Last Time She Died

by Niki Kamerzell

  “I—” she croaked before she started coughing. “It’s cold.” Her voice was hardly a whisper.

  “Okay.”

  Moving his arm around her, he jumped when she winced. Carefully, he picked her up and carried her to his car.

  “Cali, what the fuck? How did this happen?” In the illuminated car, she could see his round eyes examining every bleeding wound.

  Cali took a deep breath. One eye still wouldn’t open, and she rubbed her palm over it. Her cheek stung where she touched it and blood coated her fingers as she pulled them away. Cupping her hand over her injured left eye, she tried to focus with only the right. She was in the front seat of his car, and he was leaning over, belting her in.

  Dustin’s hair stuck up at odd angles and his shoulders sagged. He still had sleep in the corners of his eyes. His terrified eyes watched her. He was dressed only in plaid green pajama pants.

  He’d crawled out of bed to find her.

  “You’re bleeding everywhere. We’re going to the hospital.”

  Cali shook her head, which made her dizzy. “Take me to the cemetery.” Cali’s voice slurred and even she had a hard time understanding the words.

  “Cali, what? The cemetery? You’re covered in blood.”

  Cali nodded lazily and her head spun. “I need to see something.”

  She couldn’t focus. She hurt too much. Her feet burned, her face was sore, her throat hurt. Mostly though, she felt like her heart was being torn from her chest.

  Pulling her feet up onto the seat and tucking into a ball made every one of the many cuts on her feet burn. Looking down, she saw chunks of dirt and blood smeared over Dustin’s car seat.

  “Shit. Sorry, Dustin.” She put her feet gently back on the floor.

  “You’re going to the hospital.” He looked at her, his face screwed up with worry.

  “Please, take me to the cemetery. It’s important. Hospital after.”

  He reached for her, but let his hand hang as if afraid to touch her broken body. “Cali, what happened? Is this road rash?” He pointed to her leg.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t know, Dustin.” Her voice, still creaky, was getting louder. “I was sleeping, and I woke up in the snow. I ended up in the chicken coop and then Lexi’s grave. Only I didn’t realize it was her grave until I dug myself out. This weird creepy voice chased me through town and I fell in one of the ponds over there off Eisenhower.” She took a deep breath. “What the fuck? I thought I was dreaming, but I fell off a bike, and all this mud. How is this possible?”

  Dustin stared open-mouthed. “In Lexi’s grave?” he asked after an awkward silence.

  “Yeah. I was so sure it was a dream. I mean, it makes no sense. I don’t know what happened. He left and I woke up, and you were here. I can still taste the dirt.” She bit her lip so hard, she thought it might bleed.

  “He?”

  Cali’s voice wavered. “He was chasing me. He was trying to kill me and I ran.” She looked around. “Where are we?”

  Dustin cleared his throat and took a moment to compose a response. “By the old theater.”

  She hadn’t gone as far south as she’d guessed.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I don’t know.” Dustin looked far more alert every moment. “Cali? Wh-who’s he?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was thick, and she started to cry. “He isn’t human. He’s from—” she trailed off and shrugged.

  “So, you were on a bike,” Dustin said absently. “Then you were here. But you were in Lexi’s grave? In her grave.”

  “Uh-huh.” She started picking dirt from under her fingernails. “I mean. That isn’t possible. But yeah. I keep seeing her everywhere, too.”

  “Who?”

  Cali looked up into Dustin’s eyes. He’s going to cart me off to the looney bin, she thought. Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Lexi. I see her all the time. She shows up in my dreams. The other day in the darkroom when I hit my head and thought I had ruined your negatives? She was there. I gave her that necklace, our ‘best friends forever’ one that I told you about, and now when I see her, she’s wearing it.” As she spoke, Cali realized she was clutching her half of the necklace. She dropped it.

  “Oh.” Dustin nodded slowly. “Like a ghost?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I guess I believe it’s possible.”

  She sighed. “I don’t. I never have. But since she died, I swear, she is always around. Always, and never.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  His headlights sliced through the dark and Cali could see familiar buildings passing.

  “Why didn’t I tell you I thought my dead best friend was stalking me?” Her voice was deadpan. “Gee. I don’t know, Dustin. Seems like an easy and totally normal conversation.”

  Dustin let out a nervous laugh. “There isn’t much totally normal about you, Cali Fox, and I still love you.”

  Cali inhaled sharply. “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Love me?” Her voice was wispy and shrill. “I mean, I tell you I’m crazy, and you—are you sure?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Dustin turned into the graveyard and Cali held her breath while he zigzagged his way to Lexi’s grave.

  ***

  Alexia woke in her bed with the sun streaming through her window. She sat up quickly, remembering the night before with Leland. How she’d gotten home or where Leland had gone was a mystery.

  Thinking about the night reminded her of all the flashes of all those people. They seemed so familiar, but Alexia didn’t know them.

  Maybe nothing would ever seem crazy again.

  Alone with the truth, she wasn’t sure what to do. She wandered out of her house seeking answers. Her mind raced with questions as her feet moved under her. Stopping, she looked across the street to the Fox’s house.

  “Ha.” Her voice held no humor. “Maybe I can teleport.”

  She drifted into the back yard. The picnic table was gone. When she’d lived with Cali in their apartment during college, they hadn’t had a yard for the table. She remembered the afternoon spent painting it and smiled sadly.

  She left the yard and started walking down the center of the street. Cars began to flicker in and out of the two folds of reality. It was unsettling at first, but the people in the cars didn’t react to her and would vanish before they got too near. She realized they were part of Cali’s world, and not her Ether.

  She watched the flickering realities, wondering why she couldn’t separate them. Leland said her Ether was just on top of Cali’s world. These little glimpses into the living world were how she’d kept her memories going. If this had happened to her before, as she suspected, she didn’t remember a thing about it.

  In the blink of an eye, Alexia stood in front of a farmhouse just outside the city limits.

  She wasn’t sure why she was there. The house wasn’t familiar. While walking away, she glanced into the yard, Alexia saw Cali’s picnic table. Startled, she drew closer to it. Alexia ran her fingers over the familiar benches. Time had faded a lot of their drawings, but Cali had never painted over any of it. Alexia found herself running her fingers through the grooves Cali’s father had made when carving in both girls’ names. She collapsed on the bench, overwhelmed by everything and thinking of Cali. She laid down with her back on the splintered wood, staring up at the sky. While watching the clouds, she started crying.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there when she felt rain falling on her face. The misty morning had turned into big raindrops. She opened her eyes and saw she was no longer on the bench in Cali’s new yard. It was dark and she was staring into headlights.

  Alexia gasped. After a moment, she realized the lights weren’t moving and relaxed. Someone had gotten out of the car and walked around toward the trunk. The passenger door opened.

  “Thanks. I just have to see.”

  Alexia sucked in a breath as she heard t
he familiar voice.

  “Sure,” a man responded.

  “Cali?” Alexia’s voice sounded hollow.

  Cali’s face snapped toward her and her eyes widened as they locked on Alexia’s.

  “Lexi?” She paused. “Shit. Please don’t start bleeding, oh god.” Her voice, hardly a whisper, shook.

  “What? How-why—” she stammered through her shock. Pausing, she started over. “You can see me?”

  Cali moved as if to get out of the car but grimaced as her feet touched the ground. Alexia noticed the gaping cut around Cali’s eye. Her feet bled heavily, and cuts and scrapes littered her skin.

  “Oh,” Alexia breathed. The cut had appeared when Alexia had seen her accident and Cali had run into the wall of light.

  “What?” Cali crinkled her nose while lifting an eyebrow.

  Alexia smiled at the familiar expression.

  “Why do you keep showing up?” Cali echoed Alexia’s question. “How are you here? If it’s all graves and blood I—” Cali’s hand absently went to the wound on her cheek.

  Alexia thought a moment. “I’m not sure what that means. I don’t want to be all graves and blood.” She sighed. “I opened my eyes and I was here.”

  Cali stared hard at Alexia as if to verify she was real. She wrapped her hand around the charm on her neck. “You’re wearing your necklace.”

  “You gave it to me.” Alexia placed her hand over her chest where the necklace rested.

  “But—you’re dead.”

  The trunk slammed, making Cali jump. Her face paled and she turned to the back of the car.

  “Who is that?”

  Cali didn’t respond.

  “Cali?”

  The man looked at the ground in front of Cali, and Alexia realized where she was. The car was parked next to Alexia’s grave and Cali’s door was open so she was only feet away from it.

  “I knew I had a blanket in there,” the man said, wrapping a small fleece blanket around Cali’s shoulders.

  Alexia moved to the gravestone and read her name over and over. She started to sway and her vision blurred. Shaking, she looked back to Cali.

  The man. Alexia recognized him. He had been standing behind her when Alexia saw the accident. Cali looked back to where Alexia stood, and her face fell. Alexia realized Cali could no longer see her.

  “I want to go.” Cali’s voice was tight. Her hard face and the tone were so familiar to Alexia. She was trying not to cry.

  The man guided Cali into his car and gently closed the door. Alexia was sure they had met, in her life as Alexia. She was pretty sure she had in past lives too. She just couldn’t remember.

  “Alexia? How did you get here?”

  Alexia spun around and faced Leland.

  “How long have you been there?” she said, sounding and feeling guilty, but not sure why. “How did you get here? How did I get here?”

  Leland opened his arms and Alexia, wanting comfort, sank into his chest. She thought she would cry, but tears didn’t come.

  “You can’t do this to Cali. Imagine what she is going through and how confusing it must be to see you here.” His voice was soft as he gestured to the grave behind her. “This isn’t our world, Alexia. You shouldn’t show up just because you can.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Alexia snapped, feeling defensive. “I don’t even know how I did it.”

  “Let’s go home.” Leland spoke softly, lifting her chin with his index finger. His hands ran down Alexia’s arms and gently held her fingertips.

  Alexia stood silent for a moment. The rush from Leland’s touch still ran through her, making her head swim. She almost pulled her hands free before deciding she wanted the comfort. She needed it, just as she’d needed to see Cali. “Okay.” She spoke slowly.

  Darkness seeped all around and Alexia could see nothing.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cali sat in the passenger seat of Dustin’s vehicle and stared out the window as he drove.

  “I saw her again,” Cali said nervously. She’d been trying to say the words for a while. “And I think I’m crazy.”

  “When?” Dustin’s voice was level.

  They were on their way home after the hospital.

  There’d been no giant hole at Lexi’s grave. Cali hadn’t really dug herself out of it. A part of her had been relieved; it should have been impossible to do something like that. Another part of her was terrified, she wasn’t sure what had really happened. She’d actually gotten quite hurt. The bike had been real; Dustin had pulled it off of her when he’d found her. She wondered how the cuts and the bike could be real when digging herself out of a grave hadn’t been.

  Realizing she’d been thinking for a long time, she looked up to Dustin and spoke in a rush. “I should have said something right away, but I just didn’t know how. And then we were at the hospital, and I didn’t want to say it in front of them.” She had twenty stitches in her feet. Four more in her right hand, and glue had been used in lieu of stitches on her face. She was wrapped in bandages.

  “Maybe the doctors are right and it’s just stress.” Dustin brushed the bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t think you’re crazy. The doctor will help.”

  “That shrink,” Cali corrected.

  “Nothing wrong with shrinks.”

  “Not if you’re bat-shit crazy.”

  Dustin let out a choked laugh. “You’re not bat-shit crazy. Probably. Shrinks help all kinds of people.”

  “Probably?” Cali took a long drink from the giant, insulated mug from the hospital. They had tried to keep her for longer, but she’d refused.

  “I went to one when I was a kid. Pretty much up until I graduated. You shouldn’t be ashamed of it. I’m not.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “I always seem to know when danger is coming,” Dustin said after a pause. “I’ll get this bad feeling and then I know Aunt Carla is going to be in a hiking accident, or my mom is going to cut her arm while putting up trim and bleed all over.” He shrugged. “I was always right.”

  “What? When did that stop?”

  Dustin’s smile looked forced. “It didn’t. That’s how I knew where to find you. I woke up and something told me you were hurt. I got into my car and went straight to you.”

  Cali didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “Does that scare you?”

  “You sensing danger? No, Dustin. I see my dead best friend all the time. You having premonitions of danger isn’t scary.”

  He nodded.

  For a while, neither spoke.

  “I miss her like hell.” Cali broke the silence. “She was my best friend. People say ‘oh, move on’ or ‘you’ll get over it’ but screw them. I hate hearing that. I loved her like a sister. I don’t want to move on. I hate that she’s dead.” She paused and took a deep breath. “But I don’t want her to pop up all around me all bloody and scare the shit out of me. I mean, I have seen that accident enough in my mind that I-I don’t want to see her like that. I just want to know she is happy, but every time I see her, she doesn’t look happy. She looks—” Cali trailed off. Tears stung her eyes and she wasn’t sure how to continue.

  “You should stay at my place for a few days,” Dustin said after a long silence.

  “We need to pick up Tesla and I need some clothes.”

  “You don’t want to wear that hospital gear forever?” Dustin scoffed.

  Cali looked down at herself. They had cut her clothes off. She was wearing teal sweatpants that were too loose and a dark red t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. Something out of the lost and found, she guessed. “I plan to burn these as soon as possible.”

  Dustin laughed and turned toward Cali’s house.

  Cali felt herself relaxing. Her feet throbbed and her cheek was swollen, but her head no longer felt like it was going to explode. Dustin made her feel safe. She needed that.

  ***

  The fog cleared, and Alexia sat outside under a tree in her front yard with Leland. Part of her wond
ered if it could be possible everything had been a dream. The air shuddered showing two distinct realities. They shimmered over each other like two movies playing on the same screen. She hadn’t been dreaming.

  She heard Leland’s voice but didn’t catch the words.

  “What?” she asked.

  Leland shook his head and laughed. “Nothing.”

  She felt her stomach twist and her face redden. “I must have been somewhere else. What were we talking about?”

  Alexia shuddered as two separate images superimposed themselves in front of her and clutched her necklace.

  “That necklace—” he trailed off.

  Alexia wrapped her fingers around the half-heart charm. “What about it?”

  He leaned toward her and held out his hand. “May I?” Alexia sighed and dropped her hand. Leland touched the silver charm. “This is real.”

  “O—kay.” Alexia dragged the word out.

  “It didn’t come from here,” Leland said. “It’s not part of your Ether. Where did you get it?”

  “Cali gave it to me for my birthday.”

  “You two did more than see through to each other. She must have actually been here to give you this.”

  “And what does that mean?” Alexia asked.

  He pushed his hair back. “There are not a lot of Essences that strong. Cali was not that strong in her last life. Her powers are growing quickly, but it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Powers?”

  He shrugged. “Cali can see and travel through dimensions. Not as a human. Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Alexia said through thick sarcasm.

  He sighed. “You don’t remember that either?”

  She shook her head. “Cali has magical powers?”

  “They aren’t magic.”

  “Seeing though dimensions isn’t magic?”

  He shrugged. “If she could do it as a human, yeah, I guess that’s what they’d call it.”

  “But humans can’t do that?”

  “Ehh.” He turned his palms up. “We can’t.”

  “We?”

  He nodded. “Us. Cali, me, you—”

  “I’m magical too?” She cut him off.

  “Alexia, it’s not magic,” he laughed.