by Dan Rix
Nothing happened.
“Now what?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s supposed to move.”
“Aren’t we supposed to both touch it or something?”
“Duh, right,” she said. “I forgot.”
Together, we crept up to the board, but before we could touch anything, the planchette jiggled and tumbled to the floor. I snatched it up and put it back on the board, breathing too fast. “Grab the other side.”
She did. “Wait, we’re supposed to ask a question,” said Megan.
“Right, uh . . .” I swallowed hard and stared at the foggy words in the mirror. “Who are you?”
Under my fingers, the wood piece nudged to the side. We both shrieked and let go.
“Did you do that?” said Megan.
“No, of course not—”
Then the piece moved again all on its own, like someone had flicked it. Megan grabbed my arm. Something nudged the piece again, and in fits and starts, it inched across the board until it settled on a letter.
Megan leaned forward. “S,” she announced.
It moved to the next letter, and I read off an “A.” The wood piece slid again, stopping at three more letters.
“R . . . A . . . H,” said Megan.
“Sarah,” we said together.
Chapter 18
“The interment was on Thursday,” said Megan, hanging up the phone after talking to her sister. “She’s buried in the columbarium over at Forest Glade Cemetery.”
I nodded, chewing my lip as my mind grappled for an explanation. “And she saw them do it? I mean, your sister, she saw them inter her or whatever?”
“That’s what she said.”
“What the hell?” I breathed.
Sarah—or Sarah’s ghost, or spirit, or whatever that thing was in Megan’s bathroom—had spelled out no other words on the Ouija board or in the mirror. Had she floated away through the walls? Or was she still here, watching us?
Help me.
That was all. And her name.
The simplest message possible.
The whole episode left me deeply unnerved.
“What was her last name?” I said. “I don’t even know her last name.”
“Erskine,” said Megan.
“Erskine,” I repeated. “Sarah Erskine. It wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been her.”
“Who else do we know named Sarah?”
“She’s dead, Megan.”
“Isn’t that the definition of a ghost?”
“It’s the dark matter . . . it’s screwing with us.” I glanced nervously around Megan’s bedroom. The place didn’t feel safe anymore. Something could be here right now sharing this very same space with us.
“The Ouija board moved,” said Megan.
“I know, and there were footprints and she wrote on the mirror and she turned on the faucet. I know she was real. There was something there, something that had physical substance. The steam even swirled around her.”
“What do you want to do, Leona?”
I looked up at her. “How far is Forest Glade Cemetery? How far of a drive?”
She shrugged. “Fifteen minutes. Why?”
I pushed myself to my feet. “Grab your keys.”
Bougainvillea clung in thorny clumps to the fence around Forest Glade Cemetery, littering the dewy grass with magenta petals. We found a sparse section where the vines retreated from the chain links.
I wedged the toe of my running shoes into the fence and shimmied up to my hips, thorns scraping at my wrists. I hoisted my legs over one at a time, then dropped into a heap on the other side, where I leapt to my feet and brushed off. A cool adrenaline buzzed under my skin.
We hadn’t bothered with invisibility, though we’d brought the contact lens case in the car just in case.
This late at night, the cemetery was deserted. Gates closed at sunset.
The fence rattled, and Megan landed behind me.
Rows of decorated gravestones stretched away from us over grassy hills, dotted with dandelions and flowers, all shimmering under the full moon. Lanterns lined a cobblestone footpath.
“Why does everyone say graveyards are creepy?” I said. “This isn’t creepy. This is nice.”
“It’s the thought that’s creepy,” said Megan.
“What, that dead people are buried here? The earth has been around for four billion years. Every inch of ground has got dead people buried in it. What do you think soil is, huh?”
“Okay, Leona.”
My eyes settled on an open-air structure of white marble and Greek columns at the top a hill. “That must be the columbarium.”
“How do you know?” she said.
“It looks like a columbarium,” I said, starting up the path.
Sure enough, the building turned out to be a maze of marble walls, each face bearing hundreds of bronze plaques. Little niches for stashing dead bodies.
Megan edged closer to me. “Leona, how are we going to find her?”
“We’re going to check each one.” I shined my cell phone light at a random plaque, all corroded and black. Javier Something-or-other, couldn’t read his last name. I moved to the next plaque, also corroded. Hanging from a knob in the wall, a green urn held a few dried twigs, flowers long since dead.
“Why don’t we look for fresh flowers and a new plaque,” said Megan.
I stopped, ready to dust off a third plaque. “That’s . . . a much better idea.”
So we ventured deeper into the maze, panning our cell phone lights across the marble walls flanking us. The plaques at the top towered twelve feet above us, impossible to reach. Cheaper real estate probably.
At last, my light gleamed off a shiny bronze plaque, newly minted, nestled deep in a bushy wreath of fresh flowers and ribbons. Hers.
Sarah Erskine.
I guess I hadn’t really believed she was here, because seeing her name sent a chill through my bones. She had left us a message an hour ago, yet here was her grave. Her body had been interred here for almost three days.
Wait . . . her body?
I glanced side to side at the neighboring plaques, only a few inches apart. “No, no, no,” I said, backing away to survey the entire wall. “You couldn’t fit a body in these slots. No way.”
“No shit, Sherlock, she was cremated.”
I blinked, feeling stupid. “Cremated?”
“Yeah, when they burn your body until there’s just ashes—”
“I know what cremated means,” I snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me that before we made this stupid trip over here?”
“I didn’t see how it was relevant.”
“Megan, she was cremated.” I gave her a pointed look. “Tell me that’s not relevant.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Hold up, hold up, you’re not saying . . .”
I nodded.
“Wait, you think she’s . . .” she pointed vaguely into the distance, “you think she’s still . . .”
“Still alive?” I said. “I’m just putting two and two together. There’s no coffin here, there’s no body, right? Just a bunch of ashes, which means no one saw them put a body in the ground. And thirty minutes ago we had someone invisible in our house claiming to be her. All I’m saying is something really screwed up is going on here, okay? That’s all I’m saying.”
My phone rang, making us both jump.
I pulled it out.
One look at the caller ID made my throat seize up.
Emory Lacroix. He was calling me . . . why was he calling me? My skin broke out in hot flashes.
We’d exchanged numbers this afternoon. The memory surfaced out of a fog, as if it had happened in another life. At the time I’d
been too lovesick—and maybe actually sick—to think straight.
“I . . . I need to take this,” I said turning away from my best friend. I swiped a trembling finger across the screen to accept the call and raised the phone to my cheek, mechanically answering, “Hello?”
“Yo,” he said, chewing something on the other end. Crunchy cereal it sounded like. “I wake you up?”
I shook my head, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “No,” I whispered.
“Come over,” he said. “My parents are gone.”
My heart seemed to speed up and slow down at the same time.
“Right . . . right now?” I asked, horrified.
“Yes. Right now.”
“Do I get a choice?” I said.
“Unless you want me to make it for you,” he said, “which I’m doing right now. Get your butt in your car and drive over here. It’s a full moon, and I got steps in my backyard that go right down to the beach. It’s fucking beautiful right now.”
For a split-second, I felt happy little butterflies in my stomach, and then my insides twisted up into a tiny knot and crushed them out of existence, leaving only cold emptiness. My heart slammed against my sternum.
But I couldn’t say no.
Only he could judge me as worthy, only he could choose to show me mercy for what I’d done. He held my salvation, and as long as he held it, I would be his slave.
I would do anything for him.
“Cool,” I said, feeling hollow. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Dress warm,” he said, and hung up.
I lowered the phone, struggling to breathe against a horrible crushing in my chest. I was trapped.
I couldn’t bring myself to confess. Not tonight, not on a moonlit beach, not on the same day I kissed him. To do that would be unthinkable. But to see him again without telling him would only deepen my betrayal. I couldn’t do that either.
A hundred bronze plaques stared down at me in silent judgment, the ashes of the deceased. Right now, I would have traded places with them in a heartbeat.
I had to do it tonight.
Right now, before I got any closer to him and forever lost my chance at redemption.
His phone call had forced my hand.
I inhaled slowly, summoning the courage. I could do this. I had to do this. It wanted me to do this . . . the dark matter. It had been preparing me for this moment since that night I had gone down into the crater and found it.
I glanced at Megan.
She gaped at me, jaw suspended in disbelief. She’d seen the caller ID over my shoulder, she’d heard the entire conversation.
She knew I was about to see him.
“Take me home,” I said, no longer caring about her or Sarah Erskine or the message in the mirror.
Tonight, I would make myself invisible and lead Emory Lacroix to the decayed remains of his fifteen-year-old sister.
“Leona, that you?” came my mom’s muffled voice from my parents’ bedroom, the door open a few inches.
I froze in the hallway, caught in the act. It was almost midnight, they should have been asleep.
I stepped up to their door, peered into the darkness. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“I thought you were spending the night at Megan’s?”
“Yeah, I . . . I changed my mind. She just dropped me off.”
“Okay.” The mattress creaked as she turned over. “Would you mind closing our door?”
I pulled it halfway shut, but hesitated and leaned my forehead on the wood. After tonight, nothing would ever be the same again. “Mom?” I said, feeling like I needed to say goodbye to them.
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
“Dad, you awake?”
“Mmm . . .”
“I love you.”
He mumbled something back to me.
“Leona, is everything okay?” asked my mom, tossing some more.
“Everything’s fine . . . everything’s going to be fine. I promise.” With that, I pulled the door shut. In the silence, a shiver slipped under my skin.
I was doing this tonight.
Back in my bedroom, I closed the door and backed against it, taking slow, deep breaths to calm my humming nerves. My heart felt excited and sick at the same time.
Time to get ready.
I set the contact lens case on the floor, fingers jittery, and uncapped it. The interior came into view. Nothing there.
They’ll find you, Leona.
I pushed the thought from my mind, kicked off my shoes, peeled off my socks. Every inch of me trembled. My icy fingers groped the button of my jeans, undid it, and lowered the zipper. I tugged them off and lay them on my bed, followed by my sweater, my shirt, my bra, my panties. A chill swirled around my naked skin, raising goosebumps. I let out another shiver. This one from sheer terror.
Tonight was going to be cold. I took a final shuddering breath and dipped my index finger into the contact case, into what felt like a dollop of honey, and raised it in front of me. Then I stretched it around my fingernail toward my knuckle, erasing the finger before my eyes. By now I was a pro at this.
After tonight, Emory would go to the police. Of course he would. They would reopen the investigation. They would find clues on the body—Megan’s and my DNA, a strand of my long hair, chips of lipstick-red paint from a Toyota Corolla embedded in her scalp. They would eventually find me.
I needed them to find me.
I needed him to find me.
I pulled the dark matter down my wrist like I was pulling on a glove, averting my eyes from the cross section of quivering meat.
There would be a trial, and I would plead guilty and go to jail and pay for my crimes. The sentence would be long . . . but not forever. Years . . . but not a whole lifetime. When I eventually got out, my body would still be young, I would have most of my twenties still ahead of me. And then, maybe then, after I had repented and confessed my sins and served my time, I would finally be able to forgive myself.
But not until Emory did first.
The dark matter spread over me on its own now, claiming my flesh inch by inch. I closed my eyes and let it happen, focusing on the tingle climbing my neck, unfurling across my torso, swallowing me whole. The sticky membrane clamped over my nose and mouth, and for a panicky few seconds, I choked on it. Then it expanded into my lungs and fused to my skin, became one with my body. It was now my skin.
No, Leona, said the voice in my head.
You’re now my skin.
Chapter 19
Tonight, Emory was expecting me, Leona Hewitt. Instead, he would get his sister’s ghost.
A full moon beamed over the quiet neighborhoods on the Mesa, its rays seeping right through me. I had no shadow. As I walked away from my bike, the gravelly asphalt dug into the soles of my bare feet, but I felt no pain. A week of hiking along concrete sidewalks with no shoes had toughened them, and now I could probably walk over broken glass without flinching.
A thin sheen of sweat clung to my legs and torso, soaking in the night air and chilling me to the point of hypothermia. Even my bones felt frozen, like they were made of ice, thawing slowly and leeching cold water into my veins. Yet my face burned like I had a fever.
Could I really do this?
Could I really lead him to the grotesque secret I’d been hiding for three months?
My nerve-endings felt numb, deadened by the anxiety crackling through my limbs. A figure in a dark hoodie approached fast on the sidewalk, eyes downcast, shoulders hunched forward. A stranger’s presence always made me hyperaware of my nakedness. I stepped to the side and let him pass, resisting the instinct to cover myself. A tiny pebble skittered away from my toe.
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He gave it the most fleeting of glances and hurried on his way.
It was strange how people reacted, the excuses they made. Out of nowhere, in a seemingly impossible incident, a pebble bounces across the pavement on its own, and the brain instantly has an explanation—he must have kicked it, or it’s a seed that fell from a tree, or it was dislodged by the rumble of a distant semi-truck, or a bird dropped it. Never does it occur to him that it was kicked by an invisible teenager not five feet away who’s on her way to confess to a murder.
The stranger made a beeline toward the hedge where I’d hidden my bike, threw a haphazard look behind him, and wrestled it out of the brush and rode off with it.
“Hey!” I yelled, running after him before I could stop myself.
He skidded to a stop, lay the bike clumsily on the ground, and took off running without a look backward.
Grumbling to myself, I hauled the bike back to the hedge and continued on my way.
Emory’s house reared up on my left, silhouetted against an ocean glittering in silver moonlight. The sight stilled my galloping heart. He would have taken me down to the beach to show me that sight. And then what? Would he have kissed me by the crashing surf until my toes curled in the sand?
My stomach gave a funny quiver.
It wasn’t too late. I could run back home and tear off the dark matter, dress cute instead, and come back as Leona Hewitt—just an innocent girl with a puppy crush on a hot senior. For one more night, just one more night, I could pretend.
A gnawing sensation blossomed in the pit of my stomach at the thought. I couldn’t. I couldn’t live like that anymore. If I didn’t do this right now, the terrible weight of my failure would crush down on my soul. I wouldn’t be able to make it through the night like that.
Standing in front of his house, I licked my lips and tasted the salt of my sweat. Inhaling, I took in the dewy sweet smell of moist soil. A wall of dark windows stared back at me. One lit upstairs. His bedroom.
My pulse climbed into the stratosphere.
