirely of all blood. That’s why it’s so dry.”
My mother shook her head. “Who would do such a thing?”
“I wish I could talk to Mama and Papa,” Grandma said, her voice wet and ragged. “I know it would give them peace just to know what happened to her.”
“I’m sorry to have to ask you this,” the doctor said to Grandma, “but can you positively identify this body as that of your sister, Colette Gibson?”
“Oh, come on,” Mom protested, sounding angry. The answer was obvious, and Grandma was suffering.
“Yes,” Grandma Gibson said between sobs. “That’s her hair. There’s no mistaking it. That’s her dress. Her favorite dress.” Reaching out with one hand, she stroked the corpse’s hair. “She’s my dear girl. My best friend.”
“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Kalla said. “Should I cover her now, or do you need more time?”
“I’d like a minute alone with her,” Grandma Gibson said.
“Of course.” The doctor headed briskly toward the door. “Take all the time you need.”
Mom followed Dr. Kalla, and I expected to go, too, but Grandma Gibson wouldn’t release me. “Stay here with me, Aurora. Please,” she said in a low voice.
“Okay,” I said reluctantly. My head was swimming, and I desperately wanted to run for the door.
“Lettie’s death has haunted me my whole life,” she said, once we were alone. “I’d always hoped she had eloped and was alive somewhere and happy. But I always kind of knew that it wasn’t true. I knew she was gone.”
“I’m so sorry, Grams,” I said, feeling both nauseated and terrified. It really was like looking at my own dehydrated corpse.
“You know who did this to her, don’t you?” Grandma said in a low, harsh voice, clasping my arm tighter. “You know who sank his fangs into her flesh and sucked out her blood until she was nothing but a dried husk. And then he threw her away. Hid his shame by getting rid of her body.”
“No,” I said, struggling to free my a
rm. “He wouldn’t.”
“He did,” she hissed, leaning closer to the body and dragging me with her. “Who else could it be? There’s no one. He killed my beautiful sister, and now he’s come back for my great granddaughter.” She was wrenching me around, pressing me toward the hideous corpse; I was only a few inches away. “I’ll tell you who killed Colette,” Grandma cried. “It was Jessie Vanderlind.”
“No!” I screamed.
Chapter 3
“What’s going on?” Mom shouted, charging into the room followed closely by the doctor.
Grandma Gibson released my arm so suddenly that I stumbled backward and crashed into an empty gurney. “Mom,” I sobbed, running over to her and collapsing in her arms.
“I shouldn’t have let her in here,” Dr. Kalla said, mostly to herself. “I should have used better judgment.”
“What happened?” Mom asked, wrapping her arms around me. “Grams? What’s going on?”
“I was just giving my great granddaughter a lesson in what happens when a girl gets involved with the wrong boy,” Grandma Gibson said, not the least bit remorseful for having terrified me.
“Well, I hardly think frightening her with a dead body is the way to do it,” Mom said, her temper rising. She always tried to give me my space but, like any mom, was also very protective of me. “Besides, I don’t think that’s a lesson that Aurora needs to learn. She’s not boy crazy, and I meet everyone she dates.”
“Do you know that she’s seeing someone right now?” the crazed woman formerly known as my great grandmother demanded.