Get another one!
I did. Found the strike strip again. Pinched the match between my fingers and . . . realized that I had no idea how to light it. Why would I? At camp, only counselors started fires. I'd never smoked a cigarette. I didn't share other girls' fascination with candles.
You must have done this before.
Probably, but I didn't remember . . .
Who cares! You've seen it in movies, haven't you? How hard can it be?
I pinched the match again, struck it. . . and it folded on impact. I pulled out another. How many were there? Not many —it was the same pack Rae had used the first day I'd caught her lighting matches.
This time, I held the match lower, near the head. I struck it. Nothing. I struck again and the match head flared, singeing my fingertips, but I didn't let go. The flame burned bright, but gave off very little light. I could see my hand, but beyond that —darkness.
No, there was something to the right, moving on the dirt. I could make out only a dark shape, dragging itself toward me. Big and long. Something reached out. It looked like an arm, splotchy, the hand almost white, long fingers glowing against the earth.
The hands reached forward, clawing the dirt, then pulling the body along. I could see clothes, ripped clothing. The smell of dirt and something dank filled my nostrils.
I lifted the match higher. The thing raised its head. A skull stared at me, strips of blackened flesh and dirty encrusted hair hanging from it. Empty eye sockets turned my way. The jaw opened, teeth clacking as it tried to speak, uttering only that horrible, guttural groan.
"Help. Help me."
I screamed into the gag so loud I thought my head would explode. Anything left in my bladder gave way. I dropped the match. It sputtered on the ground, then went out, but not before I saw a bony hand reaching for my leg and a second corpse slithering up beside the first.
For a second, I just sat there, nearly convulsing with fear, my screams little more than rasps. Then that hand wrapped around my leg, cold bone biting in, scraps of ragged cloth brushing my bare skin. Even if I couldn't see it, I could visualize it, and that image was enough to stop the screams in my throat and jolt me back to life.
I yanked free, kicking, shuddering as my foot made contact, and I heard a dry, snapping sound. As I scuttled away, I heard someone saying my name, telling me to stop.
I tried to pull the gag off, but my shaking fingers still couldn't find an edge. I gave up, crawling as fast as I could, until the thumps and clicks and enraged hisses grew distant.
"Chloe! Stop." A dark shape loomed above me, illuminated by a dim light. "It's —"
I kicked as hard as I could. A sharp hiss of pain and a curse.
"Chloe!"
Fingers clamped down on my arm. I swung. Another hand grabbed that arm, and yanked me off balance.
"Chloe, it's me. Derek."
I don't know what I did next. I think I might have collapsed into his arms, but if I did, I prefer not to remember it that way. I do remember feeling the gag rip away, then hearing that awful thump-thump and scrambling up.
"Th-th-there's —"
"Dead people, I know. They must have been buried down here. You accidentally raised them."
"R-r-raised —"
"Later. Right now, you need to —"
The thumping sounded again, and I could see them —in my mind—pulling their limp bodies along. The rustle of their clothing and dried flesh. The clatter and clicks of their bones. Their spirits trapped inside. Trapped in their corpses—
"Chloe, focus!"
Derek grabbed my forearms, holding me still, pulling me close enough to see the white flash of his teeth as he talked. From behind him came that faint light I'd seen earlier. The door had been left open, letting in just enough light to make out shapes.
"They won't hurt you. They aren't brain-eating movie zombies, okay? They're just dead bodies with their spirits returned to them."
Just dead bodies? With their spirits returned to them? I'd sent people —ghosts—back into their corpses? I thought of what that would be like, shoved back into your decomposed body, trapped there—
"I —I—I need to send them back."
"Yeah, that'd be the general idea."
Strain sapped the sarcasm from his words; and when I stopped shaking, I could feel the tension running through him, vibrating through the hands gripping my arms, and I knew he was struggling to stay calm. I rubbed my hands over my face, the stink of dirt filling my nostrils.
"O-okay, so how do I send them back?"
Silence. I looked up.
"Derek?"
"I . . . I don't know." He shook it off, rolling his shoulders, the gruffness returning to his voice. "You summoned them, Chloe. Whatever you did, undo it. Reverse it."
"I didn't do —"
"Just try."
I closed my eyes. "Go back. Back to your afterlife. I release you."
I repeated the words, concentrating so hard sweat trickled down my face. But the thumping kept coming. Closer. Closer.
I closed my eyes and made myself a movie, starring a foolish young necromancer who needs to send spirits back to the netherworld. I forced myself to picture the corpses. I saw myself calling to their ghosts, freeing them of their earthly bonds. I imagined their spirits lifting —
"Help. Help."
My throat went dry. The voice was right behind me. I opened my eyes.
Derek let out an oath and his hands tightened around my forearms.
"Keep your eyes closed, Chloe. Just remember, they won't hurt you."
A bony fingertip touched my elbow. I jumped.
"It's okay, Chloe. I'm right here. Keep going."
As I held myself still, the fingertips poked my arm, then slid along it, stroking, testing, feeling, like the blind man with the elephant. Bone scraped over my skin. A rustling clatter as the corpse pulled itself closer. The smell of it —
Visualize.
I am!
Not like that!
I closed my eyes —meaningless since I could see nothing with them open, but it made me feel better. The fingers crept and poked over my back, plucking my shirt, the corpse making gah-gah-gah noises as if trying to talk.
I gritted my teeth and blocked it out. Not easy, knowing what was touching me, pressing up against my side —
Enough already!
I concentrated instead on Derek's breathing. Slow, deep breaths through his mouth, as he struggled to stay calm.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Find a quiet spot. The creative place.
Slowly the sounds and touches and smells of the real world faded. I squeezed my eyes shut, and let myself free-fall into my imagination. I focused on the bodies, imagining myself tugging out their spirits, setting them free, like caged doves, winging their way into the sunlight.
I repeated the images —freeing the spirits, wishing them well, apologizing as I sent them on their way. Dimly I heard Derek's voice, telling me I was doing fine, but it seemed to float, dreamlike on the edge of consciousness. The real world was here, where I was undoing my mistake, reversing the—
'They're gone, Chloe," he whispered.
I stopped. I could still feel bony fingers, now on my leg, a body resting against mine, but it wasn't moving. When I twisted sideways, the corpse fell, an empty shell, collapsing at my feet.
Derek let out a long, deep breath, running his hands through his hair. After a moment, he asked, as if in afterthought, whether I was okay.
"I'll live."
Another shuddering deep breath. Then he looked at the body.
"Guess we've got some work to do."
Twenty-nine
BY "WORK," HE MEANT cleanup. As in, reburying the bodies. All I'll say about that is that I was glad even with the door open it was still too dark to see those corpses very well.
The graves were shallow, barely more than a few inches of dirt over the bodies, enough for them to claw through when their spirits were slammed back into their corpses. But I didn't want
to think about that.
I could tell the bodies had been buried quite a while, probably before Lyle House had become a group home. And they were adults. For now, that was all I needed to know.
As we worked, I asked Derek how he'd found me. He said that when he realized Tori had stayed behind, he knew she was up to something, so he went to check on me. How exactly he found me, he didn't say, only shrugged and mum bled something about checking "the obvious places" when I seemed to be missing.
The question now was: What to do about Tori?
"Nothing," I said, wiping my trembling hands after smoothing over the second grave.
"Huh?"
Nice to hear him say that for a change.
"I'm going to act like nothing happened."
He considered it, then nodded. "Yeah. If you blame her, things will only escalate. Better to ignore her and hope she gives up."
"Pray she gives up," I muttered as I crawled for the door.
"Is there still clean clothing down here?" Derek asked.
"One load in the dryer. That's it. Why —? Oh, right. Better not to go upstairs covered in dirt." I climbed down the ladder. "Most of what's in the dryer was yours so—"
"Chloe? Derek?" Mrs. Talbot stood in the laundry room. "What are you two doing together? Derek, you know you're not supposed to —" Her gaze traveled over my filthy clothing. "Dear Lord, what happened to you?"
* * *
There was no sense denying we'd been in the crawl space, since she caught us stepping from the closet, me caked in dirt. I moved my legs together, hoping it hid the wet mark. The blow to the back of my skull throbbed and I struggled to speak, praying Derek would jump in. He didn't. One rescue a day must have been his limit.
"I was doing laundry, and D-Derek came down, looking for —"
Dr. Gill stepped into the room. My gaze shot to her. "Go on, Chloe."
"H-he wanted his shirt. I —I asked about stain stud, because I couldn't find any and I opened the closet to look, and Derek said it was usually l-locked. We f-found the ladder and the crawl sp-space and we were curious."
"Oh, I bet you were curious," Dr. Gill said, crossing her arms. "Kids your age are very curious, aren't they?"
"I —I guess so. We were exploring—"
"I bet you were," Dr. Gill cut in.
I realized what she thought Derek and I had been doing.
Even as I denied it, 1 saw she'd given us the perfect out. If I just dropped my gaze sheepishly and said "Yep, you caught us," they'd have their explanation, with no reason to go into the crawl space and discover those hastily reburied corpses.
If it had been Simon, I'd have done it in a second. But Derek? I wasn't that good a liar.
It didn't matter. The more I denied it, the more certain they were that we'd been fooling around. Dr. Gill had already made up her mind. If you find a teenage boy and girl in a dark, private place, was there really any question what they'd been up to?
Even Mrs. Talbot seemed convinced, her mouth tight with disapproval as I blathered.
And Derek? He didn't say a word.
* * *
Once we were released, I hurried upstairs to change my jeans before anyone noticed the pee mark. When I checked my head, I had two goose eggs, one from Tori and one from hitting that pillar.
Back downstairs, I showed the smaller one to Dr. Gill, hoping it would support my story that we'd been exploring —see, I even bopped my head. She just took a cursory look, handed me Tylenol, and told me to lie down in the media room. Aunt Lauren was on the way.
* * *
"I don't know what to say, Chloe."
Aunt Lauren's voice was barely above a whisper. These were the first words she'd said to me since arriving at Lyle House. I'd heard her arguing with Dr. Gill and the nurses earlier, demanding to know why they weren't making sure Derek stayed away from me, as she'd been promised. But now, with me, that anger had disappeared.
We were alone in Dr. Gill's office. Just like Tori and her mother had been. While I knew this meeting wouldn't end in threats and bruises, I imagined I'd leave feeling no better than Tori had.
Aunt Lauren sat ramrod straight, her hands cupped in her lap, fingers twisting her emerald ring.
I know you're fifteen. Even if you haven't really dated yet, you're curious. In a place like this, isolated from your friends and family, living with boys, the temptation to experiment —"
"It wasn't like that. It wasn't anything like that." I twisted to face her. "We found the crawl space and Derek wanted to check it out and I thought that'd be cool."
"So you followed him in there? After what he'd done to you?" She'd gone still, the disappointment in her eyes changing to horror. "Oh, Chloe, I can't believe — Did you think harassing and hurting you the other day meant he liked you?"
"What? No, of course not. Derek isn't — He made a mistake. He didn't really hurt me and he didn't mean to do it. It was a misunderstanding."
She reached forward and gripped my hand. "Oh, Chloe. Sweetheart, no. You can't fall for that. You can't make excuses for him."
"Excuses?"
"Maybe this is the first boy who's ever said 'I like you,' and I know that feels good, but this will not be the only boy who likes you, Chloe. He's just the first with the nerve to say so. He's older. He took advantage of the situation. At school, I imagine girls won't look at him twice and here he is, with a pretty girl, young, impressionable, trapped —"
"Aunt Lauren!" I yanked from her grasp. "God, it's not —"
"You can do better, Chloe. Much better."
From the distaste on her face, I knew she wasn't talking about how Derek treated me. I felt an odd surge of outrage. Sure, I couldn't bring myself to pretend that I'd been fooling around with him. But I'd felt bad about thinking that way.
How Derek looked wasn't his fault. He was obviously aware of it —and how others reacted to it—and it certainly wasn't like he tried to be repulsive. An adult should know better. Aunt Lauren should be the one giving me the you-can't-judge-a-book-by-its-cover speech.
Any notion I'd had of confessing the truth to Aunt Lauren evaporated. She looked at Derek and she saw a creep who'd attacked her niece. Nothing 1 could say would convince her otherwise, because he seemed like a creep. And nothing I could say would convince her I was really seeing ghosts, because I seemed like a schizophrenic.
"Aren't you going to say anything, Chloe?"
"Why?" I heard the chill in my voice. "I've tried. You've already made up your mind."
She shifted in her seat, inching to the edge, closing the gap between us. "I'd like to hear your side."
"Just because I'm in this place, just because I'm 'sick,' doesn't mean I'm any different than I was a week ago. Back then, you'd know something was wrong with this story. You'd have asked for my explanation before accusing me of anything. But now?" I stood. "Now I'm just the crazy girl."
"Chloe, I don't think —"
"I know exactly what you think," I said, and walked out.
* * *
Aunt Lauren tried to follow, but I wouldn't listen. I was too angry. Too hurt. To think I'd fool around in a basement crawl space with the first boy who showed an interest in me? That really stung.
God only knew what she thought we'd been doing. I was pretty sure her imagination had taken her way past the sweet first-kiss stage. To think I'd go from "never been on a date" to "rolling around in the dirt with a stranger"? That was insulting. No, more than insulting. It made me furious.
Did Aunt Lauren know the first thing about me? And if she didn't, who did?
When it was clear I wasn't going to "calm down" and talk to my aunt, it was time for the next phase. The trial. I was summoned back into the office, with Derek as my codefendant and Dr. Gill and Dr. Davidoff as judge and jury. It was a closed court. Even Aunt Lauren wasn't allowed in.
I didn't bother to argue about why we'd been in the crawl space. I'd moved well past the "Oh, my God, I don't want anyone to think I'm that kind of girl" stage. If they thought
Derek and I had been grappling in the dirt, then at least it meant they wouldn't go into the crawl space and see the signs of disturbance . . . or, if they did, they'd figure they knew what caused it.
Despite what Aunt Lauren believed, I was sure Derek was as horrified by the thought as I was. When Dr. Gill tried to get a confession from him, he only shrugged, and muttered "whatever," arms crossed, big frame slumped in his seat, defiance in the set of his chin. Like me, he'd realized there was no use arguing, but he wasn't about to confess either.
"This isn't the first time you two have . . . tangled," Dr. Gill said finally. "And I have a feeling it won't be the last. We need to nip this in the bud, and the only way we're going to do that is with a transfer. One of you will have to go."
"I will." I heard the words and it took a moment to realize they'd come from me.
Was I crazy? Volunteering to be transferred when I was already worried about what such a transfer meant?
But I didn't take it back. If one of us had to leave, it should be me. As frightened as I was of being shipped out, I wouldn't separate Simon and Derek.
Still, I expected Derek to jump in. I don't know why — certainly not chivalry. But, it seemed only right to at least raise a token protest. The polite thing to do . . . which I supposed should explain why he didn't say a word.
"No one's going anywhere," Dr. Davidoff said softly. "For now, I'm putting you both on notice. But don't give me any reason to revisit this discussion. Is that understood?"
It was.
Thirty
WHEN THE DOCTORS DISMISSED us, Derek and I headed into the hall together. I tried to dawdle, fussing with an imaginary spot on my shirt and giving him time to walk ahead, avoiding any awkwardness. He parked himself in front of me, arms crossed, fingers rapping his biceps with impatience.
I reminded myself of how he'd rescued me. I should be grateful. I was. Right then, though . . . I don't know. My head hurt and I was still smarting over my aunt's rejection, and when I'd offered to be sent away and he didn't argue, it stung. I didn't want it to. But it did.
"What are you wiping at?" he whispered finally.
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