We Speak in Storms

by Natalie Lund

  She said hello back and forced a smile for Mrs. Greenley before wandering around the familiar display cases. They contained bone china ringed in blue, brooches with glass stones, inventories of the founding settlers’ livestock, Bibles with family names inscribed on the first pages, and letters in a script Callie was barely able to decipher. All of the cases were made of shatterproof glass, supposedly to protect the historic artifacts from the Winston twins and their penchant for smashing. Callie had always guessed that it had more to do with the living—distant relatives wanting to reclaim their stake in Mercer’s history, children wanting something pretty to call their own, teens wanting to leave their mark on something. Would Callie have had a destructive phase if it weren’t for her mother’s illness? Would she still?

  “I heard your class is doing research on the sixties,” Mrs. Greenley said, interrupting her thoughts. “Some of your classmates are already here.”

  Callie’s mind whirled. Her classmates? Had she been assigned a history project and forgotten?

  “Come. Come. We have more records downstairs.”

  She followed Mrs. Greenley to the basement. Hundreds of white cardboard boxes lined the rows of shelves. Joshua sat at a table in the center of the room, lit by green banker’s lamps. Brenna sat beside him, her dark hair with the flame-tipped ends curtaining her face. Callie felt at once glad and confused to see them.

  “Here they are, dear,” Mrs. Greenley said. Joshua looked up, his bruised face registering Callie. He tapped Brenna’s arm. She pushed her hair back behind her ear and nodded, like she’d expected Callie all along.

  You’re here about the car, aren’t you?” Brenna asked as Callie sank into a chair beside her.

  Callie nodded.

  “Us too,” Joshua said. “Brenna found a patch with the name Luke in the Pontiac, so we’re looking for something—anything—that connects the name Luke to the car.”

  “You got into the Pontiac?” Callie’s wan face arranged itself into something like interest.

  “Yeah, she’s a badass like that,” Joshua said. “No big deal.”

  Brenna felt herself flush. She wasn’t used to being admired.

  “Where’s the car?”

  “At the impound lot. The VW we found is there too. They don’t know how it got stuck in the storm either.”

  “So what can I do?” Callie asked.

  “Grab a box and dig in.”

  Brenna pushed a box toward Callie and stood to grab another. She allowed her hand to hover over the boxes the old lady had pointed out until she felt the tug beneath her ribs again, like she had in the impound lot. She was about to find something big. She slid the box off the shelf and opened the lid.

  Yearbooks.

  She flipped through rows and rows of individual portraits, of clubs and teams on risers. There was a choir in knee-length robes. She recognized the girl front and center, standing on the lowest riser, and the pronounced gap between her shoulders and the boys on either side. Brenna brought the book to her nose. The girl’s skin was pale, washed-out in the old image. She wasn’t wearing makeup. She didn’t have bangs, or they were pinned back, but the heart-shaped face, the large eyes, the ponytail curled over her shoulder—they were familiar.

  She counted the names in the caption, stopping at the fifth: Dorothy Healy. Dot. Brenna’s stomach shifted. She wanted to vomit, but she also felt hungry, ravenous. This was definitely the same person. Dorothy Healy had crossed back and was visiting Brenna, of all people.

  But if Gretta was right, and the spirits were trying to communicate, what on earth was Dot trying to tell her?

  Joshua started with the obituaries from the night of the 1961 tornado, looking for other Miltons, relatives of Edward Milton who may have been driving the Pontiac. There weren’t any.

  Brenna told him to check the police logs, so he pulled them off the shelf and began flipping through each one. Most were typewritten reports in plastic page protectors, but a few were handwritten notes on blue-lined paper. Joshua tilted the pages to read the chicken scratch.

  Eddie Milton. The name was scrawled like an afterthought on the top corner of one page. Joshua inhaled sharply. The Pontiac owner was at the drive-in that night.

  Eddie had reported his friend Luke Winters missing. He’d told the officer he’d last seen Luke heading in the direction of the snack bar. The officer underlined Luke’s name twice and wrote a question mark. Luke, the name on the patch. L and E—just as he’d guessed. The hair stood up on Joshua’s neck. How was this possible?

  Brenna handed him a yearbook with a spread of candid photos of Fall Fest.

  “The car,” she said, but Joshua didn’t pay attention to the Pontiac, or to the young version of the owner, Eddie Milton, sitting on the hood, smiling widely with a letterman’s jacket unbuttoned to reveal the Mercer FD emblem on his chest. All he saw was a young man who was identical to his Wolverine neighbor, except his hair was gelled back and his facial hair was faint. The man’s arms were crossed and he leaned against the car confidently, his eyes bright and amused, teasing whoever was taking the photo. Alumnus Luke Winters and junior Edward Milton II join the Fall Fest parade, the caption said.

  Joshua slammed the book shut, his heart thudding in his chest. “No,” he said. All Mercer’s backward beliefs came hurtling at him—Mrs. Jenson, the bridge, Blue Light Cemetery—everything he’d grown up with but had sworn off because the town had refused to accept him. If he admitted they were right about ghosts, did it mean they were right about him? No, of course not. But the situation didn’t make sense. Unless the man in the yearbook was his neighbor’s relative. Maybe the picture was of the guy’s grandfather. Maybe he was the one who’d gone missing during the storm.

  Brenna was watching him, chewing on the red-dyed ends of her hair. “You met one too, didn’t you.”

  It was a statement not a question, but Joshua didn’t know how to answer. He looked at Callie, who held an obituary, her mouth opening and closing like a fish reeled onto a boat.

  Brenna craned her neck to see it. “You’ve met Celeste Vidal?” she asked. “I visit her headstone sometimes.”

  Callie shook her head. “No. Not Celeste. The mother who’s listed as a survivor. She came to my house—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. None of it does.”

  Brenna slid off her chair and sat cross-legged on the concrete floor. She held out a hand for each of them. Joshua was surprised by her hand, how comforting it was, how easily Callie sank beside Brenna too.

  “Some weird shit is happening to us,” Brenna said. “And we have to figure out why.”

  At this, Joshua felt a rush of excitement beneath his skin, as though his cells were gathering there, preparing to rebuild him as someone needed, someone new, someone seen.

  Callie clutched the obituary in her free hand. She’d be listed as a survivor soon. Her father, too. How could living on after her mother be considered surviving? How, when she was barely even surviving now?

  Callie felt something awaken in her, its eyes dazed and blinking. It dared her to keep going, to interrogate her surroundings. Why was she in a basement, holding the hand of a girl she’d only met days ago? Why did she hear whispers? Why did it seem as though her house was trying to tell her something? Why was an old woman asking her about Lincoln? Why was her mother— She had to say it aloud.

  “I’m so scared for my mom to—” The word was stuck there, behind that boulder in her throat. She pushed, wedged it aside, so that enough air could get through—enough for the word: die.

  Brenna met her eyes and held the gaze. “I know,” she said, and it felt better to Callie than all the mumbled “Oh, hon”s and “Sweetheart”s and “Prayers” and “I’m sorry”s she’d heard over the last few months. It felt like relief.

  Callie exhaled.

  As she held Callie’s hand, the adrenaline drained from Brenna, leaving a cold prickle o
n the back of her neck. Otherworldly beings weren’t as terrifying as the thought of her own mother’s death. Imagining her gone was like imagining a tear in the force that tethered Brenna to earth, like floating into cold darkness. Yeah, they fought, but she couldn’t imagine life without her mother in it.

  “Let’s get out of here. It’s stuffy. And you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She tugged gently at Callie’s bird-boned hand, hoping for a smile. Instead Callie laughed—a surprising bark of a noise. Joshua’s eyebrows shot up at the unexpected sound, and he began to laugh too, his laugh huffing off the roof of his mouth. Brenna couldn’t help grinning.

  When the laughter had died down, Joshua spoke first.

  “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, look for more evidence? I mean, dead people walking on Earth? It’s ludicrous, right? We’re just going nuts like the rest of this town.”

  Brenna looked pointedly at Callie, who had fallen silent and was reshelving boxes.

  “Yeah, okay. Let’s get out of here,” Joshua said, stuffing the police log into his jeans pocket. Brenna closed the yearbook and tucked it back into the box.

  Together, they climbed the stairs of the historical society and stood on the front porch. Brenna shielded her eyes. In the bright sun, the whole thing seemed implausible. And yet she was certain she’d seen Dot in that photo. “Who are your”—Brenna paused, searching for the right word—“visitors?”

  “I don’t know about ‘visitors,’” Joshua said. “But there’s this mechanic dude I saw the night of the tornado. The next day, he was watching my house from across the street, and he said this weird thing to me. He said, ‘Don’t let them get you down,’ like he knew me. I definitely saw someone who looked like him in the photo, but maybe this guy just has a relative who died in the tornado years ago and who looks just like him.” Brenna raised her eyebrows. “I know, I know. When I say it out loud, it sounds crazy. But so does the alternative that he’s . . . dead.”

  “What about you?” Brenna asked, turning toward Callie.

  “Ellie Vidal, Celeste’s mother,” she said. “I mean, it’s possible her daughter died in the tornado and she’s still alive. The math could work, I guess. But she knew stuff about me just like yours did, Joshua—my house and my mother—and I’m pretty sure we don’t know her.”

  “Mine knows me too,” Brenna said. “She gave me a notebook the first time we met and told me I was a writer even though I haven’t written in a while. I think I saw her picture in that old yearbook too.”

  They all stood in silence for a minute. Each of them lost in thought.

  “So now what? What do we do?” Joshua finally asked, rocking backward and forward on his heels. He was spinning out, Brenna could tell.

  That photo of Dot had chilled her. She’d seen far too many horror movies with girls like herself dragged into a hellmouth, possessed, or murdered for defying some understood but unstated rule: too much sex, doing drugs, not being white. But Dot’s presence had never felt dangerous. It was comforting.

  “Maybe we ask them,” Callie answered—so long after Joshua had asked the question that Brenna had forgotten it.

  “Ask them what? Like, ‘Hey, are you alive?’” Joshua said.

  Callie shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “And then what do we do?”

  Brenna thought about what Gretta said. “We listen. Maybe they’re trying to tell us something.”

  “We listen,” Joshua repeated, rocking even more violently, about to launch off his toes and into the sky.

  “What are you thinking?” Brenna asked.

  “We need to tell someone,” he said.

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Someone in charge. I mean, if this is true, and that’s a big if, it’s huge. Like, talk-show huge. Everyone in the town is going to want a piece of them. A piece of us.”

  Callie shuddered.

  “I don’t think it’s come to that yet. Let’s just start with what Callie suggested,” Brenna said. The thought of talking to Dot again made her skin crawl with excitement and fear. Even if she’d believed in the Winston sisters wreaking havoc on the town’s china, and Mrs. Jenson pecking grains from Mercerites’ palms for eternity, she’d never been face-to-face with the truth before. Belief, surprisingly, was easier. “I think we have to figure out why. Like, why us and why now?”

  Callie’s phone buzzed. “Oh shit. I have to go,” she said.

  “Are you okay? Is it your mom?” Joshua asked. Brenna shot him a look.

  “No, it’s my birthday.”

  The girl turned and jogged toward a car on the street. “Happy birthday,” Brenna called after her.

  “And don’t forget to ask your”—Joshua paused—“stranger?”

  “Storm Spirit,” Brenna corrected, savoring the name. For so long, it had been part of a legend she’d believed. Now it seemed closer to the truth.

  DAYS AGO

  Days ago, right after the storm, we realized it wasn’t just our voices that crossed through. The excitement is still ruffling through us. We billow.

  But.

  We didn’t all cross back. So we are angry, and this feeling careens. It ricochets.

  Only they made it through. Only they dropped onto Earth like The Wizard of Oz’s pigtailed Dorothy. The chosen who get to meet those who speak to us, dream us, need us.

  Even worse, their thoughts are not ours anymore. The ones who fell are separate, individual again, plucked from us because only they could answer, because their aches paralleled those below. How can they survive without us? How do they remember how to live? Will they stay forever?

  We who remain, we worry, watch, and want.

  Callie had forgotten Leslie. The girl who’d held her hand on the first day of kindergarten and made up a song because Callie was crying about missing her mom. She’d never wanted a birthday celebration less in her life, but Callie knew what she had to do.

  I’m on my way. Sorry got held up with Mom, she texted as she climbed into the car.

  In the rearview mirror, she saw Brenna and Joshua talking outside the museum. Callie wanted to be with them, figuring out what was going on, who their visitors really were, and why this was happening to them. Joshua and Brenna spoke to her with a directness, with an ease, that comforted her. That made it simpler to forget about her mom—and to remember, too. And now, something inside her—the something that was her mother, that was Mercer—had woken up. It was buzzing beneath her skin, crawling from limb to limb. Could their visitors really be ghosts? How, when Callie no longer believed?

  * * *

  * * *

  Leslie met Callie in the parking lot of Giovanni’s, holding a black bandanna. Her smile was so big, so angry, the metal braces around her back molars were visible, but Callie trusted she’d still be herself—cloyingly sweet—if only because it was Callie’s birthday.

  “Turn around,” she said, holding up the bandanna.

  “Leslie, I thought this was going to be low-key.”

  “Turn around.” Her voice was sharp.

  Callie complied and Leslie tied the bandanna over her eyes. It smelled like Leslie’s house: browned butter and vanilla. Callie tried to remind herself that this was for Leslie. Leslie who played her flute at St. Theresa’s Assisted Living Center at Christmas. Leslie who spent her spring breaks painting houses for Habitat. Leslie who handmade thank-you cards. Callie tried to concentrate on the softness of her hand, the smell of garlic and melted cheese, as Leslie led her through the restaurant.

  “Surprise!” voices shouted, and Callie pulled the blindfold down over her nose, blinking in the green-shaded light. Her friends from church and cross-country were seated at a long table, Mrs. Walsh, Leslie’s mother, and Callie’s father among them. Her stomach sank; if her father was here, then Leslie knew she’d lied about being held up with her mom.

  Everyone just smiled at he
r, waiting for something. Her father was smiling too, but his eyes were slits, the lines underneath like angry parentheses.

  Mrs. Walsh clapped her hands and walked around the table to hug Callie. Her perfume was too strong, like she’d bathed in Easter incense. “Happy birthday,” she said. “Forgive us; we ordered a few appetizers because we were starving.”

  “I’m sorry. I got held up,” Callie said, but her voice came out tinny, robotic. “This is really nice.” She shot Leslie a look that she hoped said everything: Why did you do this, I didn’t want this, I refuse to feel guilty. Then to her father, pleading: I didn’t know.

  A seat beside her old crush, Grant, was open—like this, too, was a gift from Leslie. Callie sat, unrolled the cloth napkin, and put it on her lap.

  “Your dad told us the race went well,” Mrs. Walsh said from her end of the table. “And you got your license?”

  Callie nodded.

  Mrs. Walsh seemed to be waiting for her to say more, but Callie looked pointedly at her silverware.

  Grant handed her a platter of cold garlic knots. She took one, pulled it into two doughy threads, dunked them in marinara sauce, and then dropped them onto her plate.

  “Are you—okay?” he asked, pushing aside floppy chestnut hair.

  “Yeah,” Callie said. “It’s just been a weird day and this was—”

  “Too much?”

  “Way too much. Did she really plan this overnight?”

  “Yeah, she sent a group text. Said things were rough with—you know—and you needed it.”

  He handed her a pitcher of pop. The ice was almost melted and it looked flat, like even the carbonation didn’t want to be there. It made Callie inexplicably angry.

  She picked up one of the strands of her garlic knot. She wanted to find Mrs. Vidal at St. Theresa’s—or search online for information. Something other than sitting here, thinking what a bad friend she was, what a bad daughter. Her stomach grumbled, hungry. Always that gnawing feeling that she had to battle to empty herself. The garlic smell reminded her of her father’s zucchini lasagna, of guacamole on taco nights, of delivery pizzas she’d shared with her mother when her dad had had to work late. Unable to resist, she bit the knot. It was doughy in the center, undercooked and wet, like paste. She spit it into the napkin and tucked it into her pocket.