Desires of the Dead (3 page)

It was probably some animal—a seagull or a rat—accidentally trapped inside the cargo vessel, starved to death.

Could that be an imprintable offense, a death caused by mistake?

It must be,
Violet thought as she followed Chelsea back out of the shipyards.

The salt hung heavily in the air, clinging to the sound waves . . . and the haunting resonance of the harp that drifted after them.

The ferry ride was more fun than Violet had expected, especially in light of her discovery in the shipyards.

They only stayed on the island for about an hour, walking from the dock to an ice-cream shop, the kind that made real old-fashioned ice cream and served it in warm, handmade waffle cones. They ordered the most ginormous, two-scoop cones and somehow managed to eat every last bite.

Chelsea talked about Mike, the new kid—
again
—and Violet mostly listened. It wasn’t like Chelsea to obsess over a boy, and Violet found it sort of hilarious to hear her going on and on about him. Not that there was much to go on and on about. They still knew barely anything about him except that his sister’s name was Megan, and their last name was Russo. In the three short days he’d been at their school, he and his sister had managed to stay pretty much to themselves.

Aside from Jay, Violet had hardly seen Mike talk to anyone. So Chelsea was forced to repeat the few things they did know about him and to wonder aloud about the rest.

During their trip back, Violet fought against the persisting discomfort from the echo in the shipyard. And even though she could no longer
feel
it physically pulling her, or even hear the sounds of the harp out there in the open waters, that didn’t mean it had left her alone.

Already the familiar sensation settled over her, the uneasiness she’d grown so accustomed to when a body was desperate to be laid to rest.

The dead didn’t always want to be forgotten. And that need to be discovered could be so powerful that it became Violet’s only thought, her only purpose, until she could locate the remains, and if possible bury them properly, giving both the victim and herself a sense of completion.

Closure, her mom called it.

Closure
was a good word for the relief she felt when a body was safely buried.
Quiet
was another. Better still, Violet thought, was
peace
.

She did her best to ignore the draw that tugged at her as soon as they docked again in the city, so near the body once more. And the drive home was no better. Just like on the ferry, there was that ever present feeling of discontent that refused to release her.

Chelsea dropped Violet off at home, honking one last time for good measure as Violet got out of the car.

Violet laughed, maybe a little too hard, as she tried to chase away the tension that settled over her more heavily with each passing minute.

By the time Jay called, Violet was in a foul mood. She thought about telling him about it, about what had happened in Seattle, but all she really wanted to do was to curl up in a ball and ignore that it had ever happened at all. If she could have willed it all away, she would have.

Even though Jay tried to change her mind, he knew better than to push too hard. Violet needed some space.

She was sure she would tell him about it eventually. Just not now.

For now, she wanted to rest. And to forget.

Chapter 3

The blackness was stifling, overwhelming. She was afraid it was going to suffocate her. But it was the cold that was unbearable.

She searched around her once more, exactly as she’d done every few moments for the hours—or days—that she’d been trapped inside. Time had stopped holding any tangible meaning as seconds stretched into minutes, stretched into hours. Stretched into days.

It was useless, her efforts futile. There was no escape, and she already knew it, but her waning survival instincts refused to allow her to surrender . . . to accept her fate.

There was no light. Not a trace. Not even a flicker.

And no light meant no openings.

But she searched anyway, because she couldn’t give up, feeling with her fingertips along every surface she could find . . . the floor . . . the walls . . . the corners. They were all too familiar to her now, and her skin was raw from probing the unyielding and punishing metal.

Panic took hold, again, and she screamed, beating her bruised fists against the walls that confined her. The voice that came out of her mouth was foreign, even to her own ears. It was weak and small. It sounded like someone who had already conceded to death.

The darkness closed in on her, filling her lungs until it was hard to breathe and impossible to scream any longer. The sounds of her stranger’s voice rasped and echoed around her until she found herself gasping to catch real air . . . clean air . . .
undark air
.

She collapsed into the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking herself.

It was so dark.

And she was all alone. And so very,
very
afraid.

She cried into the void between her legs and her chest, sobbing at first and then fading to a diminutive, almost inaudible, whimper as she curled into herself.

She wanted to go home.

Violet didn’t wake quickly. Instead she woke on a slow sob, crying into the damp surface of her pillow, clutching it tightly as she tried to smother the lingering terror.

She felt confused, stunned. At first she couldn’t recall the dream, so unlike the ones that had haunted her in the past, or the reason this one had brought her to tears. But as she lay there, struggling for composure, it came back in fragments.

The smothering blackness.

The fear. Sheer panic.

The devastating feeling of defeat.

The glimmer—although pale and fleeting—of hope.

It was as if she’d been buried alive. Entombed in total darkness with no escape. Violet was shaken by the nightmare, even as she assured herself that it was just that, a bad dream.

But this time she didn’t believe it; she wasn’t buying it at all. This was more than just a dream.

And she knew why. It was the voice. It hadn’t been
her
voice. It was small. Frail. And it belonged to someone else.

She closed her eyes, struggling to give the haunting images meaning. Why had she dreamed she was another person, trapped and alone in the dark?

And why had it felt so real?

But she knew the answer. Of course she knew. She’d known it even in her dream, in the deepest voids of sleep. And now, as she danced between knowing and not wanting to admit the truth, it fractured her tentative grip on her own well-being.

It felt real because it was real.

Someone was in there. Isolated and afraid.

She blinked, trying to make the idea go away, but it refused to budge.

There was a person inside that steel container.

She shook her head, even though there was no one to see her. Still, the voice inside her head refused to be silenced. “No,” she whispered, “there isn’t.”

But saying the words aloud didn’t make them true; even she knew that.

The tears came again, but this time they were hers and hers alone. Because even though she knew what her dream was telling her, that there was a person in there—a dead person—she also knew she had to go back to make sure.

The sky was the shade of polished ebony when Violet crept out of her house, leaving only a brief, and vague, note so her parents wouldn’t be alarmed when they got up and discovered she was gone.

She held her breath, listening to the crunch of gravel beneath her tires as she eased her car out of the driveway with the lights still off. When she reached the road, she double-checked her pocket to make sure her cell phone was in there, and she flicked the headlights on, casting an unnatural glow through the mist that had settled over the deserted back roads around her house.

The air was brisk, and since Violet hadn’t taken the time to let her car idle before leaving, too worried her parents would hear the noisy engine, the interior was frosty. She could see her own breath in front of her face as she drove toward the main highway out of town.

It was early—or late—depending on how you looked at it, and the roads were empty at this hour. Violet felt like the only survivor in some sort of postapocalyptic movie, alone in the abandoned shell of a town. The illusion was shattered when she saw a car coming toward her on the opposite side of the narrow highway. She wondered briefly if they were coming home or heading out like she was.

Because she hadn’t slept much, she was tired. Fatigued was more like it. And the darkness had a lulling effect on her senses as her car moved across the pavement, rocking her gently. She stopped at a small drive-through espresso stand that was open all night to pick up a double-shot vanilla latte, hoping to shake some of the weariness out of her system for the long drive to Seattle.

As she got closer to the city, and night edged toward dawn, the sky gradually shifted from ebony to a deep, smoky charcoal. More cars crept onto the roadways, and suddenly Violet was no longer alone.

But that didn’t mean she was any less afraid. She was terrified about going back to the shipyard, about standing in front of that cargo container for a second time, knowing what might be inside. And she had no idea what she could do about it once she got there.

Unfortunately there was no way she could just ignore it either. This echo would never leave her alone.

She came to a stop, parking her car right outside the tall chain-link fencing that guarded the perimeter of the shipyards. Even from where she sat, it was obvious: The gate was definitely
not
open this morning.

Violet got out of her car and approached the closed entrance. Crystalline puffs of steam were visible from her mouth as she zipped up her coat and stuffed her hands deep inside her pockets. It was still so dark,
too dark
, and Violet scanned the area for any sign of life.

Yesterday there had been only a few people milling about, but this morning there was no one. The silence was nearly complete, except for one thing: the tremulous vibrations of the harp.

It only added to the mysterious calm that drifted like fog through the vacant grounds.

Her heart pounded recklessly as she reached the gated opening. Part of her hoped it was locked, had probably been hoping for that the entire drive. And now, that desire nearly overshadowed the nightmare that had drawn her here in the first place.

The coward in her thought about leaving, about just turning around and heading back. But she knew she couldn’t. This wasn’t something that would just go away on its own. She knew that much for certain.

Getting through the gate turned out to be simple. There wasn’t a lock, at least not like the padlock she’d seen on the shipping container. She reached out to touch the seemingly simple, garden-variety U-shaped fence latch. Her fingers clasped it and she lifted. It opened easily.

She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, but there was no one in sight.

Every fiber in her body was on alert as she held her breath and shoved the gate.

It inched open. It was tall, and heavier than it looked, and Violet had to lean into it a second time, using her shoulder to push it far enough so she could squeeze through.

The resonance of the harp eclipsed the noises around her, the waking city at her back, and the ocean in front of her. It was vaporously surreal. Ominous. It was like the sound track from a horror film.

But this was no movie, Violet reminded herself; she was here to find a body.

She crept as quietly as she could around the containers, despite the fact that she seemed to be all alone, following the ghostly echo of the harp that drew her. When she saw the container in front of her, looking exactly as it had the day before, she was assaulted by that same sense of alarm, the sudden grip of panic, that she’d felt during her dream. The terror, she recognized, of being trapped within the solid steel walls.

She was shaking all over, her body mimicking the vibrations that quivered through her like electrical currents. She wanted to get closer, but her feet felt heavy and she struggled with the weight of them.

When she reached the container, the musical echo that just yesterday seemed eerily harmonic now felt menacing. It tore through her senses like an out-of-control chain saw, ravaging her.

She tentatively reached out to touch the steel walls, afraid that they might scald her. But just like yesterday, her fingertips brushed the icy-cold metal unscathed. From her nightmare, she knew exactly what it would feel like from the inside, and that memory stayed with her as she stroked the exterior.

The vibrations were jarring; the harp’s echo was invasive and painful.

He, or she, was in there. And even though it was too late to save the person, the body still wanted to be found.

Violet shivered against the cold as she tried to withdraw into the warmth of her thick coat. But nothing could warm her now; the chill was bone deep.

She wondered why she’d dreamed about this individual. Her ability had never led to that before. What was it about
this body
that made it infiltrate her dreams?

Violet wasn’t sure what to do now. Who should she call? Who could she tell?

Not her uncle Stephen. Even setting aside the fact that Seattle was way outside his jurisdiction as a cop, he was still her uncle, and that meant, without a doubt, he would feel obligated to tell her parents that she’d come out here—alone and practically in the middle of the night—in search of a dead body. They would never let her out of the house again.

And, for almost the same reasons, she couldn’t tell Jay either.

But she had to do something. She would never sleep again if she didn’t help whoever was in there.

She fingered the cell phone inside her pocket.

She could call the local authorities . . . anonymously. She could make up some excuse for them to come out here and look for the body and then leave without giving them her name.

But even she knew she couldn’t use her cell phone; it would be too easy to trace the call, to track it right back to her. And then they’d want to know how she knew where to find the body. A question she did not want to answer.

What she needed was to get out of here. To find a pay phone.

She moved quickly now, backtracking through the shipyard. She stole through the opening at the entrance and raced toward the sidewalk, scanning up and down the road for a pay phone.

It didn’t take long to find one; there were two, in fact, that she could see from where she stood. One was just at the edge of the shipyard’s parking lot.

She jogged across the short space and picked up the receiver. The handset was cold and dirty, but Violet barely noticed. She surveyed the silver face of the phone for dialing instructions. She didn’t have any change, so she hoped this would work.

She dialed quickly, her fingers trembling.

There was a soft click, and then . . .

A woman’s cool voice spoke from the other end. “911, what’s your emergency?”

Violet paused.
This is a mistake,
she thought;
I should hang up
. Her thumb hovered over the large lever on the phone.

“911 operator, please state the nature of your emergency.”

She hesitated, but she had to do something.

“Hello?” she said flatly, her mind spinning in a thousand different directions, grappling for a coherent explanation.

“Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“I . . . I think I heard something . . . some
one
. . .” Violet started, still unsure. Her hands were shaking, and so was her voice. “It was coming from inside one of the shipping containers on the waterfront.”

“Do you have an address?”

Violet shook her head, even though the dispatcher couldn’t see her. “It’s near the ferry terminals. The ones at Pier Fifty-two. There’s a sign that says
Puget Sound Shipyards
.”

She was jumpy about placing the call. Maybe she’d made a mistake. She glanced around uncertainly, suddenly wondering about what kind of person could put someone inside one of those containers. What if that person was still here? What if he was watching her? What if he’d followed her?