The Dead Lands

by Rick Hautala

  Megan’s scowl deepened, her eyes darkening like storm clouds.

  “What question?”

  “What would you tell your brother, if you could?”

  Megan was silent for a long moment. The babble of voices faded away to nothing. Abby could feel herself withdrawing from the situation as if she was being called to go someplace else.

  Then she saw tears gathering in Megan’s eyes. She knew they weren’t real tears. They couldn’t be. But the emotions twisting inside her were so strong they created the illusion of real tears, reflecting her internal turmoil.

  “I’d tell him—” she finally said, but then her voice dropped so low Abby could barely hear her. “I’d tell him that I—”

  But then, in an instant, a look of genuine terror passed across her face. Her eyes widened so the pupils looked like sparkling gold coins. Her mouth dropped open into an extended O, and her shoulders slumped forward like she was collapsing in on herself.

  Suddenly fearful for her, thinking she might be “moving on” right now, Abby looked around, half-expecting to see a Reaper. But no cloaked figures lurked in the room as far as she could see, just throngs of living, breathing people who had no idea that the person they were mourning was standing right there with them, unable to let them know anything about what she was thinking or feeling.

  “What?” Abby said, urging her on.

  “To be careful,” Megan whispered, her voice like a faint gust of wind.

  “Of anything in particular?” Abby sensed that Megan was close to admitting something that was eating at her on the inside, perhaps the something that was making it impossible for her to pass on.

  The fear in Megan’s eyes was palpable as she stared at Abby. Her lower lip was quivering, and she looked like she was about to scream so loud even the living might hear her.

  “Out there … on the cliffs,” Megan said in a shattered voice.

  “Why would he have to be careful out there?”

  The terrified look in Megan’s eyes intensified. She stared straight ahead without blinking as though she was mesmerized by something that even Abby couldn’t see.

  “It’s dangerous out there, and there was a … a person who followed me there.”

  “Someone you knew?” Abby realized how difficult it was for Megan to say this. Not wanting to frighten her by pushing too hard, she backed off.

  Megan was shaking her head from side to side and making a low, soft moaning sound that Abby had heard many times before from suffering souls who were at the point of realizing or admitting something important.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him. Honest. I swear I didn’t, but I was scared and I started to run.”

  “Did he chase after you?”

  Megan was silent for a long, tense moment as her eyes flicked back and forth crazily. It was like, even now, she was looking for someplace to run, to hide.

  “I think he was … I thought it might be—” She paused and licked her lips. “So I ran, and when I ... when I got to the … to the edge of the cliff, I tripped and fell.”

  Her face was a pale oval of terror as she locked eyes with Abby. Her shoulders were quaking as though invisible hands had taken hold of her and were shaking her for all she was worth.

  “I fell, I swear to God I didn’t mean to jump!”

  “I never said you jumped.”

  Megan’s expression froze in horror, but then—ever so gradually—it began to melt. Her eyes lost their distant gleam, and something inside her seemed to crumple.

  “But I did,” she finally said, her head drooping and her shoulders slouching. “I did jump.”

  Abby was stunned. She had no idea what to say. If that’s what really happened, she was happy for Megan now that she had unburdened herself. Perhaps now, maybe by the time they got back to the cemetery, one of the Reapers—maybe even the one who was friendly to Abby—would show up and take her away.

  “There was nothing else I could do,” Megan said in a voice like shattered crystal. “Do you understand?”

  All Abby could do was nod sympathetically.

  “I was trying to get away from him. I didn’t want him to catch me, and I … I had to jump. I didn’t think I would. I was sure—I hoped it would be all right, that I would land safely, but I didn’t jump out far enough to make it to the water, and I landed on the rocks.” She shivered with the memory. “Now that I think about it, I don’t remember any pain. I’d tell Mikey that, too, that there isn’t any pain. But all I remember is how scared I was that he would catch me, and how lucky I was to finally get away. But I never wanted to—”

  Her voice broke again, and she leaned against Abby, sobbing as she pressed her face against Abby’s shoulder. Abby raised her hand to the girl’s shoulder, even though she knew Megan couldn’t really feel it. The voices of the people around them faded to nothing, and all Abby could hear was a deep, shuddering sigh.

  “I didn’t want to die. Not really. I just wanted to get away from him because I knew what he wanted.”

  — 2 —

  “You can’t hold me here more ‘n twenty-four hours without chargin’ me with somethin’,” Andrew Collins shouted.

  He was sitting on the edge of a jail cell bunk, his bare feet planted firmly on the floor, his hands pressed between his knees. They had taken his belt and personal effects, leaving him with nothing but his jeans and Falcons shirt.

  The silence was broken only by the distant clack-clack-clack of someone banging away on a computer.

  Collins shuddered as he took a deep breath, held it in for a count of ten, and then let it out slowly, whistling between his teeth.

  “I have a right to a phone call, ‘n a lawyer!”

  Still no answer until, from another room, the detective who had brought him in this morning—what was his name again?—shouted back, “Keep your shirt on. I’ll be right there.”

  Collins scowled but resisted the urge to spit onto the cell floor. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he wondered just how much trouble he could be in this time. He was sure he was in deep shit no matter how much he insisted he hadn’t done whatever it was they thought he did. He lowered his head until footsteps sounded in the corridor, approaching his cell. He looked up without the least bit of expectation in his eyes.

  “So,” the detective—

  Gray! Yeah, that’s his name!—said.

  “Got anything you wanna talk about before you leave?”

  Collins wished there weren’t any bars between them because he was ready to beat the tar out of this guy. So damned smug! Instead, he just sat there, trembling with repressed rage and the faint hope that they would spring him. After all, they had nothing on him. If they did, they would have thrown it in his face by now.

  “Not a damned thing,” Collins said.

  Detective Gray was silent for a moment, grunting softly as he nodded, considering.

  “How ‘bout that cut on your head. Care to explain how you got that?”

  “I already told yah.” He reached up and flicked the edge of the scab with his fingernail. “I whacked myself on a cupboard door a couple of days ago.”

  “Looks more like the kind of cut you’d get if you were—I don’t know, say, struggling with someone, and they scratched you.”

  Collins snorted and shook his head. The urge to spit onto the floor was stronger.

  “You have a struggle with someone recently?”

  Collins looked at the cop, his pulse pounding hard in his chest.

  “No,” he said.

  “You own a yellow raincoat?”

  Collins looked at him, surprised, and said, “No.”

  Detective Gray nodded, but his expression was flat and unbroken. Collins knew he didn’t believe him. He didn’t have to wonder how much the bastard would disbelieve him if he told the truth now.

  “Lemme ask you something,” Gray said, moving closer to the bars, folding his hands, and resting his elbows on the crossbars.

  “I got time,” Collins said
. “Apparently I ain’t goin’ anywheres.”

  Gray smiled at that, his lips stretched thin against his teeth.

  “You know a girl name of Megan McGowan?”

  The name sent a spike of chills through Collins, and he was convinced Gray had noticed his reaction.

  “Megan McGowan?” he said, forcing his voice not to tremble.

  “Yeah. Megan McGowan. She a friend of yours?”

  Collins shook his head, feeling the whole world crashing down around him.

  “Can’t say as I ever heard of her,” he finally replied. “She a friend of yours?”

  “Not anymore,” Gray said. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh. Too bad.”

  It was all Collins could do to keep his voice from cracking. His armpits were dripping with sweat.

  “Whoever killed her was wearing a yellow raincoat.”

  “And you know that—how?”

  “From scrapings under her fingernails. Looks like she put up a bit of a fight. The kind of fight where someone might get a scratch on their face.”

  “I ain’t got a yellow raincoat. Search my apartment if you want. You won’t find one.”

  “Unless you already threw it away,” Gray said. “Funny thing is, though, we also found your name on her computer.”

  There was unbending steel in Gray’s voice, and a cold light gleamed in his eyes. Collins couldn’t help but feel like he was staring into a reptile’s eyes. He sensed how badly this could go.

  “That doesn’t mean a goddamned thing. People I don’t know are contactin’ me all a’time on Facebook.”

  “This wasn’t in Facebook. It was in her e-mail account.”

  Collins shrugged and shook his head.

  “I have no idea what you think I might’ve had to do with anythin’,” he said. “I done my time for what I done, and I’ve been on the up and up ever since.”

  “Really?” Detective Gray’s eyes narrowed like a snake’s. “Does sending letters to underage girls count as being on the ‘up and up’?”

  “There’s no law against writin’ e-mails to anyone. ‘N ‘sides. How wuz I spozed to know she was unnerage? People lie about that shit all a’time on-line.”

  “Unless what you wrote back can be construed as solicitation. Then, I think you may have a problem.”

  “Look here!” Collins said, no longer able to hold himself back. He stood up and darted over to the bars. Gray drew back as if concerned he was going to reach out between them and grab him.

  “I don’t know what happened! ‘N I don’t know what you think I might a’ done, but just ‘cause my name shows up on some dead chick’s computer, that don’t mean I had anythin’ to do with anythin’. So unless you’re gonna charge me, I want you to let me the Christ outta here.”

  Gray studied him for a moment, and then he smirked and shook his head. Stretching out his arm, he shot his cuff and glanced at his wristwatch.

  “The way I figure it, I can keep you another sixteen, seventeen hours,” Gray said calmly. “Maybe then you’ll think things through and maybe want to tell me something I don’t already know.”

  “Up yours,” Collins said, really wanting to spit now.

  “No,” Gray said as he turned and started walking down the corridor. “Up yours!”

  — 3 —

  Following visiting hours at the funeral home, Megan and Abby returned to the Old Settlers’ Cemetery just before dark. The rain had stopped, but it was still cloudy, so night came on, measured by the gradual darkening of the sky.

  No Reapers showed up along the way to take Megan away, but Abby wasn’t surprised. She knew Megan’s confession that she had jumped off the cliff instead of fallen wasn’t the whole truth, either. As long as Megan didn’t admit or didn’t realize and accept everything that had happened to her, she was going to linger here in the Dead Lands.

  But as night descended, another, stranger feeling consumed Abby.

  She was being pulled away from the cemetery, but she didn’t know why or by what. She would be much safer—from Reverend Wheeler and any other of the myriad dangers in the Dead Lands—if she stayed where she was, but something, an indescribable longing drew her from the cemetery.

  She knew she had to follow it wherever it led.

  “I have to go do something,” she told Megan once night had fallen, and the land was blanketed with darkness.

  “What do you mean, ‘do something’?” Megan had a look of shock on her face.

  “There’s … I’ll tell you later, but I have to go. Promise me you’ll stay here, no matter what?”

  “I don’t see why you can leave and I can’t.”

  “It’s just the way it is,” Abby said as a chill stirred deep inside her. She knew it was foolish to leave the safety of the cemetery now that it was dark; she wondered why whatever it was couldn’t wait until morning. She paused, trying to analyze and understand these feelings, but she couldn’t get a fix. All she knew was that something was wrong. Something about her situation had changed. She had no idea what it was, but like a magnet draws iron, she could feel herself being pulled.

  And she would follow the pull, no matter where it led or what dangers threatened her.

  “It won’t take long,” she said, cringing at the lie. The truth was, if she had no idea what was calling to her, how could she know how long it would take? She might never come back. What would Megan do then? All she knew was that she felt a deep yearning like she had never experienced before, or at least not since she was alive, and she had to find out what it was.

  “Don’t argue with me,” she said, adopting the tone her father used to use on her. “Just stay put. You don’t want Reverend Wheeler to get you, do you?”

  The expression of horror that lit Megan’s eyes was genuine. She shook her head and said, “No friggin’ way.”

  “Good. Then stay here, and I’ll be back before sunrise.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  With that, Abby drifted through the cemetery gate, hesitating for a moment to search the darkness for any hint of Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds. The wind sighed in fitful gusts, blowing fallen leaves along the ground where they clattered and snapped like skeletal fingers. The moon was behind a raft of clouds. Off to the left, the ocean was lost in darkness, but waves whispered on the sand, sounding further away than usual and filling Abby with unease.

  Abby moved slowly up the street, continually looking left and right, poised and ready to dart back into the cemetery at the first sign of danger. Streetlights lit the street, glowing like dandelion puffs in the fog. Abby could feel Megan watching after her, and just before she rounded the corner, she turned back and waved. She wasn’t sure if Megan saw her and waved back or not.

  Spreading her arms wide, Abby looked skyward, trying to get a sense of where she should go. The night surrounding her was silent as though muffled in cotton. A few cars passed by, but they appeared translucent and fleeting. Abby had the odd sensation that she was falling out of the world as a curious floating sensation took hold of her, and she rose into the air.

  She had moved like this before in the Dead Lands, but usually the way she got around was the same as how she would have gotten around if she were still alive. She would have walked. But now, this weird feeling of simultaneously flying and falling lifted her off the ground. She fought back an immediate rush of panic when she looked down and saw the world far below. Houses and streets, and woods and lawns all spiraled around her like she was being tossed about inside a kaleidoscope. Cars and people in small groups or alone moved about in bizarre patterns. A few people glowed, and Abby knew these were ghosts like her, wandering about the Dead Lands.

  She was filled with a queasy sense of vertigo as she spread her arms wide and tumbled through the night. The thought crossed her mind that she might be “moving on,” that she had finally been released from the Dead Lands and was going to her eternal rest, but then she noticed she was no longer moving.

  She hovere
d in the air above what looked to her as an ordinary house, exactly like all the others on this street except for one thing. A faint glow of phosphorescent blue light spilled from one of the upstairs windows.

  Another ghost? Abby wondered as she drifted closer to it. The brightness increased until it hurt her eyes. Time seemed to stop as she came closer to the window and looked inside the room.

  No ghost … just a living boy, sitting in a dark bedroom. He looked to be about her age. He was at a desk and staring at a bright square of light that flickered wildly as picture after picture flashed by.

  Abby watched him for a moment or two, shocked by his looks. She knew he couldn’t be who she thought he was, but the resemblance between him and her friend Jon Hilton was so strong she had to wonder if that’s why she had been drawn here.

  But then a stab of icy cold went through her when she saw something else—a small box on the desk next to the flickering box of light.

  In the box was her mother’s locket.

  — 4 —

  No matter how much Jim tried to concentrate on the computer game he was playing, his attention kept wandering back to the locket on the desk next to his monitor. The flickering glow made shadows dance and shift so the gold looked like it was alive and moving.

  Jim paused and took a breath. Poising his hands over the keyboard, quickly typed the message “L8R” into the message box and hit ENTER.

  Without waiting for a response from any of his on-line friends, he closed the screen, exited the game, and shut down the computer. He shivered as he leaned back in his chair all the while staring at the computer screen as his computer cycled down and then winked off. Without any other illumination other than what was coming in through the window, the room was plunged into darkness.

  In that darkness, whatever it was that had made him shiver got even stronger. A prickling surge of panic rushed through his stomach as he looked around. The streetlight outside his bedroom window cast long shadows of tree branches across the windowsill, floor, and opposite wall. There was no wind, but he could easily imagine—as he had since he was little—that those shadows weren’t of trees at all but of thin, skeleton hands that were reaching out to snag him.