There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around (12 page)

Cinnamon, who'd plunked herself down several feet away from the house, got up and approached warily. We held our hands out for her to sniff. Reassured that it was really us, she gave one halfhearted bark and slowly wagged her tail.

But she stopped wagging and stopped following when she saw that we were headed for the edge of the ditch. She sat down and began that low mournful moaning dogs sometimes do: the sound that—after about ten seconds—makes you want to throw a bucket of cold water at them.

There was a good spot for getting down into the ditch, right on the border between our yard and the Wienckis', a trail formed and kept clear of vegetation by butts sliding down and feet climbing up, through two generations of Beatsons and one of Wienckis.

Jackie, who wasn't used to it, clung to branches and
dug her sneakered feet into the dirt and generally looked like she was mentally kicking herself for agreeing to come.

The whole bottom of the ditch was filled with muddy, murky water—about two feet deep in the middle and stretching across at least twenty to twenty-five feet. In the winter you can ice-skate on it, but by summer the water would be gone. Everything looked pretty much as it always does in earliest spring: scrubby little bushes that you'd swear must be dead but always come back, lots of rocks and dead leaves, and mud everywhere. At the moment, there were some beer cans half submerged in the water at the far edge, which had to be from the slobs in the development behind us. The Wiencki kids are getting too old to come down here anymore, and Zach and I have too much class to litter. Or to drink beer.

It was easy to follow Vicki's footprints in the mud. Almost to the water, she had veered off the path and headed in the direction that led directly behind our house. With the mud trying to suck my shoes off my feet, I followed, with Jackie huffing and puffing right behind me.

We were headed toward something on the bank. At first I figured Vicki had brought down some sort of snack, sat down in the mud to eat, and then left the box or bag down here. Vicki is enough of a slob that it made sense.

But as we got closer, I saw that wasn't it at all. Vicki
had been digging in the side of the bank, which explained her muddy hands, and what she'd uncovered were bones, which may have explained a lot more.

I stopped, unable to bring myself to go any closer. They were all brown and brittle looking. No skulls showed, but that didn't matter. I knew they were human, and I knew whose they had to be.

Behind me, Jackie asked, "Do you think if we rebury them, she'll go away?"

"No." I told her. "I've been down here a million times, ever since I was five or six. I
know
these bones haven't been lying here out in the open since the time you first saw the ghosts. They weren't here this past fall."

"Yeah, but maybe it's because they're out in the open that Adah had the strength to take over Vicki's body."

I rubbed my hands over my face, trying to concentrate. "But if Adah wasn't in Vicki until Vicki uncovered the bones,"—I turned back to look at Jackie—"then why did Vicki uncover the bones?"

Jackie started to shake her head. Then I saw her eyes move to focus on a spot over my left shoulder. Her eyes got real big and I knew what to expect even before I turned.

It was Adah, hovering palely over the bones.

I took a hasty step back, ready to run, but she made no move to follow.

Which was good, because I don't really think my wobbly legs would have carried me far.

She reached out to me, then brought her hands back to touch at where her heart would be if she'd had one. She indicated the bones, then brought her hands up to her face.

"Watch out," Jackie said. "She's putting some sort of spell on us."

"No, she's not," I said. When she touched her cheeks, it drew my attention to the fact that she didn't look angry and fierce. She looked sad and—hard as it was to believe—frightened. Surely not of us. But then, what? I said, "She's trying to tell us something."

Adah nodded.

"What?" I asked her. Was I up to facing what could frighten a ghost?

She crouched down and touched the bones, her hand passing right through them. Again her hand went to her breast, then she held her hand parallel with the ground but up higher than her shoulder. She pointed at the water. Then, once again, she gestured toward the bones.

"They're your bones," I said.

She nodded.

"Yours and Marella's"—I felt incredibly strange saying it—"after ... after you drowned."

Once more she nodded. And once more she touched the bones. This time she pointed to me before holding her hand up in the same little-child gesture she had
done before. And now she pointed up the hill, in the direction of our house.

"Vicki?" I said. "You're saying something about Vicki, but I don't understand the rest."

Adah touched the bones with both hands.

"Vicki touched the bones?" I asked.

Nodding, Adah indicated herself, then gave the sign for little child and pointed toward the house.

I took in a deep breath. "Marella."

Adah nodded.

Jackie had crowded up behind me and now she said, "You mean it's Marella who's taken Vicki's body?"

Adah nodded.

"Ted," Jackie said, "what if she's lying?"

"If she's lying, then who
is
in Vicki's body, with Adah down here with us?"

Adah was still crouched by the bones. Instead of floating, her feet—and, in fact, the lower part of her body—seemed to be half swallowed up by the mud.

It must be hard to stay level, I thought, when you can't feel the ground.

It must be hard to communicate when you can't talk and when people scream and carry on every time you try.

Suddenly everything fell into place. "You were trying to warn us," I said. I looked at Jackie. "All along, she knew what Marella was planning. That she was just waiting for a little girl of her own age, trying to get her
to come down here, to uncover the bones"—I turned back to Adah—"so that she could live again."

Adah looked at me through large sorrowful eyes.

"You were trying to protect us," I said. I held my hands out to show how helpless we were. "Is it too late to help us? What should we do now?"

"Ted." Jackie tugged at my sleeve to keep me from moving in closer.

Adah indicated herself, then me.

"You're wiling to help?" I said, trying to wave Jackie back.

Adah nodded. Once again she gestured toward herself, then toward me.

I pulled away from Jackie and crouched close to Adah. "What?" I said. "What are you saying?"

"Ted," Jackie said more insistently.

Adah simply repeated the same gesture, but then while she had one hand out toward me, she put her other hand on the bones.

I jerked back, knowing that it was too late, that if she wanted to touch me, I was close enough.

She didn't.

"
Te-ed.
" Jackie put two syllables to my name. "Just because Marella is the one who has taken over Vicki, that doesn't mean that Adah doesn't have exactly the same plan for you."

Jackie was right. There was no reason to trust Adah. In fact, it was ridiculous to trust her. If I moved fast
enough, there was still a chance I could get away before she could touch me.

I thought of annoying, slobbish Vicki.

I thought of dying and that maybe there wouldn't even be enough of me left to know I was dying.

I thought of the night Vicki had seen what she was sure was a "bad lady" come into my room and how, despite her fear, Vicki had followed her in to warn me.

"But if I don't trust her," I said, speaking to Jackie but looking at Adah, "then there's no way to get Vicki back."

Adah looked down, which I took to mean she agreed but didn't want to say so. She extended her hand to me again and patted the bones with her other hand.

"Ted," Jackie said, "this is crazy."

I took a deep breath. "I hope not," I said.

Much as I didn't want to, I reached down and, with one hand, touched the bones and, with the other hand, touched Adah.

THE BOY AND I ARE
touching the bones at the same time. I feel like something just sucks me up, like a worm feels when the old jaybird sucks it up—
whoosh,
right past the beak, down the throat, and straight into the stomach. I'm dizzy all over, and I'm afraid I'm like to pass out. I put my hand out to keep from tipping right over, and when I catch a sight of that hand, I'm even more like to pass out—the hand is small and white, with no calluses from chopping wood and no burn marks on the back where [ always seem to catch my hand on the stove every winter, no matter how careful I plan to be.

I can feel the boy struggling inside me, afraid because he thinks he's given his body over to a haunt and that he'll never get out again.

Easy, honey, easy,
I tell him, never having to say the words out loud but just mind to mind because we're in the same body. If I could have talked to Marella this way
all these years, everything would have been a lot easier. Or even if I could have talked to the boy this way before, when we were all up at the house, before Marella took things too far.

I open up my mind to him, let him see I mean him no harm. Presently the boy calms down, like when you catch a butterfly in the field and, at first, you can feel it struggling, fluttering against your cupped hands, but then it sits itself down and waits to see what will happen next. The boy sits himself down and waits to see what will happen next.

I look up and there's the girl cousin, the one who looks like a haunt herself. Jaclyn, or Jackie, or Jac, I know she's called, because the boy opens up his mind to me—just for a quick peek, still not sure he trusts me. Jaclyn has picked up two pieces of twigs and holds them out between us, forming a cross, and looks like to faint dead away.

"Calm down, girl," I tell her, touching the cross gently, though my coming so near causes her to shake. "I believe in the Lord Jesus, too."

I start up the hill—marveling, the moment I think on it, that I remember how to walk, how to climb. But the boy's body takes over for both of us. It feels so good to be doing something real. I'd thought I'd never again feel the warmth of the old sun on my face, nor the springiness of the branches on the bushes, a sure sign that warm weather is on the way even though everything looks like winter. Why the good Lord ever made a
place as dismal as up North I'll never know. But the air smells crisp. I'd forgotten how good air can smell.

I can hear the girl climbing up the hill behind me, breathing ha rd like she isn't used to hard work, though she's surely old enough to have babies of her own. When we get to the top, their dog commences to barking. "Quiet down," I tell the hound. "I mean no harm."

The dog just barks and barks and follows as we go into the house.

It isn't as fine as the big house, but there are things of wonder in here, besides the machine that tells stories. There's a chandelier made of metal instead of crystal, but with candles that light themselves, and there are tiny little portraits of the family, painted so real they remind me of the photographs Master had made of himself, 'cept they're in color, and you can't even see the brush strokes. The boy tries to explain, but I tell him,
Hush, now. You don't want me falling in love with your world.
I feel his flutter of fear at
that
thought.

Meanwhile the other boy, the one named Zach or Zachary, calls down from upstairs, "Cinnamon! Quiet! Jackie, what's the matter with that spaz dog of yours?"

I can see him standing in the upstairs hallway, bracing himself, holding on for dear life to a doorknob, 'cept it's metal 'stead of glass, and shiny—shinier even than the Master's brass plate for calling cards. From the other side of that door I can hear a commotion, which is Marella in her new body, causing a fuss, trying to force the door open.

It's so good feeling the springiness of the carpet beneath my feet, running my hand over the smoothness of the wooden banister, seeing all them bright colors. But I say, "Zachary, open that there door for Marella."

His mouth drops open and he looks from me to his cousin, back to me again, and never says a word.

Jaclyn says, "It's all right, Zach." Then she says, "I think."

Still he never says a word but only, presently, lets go of the door.

Marella yanks it right open. "How dare you lock me in there?" she demands, stamping her foot. It isn't her voice, it isn't her face, but, oh, my heart aches to see her and to know that after all this time I can hold her close to me, 'cept that it surely isn't me, either. She has changed from the shirt and trousers the little girl Victoria was wearing into a yellow dress that doesn't even cover her knees. It has embroidered pictures that the boy thinks look like rabbits and baby chicks. From the boy, I recollect what I never knew—that this is Victoria's new Easter dress, which the children's mama bought for her and Victoria complained was too frilly and fussy. But, of course, Marella has never worn anything so fine.

"Marella," I say.

She knows it's me right off. She slams the door shut. The same sort of nonsense she was pulling in the attic, trying to prevent the boy from learning about us and how we got here.

'Cept that Zachary has put his foot in the way, and the door just bounces right back open again.

"Marella," I say, going the rest of the way up them stairs.

"Go away," she calls, backing away from me.

But I grab ahold of her arm. "Marella, you stop this foolishness," I tell her.

"This is my body now," she says, stamping her foot again. Marella was always a child to get that old foot stamping whenever she didn't get her way. "I've waited so long, and now it's mine."

"It is
not
yours," I tell her. "You need to give it back."

"It's mine now," she insists.

"You come over here to me awhile," I say.

But Marella digs the heels of her fine new shoes into the carpeted floor, and the boy's body is not strong enough to force her to move without the risk of hurting her.