Remember Me (12 page)

Garrett decided to call it a night. The clock in the living room read four in the morning. I followed him out and into the elevator down to the ground floor. He looked pretty fried; I was worried about him driving home in his truck. My concern was not purely altruistic. I figured if he was all I had, then he'd better stay alive.

He did not, however, head straight to his truck once we were outside. He strolled instead over to the cement walkway that ran beneath Beth's balcony. I followed with great reluctance.

The police had roped off the spot and had wiped up most of the blood. But I could still see the wide, dark, lopsided memento my plunge had left on the ground. I began to feel sick.

"Hey, Garrett, let's go," I said. "This was just a place to land. It's not important."

He didn't share my opinion. He stared for a long time up at the balcony, and it seemed to me he was trying to picture my fall. Then he did something very strange; he actually sat on the ground beside the stain on the concrete. He pulled out his wallet. There was a picture of a girl my age inside. She had dark hair, sharp features—we didn't look alike. She was probably a shade more beautiful than me. Sitting alone, with me by his side, the picture in his hand, Garrett's face visibly sagged.

I figured whoever she was, she must also be dead.

I didn't know what to do. I felt too shaky to try to console him. And I knew it would be a waste of time. I sat down across from him on the other side of the stain.

"It wouldn't be so bad for us," I whispered, "if only you knew we were still here."

I didn't know how bad it could get.

Garrett sat there awhile, but eventually he put his picture away and stood up and walked away. I didn't chase after him.

He was probably going home to bed. Also, although I had approached the spot with many reservations, I was rinding it had a peculiar allure for me now.

Twice I tried to stand and leave, but I couldn't. I felt my hand reach out and touch my lost blood. But unlike the doorknob at home or Jimmy's arm at the hospital, I did touch it. When I pulled my fingers away, they were dark and dripping. I could see it, the warm red life running out of my hand.

My surroundings began to whirl, and I had to lie down. It seemed only appropriate that I should lie on my back with my head in the center of the mess. I was where I belonged, I thought miserably. Where it had all ended.

There was the annoying lamppost off to my left, and far above I could see the balcony.

But I didn't have to picture my fall as Garrett had done. I could remember it, especially the hot wave that had come upon me at the end and washed me away.

Only now, unlike then, I began to feel pain in my head, a throbbing, skull-cracking pain.

My hand instinctively tried to reach up to the top of my head. It tried, but it didn't succeed.

Something kept pushing it down.

No. Someone.

Suddenly I was not where I had been. I was back in the hospital, in the morgue. Dr. Leeds was standing above me, a glaring white light at his back. He was trying to put me in a green bag.

But my right arm kept popping out. He had taken away my towel. It had been gross and disgusting, but I wished with all my heart that he had left it alone. My brains literally felt as if they were spilling out of my head.

Stuffing my arm back under the plastic, Dr. Leeds pulled the fat zipper toward my face.

"No!" I shrieked in horror. I fought to pull my arms up, to kick the bag off with my feet.

But I was paralyzed. The zipper kept coming, past my sewn lips, over my glued eyelids. The doctor, looking down at me, sadly shook his head one last time. Then there was darkness, and he was lifting me up and shoving me into a locker. I heard the door slam shut. I felt the cold go deep within my black heart. Oh.

Lord, yes, it was black then. It was the abyss I had glimpsed as I had lain on the floor at the party.

But darkness inside, outside—it is not so different as the living might believe.

In the next instant I was back on the messy walkway, the balcony above me.

Only now there was something standing up there.

It was my first glimpse of the Shadow.

It bore no resemblance to a human being, and yet, from the start, it reminded me of a person. There was no reason it should have. Its shape and color were difficult to comprehend.

It seemed a dark cloud caught in a state of flux between a solid and a vapor. It also appeared to be a part of the surroundings, a dam of some sort on the plasma that continued to flow through my new world. Or perhaps, I thought, it was a scar on the world. It was painful to behold.

It was watching me.

I got up very slowly and began to back away from it. It shifted as I moved, following me.

I couldn't see its eyes, but I could feel them on me—cruel and penetrating. The thing didn't like me. I didn't like it. When the concrete walkway came to an end and the asphalt parking lot began, I ran.

It ran after me.

Someone had left the gate open. I dashed out of the complex, down a short road, and onto the deserted coast highway. I could see no one—no cars, no lights, no signs of life anywhere. I had a monster on my tail and no one around to help. Many times, when I was a child, I'd had a nightmare in which I tried to flee from a hungry creature with scales, claws, and dripping teeth. I had awakened in a cold sweat, crying for my mother. Sometimes she would come to my bed and comfort me. But other times she wouldn't hear me, and there'd be no comfort, and no sleep, until the sun came up.

I knew it was hopeless, but as I raced across the highway and onto the sand toward the vast ocean, I called for her once more.

"Mother!"

It was a hundred feet behind me, and in the next moment it was on top of me. I had run out of room. I'd run straight to the water's edge, boxing myself in. I turned to face it, to plead for mercy, but I couldn't bear to look at it. Without looking, I knew there could be nothing more horrible than what it had planned for me.

It stopped several feet from me. For several seconds it appeared to study me, and I could feel wave upon wave of loathing radiate from it like dark swells in a poison ocean. And what made it so utterly terrible was that it knew me. It had reason to hate me. It reached out a distorted hand to touch me.

"No!" I shrieked, turning and fleeing into the water.

I was no saint. I couldn't walk on water. I began to go down, but still it pursued me.

"Mother!" I cried. "Save me!"

"Shari."

I heard my name. I opened my eyes. It was dark. I was home, in bed with my mother. She lay with her back to me, and I was holding on to her, trying to. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear her crying. I could feel her heart breaking. I tried to squeeze her tightly.

"I'm here, Mom. I'm here. Please don't cry."

There was a pause, and then, when she said my name next, it was as if she had heard me.

"Shari?"

"Yes!" I cried. "It's me! I'm here! I'm here! I never left!"

She didn't respond, not directly. But she did stop crying, and soon she was asleep. And so I also slept, holding on to her as best I could, and swearing to myself that I would never, ever let go.

CHAPTER

VII

A. AWOKE TO a sunny day. My mother was gone. So was her bedroom. I had moved again. I was at Amanda's house. I jumped up from the bed on which I was lying. I still had on the green pants and yellow blouse I had worn to Bern's party.

They were wrinkled, as if I had in fact slept in them, and I felt greatly relieved.

It was not as though I had forgotten what had happened the previous night, but I had a sudden rush of confidence that it couldn't have really happened.

People died all the time, I realized, but it was simply too ridiculous to think I could have been so unfortunate.

My confidence lasted long enough for me to walk into the living room. Mrs.

Parish, dressed in mourning black, was sitting on the couch holding a rosary.

"Hello, Mrs. Parish," I said, flipping a spunky wave at her.

Nothing. Not even a puzzled glance in my direction. I plopped down in the chair across from her. "Damn," I said.

Apparently, dying was one condition a good night's sleep couldn't remedy.

"You better finish your breakfast," Mrs. Parish said to Amanda. "They'll be here any minute."

Amanda, wearing a long gray dress that matched her wide gray eyes, was seated at the dining-room table, a bowl of oatmeal in front of her. The table, in fact the whole place, was fairly undistinguished. There wasn't a piece of furniture one couldn't have found at the Goodwill.

"I'm not very hungry," Amanda said.

"You'll need your strength," Mrs. Parish said, although it was clear from her shaking hands that it was she who needed the strength. "Please eat."

"All right," Amanda said, spooning down another soggy bite. "Where's the service going to be?"

"At the chapel at the cemetery," Mrs. Parish said.

"Now hold on a second," I said. "I just died. I'm not ready for any funeral. I'm not ready to—"

Why say it? Who was ever ready to be put in the ground?

But there was still a scheduling problem here. No one was buried the day after they died.

The only logical explanation was that I had slept away several days.

My, I thought, how time flies when one splits open one's skull.

"Will it be a Catholic service?" Amanda asked.

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"You might not want to bring your rosary. They only use those at Catholic masses."

Mrs. Parish looked down at her string of tiny black beads.

"I can pray quietly," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

"What?"

Mrs. Parish looked up. "Nothing, honey. Are you almost done? They should be here soon."

"I'm almost done," Amanda said, nodding patiently.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"You're remembering to take care of yourself?"

"I'm fine, Mother."

"Good," Mrs. Parish said weakly. "That's good."

Jo and her mother, Mrs. Foulton, arrived shortly afterward.

I felt honored that they were all going to my funeral in the same car since they seldom did anything together. Mrs. Foulton had on a black dress—somehow it still looked like a nurse's uniform—but Jo was wearing orange pants and an orange blouse. It was incredible. Who would wear orange to a best friend's funeral?

"This isn't Halloween, for God's sake," I told her, insulted.

Amanda set her bowl of half-finished oatmeal in the sink and headed to her room for her bag. Jo went with her. Mrs. Foulton sat beside Mrs. Parish on the couch. Neither looked as if she had been getting much sleep lately. But Mrs.

Foulton clearly had no intention of showing any weakness.

"You've got to get a handle on yourself," she said to her sister, pulling out a cigarette and a Bic lighter. "This is going to be hard enough on the girls."

Mrs. Parish nodded, bunching up her rosary in her hand.

"I know," she said.

"How's Amanda taking it?"

"I thought I heard her crying last night." Mrs. Parish took a breath. "How's Jo?"

"She doesn't say a word."

"Have you tried to talk to her about it?"

Mrs. Foulton lit her cigarette and exhaled a large cloud of smoke. "I don't want to talk about it. She's gone. It's done."

Mrs. Parish looked at her. "How can you say that?"

"It's true."

Mrs. Parish held her eye. "You're not going to forget her."

Mrs. Foulton went to snap at her sister but then thought better of it. She ground out her cigarette, lowering her eyes and voice. "No, I don't suppose I ever will forget."

The girls reappeared. We went outside and climbed into Mrs. Foulton's Nissan.

I sat in the back between Jo and Amanda. The sky was a sparkling blue, and the sun was cloaked in a dazzling aura of purple. That was another thing—I could stare right at the sun and not hurt my eyes.

Mrs. Foulton lit another cigarette and started the car.

Cruising down the road, the breeze through the open windows didn't mess my hair one tiny bit.

The cemetery was not very close to my house. My parents had lived in another neighborhood earlier. I suppose they had purchased a couple of local plots back when things were cheaper. In other words, I was being stuck in a plot they had one day planned on using for themselves. That was fine with me. I didn't plan on spending a lot of time underground.

But I felt a morbid curiosity as we drove through the flower-lined cemetery gates and started up the grassy hill along the narrow winding black road that led to the chapel. I leaned over Amanda and stared out the window. I was looking for other ghosts, but I couldn't find any, not even a little white Casper to go for a walk with. 1 began to feel lonely.

Part of the reason I had never been much of a churchgoer when I was alive was the minister of our church—the Reverend Theodore Smith. He wasn't an old-school fire-and-brimstone preacher; he was just straight, so straight you could line up your wallpaper next to him. He was one of those rare men you just knew had never been to bed with a woman.

He was about thirty-five and by no means bad looking, but the only suits he wore were the ones his father had left him in his will. He was always talking about Jesus.

You would have thought they were old friends. He could have bored any empty pew. But I wasn't surprised that he was there to host my funeral. I bet he figured this was one service I couldn't walk out on.

I was in for a big disappointment when I walked into the chapel with Jo and Amanda and their moms. Besides seeing Reverend Smith up front, I discovered that few kids from school had bothered to come. At first I figured we must be early, but the service started almost immediately, and there were no latecomers. I couldn't understand it. I had gone to Hazzard High for four years.

I hadn't been on the cheerleader squad or anything, but I had gotten around. I had been invited to every damn party there was, and, all told, there couldn't have been more than a dozen kids present. Then it hit me. Everyone thought I had committed suicide.