Dust to Dust

by Melissa Walker

  Now I look up each of their names, one at a time. The calm stillness of the night feels almost reverent as I click the keyboard.

  Reena Bell, a star cheerleader for West Ashley, beloved daughter of Lydia Bell and Sergeant Harris Bell, older sister to Trenton Bell.

  An army kid. I think I knew that.

  Even in the black-and-white newspaper photo that’s online, you can tell that Reena was beautiful—glossy raven-colored hair, smooth dark skin, doll-like brown eyes. Her smile almost pulses with joy. In the recesses of my mind, I think I can hear her laugh, and it’s tinged with this sarcastic edge that seems both harmless and menacing all at the same time.

  She said we were friends. But if that were true, why does my stomach churn when I look at that crack in my window?

  When I turn to links about Leo Cutler, I find a ton of local news coverage about his football career. Apparently he was a defensive tackle for West Ashley, the kind of athlete who goes on to play in college. His photo, too, shows a buoyant, infectious grin, and his eyes hint at mischief—the good kind. But there’s something about the planes of his face, his deep-set eyes, and close-cropped white-blond hair that gives me the chills.

  By the time I’ve learned that Reena was a member of the 4-H Club and Leo used to assistant-coach a peewee football team, my eyes are glossing over. It’s close to two in the morning. I need to sleep. I click one last link on a search of Thatcher’s name, and I find a small, personal page run on one of those easy-blog sites. It has a few photos from his memorial and it lists the program: a reading by an uncle, donations to United Way of South Carolina in lieu of flowers, and a link to “When You Say Nothing at All” by Alison Krauss, “a song for Thatcher.”

  I make a mental note to look up this song, and then I let my head fall back onto the pillow, my eyes starting to close, weighed down with the heaviness of the brutal reality.

  The more I learn about Thatcher, the more alive he seems.

  When I wake up in the morning, I feel two things: energetic and annoyed. I realize that in order to do what I need to do today, I have to text Carson. I’m still mad about her giving my number to that reporter, but the anger will have to wait.

  Me: Pick me up?

  Cars: Where are we going?

  Me: Adventure. 10 mins.

  Five

  THATCHER LARSON, AGE EIGHTEEN, is buried in a small cemetery in northern Charleston.

  This knowledge stirs within me as the breeze musses my hair. Carson’s got the top down on her convertible VW Bug, and she’s following my navigation instructions excitedly.

  “Are we going to see Nick at his Habitat site?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. You know how I love sweaty, shirtless boys.”

  Carson’s trying to make me smile, but I keep my mouth still, eyes on the road. She’s undeterred by my silence. “Are we driving across town to check out the new J. Crew? I hear it’s huge.”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders slump. “Wait. Are we really going grocery shopping for my mom like you told your dad?”

  “Stop guessing. Please.”

  At a red light, I feel my best friend turn to look at me. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “You are,” she says, surprised. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing,” I say, almost wishing I’d called for a taxi this morning. I couldn’t very well ask my father to take me to a cemetery without an explanation, but I need some time to absorb what I’ve learned in the past twelve hours.

  “Seriously, Callie, you’re mad,” she says, turning back to the road as the light turns green. “I can tell, and I don’t know what I did but I wish you’d just say it.”

  “Remember when we were little and we used to play the trust game?” I ask her.

  It was this thing we did where one of us would blindfold the other and then lead her to a secret location, usually under a tree in Carson’s backyard or by the riverbank in mine. Then the blindfolded person had to touch, taste, and smell something and try to guess what it was. Often it was a cattail or a magnolia—harmless. But it’s surprisingly hard to guess what something is when sight is taken out of the equation. And we had to trust that we wouldn’t lead each other somewhere dangerous, or make each other taste something really gross.

  “Of course,” says Carson.

  “Well, this is like that,” I tell her. “No questions, Cars, please. Just give me a ride, okay?”

  She nods, always up for anything she can think of as a game.

  I sit back, relieved, as I direct her to turn in to the cemetery gates.

  Carson raises her eyebrows, but doesn’t say a word. The trust game is in effect.

  The website for the cemetery actually had a feature called “find a grave,” which is creepy but helpful, so I have instructions on how to walk directly to Thatcher’s spot. The memorial bench is supposed to be near it, too. I guess it was his family who sponsored it.

  Carson follows behind me, uncharacteristically silent. Partly because of the game and partly because of our hallowed location, I’m guessing.

  We take a left turn past military headstones dotted with small American flags and I notice a sad stone lamb marker overgrown with moss. We climb up a steep hill in the early morning sunlight, and my walking slows—and not just because of the incline. Carson slows, too, looking at me questioningly, but I turn away from her and keep walking. My legs are holding up; the pain I’ve been fearing since I’ve stopped the pills hasn’t come. Still, my pace begins to slow, because I’m wondering: What do I hope to see?

  As we trudge up to the blinking blue dot on my phone, my rational self is thinking, He’s in a grave. That’s where I’ll find him. But now that I’m about to face the place where his physical body rests, my heart begins to ache. Thatcher’s body is here, but I know that his soul isn’t.

  Where is he? He was in my bathroom yesterday afternoon. That I know. Is he here now? I try to sense him but I don’t feel his presence. Can I trust my own instincts?

  As slowly as we’re walking, we do eventually reach the top of the hill, where Thatcher’s grave should be. There are a dozen stones, all lined up in a row like straight-backed soldiers. I take a deep breath and begin to finger the amber heart around my neck, working it up and down its chain.

  Carson coughs from behind me, and I jump—I’d almost forgotten she was here.

  “Can you wait?” I ask her, and she nods and stops walking as I move up one more row.

  When I position myself to read the names, it’s the first one I see, almost as if my eyes were drawn to it by magnetic force.

  Thatcher Larson.

  My body stills, my face frozen as my eyes scan the words.

  Beloved son and brother.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  I let go of the pendant, reaching out my hand to trace the engraved lettering. As I press my fingers into the indentations, sliding over each letter one by one, I feel my lip quivering. I know he’s dead, but seeing his name spelled out here in gray stone still seems so shocking to me. Not too long ago, I kissed Thatcher, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt that alive in my life.

  I remember a field trip to a Civil War cemetery back in second grade. We made art projects from the graves by placing thin paper on the tombstones and rubbing a piece of black chalk over it so that the words showed up on the paper. But those were people from the past . . . not people I know. Knew. Know.

  I drop my head to the ground as a tear slips down my cheek. Thatcher’s body, or at least what remains of it, is six feet underneath me now. Has been for more than ten years . . . since the night he died.

  I look back at the grave.

  I won’t let you go. I say it aloud then, in a quiet whisper, though I can’t feel his presence right now. Still, maybe he can hear it: “Thatcher, I’m not letting you leave me.”

  Instead of turning my face down to the ground, I lie on my back, over the grass that covers his coffin, and look up into the
sky. What if I had really let go of this world? I’d be with him now, with Thatcher in the Prism. My heart pricks at the thought of it—at the horrifying wish I almost have. A wish to have died.

  The relentless South Carolina sun is strong even this early in the morning, and it beats down on me. I feel a trickle of sweat make its way from my forehead to the crook of my neck. But I don’t close my eyes. I look right into the bright blue.

  Carson’s shadow breaks my trance.

  I sit up, feeling nervous, not ready to explain myself or what’s happening, not sure what to say.

  She reaches her hand out to help me up, and I take it. She doesn’t ask any questions, just glances at the grave and then moves to sit down on a bench under a tree nearby. She pats the space next to her.

  We’re quiet for a few minutes, but I can feel my best friend getting restless.

  Finally, she breaks the silence. “Okay, so I know we’re playing the trust game, but does that mean I’m not allowed to talk?”

  I feel my anger at her soften. “No, it’s okay.”

  “Phew, because that was hard.” She looks at me now, her eyes serious. “Does this cemetery have something to do with what you saw on the other side?”

  I try to keep my face still, but I realize I can’t hide much from Carson when she says, “Callie, I’ve believed in this stuff my whole life. I’ve read books about hauntings and theories about good ghosts and bad ghosts and Heaven and Hell. Not that I think you’d know anything about Hell—of course you’d have gotten more close to Heaven—and you probably didn’t encounter any demons or deal with scary things like poltergeists or whatever but . . .”

  She pauses and looks at me as my mouth drops open.

  Poltergeists. The word makes my heart jump in fear when she says it, opening my mind to a rush of memories I’m not ready for. Images of Reena and Leo . . . and them using me for some kind of sick, twisted game. I take a deep breath. I have to play this off—Carson is sharp and I don’t want to give her any reason to keep pressing me when there’s so much I have to piece together yet.

  “I can’t believe you’re rambling like this,” I tell her.

  “Callie, stop holding out on me! You must have seen something, you must remember what you saw while you were in the coma. What was it like? Please tell me.”

  “Why? So you can give a quote to Pete Green from the Post and Courier?”

  Carson’s face looks like I’ve slapped her, and instantly I regret my harsh tone. But I’m not letting her off the hook.

  “You gave him my number.” It’s a fact. An accusation.

  “I did,” she admits. “But only because he’s a friend of my mom’s from high school so I know he’s a decent person—he could tell your story, Callie; he’d be fair to you.”

  “There is no story,” I say.

  “Oh yeah? Well then why are we here, at the grave of someone who died ten years ago, with you acting more emotional than I’ve seen since . . . well, ever!”

  I look down at the bright green grass under our feet.

  “I’m not emotional,” I say defensively.

  “More emo than Nick at a Bon Iver show,” she says, and I stifle a smile.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, not that emo,” she says. “But pretty close. I just want to know why.”

  Her dark-brown eyes are shining with curiosity, and I realize that this is my best friend in front of me, and she’s asking me legitimate, natural questions. I’m just not sure how to answer them. So I tell her the truth. Some of it.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure what happened when I was in the coma. A few things I remember in detail, I think.” I pause, a flash of Thatcher’s achingly kind, frustratingly distant eyes in my head.

  “There’s the emo look!” says Carson.

  I glance at the ground and wipe thoughts of him from my mind before I continue. “Other stuff is more hazy. Think about all the painkillers I’ve been on.”

  Carson nods. “I know it can’t be easy.”

  “I haven’t taken a pill since yesterday,” I confide in her. “My dad thinks I’m still on them, but I want to stop feeling so foggy-brained.”

  No more pills. Clear your mind.

  “Do you feel okay?” asks Carson. “Are you in pain?”

  “Not really,” I tell her. “I need to get my head straight, even if it means I hurt a little. But Cars, you can’t talk to the press. Please. What happened to me isn’t even certain enough for me to tell you about it, and it’s definitely not something I want to hash out with reporters. Don’t you get that?”

  She nods, and then her eyes meet mine. There’s an apology there—I can see it plain as day.

  “I just think it’s such a blessing,” she says. “You almost crossing over and then coming back to life. It’s a miracle. People want to know what it was like. I want to know what it was like.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “And I will share as much as I remember with you, once I figure out what was real and what wasn’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Carson moves forward to give me a hug and I lean into her, relishing this affectionate touch. And I remember how in the Prism we moved around each other, with space between us. Touching was dangerous, touching was . . .

  My eyes flash open as I recall the energy pulls I felt when I was touched in the Prism. When I shared my energy.

  Suddenly, a wave of sensation starts to tingle in my toes, washing up through my body in a whoosh, a swell of energy. It starts out as a buzz, but then it escalates into an uncomfortable electricity that’s shocking in its intensity. I let go of Carson and stumble off the bench, sinking to my knees as I close my eyes and let my hands feel the soft, mossy earth.

  “Callie? Are you okay?”

  Carson is bending by my side but her voice sounds far away. All I can feel is the sparking and burning that’s happening inside my body. I open my eyes, forcing my mind to stop tricking me, letting my eyes and ears show me what’s real, what’s solid. My hands grip the ground until my fingernails hit dirt, and then the crackling pulses that undulate in every fiber of my physical body start to ebb.

  I lean back against the leg of the bench with a long breath.

  “I’m fine,” I tell Carson.

  “Maybe you need to rethink the meds,” she says. “Just for another few days until your body’s healed some more.”

  I shake my head no. I try to tell myself that the jolt of pain I just felt is normal after what my body has been through. It’s because of the accident, whatever’s left in my system of the pills, the physical trauma I’ve experienced.

  But a part of me wonders if it was something else. Something more ominous.

  I look up to ground myself in the world around me before my mind gets carried away. And that’s when I come face-to-face with the plaque on the center of the bench.

  Of course, the memorial bench.

  Three names:

  Thatcher Larson

  Leo Cutler

  Reena Bell

  “Callie, what is it?”

  Carson catches me staring at the names, and I realize that she knows me too well to be kept in the dark.

  “Those people,” I tell her, gesturing at the plaque. “I met them . . . on the other side.”

  “You did?” Her eyes light up.

  I look up at the branches of the tree above us, and I remember a moment in a cemetery like this one, where Leo and a friend were shaking branches and frightening people on a ghost tour.

  “Reena and Leo, they were the types of ghosts who liked to mess with the Living.”

  “Like moaning and slamming doors?” asks Carson. I can tell she’s letting her mind run wild with the ghost stories she’s heard.

  “Something like that,” I say. And then I start to tell her what I’m remembering as it comes to me. Because maybe sharing it out loud will help everything come together inside my brain. “I spent time with Leo and Reena, walking on
the beach, going to a café, almost pretending we were alive. They made me laugh; I had fun with them at first.”

  “That sounds cool!” Carson smiles at me. “But why do you look so sad?”

  “They weren’t really my friends,” I say, and as I talk to Carson my memories are becoming clearer. “The way Reena taught me to move objects, the way she asked me about my life and shared her friends with me, it was nice. But something wasn’t right.”

  “What wasn’t right?”

  The word poltergeists reenters my mind, and now the underside of Reena, Leo, and their friends is coming into full view. When their smiles faded, I saw that they were angry and bitter, hatching some kind of insane plan to live again. Reena was just using me. I had a special kind of energy in the Prism, and she drew on it because she knew it might get her what she wanted. All the poltergeists did. Thatcher tried to protect me from them as much as he could but . . .

  Now that I’m alive, back on Earth, am I safe from them?

  “Callie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  I’ve gone silent, because it’s getting harder and harder to fill up my lungs with air.

  The further away I get from my last pain pill, the crisper my otherworldly memories become. And suddenly, nothing makes sense and the world seems mad. At first I thought it was the meds that were bringing on these visions, these phantom voices. The truth is, they were dulling them, erasing my memory of what happened during the time I was in that coma.

  Because one thing is for sure: My body may have been in that hospital bed, but my soul sure as hell wasn’t.

  I stand up shakily.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Carson. “I’m not feeling great.”

  “Of course.” She hurries to hold my elbow and I keep an eye on the memorial bench as we make the descent down the hill to Carson’s car, as if something might arise from beneath the grave to pursue us.

  Six

  “THE FILET MIGNON FOR Callie May; I’ll have the rib eye.”