by Steven James
He noticed Stacy staring in his direction.
Not the best timing in the world, watching another girl hug him. Especially a girl as popular as Nicole.
He hid by looking at the bulletin Nicole had given him.
Printed on the front was Emily’s name and date of birth.
And date of death.
She’d lived fourteen years, four months, and twenty days.
Immediately, and without even realizing it, Daniel calculated that he had already lived 845 days longer than she ever would.
He didn’t open the bulletin. He didn’t want to see all fourteen years, four months, and twenty days of her life summarized in one tidy little paragraph. It didn’t seem fair.
The line edged forward as the first few people finished looking at Emily’s corpse and then made their way to a semicircle of mourners, presumably Emily’s family, standing near the piano.
845 days.
The idea that death is the end, the end of every dream and memory that a person will ever have, every hope and smile and tear . . . it was unsettling.
Teenagers weren’t supposed to have to think about things like that.
845 days.
The casket was adorned with flowers. Only the left half was propped open.
The line of people shuffled slowly toward it.
Someone had placed fifteen framed photos of Emily on a table nearby.
A couple of them were pictures of her at birthday parties when she was a kid; one showed her at the beach walking by herself. In another, she was inside a cabin with an older man who might’ve been her grandpa. In the biggest photo—a studio picture—she was kneeling beside a golden retriever. In the most recent photos she had on a silver necklace with a heart-shaped locket.
In all the pictures Emily was smiling, but it struck Daniel that he had never seen her smile at school.
Two people finished their viewing and stepped aside. As Daniel moved forward, a man who was walking past patted him on the shoulder. The man’s face was drawn and sad. Daniel didn’t recognize him.
“Were you a friend of Emily’s?” the man asked.
Actually, no. I barely knew her.
“Um. Sort of.”
The man nodded and patted his shoulder again and told him, “Thanks for coming. It really means a lot to us.” Then he left to go stand by the piano, and Daniel realized he was probably a relative of Emily’s, maybe even her dad, and he felt worse that he hadn’t known her better, as if somehow it would have meant more to this man if he’d been Emily’s good friend.
Daniel wanted to go and tell him, “Really, you know what? She was one of the nicest girls I’ve ever met.”
But instead, he stepped forward with the line.
It was moving faster now. Just eight people ahead of him.
He wished his headache would go away.
As he took another step, it struck him that if Emily had gone to another high school or lived in a town fifty or a hundred miles away, he might not have even heard about her death, and he would be at football practice right now—the one that had been canceled in light of the funeral—and that would be that. Anonymous people die in distant places every minute of the day, but death doesn’t seem to mean anything to us until it somehow touches our life.
Four people.
Finally, he caught a glimpse of Emily Jackson’s face.
CHAPTER
FOUR
1 MINUTE
Actually, he could see only the top half of her face—her eyes, her forehead, a blond fringe of hair. Somehow they’d made it look like she hadn’t really been underwater all that time, but still her face didn’t look natural.
Her eyes were closed. The acne on her forehead had been covered up with the makeup they use on the dead. He’d never really thought about it before, but someone at the funeral home’s job was to put makeup on corpses for a living.
That’s how the guy paid the bills.
Daniel forced himself not to think about that.
Only three people stood between him and the body.
He felt his heart beating faster now, nervous with a quivering, expectant kind of fear.
Then he saw the rest of her face.
Some people say that dead people look like they’re sleeping, but Emily didn’t. She looked dead and that was all.
Two people.
Then one.
And then Daniel was standing in front of the casket, staring down at the pale dead face of Emily Jackson.
THE BLUR
Her lips were closed just like her eyes. Hands folded neatly across her chest.
She looked smaller, more frail than he remembered her.
For a brief, macabre moment, he had the desire to touch her hand, to somehow comfort this girl who would never go to a homecoming dance, never stay out too late on prom night, never graduate, go to college, get married, raise a family.
What does the skin of a dead person feel like?
The idea evaporated in a swirl of fear and repulsion.
You ignored her.
She looked both familiar and like a stranger.
Lying still, so still.
And then Emily Jackson opened her eyes.
CHAPTER
FIVE
Daniel gasped and stumbled backward, bumping into the person behind him. He turned to see an elderly woman looking at him concernedly. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Did you see that?” His voice sounded like dust.
“What?”
“Her.”
He pointed at Emily. He couldn’t bring himself to say any more.
The woman leaned to the side and tipped her gaze toward the casket, but acted like nothing was out of the ordinary and looked at him with mild suspicion.
Slowly, his heart hammering, Daniel peered into the casket again.
A deep chill.
Emily was still lying there but had tilted her head and was staring at him, her eyes ghostly white, drained of color. She opened her mouth slightly and a trickle of stale water oozed out.
She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening!
He pinched his arm, hard, but the image of Emily staring at him did not go away.
Then her lips moved and he heard his name in a voice wet and soft: “Daniel.”
This isn’t real!
Right before his eyes, weeds from the soft-bottomed lake appeared in her hair. Her clothes became soaked. The color of her skin changed from imitation-Caucasian-white to the bluish gray shade of death that it must have been when the two fishermen found her. Then she spoke to him again, her voice moist and gurgly, more water seeping from her mouth with every word: “Trevor was in the car.”
Pain buzzed through his head.
The moment overtook him. He was too petrified to move.
“Trevor shouldn’t have been in the car,” she said. Then, with one swift and abrupt motion, she sat up. “Find my glasses.” She slung her arm toward him and clenched her dead fingers around his forearm. “Please, Daniel.” A gush of filthy water spilled from her drooping mouth.
He yanked his arm away and stumbled backward again, his head throbbing, pounding, the world growing dizzy, dizzy black. Emily slumped back into her casket, and then everything was turning in a slow, wide circle, and he realized he was on the floor of the church and people were leaning over him, asking what was wrong, if he was okay.
The darkness curling through his mind turned into a sharp blade of light that sliced through everything.
“She’s alive,” he said as loudly as he could, but it didn’t sound loud to him at all. “Emily’s still alive.”
And that was the last thing Daniel remembered before he blacked out.
CHAPTER
SIX
He woke up disoriented, his thoughts in
a fog. As far as he could tell he was lying on one of the stiff couches in the lobby. His dad, along with some adults he didn’t recognize, were staring down at him.
The ceiling lights glared above him. He had to blink and look away.
“Dan?” There was both concern and relief in his father’s voice. “Are you okay?”
Daniel blinked again. It was all coming back to him now—entering the church, approaching the casket, seeing Emily . . . .
She spoke to you. She called you by name.
“Are you okay?” his father repeated.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Um, is she . . . ?”
“Who?”
“Emily. Is she . . .” Man, this was going to sound weird. “Is she really dead?”
His dad nodded somberly. “We can talk about this more at home, alright?”
“So she . . . ?”
“Yes.”
The vision of Emily in the casket, the sight of the water pouring from her mouth, the gurgling sound of her voice, the firm grip of her hand on his arm, all of it had seemed so real.
How could any of that have happened if she were dead?
But it couldn’t have been real either. Emily had drowned and she was dead, and dead people don’t open their eyes, don’t sit up in their coffins, don’t talk to you, and they certainly don’t reach over and grab your arm.
You’re just seeing things. That’s all it is. Your mind is playing tricks on you.
But it’d seemed just as real as this conversation he was having with his dad.
He was still dizzy and it took a little effort to sit up. A couple of people who were standing beside his dad eased away. Then the others did as well, until it was only Daniel and his father.
“You fainted,” his dad told him, as if he were anticipating a question that, in truth, Daniel hadn’t even been intending to ask.
“I’ve never fainted before.”
“Was it the headache?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel’s dad helped him to his feet, and amid the stares and anxious glances of some of his classmates, they left the church.
“I guess it was the shock,” his dad said, “you know, of seeing her like that.”
“I guess it was.”
On the drive home, Daniel tried to shake what’d happened from his mind, tried to convince himself that he had not seen what he had, that he had not heard Emily tell him that Trevor was in the car, that a dead girl had not asked him to find her glasses.
Now that he thought about it, in the photos at the front of the church she’d been wearing a pair of glasses, and in school when he’d seen her, she’d had them on then as well.
He didn’t know if it was typical to put people’s glasses on them when they were lying in their caskets. It seemed like an odd thing to do, but it was possible that it happened, if maybe someone wore glasses all the time and the funeral home staff was trying to make them look as normal as possible.
But in this case, no one would have found Emily’s glasses anyway. After all, she drowned, and it seemed pretty unlikely that she would have somehow been able to keep her glasses on while the currents in the lake dragged her down and carried her into that inlet where her body was found.
They arrived home and Daniel headed to his room.
He’d never known what to believe about ghosts. On the one hand, the supernatural or the paranormal, whatever term you wanted to use, wasn’t something he could easily accept. He believed science would eventually wrap its arms around those things and come up with an explanation that made sense.
On the other hand, lots of people really did see unexplainable things, and there was no discounting what they experienced—visions, hauntings, strange noises in the night, doors or windows slamming on their own. Patches of freezing air where nothing cold should be.
Before today, he could barely imagine what that was like.
But was it Emily’s ghost he had seen?
He really couldn’t come up with any other explanation.
Daniel removed his tie, the only one he owned, and hung it in his closet.
But even if it had been Emily’s ghost, why would it ask him to find her glasses? Daniel had seen his share of scary movies and heard his share of ghost stories around campfires—especially from his friend Kyle.
According to what people said, ghosts, if they were real at all, were sometimes harmless—benevolent even—bringing help to the living. Sometimes they were seeking justice or a place to find their final rest, or the opportunity to finally slip out of limbo and into eternity. But sometimes they were vengeful or just plain evil.
The stories Kyle liked to tell were usually about the vengeful ghosts or poltergeists who wanted nothing more than to terrify or harm people who were still alive.
Or kill them.
Sometimes they wanted that.
Daniel reassured himself that all those things were just made up, that in real life ghosts didn’t exist.
But as he took his shirt off, a thin cold shiver slithered down his spine.
He stared at his arm.
Clawlike marks, swollen and red and shaped in the form of a hand, encircled his forearm in the place where the dead girl had grabbed his arm during her funeral.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Daniel did not sleep well.
It wasn’t just the disquieting feeling of being at the funeral, or the fact that his arm hurt; it was mainly that image of Emily staring at him, moving, sitting up. It wouldn’t leave him alone, even in his dreams. She kept rising in her casket and speaking to him.
Trevor was in the car. Trevor shouldn’t have been in the car.
Find my glasses.
Please, Daniel.
In his dream she called him by name, over and over.
Please, Daniel.
Daniel . . .
The photos from the front of the church came to life, and he saw her as if she were moving from one to another, morphing and changing and merging, picture by picture—the cabin to the beach to the studio photo with her dog—with glimpses of her walking through the halls of school in between.
Finally, when he did roll out of bed, he felt like he needed a few more hours of sleep.
The marks were still on his arm.
Still sore.
He chose a long-sleeved sweatshirt so no one would see them.
He wasn’t sure how he’d cover them up during football practice, but maybe using his arm warmers would take care of it—as long as no one noticed anything in the locker room while he was changing.
Just like usual, his dad was in the kitchen scrolling through the news feeds on his iPad as he finished his coffee, with a copy of the local paper that he’d already read folded up next to his empty cereal bowl. He wore his sheriff’s uniform. Radio. Flashlight. Handcuffs. Gun. Ready for the day.
“Feeling better this morning, Dan?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He didn’t realize he’d turned his wounded arm away from his dad until after he’d done it.
Man, he hoped he wasn’t going to be self-conscious about that at school too, or it was going to be a really long day.
“What time will you be home from football practice tonight?”
“We’re reviewing game films of the Pioneers afterward, so it might not be until six thirty or so. Kyle’s coming over at eight to study for our history test tomorrow.”
His father finished his coffee. “You want me to pick up something for supper on the way home?”
“I’ll throw some fajitas together.” When his mom moved out, Daniel and his dad had split up the cooking responsibilities, and his specialty was homemade tortillas, so his father didn’t argue at all about the idea of fajitas.
“That’ll work.” He rose and gently patted Daniel’s shoulder. “Hey, bud, I know there’s been a lot
going on this week, a lot of really intense stuff. Hang in there.”
“I will.”
Things had been pretty good between the two of them since the day last spring when Daniel’s mom had said things no woman should ever say to her husband, and then walked out the door.
The separation had really affected his dad. He didn’t smile so much these days. He worked hard, he was a good dad, he was there when Daniel needed him. But his heavyheartedness had weighed on them both, and Daniel wasn’t sure how to help lift him out of it.
The divorce still wasn’t final. Daniel’s mom talked to him occasionally on the phone and told him how much she still wanted to be part of his life, but since she still hadn’t come back to Beldon from the Twin Cities, where she was living with her sister, not even come back once, her words didn’t mean much to him. It was clear to everyone that she wasn’t returning, at least not for good.
Outside, a thin layer of frost covered everything, and Daniel had to scrape his car before backing down the driveway.
On the way to school, he tried to put Emily’s death and the funeral out of his mind, but had a hard time dismissing what’d happened there at the front of the church. It had to have been more than a hallucination. He’d seen her ghost, he’d heard it speak, and he bore the proof of the encounter on his arm.
But what was he going to do about any of that, apart from hiding the hand-shaped, swollen mark and trying to forget what’d happened?
That really was the question.
And he didn’t have any clue as to the answer.
But one thing he was pretty sure about: it wasn’t something he was ever going to be able to forget.
Daniel found his typical parking spot on the edge of the lot near a quiet grove of pines where he sometimes saw deer in the mornings, especially in the winter, when it was just barely getting light when he drove up. The football stadium lay to the left, near a farmer’s cornfield bordering the school.
After grabbing his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder, he headed toward the building.
Beldon High School was relatively large, considering how many people lived in town. About a decade ago someone had decided that busing students in from the region would be cheaper than building or remodeling smaller high schools throughout the area, and they’d been doing it ever since. Daniel’s class was the smallest, but even it had a couple hundred kids. There were more than enough students at the school for some of them to slip through the cracks.