Touched by Death

by T. L. Martin

  She smiles as she rises from her seat. “It was no trouble, honey. Hopefully I’ll get to see more of you soon.”

  “Yeah, definitely.” I’m about to give her an awkward wave when she reaches her arms around me in a tight embrace. It reminds me of the way Claire hugged me after putting up the New Year banner, and I instantly lean into it. Everyone could use a good hug in their life.

  Just as I turn to walk away, I hear Lydia’s voice behind me.

  “Hey, Lou?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Hawkins family.”

  My eyebrows pucker together. “Sorry?”

  “The Hawkins Family,” she repeats, taking a step toward me. “They used to live here a while back. Ended in tragedy, I’m afraid. But I know that Mr. Blackwood had some sort of connection with them. Not sure if it helps, but it’s the only other thing I know about him.”

  Chapter 32

  I head back to the inn, deciding to save the trip to the library for another day since I start work in less than an hour and still have to get ready. Should be more than enough time to squeeze in an internet search on the Hawkins family, though.

  Claire’s on the phone when I step inside. She catches my eye and grins wide. I give her a fake applaud as I pass by that says, Yeah, yeah. You got me, and she snickers.

  Once in my room, I get comfortable on the bed and retrieve my phone, immediately starting a Google search. I don’t even have to scroll through the search engine results, because right there at the top of the page reads: “Hawkins Family of Three, Burned to Death in Their Own Home.”

  My stomach twists at the words, eyes squeezing shut before I force myself to continue reading. There’s a picture of the house—or what’s left of it, but it’s the wild flames that take over the image, swirling between dark clouds of smoke. I squint, focusing on the background scenery, and notice that the property is on some kind of small farm.

  Ashwick, KS—Single father and two sons pronounced dead following a house fire apparently sparked by gasoline and a match.

  About 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 6, 1958, Kansas State Police troopers responded to a medical call at 2139 Deer Lane. As they neared the scene, they spotted smoke coming from the house, said Chief of Police Wayne Mulligan—

  My fingers tighten around the phone as I carefully reread that last name. Mulligan. I know that name. I know it, because it was Grams’s last name. Tallulah Mulligan. The Chief of Police, though? My mind immediately begins forming assumption after assumption, and I have to give my head a little shake. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Mulligan is a fairly common last name, right? Still, I store the piece of information away for later.

  I redirect my attention back to the article in front of me.

  Firefighters arrived and battled the blaze. Once it was controlled, responders entered the structure, which was left mostly in ruins. They found resident and father of two Sherman Hawkins lying on the living room floor.

  Hawkins was removed from the house and paramedics pronounced him deceased, Mulligan said.

  An initial investigation showed the kitchen floor had been doused in gasoline before a match was lit to it. The physical state of Hawkins’s body suggests foul play, with a severe injury to the back of his head having occurred just prior to the fire being set. Additionally, blood residuals recovered on Hawkins has since been matched to the DNA of both his sons.

  The investigator says at this time all evidence suggests the fire was intentionally lit by one of the Hawkins boys.

  While the bodies of the Hawkins boys—seventeen-year-old Enzo Hawkins and twelve-year-old Thomas Hawkins—were never recovered due to the poor condition of the property’s remains, further forensic evidence has since confirmed their deaths.

  At present, Mulligan, who was also close friends with the now deceased Sherman Hawkins, says the case is currently closed.

  Holy crap. My jaw aches from clenching it so hard, and my hand cramps around the phone I'm holding in a death grip.

  It can't be them.

  Can it?

  My heart’s racing as I release the phone and snap upright, my mind involuntarily darting back to my dreams.

  Thomas. Twelve years old. An older brother. Evidence of foul play. Fire, the kitchen.

  It all lines up. In fact, it could easily have been where my latest dream was headed if I hadn’t woken in the middle of it. But really, how could that even be possible? They’re dreams. I pause, reviewing all the impossible things that have already happened in my life lately. Dying, being saved by Death, him getting trapped in my room, me crossing over to the other side, my body attempting to adjust to life over there. Maybe it’s not so unbelievable after all.

  Even so, what are the odds that the people in my dreams would exist right here, in this very town? Or that they did, anyway. My eyes shut at that last thought, my insides churning so intensely it makes my head pound.

  It can’t be true. It can’t end like that for them. God, I was there. Right there with them. I know what that monster did to them. Felt from a place deep within me the way that raw, blood-thick, brotherly love constantly burned between the boys. I knew them. I was them. I bled with them. And now it feels as though a part of me burned with them.

  Tears roll down my cheeks, but I don’t bother to wipe them. What’s the point, when I know they’ll just keep on coming?

  There has to be more to their stories, right? They were so young, had so much more life to live. And after all they’d gone through, all the suffering, all the pain. Where’s the justice? Where’s their silver lining? It just doesn’t seem right for that to be the ending to their story, when it should have been the beginning.

  I grab my phone again, this time doing a search under the boys’ names. I figure with an incident as big as this one happening in such a small town, there might be something more on them.

  Nothing.

  All that pops up is that same article. I try searching under the father’s name instead. Bingo. It’s just one photograph, but it’s all the confirmation I need. A sickening feeling takes ahold of me as I instantly recognize the monster from my dreams. He sits on a chair in the grass, one leg kicked out and a pipe in his mouth, like he hasn’t a care in the world. The woman beside him is gorgeous. There’s a flashy, almost seductive smile on her face, one eyebrow arched daringly at the camera. Her hair is a silky black, perfectly coiffed in a way that makes her look out of place in the middle of a farm as they are. So this is the mother who was never there. The woman who cared more about her next fling than her own children.

  My thumb clears the screen as I swallow down the urge to vomit. I have all the proof I need. It is them. Enzo and Thomas Hawkins. The brave brothers with hearts spun from gold. Survivors. Angels. And everything good and strong in between.

  I can’t take the heartache, still feeling the reality of this revelation sink into my mind, my soul.

  Why? Why am I having dreams about these two people who existed decades ago? I may not have trouble believing in the impossible anymore, but I still want to understand it. Is there some connection I should be making here? Something I’m meant to do in relation to these boys?

  It’s on that heavy thought that the alarm goes off beside me. Ugh. I have to go. I can’t imagine spending the day cleaning when I should be trying to figure out what’s going on with me. With all of this. But I have to go. If I’m going to get anywhere with Mr. Blackwood, if I have any chance of getting answers from him about the Hawkins brothers, I need to repair the trust I broke with him first. Show him he won’t scare me away. That he can yell, he can bark, he can push and shove all he wants, but I’m not going anywhere.

  As expected, Mr. Blackwood ignored me for most of the day. I was happy to find him already home when I arrived this time, rather than stumbling drunkenly through the door later on. He even seemed to be back at it with his research again.

  I made a point to give him some space after our last little episode. It wasn’t easy. I almost caved several times, my jaw about to s
nap from how hard I forced my mouth shut all day. It was difficult enough trying to stay out of his business before, but now that I know he has ties to the Hawkins boys, it’s near impossible.

  When it came time for me to leave, I gave him my usual goodbye and he gave me his usual grunt. He didn’t toss me out on my ass mid-day or drink himself to death, so, yeah, I’d say the day was a success.

  I almost stopped at the library on my way home, but the more I thought about it, the more I concluded I would rather he reach a point where he’s willing to show me his work than have to go snooping around even more. As of now, the library is my Plan B.

  After my bath once I’m back home, I mentally go over exactly what Death and I need to focus on when he comes over tonight: how to get ourselves out of this mess before it gets any worse. That is what we need to discuss, and that is all we need to discuss.

  I’m certainly not obsessing over my sleepy confession last night, which is also not replaying in my head like a broken record as I realize I’m about to face him for the first time since then. I’m not taking the time to blow dry my hair or put on my favorite lip gloss. And I’m especially not sliding my legs into the kind of jeans that highlight my curves in all the right ways.

  But if I were . . . I might wonder what he’d think at seeing this look on me. I might wonder if he’d comment on it, or inch closer and slowly brush the hair from my face. I might wish for just one last moment to pretend we aren’t from different worlds, we don’t have an expiration date, and that I’m just a girl and he’s just a boy.

  I shift my head and eye the clock. At least I can always count on him being on time.

  Which means I have exactly forty-five seconds.

  Forty-five seconds to get my head together and stay focused on the reality of our situations. Thirty-nine seconds to remind myself why I can’t get all girly on him now and need to concentrate on the issues with my actual heart, not my metaphorical heart. Twenty-two seconds to become a full-blown adult who knows how to get shit done.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Ten.

  Five.

  And . . .

  I turn my head. Look around. Clear my throat. “Um, hello?”

  Nothing. Strange.

  I continue to wait, chewing my lip and allowing my mind to wander. I toy with the ring on my middle finger, the one I’d made sure to slip on after my bath. Then I continue to wait as I return to the bathroom to check my hair, adjust my top. And I flick through the channels as I wait some more. It’s not until over an hour later as I lie restless on my bed that I finally get it.

  He’s not coming.

  Chapter 33

  Tilting my head, I squint and shift the phone. “So . . . is this what I think it is?”

  “Well that depends.” Jamie peeks over my shoulder, her jasmine scented perfume saturating my room. It’s Saturday, and she arrived from LA over an hour ago, insisting through a thick, clogged voice that she is not coming down with anything and that she is here to have a crazy weekend of fun with her bestie. Apparently that involves staring at weird pictures. “Are you thinking it’s the udder of a cow?” she asks.

  “Yup.”

  “Then yes!”

  “And are you, um, milking it?”

  “Ew. Don’t remind me.” She sniffles, her nose pink from all of the sneezing she’s been doing, and reaches over to pluck her cell phone from my hands. She cringes as she inspects the picture on the screen one last time. “I swear, the things I do for that man.”

  “Oh god,” I groan. “Please don’t tell me this is some kinky thing Daniel’s into.”

  “What?” Her jaw drops dramatically, and she shoves my shoulder as I chuckle. “Not even. Well, kind of. The kinkiest thing we’ve ever done, though, involved a butt plug, a ladder, and one of those furry—”

  “Nope.” The palm of my hand shoots up between us. “Stop right there. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but can we get back to the cow udders, please?”

  “Oh, right. I drove past quite a few farms to get here and,” she shrugs, wandering toward the fireplace and picking up one of my framed photographs, “well, Daniel’s always had this fantasy about cowgirls. I tried to tell him awhile back that real cowgirls aren’t like they are in those porn videos—”

  “Didn’t need to know that—”

  “But he wasn’t having it. So anyway, this is just me making good on his fantasy.” She turns back to me and winks.

  I snort and shake my head as she lets out another little sneeze. “Ugh,” she moans. “Be right back.” She disappears into the bathroom.

  After fixing the family photos she unwittingly rearranged, I step back and glance down at my mood ring, twisting it around my finger. He never came that night, or the next night either. Not when I made sure to be here at our usual time, just in case, and not when I tried calling out his name. All that answered was silence and an empty room.

  A part of me worries. After all, I’m not the only one whose body is trying to acclimate. What if something happened to him? What if he’s stuck somewhere? Or what if something went wrong and he wound up in some other girl’s room somewhere across the globe? What if he’s lost control of things again and can no longer come at will? Or what if his heart decided not to beat for me after all, and without a beating heart, he’s unable to cross back over? The possibilities are endless, and my pulse rate picks up just thinking about them.

  Another part of me, though, the part that’s nestled deep down in my core, knows that this is intentional. For whatever reason, he’s choosing not to see me anymore. Choosing to stay away.

  I press my fingers to my chest, searching for that beat again, as I have been doing every morning when I wake up. The rhythm is still there, pounding gently beneath my touch, but it’s even fainter now than it was a few days ago. Fear sneaks its way to the forefront of my mind, and I try to block it out. But it’s stronger than me. I’m scared, and without him I have no one to talk to about it. No one to lean on. No one to turn to. It’s a lonely place to be.

  The bathroom door clicks open with Jamie stepping out, a tissue pressed firmly to her button nose, and I try to smile. I know I’m lucky to at least have friends here with me, even if I can’t talk to them about these things. “Got any tape?” she murmurs, clearly annoyed. Her voice sounds even more nasally now that she’s got her nose all plugged up. “I gotta stop the stupid leaking somehow if we’re going out.”

  “Jamie . . .” My brows knit together. “You sure you want to be out and about when you’re feeling like this?”

  “Psh.” She shoves my arm then pulls me in for a tight hug with her free hand, sniffling all over me. “You kidding? Like I’m going to let a little hiccup interfere with our plans. A-a-a—” I duck out of her grasp just in time. “CHOO!”

  Well, this should be interesting.

  By the time evening rolls around, Jamie’s tucked into my bed like a tall, skinny burrito. Her naturally tan face is tinted with rosy splotches, and used tissues are littered all around her. Claire’s scooting the rocking chair and rug aside, making space for the air mattress she brought over for our sleepover.

  “Seriously, you guys,” Jamie mutters for the millionth time this hour. “You do not need to stay in just because I’m a wreck. Go out, have fun. Get drunk for me.”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” I repeat, also for the millionth time. “Staying in with you and Claire beats going out and getting drunk any day.”

  “Liar.”

  “Yes.” I smirk, and she snickers.

  A loud noise hits our eardrums as the mattress begins filling up, and Claire shouts to be heard. “I’m not old enough to buy alcohol!”

  “Use your fake ID!” Jamie shouts back.

  Claire scrunches her nose. “I don’t have a fake ID.”

  “What?” Jamie’s eyes go wide, but she quickly replaces the shocked expression with an excited one. “Lou can go out and buy some, and you guys can party here! Then I’ll get to watch you two embarrass you
rselves, and I can make fun of you in the morning while you’re puking over the toilet seat. See? It’s a win-win for everyone.”

  Claire laughs. “Clearly.”

  “No one’s getting drunk tonight,” I holler. “We’re taking care of your sick butt and watching the classics.”

  The blaring noise around us finally simmers down as Claire unhooks the air pump. She turns to us then, an eyebrow quirked. “The classics? Um, I’m not really one for old movies—”

  Jamie chuckles, shaking her head. “No, sweetie. Our classics.” She flicks a finger between me and herself. “Clueless, Ten Things I Hate About You, and Mean Girls.”

  The familiar tune seeps into my ears, distant and hazy. What the hell is that? I groan and roll over, my arm falling on Claire’s, causing her to stir. Then it starts again, that high-pitched rhythm I’m slowly becoming able to place.

  My phone. Great.

  I climb off the air mattress, careful not to disturb Claire this time, and grab the object lighting up a few feet from me. I don’t even look at the number before I answer the call and slip into the bathroom. I gently close the door behind me.

  “Hello?” I whisper groggily.

  “Yeah, is this Lou?” It’s some guy’s voice I don’t recognize, and there’s loud music in the background.

  “Um, yes?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour but . . .” He pauses, his reluctance obvious. “Uh, well, your boyfriend is passed out on my bar’s floor, and we closed over ten minutes ago.”

  What? I finally pause to glance down at my screen. It’s Bobby’s number. I return the phone to my ear, and the man is already speaking again.

  “I really don’t wanna have security kick him out. I like the dude. But he can’t stay here all night.”

  It takes a minute for his words to really sink in. Bobby is on the floor. Passed out. At a bar. Sober Bobby is passed out in a bar. Oh, no.

  “Um, yeah. Yeah, of course. I’ll be right there. Can you text me the address?”