by M Sawyer
Nolin couldn’t decide if she felt angry, violated, or afraid. Did she have a right to feel any of those things? Did she have a right to anything in her life? After all, she, Nolin, was the interloper. The imposter. The girl in the woods, the shadow who’d always lurked at the edges of her life, was the real Nolin.
Her mind coiled around the only thread she had, the only other possible changeling she knew about.
Alexa.
Her feet carried her out of her bedroom. She found herself opening the door to Melissa’s room. The journals were still sprawled over the floor, exactly where she’d left them.
She knelt and began to gather them up, stacking them so she could shove them back into the box spring where she’d found them. It was too little too late, but it gave her something to do, just for a minute.
She reached for a journal near the side of the bed, and her eyes caught on something beneath the nightstand. She slipped her hand underneath and her fingers closed on what was unmistakably a book.
Another journal?
Her heart leapt in her chest. It was bound in fake brown leather and looked newer than the others. The spine creaked as it opened. It was blank.
Nolin flipped through the pages. All blank.
“Come on!” Nolin yelled. She threw the book, and it smacked the wall. A few pieces of paper slipped out as it flopped to the floor.
Her heart beat faster. She crawled to where the book had landed and carefully picked up the papers.
Two photos, slightly faded. One of a shiny wooden casket, crowned with a spray of flowers and surrounded by people dressed in black. Blue sky and green grass. She didn’t recognize anyone in the photo.
The other was a man and a woman standing on the other side of the same coffin, not looking at the camera. They were flanked by a young boy and a teenaged girl Nolin recognized as Melissa. The woman was crying; the man was solemn. The boy looked sad, but Melissa’s young face was a mask. Her lips pressed together, and her eyes were blank. Arms folded tightly over her chest.
There were also newspaper clippings, stiff and yellow with age.
The first headline set her heart racing.
Teenage Girl Missing in Camping Accident, Found Dead
Alexa Mitchell, 16, was found dead last Saturday near Swallow Ridge. She had gone on a hiking trip with her friend, Melissa Michaels, 16. The two girls were hiking alone when Alexa reportedly slipped and fell down the ravine and into the river, where she was washed downstream. Michaels claims to have climbed down the ravine after Alexa, but was unable to find her friend. After searching for some time, Michaels returned to town to report the incident. Searchers discovered the body nearly a mile downstream from where Michaels claimed the fall occurred.
Nolin felt like an ice cube had slipped down her throat and dropped into her stomach, coating her insides with chilling dread.
The next clipping was a short obituary accompanied by a grainy photo of Alexa that looked like a school photo. Alexa’s face was reduced to a grid of black-and-gray dots, though Nolin made out a sharp nose, high cheekbones, and piercing dark eyes on an unsmiling face.
Alexa Mitchell, 1969-1985
On Saturday, May 18th, Alexa Mitchell was killed in a hiking accident in the hills near Calder, Colorado.
Alexa attended Calder High and was an honor student, well-liked by her teachers and peers, and showed great promise in the fields of biology and chemistry. She planned to apply for college during her senior year. She was considered for many scholarships to universities throughout the western region and was the recipient of several local and national academic awards.
An orphan, Alexa was a resident of Colorado foster care, though she was well-loved by the family of her best friend, Melissa Michaels. The family was planning to adopt Alexa before her untimely death and made all arrangements for Alexa’s funeral. Alexa will be buried in the Maxfield City Cemetery.
A great loss to the community, Alexa will be missed.
Nolin sat back on her heels and stared. Maxfield City Cemetery.
Her cemetery, where she’d lived and worked for five years, probably seeing that grave every day without even knowing it.
Nolin moved on to the last clipping. Her hand shook as she read.
High School Student Suspected in Teen’s Disappearance
Melissa Michaels, 16, was questioned by local police about the death of her friend, Alexa Mitchell, in a hiking accident along Swallow Ridge. Suspicion was aroused by a doctor who treated Michaels’ cuts and bruises from what Michaels claimed was a desperate search along the ravine for her friend. Scratches on Michaels’ face and arms appeared to be made by human fingernails rather than branches, and the pattern of bruises on her arms were consistent with finger marks.
Searchers also noticed that the slope of the ravine that Mitchell had supposedly fallen down was dense with trees and foliage, and that it was unlikely a person could have fallen all the way into the river from the trail above.
Students and teachers at Calder High confirmed suspicions that the relationship between the girls was a tense one, that Michaels was often jealous of Mitchell’s achievements and that the two often quarreled.
Authorities are reviewing the case. The site of the accident will continue to be searched for further evidence.
Nolin stared at the paper in her hand, shocked, scanning through memories of teachers and neighbors whispering about the “incident,” something that had to do with Melissa that Nolin had never understood.
This was it. The whole town thought her mother was a murderer.
Could Melissa actually kill someone?
A girl who outshined her at school, who her family loved more than they actually loved their own daughter, while Melissa felt shunted to the background.
Could Melissa have been jealous enough to push her down the ravine?
Nolin’s mind whirled. She snatched up the photo of the funeral again. Melissa’s blank face. Her crossed arms. She sure didn’t look sad that she’d lost her best friend.
Maybe this was why Melissa was sick. She couldn’t live with what she’d done.
This was why Melissa had always treated Nolin like a monster: because Nolin reminded her of someone she hated.
Another thought ran through Nolin’s mind: If Alexa was a changeling, had Melissa known? Did she suspect that Nolin was as well?
Nolin ran her thumb over of the faded photo, smudging it slightly. Then she noticed something. Nolin held the picture up to her nose and squinted. Melissa had something tucked under her arms in the photo. It looked like a book, the size of the journals she’d read. Black. It blended with Melissa’s dress, which is why Nolin hadn’t noticed it before. Then it hit her.
Melissa’s first journal said that Alexa kept a journal as well. The book in the photo. It didn’t look like any of Melissa’s, so maybe the book Melissa held was Alexa’s.
But why would she bring it to the funeral?
Nolin struggled to string her thoughts together. She was so exhausted. Her temples throbbed.
A connection formed. Nolin tried to brush it off as ridiculous, but something about it fit. It was exactly something Melissa would do. Morbid. Desperate.
What if that journal contained something Melissa never wanted anyone to read?
What if she slipped it into the casket so its secrets would be buried along with Alexa?
It was crazy, insane.
At this point, Nolin was willing to bet on crazy.
Nolin pulled out her phone, flipped it open, and texted Drew, a twinge of guilt burning her stomach.
I’m sorry, I’m going to have to skip lunch again today. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.
Before closing the phone, she vaguely noted that her battery was low, but she had other things to think about.
Nolin crossed the room and scrambled down the stairs, down the hall, and into the driveway with purpose. She started her little blue car and sped down the road, her mind spinning with obsession.
She had a gra
ve to rob.
Chapter 40
THE FREEWAY PASSED in a blur; the ghosts of hundreds of trips to hospitals and nursing homes to pick up cadavers in the middle of the night. Everything looked different during the day. The day belonged to the living, but the dead ruled the night. Nolin always felt it while driving back to the mortuary in the white van with a body behind her, or walking through the graveyard at night. The graveyard and the mortuary pulsed with the presence of passed souls who never slept. Daytime felt different.
Nolin shook her head to rattle her crazy thoughts and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Images of rotting hands pressing up through the soil of the graveyard haunted her. She thought of yellowed eyes meeting hers on the embalming table, invisible gazes following her journey since she left the mortuary.
Nolin had watched Rebecca handle hundreds of dead bodies. Rebecca never showed a hint of anxiety; she was like any other industry worker hauling bolts of cloth or car parts. When the body died, it was no longer a person. It was just a body.
Finally, she exited the freeway onto the busy city streets of Maxfield. Honking horns and roars of car motors faded to a buzz in her ears. She dimly realized that perhaps she shouldn’t be driving, tired as she was. Somehow, she managed to navigate the chaotic streets until the buildings and lights gave way to trees and faded stop signs. She reached the outskirts of town, and finally, the arched sign over the entrance to the cemetery rose in her view.
The grass was a little long. Whoever was mowing the lawn lately hadn’t done a very good job. The gravestones and old church looked more foreboding under the clouded sky than she remembered. Gravel crunched under her tires as she pulled into her old spot. It felt strange not to see Rebecca’s Camry right next to her. The graveyard was silent as she climbed out of the car. No birds, no rustling of leaves in the breeze, nothing at all.
The mortuary seemed to be empty, but it was unlocked.
Eli’s office was neater than usual. His framed photographs and candy dish were missing. Whoever had bought the place might not have moved in yet.
Eli had never computerized the records. Her best bet for finding the grave would be to check the ancient filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Nolin yanked open the file drawers. The tabs of the ancient manila folders were labeled, but Eli’s scrawl was so untidy that she could barely read it. She squinted at the handwriting on the tabs; last names in alphabetical order, some folders obviously older than others. In the middle of the row, a few folders with the name “Mitchell” caught her eye. “Mitchell” wasn’t an uncommon name, so one by one, she slipped out the folders, opened them, and then stuffed them back in when they weren’t what she needed. She slipped out the last one and let it fall open.
Mitchell, Alexa
Nolin examined the wrinkled, yellowed form. The graveyard was set up on a grid system, and it didn’t take her long to picture the exact area in her mind where Alexa was buried.
It occurred to her that digging up a grave in the daylight might be a bad idea; dusk wasn’t far off. She climbed the stairs to her room to wait.
Her old room felt foreign. She’d only been gone for a few months, but it felt like several lifetimes. The smell was different, musty. The orange light of the sunset felt hotter, more slanted than she remembered. She threw open the window, took a seat on the floor, and waited.
The sun sank lower and lower, setting the sky on fire. The red clouds faded to purple, then blue. The first stars of the evening appeared, opening their eyes one by one.
It was time.
She climbed down the stairs and out of the mortuary to where the paperwork said Alexa was buried. The fireflies that usually flitted about the headstones at night were absent.
She was completely alone.
Finally, she found it.
The small, unimpressive headstone lay flat on the ground. The name etched into its surface was still crisp even though the grave was over twenty years old. She’d never been interested in the newer graves and rarely noticed their names. She was drawn to the older graves, with old-fashioned headstones that stood up and whose names were barely legible. No wonder she’d never noticed this one before.
Good. She knew where she was going now. She turned and ran back toward the mortuary where the gravedigger’s backhoe was parked. He always left the keys inside.
She’d only driven the backhoe once, but she managed to maneuver the large machine back to the gravesite. The friendly gravedigger had let her help dig a grave years ago. Digging up an occupied grave couldn’t be much different.
Through the windshield, she looked down at the tiny headstone, her heart drumming. I can do this. Finally, she tilted the lever and dipped the bucket toward the ground.
She dug carefully, making slow progress. The bucket scooped up lumps of dirt that she carefully dumped into a pile, swiveling the machine on its base.
Finally, the teeth scraped the top of a concrete box. Her heart leap and she withdrew the bucket from the hole. Grabbing the shovel she’d found, she climbed out of the backhoe and into the grave to finish.
She worked silently in a slow rhythm, scooping and swinging. The shape of the concrete box appeared as she dug out the corners. The exertion calmed her; the images of rotting corpses and zombie movies dulled. It was almost over.
Finally, she pulled herself out of the grave and climbed back into the backhoe to retrieve the chains she’d brought in the shed. She hoped this worked.
Carefully, she wrapped the chains around the bucket, then jumped into the grave to dig the hooked ends of the chains under the lip of the concrete lid. Then, she scrambled back into the backhoe. Her hair was soaked with sweat.
Please, please, please, she prayed as she restarted the machine and started to lift the bucket.
The arm struggled, but the lid moved. Slowly, it lifted out of the grave.
For a moment, she paused, staring down into the hole. The smooth surface of the closed casket gleamed in the moonlight, still glossy after all these years. Since she’d arrived, her heart had been pounding in her chest. Now, it seemed to stop completely.
Carefully, she lowered the lid to the ground, then climbed down and approached the edge of the grave.
Maybe she’d made a mistake. Why had she thought Melissa would put the journal in the casket? She hadn’t been thinking clearly. She was so stupid. This was a terrible idea.
But the hole was dug. The lid was off. All there was left to do was open the casket and look.
She clambered down into the grave, carefully placing her feet on either side of the casket where she’d dug a little extra space to stand on. Her fingers fumbled for the lip of the lid. Taking a few deep inhales and then holding her breath, she mentally counted to three.
The old casket opened with a creak.
The coffin was lined with rotted silk. Nestled into the lining was Alexa. Masses of dark hair surrounded her dry, sunken face. Brittle lips drew back from a set of yellowed teeth. The mouth cracked open in a silent cry. The top of her ribcage poked through the remains of a dark green frock and her limbs were nothing but dried-out sticks, shrouded with papery shreds of skin.
Nolin fished the latex gloves from her pockets and slipped them on, struggling to get her fingers in the right places. Her hands didn’t want to work right. She’d been holding her breath, but her lungs screamed for oxygen. She briefly tilted her head to the sky and gulped in a mouthful of air.
Even in that brief inhale, she could taste it—the edges of decay on the dust that floated up from the casket.
Nolin crouched over the body and gingerly felt along the corners of the casket, under Alexa’s stiff arms and legs. Finally, she found something under the left hip. It slid out easily.
A book, the black book Melissa had been holding in the photograph, sealed in a plastic zipper bag.
It struck Nolin as odd that Melissa would bother to put it in a bag. Maybe she’d planned to come back for it someday. Her mother’s strangeness never ceased to amaze her. Yet here
she was, Nolin, digging up a body for something that might or might not have been buried with it.
Before climbing out of the grave, Nolin looked at Alexa’s face, imagining eyes beneath the sunken, crepey eyelids. In some ways, she felt like she knew her. They shared their strangeness, their origins, perhaps. Nolin hoped that whatever she found in the journal would be the truth, would either confirm or deny her theory that she wasn’t the only changeling to darken Calder.
Nolin closed the casket and climbed out. Back into the backhoe to replace the cement lid, scoop the dirt carefully into the hole, and cover the dirt patch with patches of sod. She took her time, because the prospect of getting caught wasn’t nearly as terrifying as what she might find in that book.
***
Melissa opened her eyes, but all she could see was pain. She didn’t know pain had a color. It was a bright red film over her eyes that hid the real world. Tubes and needles hung out of her famished body—her stomach, her wrists, her nose—pumping nourishment into her. She felt so light, like she could float right off the bed. Was she lying on a bed? She must be. Softness cushioned her sharp joints.
She felt something brush past her, then a gentle hand on her face, adjusting the feeding tube.
“You’re going to be okay,” crooned a soft voice. A woman’s. Familiar.
She’d heard that voice many times.
Her.
Melissa tried to look. Her eyes were open, at least she thought they were. All she could see was pain—jagged, dark shapes against a crimson scrim. Fabric brushed her fingers, the thick material of nurse’s scrubs. A soft, icy hand closed around her arm.
Terror shot through Melissa’s body.
“There, there,” said the voice, cold and amused. Melissa felt the frigid hand on her hot forehead. It brushed her tenderly, though fingernails raked Melissa’s skin as the hand slowly pulled away. Melissa tried to scream, but only a managed a choked squeak through the tubes and the pain.
“I’ll see you soon,” said the one from the woods.