by Rachel Rust
I stare at the tape. “What do I do with this?”
“Put the boxes together.” He laughs and walks off without giving any further instructions.
“Hurry, tape those boxes up,” Grandma says. “More people are coming with food.”
I sit on the floor with the cardboard and wrestle the large box, practically having to lay over the top of it to get all the flaps closed. The packing tape uncurls with a nasty screech and sticks to my hair before I can get it onto the cardboard.
“Having fun?” a familiar voice asks with plenty of humor.
I glare up at David as he peers over the table at me. Next to him, his dad is unloading a crapload of cereal boxes in front of my delighted Grandma.
“You have tape in your hair,” David says with a grin.
I yank the sticky strip away and try not to grimace as it rips out multiple strands. “Thanks, I had no idea.”
David glances at Grandma and then leans down and whispers, “What are you doing later?”
“Nothing, but I don’t know how long I have to be here.”
“Text me when you’re done, and we can—”
“Here are some more boxes,” a chipper voice says. Samantha literally bumps into David, cutting off his words and shoving him out of the way so that she’s now standing between David and me.
“Oh, how wonderful,” Grandma says, taking the food from her.
Samantha fires a side-eyed glare my way before smiling back at David. “I’m so happy to run into you here.” She places a hand on his arm. “It’s so thoughtful of you to help the food drive.”
David responds with a shrug and pats his dad on the shoulder. “We should get back to the store.” He holds up his phone as a reminder for me to text him and I nod.
Samantha’s smile fades as he leaves. Whatever her fixation is with him, he clearly doesn’t reciprocate it, and I can’t help the grin that creeps across my face. She scowls back at me and then turns her other face to my grandma with a wide smile and sickly sweet voice. “Goodbye, Mrs. Carpenter.”
“Goodbye, Sam,” Grandma says. After Samantha leaves, she turns to me. “Such a kind girl. You two should hang out more often.”
Over my dead body. I ignore the suggestion and go back to wrestling boxes.
It’s three o’clock by the time the food drive ends, and I’m hungry and pissed that half the day has been wasted. Yes, the food drive is for a good cause, but David now has only a day and a half to live. There are plenty of other people who can shove food in boxes. I need to help David.
Pastor Schneider glides up to our table as we’re getting ready to leave. He extends a limp hand to me. “Thank you so much for coming out today and helping, Jessie.”
At the sound of the J-name, I compel my irritation to remain internal and I smile. “No problem.”
“We’re having a prayer vigil for those sweet little missing girls this evening at seven,” he says. “Will we see you there?”
“No.”
He gives me a startled look, and Grandma chides me with her eyes.
“I mean, no I can’t, I have plans.”
“What plans?” Grandma asks.
I scramble for an answer. I can’t tell her the truth. She’d never allow me to meet up with David as an excuse to get out of Pastor Schneider’s invitation. “Samantha,” I blurt out. “I am going to hang out with her…sorry I forgot to tell you earlier.”
Grandma smiles. “Okay, that’d be fine.” She turns to Pastor Schneider. “William and I will be there this evening.”
“Great,” the pastor says. He turns to me with a hint of a sneer, as if he knows I’m lying. “Sure you can’t come?”
I nod. “Sorry.”
“Very well, then. Please excuse me.” He turns and walks to Rhonda where the two of them look over her clipboards of information.
Back at the house, Grandma asks if I’m hungry. I lie and say no, asking to go for a walk. After all that standing around at the food drive, I need to stretch my legs. Grandma buys the excuse and lets me go.
As my feet stroll down the sidewalk, I text David.
Where are you? I’m finally free
My empty stomach leads me to Dotty’s where I pick up a small bag of Doritos. I skip Samantha’s checkout lane and go to TJ’s.
“How’s it hangin’, TJ?” I ask, only because it’ll embarrass him and I’m particularly annoyed by Samantha’s existence in my life. Misery loves company, and all that crap.
TJ’s pale cheeks flush a deep red. “I’m—I’m fine, how are you?”
“Peachy keen.” My deadpan tone does not match my words, and the slight smile on TJ’s face tells me he picks up on this.
I like TJ and wonder if he knows David and Mateo. Maybe from school, or just from around town. He probably does. Everyone knows everyone in small communities. Or at least they know names and faces…but given that there are pictures of missing girls on the bulletin board, how well do they all really know one another?
I pay and take my change. Once outside, I check my phone. No reply from David. I go next door to the hardware store where his dad is at the register, helping two young boys who are buying fishing poles.
“Is David here?” I ask.
“No,” his dad says, handing the taller boy his change. “Said he was going to lunch. But that was two hours ago. Haven’t seen him since.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“If you find him, tell him to get his ass back to the store, will ya?”
“Sure thing,” I say with a smile.
I inhale my Doritos while walking to David’s house, where I toss the empty bag in the curbside garbage can, and then knock on the front door. There’s no answer, so I text Mateo.
Is David with you?
Mateo: No, he’s probably at work
I roll my eyes. Wrong.
He texts again.
Mateo: We need to get together and discuss my findings from the night in your room. Found a very interesting EVP
I ignore his message. There’s no time right now for Mateo’s ghostly analysis. I need to find David.
I walk back to the park and sit on a bench. From the next bench over, Old Man Zach raises a shaky hand and I wave back.
I close my eyes. The breeze covers me head to toe and I relax my muscles, allowing the memories of decades gone by to flood me once again. David filters into my head—different decades, different ages, different parents. He’s lived in different houses and had different friends and different jobs. But throughout all his lives, there’s been just one place he visits to find solace.
The wind shifts and turns cold, and the memories of the past grow gray, stripped of all color and warmth. Wind whips through my hair and my eyes open with a start. I know where David is—the once place in town that connects all his lives.
The cemetery.
…
The sky is fully gray by the time I make it to the cemetery entrance. David is easy to spot as the only living human. He’s standing in the right-hand corner, directly down from the entrance. I make my way to him, careful not to step on the flat headstones and trying my best not to walk directly on top of the dead, though that’s nearly impossible in some places.
David’s back is to me, but the air is still and quiet, so I’m sure he hears my shoes shuffling through the grass. He’s looking down at a headstone. I step up next to him and he doesn’t react. The headstone he’s staring at is simple, old, and white. Chiseled into the top is a name: David Benjamin Smith.
D.B. Smith. Just like in the axe murder book.
Beneath the name are years: 1894–1912.
I glance down and we’re both standing directly on top of the grave. I hop to the side.
David chuckles. “It doesn’t matter where you stand. I don’t care.” He kicks dirt onto the headstone, littering the white stone with specks of brown. “He doesn’t care. He’s dead.”
He?
“But that’s you.” I point to the grave, as though David doesn’t understand
.
“That’s not me under there,” David says. “It’s only a shell. A body, or whatever’s left of a body.”
I wrinkle my nose at the thought.
He turns to me straight on and places his hand to his chest. “This is me. I am me. I’m never in the graves.”
“You’re a snake.”
His eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
I let loose a little laugh and the levity feels good. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I meant you’re like a snake. You shed your skin and continue living.”
The corner of his lip turns up. “Yeah, I guess something like that.”
My smile fades with a thought. “What if when you save your eighth person, you die for good? Are you ready for that?”
“Yes.” His answer is so immediate and so resolute that I actually take a step back. His eyes are sad as he stares me down. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of living here life after life, seeing that damn house, living with the memories and regret and shame. I want the cycle to end and I’m perfectly prepared to be dead for good.”
“But what about the rest of us?” I ask, trying not to sound selfish, but knowing that’s exactly how I sound. “No one else wants to see you die.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to die.” He glances down at himself. “This body is going to die soon whether it’s when I save an eighth person or if I turn eighteen. So everyone around here right now who knows me as David Higgins is going to a funeral soon and they don’t even know it yet.”
“But I know it.”
Solemnness hangs on his face. “And I wish you didn’t have to. It’s easier if people don’t see it coming.”
“What about your parents?”
“My parents,” he repeats softly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Follow me, there’s something I want you to see.”
We walk toward the middle of the cemetery and he stops in front of a newer headstone made of a reddish-colored granite. The name Higgins is engraved in large letters. On the right side is the name Laura.
“My mom, from this life,” David says. “She died four years ago from breast cancer.”
I place a hand on his arm. “Oh, David, I’m sorry.”
“Her death tore my dad to pieces and now he’s gonna lose me, too, and I’m not sure he’ll be able to handle that. So, yeah, I’m ready for all this bullshit to end. I don’t want anymore lives, and I don’t want anymore parents because they all end up burying a son. It’s not fair to them and it pisses me off. I’m done. I want to make up for what I did in my first life, and then have all of this end.”
“Where are your older parents from other lives? Do you still see them?”
David shakes his head. “Most of them have passed away. I have a dad from my fifth life who lives on a farm near Des Moines somewhere. My last parents moved away after I died. I don’t know where they are.” His eyebrows knit together, and he says no more about any of his parents.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“I’ve been an only child in every life, except for my original life. Back then, I had three brothers and two sisters. A huge family by today’s standards.”
“Are they all dead?”
“All but one. My youngest brother, Zachariah.”
Zachariah. I smile in understanding. “Old Man Zach is your brother. That’s why you’re so nice to him.”
David nods. “I do what I can to help him. I try to make sure he gets here and there safe. He lives in the nursing home near the park, but he loves being outside. Always did.”
“I wish he knew that you’re his brother.”
“Me, too. Because if I die in two days, he’ll be long gone by the time I remember him in my next life.”
Grief squeezes my heart. All around us exists nothing but death and stillness. Nothing in the bleak cemetery seems hopeful.
“Why are we standing around here? We need to go find someone for you to save. There has to be someone who needs saving. People do stupid stuff all the time that puts them in harm’s way.” I step up and tug at David’s shirt sleeve. “Let’s go. We can go to the nearest hospital. You could find someone to save there. You could do CPR or plug a bullet hole with your finger or—”
“It’s not that easy, Chessie,” David says.
“But it could be if we go somewhere like a hospital where people are on the edge of death!”
He shakes his head. “It’s not that easy because there’s something working against me. A force.”
“A force?” I ask with suspicion. I can’t take any new information about weird supernatural crap. My mind can barely process the information I have now. “What do you mean there’s a force working against you? Like the Sith?”
David doesn’t laugh. Instead, he looks to the dreary sky. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet.” When he looks back down—directly at me—his eyes are dark and serious. “I reincarnate, as you call it. And so does Tommy.”
“Tommy? The killer Tommy?”
David nods.
“You’re telling me that Tommy is alive?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Who is he?” I haven’t met anyone in Villisca named Tommy yet. But it’s a common enough name that even in a tiny town there has to be at least a handful. Maybe even a dozen or two.
Before David can answer, an engine whirls to life several yards away. At the far end of the cemetery, the old caretaker is seated on a riding lawn mower. He watches us, but unlike my first encounter with him, he doesn’t yell at us to leave. He simply starts mowing.
“C’mon,” I say with another tug at David’s shirt. He follows me out of the cemetery without complaint.
We’re two driveways down before he finally answers my question.
“I don’t know who Tommy is.”
“But wouldn’t you recognize him? How many Tommys or Toms or do you know?”
“That’s the problem…his name isn’t always Tommy and he looks different in every life.”
My eyebrows scrunch down. “But you’re always David and you always look the same. So why isn’t he always Tommy?”
David kicks a branch out of his path. “I’m the same person every life because I can still make things right for myself—for my original self. That’s why I show up as my original self in every life. But Tommy isn’t atoning for anything. His original self is damned because of what he did. His old life is completely over, he has no more connection to it, so that’s why he’s never Tommy anymore…not in name or looks. He just sort of exists, like his soul skips from life to life, following me around. It’s like that night bonded us together in some sick way, and he clings to me and my reincarnation. I’m his ticket to living, and that’s why he doesn’t want me to save anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because when I save my eighth person, I’m atoned and I can finally be at peace. And then he’ll have nothing left to cling to. If I’m dead for good, he’ll be dead for good. But he prefers living, so he’s trying to postpone true death for as long as possible.”
We continue walking in silence and make it to the park before Mateo’s white Suburban screeches into a parking spot nearby.
David and I stop, waiting for our gangly friend to come to us.
“Does Mateo know?” I ask.
“No. And do not tell him.”
“Why not? He’s into stuff like this. He might know what to do.”
Mateo’s halfway to us now with a voice recorder in his hand.
David looks down at me and whispers, “Do not tell him anything. Like I said, it’s easier if people don’t see my death coming.” He looks back up at his friend, and his face morphs from serious to casual. “Hey, man, what’s up?”
Mateo holds up the voice recorder. “Something you guys need to hear.”
We pile into Mateo’s car and shut the doors, shutting out the sounds of the town. Mateo turns on the recording of our night
in my bedroom. For several seconds, the only sounds are the three of us—Mateo shuffling in his spot against the wall, me rearranging the covers on my bed, a random throat clearing, a squeak of my mattress. And then things go silent. The ambient noise of the room disappears, replaced by pure silence. It’s as if Mateo has switched off the recorder, but it’s still playing.
“That’s weird,” David says. “Why is there no noise?”
“I don’t know,” says Mateo, “but this is during the time when that hazy thing came out of the closet. My guess is that its energy blocked all noise.”
We listen further to the sound of nothing. And then, as if the recorder turns back on, the ambient sound of my bedroom comes back. Of course, now it’s laced with a bunch of “what the hell was that” because, in the recording, we had just seen the haze in my room disappear into the closet and slam the door shut. I distinctly hear David and Mateo’s voices, though slightly distorted by the quality of the audio. But then, for a split second, a small, young voice says something. Only one syllable, I nearly missed it.
“What was that?” I ask.
Mateo smiles. “Good catch.” He rewinds the audio and hits play.
Again, the little voice says something, but it’s so quick, I can’t make it out. As if reading my mind, Mateo pulls out his phone.
“I couldn’t figure out what it was saying, so I put it on my computer and ripped just that little bit and enhanced it.” He hits a play button on his phone. “Listen.”
The audio on the phone is grainier, but I can’t hear Mateo and David speaking. It’s like we’re listening to only the background noise from that moment. And then the voice appears.
I make out a distinct B sound.
“Play it again.”
Mateo replays it.
“Blue,” the voice says.
“Blue?” I ask.
“That’s what I heard, too,” Mateo says and looks to David. He nods. He heard it, too.
“What’s blue?”
“No idea,” Mateo says, “that’s why I wanted you guys to hear it. Thought you might know.”
We all think for a while, lost in our own confusion.
“The downstairs bedroom in the Moore house has blue wallpaper,” David says.
