Heartless

by Sara Shepard

Page 25

 

  “Hey. ” Aria walked over, skirting around a large, round hedge. Her nerves jumped and crackled. “Did you hear that people think we killed Ali?”

  Spencer made a sour face. “Yeah. ”

  “We need some real answers. ” Aria gestured toward Ali’s old backyard, which was still haphazardly surrounded by yellow police tape. “I know you think the Ali ghost thing is crazy, but a medium is going to perform a seance where she died. Do you want to watch?”

  Spencer took a step away. “No!”

  “But what if she actually contacts Ali? Don’t you want to know what really happened?”

  Spencer straightened the envelopes in her hands until they all faced the same direction. “That stuff isn’t real, Aria. And you shouldn’t be hanging around that hole. The press will have a field day!”

  A gust of wind whipped across Aria’s face, and she drew her coat tighter around her. “We’re not doing anything wrong. We’ll just be standing there. ”

  Spencer slammed the door to the mailbox hard and turned away. “Well, count me out. ”

  “Fine,” Aria said indignantly, whirling around. As she stormed back to Noel, she peeked over her shoulder. Spencer was still standing by her mailbox, looking conflicted and sad. Aria wished Spencer would let her guard down and believe in what couldn’t be explained. This was Ali they were talking about. But after a moment, Spencer threw her shoulders back and headed for the front door.

  Noel was waiting by the Ali shrine on the curb. As usual, it was crowded with flowers and candles and impersonal notes that said things like We’ll Miss You and Rest in Peace. “Should we go back there?” he asked.

  Aria nodded numbly, pressing her wool scarf to her nose—the burnt smell from the fire was making her eyes water. Silently, they walked across the stiff, frosty yard to the back of Ali’s property. Even though it was only a little past 4 P. M. , the sky was already growing dark. It was strangely foggy, and thick mist swirled around Ali’s old back deck. A crow cawed from deep inside the woods.

  Crack. Aria jumped in fright. When she turned, a woman was suddenly right behind her, breathing down her neck. She had flyaway salt-and-pepper hair, bulging eyes, and sallow, papery skin. Her teeth were yellowish and rotting, and her fingernails were at least an inch long. She looked like a corpse who’d just climbed out of a coffin.

  “I’m Esmeralda,” the woman said in a thin, low voice.

  Aria was too terrified to speak. Noel stepped forward. “This is Aria. ” The woman touched Aria’s hand. Her fingers were ice-cold and nothing but bones.

  Esmeralda glanced toward the taped-off hole. “Come. She’s been waiting to talk to you. ”

  The lump in Aria’s throat tripled in size. They shuffled closer to the hole. The air felt cooler there. The wind had died down to an eerie standstill, and the mist was even thicker. It was like the hole was in the eye of a storm, a portal to a different dimension. This can’t be happening, she thought, trying to stay calm. Ali isn’t here. It isn’t possible. I’m just getting caught up in the moment.

  “Now . . . ” Esmeralda took Aria’s hand and led her to the edge of the hole. “Look down. We need to reach her together. ”

  Aria began to tremble. She’d never looked into the half-dug hole before. When she glanced helplessly at Noel, who was a few paces behind them, he nodded faintly, nudging his chin toward the hole. Taking a deep breath, she craned her neck and looked down. Her heart hammered. Her skin felt cold. The inside of the hole was dark and filled with clumps of dirt and cracked pieces of cement. A couple of pieces of police tape had fallen to the bottom, about nine feet down. Though Ali’s body had long since been removed, Aria could see a matted-down indentation where something heavy had lain for a long, long time.

  She shut her eyes. Ali had been down there for years, covered up by cement, slowly deteriorating into the soil. Her skin had fallen off her bones. Her beautiful face had rotted. In life, Ali was captivating, someone you couldn’t help but stare at, but in death, she’d been silent, invisible. For years, she’d hid in her own backyard. She’d taken with her the secret of what had really happened.

  Aria reached for Noel’s hand. He quickly curled his fingers around hers and squeezed.

  Esmeralda remained at the edge of the hole for a long time, inhaling deep, guttural breaths, rolling her neck around, rocking back and forth on her heels. Then she started to writhe. It seemed like something was infiltrating her body, slipping in through her skin and getting comfortable. Aria’s breath caught in her throat. Noel didn’t move, awestruck. when Aria’s gaze broke from Esmeralda for a moment, she noticed a light on in Spencer’s bedroom window next door. Spencer was standing at the window, staring at them.

  Finally, Esmeralda raised her head. Astonishingly, she somehow appeared younger, and there was a whisper of a smirk on her face. “Hey,” Esmeralda said in a completely different voice.

  Aria gasped. Noel flinched too. It was Ali’s voice.

  “So you wanted to talk to me?” Esmeralda-as-Ali said, sounding bored. “You only get one question, so make it good. ”

  A dog howled in the distance. A door slammed across the street, and when Aria turned, she thought she saw Jenna Cavanaugh gliding past the bay window in her living room. And Aria even thought she could smell a hint of vanilla soap wafting out from the bottom of the hole. Could Ali be right here, staring at her through this woman’s eyes? And what was Aria supposed to ask her? There were so many secrets Ali had kept from them—about her tryst with Ian, the problems with her brother, the truth about blinding Jenna, and the possibility that Ali wasn’t as happy as everyone thought. But really, one question stood out cleanly from the others.

  “Who killed you?” she finally asked in a quiet, quaking whisper.

  Esmeralda wrinkled her nose, like this was the stupidest question in the world. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Aria leaned forward. “Yes. ”

  The medium lowered her head. “I’m afraid to say it out loud,” she blurted, still in Ali’s voice. “I’ll have to write it down. ”

  “Okay,” Aria said quickly.

  “And then you have to leave,” Esmeralda-as-Ali said. “I don’t want you here anymore. ”

  “Sure,” Aria wheezed. “Anything. ”

  Esmeralda reached into her purse and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. Scribbling quickly, she folded the note and handed it to Aria. “Now go,” she growled.

  Aria backed away from the hole, nearly tripping as she went. She didn’t even feel her legs as she sprinted to Noel’s car. Noel was right behind her, pulling her to him and holding her close. For a moment, they both were too overwhelmed to speak. Aria stared at the Ali Shrine again. A single candle flame illuminated Ali’s school picture from seventh grade. Ali’s wide, toothy smile and unblinking eyes suddenly made her look possessed.

  She thought about the story Noel had mentioned—“The Fall of the House of Usher. ” Just like the sister in the story who had been entombed in that old house, Ali’s body had been trapped under the concrete for three long years. Were souls released from their earthly vessels as soon as a person died . . . or much later? Had Ali’s soul escaped that hole just after Ali took her last breath . . . or only after the workers excavated her rotted corpse from the ground?

  The slip of paper Esmeralda had given her was still in Aria’s palm. She began to slowly unfold it. “Do you need a minute alone?” Noel asked softly.

  Aria swallowed hard. “It’s okay. ” She needed him here. She was too afraid to look at the note by herself.

  The paper crinkled as she spread it out. The letters were round and bubbly—Ali’s handwriting. Slowly, Aria read the words. There were only three, and they chilled her to her very core:

  Ali killed Ali.

  Chapter 23

  All in the Family

  About an hour later, Spencer sat at her desk in her bedroom, staring out the big bay window. The back
porch lights threw an eerie glow over the ruined barn and the twisted, hideous forest. All the snow had melted, leaving a film of muck over the ground. A bunch of tree surgeons had hacked away at the brambles with chain saws, leaving a big pile of dead timber on the lawn. A cleanup crew had ransacked the barn today, depositing the remaining furniture near the patio. The round rug where Spencer and the others had sat the night Ali hypnotized them was propped against the steps of the deck. It had once been white, but it was now burnt-marshmallow brown.

  Aria and Noel were no longer gathered around the hole. Spencer had watched them from the window; the whole thing with the medium had taken only about ten minutes. Though she was curious about what Aria had discovered with Madame Psychic Friend, she felt too stubborn to ask. The medium looked suspiciously like the woman who hung out on the Hollis College green, claiming she could speak to trees. Spencer hoped the press wouldn’t get wind of what Aria was doing—it would just make them look crazier.

  “Hey, Spence. ”

  She jumped. Her father stood in her doorway, still in a dark pin-striped suit from work.

  “Want to look at windmill Web sites with me?” he asked. Her parents had decided to replace the fire-damaged windmill with a new one that would help to power the house.

  “Um . . . ” Spencer felt a twinge of regret. When had her dad last asked her to take part in a family decision?

  Yet she couldn’t even look at him. The letter she’d found on his hard drive scrolled through her mind like the CNN news ticker. Dear Jessica, I’m sorry things got cut short. . . . I can’t wait to be alone with you again. Xx, Peter. It wasn’t hard to draw awful conclusions. She kept imagining her father and Mrs. DiLaurentis sitting on the beige wraparound sofa in Ali’s living room—the very same couch Spencer, Ali, and the others sat on when they watched American Idol—nuzzling noses in the same way some PDA-obsessed couples did in the hallways of Rosewood Day.

  “I have homework,” she lied, the grilled chicken salad she’d had for lunch churning in her stomach.

  Her dad looked disappointed. “Okay, maybe later then. ” He turned and padded down the stairs.

  Spencer let out a pent-up breath. She needed to talk to someone about this. The secret was too weighty and overwhelming to handle alone. She pulled out her phone and dialed Melissa’s number. It rang and rang.

  “It’s Spencer,” she said shakily after the voice mail beep. “I need to talk to you about something with Mom and Dad. Call me back. ”

  She pressed the end button with despair. Where’s Mom? Melissa had bleated to their dad the night Ali went missing. We need to find her. According to their father’s letter to Ali’s mom, the two of them had met up that same night. What if Spencer’s mom caught them together and that was why she never wanted to talk about that night again?

  The realization hit her again. Her dad . . . and Ali’s mom. She shuddered. It was unthinkable.

  The woods were eerily still. A flutter to her right caught her eye, and she turned. There was a flash of yellow at Ali’s old bedroom window. Then a light flipped on. Maya, the girl who lived there now, crossed the room and plopped down on the bed.