Death Notice (37 page)

Inside his office, Henry switched on the lamp at the desk. Although everything looked the same, the room felt different. Soon, nothing there would be his anymore. Not the desk. Not the chair behind it. Not even the operas saved on what had once been his computer. The only items that truly belonged to him were a few reference books on the shelf, a thermos in a bottom desk drawer, and a rarely used sport coat hanging in the corner.

Gathering them in his arms, Henry prepared to leave the office behind. Standing in the center of the room, he rotated slowly, giving the place one long, last look. The room was small. It was dingy. It was barely a step above an attic. Yet Henry had loved working there and would miss it. It was the only thing about the
Gazette
he would miss.

He was halfway out the door when an unmistakable noise rose from the desk.

The fax machine. It was awakening with an agitated hum.

Frozen in the doorway, Henry watched as a single sheet of paper rolled out of the machine.

A now-familiar dread-filled chill ran up his back. Dropping his belongings, he moved to the desk on unsteady legs. He reached out toward the page, his hand cautious and fearful.

Using a thumb and forefinger, he picked up a corner of the page. As he lifted it, Henry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want the responsibility looking would bring.

But he had to. The fax could contain a single name. If so, that person was now marked for death. He had to tell Kat about it. He had to help.

Henry opened his eyes, first the left, then the right. It took a second for them to work in unison. There was a brief blur, followed by the page coming into focus, the words typed across it clear and unmistakable.

When he saw the name printed on the death notice, Henry half gasped, half sobbed. The sound reverberated through the office as he dropped the fax. He heard the echo, the noise sticking in his ears as he sprinted out the door and down the stairs.

Out on the street, he picked up his pace. The sidewalk was packed with costumed revelers, making it hard to move. When the marching band fired up in earnest at the southern end of the street, signaling the beginning of the parade, the crowd surged forward, taking Henry with it.

He elbowed his way out of the cresting wave of humanity, shoving through them. He dodged bystanders, weaved past them, bowled them over.

A young couple pushing a stroller moved into his path. He jumped out of their way, crashing instead into a large man holding a cup of coffee. They blindsided each other, the cup flying, the coffee arching in the air. Henry then reeled into the couple. The stroller flipped, the baby tumbling onto the pavement.

Henry climbed to his feet while the couple gathered the child, cursing at him. Bystanders joined them, shouting at his
back. Moving forward, Henry ignored them. Someone dressed in a clown costume tried to stop him by grabbing his shirt. Henry jerked his arm away, the shirt tearing, and continued running.

Propelling himself up Main Street, Henry scanned the crowd, searching frantically for Kat. He strained to catch a view of her uniform, a glimpse of her hair. But it was too crowded. All he saw was a moving tapestry of bobbing heads that filled the sidewalk.

Stopping for a moment, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted her name. “Kat!”

The people standing closest to him whirled around, either annoyed, startled, or both. Henry paid them no attention, shouting even louder.

“Kat!”

His voice was drowned out by the band, which was now in the street, marching parallel to him. The blare of trumpets mixed with the
rat-a-tat-tat
of snare drums to stifle his calls.

Henry looked across the street. He was tall enough to see over the heads of the people standing at the curb, getting a clear view of the opposite sidewalk. There, enmeshed in the crowd, was Kat Campbell.

A sense of urgency tugged at Henry, pulling him through the crowd lining the sidewalk.

He had to reach Kat.

He had to warn her.

Henry nudged his way to the curb. With no small amount of force, the crowd parted, letting him leap off the sidewalk. He darted into the street, the band marching on, trying to ignore him. He shuffled between flute players and dodged around the drums until he was on the other side of the street, screaming Kat’s name, rushing toward her.

When he finally reached her, he gripped her in an urgent embrace.

“I just got another death notice,” he said. “It’s for James.”

All the air evaporated from Kat’s lungs when Henry told her the news. She staggered a moment, gripping his arm for support.

“What did it say?” Speaking was a struggle, accomplished only through sheer force of will.

“It had his name,” Henry said. “It had today’s date.”

Kat’s mind raced, rolling over a thousand different thoughts and scenarios. What Henry was telling her didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be. Things like that happened to other people. To Alma Winnick. To Lisa Gunzelman.

Not to her.

But she knew Henry wasn’t lying. His face was flushed and anxious, with a streak of crimson following the path of his scar. She saw fear in his eyes—the dark, quaking fear that overcame people when they encountered something unspeakable.

It was happening, all right. It was happening to her.

“When?” she whispered. “What time did it say he’d die?”

The fear didn’t leave Henry’s eyes as they roamed up and down Main Street.

“Now,” he said. “Right now.”

Kat bolted into the street, stumbling into the middle of the parade. The marching band was still there, members of it scattering out of her way. The song they were playing fell apart, a lopsided chorus of sour notes and skipped beats. As the song wound down, Kat raised her voice, screaming her son’s name in the middle of Main Street.

“James!”

Behind the band was the March of the Ghosts—dozens of children dressed in exactly the same way. They walked in a hodgepodge of white sheets, some waving, others skipping.

James was among them. At least he was supposed to be.

Kat prayed he was there, secure in his costume, blending in with all the others.

She sprinted into the fray, shrieking his name like a woman possessed.

“James! Where are you?”

She paused, hoping to hear him return her call. When no response came, she reached out to the nearest child and yanked the costume away. It uncovered a young boy who wasn’t James, and who was startled to be so suddenly unmasked.

“Do you know James Campbell?” Kat asked him. “Have you seen him?”

She didn’t give the boy a chance to reply, moving instead to the next ghost, ripping the sheet away. She continued that way down the street, running against the tide of ghosts, grabbing whomever she could reach. She tugged off their costumes, letting them fall when she saw that the child beneath wasn’t her son.

None of them were.

Kat stumbled through the group, panic paralyzing her body. Her arms and legs were weak, no stronger than toothpicks, brittle and ready to snap. Her breath was ragged and unsteady, interrupted by sobs that bubbled up from her chest.

“James!” she yelled. “Talk to me, Little Bear!”

Many of the children had started to scurry away from her, moving up the street as Kat stormed down it. She still grabbed at them, missing some, catching others. She snagged one child by the edge of his costume, jerking him backward until he bumped up against her. When the sheet came off, she saw it was Jeremy, eyeglasses askew on his nose.

Kat dropped to her knees in front of him. “Have you seen James?”

Jeremy shook his head, frightened. She tried to speak calmly.

“Honey, do you know if he’s in the parade?’

The boy’s response was a shake of the head and a timid murmur. “I don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“When we were putting our costumes on.”

A parade float now ran along beside them. It was a flatbed truck decorated to look like a cemetery, complete with plywood tombstones and zombies tossing candy to the crowd.

Kat grabbed Jeremy’s shoulders, shaking him in desperation. “Where was that?”

“Down the street,” he said.

“You didn’t see him after that?”

Another scared shake of the head. Another “I don’t know.”

Kat released the boy. She stood. Whirling in the street, she studied the crowd, hoping to see her son tucked somewhere within it. Her despairing gaze ran across the bystanders at the curb, beseeching them for help.

“Has anyone seen my son?” she called. “Please tell me if you’ve seen him.”

She turned to face the other side of the street. The float was still there, proceeding at a crawl, blocking her view. The zombies on board had stopped their dancing and candy tossing. They stared at Kat, perplexed. She stared back, eyes moving from them to the fake cemetery they stood in. She saw the graves, wobbling from the movement of the truck. She saw a gnarled tree made out of cardboard.

And she saw a coffin.

A small rectangle, it sat at the back of the float, resting on a bed of crepe-paper grass. The coffin was made of untreated wood.

Kat had seen that type of coffin before. Twice.

She ran to the edge of the float, reaching out to the people riding it.

“Help me!” she said. “I need to get up there!”

Two of the zombies bent down and, holding Kat by the arms, lifted her onto the float. She moved across it, stumbling slightly as the truck lurched to a stop.

When Kat reached the coffin, she fell in front of it, her palms flattened against the lid. She made no sound as her hands ran over the rough wood. When a splinter of pine sunk into the flesh of her palm, she didn’t react. She was too numb to feel it and too weak to make a sound even if she had.

Slowly, she moved her hands to each side of the lid. It had been nailed down in the center and at each corner, just like the other coffins. Kat had become an expert at loosening them, knowing the right places to apply pressure and pull. But when she slid her hands into position, they froze, refusing to move any further.

Kat knew she needed to open the coffin. There was a strong possibility that James was inside, maybe dead. With the Grim Reaper’s other victims—Troy Gunzelman, for example—she hadn’t been afraid to tear off the lid. But now it was her son she would be exposing. Her only son. Her only source of happiness. That fact left her paralyzed, unable to lift the box’s lid.

She thought about what Lisa Gunzelman had said after Troy’s death. This was the feeling she was talking about. At that moment, Kat was still a mother, and for all she knew, James was still alive. But if she opened that coffin and found her son lying dead inside, it would all be over. She would instantly be ripped in half, shredded into another person entirely.

Everyone around her had become surreally quiet. The men on the float. The people lined up at the curb. Even the marching band. All of them were mute with fear and anxiety. Kat felt the tension radiating from the crowd. They wanted her to open the coffin. It was brutal human nature. They wanted to see what was inside.

Kat did, too, even if it meant devastating news. Even if it meant that life as she knew it was over.

She held her breath.

She lifted the lid.

She looked inside.

The coffin was empty, a fact that made Kat almost weep with joy. She shoved a hand inside and moved it around, feeling the rough bottom, the interior walls. She had become so convinced James was inside that when it turned out he wasn’t, she immediately assumed her eyes were playing tricks on her.

But they weren’t. Her son wasn’t there. Yet Kat’s relief was tempered by a gnawing fear. Because if James wasn’t in the coffin—and clearly he wasn’t—then where was he?

Henry raced down Main Street, his arms and legs pumping so hard he thought they’d fall off. The parade had come to a complete stop, its participants parting to get out of his way. Those who didn’t were bulldozed aside without discrimination.

He shouted James’s name as he ran, screaming it until his throat ached from the strain.