Silent as the Grave

by Zoe Aarsen

  With that same, cunning hint of a smirk on her face.

  The group around us began to disperse as people walked toward their cars. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Cars pulled away from the curb, and I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder and back at Violet’s Mini Cooper.

  But Henry, Violet, and I remained where we stood, all of us watching Mischa as neighbors, friends, and relatives shook her hand, and she politely filled them in on Amanda’s prognosis.

  Pete emerged from the thinning crowd and made a beeline for Violet.

  “No, no, no,” I said to Violet under my breath. “He can’t be here right now. Get rid of him!”

  Without acknowledging me or Henry first, Pete reached for her and tried to kiss her on the mouth, but his lips landed on her cheek when she didn’t turn her head. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said, and then shot Henry a sheepish look with his head slightly hung. “Hey, man.”

  Henry nodded stoically in response. “Hey.”

  I didn’t think Henry and Pete had ever spoken since the fall, when Pete had started going out with Violet shortly after Olivia’s death. At one point, before Henry graduated, they’d run in the same social circle: the jocks, the privileged guys who drove nice cars. It had to bother Henry that his sister had been so quickly replaced, but today was not the day for him to confront Pete about his romantic choices.

  “My mom and I are going to Bobby’s,” Pete told Violet. “Come with us. I barely saw you all weekend.”

  Violet ran her hands over the front of his wool coat and told him, “I can’t. I have plans. But we should go to a movie or something tomorrow.”

  Pete gave me and Henry a look, as if he didn’t want us to hear him. He leaned closer to Violet and said in a low voice, “But your parents will be back by then.”

  Highly aware that there were only a few people remaining at the grave site expressing their condolences to Mischa, Violet stood a little taller and said, “I’m sorry. I just have to do something today.”

  Now Pete took a step back, perhaps humiliated that she’d dismissed him in front of us. He narrowed his eyes at us and said, “I don’t understand what’s going on, here—why you’re hanging out with these people.”

  Surprising me, Violet took a step closer to me. “Just… I’ll call you later, okay?”

  Her shoulders slumped when he turned and walked back to his mother, clearly miffed at Violet. It was easy to see that their exchange had upset Violet, too. “Stay focused,” I reminded her. “Don’t think about him anymore.”

  It was then that Mischa finished her conversation with the rabbi and turned to face us. She stepped around the graves as she walked toward us at a pace so leisurely that it made my heart beat faster. She seemed to ignore Violet and Henry, and focused all of her attention on me. The hairs on the back of my head stood on end, and I felt my skin prickle beneath the heavy sleeves of my winter coat.

  “It was so kind of you to come today,” Mischa said when she reached us. “Although I suspect your reason for being here isn’t to pay respects to my dead parents. After all…” She batted her eyes at me and flashed me a petty grin. “They’re dead because of McKenna’s foolhardy belief in herself, aren’t they?”

  It was difficult to remember that this wasn’t really Mischa talking, blaming me for her parents’ deaths. I’d told Violet and Henry to let me do all the talking, and per Jennie’s advice, I tried to keep my response simple and direct. “We’re here to make a deal with you,” I said, trying my hardest to keep my voice from shaking.

  Mischa’s face remained unchanged—frozen in a hollow grin—for just long enough to make me uncomfortable. Then I realized that the spirits were waiting to reply in the hope that either Violet or Henry would speak up so that they could start pitting us against one another. Instinctively, I reached out and wrapped a hand around each of their arms to remind them to remain silent.

  Mischa finally threw her head back and cackled. “That’s hilarious. A deal? You don’t have anything to trade.”

  “I think you’ll be interested in what we have to offer you. But we’re not discussing terms here. If you’re interested, you have to come with us,” I said.

  Again, Mischa laughed, and I could feel my heartbeat echoing throughout my entire body. The spirits must have sensed that we were there with serious purpose. “Why would the three of you think I’d have any interest in anything you have to offer?” With a sneer, she nodded in the direction of Violet. “She is useless to me. And he”—she pointed her chin at Henry—“is just a soul, as useless as all the rest.” She narrowed her eyes at me and leaned forward to make it clear she was really only speaking to me. “You know as well as we do that he’s too weak to carry the curse. He’s too weak to be of much use to anyone.”

  I felt Henry’s muscles tense under my hand, and I squeezed his arm to remind him to not interact with the spirits.

  “Guessing what we’re proposing to offer is a waste of time,” I replied. “If you’re interested, get in the car and come with us.” The spirits crossed Mischa’s arms over her chest. Sensing that I was failing, and quickly, I threw out my wild card. If this didn’t do the trick, I didn’t have another idea for how we might lure Mischa back to the Simmons mansion without using force. And I highly doubted that we were strong enough to get her there on our own, even with Trey’s assistance. “But you know, I might be worth more alive to you than dead. I’m sure you’re aware that I have an ability that’s somewhat rare. It could be of use to you.”

  An eyebrow on Mischa’s face rose at me as if the spirits were doubting everything I’d just said, although the fact that they were still standing there, listening, was evidence that they were at least mildly intrigued. “Your ability, as you call it, isn’t worth anything to us! But you have something else we might want—under the right circumstances.”

  “Then let’s go,” I said, eager at that point to get them in the car.

  “Not so fast. We don’t agree to anything without something in return.” They set Mischa’s hands on her hips.

  Violet turned to me in objection, but I replied, “I already told you. We won’t negotiate here. If you want to strike a deal, you have to come with us.”

  Gambling on my own future, I turned and began walking toward Violet’s car, still holding on to Violet and Henry’s arms to make sure they followed me. We’d walked a good ten feet—and I’d started to truly panic that I’d blown my only shot at saving my own life—when I heard Mischa say behind us, “Fine. Have it your way.” Although it was a victory that the spirits had finally agreed to come with us, my chest tightened and my lips trembled.

  This was really happening.

  When we reached Violet’s car, she unlocked the doors with a quick flip of her key fob. I hoped I was the only one who noticed that her fingers were shaking. I opened the back door, and Trey sat upright in the back seat. Once he saw that Mischa was standing behind me, he slid over to the far side, and I gestured at Mischa to climb in.

  “We’d prefer to sit in the front,” the spirits said, and Mischa’s face smiled sweetly at Henry just as he opened the front passenger-side door.

  He hesitated, unsure of how to handle the request, until I snapped at Mischa, “You sit in the back, or you walk.”

  Mischa grinned and wiggled her fingers at me as if pretending to be afraid, but she crouched and climbed into the car as told. The back seat of Violet’s car wasn’t wide enough to have an actual middle; it was an uncomfortable, unsafe squeeze for three people to sit back there. But Mischa didn’t say a word as she pressed her knees together, and Trey and I buckled our seat belts.

  Violet started the engine and carefully pulled away from the curb. She knew, just as the rest of us did, that she had to focus more intently on driving safely than she ever had before in her life. Because there was simply no telling what the spirits might do to us now that—for the first time, ever—we had them where we wanted them.

  CHAPTER 18

  WHAT AN UNEXPECTED
DELIGHT TO be back here,” the spirits said in Mischa’s voice as we stepped through the front door of the Simmons mansion. Her eyes wandered around the large foyer as if she were the owner of the mansion, returning home after a long trip. “We didn’t expect we’d ever have occasion to return to this place.”

  Violet shot a furtive look at me as she hung up her winter coat on the rack near the front door. My phone—my connection to Jennie—was in my pocket, and I pulled it out after a split second of hesitation before handing over my coat when Violet reached for it.

  Though Mischa hadn’t even watched me do that, with her back turned to me, the spirits said, “Of course. Wouldn’t want to play any games without your precious sister.”

  I felt Trey’s hand on the small of my back, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing I was: We may very well have been in way over our heads. From the wide doorway leading into the parlor, Henry looked over at me. I could see the rise and fall of his chest as he inhaled and exhaled. I was more terrified than I’d ever been—even more than in the moments following the avalanche we’d survived in Michigan, when I’d been buried in snow.

  “You’re right, we wouldn’t,” I replied, using the spirits’ acknowledgment of Jennie as an excuse to place one of my earbuds in my right ear and tap my radio app on.

  “Well, we’re all here,” Trey said, leaving my side, walking past Henry, and strolling into the parlor. “Might as well get down to business.”

  Mischa confidently followed him into the parlor and stood at its center with her arms extended outward, like the ringmaster of a circus welcoming a crowd. “Yes. Let’s.”

  I swallowed hard, listening for guidance from Jennie over the earbuds. Although I could sense her presence, she was silent, and I assumed that she was remaining quiet for our safety.

  Henry, Violet, and I stepped into the parlor and fell into a circle formation around Mischa, who sat down on one of the sofas, facing us. The mason jar containing the real Mischa’s soul was set on the coffee table in front of her, and she smiled at it. I tried with all my might not to think about the handgun stashed under the pillow on the sofa behind me. Violet had stationed herself directly in front of it, presumably so that she could reach behind herself and grab it when she needed to.

  “We’d like to propose playing a game with you,” I said, ad-libbing. I’d rehearsed this part in my head at least ten times since Jennie and I had devised this plan at dawn, but I still wasn’t certain what was going to come out of my mouth next. I knew that no matter what I offered Mischa, it wouldn’t be good enough, and she’d counter with something else far more dangerous. “Double or nothing. If you win, you get me and my twin sister. And if you lose, you lose your claim on me, now and forever.”

  I was already expecting the spirits to refuse this proposal because it was flimsy, nothing more than empty words. But I still bit my lower lip when she raised an eyebrow as if considering, and then viciously cackled. “That’s not much of an offer! It’s more like nothing or nothing. We came all the way here to make a deal, and we’re sure it won’t surprise you that we already have a proposition in mind.”

  Perhaps because the spirits weren’t trying very hard to convince anyone present that they were Mischa Portnoy, teenage gymnast, Mischa had gone pale since we’d arrived. Veins throbbed beneath the skin of her face, delicate blue webs of blood coursing beneath her eyes, up her temples, and into her hair.

  This would have been the perfect moment for Violet to have instigated an argument with me to put the pressure on Mischa to agree to a game. It would have been ideal for the spirits to have tried to prevent me from dying before they specified their offer, before whatever I stood to lose had been defined. With a tight frown, I glimpsed at Violet, but her eyes were fixed on Mischa. My fingers curled into my palms, forming loose fists. Maybe Violet truly had no intention of acknowledging my request. I tried my best not to let my anxiety show on my face; our success that day entirely depended on Violet. I had to believe she could do this. If she didn’t, she was likely going to doom us all.

  “You have access to something very special,” Mischa said, folding her hands in her lap and fanning her fingers in a way that was so hypnotic that I averted my eyes. “Or, rather, you will… soon.” I wasn’t sure what the spirits were referring to, but my chin wrinkled in disgust at Mischa’s enthusiasm. “There’s nothing we love more than innocence. And there’s no one who can fulfill our desires with as much ease as a child.”

  A child? I didn’t know any children.

  But just as I wondered what in the world the spirits were getting at, the answer occurred to me.

  Dad and Rhonda’s baby.

  “If you want to play another game with your soul as the prize, then your half brother is the only thing you have that we’re willing to bargain for,” the spirits told me, never tearing Mischa’s eyes away from mine.

  A brother. Although I felt as if I’d had the wind knocked out of me, I marveled at the unexpected news that Dad would be having a son. He and Rhonda probably didn’t even know their baby’s gender yet.

  “If you lose? Then we’ll evacuate this body and relocate to yours. We’ll return to Florida tomorrow instead of you, and we’ll find a way to infect that baby’s soul as soon as he’s old enough to speak. After all, no one ever says no to a baby. He’ll be able to summon the souls of whoever we choose for many, many years.”

  Suddenly aware of Jennie’s voice breaking through the static in my right ear, I heard her say, “No! Don’t agree to that!”

  “What half brother? Am I missing something here?” Henry asked me.

  Ignoring him, I struggled to find my voice, and my objection came out as a whisper. “Not that. Not the baby.”

  “What are you doing?” Violet hissed at me, her face scarlet with rage. “Just say yes so we can play the game and get this over with!”

  I shook my head at Mischa. “What do you even get by capturing all these souls?” I asked. “What’s the point of all of this? What has the point ever been?”

  “Your sister is in a state you’ve heard described as ‘the dark place,’ ” the spirits reminded me. Her eyes were now as dark as charcoal, so dark that the pupils had blended in with the irises. The veins beneath her skin looked darker, almost blackened, like actual cobwebs beneath a thin veil of translucent skin. “As long as we collect souls, we keep ourselves out of a place much, much darker. We like it here, among all of you, where there is work to be done and there are games to be played.”

  On my left side, Violet pointed at me, looking furiously from Henry to Trey. “She’s tricking us! She and her sister are doing something to screw us over!”

  She sounded so hysterical that I wasn’t sure if she was following through on my request or actually accusing me of selling everyone else out. Henry and Trey both looked at me in uncertain wonderment.

  “She’s going to make them take our souls instead of hers! She doesn’t have a brother! This is all a trap!” Violet shouted and took a step backward—toward the sofa behind her and away from both me and Mischa. “I’m not going to die,” she announced. “Not after everything I’ve gone through. You’re not going to take me like this!”

  Still unsure of what was actually happening, I argued, “I’m not tricking anyone, Violet. Honestly.” And just to be safe, I whirled around and snapped at Mischa, “I don’t agree. We’re not playing any games for the baby.”

  Mischa stood up from the sofa on which she’d been sitting. “Then there’s nothing to—”

  The spirits went silent as Mischa’s eyes fell upon something behind me, and a wide, wicked smile stretched across her gruesome face. I turned around to see that Violet had pulled the gun out from under the pillow and had it aimed at me.

  “Jesus, Violet!” Henry exclaimed as he extended an arm and outstretched his fingers toward her. “Is that real?”

  Instinctively, I threw my hands in the air—as anyone would if a loaded gun was pointed at their chest. “Violet, don’t,” I begged
. None of this seemed like a viable plan now that the spirits had mentioned Dad and Rhonda’s baby. How could Jennie and I have been so careless as to have not taken the baby into consideration? I had barely given Dad’s announcement much thought since leaving Tampa, but now it seemed like an enormous oversight.

  “It’s real,” Trey said calmly. He made eye contact with me, and I could tell that he was afraid, but he understood that this was what I had warned him about. He glanced over at the piano, which was a good fifteen feet behind where Mischa stood. He was remembering what I’d told him about the pins, and trying to determine how he might make his way over there without rousing the spirits’ suspicion.

  “Put it down!” Henry urged Violet. “There’s no reason for anyone to get shot.”

  “No,” Violet refused in a voice amplified by fear. She waved the gun at me. “We’re playing any game they choose, right now. Give them whatever they want.”

  “Shall we play?” the spirits asked me in Mischa’s voice.

  Static filled my right ear, and I was about to object, when Violet commanded, “Say yes, or I’ll shoot. I swear, I will. I’ll tell the police that you guys broke into my house and that I was acting in self-defense.”

  Jennie had told me to be prepared for whoever I asked to actually make good on their threat to kill me, but now that I was actually in that situation, I was wondering if I’d live long enough to ever step outside of the Simmons house again.

  It was all starting to fit together in my head: the foreboding sense that had overcome me the first time I’d ever visited this place with Violet; the way that the trees along the private drive seemed to envelop this house, hide it from the outside world. I would die here, and I had felt that in my bones every time I’d ever come here.

  “No,” I told Violet.

  On my right, I heard Trey say, “McKenna, just play the game. Please.”