by Val Karlsson
After a few hours, sleep finally took me. But I kept having nightmares. I saw my mother’s car on fire. There was black smoke everywhere. I saw her body slumped over the steering wheel. I tried to scream, but no sound came out.
Then I was standing outside my house, and I saw a shadowy figure skulking around the side. Then it disappeared. I was so cold. The grass rustled behind me, and I turned to see Sal, standing tall with fury in his eyes. His arms were raised. He was holding an ax over his head, ready to strike.
I couldn’t move—my feet were stuck to the spot. I heard my mother screaming from somewhere behind the house. “No, Sal, noooooo!”
I sat up in my bed, wide awake. My heart was pounding. I could swear I still heard the echo of my mother’s scream in the distance.
4
I came downstairs in the morning to find that my stepfather had been up all night. He’d been preparing Mrs. Antonino’s body and collecting my mother’s burnt remains. He said he had laid her bones in a casket, now closed, in a corner of the back room. I didn’t want to look at them. My mother’s funeral service would take place the following day.
I wondered how many people would come. We had no family. My mother’s parents died when she was very young, and she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. On my stepfather’s side, I had only one uncle, Bert. Sal didn’t speak to him anymore.
It seemed like everyone in Bridgewater and Rockdale showed up for my mother’s funeral. Aisha and Lincoln were there early. Aisha didn’t let go of my hand the whole day. It seemed like everyone had something nice to say about my mom.
“Your mother was a very special woman,” Ms. Smith, a teacher at Bridgewater Elementary, told me. “She helped me through my mother’s death.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” said Mr. Roswell, who worked at the auto shop.
“Your mother is looking out for you,” explained Mrs. Winston. My mother had helped her connect with an aunt who had died several years ago.
It was nice to hear all these things. But I knew soon these people would all go home, and it would be just Sal and I. I thought again about the Protectors, and I wondered what my mom would say about her own case. There was no body left here, only bones. Would that count? Wouldn’t she become my stepfather’s Protector, not mine, since he had handled her remains before the burial? I dismissed these thoughts, though. Wasn’t I still a rational thinker who didn’t believe in spirits?
Near the end of the evening, Mrs. McKenzie hugged me. She cried like it was her own mother who’d died.
“It’s so unfair!” she cried. “Her last act was to cleanse our house of evil, and then the evil followed her out!” Mrs. McKenzie struggled to keep control of her emotions. “You know, your mother knew something was wrong. She knew! Something strange, she said. . . . Her GPS was acting funny in the car. It kept showing her routes that would have taken her miles out of the way. She ignored it because she already knew the way. So strange, isn’t it? She should have followed it anyway. If only she had followed it!”
I looked over at Sal, who was shaking hands and nodding as people offered their condolences. His face looked empty. I saw Mrs. Morelli politely approach him. I cringed as I remembered the argument my parents had the day my mother went to visit with the old lady.
“Mr. Signorelli, I am so sorry for your loss,” Mrs. Morelli said, and I could hear the sad sincerity in her soft voice. Sal just nodded, barely looking at her. She leaned in and whispered, “You know, she was so good at communicating with the dead, Mr. Signorelli. I am sure she is still here with you. Don’t you worry.”
He looked at Mrs. Morelli, and I instantly felt cold. In his eyes was the same flash of fury I had seen when he locked me in the casket room so many years ago. “Oh, I know that, Mrs. Morelli. I know she’s still here.”
As soon as the service was over, Sal and I carried the casket out into the backyard. We lowered it into a hole he had dug during the night. All of Sal’s ancestors were buried in a little private cemetery in the far corner of the backyard.
I threw the first handful of dirt on top of the coffin. Tears were streaming down my face. I looked at Sal’s face, but it was still vacant. It was like any other burial to him.
“Shouldn’t we say something before—” I began.
“No!” he interrupted, now glaring at me. “Pick up that shovel and fill in the hole.” He vanished into the house, where he went upstairs and locked himself in his room.
I did not see him again for three days.
Four days later, Sal brought in the first body since Mrs. Antonino. It was the former Frankie Davis, an obese man who’d died of diabetes. I went down to the prep room where Sal was getting things ready. Frankie was lying cold and stiff on a plastic sheet, his bluish-white skin almost glowing under the fluorescent light. His legs were swollen and purple. His head was turned sideways so that his wide-open eyes stared at me as I came in. His mouth gaped open, as though he were surprised. I shuddered when I saw him.
Death had never been personal for me before. Corpses had always been part of daily life. Now, with my mother dead, it was hard to think of Frankie as just another dead body. It gave me chills to see Frankie’s lifeless eyes staring at me. I felt like running. Fortunately, Sal didn’t really seem to want me around.
“What is it?” he growled at me when he saw me just standing there at the open door.
“I thought you might need help.”
“It’s a little late now. I’ve already got him down here. That was the hard part.”
“How did you . . . ?”
“Never mind. I’m fine without you anyway.” Sal began setting Frankie’s facial features. He lifted Frankie’s lip, which made it look like Frankie was sneering at me. I shuddered and left the room.
5
Weeks went by. I just assumed Sal was doing all the stuff my mother and I used to handle. He never asked for my help. I figured he was as glad to be away from me as I was to be away from him.
Eventually, I started noticing that all was not right with the family business. The bills were piling up unpaid on Sal’s desk. There weren’t many funeral services in the parlor either. I didn’t see Sal going down to work in the prep room very much. Instead, he would sit for hours in the garage, drawing in a sketchbook. I’d never seen Sal draw before. That was his own weird way of grieving, I guessed.
One day when I got home from school, I found Sal in the garage, sketching. It had been weeks since our last funeral service. I needed to say something. This was our business. If we lost it, we would be broke.
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound casual. I guess he hadn’t seen me coming, because he jumped a little and closed his sketchbook. He looked up at me, his eyes vacant. He mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
“No calls today?” I asked, but he did not reply. “Sal?”
He still didn’t reply. His eyes were down now, and he wouldn’t look up again. I went inside to check the messages myself. There were five in all, from families wanting to arrange funeral services. Two were from yesterday! I wrote down all the details and ran back out to the garage. Sal’s notebook was open again.
“Um, these messages were on the voicemail. They sound important.”
I held out the paper, but Sal did not reach for it. Without even looking up, he waved the paper away, grumbling.
“I think you should call them back. They’ll go to another funeral home—”
“I’ll take care of it!” he snapped. “I’m taking care of it.”
I didn’t want to push Sal too hard. I knew how that could backfire, so I didn’t answer right away. I stood there in the doorway of the garage, weighing my options. Clearly, Sal was not taking care of it.
“Sal,” I began hesitantly, “if you need help with the business—”
No response. He remained concentrated on his drawing. But I saw his forehead wrinkle a little. Maybe it was worry, irritation, or some other emotion I couldn’t figure out.
“Maybe, at least I could ta
ke care of the paperwork, answer the phones and help make the arrangements—”
“Go away!” he roared. He stood up and lunged at me. “Go away!” His lips were white around the edges. I ran out of the garage, my heart pounding, and I didn’t look back.
Later that night, after Sal had gone to sleep, I found his sketchbook in the garage. I took a look at the drawings. In the sketchbook were drawings of people’s faces, just from the neck up. I was surprised because they were pretty realistic drawings. I didn’t know Sal had any artistic talent, but then again, there were probably a lot of things I didn’t know about Sal.
But there was something strange about the drawings. The people looked limp. Their eyes stared straight ahead, looking glazed and sunken in. Many of their mouths hung open loosely. Then I realized—they were dead. Sal was drawing dead people. And many of them were bodies I’d seen before. There was Mrs. Chase before we’d wired her mouth shut. And young Kelly Hampton with her forehead smashed in from the car accident that killed her. I frantically flipped through the pages, feeling sick and dizzy as I saw more and more familiar faces. Why would Sal draw these people?
Then I stopped and stared at a page in the middle of the sketchbook. It was my mother. But she was thinner, and her hair was a mess around her bony face. And unlike in the other drawings, the eyes were bright and alert. My mother’s mouth was a tight, firm line. She was alive.
It had been almost a year since my mother’s death. I definitely wasn’t over it. If anything, I was feeling worse about it. The house felt strange, and it felt even more off as the anniversary of her death approached. Sal continued to draw in his sketchbook, but I hadn’t looked at it again. Once was enough.
That night I took a walk. I just felt like wandering. I stepped outside, and the wind in the trees sounded like whispers all around me. I could swear I heard words. “Luke . . . go down . . . down!”
Was I hearing things? I pulled out my iPod—a gift from my mom—and pressed play. Then I walked to the end of my street and turned down Pleasantview Avenue.
It was my normal playlist—a mix of rock. But something weird happened in the middle of it. A track came on that I’d never heard before. It was a low voice singing, but a woman’s voice. It sounded like a slow, sad folk song. The voice and the music sounded vaguely familiar, but I could barely hear it. It was muffled, and there was an echo and some static interference. Still, I could make out a dripping sound and something like chains rattling.
I hit the “back” button, but the playlist jumped back to the previous track. I scrambled to pull the iPod out of my pocket and try to get the weird song to play again, but it was gone.
I heard the chains again in my dreams that night. Or was it a dream? I was half awake and half asleep. I couldn’t tell where the rattling was coming from. It reminded me of an episode of Ghost Hunters I’d seen on TV recently, where they supposedly recorded a ghost rattling chains and moaning. It was so fake! Why would ghosts rattle chains anyway?
Dream or no dream, and ghost or no ghost, I definitely heard chains rattling. There was no moaning—or singing—but there were chains for sure. And it wasn’t coming from outside.
Then I heard a creaking coming from inside the walls. I still didn’t believe in ghosts. There had to be some rational explanation. But still, I stayed in my bed, wrapped in my blankets, not daring to move and not able to sleep.
6
What’s wrong, man?” asked Lincoln as we walked out the doors of Bridgewater High toward the parking lot and Lincoln’s car. Aisha was staying after school for drama club. “You look like you’re totally dragging.”
“Tired, I guess . . . didn’t sleep too well.” I paused. “Also . . . it’s been almost a year since my mom died. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about that.”
“Hey, maybe she’s still around,” Lincoln offered.
“I’d like to believe it,” I said, “but that was her thing, not mine.”
“Come on,” Lincoln insisted, “maybe she was right. Maybe she has become your Protector!” I had told Lincoln once about the Protectors, and he really stuck to the idea. He was so into it. He made me regret ever telling him.
“Look!” I snapped. “Even if that stuff is true, I was not the last one to touch her body. And, I don’t even know if a few burnt-up bones count as a body.” I stopped. I was starting to feel slightly sick.
“Hey, I’m sorry, man. I was just trying to cheer you up. Listen, maybe you need to get out a little. I was thinking of having a few people over tonight to hang out, if you wanna come.”
“I don’t think so, Lincoln. Thanks anyway.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t really feel like it,” I said. Was it really that hard to figure out why?
“It will be fun,” Lincoln said as we got in his car. “You can bring Aisha. And I want you to meet this girl I’m seeing.”
I raised my eyebrows. Lincoln had a new girlfriend every month. He laughed at my expression.
“No, she’s really great. Her name is Sheila. Come on, man. It’ll be fun! You never go anywhere. That’s, like, scientifically proven to be bad for your health. I won’t take no for an answer.”
I sighed. “Okay, I’ll be there.” Maybe I could leave early.
Lincoln was right. I never went out. But I must have been feeling more alone than ever in our big, old, empty house with only Sal for company. I guess, on some level, I wanted to be around people—normal people.
I walked over to Aisha’s house to pick her up, and then we walked together to Lincoln’s. Aisha was all dressed up. She was so happy to be going to a party with me that it made me feel a little guilty. I hadn’t taken her anyplace nice in a long time.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when we got there. It turned out “a few people” meant half the student body of Bridgewater High and the two neighboring schools. All around, kids were dancing, talking, screaming, laughing. Aisha and I found Lincoln in a corner, talking to a girl with long blond hair.
Aisha poked me in the ribs as we walked over. “Is this girlfriend five or six of this year?” she whispered. I smiled and shrugged.
“My man!” Lincoln shouted when he saw me. “This is Sheila.” Lincoln put an arm around the girl he’d been talking to. She was smiling and holding a cup of some colorful punch. “Sheila, this is Luke and Aisha.”
“Hey,” said Sheila, smiling and rocking a little where she stood. Her face was flushed pink. It was pretty obvious that she had been drinking—a lot.
At the sound of my name, a skinny kid with bad acne and a baseball hat whipped around. “Luke Signorelli?” he asked.
“Yeah . . .” I said.
“You’re the kid who pickles bodies in his basement, right?”
“Fitch!” said Lincoln, annoyed.
Fitch continued. “Dude, I want to hear all about it.”
I looked at Lincoln, who shrugged. “Luke, this is Jim Fitchburg. He goes to Rockdale High with Sheila.” I smiled weakly at him. I didn’t expect anyone to be so interested in embalming.
“So, how do you do it? I mean, do you cut up the bodies and stuff?” Fitch asked.
“Well, sort of. It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Sheila,” Lincoln said, laughing, “you be the cadaver, and Luke can show us how it’s done.”
Sheila cleared off a coffee table and lay down on top of it. I acted out the whole process. A small crowd started gathering around me. Every cut with my imaginary scalpel met with hoots of cheers and laughter. At first I felt good. It was fun getting attention for my weird set of skills, even if they were only cheering because they’d all been drinking so much. But all of a sudden I was freaked out. It was too real or something—Sheila playing dead on the coffee table.
“Okay, okay, that’s it,” I announced.
“Come on, finish!” Aisha said.
I looked up, and I saw a sea of laughing faces.
“No, no really, that’s it—all we do next is fix up the hair . . .” My hands were c
lammy as I tried to reach for Sheila’s hair. I felt like throwing up. “That’s it.” I jumped up and ran outside. I sat down in a chair by the pool, trying to catch my breath.
A few minutes later, Aisha was there. She touched me lightly on the shoulder.
“Luke, are you okay?” she asked. She was trying not to be dramatic, but I knew how worried she was. That was the thing about Aisha—she couldn’t hide anything she felt.
“I don’t think so,” I said, looking away. I wanted to explain, but how could I? Whatever was happening to me I couldn’t even explain to myself, much less another person, no matter how close she was.
I hadn’t had any nightmares about my mother’s death in a long time. But that night, they started again.
In my dream, everything was black and silent. Suddenly, I could see my mother trapped inside a casket, banging from the inside. She was screaming to get out as Sal and I lowered her into the ground in the backyard and began throwing dirt on her casket.
I woke up in a sweat. I swear, I could still hear her voice. I heard her muffled screams and banging through the night.
The next morning, Sheila’s body was at my house.
7
The hospital morgue brought Sheila over. Sal was locked in his room, so there was no one to see to her but me.
I couldn’t believe it. Apparently, after Aisha and I left the party, Sheila kept drinking. She and Fitch went walking out on Bluff Island. They were walking near Dead Man’s Cave when Sheila lost her balance and fell. She died instantly on the rocks below.
Lincoln texted me. Did u hear??
I texted him back, my fingers trembling. She’s here.
In ten minutes, Lincoln was ringing the bell and banging on the door. “Let me see her! Let me see her!” he begged. He looked like hell, with dark circles under his eyes and the same clothes from yesterday. “It’s my fault! I shouldn’t have let her drink so much. . . .”