Silent as the Grave

by Zoe Aarsen

  “Sounds about right,” Mrs. Robinson agreed.

  I asked, “How would I do that? I mean, how could I possibly get them out of her soul and then keep them from going back in?”

  Mrs. Robinson paused for a moment, and I could hear what sounded like Wheel of Fortune in the background on her television. “You can draw them out by tempting them with a better host. Think about what they like to do, and who would be good at it.”

  “Either someone powerful and good at bullying people into doing things, or someone super trustworthy,” Henry mused. Oddly enough, when he put it that way, I guessed Violet had probably once been more of the latter and had become better at bullying people over time. In fact, when we’d first played the game with her, she hadn’t really pressured us at all. She’d made it sound like it would be fun.

  “Then what? Is there something we have to chant? Some kind of ritual we have to perform?” I asked. I didn’t know much about the practice of voodoo, but I knew enough to hope that Mrs. Robinson’s recommendations didn’t include any kind of animal sacrifice or blood. I also didn’t much like the idea of the spirits fleeing Mischa’s body and then roaming freely around town. My assumption was that we were going to have to somehow either destroy them or capture them.

  “Well, you’ve got to decide who your bait’s going to be and figure out how to get them close to the afflicted person. Real close. Same room, just a few feet away. In fact, touching would be best. The spirits aren’t going to want to travel far. No, they’re not,” Mrs. Robinson told me. “When you figure that part out, call me back, and I’ll tell you what to do.”

  Henry and I sat in the cab of the truck in silence for a moment after Mrs. Robinson ended our call. Who in the world could we possibly ask to serve as bait—and get them to agree to touch Mischa so that the spirits would attempt to leap from her soul—and into theirs? We’d have to do it at the memorial—Mischa would obviously definitely be in attendance, and there’s no way she’d agree to meet us anywhere else. I said so out loud to Henry.

  After nodding, Henry raised an eyebrow at me. “I thought you said you lost your phone.”

  “I did,” I replied, trying to sound casual and not defensive even though I felt so. “But I just found it when we stopped by my house.”

  Henry removed the keys from the ignition, but neither of us moved to get out of the car. He stared forward through the windshield. “You know, Trey’s missing from his school.”

  I bit my lower lip in fear that Henry was about to call me out for plotting with Trey and leaving him out of the loop.

  “There was a story in the Gazette this morning. Police in town are asking people to keep an eye out for him in case he shows up around here,” Henry continued.

  “I know about the article,” I admitted. “I didn’t read it. But I heard that Trey’s missing. I think he’s in trouble.” Guilt twisted my mouth as I thought about how foolish it was for me to have insisted that Trey follow me back to this town, where so many people were on the lookout for him. I hoped wherever he was at that moment, he was well hidden, and that he’d contact me before nightfall.

  I could tell there was more that Henry wanted to say or ask me, but instead he simply said, “I think you’re in more trouble than he is.”

  With that, Henry reached for the door handle, and I did the same.

  Henry hadn’t been exaggerating about his house being a mess. Newspapers were stacked in columns throughout the living room, forming a wall around the couch. Boxes that looked like they’d been shipped from online stores were stacked like inconsistently sized bricks along one wall, nearly reaching the ceiling. A faint smell of mildew wafted through the living room, making me wish we could step back outside for fresh air.

  Trying not to let my discomfort show on my face, I followed Henry into the kitchen to enter the garage through the interior door, and I pressed my lips together in shock when I saw more of the same: orderly columns of paper bags, mountains of emptied, washed aluminum cans, flattened cereal and frozen dinner boxes, stacked and tied with twine.

  “What’s going on, here?” I asked Henry. The Richmonds’ house had always been spotless and beautifully decorated. Even back in January, when Henry and I had crashed here the night I’d broken out of the Sheridan School for Girls, the house had been thoroughly vacuumed and smelled like fresh potpourri. Seeing it in such a state of clutter made me feel like we’d crossed over into the twilight zone.

  Henry tossed me a bottle of water from the fridge. “My mom’s obsessed with saving everything. She keeps saying maybe it can all be used later for something else.”

  “You mean… hoarding?”

  “Yeah. My dad’s been trying to get her to speak to a therapist. She’s always been into scrapbooking and saving souvenirs and stuff, you know? Seems like losing Liv has kicked her tendency to want to save and cherish things into high gear.” He looked around the kitchen with a look of defeat on his face. “Part of me pities her, and another part of me is really angry that she’s let it get this bad.”

  Henry didn’t seem to want to elaborate, and I didn’t press him for details. Mrs. Richmond had seemed okay to me when I’d interacted with her back in January. She’d offered us the use of her credit card during our trip to Michigan, and had kept the secret of our destination, even though she must have known we were venturing directly into danger. But now, on second thought, it was clear to me that her actions were not those of an adult in the best state of mental health. I suppressed the urge to suggest having my dad call Mrs. Richmond to provide help. I might not live long enough to see that offer through.

  Henry flipped on the lights in the garage, and my breath caught in my throat. A red Prius—Olivia’s sixteenth birthday present—was parked in the second spot. I hadn’t seen it since the day she died; I’d passed it in the high school parking lot that morning and felt a pang of envy. I’d never—in all the months that had passed since September—wondered who’d traveled out to the mall in Green Bay to pick it up after the accident. But now, seeing the forlorn expression on Henry’s face when his eyes landed on it, I had my answer.

  “I think the radio’s over here, with his tool stuff,” Henry murmured, passing me to cross the garage and reach steel shelving that was heavily loaded with shrink-wrapped flats of bottled water from Costco and cardboard boxes. Mr. Richmond’s radio wasn’t hard to find, but it required a fresh pair of nine-volt batteries. “I guess they didn’t use this thing the day of the tornado,” Henry remarked.

  Fortunately, since Mrs. Richmond’s tendency to stock up on seemingly trivial items and store them was not a new one, Henry was able to find the exact batteries he needed in the kitchen.

  He popped the new batteries into the radio, and then turned the on/off knob. After a second, the chords of an old Bon Jovi song trickled out of the old device, sounding like the radio waves carrying them to our ears had originated somewhere very far away—like the other side of the galaxy. “We’re in business. How do we find your sister?”

  I switched the frequency to AM and twisted the dial all the way to the left before slowly, slowly turning it to the right. Leaning forward, I turned my head to position my ear closer to the radio’s speaker. “Don’t laugh at me. I know I look ridiculous,” I told Henry.

  He smiled at his feet and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “It’s a little late for either of us to worry about looking ridiculous.”

  I had scanned all the way across the dial, twisting as slowly as my fingertips would allow when I arrived at AM 1354. “Jennie? Can you hear me?” I asked self-consciously. Even though Henry had seen me dashing through snowbanks without a coat, posing questions to a pendulum, and getting tossed out of Violet’s house by meatheaded seniors, it still felt a little odd to have him witness my attempt at paranormal communication. But he’d handled everything that had happened at the occult bookstore and on the mountainside in Michigan in stride, so I didn’t think he’d be freaked out by my growing abilities to communicate with Jennie.
If I was actually able to reach her, I was pretty Henry would have been impressed.

  But all I heard was the crackle of static, followed by mariachi music originating too far away for the signal to come through clearly. “Maybe FM,” I said, trying to stay hopeful.

  “What are you listening for?” Henry asked.

  Once he’d asked, I had to admit that I couldn’t quite explain it. “It’s not really a sound. It’s more like a vibe. So I guess I’m not even really listening for it, exactly. I mean, I can hear noise, or a voice. But it’s more like my ear feels a certain way—it kind of tickles my skin, and I sense that something’s sending me a message. It’s only worked a few times, so it’s not like I’m an expert, or anything.”

  Henry nodded as if this made perfect sense to him, although I didn’t even completely comprehend how it worked. All I knew was that every time Jennie had reached me through radio waves, it had been easier to understand her.

  After just two twists of the dial across the FM frequencies, I heard a distinctive female voice asking, “McKenna Brady, are you listening?”

  I flinched in surprise and smiled at Henry. “Did you hear that?”

  Henry’s eyes traveled to the radio as if he might be able to see evidence of what I was claiming to have heard. “Hear what?” He looked at me with a flash of dismay, like either he thought I was pranking him, or he was jealous that he hadn’t heard what I had.

  “Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me.”

  “I can hear you!” I said to the radio as if the speaker was a microphone.

  “Geez. I was starting to think I was just babbling to myself.”

  Although the voice coming across the radio sounded female, I was sure it didn’t belong to Jennie. I raised one eyebrow at Henry, wondering if he had figured out who’d contacted us through the radio at the same time I had. But he was completely oblivious to what was happening in front of him. “You really don’t hear anything?” I asked him, and he shook his head.

  “Just static,” he admitted. Despite the fact that he was wearing a heavy sweater, he crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed his upper arms. “But it’s freezing in here all of a sudden. Can you hear your sister?”

  I shook my head.

  “He can’t hear me. He’s not a freak like you.”

  “Thanks, Candace,” I laughed, feeling overjoyed and emotional, while looking Henry in the eye. I was thrilled to hear my deceased friend’s scratchy voice, even though connecting with her instead of Jennie made me even more worried about what had happened to Jennie when Mischa had read my card. I had to wonder why I was suddenly able to hear Candace; had she been trying to reach me since the fall? Or was my ability to hear souls’ messages growing stronger? “Could you give Henry some other kind of sign that you’re the one talking so he doesn’t feel left out?”

  “Ugh.”

  The overhead light flickered. Henry startled and squatted as if he’d felt the ground move beneath his feet and he was bracing himself for an earthquake. His eyes looked upward, and he pointed at the light fixture. “Candace did that?” he asked.

  “Tell him that’s nothing compared to what I do at Isaac’s house,” Candace said. “He’s hooking up with Hailey West now. Did you know that? I haven’t even been gone six months.”

  “Sorry,” I told her. Isaac Johnston was just about the last person on my mind those days. “Candace. The place where you are. Is it… dark?”

  There was a long pause before she replied—long enough to make me fear our connection had been broken.

  “What’s she saying?” Henry asked.

  “Shh,” I said.

  She finally said, “It’s hard to explain because things aren’t really light or dark in the way you’d think about where you are. Here, it’s just… nothing. There’s nothing around me in any direction. I can see you guys, but it’s, like, through a thick screen, sort of.”

  I was wondering, of course, if Candace had ended up after death in the same place as Jennie. “I can’t talk for long,” Candace continued, making me realize that pursuing this line of questioning to try to establish communication with Jennie again was selfish of me and wouldn’t necessarily solve my most urgent problems. “They don’t want me talking to you.”

  I didn’t have to ask who she meant by “they.” “They know she’s talking to me,” I informed Henry, and he also immediately knew which “they” I was referring to.

  “Ask her about getting the spirits out of Mischa,” he urged me.

  “Candace, Violet’s curse is on Mischa now. We have to use someone else as bait to—”

  She interrupted me. “You don’t have to fill me in. I already know all of that. And you already know who the best person is.”

  I shrugged at Henry and replied, “I promise you, I don’t already know.”

  Candace sighed, exasperated, and I could vividly imagine her rolling her eyes at me. “Come on! Someone who easily influences other people, either through charm or by bullying?”

  I mentally ran through all of the names and faces of kids I knew at Willow High School. Many of them were people who had never even registered on Candace’s radar. Roy Needham was a bully, but more of the kind of guy who started fights in the parking lot than someone who had mastered the art of peer pressure. Sophia Diaz, a senior, was rumored to have flirted her way into the starring roles of several theatrical productions of the drama club, but wasn’t exactly beloved by her peers. Besides which, I barely knew either of those people well enough to loop them into a plot involving Mischa. “Just tell me,” I demanded.

  “You’re standing right next to him!”

  Although I consciously tried to keep my eyes focused on the radio, they drifted up to Henry’s face anyway. “Bad idea,” I told her, hoping Henry hadn’t inferred what we were discussing. His blank face and eager eyes suggested that he was completely oblivious. “That’s not an option.”

  “Um, hello. It’s the best option,” Candace insisted. “Mischa knows him and trusts him, and he’s already clued in to what’s happening. So you wouldn’t have to lie to him about the plan.”

  “Too many complications if anything goes wrong,” I said, not wanting to elaborate in front of Henry. If the spirits were to somehow latch on to Henry and burden him with the curse, it wouldn’t be fair to him to expect him to reap souls after losing Olivia. He’d already suffered enough, and so had his parents. And furthermore, I just couldn’t imagine Henry having the heart to kill someone else, no matter the consequences for refusing to follow orders.

  The radio emitted a long stretch of crackling static before Candace replied, “That’s my recommendation. But if you think you know better—”

  “Not an option,” I repeated.

  The static was increasing, making it more difficult for me to discern Candace’s voice from the hissing and popping. All I was able to make out from her reply was, “… going to have to choose, eventually.”

  “Choose what?” I asked impulsively. Choose eventually. My impulse was to believe she was referring to Trey and Henry. But choose which one of them for… what? Love, or as some kind of sacrifice?

  “They’re here,” Candace said, sounding alarmed. The overhead light in the garage flickered again, catching Henry’s attention. The volume of audio coming from the radio momentarily cut out, and when the static returned, it was noticeably quieter. “Are the batteries dying?” I asked Henry.

  “Those are brand-new batteries,” he reminded me.

  I slapped my palm against the top of the radio, not ready to end my conversation with Candace just yet. “Candace, I’m losing you,” I shouted. Inside the Richmonds’ house, muffled by the garage door, the smoke alarm in the kitchen began going off.

  “What the hell?” Henry muttered. He took a few steps toward the door before hesitating. “I don’t smell smoke. Do you?”

  “I don’t think there’s a fire,” I told him, distracted by my eagerness to maintain my connection to Candace. But the static was so thic
k that if she answered me, I couldn’t hear her, and her “vibe” was gone. Desperate, I flipped the radio over to check the battery compartment again, and swore when I saw sticky brown liquid oozing out from the plastic panel door.

  “Don’t touch that,” Henry warned as I instinctively reached to pop the door open. I set the radio upright on the workbench again and slapped the top of it, causing it to spit out one last burst of static. With it, I heard just the last snippet of Candace’s voice uttering the last name—other than Henry’s—that I wanted to consider for the role of bait.

  And then… the radio went silent.

  “What’s happening?” Henry asked. “Can you still hear her?”

  I twisted the radio’s tuner in both directions, but Candace was gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  IT SHOULD BE ME.”

  Henry had ignored my request that he turn down my mom’s invitation to our house for dinner, and had rung our doorbell at six o’clock carrying a bouquet of flowers from the grocery store. When I answered the door, I looked up and down the block in a state of heightened paranoia, terrified that Trey might be lurking behind a bush, watching and making an incorrect assumption about why Henry had come over. But I had to assume that Trey’s instinct was to stay as far away from our street as he could get, which didn’t make me feel much better since most businesses in town were still closed because of tornado damage.

  I was grateful for Henry’s company. His presence at the dinner table distracted Mom from the fact that I felt too queasy to eat. I still hadn’t put together any kind of strategy for finding Trey, and had yet to find any comfort in Candace’s recommendation. I was mentally freaking out a little bit.

  We sat in the kitchen, speaking in hushed tones over cups of coffee while Mom and Glenn watched a British baking show in the living room.