Dust to Dust

by Melissa Walker

  “Thaaaatcheeeer!” I scream, so hard my vocal cords are nearly shredded.

  And then I hear something that sounds like streams of air being sucked out of the sky.

  “Stop!” Thatcher’s voice echoes from the woods and I see him emerge on the beach, clear as day. His muscular arms are taut and ready—I can see he’s poised to spring out into the water, ready to battle, and it pushes away the seeds of doubt that Wendy planted within me earlier.

  How could this selfless person ever hurt a soul?

  “Oh my gosh!” says Carson, turning to see him. “Thatcher.” She glances back at me. “Callie, is this . . . him?”

  Reena’s laugh carries across the sand. “Aw, the gang’s all back together,” she says with a fake-friendly lilt. Then she fixes her attention on Nick. “Better tell your living boyfriend to be careful, Callie. We know how Thatcher gets . . . overcome by emotions.”

  “Reena, enough. Leo may be able to own Eli tonight, but you’ll be left without a body—taking Carson a second time will just weaken you even more,” says Thatcher over the water. I have to admit, I was expecting him to attack her and Leo right away, but of course he wants to try and talk them out of this first—that’s his way. “Then you’ll have to return to the Prism, and we will never let you come back here.”

  He gestures behind him and I see the other Guides, their figures glowing on the beach with him. I feel a wave of relief wash over me, but as quickly as it comes, it goes with the sound of Reena’s voice.

  “Oh, Thatcher,” she says, acting sickly sweet. “I think you missed possession number two.”

  My heart speeds up, regret charging through me. “What do you mean?”

  Reena spins toward me. “While you and your true love were canoodling out in the water on Sunday, I took the opportunity to use Carson the way he was using Nick.”

  I feel like I’ve been punched. The energy pull . . . the one I thought was happening because Thatcher was using my energy to possess Nick. It was Reena taking Carson’s body, back on the beach. I think about Carson mentioning how tired she was feeling from her day in the sun. Why didn’t I make the connection then? Why didn’t I see the signs?

  Maybe because the only person I was thinking of in that moment was Thatcher.

  I don’t think the consequences of our relationship have ever been greater.

  Before I can explain or say anything to Carson, she’s standing up to face Reena in her take-no-bull way, despite the fear I know she feels. She sways a little on the dock but stays steady on her feet. “You’re so full of crap, Reena. Everyone here knows you’re bluffing. Callie told us what Thatcher knows. That you’re almost out of energy.”

  “Oh, Carson,” purrs Reena, stepping from the water to the dock now. “I admire your fire. So very much . . . too bad you’re dead wrong.”

  Reena reaches out a hand to touch one of Carson’s glossy brown curls, and I hear Thatcher shout, “Nooooo!”

  I lunge toward Reena, but the moment I move, a piercing pain hits me, like someone has driven a pair of scissors through my skull. A blazing flash of light blinds me and I roll off the dock, my head in my hands. The sting is excruciating, and I must black out for a minute, because when I come to again, water is filling my lungs and I’m sinking down to the bottom of the river.

  Suddenly, I feel someone reach under my arms and pull me up to the surface, where I spit up liquid and choke down air. Nick has me—he’s dragging me to the beach.

  When he pulls me to the sand, I don’t see Reena or Leo. But I see Thatcher and the Guides, now standing on the beach around me in a protective circle.

  I slowly sit up and my vision clears. Nick is next to me. Dylan is pulling up the yellow kayak nearby—he kept the book dry. Carson. Eli. They’re sitting on the beach next to the red kayak—they must have paddled back together when I went under.

  “Did it work?” My voice is a whisper.

  I look over at Carson, whose eyes are closed. Eli’s are too.

  But then they both blink at once.

  “Yes,” they say in unison.

  And the way they say it makes the blood in my veins turn to ice.

  I look at Thatcher, hoping he’ll shake his head, tell me that my worst fear hasn’t happened, hoping he’ll say that our incantation worked, that Reena and Leo are gone.

  But what I see is pure rage in his face as he stares at Eli. When Thatcher runs at him to attack, I know there’s no time to waste. I have to get Reena out of Carson’s body before she fully attaches.

  I spring to my feet and tackle my best friend, driving her into the sand and trying to draw on my energy, reach inside myself and find the depths of my power—if ever there was a time to call on every ounce of strength I have, it is now. I’m trying to push her energy—trying to move Reena’s soul from Carson. What I end up doing is some messed-up kind of CPR, banging on her chest and screaming like a banshee.

  “Callie, you’re only hurting her physically,” says a voice beneath me. It sounds just like Carson, it’s coming from her mouth, but isn’t her. And I lift my head toward the sky and let out a ferocious scream as I realize, truly realize, what has happened.

  Reena has taken her for a third time. Carson’s soul has vanished. Turned to dust.

  It’s too much to bear.

  “Callie, what are you doing?” It’s Dylan. He clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s pulling me off Carson, confused by this bizarre scene.

  “Dylan, help!” says Reena, deceiving him from inside Carson’s body. It must look like I’m crazy, like I just attacked my best friend. But Dylan knows better than that.

  He glances at Carson, but then, holding my shoulders tightly in his hands and shaking me until I lock eyes with him, he just says, “Reena?”

  Tears stream down my face. “She’s taken Carson for a third time,” I say. “I can’t move her soul. It’s latched into the body and—”

  He doesn’t let me finish, just drops my shoulders and turns to Carson, staring at her with a gaping, horror-filled gaze. She smiles back at him, but the smile isn’t Carson’s. It’s sinister and tight and void of any compassion or love. Dylan panics, diving for the book he left in the kayak.

  “There’s got to be a way . . . ,” he whispers, rifling through the pages frantically.

  Nick is standing next to Eli, gazing down at him in horrified wonder after Thatcher’s assault. Does Nick know that the person he’s looking at isn’t his soccer teammate? Eli is dead, vanished, and Leo has taken him.

  And all this happened because of me.

  I’m the one who organized this whole plan. The one who brought everyone to a vortex without knowing if the incantation would really work. I’m to blame, for all of this. If I had just listened to Thatcher and waited . . .

  The guilt ravages my mind and Thatcher must hear it somehow, because he’s there, by my side. His face is a picture of dread. The other Guides stand, helpless, at the edge of the woods. The battle they were ready to fight cannot take place. Because the enemy now walks among the living, inside the physical shells of our friends.

  “Don’t punish yourself,” he murmurs, but nothing he can say can make this awful ache inside me go away. “Your intentions to banish them were all good . . . but . . .”

  The look in his eyes says it all.

  “It’s over,” I say, translating his expression. “They’ve won.”

  He sinks to the sand, where Carson’s and Eli’s bodies still lie, regaining strength. His ghostly form flickers like he might disappear from devastation. I long to reach out to him, to hold him, but I can’t. We are all lost, unable to save our friends.

  I drop to my knees next to Carson, who is now going to live a life that Reena dictates. Will she leave Carson’s family and find her own? Will she treasure my best friend’s world, so full of light and laughter and friendship and love? Or will Reena create her own existence, living carelessly and doing whatever she pleases? It doesn’t matter, I realize. Even if she does follow in Carso
n’s footsteps, it won’t be Carson. It’ll be an impostor.

  I lie on the ground, unable to face the new world around me. I find some comfort in the cold, wet grains of sand that stick to my cheek. I focus on them, not on the anguish I’m feeling. These billions of tiny specks broken up by water, washed away with years of patient energy and careful erosion, are my universe right now.

  Then I hear a jangle of keys behind me. “Sweet!” It’s Carson’s voice, but Reena’s tone. “A VW Bug? I’ve always wanted one.”

  I lift my head to see Reena and Leo near me on the beach, smiling at each other, holding hands. Carson and Eli reimagined. Reborn in a way so wrong I can’t accept it. I won’t.

  I push myself to my feet and stand over them as they revel in their victory.

  “You can’t do this,” I say, and my voice sounds almost pleading.

  “It’s already done, Callie.” Eli’s mouth speaks Leo’s words.

  Reena shoots her hand up into the air, lifting Carson’s keys like a trophy and letting out a rebel yell that echoes through the woods and out onto the water. Then she races down the path to the parking lot with Leo at her heels, and I hear the two of them rev the engine and drive off into the night.

  I falter, almost faint with grief, and I shift my feet to keep my balance. I feel Nick’s arms before I see him come up behind me. He envelops me in the hug I want from Thatcher, and I turn to him, burying my face in his warm chest. That’s when I cry. I let my body shake, heaving with sobs for my best friend, who’s suffered a fate worse than death—she’s been taken. Turned to dust. And someone else is going to assume her identity. Her family will always wonder why their sweet, loving girl suddenly changed, and all of us will know the horrifying truth.

  A truth that I couldn’t prevent. A truth that I brought upon all of us.

  My body is racked with sadness and I don’t hold a single sound back as I wail into Nick’s shirt. Crying for Carson, for Eli, for . . . me.

  When my tears dry and my blurry vision clears, I stare down for a moment and focus on two objects that catch my eye. The shoestring and the cuff link. They’re lying in the bottom of the yellow kayak. I let go of Nick and reach down to pick them up.

  Then I turn, and I see Thatcher, still bent down in the sand. The upper Wando is a vortex, a powerful place, a death spot even, and I can see Thatcher here. I can talk to him. Who knows, this might be the last time.

  I walk over to him slowly, and each step feels like my feet are leaden and dragging.

  “What do we do?” I ask him, my voice vacant and detached. I don’t sound like me at all.

  “There’s nothing,” he says. “Nothing can be done.”

  “Thatcher?” a voice calls from the woods, and I turn to see Wendy, finding her way through the deepening darkness.

  “What’s she doing here?” asks Thatcher, startled.

  “I don’t know. I’ll go talk to her.” I jog over to Wendy, wondering what she saw and, if she did, if she’s okay.

  “Hey,” I say, coming to a stop at the edge of the forest and the sand.

  “Don’t be mad; I just had to see why you wanted Reena’s and Leo’s stuff, so I followed you. I was in the woods, watching,” she says, looking over my shoulder, as if she’s still trying to spy on us. “I’m not sure what I saw happen. Is everyone all right? Your friends ran past me just now. . . . They seemed weird.”

  “It’s complicated” is all I can say without breaking down again. Until I realize that there’s someone here that she desperately needs to see. “Come with me.”

  I lead her to where he’s still kneeling in the sand, and he looks up at me with a world of torment in his stormy blue eyes.

  “It’s time for you both to talk,” I say.

  Then I turn to Wendy. “Your brother is right here,” I tell her. “He can see and hear you.”

  Wendy takes in a breath, her eyes starting to fill with tears. I see a flicker of doubt, but I say, “Trust me. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Thankfully she does, standing still, waiting for what she’s always hoped for and feared.

  “Wendy,” says Thatcher. And I can tell he’s using all of his remaining energy to push through the boundaries of the Prism and Earth so that she can listen to the sound of his voice.

  Tears streak down her cheeks instantly, and I know she’s heard him.

  “Thatch. It’s you,” she says.

  “It’s me,” he replies, standing up to face her.

  Wendy wipes at her eyes. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I know,” says Thatcher.

  “I thought . . . you hated me,” she murmurs. “That you felt the accident was somehow my fault.”

  “No, nothing is your fault. Not my death. Not what happened at the beach.”

  My breath catches when I hear him admit it. He did hold her under the water that day. He had threatened his own sister.

  Thatcher looks at my face, and the way his lips are tightening sends a surge of sympathy through me. “I was angry, misguided, as vengeful as Reena and Leo are . . . once,” he says, his eyes trained on me, as though he’s trying to explain his behavior to both of us. “But it was wrong, and I let go of all that bitterness, and I tried to haunt you the right way, Wendy, I did. I tried to help you grieve . . . and heal.”

  His face turns to hers, and though I know she can’t see him, it’s almost as if she’s looking into his eyes.

  “Oh, Thatcher,” Wendy says. “I’ve wanted to believe that you were with me, but I’ve been so afraid since that day. I—”

  Thatcher puts his hand up close to her mouth, and Wendy’s words quiet. She can sense him there; the energy connection is clear.

  “Shhh . . . ,” he says. “I’m so, so sorry. I would do anything to take it back. I want you to live without guilt, without regret.”

  Her head drops and two tears fall, hitting the sand gently.

  I back away, letting the two of them share this moment of forgiveness. I burn the scene into my memory, one that I’ll turn to when I wonder if there is still any light in the world. In the midst of the horror, at least there is this one piece of good.

  But the second I feel a small bit of relief, I’m smacked back down again by the truth.

  The more Wendy’s burden begins to lighten, the more peace she lets into her heart, the closer Thatcher gets to Solus.

  The hope that’s brimming in Wendy’s eyes is secretly killing me. Thatcher is going to merge and I’ll be all alone, with this blood on my hands.

  Well, not entirely alone. Nick is sitting on the beach still, his head hanging low. Dylan won’t stop frantically reading the book we were using. There are silent tears spilling down his face as he bites his lip, obviously hoping that there’s some kind of Hail Mary pass in the pages in front of him.

  Then all of a sudden, he stands. “Guys!” he says. “Listen to this: ‘In the case of a third possession, the host soul will grow smaller and smaller, fading over a period of one sun cycle, from which point the occupying or possessing spirit shall inherit full control of the body and the host soul will vanish.’”

  I’m excited by his enthusiasm, but I have no idea what he’s saying.

  “What does it mean?” I ask.

  “It means that there’s a timetable for the soul attachment,” says Dylan. “It means that Carson’s and Eli’s souls may still be in their bodies, but by dawn, they’ll be gone and the takeover will be complete.”

  “You’re saying they’re alive?” I ask, hope starting to swell in my chest.

  “There’s a chance, yes,” he mutters.

  “But they’ll be dead, or whatever, by morning?” asks Nick.

  “Right . . . for now, they’re just barely hanging on.”

  I stare at the book in Dylan’s hand, and the hope I was just feeling transforms into frustration, and anger. “So what do we do now?” I shout. “Each time one of these books gives us some answers, it gives us even more questions! Meanwhile our friends are
disappearing while we sit here and read!”

  “It’s all I know how to do, dammit!” Dylan stands up and throws the book across the sand, and it nearly lands in the water. His hands are balled into fists. His optimism, his hope, is faltering. Just like mine. I lean down to pick up the book, sorry I lashed out, and the photo I took from Wendy’s house falls to the ground. The wind picks it up, blowing it straight to Dylan’s leg, and he reaches out to grab it.

  My instinct is to take it back, to keep it close because I can almost feel Wendy sending Thatcher away from us. But I don’t, because of the intense way Dylan is studying it. Staring at Reena, Leo, and Thatcher, together.

  “Is that Reena and Leo?” he asks me.

  I look down, afraid that if I tell him, he’ll tear up the photo. “And Thatcher,” I say softly.

  “Wait,” says Dylan, and his voice demands attention. “They were all friends?”

  “Yes,” I say. “A long time ago.” I look around and a chill rushes through me. “They all died here.”

  Dylan whips his head up, his eyes locking with mine.

  “All three of them at the same time?” he asks.

  I nod.

  Dylan grabs the book from my hands. He opens it up, flips to the middle, and starts to read.

  “‘When banishing a poltergeist from a death spot, it is important to note that all souls who were present and taken in the moment of said poltergeist’s passing must be called as well. One soul shall not move without the presence of other souls in the case of multiple or simultaneous deaths.’”

  “English!” Nick yells, getting impatient.

  “It means that the three of them are tied—they died in the same spot at the same time. In order to send the two away from the here and now, all three have to move from these dimensions together.”

  “But we tried the incantation with Leo and Reena, and it didn’t work.”

  “Maybe it did,” says Dylan. “We may have primed their energy for banishment, but without including Thatcher’s merge, the action couldn’t complete!”