by Sonia Hartl
“I can’t believe we’re spending our last night with our memories in this dump,” Ida said.
“Why should we, though?” I propped myself up on my elbows. “Let’s stay out after we meet with Frankie. Aren’t we supposed to be creatures of the night or whatever? We can go where we want.”
“She does make a good point,” Rose said. “I don’t want to stay here, either. It smells weird, and it’s already going to bother me forever that I never did get it all the way clean.”
“We’ll figure it out on the way. We should get going now, though. It takes forever to get to the bridge.” I twisted Parker’s bracelet on my wrist. She was already gone, but it wouldn’t feel final until we left town.
Ida grabbed my notebook and pen from the bed and left a note for Stacey, letting her know we wouldn’t be back until morning. She’d likely be gone that long as well.
The three of us took a bus to the edge of town. I hadn’t been up there since the summer between eighth and ninth grade, but everyone knew where to find Ghost Bridge. It was an intrinsic part of growing up in Glen River.
This part of town stopped being developed after the fire. A few places that could’ve been banks or stores were now nothing but a few posts rising out of tall grass. A wall or two still stood back when Stacey and I had come here years ago. From the disturbed expression on Rose’s face, I had a feeling that whole buildings had been intact during her time.
I swatted a fly away from my face. “We should’ve made him meet us at Burger King.”
“Why? So you could pick up a job application?” Ida asked.
“Hilarious.” At least I’d attempted to work. Productive member of society and all.
I walked ahead, picking up my pace at the sound of water splashing against muddy banks. The temperature around the bridge ran ten degrees cooler because of the creek. It wound all the way through the heavily wooded area and emptied into the Glen River. A storm had blown through the night before, taking out most of the remaining leaves. Trees pricked the skyline, their dark and empty branches like the thin and scratching fingers of nightmares.
“This is an odd place to meet.” Ida jumped on the bridge, testing her weight against the time-worn planks. “Why did he pick Amelia’s?”
“Elton’s maker?” I shielded my eyes from the sun as I looked up the hill. “No way. This place was a legend to me growing up. Her family is supposed to be haunting this bridge.”
“I heard the same growing up.” Rose gave me a soft smile. We grew up a few streets over from each other, but it never really clicked until this homegrown ghost story connected us across a generation. “Someone set fire to their house in the middle of the night, and they still wander this road, searching for their murderer.”
“Her family might very well still be haunting the area.” Ida grabbed the railing stained with rust and peered down to the rushing water below. “They seemed the type to hang around and annoy the living long after their welcome.”
It struck me then just how many years Ida had been walking the earth. She remembered actual people I’d only heard about through rumor and speculation. She knew the truth behind the stories I always thought had been made up to scare teens away from having sex up there.
“Was her family really murdered?” I asked. All those summer nights Stacey and I had sat out here with a Ouija board, never knowing ghosts from the past didn’t haunt bridges. They wandered in plain sight, attended high school, and worked at Taco Bell.
“The vampire who turned Amelia burned down her house.” Ida turned her gaze up the hill. “Everyone assumed she died in the fire. At the time, I assumed she had set it.”
“There was no love lost between Amelia and our Ida,” Rose said.
“I’m not sorry she’s dead.” Ida shrugged. “She was a lot like Gwen. The type of girl who hated other girls. She once let a creek snake loose in my family’s store, just to be mean. It caused a panic for weeks and nearly bankrupted us.”
“That sounds like something Elton would do,” I said.
“If only I’d seen that at the time.” Ida let go of the rail and dusted off her hands. “This used to be part of a larger business district, but it appears nature has reclaimed the area.”
“No one would build up here because of the ghosts,” Rose said. “My father was a land developer. He mostly looked for places to build auto plants in the post-war boom, and the town commissioner told him they wouldn’t be able to find a single man to work up there if they built the plant over what they considered a burial ground.”
“It’s just like Amelia to tarnish a place for an eternity,” Ida said.
The crunch of heavy footfalls on gravel had us turning our heads. Frankie walked up the hill looking like a lumberjack in a Technicolor film with bad ’70s hair. Lucky for him, he came alone. I’d half expected him to set us up. Even though he’d proven himself several times over, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.
“Hey.” He stopped at the entrance to the bridge. His shoulders were wide enough to block our view of the road. “Did you bring your heirlooms?”
“No.” The cooling silver of my locket pressed against my skin beneath my sweater. We’d debated leaving them behind, but Stacey wasn’t home. It was too risky. Anyone could just wander into her house, even if it was hard to see from the road. “I told you we wouldn’t be bringing them with us, but don’t worry. They’re somewhere safe.”
Ida watched Frankie with the kind of intensity she usually reserved for her art projects. As if she were debating which of his body parts she’d like to remove next. His gaze darted to hers, and he gave her a smile. She cracked her knuckles in response.
“I’m glad they’re safe.” Frankie scratched the back of his large head. He kept glancing at Ida, like he wanted to pull her aside and talk, but she kept her chin firmly lifted and her gaze on the open field behind him.
I took a step forward, placing myself in front of Ida and blocking Frankie’s continued attempt to get her attention. Rose stood beside me, the two of us forming a wall that all but said, “Back off, she’s not for you.” Ida had no interest in Frankie, and the sooner he understood that, the better off he’d be.
“Why did you bring us up here?” Rose asked.
“Elton has been going out of his mind since Parker skipped town.” Frankie shuffled his feet, kicking up dust from the dry road. “He wants to leave tomorrow.”
My head went light as the blood in my body dropped to my stomach. Rose looked at me, her brow wrinkled. Surely, he would wait for Parker to return. There were still boxes in her mom’s apartment. He had to think she was coming back.
“Why is he leaving already? What about Parker?” I asked. Elton wouldn’t leave this town without a new girl to take my place. Much like my kill code, Elton had his own rituals.
“He thinks Parker is gone,” Frankie said. “He knows you have all three heirlooms, and he’s worried. I’ve never seen him like this. He won’t go hunting. Makes Gwen bring kills home. She doesn’t mind, but you know. It’s gross.”
“Tell him you heard she’s coming back in two days,” I said.
“Is that true?” He gave me a funny look, and I could feel his questions about Parker and me crawling across my skin like a multi-legged insect.
“Does it matter if it’s true?” As far as Frankie was concerned, I didn’t know where Parker had gone or when she was coming back. I didn’t know anything about Parker at all. “Just tell him that so he’ll stay.”
“It makes very little sense for him to leave,” Rose said. “We’ll just follow. It’s not like he can hide from us, though it would give me immense pleasure to see him try.”
A vision of Elton hiding in a cold, dark cave with none of his pressed shirts or leather shoes brought a smile to my face. He treated us like a joke at every turn, constantly underestimated our capabilities, and in the end, he was the one running scared. Karma could be known to take her time, but she made one hell of an entrance.
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sp; “I’m trying my best.” Frankie lifted his meaty hands in the air. “He doesn’t see me as a voice of reason. What do you want me to do?”
“Bring him to the school parking lot at midnight,” Ida said. “We’ll light the fire at eleven. It’ll be done before you arrive.”
Frankie gave a curt nod. “I’ll do my best.”
He informed us that as soon as Elton fell, Gwen would be outmatched, and he assured us she would lose interest the moment the odds were against her. She only fought battles she was confident she could win. Ida kept her distance from Frankie as we set up the final details of our plan. She rubbed her arms whenever he looked at her, as if she could feel the chill coming from his stony gaze. While he and Rose got into a debate about what time to bring Elton to the school, I took the opportunity to sidle up next to Ida.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Ida glanced at Frankie. “I just can’t shake this bad feeling.”
At least I wasn’t the only one. Maybe we shouldn’t have trusted Frankie so much, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Though we’d probably all breathe easier after tomorrow night.
After Frankie left and disappeared down the main road, Rose turned to us. “Okay, we’re obviously still doing the ritual at ten, correct?”
“Yep,” Ida and I said at the same time.
We planned to light the fire at the exact moment the moon was highest in the sky, allowing night to fall while we prepped the ingredients needed to poison the blood housed within our heirlooms. The ritual would be done hours before Frankie was due to bring Elton to the parking lot. We weren’t taking any chances.
“What should we do now?” Rose asked. “It’s the last night we’ll remember being in high school. Should we do something wild, like make out with some boys in the back seat of a car?”
“No boys, please. I have a better idea.” Ida opened my notebook, flipping past the pages that detailed that day at the county fair when she let a pig loose from its pen because it made her sister happy. “My best memory is in here. I think we should all have one recorded.”
“I don’t know if I have one.” I had a lot of little things she could write down. The things I’d never fully experience again. Like summer slushies melting on my tongue, the feel of the wind in my hair as I rode my bike down a steep hill, and the scent of chlorine clinging to my skin when I was still young enough to believe in mermaids.
“Try me.” Ida held the pen poised over the paper.
“The day Stacey and I found the lockets.” I could still smell the mustiness of the attic, feel the sweat dripping down my back, and the grime of fifty-year-old dust beneath my fingers. A summer full of adventure, romance, and ghosts lurked around every corner, the kind you could only believe in when you were thirteen. “That’s what really solidified our friendship.”
Finding Edie’s lockets had been a turning point in my life. It had been the moment I stopped trying to get whatever I needed from my mom and started becoming my own person. The summer of possibilities. Stacey and I had bikes and the spare change we found under the couch cushions. It was enough to conquer the world.
As Ida finished noting every detail, the sights, sounds, and smells that wouldn’t mean anything to me after tomorrow, I turned to Rose. “What about yours?”
“Mine is really a small series of memories from the summer before my sophomore year, at the drug store. They had a soda fountain and a coin-operated machine, which you all call jukeboxes now. That was the last summer I had all to myself, before my parents started pressuring me to get serious with Mike, get serious with helping out around the house, get serious about becoming a wife, because that’s all I was good for.” Her delicate face had become pinched and angry, and she let out a breath as she smoothed over her expression. “Sorry. This is supposed to be a happy memory. Let me start over.”
Ida wrote down the details of Rose’s only summer of independence, when she was old enough to go around town by herself but still too young to be groomed for marriage. Her memories smelled like fresh-cut flowers and tasted like root beer. Her frustrations with her parents were completely different, yet also perfectly mirrored mine. It made me wonder if we had been given the chance to grow and change, if we would’ve ended up exactly like them.
When Ida finished documenting the details for Rose like she’d done for me, she closed the notebook. “There. Now we each have one moment from our lives we get to keep.”
Rose took the notebook and flipped through the pages. “The thing is, I can read those memories again, but it will never feel like it used to. I’ll never be carefree like that again.”
“If our memories are gone, won’t there be a new definition of carefree?” I asked.
“If this is the new carefree, I don’t want it,” Rose said.
“Only because you think things used to be better,” Ida said. “Nostalgia clouds your judgment. It’s hard right now, but once Elton is gone, we’ll find our way. Maybe we’ll actually enjoy being vampires.”
There was a concept. I took my locket out of my sweater. Sunlight glinted off the tarnished silver as I raised it in a toast. “To the new carefree.”
Ida and Rose took out their heirlooms and clinked them against mine. With the freedom to go where we wanted, without our pasts weighing us down, we could do anything we wanted. A new summer of possibilities. It wasn’t too late to conquer the world, once we had the space to find ourselves.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Stacey slung a backpack over her shoulder and looked over the wreckage of the last place she’d been able to call home. Not even an echo of our childhood lingered there anymore. The space had become a wasteland. Her expression held no sorrow as she took in the crumbling plaster and specks of mold. Only resignation. This was the end, at last.
“I feel like I should make a speech,” she said.
I stood beside her and put my arm around her shoulders, tilting my head to rest against hers. “You could say goodbye to your mom. Or say goodbye to Edie.”
“I’ve already done both those things.” She turned around. “Let’s just go.”
For Stacey, there would be no lengthy reminiscing. No last words. If she got caught up in sentimentality, it would be that much harder to walk away. Later, after this was all over and we were far from here, she’d find what I wish she’d been able to say now.
Rose, Ida, and I followed her out of the house. We didn’t bother to shut the door. There was no point to it. In another fifty years, the house would be reclaimed by nature and crumble to dust. Maybe it would become another town legend, like Amelia’s house had been for both Rose and me. Or maybe the history would die out, like so many others. At least it would live on in Stacey. If she allowed herself to look back every now and then.
The last of the fallen autumn leaves crunched beneath our feet as we trekked through various yards on our way to the school. The air held a snap of winter chill. Snow would be coming soon. “I can’t believe this is our last night in this town.”
“Will you come back for your mother’s funeral when she dies?” Stacey asked.
“No.” I wouldn’t have any memories left to mourn. “She probably won’t even have a funeral. There is no one left to arrange it, no one who would even bother.”
Her death would be quiet. She spent her life chasing people who never wanted her, while pushing away anyone who would’ve cared. Guilt threatened to make its familiar presence known, but more than anything, it just left me feeling empty. Wishing things had been different.
As soon as we set foot on the black concrete of the school’s parking lot, Stacey shuddered. “I hate it here. It’s like walking over my own grave.”
A few weeks ago, I would’ve blamed time, but time had nothing to do with Stacey’s discomfort. Regret was a heavy burden to carry. It made everything feel like it fit wrong, even the air we breathed.
Rose and Ida walked ahead, and I hung back with Stacey. As far as we knew, it wasn’t technically necessary for
us to burn our heirlooms in the place where we’d all been turned, but so many rituals were nothing more than established patterns. We figured it couldn’t hurt.
“You can stay on the edge, until we’re done, if you want,” I said.
“Yeah.” She looked over my shoulder at Rose and Ida. “I don’t need to be a part of this, and I hate it here.” She tossed her backpack onto the grass. “I’ll just wait until Elton shows up.”
“I’m sorry.” I squeezed her arms. “Sorry you died here because I wouldn’t listen. Sorry your mom died alone when you should’ve been there. I’m sorriest I won’t remember you.”
She nudged me. “You’ll remember some of me.”
If we hadn’t reconnected these last few weeks, all I would’ve had was the memory of turning her. I grabbed her hand. “Please keep who I had been alive, remind me every so often, even if it’ll mean nothing to me.”
“I won’t forget.” She gave me a half smile. “There are worse people to be tied to for eternity. If I have to be stuck with anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”
I left her on the edge of the parking lot as I joined Rose and Ida for the final walk. The clouds, tinged gray by the twilight, parted to reveal the moon. Its soft glow illuminated the ground, throwing a hazy filter over the world. The days, hours, minutes we had left had run out. The time had come to say our final goodbyes.
I twisted Parker’s bracelet on my wrist as we walked to the center of the blacktop. Rose set down her portable workshop and pulled out a cast-iron cauldron she’d bought from Walmart. She needed to get the fire hot enough to melt our heirlooms but weak enough to keep the cauldron intact. A balancing act. She began to stoke the fire with small sticks she’d been drying in the sun for weeks, then added a bit of thermite to make it hotter. Once she was satisfied with the results, she set out the ingredients she’d need to poison the blood.