Raising the Dead

by Mara Purnhagen

It was the driving principle behind my parents’ careers. But after Charleston, I’d noticed a shift in how my mother and my father approached their work.

  While Dad continued his no-nonsense, scientific approach to all things paranormal, Mom seemed to take a step back. The first time I’d noticed the change was the day we returned from Charleston. Our house was a wreck, the result of two angry spirits. Furniture lay on its side and the hundreds of sheets of paper scattered throughout the downstairs made me think a tiny tornado had touched down in the center of our dining room. Immediately, Dad went about fixing the big things, such as returning chairs to their rightful place and inspecting the ceiling for cracks.

  Mom took a different approach. She knelt on the floor, examining each piece of paper for clues and running her hands over every jagged line streaking the walls. She was searching for a pattern, I realized, some common thread that tied everything together. While Dad assumed it was all a random mess, Mom thought it represented something deeper and more complex. When she asked Dad to slow down, he laughed. “The sooner we put all of this behind us, the better,” he declared.

  Mom tried to explain her ideas to him, that maybe they should catalog exactly what had happened, but Dad dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “It means nothing,” he said. “Nothing a couple hours of hard work can’t fix.”

  Mom pursed her lips and looked like she wanted to debate the issue, but even I knew that when Dad decided upon something, it was final. Mom picked her battles, and this was one she couldn’t win. Yet.

  “Ranch or Italian?” Mom asked Trisha, bringing me back to the present.

  “Definitely Italian.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  I watched the way Mom talked with Trisha, the way she smiled and went out of her way to make Trisha comfortable. We rarely met Shane’s girlfriends. He only introduced us to women he had dated for more than a month, a population I could count on one hand. Trisha was special, and everyone in my family knew it.

  While the pizza cooked we converged in the dining room, eager for new flood updates. The same footage aired on the news, though, an endless loop of water licking the bottom of stop signs and cars gliding along on dark waves.

  “I haven’t seen a storm this bad since Noah was in diapers,” Trisha announced.

  Noah winced. He’d endured a full 24 hours of discomfort, beginning with having to dress in my dad’s old sweatpants after we made it home, to sleeping on our sofa with a snoring Shane sprawled out on the floor, to watching his mom feed chunks of grapefruit to Shane at breakfast. Noah looked miserable, and I wanted to do something about it. While the adults stared at the TV, flipping between the weather channel and the local news, I invited him up to my bedroom.

  “I think you need a break from all of this,” I told him.

  “Anything’s better than staring at the TV,” he agreed.

  As soon as Noah stepped into my room, I felt nervous and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. It wasn’t that I thought something would happen, but maybe being alone together would inspire him to make a move. I was suddenly aware of everything my room held and what those things might say about me. Would he laugh at the small pink teddy bear perched on top of my dresser? Would he dare open my closet? Normally my clothes were strewn in heaps across the floor, but when it became apparent that no one would be leaving the house Friday night, I had shoved everything into my closet. An avalanche of clothes waited behind the double doors, ready to tumble down on the unlucky person who turned the handle.

  Thankfully, Noah did not venture near my closet. Instead, he went straight to my bookshelf while I sat on the edge of my neatly made bed. “These are all required reading,” he said as he examined my small assortment of books.

  “Not all of them.” I was immediately defensive. I’d had no idea he would be drawn to my bookshelf, of all things. My desk was much more impressive, with a powder-blue laptop, a ceramic mug filled with pens in every color imaginable, and a framed picture of all of my friends—including him—at homecoming.

  Noah held up a paperback copy of A Tale of Two Cities. “You bought this for recreational purposes?”

  “It’s a classic.” It was also an assignment at one of the many high schools I had attended. We’d moved before I had finished the semester—or the book.

  “Hmm.” Noah looked unconvinced. He ran his fingers over the spines of my collection, stopping when he came to a red paperback. “I like this one.” He held up a well-worn copy of Fahrenheit 451.

  “That’s my dad’s,” I told him. “But it’s one of my favorites.”

  “Mine too.”

  This minor revelation made me majorly happy. Sharing the same taste in books, despite the fact that those books had been part of a school assignment, was a positive sign.

  I wasn’t sure what to do after Noah finished examining my pathetic bookshelf. Invite him to sit with me on the bed? Offer him a peek into my dresser? Fortunately, he made the decision for me.

  “I was thinking about the coffins,” he said as he sat down on the floor. “What happens after the rain stops? Whose job is it to go out and collect them all?”

  “The police? Or the county coroner, maybe?”

  “Yeah, but they’re going to be crazy busy with everything else going on. Retrieving old caskets might not make the list.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Think your parents will get involved?”

  I sighed. “Probably.” Mom would definitely volunteer. She would want to examine not only the coffins but their contents, as well. Both my parents had assisted in similar projects, but it had been a while—not since I was a toddler, at least.

  “So Shane would help, right? I mean, he goes where they go.”

  “Wait.” I narrowed my gaze at him. “You’re hoping Shane becomes totally occupied with work for a while so he won’t have time for your mom.”

  Noah gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Right. Nice try, but a few hours away at work isn’t going to stop those two from being a couple.”

  He groaned. “Did you see them at breakfast? Can’t they at least tone it down when I’m around?”

  “It was a little much,” I agreed.

  He leaned his head against my bed. “And I’m so tired. Shane snores like a wild boar.”

  “Wild boars snore?”

  “You know what I mean.” He closed his eyes. “I need a nap.”

  I got up. “Take my bed for a few hours.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” I had changed the sheets the night before, so I was pretty sure there were no drool spots on my pillow.

  “Well, yeah, if you’re okay with me sleeping in your bed.” Noah pulled himself off the floor. We stood facing each other for a moment. He was so close I could smell the cinnamon on his breath and I wondered if I should just step forward and kiss him. I couldn’t, though. I wasn’t that brave.

  “Sweet dreams,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart.

  I closed the door behind me and went downstairs. Noah was in my room, in my bed. It made me giddy, and I tried not to smile too widely.

  Downstairs, Mom was taking the pizza out of the oven. “Where’s Noah?”

  I sat down at the table. “He wanted to take a nap. I guess he’s had a hard time sleeping because of Shane’s snoring.”

  “Tell me about it,” Trisha muttered.

  Mom and I shared an amused glance. “Well, dinner’s ready. We’ll save him some for later.”

  After dinner, I stayed in the kitchen and called Avery. “Guess who’s sleeping in my bed right now?”

  “Seriously?”

  I curled a strand of hair around my finger. “He’s up there right now. That’s a good sign, right?”

  “No.”

  “What?” I was confused. Why wasn’t Avery excited for me?

  She sighed. “I don’t think it’s a sign of anything, Charlotte.”

  “But—“
/>   “Look, I know you like him, but I think you’re setting yourself up to get hurt.” She cleared her throat. “I need to tell you something. You’re not going to like it, which I why I didn’t tell you earlier.”

  I listened carefully as Avery described an encounter she had with Noah during the homecoming dance. She had watched as Noah and I danced to a slow song. When the song ended, I had gone over to talk with Callie and some of our other friends while Noah went to get us drinks. Avery went up to him. She mentioned that we seemed to be hitting it off, but Noah had shaken his head. “We’re friends only,” he said. His voice, Avery said, was emphatic. “She knows that, right?” he’d asked her. “That we’re friends and nothing more?” Avery said that I did know that. She then asked Noah to go out to her car and get a jacket for her. “I wanted to talk with you right away,” she said, “but then Jared and I started talking and I got distracted.”

  “Oh.” The giddiness that had consumed me earlier evaporated.

  “This is a good thing, Charlotte.”

  “How is this a good thing? The guy I like wants nothing to do with me.”

  “That’s not true. He likes you, but not in the way you want.”

  “Again—how is that a good thing?”

  Avery was quiet for a second. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Charlotte, now you know. Now you can move on and find someone who wants to be more than a friend. Instead of focusing on a relationship that will never happen, you can open to the possibility of someone else.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

  “Not exactly.” She sighed. “I tried setting up Callie with someone once. She was really into him, but he didn’t return the feelings. It was a disaster.”

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. Maybe Avery was right. It was time to accept a nice, simple friendship with Noah and put my romantic energy into someone else.

  “You’re my friend,” Avery said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s the only reason I’m telling you this.”

  “I know.” I could hear everyone in the dining room discussing the storm. Then I heard Noah walking down the stairs. “I have to go. Noah’s awake.”

  “Sure. And remember—there’s nothing wrong with having a great guy friend.”

  “Right.”

  “Besides,” Avery continued. “Callie says she knows a football player who would be good for you.”

  We said goodbye and I hung up. Noah walked into the kitchen, his hair pressed to one side from where he’d slept on it. I resisted the urge to brush my fingers through it.

  “How was the nap?” I asked.

  “Good. I’m starving, though.”

  I got up from the table. “I’ll reheat the pizza for you.”

  He sat down, still looking sleepy. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” I took the pizza out of the fridge. “After all, what are friends for?”

  Chapter Three

  The rain stopped roaring on Sunday night. By Monday, it was barely a drizzle. The sky still loomed gray and bloated clouds moved fast and low, but the worst was finally over.

  “I guess we’ll be leaving,” Trisha announced after breakfast on Monday. I had gotten used to having everyone around. We had developed a cozy routine revolving around simple meals and old movies. The house would seem empty without our guests, but part of me was relieved: it was difficult to be around Noah all the time. I kept noticing little things about him that I liked, such as the way he was careful to always clean up after himself and help my mom, and how he laughed at something on TV. It would be easier to see him as just a friend, I decided, once there was some distance between us.

  With school officially canceled, I focused on helping my parents, who had reached out to overwhelmed authorities and offered to assist in their casket cleanup efforts. Over two dozen coffins had been unearthed during the storm, and it was essential to get them back to their proper burial spaces. One had been discovered wedged in the cart corral at a grocery store. Two were found lodged between trees at a local playground. And several had floated all the way to the high school, where they came to a strange stop on the drenched football field. The image of the splintered wooden boxes sitting near the 50-yard mark dominated the local media. Dad was not amused.

  “There are thousands of people without power right now, and this is what makes the news?”

  Despite the fact that he made a living off people’s intense interest in life after death, he was constantly annoyed by public fascination with the subject.

  Mom researched local cemeteries, made endless calls, and confirmed that the coffins had come from a tiny graveyard a mile away.

  “Some of them are from before the Civil War,” she told me and Dad. I had raided the pantry to produce dinner, which consisted of canned spaghetti with meatballs and buttered wheat bread. After a weekend without a trip to the store, canned goods were all we had left, but it was practically gourmet by my family’s standards.

  I automatically grabbed ginger ale out of the fridge because I knew Noah liked it, then put it back when I remembered that he was gone. He was probably sick of sleeping on the couch and being surrounded by Shane and my family all day, I reasoned. He was probably sick of me, for that matter. After the time we spent in my room and his nap on my bed, he had seemed extra distant. Maybe he had sensed my crush, and was trying to define clearer boundaries. He wouldn’t need to worry about me, though—I was determined to take Avery’s advice and move on to someone who was interested.

  “The police have taken custody of a dozen coffins so far,” Mom continued. “They moved them to the morgue already.”

  “How?” Dad asked. I couldn’t imagine a flatbed truck stacked with century-old caskets driving through town. That was definitely an image that would attract the local news. Mom’s reply surprised me.

  “Garbage trucks.”

  “They put them on garbage trucks?” I couldn’t disguise the disgust in my voice. It seemed so disrespectful.

  “Yes,” Mom confirmed. “The trucks are big enough to hold the coffins and don’t attract attention.”

  “Still,” I said. “It seems so gross.”

  “It’s practical,” Dad said. “These people have been dead for so long that they have no family members who would remember them. It’s the best way to transport them without attracting unnecessary attention.” He nodded, satisfied. “Very smart.”

  It may have been practical and smart, but I couldn’t help think of the other Charlotte, the girl who had died over a hundred years earlier and who had spoken to me in Charleston. I wouldn’t want her thrown into the back of a garbage truck. I wouldn’t want anyone carted around that way. It was dehumanizing.

  “We’ll meet with the caretaker tomorrow morning,” Mom said. “It’s such an old, tiny little cemetery that it’s basically been forgotten. The man I spoke with mows the grass twice a year, and that’s about it. This whole situation has him rattled.”

  “But he’s willing to accept our help?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.” Mom played with her fork. I was pleased to see that she had eaten all of the dinner I had single-handedly prepared, even if it was simply canned food heated in the oven. “He understands that the bodies need to be interred as quickly as possible. He also understands that we have an historical interest in the work.”

  Historical interest. It was a fancy way of saying that my parents like to look at old dead bodies. One of Mom’s stock lectures focused on historical burial rites and practices. This was like winning the corpse research lottery.

  She explained that she wanted to visit the cemetery first. A geological survey team would be there to make sure the ground was safe and that the caskets could be returned to the earth.

  “How are you going to match the bodies with their gravestones?” I asked.

  “That’s where my expertise comes in.” Mom finished her dinner and moved her plate to the side. “We’ll start by examining artifacts left with the bodies. How they’re dressed wi
ll help narrow down a time frame, as well. But we may not be able to correctly identify each one.”

  “We’re talking about centuries-old wood,” Dad said. “How many even survived the flood intact?”

  “Not many. But there’s about a dozen complete caskets. Cracked, but whole.”

  “So some of the caskets aren’t whole?” I looked down at my half-eaten spaghetti. I wasn’t so hungry anymore.

  “No. Most of them were damaged too heavily. Chances are the remains inside weren’t substantial, though.”

  I hoped not. I could imagine someone emerging from their house after days stuck inside, only to discover a withered arm resting on the sopping wet lawn. My parents’ task was a strange one, but it held importance. It helped restore a kind of peace.

  “How can I help?”

  Mom and Dad looked at me. “We weren’t planning on having you help,” Dad said.

  “We didn’t think this would be something you would be interested in,” Mom rushed to add.

  “I’m not.” I had no intention of lifting coffin lids and peeking in. But I was used to being a part of the family team. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be involved in some small way. “I was thinking of clerical stuff or research or whatever. But if you don’t need me, that’s fine.”

  “Clerical work,” Mom repeated. “I’m sure we could come up with something.”

  “You could work from home.” Dad smiled. “We’ll call you if we need anything.”

  It was a brush-off, and despite the fact that this was not a project I was eager to get too involved with, my parents’ quick dismissal of me stung. After dinner I went to my room and called Annalise.

  “I need some big sister wisdom,” I told her.

  “And you called me?”

  “Ha. Seriously, do you have a minute?”

  “I always have a minute for you. Talk to me and I’ll do my best to impart my wealth of knowledge and experience upon you.”

  Annalise already knew about the flooding and the damaged graveyard. She had talked with Mom several times a day since the storm began to assure her that everything was fine and she was riding out the storm. I suspected she had spent the weekend curled up with her boyfriend, Mills, and had barely noticed the weather outside her apartment. She was lucky—the guy she liked was definitely into her as much as she was into him.