The Dead Lands: A Mockingbird Bay Mystery
Date: 2014-02-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: In a place Abby calls the Dead Lands, she aids individuals trapped by unfinished Earthly business and helps them move on. Abby meets Megan McGowan there, a sixteen-year-old girl who fell to her death on the rocky shores of Mockingbird Bay. Megan can’t remember if it was an accident…or something worse. With the help of Jim Burke, a young man who becomes a close friend, Abbey works to discover how Megan became trapped in this empty place. But Abby has other troubles -- her uncle, the Reverend George Wheeler, evil and vengeful, pursues her with his Hell Hounds through the twilight realms of the D

The Dead Lands

A Mockingbird Bay Mystery

By

Rick Hautala

JournalStone

San Francisco

Copyright © 2014 by Rick Hautala

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-940161-30-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-31-0 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-940161-32-7 (hc)

JournalStone rev. date:  February 7, 2014

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952623

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Design: Denise Daniel

Cover Art: Glenn Chadbourne

Edited by:  Elizabeth Reuter

Mockingbird
Bay

Prolog
Busted

“And just where have you been, young man?”

Busted, Mike thought, freezing the instant he heard his mother’s voice behind him.

He turned and saw her standing in the kitchen doorway, both hands planted firmly on her hips. He’d been trying to sneak into the house undetected so he could go up to his room and pretend he’d been up there all along. He could claim he’d been sleeping on the patio out back and hadn’t heard her call him to help carry in the groceries.

He should have known she’d catch him red-handed.

“Umm … nowhere.”

“And where’s your sister? She’s supposed to be watching you.”

“I don’t need—” Mike started to say, but his voice died away.

A sharp pain stabbed him between the shoulders when he shrugged, holding his hands palms up as if he were absolutely helpless.

“She’s supposed to be keeping an eye on you … not the other way around.”

As always, Mike thought his mother lost her patience with him a lot more than she did with his older sister. Maybe it was because Megan’s last name, McGowan, wasn’t the same last name as his—Ryder. That was because his mother, Caroline, had divorced her first husband, James, who was Megan’s real dad.

“I hope you two weren’t out at Fort Williams.”

Mike didn’t answer her right away.

He couldn’t.

He sure as heck wasn’t going to lie, but he couldn’t very well tell the truth without getting both him and Megan into some deep, deep trouble.

“Please tell me you weren’t out at Fort Williams!”

Mike bit down hard on his lower lip, trying not to blurt out the truth. If he lied now, his mother would find out the truth sooner rather than later.

She always did, and after what he had seen …

“Umm … yeah, well … kinda,” he said, knowing even as he said it that his answer wasn’t going to satisfy his mother.

“What do you mean kind of? You either were or you weren’t.”

His mother’s eyes fluttered as she took a shuddering breath and then let it out with a heavy sigh of frustration.

“You know you’re not supposed to go out there, not without an adult.”

“We weren’t really at the fort.”

Mike narrowed his eyes, silently praying that his mother would be satisfied with that and stop grilling him. He was t-h-i-s close to breaking down and saying what had happened—what he thought had happened—and then both he and his sister would be in deep doo-doo. They’d be grounded for weeks, at the least, and it would be even worse when, later, Megan took out her anger on him.

When she gets home …

If she gets home …

He was worried because he had seen … something—he wasn’t exactly sure what—out at the park … something that frightened him so much he wasn’t sure if it had been real or if he had imagined it.

“You weren’t fooling around out on the cliffs, I hope.”

Mike narrowed his eyes, wishing he could disappear as he shook his head in denial.

“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want you going out there? Those cliffs are dangerous.”

“I wasn’t on the cliffs … Honest!”

At least he wasn’t lying about that! He had spent most of his time climbing around the rocks of the old World War II fortress.

“How about your sister? … Did she go with you?”

Mike shrugged tightly even though he knew perfectly well that his sister had done worse … much worse. She had actually gone out to the cliffs. She went out there all the time. Just last night she had told him she was going there today to meet someone. When he had asked who, she’d told him to mind his own damn business.

And that’s what he’d done.

Sort of.

Earlier today, he’d followed Megan to see what she was up to until she started down one of the winding dirt paths that led out onto the rugged cliffs overlooking the ocean. Remembering his mother’s repeated warnings, he’d started off in another direction. He wasn’t going to get into trouble like Megan was when—not if, when—their mother found out.

“I asked you a question, young man.”

Mike shrugged again, staring blankly at the floor and bracing himself for what was coming next.

“Do I need to give you a lickin’? Is that it? You’re ten years old, for God’s sake. I would think you’d be too old for spankings.”

“I am,” Mike said, involuntarily covering his butt with both hands as if that would protect him.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“You mean Megan?”

“Of course I mean Megan!”

“I … I’m not sure.”

He could see that his mother was really more worried than angry, and he wondered how much angrier she would be if he told her he’d gone looking for Megan but had run straight home after he found one of her sneakers, the left one, on the trail.

And there was no way he could tell her what else he had seen because he was so scared he was no longer sure himself.

Abby

There are times when I’m really dead, but they don’t last long.

What happens is this. A mockingbird sings above my grave, and its song wakes me up. Not that I’m really asleep. For much of the time, I might truly be dead. Even though I died over a hundred years ago, I’m still not sure what being “dead” really means.

But when the mockingbird sings above my grave, I wake up, and I know there’s something I have to do. Someone who has died more recently than I have needs help. So I leave my grave, find whoever it is, and do what I can to help them.

I like helping people, even if they’re dead, but I should probably tell you a little about myself, first.

My name is Abigail Cummings. When I was alive, everyone called me Abby. I was born in 1867 and was raised, an only child, on a small farm outside of Waynesboro, Virginia.

I died in a shipwreck, off the coast of Maine in 1883.

My mother’s name was Ruth Cummings. Everyone called my father Justin, but his real name was Justinius. Both of my parents passed before I did, and I haven’t seen them since. That’s probably because I was a long way from home when I died.

After my parents were dead, leaving me alone, I was going to live in Maine with my uncle, the Reverend George Wheeler, and his wife, my Aunt Lillian. She was my mother’s younger sister.

I’m buried in the Old Settlers’ Cemetery, on a grassy bluff overlooking Willard Beach, in South Portland, Maine. I’m buried there, I suppose, because it’s close to where I died. The Faire Child, the ship that was bringing me to Maine, ran aground off Cushing’s Island during a storm. You can see the island from the cemetery.

My uncle, Reverend Wheeler, and everyone else on board also died in the shipwreck. None of them are buried here in the Old Settlers’ Cemetery, and I don’t see any of them anymore, except for my uncle.

I wasn’t ready for my life to end.

I don’t think anyone really is, but I was only sixteen years old, and I had my whole life ahead of me. I wanted to get married and have children. And now I can’t.

In many ways, I feel stuck here. I haven’t aged, so I’m still and always will be sixteen years old.

Of course, I’ve experienced and learned a lot in the last hundred or so years, and I’ve changed in so many ways. I’m amazed how much people and how they talk to each other and treat each other has changed. I try to keep up.

I’m still not certain what ultimately happens to our souls when we die. I don’t know because I’m still stuck here, halfway between life and death in this place I’ve come to call the Dead Lands.

When I was young, my friends and I used to frighten ourselves by telling ghost stories.

Now … I guess I am one.

The mockingbird is singing.

Chapter 1
Awakening

—1—

The mockingbird sat on a branch in a stunted apple tree overhanging a weathered gravestone, its song filling the late October evening. The crisp, clear notes rose above the hissing sound of waves rushing against the shore and the distant cry of seagulls wheeling high overhead. The wind coming in off the ocean stirred the dry sea grass, making it clatter and snap. The apple tree’s limbs, lined with golden fire from the setting sun, creaked like old bones.

Lying in her grave, her hands folded primly across her chest, Abby Cummings drifted closer and closer to consciousness. Then, after a timeless moment, her eyes opened, and she found herself staring up at the solid wall of darkness. The blackness flickered and hummed with coils of darker energy that tingled through her like electricity.

But even this emptiness, Abby knew, wasn’t eternal.

Even in death, there was no real death … at least, not for her.

She lost all sense of time as she lay in her coffin and listened to the faint echoes of the mockingbird’s song. It could have been minutes or hours or even days or months as the melody continued.

Her mind gradually cleared, and the sound awakened within her deep feelings and even deeper memories. Wave upon wave of sadness swept through her as she remembered and longed for everything she had lost so long ago … so long ago.

Without conscious effort, Abby rose through the vacuum, floating like a misty vapor on the sea, like a feather being tossed about by errant breezes, a dandelion puff.

Her mind cleared. She remembered with a shock that she was lying only six feet below the surface of the ground, but the journey up to the land of the living always seemed to take infinitely long. It was like flying through an endless tunnel with an impossible number of twists and turns.

She closed her eyes, but that didn’t change anything. The darkness inside her mind was just as dense, just as deep, just as eternal as the nothingness around her. Bone-deep chills ran through her until—

Finally!

—she saw a hazy blur of bluish gray light spreading above her.

“Welcome back to the Dead Lands,” she thought.

—2—

“What do you mean, you don’t know where she is? You were with her, weren’t you?”

Mike withered beneath his father’s angry glare as he sat hunched on his bed, his hands folded and wedged between his knees. He was terrified of what might come next.

“Um-hmm … yeah, well … kinda.”

“What do you mean kinda? Either you were or you weren’t.”

“We were together for a while … but then she … went off.”

“Went off? … She went off where?”

Mike shrugged as he glanced out the window. It was late in the afternoon, and night would come soon. Didn’t his father realize if he had the slightest clue where Megan was he would have told him by now?

Did his father think he was stupid or something?

“Was she with anyone else? Did she meet up with anyone?” His father was struggling not to yell at him.

“Wha—what do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. Did you see her with anyone out there … Was there anyone with her?”

His father’s face flushed deep red, and his left eyebrow started twitching the way it always did whenever he was about to lose his temper and get violent.

“N-n-no …” Mike said. “Not that I know of … I-I-I dunno … Maybe—”

Mike looked past his father to his mother, who was standing in his bedroom doorway. She was leaning against the frame, a worried, helpless expression twisting her features. Mike knew he wouldn’t be getting any sympathy from her, probably because she was afraid her husband might turn his anger on her, like he’d done a few times in the past. Mike knew he’d find no pity from either of them until they found out what had happened out there or until Megan showed up.

“What if she’s been chatting on-line again?” his mother asked in a low, husky voice. “Some of those creeps who go on-line …” She shivered and hugged herself, her face a mask of worry.

“We made it clear we want her to stop doing that.”

“That doesn’t mean she did. Remember a while ago, when she was talking to that one guy?”

Bob, her husband, glowered at her and started sawing his teeth back and forth across his lower lip. His face had gone pale except for the bright red vein lines on his nose and cheeks.

“Maybe we should call the police,” Mike’s mother suggested.

“They won’t do a damned thing. Besides, they can’t do anything for twenty-four hours.” He turned to Mike, his anger churning just below the surface like a geyser about to burst. “How about you and I take a little stroll out to the fort, young man, and you can show me exactly where you last saw her?”

Mike’s throat closed off so he couldn’t speak, but he nodded his agreement. Anything to get himself off the hook.

“Come on, then.”

His father held out his hand and beckoned to him. Mike slid off his bed and started for the door, shying away from his father when he walked past him, afraid his father might swat him a good one on the way by.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you two not to go out there,” his mother muttered, sounding thoroughly disgusted. She trailed behind them as they trod downstairs to the front foyer.

When they were at the door, his mother asked if they wanted her to come with them.

“No,” his father said, his voice snapping like a whip in the air. Mike turned to his mother, and for a split second was afraid again that his dad was going to take out his anger on her instead of him. “You have to be here in case she shows up. I’ll have my cell phone. Call me the second she shows up.”

Mike’s mother pursed her lips and nodded curtly.

“I will, but I still think we should notify the police now before too much time passes.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“But what if she arranged to … to meet one of those people from the internet … What if one of them’s a … a—”

She couldn’t finish the thought, but she didn’t have to. Mike knew exactly what she meant, and the more he thought about it, the more worried he was because as much as he tried to forget it, he had seen someone out there. Even worse, with each passing moment he realized how it was already too late for him to tell them that he had found Megan’s left sneaker and had brought it home.

It was hidden underneath his bed.

That would have to remain his secret now, even if—God forbid—the police got involved.

They were just heading out the door when the phone rang. Mike’s mother pivoted on her heel and strode into the kitchen. Mike winced when he heard her pick it up and say, “Hello.”

There was a long pause during which all Mike could hear was his own pulse, thundering in his ears. He chanced to look at his father, whose face had gone pale, his eyes glazed. And then, from the kitchen, his mother let out a loud shriek that twisted up at the end until it no longer sounded human. And then she started screaming a single word over and over again.

“No! … No! … No! … No! …”

—3—

Abby blinked and shook her head to clear it when she found herself standing in the long grass beside her tombstone. For a long while, she simply stared at her name and the dates of her birth and death carved into the weathered white marble. Once upon a time, the stone and inscription had been so sharp and new. Now, it was so worn she could barely read it.

With a sigh, she turned and surveyed the Old Settlers’ Cemetery and its surroundings. The landscape was cast in a rich amber glow that froze everything in midmotion as the sun lingered on the western horizon.

The strong breeze coming in off the ocean swirled like dark water around Abby. The long strands of her hair floated and twisted like tattered black silk in the wind, but she could not feel even the faintest trace of air across her skin.

Oh, how she wished she could.

A terrible sadness weighed down her heart as she tried to recall something as simple as how luxurious a cool breeze really felt as it caressed her face.

Against her will, Abby turned and looked out across the bay toward Cushing’s Island, less than a mile away. At first, in the lessening sepia-toned daylight, she couldn’t make out what she was looking for. But then, as her eyes adjusted to this strange twilight world, she was finally able to discern the rotting black hulk of the Faire Childe. The ship was barely visible on the rocky point of land that jutted into the ocean south of the island. The ship’s broken masts and spars and tattered sails were scattered about on the jagged rocks. Its hull, black with age and rot, swayed slowly back and forth, creaking loudly with the rushing tide, and … were those bodies, floating face-down in the water?

Many times over the years following her death, Abby had asked some of the numerous departed souls she met if they could also see the shipwreck. Nearly all of them said they could not, so Abby had decided long ago that, here in the “Dead Lands,” people either saw, or didn’t see, whatever they wanted.

The tide was high. In the fading daylight, the ocean was a deep, royal blue that hinted at purple in its depths. Waves rushed onto the shore, breaking across the smooth stretch of sandy beach with a roar. Pebbles and rocks made faint clicking sounds as the water pulled them back with it. Higher up on the beach, the sand was finer, a blinding yellowish-white in the dusky amber glow of evening. As Abby stood there, observing the world, the sun set below the horizon, coloring the sky with wide slashes of deep purple and vivid, blood red.

The mockingbird’s song came again, so close behind Abby it startled her.

Turning, she saw the bird, perched on a branch of the gnarled apple tree that grew beside her grave. The tree’s branches had been mostly stripped of leaves by the cold, salty winds. The leaves, crisp and brown, lay in curled piles like a scarf around the exposed roots.

It’s autumn, Abby thought wistfully, recalling how clean and fresh the air smelled in the fall. She shivered inside even though the air—no matter if it was freezing cold or furnace hot—never really touched her. The wind made a soft tearing sound as it whisked across the tufted grass and swirled in the lee of the rough stone wall that surrounded the cemetery on three sides.

Still mildly disoriented, Abby listened to the mockingbird’s lilting song. The notes rose and fell as the bird whistled and chirped, running through a gamut of different birds’ songs. The sound reminded her of summer days long passed.

Suddenly, the bird cocked its head to one side as though looking straight at her with one beady, black eye. Abby stared at the bird for a long time, hypnotized by the sparkling dark gleam in its eye. It looked like a chip of wet, black marble that could peer straight through her.

But then, gradually, she became aware of another sound.

The small wooden gate leading into the cemetery was ajar and swinging back and forth, making a low, creaking noise with each gust of wind. But that wasn’t what had drawn her attention. There was something else … a strange sound that was so faint it nagged at the edge of her awareness.

She quickly scanned the cemetery, but there was no one else—living or dead—close by. She wondered if any Reapers might be somewhere nearby, watching her but keeping out of sight. She could almost feel their presence. She opened her mouth and was about to call out but stopped herself when that annoying sound became clearer.

Drifting toward the wooden rail fence that lined the edge of the bluff overlooking the ocean, she looked down at the beach.

The peculiar sound got even louder.

It was an odd combination of a high-pitched, rhythmic squeak and a low sobbing, as if someone were moaning … or crying.

Close to the shoreline, Abby finally discerned a track of wavering footprints in the sand. Following them outward, away from the cemetery, she could just barely make out far off in the distance the small, huddled figure of what looked like a little girl walking away from her.

She’s sad … and afraid, was Abby’s first thought as a wave of pity filled her.

And she’s alone, and she’s crying.

Sorrow filled Abby as much for herself as for that lonely figure. At such a distance, all she could tell for sure was that the girl was about Abby’s age, maybe a bit younger. The girl’s thin shoulders were hunched up as if she were cold, and they shook whenever she let out a sob. If the girl could have felt the chilly wind blowing in off the ocean, she might have been shivering from the cold, too, but only out of habit or memory. Whether that little girl knew it or not, she was dead.

Every other step she took made that odd squeaking in what Abby called the “singing sands” of the beach. The sand here was of such a fine consistency that it made strange sounds whenever people—living people, anyway—walked on it. At times, it sounded like someone was running a moist finger along the rim of a crystal glass. Abby had never heard a dead person’s feet make that sound before. She finally realized the girl was wearing only one shoe. Her left foot—the one making the noise in the singing sands—was bare.

Abby suspected that was somehow important to what had happened and why that girl was here.

Feeling compelled to go down to the beach and talk to the girl, if only to settle her mind, Abby held back. She could call out and ask the girl to stop and wait for her, but she didn’t want to scare her any further.

She might run away, and then what help could Abby be?

She’s dead and doesn’t even know it.

Moving swiftly, her feet skimming lightly over the sand, Abby started after her.

I have to help her, she thought, remembering clearly how lost and alone she had felt when she had first found herself in the Dead Lands all those years ago.

But how long had it really been?

Time moved differently in the Dead Lands. When she was “awake,” Abby was keenly aware of days and nights passing, but the flow of time was so distorted it was almost meaningless and quite disorienting. This girl, whoever she was, was stranded here, and right now, Abby was sure she needed a friend.

There was no way of knowing how long the girl would remain in the Dead Lands. At any moment, a Reaper might appear and whisk her away, even before Abby got to speak with her.

Over time, Abby had learned that figuring out why and how someone had gotten here was important in helping him or her accept what had happened and then move on to the next level, whatever it was.

Until that happened, this girl would need a friend—someone who could help her understand how she had gotten here and what she should—or had to—do.

As Abby closed the distance between them, she suddenly noticed two dark, hooded figures on the cliffs in the distance.

Reapers, she thought with a shiver.

How long have they been there?

Have they been there all along, just waiting for that girl to come to them?

The Reapers wore dark, flowing cloaks that swept the ground. Their peaked hoods shadowed their faces as they stood on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. The girl was walking straight toward them, and apparently she was entirely unaware that they were even there.

A bolt of fear shot through Abby.

These Reapers must be waiting for the girl, but Abby was suddenly determined to get to her first so those terrifying beings might not frighten her when she finally did notice them. Abby might once have been amused by the thought that there was anything worse than dying, but she knew all too well that there were things much worse than death in the Dead Lands.

For some of the newly dead—maybe for this girl—the horrors might just be beginning.

Abby

I suppose anyone who lingers in the Dead Lands is a ghost of one sort or another. Most people in the living world can’t see or hear me, no matter how hard I try to make my presence known. A few people do, though … every now and then … and when that happens, I try my best to communicate with them like I am with you now.

When someone’s time to die finally comes—and I don’t know who or what ultimately decides that—the spirit is escorted away by beings I call “Reapers.”

They aren’t the Grim Reaper, that scary skeletal figure wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a scythe to harvest people’s souls. But Reapers aren’t entirely human, either. At least, I don’t think they are. I think of them as the Grim Reaper’s helpers. Some of these recently departed souls, they guide into the Light; others, they carry off, screaming and crying or begging for mercy, into shadows deeper than night. It all has to do with what kind of life they led.

There’s one Reaper in particular that I see quite often. He doesn’t act like any other Reapers I’ve met. I’ll tell you more about him later.

As I already mentioned, my mother and father died before I did. Their story is a real tragedy, but I don’t want to talk about it right now.

Maybe later.

Fortunately, I haven’t seen either of my parents here in the Dead Lands. I hope I never do. I pray they passed on into the Light long ago, but because my father was so violent, I’m afraid he may have been taken off into the shadows.

I’d go into the Light myself, if I could.

There’s nothing I would like better than to find eternal rest that isn’t interrupted from time to time by the mockingbird’s song.

Chapter 2
Meetings

—1—

Although the girl was moving swiftly away, Abby floated like smoke in the wind and caught up with her before she reached the cliffs at the far end of the beach. Here, rough surf was crashing against jagged black rocks, throwing threads of white foam high into the evening air. Closer to shore, the water swirled tangled clumps of seaweed beneath the churning froth.

High on the peaks overlooking the beach, the motionless figures of the Reapers stood out like two black holes ripped into the sky.

As Abby came up behind the girl, the squeaking sound the girl’s bare foot made in the sand got steadily louder. On her right foot, her only remaining shoe was white and low on her ankle with long, multicolored laces that were untied and dragged in the wet sand. Abby had learned some time ago that this kind of shoe was called a “sneaker.” She wondered why the girl was wearing only one, on her left foot, and was all the more convinced it had something to do with why and how the girl had died.

“Hello there,” Abby said, making her voice as soft and mild as possible.

All the while, she kept a wary eye on the two Reapers on the cliff, wondering if they were here for the girl, and if so, why they hadn’t started moving toward her yet. Maybe they weren’t here for her. The intentions of the Reapers were never clear to Abby, or anyone else, as far as she knew.

The girl stopped short in her tracks and cocked her head to one side as though she had heard a sound faint and far away, but she didn’t turn around.

Abby thought she might have spoken too softly. Her voice had been no louder than a faint sigh in the girl’s ear. She was close enough to reach out and touch the girl on the shoulder, but she held back, not wanting to startle her too badly.

“I’m right behind you,” Abby whispered.

At this, the girl reacted. Drawing her thin shoulders up protectively, she wheeled around, wide-eyed, and gaped at Abby. Her pale blue eyes glistened, and her expression was blank with confusion. Abby saw that she had guessed correctly; the girl was maybe a year or two younger than she.

For an instant, Abby wondered if the girl could see her at all, but then the girl’s lower lip drew tight and began to tremble. Her eyes brimmed with tears that Abby knew from painful personal experience would never be adequate to express or relieve the grief and terror inside her.

“Who … are … you?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and twisting up at the end. “Where am I?”

Abby could barely hear her above the roar of the breakers. She glanced at the Reapers once again.

It was obvious from her expression that the girl had no idea she was dead. Abby was concerned how she would react to the news when it finally hit her. Throughout her time in the Dead Lands, she had seen so many different reactions—from fear and denial to relief and joy—but this girl looked so frail and confused, Abby was afraid the instant she realized what had happened, she would start crying or else shriek with terror and maybe run off, never to be seen again.

Abby’s heart went out to her. She desperately wanted to help this girl and protect her from any and all horrors in the Dead Lands, but she couldn’t come right out and tell the girl everything that was happening.

Not yet.

She would have to ease into it.

“My name’s Abby,” she said as cheerfully as she could manage, given the circumstances. She bowed her head but refrained from giving a full curtsy. That would have been the polite thing to do back when she was alive, but Abby knew that times and customs had changed.

“What’s yours?”

Abby wanted to tell the girl that she understood her confusion. It was terrifying to realize you were dead. Abby couldn’t help but remember how she could never leave the Dead Lands, but she had been here so long now, she accepted the way things were, and she considered it her duty to help people like this lost and frightened girl adjust to what had happened.

“No, wait …” Abby said with a slight smile. “Let me guess. You look like a Sarah to me.”

The girl’s expression remained utterly blank for a moment longer; then she narrowed her eyes and shook her head slowly from side to side.

“No,” she said, her voice dragging and low. “It’s … umm …”

A look of fright swept across her face as if she had suddenly awakened from a bad dream and was now trying to remember it. Abby was ready for that. A lot of the newly dead suffered momentary amnesia about who they were.

After a moment, the girl shook her head and said softly, “Megan … My name’s Megan McGowan.” She shifted her gaze away from Abby and looked out across the ocean for a long time without saying anything more. Then she asked, “So where am I? Am I dreaming?”

“Nope. You’re not dreaming,” Abby said.

“I feel like I’m in a dream.”

“You’re definitely not dreaming.”

“Then where am I? How did I get here?”

“I’m not sure,” Abby replied. “We’ll have to find out, but I’ve been here a long time, and I know you don’t have to be afraid.”

“Afraid? I’m not afraid,” Megan said, squaring her shoulders, but her expression indicated otherwise. Her lower lip was pale and trembling. Tears brimmed in her eyes and ran in thin, silver streams down both of her cheeks.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Abby asked, holding her hand out to Megan. “We can walk and talk. I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Biting her lower lip while shying away from her, Megan hesitated to take Abby’s outstretched hand. She cast a furtive glance around the beach but still seemed not to have noticed the Reapers standing on the cliff.

“Who are you?” Megan asked even as she slid her hand into Abby’s tender grip. “And why are you wearing those funny clothes?”

“You mean my dress?” Abby said, flouncing the lacy white dress she’d been buried in over a hundred years ago. “It’s not supposed to be funny.”

“I’m sorry. I just mean it … It just looks kinda old-fashioned.”

“It’s all I have to wear,” Abby said with a simple shrug.

“It looks like something you found in your grandmother’s attic or something,” Megan said, and that seemed to satisfy her.

Hand in hand, the girls started back along the beach, moving away from the Reapers, who remained motionless on the cliff above the sea. The rhythmic sound of the surf was punctuated by the steady cadence of Megan’s bare foot, squeaking in the singing sands.

“Do you live around here?” Megan asked as they walked.

Abby was caught short by the girl’s use of the word “live.” Obviously, she didn’t understand that neither of them lived anywhere anymore.

“Not far from here,” Abby replied. “How about you?”

“I live—”

Megan stopped short, and once again a curious expression, a mixture of unnamed fear combined with confusion and genuine surprise passed across her face. She looked like she had just realized she had lost something very important but had no idea what it was, much less where it might be now. Her eyes widened in shock and gathering terror when she turned and looked down the length of the beach.

“How come the sky looks so … funny?” she asked in a high, quavering voice.

“Funny?”

Megan’s shoulders shook as if a chill had suddenly gripped her.

“And who are those people back there?”

“What people?”

Abby was hoping she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the presence of the Reapers just yet. Over the last hundred years, she had noticed that the Reapers never took anyone off into the light or the shadows until after the victim had acknowledged their presence. At times, it seemed as if they were amused or took mild pleasure in the fearful reactions they got from some of the departed souls they were about to carry away.

“Up there on the cliff?” Megan indicated the Reapers with a quick nod of her head.

Realizing that the moment of truth had arrived, Abby faced Megan squarely and held her by both arms just above the elbows. Her grip was light but firm. She carefully considered what she was about to say next.

“I … I’m not sure I know how to explain this to you, Megan, and I’m not sure you’ll even believe me.”

A powerful wave of emotion swept through Abby when she saw the worry and fear growing steadily stronger, like an approaching thunderstorm in Megan’s eyes. Only too well she remembered the stark terror she had experienced when she had first realized she was dead … and all alone.

At least she isn’t alone, Abby thought.

In many ways, the panic she had experienced that day over one hundred years ago was immediate and still surprisingly fresh.

Before she could say anything, though, from far off in the distance, there came the deep-throated sound of barking dogs. Their mournful howls and sharp yips filled the evening air, echoing from the rocks.

Looking past Megan, Abby saw two, then three, and then four huge black shapes bounding across the sand, heading straight toward them.

“We have to run. Now,” she said, trying without much success to keep the panic out of her voice.

“How come?”

Megan followed Abby’s gaze down the beach and reacted when she saw the huge, black dogs swiftly closing the distance between them.

“Wha—what are those?”

Abby didn’t reply. Holding Megan’s hand, she started running, all but dragging Megan along behind her.

“Are they after us?” Megan managed to say, gasping.

“Let’s not wait to find out,” Abby replied.

She didn’t have the heart to tell Megan the truth. If she still hadn’t realized she was dead, there was no way Abby could explain the Hell Hounds and why they were hunting for her.

—2—

Slouching in a hard, metal chair, Caroline Ryder squeezed Bob’s hand as they sat side by side in the small, windowless room in the hospital. The bars of fluorescent light hurt her eyes, making her squint as she struggled to hold back her tears. The burning sensation in her eyes and the buzzing in her head were all but intolerable. She was afraid that any moment now she was going to leap to her feet and, screaming, run from the room.

Detective Martin Gray stood a short distance behind them, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. Caroline was acutely aware of his presence hovering over them like the shadow of doom.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this, Mr. and Mrs. Ryder?” Detective Gray asked. His voice low and hushed, almost the quiet respect of a funeral director.

Holding his body stiffly, his arm around his wife’s shoulders, Bob grunted and nodded. Caroline was wired, knowing she would break down crying if she tried to make even the slightest sound. They both stared up at the blank television monitor mounted on the wall, held in place by a black metal bracket. Suddenly, the screen clicked to life, and they found themselves staring at a tiny figure lying on a shiny metal gurney in the morgue.

Caroline sucked in her breath so sharply it stung her throat like a bee sting. Then she let out a shivering cry and collapsed forward, clasping her head with both hands and rocking back and forth, squeezing … squeezing her head so it wouldn’t explode. Her eyesight blurred, becoming a dazzling array of white and gray spikes as she stared at the tiny, motionless figure. Their daughter looked like she was asleep, but Caroline knew she wasn’t asleep.

How can that be her? … How can that be Megan? … How can that be my baby girl?

She stared unblinking at the motionless figure on the cold, metal platform. Detective Gray had explained that standard procedure was to have people identify the victim using a closed-circuit television rather than putting them next to the body of the deceased, but it seemed almost worse seeing Megan this way. It was more dehumanizing, not less. Caroline was filled with an overwhelming impulse to run, to run down the hall until she found the room.

She had to go to her daughter.

She had to see her and touch her and smell her baby.

… one last time …

But as the grief washed through her, she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Megan was gone …

Dead and gone.

Forever!

And there was nothing she or her husband or Detective Gray or anyone else could do to bring her back.

All that was left now was to arrange for her funeral and spend the rest of their lives trying as best they could to move past the horror of what had happened. All she could think at this moment, though, was, how could any parent, how could any mother, ever get past the death of a child?

It wasn’t just daunting.

It was impossible.

“Is that your daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Ryder?” Detective Gray asked.

Through her tears, Caroline couldn’t stop staring at the unmoving figure, unable to accept that this really was Megan.

She looked like a doll … a mannequin.

Megan’s eyes were sunken, and there was a horrible, dark bruise on the left side of her head. Her skin, even on the TV monitor, looked unnaturally pale, like antique porcelain that had cracked and broken.

As she stared at her daughter, Caroline could almost convince herself that she could see Megan’s chest rising and falling.

“It is,” Bob said, his voice strangled. Caroline was amazed that he could speak at all. “That’s Megan.”

“I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” Detective Gray said, but the sudden chill in his voice made Caroline wonder how sorry he really was.

How could he ever understand?

Has he ever gone through anything like this?

Has he ever lost a child or a loved one?

How can he possibly know what Bob and I are feeling?

No, this was just some phony, rote expression of sympathy that the detective adopted as part of his job. He couldn’t do what he did and allow himself to really feel anything like what she was going through right now.

Caroline experienced a sudden rush of anger directed at the detective, as if somehow he was responsible for Megan’s death. When Bob touched her to pull her closer, she reacted and pulled violently away from him, coiled and ready to lash out.

“We ought to leave now, hon,” Bob said, his gaze cast down at the floor as he shook his head sadly from side to side. He raised his hand to his face and wiped the tears away from his eyes.

Caroline doubted her legs would hold her as she stood up, gripping her husband’s arm for support. The backs of her knees bumped against the chair, pushing it back so it made a loud scraping sound on the tile floor. The noise hit her nerves like a drill.

“Can I … can I go to her?” she asked in a shattered voice. “Can I see my baby?”

She hated the desperation in her voice, but she had to see and touch Megan one last time.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now,” Detective Gray said simply.

Caroline stared at him, her mouth agape, too numb to think or say anything. A hollow feeling of utter loss and grief filled her body like the cold vacuum of space.

She knew that feeling would never go away.

—3—

“Keep running,” Abby shouted to be heard over the wind and waves. “And whatever you do, don’t look back.”

Holding tightly onto Megan’s hand, they flew across the sandy beach as the mournful howling of the dogs behind them grew steadily louder. Their only hope was to get back to the Old Settlers’ Cemetery. For some reason, the Hell Hounds and their master never dared to enter it, perhaps because it was consecrated ground.

If she had been on her own, Abby was sure she could have easily outdistanced the Hell Hounds; but Megan couldn’t move as fast as she could. Having only one sneaker slowed them down all the more.

The baying of the Hell Hounds rose steadily louder as they quickly closed the distance. Abby and Megan cut across the beach, heading for the bluff that overlooked the ocean, but Megan kept stumbling and falling, wasting precious time. Abby dragged her for much of the way. After crossing the sand, they started up the narrow dirt path that snaked the grassy ridge to the cemetery. The Hell Hounds were less than a hundred feet behind them when Abby saw the wooden cemetery gate up ahead. She could imagine the heat from the Hell Hounds’ fiery red eyes burning into her back, and she could smell the stinking foam that slobbered from their gaping, snapping mouths. When she chanced a glance behind her, the Hell Hounds’ fangs flashed like silver daggers in the preternatural glow of the evening. All too easily, Abby could imagine those teeth ripping into her, bringing her down, and shredding her soul, if not her flesh.

“Can—you—make—it?” Abby gasped as they struggled through the thigh-high beach grass and up the rock-strewn slope. Megan kept tripping and stumbling as loose shale slipped out from beneath her bare foot. Several times, she almost tumbled to the beach below.

Megan seemed to be tiring fast, but Abby knew that was only because she still thought she was alive. Once she realized she was dead, she would find that she couldn’t get exhausted the way she had back then.

For now, though, Abby’s only thought was that they had to avoid these dogs—these demons—and the evil man who she knew was not far behind.

When they were almost to the cemetery gate, Abby glanced down at the beach. Her chest went cold when she saw, far down the beach but moving as swiftly as a raven in their direction, a tall, gaunt man wearing a wide-brimmed hat that was weather-stained a deep, dull gray. The brim shaded his face, which was pale and heavily lined. Instead of a heavy cloak, like the Reapers, he wore a long, black swallow-tailed coat, dark loose-fitting trousers, and knee-high, black riding boots. His eyes glowed beneath the brim of his hat, and his mouth was fixed with a thin, grim smile as he strode purposefully across the sand in Abby’s direction.

Abby gripped Megan’s hand all the tighter as she watched the man quickly close the distance between them. The baying hounds were scrambling up the bluff behind them, finding it difficult to gain purchase on the loose rocks. They snapped and yelped at each other in their fury to be the first to catch their prey.

“Halt where you are!” the man shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. His voice resounded from the rocky cliff like a gunshot. “Stop in the name of the Lord!”

Abby couldn’t help but freeze. She had heard that voice so often when she was alive that, even now, after a hundred years, it had the power to terrify her. Squeezing Megan’s hand tightly, she turned and faced the man. Even at this distance, she could see his pale, skeletal face and the cold deadness in his eyes.

“Who’s he?” Megan whispered in a frightened voice.

Abby was rigid with fear. The cemetery wall—her only refuge—was less than fifty feet behind her, but she couldn’t … she didn’t dare turn her back on this man and make a run for it.

“I don’t like him,” Megan said. “He’s kinda creepy. What does he want?”

“He wants me,” Abby said, but then her voice failed her. She squared her shoulders and, trying hard to sound brave but knowing she failed miserably, added, “That’s Reverend Wheeler. My dead uncle.”

Abby

There’s one Reaper who’s different from all the others. I don’t know his name. I don’t know if Reapers even have names. But this one seems … different, somehow. He’s never spoken to me, not once, but it seems like he’s always somewhere nearby, watching over me … especially when I’m in any kind of danger.

If he asked, I’d let him take me away, but he won’t … at least not yet. I’m not sure why. I’ve asked him—even begged him to take me to the Other Side … even if it’s into the shadows, but he never answers me.

He doesn’t talk.

He doesn’t look like the other Reapers, either. He wears a long black cloak like they do, but instead of a hood or cowl over his head, he wears a dark, wide-brimmed hat, what used to be called a “slouch hat.” I don’t know if they still call them that. I’ve never seen his face because he keeps it hidden behind a veil of black silk that hangs down from the inside rim of his hat. Just once, I’d like to see his face.

More times than I can remember, I’ve seen this Reaper guide a wandering soul into the Light. I’ve never seen him take anyone into the shadows, so I think he’s a “good” Reaper, if there is such a thing. Still, he frightens me sometimes because I get this feeling he’s always watching me …

I really don’t understand why he won’t take me away.

Whatever his reasons, he doesn’t. He simply shakes his head from side to side, and sighs so heavily it stirs the black silk that covers his face. The silk ripples like deep, dark water. And then he walks away from me.

He’s never gone for long, though. Whenever the mockingbird sings and I awaken, I sense his presence even though I don’t see him right away. I guess you could think of him as my Guardian Angel, if such a thing is possible in the Dead Lands.

There are many dangers here, no doubt.

More than you can imagine.

I’ll tell you about some of them later, but I don’t want to frighten you. Believe me, it’s nice to have a Guardian Angel even if I have no idea who he is or what he looks like, and even if he never speaks with me.

I hope … someday … he will.

Chapter 3
Pursued

—1—

“You’ll do exactly as I say, young lady!”

Reverend Wheeler’s voice boomed like cannon shot above the slow grinding wash of the surf on the rocks and sand. Beneath the brim of his wide hat, his eyes flickered with a dull, dead glow as he stared up at Abby and Megan on the bluff above him.

Abby felt compelled to shout back at him, but her voice failed her. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone. After all this time in the Dead Lands, he no longer had any say over her.

“I’m still your legal guardian, Abigail Cummings, and I grow weary of this fruitless chase.” Reverend Wheeler subtly shifted his eyes to his right, and when Abby looked in that direction, she saw that one of the Hell Hounds was moving slowly, stealthily up the hillside toward her. It was crawling on its belly, hunching and pulling itself over the shale and through the thick brush.

Where are the other Hell Hounds? Abby wondered with a sudden rush of panic. They always traveled in a pack. If one of them was moving off to her left, then the other one must be …

Abby shifted her gaze to her right.

The hillside was deep in shadow, and she knew that side of the hill was steep, probably too steep for any creature to climb. Then again, these weren’t just any dogs. She was convinced these Hell Hounds really originated in the depths of Hell. The fact that they traveled with Reverend Wheeler indicated how evil they really were because her uncle, in spite of having been a minister when alive, now served a different and far darker Master.

The sound of a twig snapping behind her drew her attention. She wheeled around in time to see another Hell Hound moving to position itself between her and the cemetery gate. With a sudden scream, Abby clutched Megan’s wrist and started running toward the safety of the cemetery.

“Stop right now, child!” Reverend Wheeler shouted. “Stop and come to me! … I demand that you obey me!”

The Reverend’s voice clapped like thunder in the air, but Abby ignored him as she ran for all she was worth toward the gate, hoping, praying she would make it before the Hell Hounds intercepted her. If they ever caught her, she was afraid they and the Reverend would drag both her and Megan down to Hell.

Would they destroy us both?

How could she be hurt?

She was already dead.

How bad could it be?

In all her time in the Dead Lands, she had never experienced pain or pleasure, at least not as she remembered them from life. Then again, a Reaper or a Hell Hound had never caught her. From the screams she’d heard when people disappeared into the shadows, she had no doubt that pain beyond anything she could possibly imagine awaited her there.

“I lost my patience with you long ago, child!”

Reverend Wheeler was shouting, but his voice was barely audible as Abby and Megan ran. The Hell Hound that had been climbing the cliffs to the right suddenly leaped forward, uttering a ferocious growl. As it closed the distance between them, Abby saw its gnashing jaws opening and shutting in anticipation of clamping its fangs down on her. An instant before it caught her, though, Abby and Megan burst through the cemetery gate. Wheeling around, Abby slammed the wooden gate shut behind her.

The Hell Hound was moving too fast to stop its charge in time. It slammed into the gate hard enough to splinter the wood, but the impact knocked it back onto its haunches. It howled in pain and fury as it scrambled to its feet and then stood there, only inches from the cemetery wall, growling and glaring at Abby and Megan. Its eyes flickered with the flames of Hell.

Even though the creature didn’t enter the cemetery—it couldn’t—Abby didn’t feel totally safe. A moment later, Reverend Wheeler appeared at the crest of the hill.

“Well, well, well, my child,” he said, shaking his head from side to side as though deeply saddened. When he spoke, his thin lips peeled back, exposing narrow, sharp teeth that looked like they had been purposely filed to fine points. “Do you really think I can’t come in there and take you if I wanted to?”

“You just try it, then,” Abby said, surprising herself with her sudden courage to confront her former guardian.

Reverend Wheeler lowered his head so the brim of his hat shielded his eyes. The wind blowing across the grass and through the trees hissed like a coiled serpent. He snapped his fingers, and the Hell Hounds all came to him and crowded around his legs, whimpering and panting. Their mouths dripped blood-red foam that sizzled when it hit the ground.

“Perhaps now is not the right time after all,” Reverend Wheeler said. Nodding his head slowly up and down, he stroked his chin as though deep in thought. “Perhaps it’s best to make you wait and wonder … and worry about exactly when I will come to claim you.”

“You don’t have any power over me, Uncle,” Abby said. “Not anymore.”

She glanced at Megan, who was cowering behind her, her small hands clinging to the folds of Abby’s dress.

For a long time, Abby and the Reverend simply stared at each other, neither one speaking or moving. Then, without another word, Reverend Wheeler turned on his heel and strode away, disappearing over the edge of the slope that led down to the beach. Abby watched him as he walked across the sand until he was lost to sight in the gathering darkness.

“Damn! That guy’s one helluva hard ass,” Megan said in an attempt at bravado.

Abby frowned and said, “Everyone talks like that these days, don’t they?”

“Like how?”

“Swearing,” Abby said. “When I was growing up, we’d get punished for talking like that.”

“Well, you gotta admit, he is a hard ass.”

“Umm … I guess so,” Abby said.

Megan paused and looked around. “Do you think he’s really gone?” Her voice was as fragile as an eggshell. “You’re sure we’re safe?”

“For the time being, uh-huh,” Abby replied, “but there’s something I have to explain to you.”

She turned and faced the girl, gripping her by both elbows. But before she could begin to speak, in the corner of her eye, she caught a hint of motion at the far end of the cemetery.

It wasn’t much. Just a glimpse of what she was sure was a person moving quickly out of sight behind the dense stand of pine trees.

But it wasn’t a person at all. Abby was sure she had caught a glimpse of a swatch of black silk hanging down from inside the wide hat brim and covering the figure’s face.

She felt much better, knowing that the Reaper she considered her friend had been close by the whole time.

No wonder Reverend Wheeler had left in such a hurry.

—2—

Dawn comes in strange ways in the Dead Lands. The dead of night is so natural it seems like it might last forever, but—eventually—the eastern sky begins to glow with a thin haze of blue light. Sometimes the sky fills with a brilliant wash of red and pink; other times, it’s tinged with deep orange or an array of violet shades; other times, it’s milky white or is lit with a dull amber glow that casts no shadows even after the sun is riding high in the sky.

Dawn on the first day after Abby met Megan on the beach came with long streaks of dark purple clouds that reached up from the eastern horizon like cat scratches raked across the pewter gray.

As the land around them gradually grew brighter, the flashing red and blue Abby had seen far off in the distance, over in the direction of the Portland Head Light, weren’t as easy to distinguish. Although they never had such things back when she was alive, Abby knew what those flashes of color were.

They were the emergency lights of the police and ambulance.

She wondered if this had anything to do with Megan’s death.

She thought it must.

Abby and the girl had spent the night in the cemetery. While it was dark, Abby hadn’t left to investigate those flashing lights because she was afraid Reverend Wheeler might still be lurking nearby with his Hell Hounds, waiting to pounce on her and drag her away. She had waited for daylight so she at least could see more clearly. The Reaper she had seen outside the cemetery—the one who watched over her—couldn’t always be around to protect her.

“Now do you understand?” Abby asked Megan.

They were sitting side by side on the grassy bluff that overlooked the beach, leaning back against the stone wall and watching the sun rise from behind Cushing’s Island. Even in the first feeble glow of dawn, Abby could see the black hulk of the sailing ship that had washed up on the western tip of the island more than one hundred years ago. The black hull and spars clung to the seaweed-crusted rocks, still battered back and forth by the waves that had claimed her life and the lives of everyone on board.

“I … I think so,” Megan replied, her voice quavering as she looked around. “I mean, it—it’s just so … so freaky and … and sad that I’ll never be able to see my mom and dad or my brother and all of my friends ever again.”

“Oh, you’ll be able to see them … and you’ll be able to hear them. You just won’t be able to communicate with them, at least not very well.”

“What do you mean?”

Abby shrugged and said, “I mean that it’s hard for anyone who’s dead to let people who are still alive know they’re still here. It takes a special person to see and hear us.”

“Do they have any idea we’re here in, like, some other way?”

“What do you mean?” Abby asked.

Megan shrugged. “I mean, can they feel us or … or sense that we’re here?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Abby replied. She was glad the girl was taking the truth about what had happened to her as well as she was. A few times during the night, she had heard Megan crying softly to herself, but she had never lost control or reacted with anger or denial, as she might have.

“You can see your family again if you want to,” Abby said. “I just don’t think that is such a good idea.”

“How come?’”

Abby turned away from looking at the derelict ship and looked Megan straight in the eyes.

“I’ve met a lot of people like you—”

“You mean dead people?”

Abby nodded and said, “Uh-huh. Dead people. And they, or their spirits or souls or whatever you want to call them, linger here because they can’t let go. They try to hold on to at least a part of the life they had. Sometimes—a lot of times—when they see the people they loved when they were alive, it … it makes it all the harder for them to move on.”

“Into the light, you mean.”

Again, Abby nodded. She still hadn’t had the heart to tell her about people who got taken off into the shadows.

“So if you’ve been here, like, a hundred years or so. How come you haven’t moved on?” Megan asked.

Her question surprised Abby. Throughout the night, all of the talk had centered around Megan and what had happened to her. Abby wasn’t ready to discuss her own situation with someone she’d just met.

“I guess there’s still something I have to do,” she replied, lowering her gaze to where the waves at low tide were washing up across the beach. A lone seagull flew by, its lonely cry echoing in the emptiness of the dawn.

“Like what?” Megan leaned forward, the intensity of her gaze making Abby uncomfortable.

“I—I’m not sure. I think—I’m positive it has something to do with my uncle … and the rest of my family, but I—” She sighed and shook her head before turning back to Megan. “If you really want to see your family—”

“Don’t change the subject,” Megan said.

“We’re not here to figure out what I have to do. I want to help you, and if you really want to see your family again….”

“Can I?” Megan’s eyes lit up with such excitement Abby could tell that, for a moment, at least, she’d forgotten what they had talked about through the night, especially some of the many dangers in the Dead Lands.

“Sure, but remember—we have to be careful because of—”

“—the Reverend. We have to make sure he doesn’t get us.”

“He’s not after you. Only me. But he might try to use you to get to me. We have to be careful. There are other things we have to look out for, too.”

“Like what?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

The sun was lighting up the land more than usual this morning, casting a rich, warm glow across the beach. Abby couldn’t help but wonder if it was just her perception, that having Megan to help gave her a purpose and made her see the Dead Lands as just a little less gloomy.

“How can I find my parents?” Megan asked. “I mean, do we have to walk to my house, or is there some way I can go wherever I want, like, you know, transport myself?”

“What do you mean by ‘transport’?” Abby said. “All you have to do is think about a person or even a place, and you  just  sort of know where they are and can get there.”

“Do I, like, close my eyes, click my heels, and make a wish like Dorothy?”

Abby chuckled and said, “I don’t know anyone named Dorothy, but no. It’s nothing like that. We have to walk there, but it’s kind of different.”

“You mean we can fly?”

“No. Not that, either. Before we go, would you like to take your other shoe off?”

“You mean my sneaker?”

Abby shrugged. They both looked down at Megan’s feet. The right one was bare; the left one still had a sneaker on it.

“I’m just saying you might feel better if you were barefoot, unless we find your other one.”

Megan considered for a moment and then said, “Nope. I think I like it this way.”

Without another word, the two of them stood up. After another look around to make sure Reverend Wheeler wasn’t anywhere nearby, at least for the time being, Abby led the way down the narrow path to the beach. Once they were at the ocean’s edge, they walked side by side toward the distant cliffs that ranged along the edge of the ocean where Portland Head Light stood sentinel over the gray Atlantic. They moved across the sand like wisps of faint mist blowing in from the ocean. Above the low rumble of the waves was the steady squeak-squeak-squeak of Megan’s bare foot.

— 3 —

“Gosh, it’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t it though?”

Julia Burke cupped the antique heart-shaped locket in the palm of her left hand and looked at it admiringly. Turning it over, she stared at the etched inscription. Written in such fancy script that it was difficult to read were the initials: R.H.C. Hanging from the locket, tied to it with a length of long, dark hair, was a small gold key.

“It’s worth twice the price just for the gold, if you had the heart to melt down something so beautiful,” said Edith Peregrine. She was the owner of Thynges Past, an antiques store on Route One, in Falmouth, a store Julia visited at least once a week.

“I would never have the heart to do that,” Julia said. “Someone, a long time ago, really treasured this item.”

“Yes, she did. Her picture’s on the inside.” Edith spoke softly, reverentially, as if she were in a church. She made a gesture as if to take the necklace from Julia, but Julia slid her fingernail into the crescent-shaped slot on the side of the heart and gently pulled up. The tiny hinge yielded slowly with age, and Julia’s hands were trembling as she opened the locket wide enough to see the small photograph nestled inside.

It was an old daguerreotype of a young girl who looked to be in her early to midteens when the picture was taken. She was pretty in a plain sort of way, with long, dark hair that flowed in tresses down to both shoulders. She was wearing a clean starched dress with a wide, lacy collar. It looked like it was white, but it could have been light blue or yellow or some other color. That was part of the fun for Julia. She loved to imagine what these people’s lives had been like. The girl was smiling for the photographer, but there was something in her eye, a distance … a dark, haunted look that Julia found fascinating.

“She’s beautiful. Don’t you think so, Jim?”

With that, she turned and showed the photograph to her sixteen-year-old son Jim, who was standing close to the door, looking like he was prepared to bolt in an instant. Jim barely glanced at the photograph and then shrugged.

“I guess so,” he said.

Julia knew how much he disliked shopping with her, especially when she was “antiquing,” but now that he had his learner’s permit, he took every opportunity to drive the car around town. He had only come into the store because he’d been getting bored waiting in the car while she dawdled around.

Turning back to Edith, Julia said, “I just love looking at old photographs. I mean, you can’t help but wonder who these people were. What kind of lives did they live? Were they happy or sad? And how did they die? It’s just so … so—” She shivered and hugged herself as though an unexpected cool breeze had wafted across her shoulders. “—so fascinating.”

“That’s why I deal in antiques,” Edith said. “I love the feeling I get when I touch people’s past lives.”

At that, Jim looked at Edith and his mother as if he was a bit creeped out by the whole thing. It was one thing to like old-fashioned trinkets, but it was quite another whenever his mother and Edith got going on about how jewelry and old photographs put them in touch with these people who had died long ago.

Julia snapped the locket shut and reluctantly handed it back to Edith, who clasped it lightly in her hand.

“I’d love to buy it,” Julia said, frowning and shaking her head, “but no, I just can’t justify it. Not today.”

Edith was silent for a long moment as she looked at Julia with a steady, unblinking stare. Then she smiled and said, “Don’t worry about it. It’s just as well, I guess. I feel as though there’s something special about this one. I’m not so sure I even want to sell it. It’s just so unique, I wanted you to see it, is all.”

“I appreciate it,” Julia said as she considered for a moment. “It is lovely.”

The asking price was quite a bit beyond what she was ready or willing to spend today, and as much as the locket intrigued her, it was, after all, just a locket. Like Edith said, it was probably worth more for the gold content than any sentimental reasons. Why would she feel sentimental about it, anyway?

“Well, champ?” Julia said, turning to Jim. “You ready to blast?”

Jim hated it when his mother used words and expressions he and his friends used. They never sounded quite right, coming from her; but without a word, he nodded and opened the door for her.

“Thanks for dropping by,” Edith said and she carefully replaced the locket into its display box and put it on the counter. “See you later.”

Julia nodded but found she couldn’t speak because for some reason, all she could think about was that antique locket. For whatever reason, the photograph of that girl and the key … the key to what? … were stuck in her mind.

On the drive home, she couldn’t stop wondering out loud about who that girl had been and what the key tied to a lock of hair might open. A small jewelry box? A diary? What?

She knew it probably drove Jim nuts to hear her go on and on like this, but she decided it was a small price for him to pay in order to get to drive the family car. Once he got his license, they wouldn’t have times like this together. It all went by so fast.

— 4 —

“Why are we even here?” Megan asked.

Abby was silent for a long moment as she stood in the corner of the shop and watched the door close and the two figures disappear into the daylight. She couldn’t begin to find the words to express how she had felt as she and Megan had watched that woman inspect the locket, her locket, with her picture in it, and her key tied to her hair.

“You remember how I told you if you think about someone you love, someone you really want to see, you’ll know exactly where they are and can go to them?”

Standing by one of the windows with a bar of sunlight beaming down—and through—her, Megan nodded slowly.

“Well, that’s how I feel about that locket.”

“You mean it used to be yours?”

Something choked Abby’s voice off, and all she could do was nod.

“And the hair that’s tied to the key? That’s your hair?”

Again, all Abby could do was nod. Moving like a puff of smoke, she drifted over to the display counter and looked at the locket. Her heart ached so much—even though she didn’t have a physical heart that could actually ache—she thought it would break from all the memories that locket evoked. She wished she could be alive and real just long enough so she could pick up that locket one last time and hold it with both hands while she remembered her mother and father and the life she used to have.

“So why not just take it?” Megan said.

Abby considered a moment, then said, “That’s not how things work here. Haven’t you realized that yet? We can’t touch anything … nothing … ever again!”

As if to prove it, Abby reached out for the locket. Her hand passed through it like a fine mist, but it was impossible to say which was less substantial—her hand or the locket.

Megan looked at her with amazement, gathering shock in her expression.

“So how come we can walk on the beach and stand on the floor here without falling through? Why do we even have clothes? And why does the wind blow our hair even though we can’t feel it on our faces?”

Abby shook her head sadly from side to side as she watched Edith Peregrine bustle around the shop, dusting and rearranging items on the shelves.

“I’m not sure,” she finally said. “It … it’s just the way things are. In some ways, it’s all just an illusion. Everything. We don’t fall through the floor because we don’t expect to, but maybe we would if we stopped believing that people—even dead people—can stand on floors because floors are solid. Maybe even when we’re alive things aren’t really solid.”

Megan’s eyes widened as the idea gradually sank in.

“You mean because we’re dead, we just see things the way they are because that’s the way we expect them to be?”

“Maybe,” Abby said. “I don’t know.” She shrugged, fighting back the wash of sorrow that was welling up inside her. This conversation was making her feel entirely too sad. She had to forget about herself, put aside her past life and even her locket, and do whatever she could to help Megan. It was selfish of her even to bring Megan here in the first place. She never should have done that.

“Come on,” she said, moving next to Megan and holding out a hand to her. Their fingers interlocked even though neither one of them could feel it. “You said you wanted to see your family. Let’s go.”

Abby

I don’t feel comfortable saying this—I don’t like saying anything bad about anyone—but I have to admit to you, at least that I don’t like my uncle, the Reverend George Wheeler.

You might even say that I hate him.

Even when we were alive, I never liked or trusted him. He was always so stern and angry, forever talking about how vengeful and just his God is. His God was not the loving and forgiving God my mother taught me about. His God was—and is—an angry God.

In fact, I know my uncle doesn’t serve God at all, and he never did.

He serves Satan.

My uncle is too filled with hatred to serve God, and that’s why he’s after me. He wants to claim my soul for the Devil because of what he thinks I did. I’ll tell you about that later. It’s still too upsetting.

But even if my uncle wasn’t evil when he was alive, he definitely changed when he died. He’s never spoken to me about his experience of death. He never will. I can only guess, but I believe he’s angry because the instant he died, he wasn’t lifted up to Heaven by angels to join God.

He’s convinced his Lord deserted him in his hour of need and left him stranded in the Dead Lands. He’s made it clear to me that he feels he has to get me to confess my sins, all of them, so he can harvest my soul before he’ll be able to get into Heaven.

He thinks I’m his unfinished business.

He can’t see, he could never see, how his anger, his self-righteousness are not the true message in the Bible. At least not the Bible as I understand it.

Even though I have no idea why I’m trapped between life and death, I think my uncle is here because he can’t admit even to himself, much less to God, that the life he lived was evil because he was so cruel and unforgiving to the people he should have shown love and forgiveness.

That’s the lesson I’m sure he has to learn before he can move on.

But what lesson do I have to learn?

I have no idea.

Chapter 4
Vigil

—1—

“How come we can hear them, but they can’t hear us?” Megan cast a worried glance at Abby, who was standing silently in the darkest corner of the living room.

Megan was next to the piano in what had been—and still was, even without her—her family’s living room, watching her mother, who was lying facedown on the couch. Caroline’s shoulders shook violently with each racking sob that filled the darkening room. When she turned her head to one side, Abby saw tears, glowing like glycerin on her cheeks. Megan’s stepfather hovered close by, looking on helplessly. He kept pacing the floor, walking over to one of the windows and looking out as though he was expecting someone.

“I’ve never been able to figure that out,” Abby said, her voice as soft as the brush of a butterfly’s wings. “Some people—not many, but some—have heard me, I’m pretty sure, but don’t forget. We’re dead. We’re not a part of their world anymore.”

“Then why are we still in it?”

Abby looked at her, feeling a remarkable mixture of sadness and confusion that she thought perfectly mirrored what Megan was feeling.

“People usually linger in the Dead Lands because of unfinished business. You must have some unfinished business.”

“I have no idea what that would be,” Megan said. “Only that I wish I was still alive. I wish I could have lived, and grown up, and had friends, and maybe even gone to college. And got married eventually and have children and … and now … now none of that will ever happen!”

Tears glistened in her eyes and on her face the same way they did on her mother’s. Abby could feel Megan’s yearning to reach out and touch her mother, if only to let her know she was all right.

But was she all right?

How could she say she was “all right” when she had absolutely no clue as to why she was still here?

“You said some people could hear you?”

Abby considered for a moment, then nodded, not sure how much to reveal.

“I’ve met a few in the time since I died, but even when I thought they could hear me, they didn’t always get what I was trying to tell them. I’ve helped people like you before—”

“You mean people who are dead.”

“Uh-huh. And once I figure out what the problem is, there’s usually someone who’s still alive who needs to know about them. But it’s difficult to communicate with the living. Sometimes they react like something’s going on or like they’re afraid they’re losing their minds, but … I don’t know. The majority of people have no inkling I’m around. It’s like, maybe they don’t want to think or believe there really are ghosts, so they deny I’m there. Lots of times some of them seem to misunderstand or misinterpret me on purpose.”

“Why would they do something like that?”

Abby shrugged. “I guess they have their own ideas about what’s happened to the person they loved who died.”

It was breaking Abby’s heart to see the anguish Megan’s mother was expressing because it reminded her so much of how she had felt when her own mother and father had died. It struck her as odd that what Megan’s mother was going through didn’t seem to affect Megan very deeply. Maybe that was part of Megan’s unfinished business.

As much as she tried to stop it, a tiny doubt entered Abby’s mind, and she was suddenly convinced that what had happened to Megan wasn’t as simple as it might appear at first. There was something about it that Abby had to figure out.

Did Megan know something she wasn’t saying? Was there something she would have to admit before she was able to move on?

Or, like with so many other people, was Megan going to be able to move only after she discovered the truth about how and why she had died?

Abby was considering asking her about that when a sudden uneasiness that had nothing to do with what was happening with Megan passed through her.

This strange feeling had everything to do with Abby but for a terrifying moment or two, Abby had no idea what it was. All she knew was that she felt a sudden urgent sense of threat. It wasn’t like when Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds were coming after her. They usually only pursued her at dusk or at night when she was most vulnerable.

No, this was something else, something that had to do with Abby. What made it so unnerving was that she couldn’t determine what the threat was or even where it was coming from. All she knew was that she felt a sudden urge to flee Megan’s house. She wanted to be alone, even if that meant leaving Megan behind for a while.

“We—ah, we have to get going,” Abby said, trying to mask her rising nervousness as she moved close to Megan and placed one hand lightly on her shoulder.

Even through her panic, it struck her as strange that Megan seemed more angry than sad about what was happening in what used to be her home. Whenever her stepfather started pacing the floor again, clenching and unclenching his fists as though helpless and unsure of what to do next, Abby noticed that Megan shied away from him.

The single most powerful thought in her mind was how much she wanted to get back to the cemetery so she could be alone and try to figure out exactly what was gnawing at her.

— 2 —

The bell on a coiled spring above the shop door jingled when Jim opened the door and entered Thynges Past. He didn’t like the owner, Edith Peregrine, and he scowled at her when he saw her standing on a small stepladder with her back to the door. She was busily dusting some items on the top shelf, but she turned at the sound of the bell and glanced down at Jim as he closed the door behind him.

“Well, well, well. Good afternoon, young man. Is your mother with you?” Edith glanced out the window as she climbed slowly down off the stepladder and walked over to her post behind the main counter. She leaned forward with her elbows resting on the glass case.

A cold ball of tension formed in Jim’s stomach. He swallowed hard as he approached the counter. There was something about this woman, something in her demeanor, in the way she looked at people—or at least him—that was off. He especially didn’t like the way she bullshitted—there was no other word for it—her customers. Too many times, he’d heard her go on and on to his mother or another customer about how the items in her shop “spoke” to her and how they put her “in touch” with people’s past lives.

Not just in touch.

In “direct contact.”

Jim suspected it was all an act she had perfected over the years to dupe people into buying her overpriced junk. And that’s all it was, overpriced junk.

Maybe that’s why she looked at him so strangely whenever she saw him: She knew that he knew she was full of crap.

He reminded himself he was here only because his mother had really liked that locket, and with her birthday coming up, it was the only thing he could think of to buy for her. Either that or another bottle of perfume.

“No, she, umm. I was wondering about that locket she was looking at.”

The palms of his hands were sticky with sweat, even though the day was cool. He wiped them on one pant leg as he took a step closer to the counter.

“It is a beauty, isn’t it?” Edith said as she reached into the glass counter and withdrew the locket from its resting place.

“I was—” Jim cursed himself for stammering as he reached for his wallet in his hip pocket. “I wanted to—ah, to buy it for her … as a … as a present.”

“Really?” Edith shot him a wolfish smile that chilled him.

“Yeah. How, ah, how much is it again?”

“Oh,” Edith said as she took the locket from its box and dangled it in front of her eyes, twirling it back and forth so the light caught it. Jim had the impression she was trying to hypnotize him, but he quickly dismissed it. Her talk about being in touch with past lives and all of that ESP stuff was pure crap. But then again, he didn’t want to take any chances. He glanced to one side, breaking the spell just in case she really was trying to cast one on him.

“I know I told your mother I couldn’t sell it for less than two hundred dollars, but after she left, the more I thought about it, the more I thought I shouldn’t sell it at all. It is a very special piece, and I think I want to keep it.”

“I’ve got two hundred dollars with me,” Jim said. “I took the money out of my savings.”

“Oh, how sweet,” Edith said, her voice sounding pleasant enough, but she still had a hungry look in her eyes that reminded Jim of the way a wolf must look at its prey just before it devours it. “I don’t think I could let it go for anything less than three hundred.”

Jim’s mouth dropped open. He started to protest, but no words came out. He was flustered and angry. He had no doubt she was jacking up the price simply to take advantage of him. He knew, and she knew.

“Really? Three hundred?” was all he finally managed to say.

He stood frozen, unable to decide whether to haggle with her or merely accept that he couldn’t afford it and leave.

“What’s so special about this locket, do you think?” Edith said, her voice dropping to a low, almost conspiratorial tone. She cupped the locket in the palm of her hand and held it out so Jim could see it. Try as he might to resist, he stared at the locket and couldn’t deny that it did make him feel … odd, somehow. Maybe it was from listening to all that crap his mother and Edith talked about whenever they came here, but there was no denying there was something strange about it.

“I … I don’t know,” Jim stammered.

“Is it the picture of the girl inside, do you think? Or is it the key?”

She brushed her fingertips across the strands of dark hair and once again began twirling the locket back and forth. The gold caught the light as it spun and flickered madly, leaving little tracers darting across Jim’s vision.

“Maybe it’s the mystery of the key. Do you suppose that’s it?”

“I just know my mother likes it, and I thought I’d—”

“It must be the girl, don’t you think? I can’t help but wonder—who was she? What was her life like? Was she married? Did she have children? How did she die?” Edith heaved a heavy sigh as she continued to stare at the locket. “Sometimes, I feel almost as though she’s here with me, that she’s connected to her locket, and I can … I can almost see her and hear her.”

She let her gaze drift past Jim, and it unnerved him so much he turned and looked behind him.

“I guess we’ll never know,” Jim said.

“Maybe that’s why we’re so attracted to things like this. Because they are clear symbols of the mystery of life and death, and they put us in touch with … things beyond.” She waved her fingers as though casting a spell.

All Jim could think about was how much he wished he’d never come here in the first place. He wished he had the courage to say “Thank you, ma’am,” turn around, and walk right on out of here and forget all about it. He would have to think of something else to buy his mother for her birthday … maybe not perfume; maybe some CDs or DVDs, or some movie tickets.

But he couldn’t leave.

As much as he tried to deny it, something about that locket had captured his interest, too. He couldn’t begin to explain it.

“So are you saying you’re not gonna sell it to me?” he asked, cringing at the nervous tremor in his voice.

“No, no, not at all.” Edith was smiling broadly. “All I’m saying is, I’m not sure I have it priced at its true value. Think about it. For the person who used to own this, it was probably worth a fortune.”

Jim withdrew his wallet and flipped it open. He withdrew a wad of bills and started counting them out.

“There’s two hundred and twenty-five dollars,” he said, happy that he had regained control of his voice. “It’s all I got. Take it or leave it.”

Edith looked at him and then at the money. A predatory glow lit her eyes. One corner of her mouth twitched into a smile that made her face look lopsided, and he knew she had gotten what she wanted from him—more than what she wanted. He was suddenly convinced the locket probably wasn’t even worth twenty bucks; he and his mother had been taken for suckers.

But he couldn’t withdraw the offer now. His hand was trembling as he held the cash out for Edith to take.

Besides, he thought, if Mom really wants it, why not?

After a lengthening moment, Edith heaved a heavy sigh and nodded. She gingerly took the cash from him and placed it on the counter. The smile on her face widened.

“You have a deal, young man,” she said.

Jim didn’t know if he should be thrilled or angry about what had just happened. He felt like he’d been taken as he stared at the pile of cash and suddenly wished it was back inside his wallet.

“Would you like me to gift wrap it for you?” Edith said. “I know your mother is going to be so surprised when she gets this.”

Shaking his head, Jim bit his lower lip to keep himself from telling her exactly what he thought of her.

“No. Thanks. I can wrap it myself.”

He waited patiently as Edith wrote up a sales receipt and slipped the box containing the locket into a thin tissue bag before handing it to Jim. He was careful not to let their hands touch when he took the bag from her.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Edith said as he turned and started for the exit.

Jim knew he was forgetting his manners, but all he did was glance at her over his shoulder and nod before swinging the door open. The tinkling of the bell above the door startled him, and his face was slick with sweat when he stepped out into the cool October afternoon. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and, gripping the package tightly, used all his willpower not to run down the street as fast as he could away from Thynges Past and Edith Peregrine.

— 3 —

Sitting in the family’s living room, Detective Gray was having a tough time trying to get a fix on Bob and Caroline Ryder, the dead girl’s mother and stepfather. He wasn’t having any better luck with the young son, Michael—Megan’s half-brother. A peculiar tension permeated the house. That much was obvious. Something was wrong here, but what?

Could it be that one or both of the parents were abusive, and they were trying to hide it?

Or was there a problem with drugs and alcohol abuse?

Granted, they were in shock over the death of their child or, in the case of Bob Ryder, his stepchild, but there was something off about the family’s overall demeanor—their “vibe”—that simply didn’t wash.

The mother was obviously shattered, an emotional wreck. Throughout their interview, she hadn’t been able to stop crying. Every few minutes, she would break down and start wailing, leaning her face into her hands, her body shaking uncontrollably.

Her husband did his best to console her, but he seemed to be all twisted up inside as well. His eyes reflected a strange, glassy distance, as if the only way he could cope with this situation was to keep it at arm’s length.

The boy, Michael, was obviously as much frightened as he was saddened by what had happened to his sister. He looked like he was ready to jump out of his skin. Detective Gray couldn’t shake the feeling that he—or maybe all of them—might be hiding something or at least holding something back. Michael was almost totally uncommunicative, and whenever he did speak, he looked at his parents first as if silently asking them for permission.

“I wish we had more to go on,” Detective Gray said to the family. “We’ll check her cell phone for the names of the people she might’ve talked to in the last few days, check any e-mails and Tweets, but I suspect what we’re looking for may be in her computer.”

“We don’t know her password,” the girl’s father said, perhaps a bit abruptly. “We didn’t make a habit of checking out what she was up to on-line.”

“Parents should be doing more of that, ‘specially these days,” Detective Gray said. “You can’t be too careful, what with all the creeps and predators out there on the internet looking for … whatever.”

Caroline listened with a vacant expression. She looked lost, as though she could barely understand the words he was saying. Tears gleamed like quicksilver in her eyes and shone on her cheeks. The tip of her nose was bright red from blowing and rubbing it.

“It was a … a privacy issue,” Bob said. “We felt … we had such a good relationship with her, with Megan, that we felt we could trust her.”

Caroline’s expression abruptly shifted, and she looked at her husband with genuine shock in her eyes. Her mouth dropped open, and she started to say something, but then she stopped herself as another wave of grief swept through her, reducing her once again to tears.

“I’m sure,” Detective Gray said, trying to keep them all focused, “if you let me take her computer down to the station, we have a guy there in IT who’ll be able to crack the password.”

“Can you do that? I mean, is it legal?” Bob asked.

Detective Gray had all he could do not to yell at him. Your daughter is dead, you damned fool!  Don’t talk to me about what’s legal or not! but he restrained himself.

“It, ah, might be a big help to see who she was communicating with and what the contents of those communications were. We’ll be discreet about any other, ah, personal information we might uncover.”

Bob and Caroline exchanged glances, neither one saying a word, but Detective Gray had the distinct impression they were uncomfortable about what the police—and they—might learn about their daughter’s secret life. He had seen it so many times before. Parents or spouses who were in complete denial about what their children or spouses were really up to on-line and in their personal lives. More often than not, it wasn’t very pretty.

“We have an investigative team out at the cliffs right now, doing everything they can to find physical evidence of the perp or anyone else who might have seen what was going on. But what might really help would be access to your daughter’s computer.”

“Her computer?” Bob said.

“If you’re unwilling to let me take it now,” Detective Gray said, “I could always get a search warrant and come back for it.”

He hated playing hardball like this, but it didn’t make sense that they would be so reluctant. Maybe the dead girl’s private writings would uncover evidence of physical or sexual abuse … or perhaps something else?

“It could go a long way in helping us figure out where to look.”

Again, the mother and father exchanged looks, and then—without warning—Caroline lunged forward and shouted, “I’m telling you! I told you all along! I swear to God it was him again!”

Detective Gray was taken aback. He fought back his confusion as he looked intently at Caroline.

“Beg pardon, Ma’am?” he said. “Who’s ‘him’?”

Bob seemed embarrassed by his wife’s sudden outburst. He held her right hand and squeezed it until her fingers and knuckles went bone white. Caroline’s face got even paler, if that was possible. Her wide, wet eyes were practically bugging from their sockets as she stared at Detective Gray.

“I—we … we’re so ashamed about what happened.”

“Tell me about it,” Detective Gray said, speaking as mildly as he could.

“We, us parents, we don’t like to admit it when our children grow up. We’re in denial. They grow up too fast as it is, and in today’s world with all its … with everything that’s happening all around us … but you can’t stop it. You can’t protect your children the way you’d like to, your precious babies … no matter how hard you try, you can’t wrap them in the security blanket you wish you could.”

“I’m not quite getting what you mean here, Mrs. Ryder,” Detective Gray said, frowning.

“I mean the guy, the man who was e-mailing her … he was stalking her last year,” Caroline said.

“Come on, darling. Take it easy.” Bob shot a worried glance at Detective Gray and then turned his full attention back to his wife. “We resolved that. I seriously doubt that has anything to do with what happened.”

“Oh, yes it does! Yes, it does!”

“Someone killed your daughter,” Detective Gray said, keeping his voice almost at a whisper so he would hold their attention, “and we intend to find out who. Although the preliminary report indicates no sexual assault, we’re not ruling out that someone might have lured your daughter out there with that intent. If you know—”

“It was last year. Last summer.” Caroline’s voice hitched on practically every word. “Hon.” She turned to her husband and, grabbing his arm above the elbow, squeezed him hard enough to make him wince. “We have to tell him.”

But Bob didn’t say a word.

He just sat there, staring blankly at his wife, at a complete loss for words. Detective Gray had all but forgotten about Michael, who was sitting off to one side, until he spoke up.

“There was some creepazoid who kept sending her e-mails, saying how he’d seen her around town and how he wanted to meet up with her.”

“Is that true?” Detective Gray asked, turning back to the parents.

After a moment of silence, Bob sighed and slowly nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “But that was over a year ago, and since then, we’re positive he hasn’t been in contact with her. Not after I put my foot down.”

Detective Gray wasn’t buying any of this. He wasn’t sure if they were simply ashamed a sexual predator had tried to lure their daughter, and they wanted to cover it up, or if something else was going on beneath the surface. Whatever it was, he was confident he would figure it out eventually.

“Then I believe all the more that having access to your daughter’s computer will answer that question once and for all. So will you let me take it down to the station for analysis?”

After another lingering glance at each other, Caroline nodded. She let her breath out and looked like a deflating balloon as she said, “Do whatever you have to, as long as you find the son of a bitch who … who—” Her voice choked off, and she wasn’t able to finish as more tears spilled down her cheeks.

— 4—

“What are those lights over there?” Megan asked.

It was the middle of the night, and she and Abby were safe in the cemetery, awaiting the dawn. While daytime had its dangers, it was extremely unsafe to move around in the Dead Lands after dark. Even after all these years, Abby only did it when she absolutely had to. Along with Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds, there were too many other unspeakable horrors they might encounter.

Abby had been feeling off-balance ever since they visited Megan’s home earlier that day. She still couldn’t explain, much less understand, the sudden odd feelings that had come over her. Along with a sense of being threatened—but not like when the Reverend was closing in on her. There was something else, something she couldn’t quite define. It confused and frightened her, and filled her with old memories from when she was alive in Virginia. It reminded her of a hot and humid day with a thunderstorm brewing and dark clouds rapidly approaching.

“What lights? Where?” Abby asked, glancing up.

She wondered if Megan was talking about those tiny points of light she thought of as “ghost lights,” faint blue flames that appeared from time to time hovering above someone’s grave; but looking around, she didn’t see any nearby.

“Over there,” Megan said, pointing down and across the beach.

For a moment or two, Abby still didn’t see what she meant, but then her gaze shifted beyond the beach to the cliffs in the distance. Finally, she saw dozens, maybe hundreds, of small, flickering yellow dots of light.

“I … I don’t know,” Abby said, genuinely confused. After existing in the Dead Lands for over a hundred years, she thought she had seen everything, but this sight was new and perplexing.

“Let’s check it out,” Megan said excitedly. She was standing by the cemetery stonewall, bouncing on her toes like an excited ten-year-old.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

Abby could feel the darkness pressing in around them. She was reluctant to take even a few steps out of the safety of the cemetery.

“Can it wait until morning?”

“They might be gone by then.” Megan held her hand out to Abby, shaking it impatiently. “Come on. We won’t go far.”

“What if the Reverend—”

“If the Reverend shows up, we’ll run. I know the way back to the cemetery now.”

Abby kept shaking her head from side to side as her mind filled with unnerving images of what they might encounter, even during such a short walk as this.

“Well, if you don’t wanna come, I’m still going,” Megan said, her voice taking on a petulant note. She started toward the cemetery gate and was reaching out to open it, but then, as if remembering her newfound state and wanting to test it, rose like sea mist and floated over the knee-high stone wall. As soon as she came to the ground outside the perimeter of the cemetery, Abby expected something horrible to happen. For several tense seconds, she just stood there, waiting to see what would occur, but the night remained silent except for the chirping song of crickets in the grass and the low, steady rush of the tide.

Without another word, Megan started walking away, leaving Abby alone under the small apple tree that grew above her grave. She was torn between staying where she was safe and going after Megan so she wouldn’t be alone in the Dead Lands after dark. Megan had no idea what dangers there were. Finally, Abby couldn’t take it any longer, and she called out for her to wait.

At first, Abby thought Megan didn’t hear her or perhaps was ignoring her, but as she rushed to catch up with Megan, she caught a glimpse of the dead girl’s face in the moonlight. Her skin was as smooth and white as polished ivory with a faint, blue glow, but her eyes sparkled with a light brighter than anything they could be reflecting in the night.

“Megan …?” Abby asked. “Are you all right …?”

She was tempted to reach out and touch the girl on the shoulder, to shake her, but she held back. She wasn’t sure what was happening. Megan walked like she was hypnotized. The glazed look in her eyes was unnerving. Her gaze was focused on the dark cliffs far across the beach and the lights that winked and danced there like fireflies.

“They’re candles,” Megan said as they got nearer. Her voice was low and dragging, like she was talking in her sleep.

Abby’s fear began to subside when she realized Megan was right. The lights weren’t anything supernatural, much less dangerous. A crowd of living people had gathered on the cliff overlooking the ocean. All of them, at least a hundred with more arriving every minute, were holding small, white candles. A faint breeze from the ocean made the flames gutter, but people cupped their hands around them to keep the candles burning.

As Megan and Abby drew closer, they watched the confused shadows cast by the hundreds of flickering flames, wavering crazily in the night.

“This is where—”

Megan stopped herself. She didn’t have to finish. Abby knew these people were gathering at the place where Megan had fallen.

“It’s so beautiful,” Megan whispered, her face aglow as she moved up the side of the cliff like a whiff of smoke and mingled among the people. Abby followed a short distance behind her, watching the curiously underlit faces of the people.

“Do you know any of them?” Abby asked once she caught up with Megan, and the two of them were weaving through the crowds. When they passed by, at least a few people seemed to be vaguely aware of their presence; some of them shivered, and the flames of their candles momentarily glowed brighter.

“Yeah, sure,” Megan said, her voice filled with wonder as she looked around at everyone. “I know some of ‘em … lots of ‘em. They … some of ‘em are from my school. Look! There’s Miss Carmody, my English teacher … and Mr. Ives, my history teacher. And … Oh, my God! Cheryl Doyle’s here!”

“Who’s she?” Abby looked at the girl Megan indicated. She was short and thin, with dark bangs that shadowed her eyes. Tears ran freely down Cheryl’s face, smearing her heavy black eyeliner.

“She was my best friend in the world,” Megan said. “We hung out together. And look! Look! There’s Reverend Kennedy.”

Abby started at the word “reverend,” but the man Megan was pointing at was a kindly-looking, elderly old man, balding with a fringe of gray hair above his ears. He had a serious, kindly expression and was standing next to Megan’s mother and father. Michael stood a ways behind them, hanging off to one side and looking like he would bolt if anyone noticed him.

“He’s the minister at the church I go to.” Megan paused and then corrected herself. “—went to.”

“It’s beautiful,” Abby said, deeply touched by this display of affection and grief. Many of the people were fighting back tears while others weren’t holding back at all. They sobbed or cried into handkerchiefs and tissues or let their tears run freely down their cheeks.

Megan was speechless. Her eyes glistened as she looked around at the crowd. It was obvious to Abby that she recognized many more people, but she wondered if it was really sinking in for Megan that this memorial service was for her … that it marked the end of her life. Megan’s mixed emotions were etched on her face, which glowed with a faint translucence in the candlelight.

“They’re all here because of you, you know,” Abby said.

Megan nodded but seemed to have barely heard her. The look of wistful longing and yearning in her eyes filled Abby with sadness. These people, gathered on the cliff where Megan had died, really did think this was the end of it all. But Abby, and now Megan knew differently. In some regards, the mystery of Megan’s life was just beginning, and it wouldn’t be over until Abby helped her complete whatever unfinished business she had.

“May we have a moment of silence please,” Reverend Kennedy’s deep tenor carried far. The crowd hushed and turned their attention to him. Many people folded their hands and bowed their head while others looked around in awe at the field and woods alit with candles.

Silence descended on the cliffs. The only sound was the crashing of waves on the rocks below. Megan’s eyes sparkled in the candlelight as she looked around at friends and neighbors and classmates and townspeople, some of whom she barely recognized. After a few seconds, Reverend Kennedy raised his head and scanned the crowd.

“We have gathered here tonight,” he said, his voice swelling, “not to mourn, but to celebrate the life and honor the memory of a wonderful person, Megan Louise McGowan.” He lowered his head. “Let us pray.”

Abby

I suppose I should tell you about what happened to my parents, but it’s difficult to talk about them, even after all this time.

I was born in 1867, shortly after the Civil War. That was a long time ago. We lived—my mother and father and I—in Waynesboro, Virginia. I never had any brothers or sisters, although I definitely wanted some. I was lonely, but certainly not as lonely as I am now.

My father was a soldier for the Confederacy. He was wounded at the battle of Second Manassas. Some people call it the Second Battle of Bull Run. After he got out of the army hospital, he went back home to farm as best he could, but for years the war raged up and down the Shenandoah Valley. A raiding party of Yankees burned his home to the ground during the last year of the war, but he rebuilt and said no one, not any damned Yankees or Rebels, was going to drive him off his property.

I know one person buried in the Old Settlers’ Cemetery served in the Civil War, too. I haven’t met him. He must have moved on before I got here. I assume he fought for the Union, but you never know. The way my father explained it to me, it was a confusing time, with brothers and cousins, friends and neighbors, fighting on both sides.

It was hard to make a living farming after the war, and my mother always said it was his war wounds—not just the wounds on his body, but the ones in his mind—that made my father so mean. When I got older, when I was in my teens, my mother used to confide in me and tell me how much the war changed him and how he had never touched a drop of alcohol until he came back from the fighting. It was the war that ruined him, she said.

But he did drink, and when he did, he was mean to my mother and me. I was just a little child. I didn’t know any better. For the few children I knew living close to us, it was the same. If they misbehaved, their parents would beat them. It was just the way people raised children back then, I suppose. I know things are a lot different now.

As the years passed, my father got even meaner to my mother, and after I turned ten or so, there were times when he’d get drunk and beat her up so bad she would have to stay inside the house for weeks on end just so the neighbors wouldn’t see how bruised and cut her face was. I was afraid he was going to break her bones and maybe even kill her, but thank God he stopped short of that.

It was only when my father drank that he got so mean. If he didn’t have a bottle around, he could be the sweetest person on earth. Once he started in with the rum or the whiskey, though, there was no stopping him. After he was in his cups, he would start in on my mother, blaming her for everything that was wrong in his life. What was worse, my mother’s sister had married a Yankee, and a preacher man, at that. They lived in Windham, Maine, a town, even a state, I’d never heard much about until after the fire.

That’s how my mother died, in a house fire. Something in the kitchen caught fire, and our house burned down to the ground. My mother never got out.

I—I’m not sure I can talk about it right now. Maybe later. Even after all these years, it’s much too painful to talk about.

Chapter 5
Brief Candle

—1—

After the formal part of the memorial service was over, and Megan’s parents and brother went back home, many other people stayed behind. Some of them stood on the cliff, lost in thought while others walked the wide expanse of lawn that led down to Portland Head Light. The steady flashing from the lighthouse swept across the land and sea, lighting up the faces and casting long, swinging shadows across the grass. On the crest of the hill, several kids Megan knew from school gathered in a circle. One of them was strumming a guitar, and they were singing.

“So this is where you fell?” Abby asked, indicating the cliff edge with a quick nod of her head.

She and Megan were off to one side, avoiding the crowd. Numerous candles still flickered in the night, but the two dead girls were lost in the shadows under the rocks close to the cliff’s edge. They could have easily passed through the crowd without anyone noticing except for maybe a few, who might experience a brief chill, like a cool breeze blowing on the back of their necks.

“It’s just so … weird. I can’t believe I’m really dead.”

Abby had nothing to say to that, but she noticed the tightness in Megan’s voice. There was a vacancy in her expression and a strange tension in her stance when she looked at the people. Someone on the edge of the cliff edge with head bowed suddenly looked up and then threw the lighted candle out into the abyss. It glowed for only an instant as it fell end over end and then plunked into the churning sea below. After that, several others pitched their lighted candles into the ocean.

“Out, out brief candle,” an older man intoned. Abby thought she recognized the expression but wasn’t sure from where.

The ghost girls watched the crowd slowly disperse. Younger children left with their parents while a few of Megan’s older friends from school who had licenses got into their cars and drove off.

“I wish I could cry,” Megan said, looking at Abby with silver light glistening in her eyes. Abby nodded sympathetically, but then a subtle electric charge passed through her … a sense of approaching danger

“Oh, no,” she whispered, so faintly Megan didn’t hear her. It was just as well because she didn’t want to frighten Megan if it wasn’t necessary.

She might be mistaken.

She may not really have heard a dog howling in the distance.

And even if it was a dog, that didn’t necessarily mean it was a Hell Hound.

“We ought to get back to the cemetery now,” Abby said.

It took effort to keep her voice from trembling, but Megan caught something in her tone because she looked at her with widening eyes.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

Abby was fighting an urge to turn and run, but she already sensed it might be too late. Confused, she looked at Megan and said, “Believe you about what?” Even as she said it, the dog howled again, closer. Abby tried not to let her rising panic show.

“That I fell from the cliff.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Abby said, looking around. Fear touched her with a cold hand. If that really was a Hell Hound baying in the night and getting closer, they might not make it back to the cemetery in time.

She moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the dark ocean. Off to the left, the beach stretched into darkness. The ocean was heaving with heavy surf, and off in the distance, pinpoints of lights glittered like diamonds on black velvet. She thought she saw shadows darker than the night moving across the sand, but she couldn’t be sure.

“I did, though,” Megan said. “I was out here by myself, and I fell.”

“Sure … I believe you.”

Abby didn’t want to alarm Megan, but they were going to have to run for it. The problem was, their only sanctuary was in the direction of those approaching shadows.

“It’s tough, when people die,” Abby said, unable to look at Megan because she was staring into the darkness down on the beach. “Lots of times, people get confused. They’re not sure what’s happened, and there’s a kind of amnesia that happens to a lot of people, so they don’t—or can’t—remember what happened. Look, umm, Megan. We really have to leave.”

“I just want you to believe me. I want you to believe that I didn’t jump. I fell! Don’t you believe me?”

The edge of panic in the dead girl’s voice cut through Abby’s rising fear. Now she looked at Megan, and moving close, grabbed both of her arms. “I do, but right now we have to run!”

Her intensity finally registered with Megan. Her eyes widened when the loud, baying howl of a Hell Hound once again filled the night.

Looking down into the darkness below them, both girls were able to see the lone dog loping across the sand. It was heading straight toward the cliffs, and them.

“Reverend Wheeler can’t be far behind,” Abby said.

Taking Megan’s hand, they started to run.

“Where can we go?” Megan asked, already sounding exhausted.

Abby didn’t answer her. They moved as fast as wind-blown smoke up from the cliff, through the tangles of brush, and along one of the winding dirt footpaths until they came to the wide expanse of field on a hill above the parking lot. The sweep of the light from the lighthouse cast shadows that swung across the ground like the fast-moving hands of a clock.

“Where is he?” Abby whispered to herself. “Do you see him?”

Megan heard her and said, “You mean Reverend Wheeler?”

As they ran, Abby shook her head but didn’t pause to explain. She was looking for the Reaper, the one who so often was somewhere close by, the one with the slouch hat and silk veil that covered his face.

“To the lighthouse,” Abby said as she glanced at the tall, white tower that stood on a cliff overlooking the sea. “We’ll have to hide there and hope …”

But even as she said it, the light from the lighthouse subtly changed. Instead of its usual bright beam, it now glowed with an eerie blue iridescence. The shadows it cast twisted and writhed with unnatural activity. There was a small door at the base of the lighthouse, and the girls ran toward it even though, as they got closer, it looked to Abby as though the door was already open. A hulking, black figure was standing in the doorway, hiding in the shadows, waiting for them.

— 2 —

“Mark Mathison. What are the chances that’s his real name?”

It was late. Almost eleven o’clock at night. Coffee cup in hand, Detective Gray was standing behind Jesse Ellis as he sat hunched over the keyboard propped on his lap, and tapped away on the keys. He frowned as he glanced from time to time at the text displayed on the monitor on his desk.

“My guess is it’s not. Guys who operate like this, they don’t want to leave a clear trail. They’ll change their handles every time they go looking for someone new.”

Detective Gray sighed and rubbed his face as he considered if this was a dead end. A few suggestive e-mails don’t amount to squat, as far as evidence went. He was sure teenagers and kids made this kind of teasing, semiseductive chatter all the time. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred—hell, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of ten thousand, it didn’t amount to anything.

“Uh-huh … Just like I thought,” Jesse said.

“What?”

“Looks like the same guy, but this is an earlier e-mail sent from a different IP address.”

Detective Gray straightened up and took a sip of the coffee that had long gone cold as he asked himself what he had, dreading this would turn up another dead end.

He didn’t have much—so far, just a name—no doubt a false one—no address, no phone number, no description, no nothing.

“Whoa, there,” Jesse said, snapping Gray out of his reverie.

“Got something?”

“Maybe. Looks like there might be a jpeg attached to this one.”

Detective Gray bit down on his lower lip, preparing himself for the inevitable disappointment if Megan McGowan had already deleted the attached picture file.

Jesse clicked a few more keys and then waited. Gray kept thinking, Please, please, please don’t have deleted it … Please help me find the person who killed you.

The status bar showing the download was moving much too slowly, but Gray resisted asking Jesse if he could hurry it up. The tension inside him was almost unbearable, but he had to get lucky here because the investigation of the crime scene had turned up absolutely nothing. After the memorial service out there tonight, against the wishes of the police department, any remaining traces of evidence would certainly have been obliterated.

Suddenly, a picture popped up on the monitor. Detective Gray let out the breath he’d been holding and leaned back to take another sip of cold coffee. He didn’t even notice how bad it tasted.

“That’s what you might call Bingo, huh?” Jesse asked, looking up at Detective Gray with a wide grin.

“You might,” Gray said as he leaned forward and studied the picture. It showed a man in his late forties or early fifties—long, brown hair, tired-looking dark eyes, and a thin, emaciated face that reminded Gray of the old punk rocker Iggy Pop.

“Least we got a start,” Gray said. “You positive this is a pic of the guy who was e-mailing her?”

Jesse nodded curtly and gave him a half-squint that silently asked: How much an idiot do you take me for? He clicked on a few windows and then, after a second or two, the printer on the desk beside him started humming as it churned out the image. When it was done, Gray picked it up and, holding it at arm’s length, studied it for a full minute in silence.

“Run this through our face recognition data base on sex offenders,” he said. “See if we get a hit.”

“Already on it,” Jesse said, and Gray was surprised when the computer made a single short beep sound. Jesse muttered, “Bingo.”

“Got a match?” Detective Gray leaned so close to Jesse he could feel his breath rebounding off the back of the man’s neck as a mug shot and stats popped up on the screen.

“Andrew Collins,” Jesse said. “Last reported address, 75 Mitchell Drive, South Portland. And Bingo again. He’s listed as having served eleven years for gross sexual assault of an underaged girl back in the eighties.”

“My, my,” Detective Gray said, smiling as he straightened up. His left hand went to the small of his back to massage the wire-tight muscles. But he was feeling good. For the first time since Megan McGowan turned up dead at the foot of that cliff, he was relieved to have something solid to work with.

First thing tomorrow morning, he would have to pay Andrew Collins a little visit and see what he had to say for himself.

— 3 —

The closer Abby and Megan got to the lighthouse, the more threatening the structure looked. Earlier in the evening, it had appeared to Abby as it no doubt appeared to anyone in the land of the living—a tall, white tower with red trim. Next to it was a two-story house where, years ago, the lighthouse keeper had lived. Now, it was a museum and gift shop. At the top of the tower, encased in glass, was a powerful lens that shot a beam of light into the night. The lens was constantly spinning, so from any viewpoint, it flashed steadily. Abby had learned years ago that Portland Head Light had been commissioned by George Washington, and she had a clear memory of seeing its beam of light winking on the horizon the night the Faire Childe ran aground.

Within the span of a few seconds the lighthouse had transformed into a derelict. The light in the tower shifted from a single, clear white beam to an eerie blue glow that sizzled like water on hot stones as it swept the night. By the time Abby and Megan were halfway to the lighthouse, the brilliant light went out altogether, plunging the wide expanse of lawn into deep, inky darkness. Worse still, a dim glow suddenly appeared in one of the upstairs windows in the lighthouse tender’s house. Abby wanted to ask Megan if she saw it, too, as a ghostly woman, her face as bone-pale, resolved out of the darkness in the upstairs window. She was staring out at the night, not really looking at Abby and Megan as they ran. Her eyes were wide open in shock; her mouth was hanging open in what looked like an eternal, silent scream.

The night was eerily hushed. Other than the distant surge of waves and the baying of the Hell Hound down on the beach, another sound caught Abby’s attention—a faint strain of piano music that drifted like dust on the wind. It swirled louder, then faded, and then grew louder again. Abby was sure it was coming from the lighthouse, but the sound wavered louder and softer, seeming to come from several directions at once—behind her … to the left … from the beach … and then from the right. Abby wondered who the woman in the window was and what her sad story might be, but then, from over the hill in the direction of the parking lot, there came another howling sound.

Another Hell Hound.

Abby glanced at Megan, who was still running beside her, and saw the stark terror in her eyes. It seemed as though no matter how fast they tried to move, the lighthouse, their goal, kept sliding away from them.

“It sounds like they’re trying to surround us … cut us off,” Megan said, gasping. She knew she shouldn’t be out of breath, but the surreal quality of the night distorted all of her reactions.

Abby couldn’t contradict her. She glanced to the right, and on the crest of the hill, lined against the night sky, she saw the silhouettes of three of the beasts. They were huge, towering against the night sky like thunderheads.

Abby and Megan raced forward with all the willpower they had, but Abby was suddenly convinced the shape in the doorway was Reverend Wheeler, waiting there in the darkness for them … for her!

When they were less than a hundred feet from the lighthouse, the face in the upstairs window of the keeper’s house also resolved more clearly. Abby could hear the woman’s voice now. She was screaming, wailing, “I didn’t mean to do it! But he came at me with an ax … And I didn’t … I didn’t mean to do it … But he came after me …” And then the sound of piano music rose higher. The tune was an old one Abby remembered: “Listen to the Mockingbird.”

They had no choice. The lighthouse was their only hope, but Abby was convinced that this was it. She had done well staying out of the Reverend’s grasp up to this point, but now it was over. It was inevitable he would catch her. His Hell Hounds had cornered her, herded her, in fact, into a trap. She tensed, waiting to see him emerge from the darkened doorway so he could claim her soul. If she could have cried, she would have.

Chancing one last glance behind them, Abby saw the pack of Hell Hounds, bounding after them over the crest of the hill. Then they were lost in the shadows, but their eyes glowed with baleful red light. Their baying howls rose in the night, making the darkness vibrate.

We’re done for, Abby thought but didn’t dare say.

She felt terrible that she had been so foolish as to fall into this trap. She should have insisted that she and Megan remain in the cemetery until dawn. It would have been safer to explore whatever had been going on at the cliffs in the morning. But Megan had insisted, and Abby would never, never have allowed her to go alone, even if it meant this.

Less than ten feet from the door to the lighthouse, she and Megan drew to a halt. The shadow in the doorway didn’t lunge out at them. It remained perfectly motionless. For a heart-stopping moment, Abby hoped in vain that it had simply been a shadow she had imagined was a person. But before relief filled her, someone stepped out onto the single granite step. Abby couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the long black cape, the wide-brimmed slouch hat, and the flimsy length of black silk that covered the “person’s” face.

“It’s you!” Abby said, unable to believe it wasn’t the Reverend standing there.

The silent, dark figure nodded and then turned and looked at the Hell Hounds, who were rapidly closing the distance. His cloak swirled like smoke when he raised his arm and pointed to the doorway. Abby didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing Megan’s hand, she tugged her into the darkened doorway and, without any hesitation, began to clamber up the circular metal stairway leading to the light at the top of the tower.

“Are you sure? Are we safe?” Megan asked.

“We can trust him.”

Megan moved more slowly, as though exhausted, but Abby knew that was a product of memory and the power of suggestion. It had taken her a long time to forget about the natural, automatic reactions of a living body, and she still experienced them from time to time.

Abby led the way up the flight of stairs. The darkness in the stairwell was thick … impenetrable. Only her hand sliding along the railing gave her any measure of reassurance.

“Who was that?” Megan asked, but Abby didn’t reply. She wasn’t in the mood to try to explain this particular Reaper to Megan, not yet. Maybe once—if they made it back safely to the cemetery.

Round and round they went up the spiral staircase. The darkness swayed and compressed around them. The only sound was the baying of the Hell Hounds, but Abby noticed that they sounded further away, not closer.  She cringed when she sensed rather than saw other presences in the darkness, and she hurried up the stairs to put as much distance as she could between them and whatever horrors waited for them outside.

At last, they reached the top of the staircase and entered the room at the top of the tower. The light was extinguished. The mechanism that rotated the lens was old and rusty, draped with cobwebs like it hadn’t been used in years. The faint sound of a piano playing “Listen to the Mockingbird” drifted to them.

Emotionally exhausted, Megan leaned against the glass wall and then slowly slid down until she was sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up in front of her. She clasped her hands together and leaned her head forward, and then she began to sob.

“It’s all right,” Abby said. “We made it. We’re safe here. I promise you.”

She wanted to go to the girl and comfort her but instead walked over to one side of the tower and looked out. Far below, moving like a raven’s wing in the darkness, a figure—no doubt the Reaper who had saved them—was moving swiftly across the dark land. The Hell Hounds were in rapid pursuit, their barking growing fainter and fainter with distance. Only after they all disappeared behind a bluff in the distance would Abby allow herself to feel a measure of relief.

But it didn’t last long.

Much closer to the base of the lighthouse, she saw another figure. Abby recognized Reverend Wheeler instantly. A jolt of fear hit her like a sudden thunderclap. The Reverend’s riding cloak swirled around him like a billowing cloud as he strode purposefully across the lawn, following his Hell Hounds. The wind tousled his long, gray hair. Abby watched him. When he was only a few paces from the lighthouse, he stopped in his tracks and turned. Abby saw the wicked glint in his eyes as he surveyed the area. He leaned forward and appeared to be sniffing the air.

Dropping to her knees, out of sight, Abby trembled in the darkness, sure he had seen or smelled her. After a few terrifying seconds, she got up the courage to peek up over the edge of the thick windowsill.

Reverend Wheeler was still standing motionless, like a marble statue, but Abby sensed that his eyes were shifting back and forth, searching for whatever—whomever he had sensed.

Don’t look up! Don’t look up! she thought as frantic rushes of panic filled her like ice water.

If he came up there … if he started up the spiral staircase … they were trapped. Doomed! There would be no escape this time.

A deep, cold trembling took hold of Abby as she watched the motionless, silent figure, waiting for him to move on in pursuit of his Hell Hounds.

Please, just go! Go! Go!! she chanted in her mind. Leave us alone!

But the figure remained so motionless Abby began to wonder if she might be looking at a shrub or rock that, in deep shadows under the lighthouse, only looked like the Reverend.

Paralyzed by her fear, Abby didn’t even dare to drop back down below the edge of the windowsill. She was positive it was Reverend Wheeler out there, and he would see even that slight bit of motion and know where they were hiding.

So she waited and watched, willing with all her energy that Reverend Wheeler would be drawn off track by the Reaper just as the Hell Hounds had.

Abby worried that he would stand there until dawn, but then finally, miraculously, Abby heard the faint cry of one of the Hell Hounds far off in the distance. Reverend Wheeler cocked his head to the side and took one last look around. Then, with a swirl of his cloak, he started away from the lighthouse, his dark figure blending into the shadows of the night.

“There,” Abby said as genuine relief flooded her. “They’re gone.”

She got up and walked over to Megan, who was still leaning against the wall and sobbing. When Abby touched her on the shoulder, the girl looked up at her, her eyes glowing like burning coals in the darkness. Abby was vaguely aware of the sound of piano music that was still playing softly.

“Now do you believe me?” Abby asked.

Megan nodded, her expression vacant.

“We should never leave the cemetery after dark unless we absolutely have to!”

Megan said nothing. Her shoulders were shaking as she cried. The lighthouse staircase echoed with the sounds of her weeping. Abby wondered: If anyone who was alive happened to be nearby, would they hear her and think the lighthouse was haunted?

“It’s all right. We’re all right now,” she said, fighting back a surge of anger that was directed at Megan. If it hadn’t been for her, wanting to check out the flickering lights on the cliff, none of this would have happened. It was a miracle they got away, and they were still not safely back at the cemetery.

What if Reverend Wheeler left one of his Hell Hounds there to watch and wait for them?

“It’s not that,” Megan said, her voice hitching with every word as if she had a breath to catch.

Abby had no idea what to say to her. She felt compelled to help her, if she could, but right now her goal was to figure out what had happened to Megan so her spirit would be released. More and more, though, she had the distinct impression that Megan wasn’t being truthful with her. She was holding back something, and Abby was determined to find out what that was.

“What is it, then?” Abby said, trying to sound patient and understanding as she sat down beside Megan and took her hand in hers.

Megan didn’t speak for a long time, but Abby told herself to calm down. They would have to stay here until morning, anyway, so there was no hurry.

“I can’t believe that they would do something like that,” Megan said at last.

“Do what? Who did what?”

“My … my family, and my friends … and the people from my school. I can’t believe—” Her voice broke off, and once again the darkness inside the lighthouse filled with a long, slow moaning cry and the faint sound of piano music. As the echoes faded, Megan looked at Abby and said, “I can’t believe they all miss me so much …”

“I know. I know,” Abby said. Even though she had been dead for such a long time, now, she wasn’t sure she was still in touch with such powerful emotions. But emotions were what kept you here in the Dead Lands.

“And I—”

Megan was still sobbing quietly, and Abby waited patiently until she could speak again.

“I miss them … I really, really miss them.”

“I know,” was all Abby could say.

Abby

You’re not the first person who could hear and see me. There have been others. Not many, but even if people can’t see or hear me, somehow they know I’m around. That’s not usually what happens. Most people have no idea I’m here. Even people who come out to the cemetery, the worker who cuts the grass and plants flowers or folks who wander around looking at the old gravestones, mine included, can’t see me.

They almost never do.

It’s tough, trying to communicate with any of them when I want to or need to. I guess not many of them are spiritually attuned to a ghost’s existence.

Through the years, though, I’ve seen many spirits pass on, and I can’t help but wonder why I haven’t left this place as well.

Not that I’m envious.

Sometimes, when souls leave with the Reapers, I know they don’t go to Heaven.

Sometimes, I’m sure, they go to Hell.

Something’s keeping me here. I have no idea what.

It might be because of my need to help others. So many lost souls that I meet need help realizing what happened to them. They need help with the transition from life to death. Many of them—most of them, in fact, are confused at first. Some of them are genuinely terrified when they realize they’re dead while others just get angry. Others are happy to be free of the burdens of life. But for one reason or another, most of them don’t fully accept that they’re dead, and they freak out, claiming it isn’t fair—that they weren’t ready to die.

As if anyone ever is.

They insist it wasn’t their time. Then there are those who simply don’t believe they’re dead and keep acting like they’re still alive. They’re the real ghosts, like the woman in the lighthouse keeper’s house. They remain like that until they can no longer deny they’re dead.

Eventually, they disappear. Well, most of them, anyway.

Some pass on into the Light. Others get swallowed up by shadows darker than a moonless night. Darker than the grave.

Usually, it’s the lost or confused spirits who don’t pass on that I try to help. People I feel sorry for. They stay behind like me, clinging to whatever’s left of their life because of something they did or something that happened to them.

Often, it’s because of the way they died, like if someone was killed by another person. Other times, it’s because they’ve left something important unfinished, and they need to finish that task or reach that goal, whatever it is, before they can find peace.

Several spirits I know have lingered for many years, even all through the times I’ve been “sleeping” in my grave. They don’t want to or they don’t dare to let go, so they just stay where they are.

There are plenty of spirits who won’t leave the house they lived in when they were alive or the place where they died. I’ve seen lots of them near these roadside shrines where they may have died in a car accident or whatever. These are the real ghosts, the kinds of things Mr. Poe and Mr. Hawthorne wrote about in their stories. There are some living people, priests and others, who do stuff to get these spirits out of these houses. It’s sad for the spirits because they can’t let go of what they used to know. They don’t know where else to go.

Before my mother died, she told me that my Aunt Lily had something valuable that belonged to me, but she never told me what it was. Maybe that’s what keeps me here. All this time I’ve been dead, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is so I can solve the problem. There’s the locket, of course, but I know where that is, and I still haven’t moved on.

Maybe I never will.

Maybe I just have to accept that I’m stuck here forever …

Chapter 6
Trick of the Eye

—1—

When morning came, it was raining. The sky churned with scudding gray clouds, and a strong, steady wind was blowing in off the ocean. Abby looked out toward Cushing’s Island, which was almost lost to sight in the downpour. Still, she could see the blackened hull of the Faire Child, tossing back and forth in the waves. Its broken spars raked the sky as though trying to shred the clouds.

Suddenly aware of a presence behind her, she turned and saw Megan standing a few paces away. Her hands were outstretched, and the most peculiar expression wrinkled her face.

“It’s raining,” she said, her voice tinged with wonder.

“Quite hard,” Abby replied.

She waited and watched as Megan turned her hands over so her palms were up to the sky. The raindrops seemed to disappear when they hit her hand and then reappear a split second later on the other side before falling to the ground.

“How come I can’t feel it … the rain on my hands?”

The answer was so obvious Abby didn’t bother to say it. She watched Megan a moment or so longer and then turned to look back out to sea. Towering breakers roared onto the beach, casting foam and seaweed high up onto the white sand—the “Singing Sands.” Halfway between the shore and Cushing’s Island, flocks of seagulls and eider ducks rode out the storm. White and black flashes bobbed up and down in the churning waves.

“I miss it,” Megan finally said, her voice so soft it was carried away by the wind, leaving the impression that she hadn’t spoken at all.

“Miss what?” Abby asked.

Megan still had her hands extended and was staring at them with the most perplexed look.

“I miss the rain on my face,” Abby said for her. ”And the wind in my hair … even the chill of a winter’s night. I miss them all. After a while, though, these things become distant memories, but. Oh, sometimes the memories are so painfully sweet.”

She wondered why she was feeling so wistful today and thought it must have something to do with last night’s memorial service for Megan. Abby recalled her own burial, and was saddened by the memory of how there had been so few people there—just her Aunt Lily, a little girl about half Abby’s age who Abby didn’t recognize but assumed was her cousin Milly, and the minister, a dark, imposing man, but not as dour and scary as Reverend Wheeler.

Or maybe it was tension and outright fear after the fright she’d gotten last night still echoed through her. She started to tremble whenever she recalled how close they had come to being run down by the Hell Hounds and taken by Reverend Wheeler. If it hadn’t been for that Reaper, they wouldn’t have been here now.

Still, was that such a good thing?

Even a miserable, stormy day like today meant nothing when they couldn’t feel the rain on their faces or the wind in their hair.

“They’ll probably be having my—” Megan’s voice caught, but she forced herself to continue, “My funeral soon.”

“Maybe it’s today,” Abby said, feeling more sadness well up inside her. “The weather’s perfect for a funeral.”

Megan considered for a moment, then shook her head and said, “I don’t think so. I mean, time is kinda strange here, isn’t it? It’s only been—how long since I died?”

Abby was pleased that the girl could talk about her own death without any hesitation or apparent discomfort. It was a sign that she was adjusting well and that she might be moving on soon. Perhaps after the funeral, she would find the peace she was looking for, and a Reaper would come to take her away. Abby hoped it would be into the Light, but over the years she had learned never to try and guess until it actually happened.

“Two days,” Abby said. “I met you on the beach two days ago.”

“Two days. Don’t they usually wait until the third day for the funeral?” Megan frowned, trying to remember. “I think when my Uncle Harry died, they had his funeral three days later.”

“I don’t know.”

Abby was distracted. Again, her gaze had shifted out to sea and the hull of the shipwreck. The discolored remnants of the sails flapped like huge wings against the sky, beating back the storm.

“I have to leave for a while,” she finally said, and she started moving across the cemetery lawn toward the gate.

“How ‘bout I come with you.” Megan limped slightly as she walked because she still had only one sneaker and one bare foot.

“No!” Abby said, surprised by the sudden vehemence in her voice.

She didn’t even know exactly where she intended to go, but she was determined to go alone. On some level, she realized something had changed drastically. Something had happened that was directly affecting her. Even though she had no idea where to start, she was compelled to find out.

“Absolutely not,” Abby said. “You’ll be safer here today. Remember last night?”

Megan’s eyes widened, but then they softened as an unheard sob shook her shoulders. She lowered her head and seemed to diminish in size.

“Just stay here. And don’t go anywhere without me,” Abby said. “I won’t be long.”

“Where are you going?”

Abby hesitated at the gate, her hand poised in the air, caught in midgesture.

“I’ll tell you when I get back.”

— 2 —

Wearing a sports coat a size or two too small for him, Mike was sitting on the edge of his bed. Outside, rain pelted his bedroom windows, running in thick, silver lines down the panes. He was staring out the window, lost in thought, his left hand clenched around his sister’s sneaker so tightly his knuckles turned white. The lack of blood flow made his fingers tingle, but that feeling was nothing compared to the frozen emptiness inside him. He felt like he was going to throw up.

He simply could not believe Megan was gone … dead … and, because his parents had decided on a closed casket service, he would never see her again.

Ever.

The dress shirt he was wearing was also a bit small for him. When the top button was buttoned, it choked him. When she saw him getting dressed, his mother had joked about how fast he was growing. The necktie, which he was proud to have tied himself, only strangled him all the more. He was getting dizzy. Pinpricks of white light spun across his vision. He couldn’t stop staring at the sneaker in his hand as his eyes filled with tears, blurring his vision.

“You ‘bout ready there, champ?” his father called out from the hallway.

Startled, Mike leaped off the bed, bent down, and tossed Megan’s left sneaker under his bed. It clunked when it hit the wall. Just as he was straightening up and turning around, his father opened the door and burst into the room. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and dark blue tie. His face looked thinner than normal, and dark circles lined his eyes. His mouth was drawn up at the corners.

“What’s taking you so long?” A suspicious look filled his father’s eyes as he cast a glance around the room.

“Nothing.” Mike wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his jacket. His lower lip started trembling. “Just, you know, thinking.”

His father didn’t appear to relax, and Mike waited for him to start yelling about something.

“You tied your tie yourself?” he asked.

Biting down on his lower lip, Mike nodded.

“Well, you didn’t quite get it.” His father signaled him to come to him with a quick snap of his fingers. “Here, lemme show you.”

Mike was trembling inside as he approached his father. He had always been unpredictable, but since Megan died, his father seemed a lot more on edge. The most innocent thing could set him off.

His father’s knee popped when he knelt down and slipped off the knot Mike had tied. He was breathing heavily, and his face had a pinched, impatient expression as he drew the tie out and silently tied it, flipping the ends of the tie so quickly they snapped across Mike’s face. When he was done, he slid the knot up tightly, his knuckles pressing hard against Mike’s Adam’s apple.

“There, better,” he said, his knee popping again when he stood up.

Staring down at the floor, Mike reached up and loosened the tie a notch. He was waiting for his father to say something, anything, just a small word of comfort, but instead he turned and walked away.

“We’re leaving to Megan’s viewing in five minutes,” he said over his shoulder. “As soon as your mother’s ready.”

Mike nodded and would have replied, but the lump in his throat—maybe it was the tie—made it impossible for him to speak. He shivered as another wave of chills went through him. He had never been to a funeral or even visiting hours at a funeral home before—not even when Grammy Evans died. He wasn’t sure he could handle this, but even if his father was acting distant to him, he told himself he had to be there for his mother … and for Megan, wherever she was.

— 3 —

Detective Gray tugged his coat collar tightly up around his neck as he swung the cruiser door shut and dashed from the curb up the short walkway to the front porch of the apartment building. On one side of the door, there were four small doorbell buttons. Names were scrawled in different styles of penmanship on small pieces of index card taped or thumbtacked next to each buzzer.

Gray found the one he was looking for—

Andrew Collins—Apt. 3.

—and pressed the button.

He couldn’t hear the bell or buzzer sound inside the building and wondered if it even worked. Stepping back, he looked up at the second floor. Both sides of the building had large bay windows. He wondered if Apartment 3 was on the right or left. In any event, as far as he could see there were no lights on in either upstairs apartment. Perhaps Mr. Collins had seen the cruiser pull up and had ducked out of sight, pretending he wasn’t home.

Gray stepped forward and pressed the button again, holding it down for a count of ten before letting it go. Then he waited.

Still nothing.

The only sound was that of rain, splattering from the downspout on the corner of the building and splashing down the driveway to the street, sweeping sand and leaves along with it. Gray was irritated. He was cold and miserable, and the last thing he wanted to do was stand out here in this raw weather. Clenching his fist, he rapped on the door hard enough to get the attention of anyone on the first floor.

He stopped knocking and waited for a count of five and then started knocking again, hard enough to rattle the glass in the door window frame. At last, a light came on in the hallway, and a balding, overweight, middle-aged man wearing a stained strap t-shirt and plain boxer shorts sauntered barefoot down the hallway toward the door.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m coming. Keep your damned shirt on.”

Gray stepped away from the door and waited patiently as the man threw the deadbolt lock and pushed the door open.

“What the hell you doing, disturbing people this early in the morning?” the man said. He was unshaved, and his eyes had a dull, rheumy glow.

Gray took his detective shield from his coat pocket and held it up for the man to see.

“I’m here to talk to your upstairs neighbor, Mr. Collins,” Gray said. “You know if he’s home?”

“You think I keep track?”

“Mind if I go upstairs and see if he’s home?”

The man sneered but didn’t answer as he stepped to one side to allow Gray to enter. Then, without another word, he turned and walked back down the hall to his apartment. Closing the door behind him, Gray watched the man go, trying not to be too judgmental. He doubted the guy knew, much less cared, that Andrew Collins had done jail time for child molestation.

Shaking the rain off his coat, Gray made a conscious effort not to touch the handrail as he walked up the creaking flight of stairs and down the short, dimly lit hallway. The door on the right had a small, metal number 3 nailed to it, but the top nail was missing, so the number was hanging backwards, like an incomplete B.

“Classy joint,” Gray muttered as he approached the door and, clenching his fist, knocked on it hard three times.

He waited, and after a few seconds heard someone shuffling around inside. A second or two later, the door lock clicked, and the door opened a few inches. A pale, bloated face peered out at him through the crack. The security chain was still in place, stretched to its maximum.

“What can I do you for?” the man asked, his voice crusty with sleep.

“Andrew Collins?” Gray said, his voice gruff, all business.

The man’s eyes widened, and his face went even paler, if that was possible, when Gray held up his detective’s shield.

“Detective Gray. Cape Elizabeth Police Department. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

The expression on the face behind the door shifted into a scowl, and the man would have slammed the door in Gray’s face if he didn’t have his foot braced against the bottom of the door to keep it open.

“Will you people please leave me the Christ alone?” Collins’ face flushed with anger. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Did I say you had?” Gray’s voice was low and steady. “I can’t stop by for a little chat? See how you’re doing?”

Collins already looked like he was close to cracking. If he had anything to do with Megan McGowan’s death, Gray was sure he’d know within the hour.

“I was hoping you’d come willingly down to the station and answer a few questions,” Gray said, still all business.

Collins eyed him through the opening of the door. Gray was positive he was debating whether or not he should try to resist, but then his shoulders dropped, and he lowered his gaze.

“Hold on. Lemme unlock it,” he said.

He closed the door, and after a brief rattling of the chain, it swung open again. For the first time, Gray got a good look at Andrew Collins. He didn’t like what he saw. The man was short, maybe five-four, five-five. He was wearing tattered, faded jeans with holes in the knees, and a washed-out Atlanta Falcons t-shirt. His arms were bony, and his chest sunken. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and hung in greasy strings behind his ears. His eyebrows shadowed dark, deep-set eyes that were too close together, like a pig’s. On his forehead was a narrow gash about three inches long that had drawn blood. Although it was now scabbed over, the skin around the wound was red with infection.

“You mind tellin’ me what this is all about?” Collins asked, giving the detective a steady stare that, Gray assumed, was meant to unnerve him.

“I’ll tell you all about it down at the station. Let’s go.”

— 4 —

Jim Burke was in his bedroom, sitting in front of his computer, but he wasn’t on-line or Tweeting with his friends. He was clutching the small box that contained the locket and the small key he had bought for his mother.

Only now, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to give it to her.

He couldn’t explain why, but he didn’t want to let go of it.

With the tip of his finger, he brushed the lock of hair tied like a ribbon to the small key. Even the slightest touch made him feel odd.

He wished there was someone he could talk to about this, but no one came to mind. He certainly couldn’t talk to his mother about it. She would wonder why he had bought the locket for her and then decided not to give it to her. And he was sure none of his friends—even Pete, his closest buddy since kindergarten—would understand. They would probably tease him about being gay if they knew he had a locket that—there was no other word for it—felt “special” to him.

“Special, all right,” he whispered as he continued to stare at it.

It’s all part of the mystery, he thought. A locket, a key, a lock of hair. Keys open locks. Locks. Lockets. Locks need keys. If you unlock something, you learn what’s inside. You solve the mystery.

It was frustrating, maddening, but he knew he was on the verge of a mystery. If only his father were still alive. He’d be able to talk to him about it. But his dad had died six years ago when Jim was only ten. It had been especially tough because Jim really loved his father and had always felt closer to him than to his mom. Even after six years, he missed his father daily. If only he were still around.

“But he isn’t,” Jim whispered, and, unaccountably, tears filled his eyes as he stared at the locket.

Then something else happened.

Jim experienced a sudden weird feeling he couldn’t begin to describe.

It started at the base of his neck. It wasn’t just a chill. It was something more than that—a deep, penetrating shiver that originated somewhere deep within him, his heart or his soul. It spread its icy fingers up vertebrae of his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. A sudden urgency filled him to get up and run, not walk, out of his room. He was convinced something threatening was right behind him, but he found it impossible to turn around and look to see if there really was something—someone—there.

He was convinced that someone had slipped, unheard and unseen, into his room and was standing behind him, watching and waiting to see what he was going to do.

The feelings became almost unbearable, and he was afraid if something didn’t happen soon, he was going to scream and keep screaming and never stop.

His hand was shaking as he raised it and tried to force himself to touch the locket again. His fingers went numb, the skin as cold as a January morning. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to move them. Every joint in his knuckles ached as he flexed his hand, imaging that he was picking up the locket.

He thought about the photograph of the girl inside the locket and wondered about the attraction he felt for her.

“But now she’s dead,” he whispered. Even as he said it, the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. The window next to his desk was open, but just a crack because of the steady, cold rain. But the chill and the tightness inside his body weren’t because of the dreary day.

No.

There was more to it than that.

Jim licked his lips and swallowed hard. He took a breath, but it felt as though his lungs were pierced with tiny pinholes, and the air didn’t go deep enough into his chest. He cleared his throat, and then, very softly, whispered, “Is someone there?”

His voice sounded foreign to his own ears, and when he listened for a reply, knowing he was foolish to expect one, he heard a soft thump … like the quiet beating of his heart muffled by his sheets when he lay in bed at night and tried to fall asleep.

The feeling that someone was watching him grew steadily more intense. Pressure built up inside his head, and he had the fleeting thought that maybe he was having a stroke or a heart attack. Maybe he was dying.

“Are you … Who are you?” he whispered in a voice that sounded like tearing silk.

He waited a while longer. There was no telling how long, but the silence in the room all but throbbed with expectation.

“You’re not … Is that you, Dad?”

There was no answer, and the coldness in the room wrapped around his heart, collapsing his chest and making it all but impossible to breathe. Pinpoints of light danced across his vision. The palms of his hands were cold and clammy.

“Is it you? Is this yours … this locket?” Jim asked, his gaze shifting again to the locket and the hair and key. “Are you mad at me because I have it?”

A small corner of his mind knew he was being foolish. There was no way a spirit, angry or gentle, could be attached to a piece of jewelry.

He was letting his imagination get carried away, probably because of the crazy things his mother and Edith Peregrine talked about at the store.

You have to get a grip, he cautioned himself.

He couldn’t let his imagination run away like this.

Still, his gaze fixed on the locket, and the sense that he wasn’t alone in his bedroom—even in daylight, gloomy though it was—grew stronger. He was sure, now, that if he turned his head fast enough, he would see someone. Chills racing up his back, and he was afraid that any second now, he would cry out.

“Please. Tell me. Are you there?” he whispered, his voice so raw in his throat it hurt to speak.

He turned his head. Not fast. Just a slow, easy turn. Vertebrae in his neck popped like a string of small firecrackers going off inside his head. But there, on the hazy fringe of his vision, he caught a glimpse of …

Something.

His body stiffened. The urge to call out to his mother was strong as he tried to see what was behind him, but whenever he turned, it shifted away, always hovering on the edge of sight. He rotated his body slowly in his chair so he could keep turning, but the faint glow moved, too.

It’s a trick of the eye, he told himself. There’s nothing there, not really.

But as he looked and listened, he heard a sound below the steady patter of rain on the roof and the hissing of tires as cars passed by on the wet road. There was something else, a low rasping sound like someone breathing.

Jim knew it wasn’t him. He was holding his breath and had been for so long his chest ached as if it were incased in iron bands. He wished he could swallow, but his throat was closed off.

Who are you? he thought rather than said.

And as much as he wanted to believe he imagined it, he heard a voice answer him. The problem was, it was too far away, too faint for him to be sure what it said, but it sounded like a girl’s voice saying, “You have my locket.”

Abby

My mother wasn’t the only person who died in the fire that burned down our house. There was this boy, a friend of mine, who lived in the house closest to ours out at the end of a long, dirt road. His name was Jonathan, Jonathan Hilton. Everyone called him Jonathan, but to me, he was always just Jon.

He was two years older than me, but we were in the same class at the one-room schoolhouse we went to. Mrs. Doyle was our teacher. It wasn’t that Jon wasn’t smart. Far from it. He was one of the smartest people I’d ever met. But his father made him work hard on their farm, so he didn’t get much schooling. He was a better reader and writer than me, for sure. Sometimes, we read poetry together … Shelley and Keats, mostly.

I know what you’re thinking … We were in love, and you know what? You might be right. Not that we knew or would admit it. We certainly weren’t too young to be thinking about who we were going to marry and settle down with. Lots of people much younger than us had already gotten married, sometimes because they had to because they were going to have a baby.

But Jon and me … I think we were both too shy to say anything about the feelings we had for each other. All I know is that I enjoyed every minute I spent with him, and I’d like to believe … I’m sure that if he and I had lived, we would have ended up happily married.

But he died about six months before I did, and I guess you could say it was my fault.

I told you how my father used to beat on my mother and, sometimes, me. He would boss her around and, like I said, when he was drunk. He’d come at her with his fists and, sometimes, with a stick or whatever might be at hand.

On the day he died, there happened to be a large kitchen knife on the table near him, and he came at my mother with it.

The problem was, he was really—what’s the word you use now? Loaded? Plastered? Whatever, he fell and cut himself real bad. He was bleeding from a cut in his neck. My mother told me this later, but she didn’t even try to staunch the flow of blood. She wanted to be rid of him, so she let him bleed to death right there on the kitchen floor. When the authorities came, she told them she’d been out back, hoeing the garden when it happened. Whether they believed her or not, they didn’t arrest her for killing him. I think most of the neighbors knew how bad he treated her and were sure she’d done it and were happy for her.

But my mother suffered.

She couldn’t take the shame of what had happened, so she wrote a letter to my aunt and uncle in Maine, asking if they’d take me in for a while. Right after we got an answer back, saying I could spend the summer in Maine, our house burned down. My mother died in the fire.

So there I was. I had no choice. My Aunt Lily and Reverend Wheeler were the only family I had left in the world.

The day of the fire, I’d gone to town to pick up some supplies for my mother. I had made plans to meet Jon later that afternoon, but my mother insisted I leave for town right then and there. I don’t know why she was so insistent about it, but she promised to tell Jon where I was when he showed up, so I left.

By the time Jon came by the house, the fire in the kitchen had already started, and the house was ablaze. What’s worse is that Jon thought I was still in the house, so he broke into the burning house to save my mother and me. By then, though, the place was an inferno. Meanwhile, I was on my way to town with a list of things my mother said she needed from the grocery store.

But poor Jon … poor, poor Jon.

He was burned horribly, trying to save us. Two days later, he died. Most of the flesh had peeled off his face, hands, arms, and chest.

I know I wasn’t really responsible for what happened to him any more than my mother was, but I just can’t help but think how different things might have been if we both had lived. It’s so sad, really…

Chapter 7
Funeral

—1—

The soft strains of organ music filled the room. Throngs of people milled about, talking in hushed tones. Although Megan and Abby couldn’t feel it, they could tell that the room was too warm. Many of the peoples’ faces were red and glistened with sweat. The few men who were wearing neckties—mostly older friends and co-workers of Megan’s father—had loosened them or taken them off. Even Mike, who spent the evening huddled in a corner, watching as people greeted and spoke with his parents, looked miserable. Megan’s mother was in tears the whole time, and no amount of consolation seemed to help.

“I wish I could talk to him,” Megan said to Abby as she indicated her brother with a quick nod of the head.

“If you could,” Abby said, “what would you say?”

The question seemed to take Megan aback, and she was frowning when she turned to Abby.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Abby replied with a simple shrug. “I was just … now that you know what being dead is like, I was wondering what you’d tell him.”

“Is there anything in particular I should tell him?”

“No. No.”

Megan continued to stare angrily at her for a lengthening moment; then she turned to her brother. Without a word, she passed like a vapor amongst the people as she moved closer to him. She raised her arms as if to embrace him, but Abby knew Mike would never feel anything. Even when Megan was standing next to him, her hands touching his shoulders, caressing him, he didn’t acknowledge … unless the look of painful sadness and abject fear on his face were his reaction, on some level, to her presence.

“How many of these people do you know?”

Megan looked startled as she turned and saw Abby standing close by. She hadn’t seen her move.

“There are a lot of kids your age,” Abby continued. She thought she recognized several of them from the memorial service out on the cliff last night. “Are they friends of yours from school?”

“Some of ‘em, yeah.” Megan scanned the crowd, but her expression didn’t reveal much. “A few cousins and family friends, but yeah, quite a few of ‘em are—were in class with me. I’d only been going to that school for the last two years. Before then, I was in public schools, but my parents took me out and made me go to that private school because of some stuff that happened. I never liked it, though … the school, I mean. I never realized so many kids knew who I was.”

Abby nodded even though she had no idea what the difference was between “private” and “public” school. The only school she had ever known had been the one-room schoolhouse in Waynesboro, with its creaking floors, tall windows, and mismatched assortment of desks and chairs. Her strongest memory was how cold the seat in the outhouse was during winter.

“Probably most of ‘em are here because they have to be,” Megan said. “I was never all that popular at school.”

A look of wistfulness shifted across her face like a cloud passing in front of the sun. She glanced from person to person, the emotions rising inside her obvious, at least to Abby.

“Lots of people,” Abby said mildly, “find it surprising once they’re dead how much they meant to many people.” She was trying to reassure Megan, but her words seemed to have the opposite effect. If anything, Megan looked even sadder and tenser. Something was going on here that Abby couldn’t quite figure out, but she was determined to do so. Maybe then Megan would be able to move on.

“You never answered my question,” Abby said.

Megan’s scowl deepened, her eyes darkening like storm clouds.

“What question?”

“What would you tell your brother, if you could?”

Megan was silent for a long moment. The babble of voices faded away to nothing. Abby could feel herself withdrawing from the situation as if she was being called to go someplace else.

Then she saw tears gathering in Megan’s eyes. She knew they weren’t real tears. They couldn’t be. But the emotions twisting inside her were so strong they created the illusion of real tears, reflecting her internal turmoil.

“I’d tell him—” she finally said, but then her voice dropped so low Abby could barely hear her. “I’d tell him that I—”

But then, in an instant, a look of genuine terror passed across her face. Her eyes widened so the pupils looked like sparkling gold coins. Her mouth dropped open into an extended O, and her shoulders slumped forward like she was collapsing in on herself.

Suddenly fearful for her, thinking she might be “moving on” right now, Abby looked around, half-expecting to see a Reaper. But no cloaked figures lurked in the room as far as she could see, just throngs of living, breathing people who had no idea that the person they were mourning was standing right there with them, unable to let them know anything about what she was thinking or feeling.

“What?” Abby said, urging her on.

“To be careful,” Megan whispered, her voice like a faint gust of wind.

“Of anything in particular?” Abby sensed that Megan was close to admitting something that was eating at her on the inside, perhaps the something that was making it impossible for her to pass on.

The fear in Megan’s eyes was palpable as she stared at Abby. Her lower lip was quivering, and she looked like she was about to scream so loud even the living might hear her.

“Out there … on the cliffs,” Megan said in a shattered voice.

“Why would he have to be careful out there?”

The terrified look in Megan’s eyes intensified. She stared straight ahead without blinking as though she was mesmerized by something that even Abby couldn’t see.

“It’s dangerous out there, and there was a … a person who followed me there.”

“Someone you knew?” Abby realized how difficult it was for Megan to say this. Not wanting to frighten her by pushing too hard, she backed off.

Megan was shaking her head from side to side and making a low, soft moaning sound that Abby had heard many times before from suffering souls who were at the point of realizing or admitting something important.

“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize him. Honest. I swear I didn’t, but I was scared and I started to run.”

“Did he chase after you?”

Megan was silent for a long, tense moment as her eyes flicked back and forth crazily. It was like, even now, she was looking for someplace to run, to hide.

“I think he was … I thought it might be—” She paused and licked her lips. “So I ran, and when I ... when I got to the … to the edge of the cliff, I tripped and fell.”

Her face was a pale oval of terror as she locked eyes with Abby. Her shoulders were quaking as though invisible hands had taken hold of her and were shaking her for all she was worth.

“I fell, I swear to God I didn’t mean to jump!”

“I never said you jumped.”

Megan’s expression froze in horror, but then—ever so gradually—it began to melt. Her eyes lost their distant gleam, and something inside her seemed to crumple.

“But I did,” she finally said, her head drooping and her shoulders slouching. “I did jump.”

Abby was stunned. She had no idea what to say. If that’s what really happened, she was happy for Megan now that she had unburdened herself. Perhaps now, maybe by the time they got back to the cemetery, one of the Reapers—maybe even the one who was friendly to Abby—would show up and take her away.

“There was nothing else I could do,” Megan said in a voice like shattered crystal. “Do you understand?”

All Abby could do was nod sympathetically.

“I was trying to get away from him. I didn’t want him to catch me, and I … I had to jump. I didn’t think I would. I was sure—I hoped it would be all right, that I would land safely, but I didn’t jump out far enough to make it to the water, and I landed on the rocks.” She shivered with the memory. “Now that I think about it, I don’t remember any pain. I’d tell Mikey that, too, that there isn’t any pain. But all I remember is how scared I was that he would catch me, and how lucky I was to finally get away. But I never wanted to—”

Her voice broke again, and she leaned against Abby, sobbing as she pressed her face against Abby’s shoulder. Abby raised her hand to the girl’s shoulder, even though she knew Megan couldn’t really feel it. The voices of the people around them faded to nothing, and all Abby could hear was a deep, shuddering sigh.

“I didn’t want to die. Not really. I just wanted to get away from him because I knew what he wanted.”

— 2 —

“You can’t hold me here more ‘n twenty-four hours without chargin’ me with somethin’,” Andrew Collins shouted.

He was sitting on the edge of a jail cell bunk, his bare feet planted firmly on the floor, his hands pressed between his knees. They had taken his belt and personal effects, leaving him with nothing but his jeans and Falcons shirt.

The silence was broken only by the distant clack-clack-clack of someone banging away on a computer.

Collins shuddered as he took a deep breath, held it in for a count of ten, and then let it out slowly, whistling between his teeth.

“I have a right to a phone call, ‘n a lawyer!”

Still no answer until, from another room, the detective who had brought him in this morning—what was his name again?—shouted back, “Keep your shirt on. I’ll be right there.”

Collins scowled but resisted the urge to spit onto the cell floor. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he wondered just how much trouble he could be in this time. He was sure he was in deep shit no matter how much he insisted he hadn’t done whatever it was they thought he did. He lowered his head until footsteps sounded in the corridor, approaching his cell. He looked up without the least bit of expectation in his eyes.

“So,” the detective—

Gray! Yeah, that’s his name!—said.

“Got anything you wanna talk about before you leave?”

Collins wished there weren’t any bars between them because he was ready to beat the tar out of this guy. So damned smug! Instead, he just sat there, trembling with repressed rage and the faint hope that they would spring him. After all, they had nothing on him. If they did, they would have thrown it in his face by now.

“Not a damned thing,” Collins said.

Detective Gray was silent for a moment, grunting softly as he nodded, considering.

“How ‘bout that cut on your head. Care to explain how you got that?”

“I already told yah.” He reached up and flicked the edge of the scab with his fingernail. “I whacked myself on a cupboard door a couple of days ago.”

“Looks more like the kind of cut you’d get if you were—I don’t know, say, struggling with someone, and they scratched you.”

Collins snorted and shook his head. The urge to spit onto the floor was stronger.

“You have a struggle with someone recently?”

Collins looked at the cop, his pulse pounding hard in his chest.

“No,” he said.

“You own a yellow raincoat?”

Collins looked at him, surprised, and said, “No.”

Detective Gray nodded, but his expression was flat and unbroken. Collins knew he didn’t believe him. He didn’t have to wonder how much the bastard would disbelieve him if he told the truth now.

“Lemme ask you something,” Gray said, moving closer to the bars, folding his hands, and resting his elbows on the crossbars.

“I got time,” Collins said. “Apparently I ain’t goin’ anywheres.”

Gray smiled at that, his lips stretched thin against his teeth.

“You know a girl name of Megan McGowan?”

The name sent a spike of chills through Collins, and he was convinced Gray had noticed his reaction.

“Megan McGowan?” he said, forcing his voice not to tremble.

“Yeah. Megan McGowan. She a friend of yours?”

Collins shook his head, feeling the whole world crashing down around him.

“Can’t say as I ever heard of her,” he finally replied. “She a friend of yours?”

“Not anymore,” Gray said. “She’s dead.”

“Oh. Too bad.”

It was all Collins could do to keep his voice from cracking. His armpits were dripping with sweat.

“Whoever killed her was wearing a yellow raincoat.”

“And you know that—how?”

“From scrapings under her fingernails. Looks like she put up a bit of a fight. The kind of fight where someone might get a scratch on their face.”

“I ain’t got a yellow raincoat. Search my apartment if you want. You won’t find one.”

“Unless you already threw it away,” Gray said. “Funny thing is, though, we also found your name on her computer.”

There was unbending steel in Gray’s voice, and a cold light gleamed in his eyes. Collins couldn’t help but feel like he was staring into a reptile’s eyes. He sensed how badly this could go.

“That doesn’t mean a goddamned thing. People I don’t know are contactin’ me all a’time on Facebook.”

“This wasn’t in Facebook. It was in her e-mail account.”

Collins shrugged and shook his head.

“I have no idea what you think I might’ve had to do with anythin’,” he said. “I done my time for what I done, and I’ve been on the up and up ever since.”

“Really?” Detective Gray’s eyes narrowed like a snake’s. “Does sending letters to underage girls count as being on the ‘up and up’?”

“There’s no law against writin’ e-mails to anyone. ‘N ‘sides. How wuz I spozed to know she was unnerage? People lie about that shit all a’time on-line.”

“Unless what you wrote back can be construed as solicitation. Then, I think you may have a problem.”

“Look here!” Collins said, no longer able to hold himself back. He stood up and darted over to the bars. Gray drew back as if concerned he was going to reach out between them and grab him.

“I don’t know what happened! ‘N I don’t know what you think I might a’ done, but just ‘cause my name shows up on some dead chick’s computer, that don’t mean I had anythin’ to do with anythin’. So unless you’re gonna charge me, I want you to let me the Christ outta here.”

Gray studied him for a moment, and then he smirked and shook his head. Stretching out his arm, he shot his cuff and glanced at his wristwatch.

“The way I figure it, I can keep you another sixteen, seventeen hours,” Gray said calmly. “Maybe then you’ll think things through and maybe want to tell me something I don’t already know.”

“Up yours,” Collins said, really wanting to spit now.

“No,” Gray said as he turned and started walking down the corridor. “Up yours!”

— 3 —

Following visiting hours at the funeral home, Megan and Abby returned to the Old Settlers’ Cemetery just before dark. The rain had stopped, but it was still cloudy, so night came on, measured by the gradual darkening of the sky.

No Reapers showed up along the way to take Megan away, but Abby wasn’t surprised. She knew Megan’s confession that she had jumped off the cliff instead of fallen wasn’t the whole truth, either. As long as Megan didn’t admit or didn’t realize and accept everything that had happened to her, she was going to linger here in the Dead Lands.

But as night descended, another, stranger feeling consumed Abby.

She was being pulled away from the cemetery, but she didn’t know why or by what. She would be much safer—from Reverend Wheeler and any other of the myriad dangers in the Dead Lands—if she stayed where she was, but something, an indescribable longing drew her from the cemetery.

She knew she had to follow it wherever it led.

“I have to go do something,” she told Megan once night had fallen, and the land was blanketed with darkness.

“What do you mean, ‘do something’?” Megan had a look of shock on her face.

“There’s … I’ll tell you later, but I have to go. Promise me you’ll stay here, no matter what?”

“I don’t see why you can leave and I can’t.”

“It’s just the way it is,” Abby said as a chill stirred deep inside her. She knew it was foolish to leave the safety of the cemetery now that it was dark; she wondered why whatever it was couldn’t wait until morning. She paused, trying to analyze and understand these feelings, but she couldn’t get a fix. All she knew was that something was wrong. Something about her situation had changed. She had no idea what it was, but like a magnet draws iron, she could feel herself being pulled.

And she would follow the pull, no matter where it led or what dangers threatened her.

“It won’t take long,” she said, cringing at the lie. The truth was, if she had no idea what was calling to her, how could she know how long it would take?  She might never come back. What would Megan do then? All she knew was that she felt a deep yearning like she had never experienced before, or at least not since she was alive, and she had to find out what it was.

“Don’t argue with me,” she said, adopting the tone her father used to use on her. “Just stay put. You don’t want Reverend Wheeler to get you, do you?”

The expression of horror that lit Megan’s eyes was genuine. She shook her head and said, “No friggin’ way.”

“Good. Then stay here, and I’ll be back before sunrise.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

With that, Abby drifted through the cemetery gate, hesitating for a moment to search the darkness for any hint of Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds. The wind sighed in fitful gusts, blowing fallen leaves along the ground where they clattered and snapped like skeletal fingers. The moon was behind a raft of clouds. Off to the left, the ocean was lost in darkness, but waves whispered on the sand, sounding further away than usual and filling Abby with unease.

Abby moved slowly up the street, continually looking left and right, poised and ready to dart back into the cemetery at the first sign of danger. Streetlights lit the street, glowing like dandelion puffs in the fog. Abby could feel Megan watching after her, and just before she rounded the corner, she turned back and waved. She wasn’t sure if Megan saw her and waved back or not.

Spreading her arms wide, Abby looked skyward, trying to get a sense of where she should go. The night surrounding her was silent as though muffled in cotton. A few cars passed by, but they appeared translucent and fleeting. Abby had the odd sensation that she was falling out of the world as a curious floating sensation took hold of her, and she rose into the air.

She had moved like this before in the Dead Lands, but usually the way she got around was the same as how she would have gotten around if she were still alive. She would have walked. But now, this weird feeling of simultaneously flying and falling lifted her off the ground. She fought back an immediate rush of panic when she looked down and saw the world far below. Houses and streets, and woods and lawns all spiraled around her like she was being tossed about inside a kaleidoscope. Cars and people in small groups or alone moved about in bizarre patterns. A few people glowed, and Abby knew these were ghosts like her, wandering about the Dead Lands.

She was filled with a queasy sense of vertigo as she spread her arms wide and tumbled through the night. The thought crossed her mind that she might be “moving on,” that she had finally been released from the Dead Lands and was going to her eternal rest, but then she noticed she was no longer moving.

She hovered in the air above what looked to her as an ordinary house, exactly like all the others on this street except for one thing. A faint glow of phosphorescent blue light spilled from one of the upstairs windows.

Another ghost? Abby wondered as she drifted closer to it. The brightness increased until it hurt her eyes. Time seemed to stop as she came closer to the window and looked inside the room.

No ghost … just a living boy, sitting in a dark bedroom. He looked to be about her age. He was at a desk and staring at a bright square of light that flickered wildly as picture after picture flashed by.

Abby watched him for a moment or two, shocked by his looks. She knew he couldn’t be who she thought he was, but the resemblance between him and her friend Jon Hilton was so strong she had to wonder if that’s why she had been drawn here.

But then a stab of icy cold went through her when she saw something else—a small box on the desk next to the flickering box of light.

In the box was her mother’s locket.

— 4 —

No matter how much Jim tried to concentrate on the computer game he was playing, his attention kept wandering back to the locket on the desk next to his monitor. The flickering glow made shadows dance and shift so the gold looked like it was alive and moving.

Jim paused and took a breath. Poising his hands over the keyboard, quickly typed the message “L8R” into the message box and hit ENTER.

Without waiting for a response from any of his on-line friends, he closed the screen, exited the game, and shut down the computer. He shivered as he leaned back in his chair all the while staring at the computer screen as his computer cycled down and then winked off. Without any other illumination other than what was coming in through the window, the room was plunged into darkness.

In that darkness, whatever it was that had made him shiver got even stronger. A prickling surge of panic rushed through his stomach as he looked around. The streetlight outside his bedroom window cast long shadows of tree branches across the windowsill, floor, and opposite wall. There was no wind, but he could easily imagine—as he had since he was little—that those shadows weren’t of trees at all but of thin, skeleton hands that were reaching out to snag him.

Stop it! he commanded himself, feeling foolish for allowing such childish imaginings to get the better of him. He was too old to be afraid of darkness and shadows. Even on a gloomy night like this, there was nothing to be afraid of.

He took a breath and held it for a few seconds, then let it out slowly.

Even that didn’t help. His pulse was still beating hard in his wrists and neck, and the shadows behind him—where he couldn’t see them—moved closer until he could almost feel them rubbing against his skin.

“Stop it … Stop it … Stop it,” he whispered, but even the sound of his own voice now set his nerves further on edge.

The feeling that there was something or someone standing behind him grew until it was almost unbearable. He let out a nervous, little moan, but it was enough to draw the attention of his mother, who was in her bedroom across the hall.

“Hon?” she called out. “You all right?”

Jim reached out and swept the locket off his desk just as his mother opened the door and snapped on the overhead light. The sudden flood of bright light hit Jim’s eyes like a dash of cold water. He winced and covered his eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding the locket.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, his voice clipped and edgy.

“What are you doing, sitting here in the dark?”

His mother started to come into the room but then apparently thought better of it and remained standing in the doorway. She looked at him with a trace of sadness and sympathy in her eyes. No matter how true it was or wasn’t, she was convinced Jim was still mourning the loss of his father, even though he had died six years ago. She was always going on to him and to her friends about how tough it must be for him to grow up without a male role model.

Jim was sure she never really believed him when he insisted that he was doing just fine. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss his dad, but something else was bothering him right now, and he knew he couldn’t talk to her about it.

It’s just your imagination, he insisted. Lately, it seemed to get out of control all too easily.

“I just turned off my computer,” he said. “I was thinking of heading to bed.”

“Kind of early, ain’t it?”

Jim shrugged and said, “There’s nothing to do.”

“How ‘bout a movie. I just got that new Brad Pitt movie from Netflicks if you want to watch it with me.”

Jim shook his head and said, “Not really. I’m kinda tired.”

He was lying to his mother, and he thought she knew he was. She stood in the doorway a moment longer, the light from the hallway haloing her head with a mellow, lemon glow. He could almost imagine she was an angel, sent to watch over him, and the tension inside him released its grip … a least a little.

“You’re not sick, are you?” his mother asked, sounding worried now.

Jim shook his head and said, “No. I’m just beat after football practice today. Coach Carter worked us pretty hard.”

“Well then … sleep well.”

She left, easing the door shut behind her. When the door latch clicked, Jim couldn’t help but jump. His shoulders ached from the muscle tension. He got up from his desk, walked over to the wall switch, and snapped the light off, plunging the room back into darkness.

When he turned around, he saw the ghost standing by the window.

Abby

I always knew Reverend Wheeler was a mean, nasty person. I shouldn’t speak so freely about him, but it’s obvious that he’s a servant of Satan. He claims to be a man of God still, but I believe no man of God would say and do to me, or anyone, what he has said and done to me.

One of the worst things, I think, is that he accused me of stealing from my own mother.

You see, my mother owned that locket. She treasured it. I don’t know where she got it. I suppose my father might have given it to her back when they first fell in love. It’s hard for me to imagine the two of them ever being in love. I only remember the bad times … once my father started drinking. But I suppose they were in love at one time, and that may be where my mother got her locket.

I wish she was here so I could ask her.

It’s a beautiful locket, though, don’t you think? I’m lucky I even have it. A few days before the house fire, the day we got word from the Wheelers that I could live with them for the summer, she gave it to me to keep.

Later, my uncle accused me of stealing it from her.

That’s not the only thing he’s accused me of, either. He’s never come right out and said it, but I’m positive he also thought—still thinks—I had something to do with how my mother and Jon Hilton died. When I told him I was in town when the fire started, he looked at me with this dark scowl like he was trying to see into my heart … right into my soul.

Of course I didn’t start the fire. I loved my mother more than I can say, and I certainly never would have done anything to hurt her or Jon.

When we were on the ship Faire Child, heading to Maine, my uncle took the liberty—he said it was his right because he was now my legal guardian—of inspecting my luggage. That’s when he found the locket. It’s made of gold, you know, so I think it’s worth a lot—certainly more now than when my mother got it, but I value it so much because it meant so much to her.

The Faire Childe was running with the wind as a storm—a hurricane, as we learned soon enough—swept up the East Coast from Florida. The ship’s captain was a brave man, I’ll give him that. I forget his name after all these years, but I’ll never forget him. He stood at least six feet tall and looked to be about as wide at the shoulders as he was tall. He had thick white hair, a full, white beard, and sparkling blue eyes that looked like they could see clear over the horizon.

But no matter how brave he was, he was no match for a hurricane on the open ocean. The ship wrecked on the rocks at the southern tip of Cushing’s Island. Everyone on board died. When you come out to the cemetery—you will come, I hope—I’ll show you where, but you probably won’t be able to see it.

That’s the thing about the Dead Lands. I think we create our own reality here after we die here based on what we did and didn’t do when we were alive. Every time I look out to sea, I see the shipwreck on the rocks.

But as I was saying, my uncle confronted me with my supposed theft just as the storm hit. He accused me of stealing the locket and then lying to him about it. He said I was guilty of other unnamed … unnamable sins, too. And he told me if the ship wrecked, if I died before I confessed all of my sins, I would face my Lord in final judgment with my sins still staining my soul. If that happened, the Reverend said, then God, who according to him is a just and angry God, would cast me into the fiery pit of Hell to suffer for all eternity.

I didn’t believe him then, and I don’t believe him now. From everything I’ve seen, God, at least the way I conceive of Him, is a kind and loving Father and creator.

Still … I wonder why I’ve been trapped here between life and death so long.

It‘s got to have something to do with the locket and the strand of hair tied to it. My mother said she cut it from my head when I was a baby. And the key … That’s what has to be what’s keeping me here.

They certainly drew me to you, didn’t they?

So maybe you’ll help me find out.

Chapter 8
Drifting with the Tide

—1—

“Are you for real?”

Jim heard himself ask that question as if he were listening to someone else talking in the next room.

His eyes were wide open, and he pinched the back of his left hand just to make sure he wasn’t asleep and dreaming. The streetlight outside his window cast a distorted rectangle of light across the floor, and the gauzy figure of a young girl wavered in and out of sight, melting into the darkness and then reappearing.

For a long, terrible moment, the figure was perfectly silent, staring at him in amazement. She looked at him as though she couldn’t quite comprehend where she was or what was going on. Jim noticed that she was wearing a lacy, white dress that looked old, like something from a history book. The hem practically brushed the floor. When she finally moved, he heard a faint swishing that reminded him of the sound gentle waves made when they break on the shore.

The girl’s perplexed expression shifted, her face changing shape like a movie projection on an uneven surface. Her lips moved, but Jim couldn’t hear anything except the distant drone of cars passing by on the street. He took a single step forward and, holding out his hands, repeated his question.

“Are you real?” He controlled his voice a bit more now.

A chill wound through him when the girl’s focus changed, and she made direct eye contact with him. Then, ever so slowly, she nodded. The glow in her eyes got brighter, and even her figure took on substance.

Am I crazy …? Am I losing my mind …? he wondered as a thrill of fear and intrigue rippled through him.

“My name’s Jim.”

He consciously kept his voice down because he was afraid he’d burst the illusion, if that’s what this was. Besides, he didn’t want to disturb his mother. If she burst into the room now, she would certainly break the magic of whatever was happening. Even if it wasn’t real … even if he was dreaming, Jim wanted to hold on to this moment for as long as he could. Whatever was happening, this moment was magical.

“Who are you?” he whispered, feeling more confident as he took another step closer. The figure shimmered and wavered, and he was afraid that even approaching it would send it away, so he froze in his tracks, his eyes wide and staring.

Again, the girl’s mouth moved, and this time he heard something … a whisper as faint as the flutter of a moth’s wings in the night.

“I … I can’t hear you,” he said, swallowing hard and trying not even to blink. “Could you say that again?”

This time, as clearly as if she were standing right beside him, unseen and leaning close to his ear, he heard the single word, “Abby.”

“Abby?” he repeated, as a tightness gripped his throat. He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh out loud … scream … faint dead away … or maybe wake up. “Abby who? What’s your last name?”

“Cummings. My last name is … Cummings …”

“Abby Cummings … So where—? Are you from around here?”

The girl’s expression tightened as she turned slowly and cast a glance over her shoulder toward the window. Outside, swirls of mist half-obscured the streetlight. In the distance, a bird was singing. Jim thought it sounded like a mockingbird, but he was pretty sure mockingbirds were daytime birds. Why would a mockingbird be singing at night?

“No,” she finally said, her voice still so faint Jim wasn’t convinced he heard her correctly. “I can’t believe it! Can you really hear me?”

“I can see you, too,” Jim said, fighting back waves of excitement. Whatever was going on here, he couldn’t believe it was happening. Even if it was a dream, he didn’t want it to end, not yet.

The girl raised her right hand and, holding it out in front of her, turned it over so it was palm up. She flexed her fingers, looking amazed that she could control them.

“I’m … real,” she said.

Jim saw her mouth move, and he heard the words, but they seemed somehow disconnected … like one of those badly dubbed kung fu movies his friend Mark liked so much. His throat felt desert-dry as he nodded, not sure she could see the motion, but too frightened and excited to speak.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice stronger.

Jim didn’t dare move.

“My name’s—” His throat closed off, but he cleared it and finished, “Jim … Jim Burke.”

The girl smiled wistfully, her eyes glowing as she reached out to him with both hands.  Jim resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. When she spoke again, her voice was clearer, and she—or her image—got more defined.

“You look like someone I used to know a long time ago.” She said this as a look of infinitely deep sadness swept over her.

Jim felt a rush of embarrassment and looked away. He was suddenly panicked, thinking she might disappear, but when he looked at her again, she was still there … clearer, if anything.

“Are you really a … ghost?”

He hated the weakness in his voice. All the while, a small, rational corner of his brain was screaming at him, insisting that he must be hallucinating this … or else he was dreaming …

But if this is a dream, he thought with a thrill, it’s amazing in its detail.

Everything in his room was exactly as it should be—his bed, bureau, desk and computer, the pile of dirty laundry in the basket in the corner—everything except for the translucent ghost by the window, looking at him and actually speaking.

“I think so,” Abby said.

“So how did you get here?”

The smile on the girl’s face widened, but her expression still looked sad. She started and cast another quick glance over her shoulder as though she had heard something he hadn’t. Like a luminous, dissipating cloud, she began to disappear.

“No! Don’t go,” he cried out, reaching out to her and watching as his hand passed clear through her with no sensation other than a quickening chill.

She turned back to him, looking relieved … if that was the word.

“There are times when I’m really dead,” she said, her voice floating like a mist in the darkness, “but they don’t last very long.”

— 2 —

Mike was sitting on the edge of the bed in his bedroom, just staring at the floor, when he heard the heavy tread on the stairs. He knew it was his father, and he cowered, silently praying that he would walk past his door and go to his own bedroom or the bathroom. But when the footsteps hesitated outside, tension bunched in his neck like a coil of tangled knots in a rope.

He waited for his father to knock and ask if he could enter, but then, without any warning, the door flung open, and his father stood there. Mike shrank back as he stared up at him in silence. His face was in shadow, and for an instant, Mike imagined an evil red glow in his father’s eyes.

“You coming downstairs to breakfast,” his father asked, “or are you gonna sit up here all day?”

When Mike nodded, he heard something crack in his neck.

“You’re not doing anybody any good, moping around up here, you know?”

Mike wanted to ask his father what exactly he thought he should be doing. Since his sister died, he hadn’t felt safe enough to tell either of his parents what he was really thinking and feeling, and they certainly hadn’t asked him, but he had seen something out there on the cliffs … something he didn’t dare tell anyone about. Besides, they were so involved in their own grief they seemed not to care about him anymore. His mother was so distraught by Megan’s death she spent all of her waking hours crying. Even when the tears subsided, she would sit by herself, staring blankly into the distance.

His father, on the other hand, seemed more angry than sad about what had happened, and he seemed to put all the blame for Megan’s death on Mike.

As if he could have done anything to stop it!

Sure, he had gone out to the cliffs with Megan against their mother’s word; but once they got there, they had gone their separate ways. He liked to poke around in the abandoned battlements of Fort Williams, which had been built during World War II, while Megan always went for a walk along the cliffs. She used to tell him—and he half-believed her, at least when he was a stupid little kid—that she saw mermaids on the rocks below, combing their hair with seashells and singing. Even if the mermaids weren’t real, and he doubted they were, he knew his sister liked to walk along the cliff edge and look out over the ocean.

He never even suspected something had gone wrong until he found one of her sneakers—the same one he now had hidden under his bed. He had recognized it as his sister’s immediately because of the long, multicolored laces with red and yellow plastic beads tied on the ends. And looking around, he had also seen her footprints on a muddy part of the trail leading out to the cliffs. Her left foot still had a sneaker while the right foot was bare.

And it sure looked like she had been running. Studying the tracks more closely, Mike had also found another set of footprints. They were larger than Megan’s and obviously made by a man-sized shoe or boot.

As afraid as he had been that something had happened to Megan, he had also been afraid that, if there was a dangerous person out here, then he might be in danger, too. He picked up the sneaker and was about to head home when he heard someone coming up the path. Fast. Running. He knew it wasn’t Megan. The thud of footsteps was too loud. Then Mike heard the person—a man—muttering curses under his breath.

An instant before the man came into view, Mike ducked behind some yew bushes. It hadn’t been raining that day, only a bit foggy in the morning, but the man was wearing a yellow raincoat with the hood up. He was leaning forward, staring at the ground as though studying it. That was probably why he didn’t see Mike duck out of sight.

As he came closer to where Mike was hiding, the man kept scanning the ground, moving his head back and forth as though he had lost something and was looking for it. Mike froze and held his breath, staying where he was and praying the man would pass by. After a short pause, he continued along the path that threaded the side of the cliff, so Mike never saw the man’s face. Not clearly. But the raincoat seemed familiar. It looked a lot like the one his father had bought at L. L. Bean’s last summer before the family went on their annual camping trip.

Once the man was gone, and Mike was sure it was safe, he took off for home as fast as he could, clutching Megan’s sneaker to his side under his jacket.

These memories were racing through Mike’s head as he stared blankly at his father, who looked like a statue in the doorway, unmoving … unyielding. The silence between them lengthened until Mike thought he was going to scream.

“The funeral’s at eleven o’clock,” his father said, glancing at his wristwatch. “So what say you come downstairs and eat breakfast with us? Your mother could use a little sympathy and understanding, you know?”

Mike nodded but stopped himself before he asked, And what about me? You don’t care about what I’m feeling, do you?

He knew it wouldn’t do any good.

His father wouldn’t listen.

He never did.

— 3 —

“Why won’t you tell me where you were last night?”

Megan glared at Abby as she stood underneath the apple tree, her arms folded across her chest.

“Do you think I enjoyed myself, being here alone all night?”

Abby shook her head but still said nothing. There was no way she wanted to tell Megan about what had happened. Meeting Jim Burke—and realizing that he could actually see and hear her—had nothing to do with Megan.

“It was scary here alone,” Megan went on, her tone wounded and petulant. “I saw and heard things.”

“That’s why I told you to stay in the cemetery,” Abby said.

Megan nodded but didn’t look mollified.

“As long as you’re in the cemetery, you’re safe.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

“So how come you can leave whenever you want to? I thought you were afraid of that Reverend Wheeler. Were you just making all that that up?”

A shiver ran through Abby at the sound of his name. She shook her head and said, “No way. But I know more about when it’s dangerous and when it’s sort of safe.”

“You told me it was tough to communicate with anyone still living,” Megan said. “So how can anything be a threat to you or me? What else can happen? We’re already dead.”

Abby was about to answer her but then decided it was just as well if Megan didn’t know. If she moved on soon, once they figured out the exact circumstances of her death, there was no point in frightening her any more. All she had to know was that, as long as she stayed in the cemetery at night, she would be safe.

“I want to go to the cliffs again today,” Megan said.

The sudden shift of topic took Abby by surprise. She was still thinking about what had happened between her and Jim last night that she had all but forgotten Megan’s problems.

“Is there … Do you feel something? Are you getting a vibe?” Abby asked.

“A vibe? That’s … I haven’t heard anyone say that in a while,” Megan said. Then she squinted as she considered the question and said, “I’m not sure. I still have this … feeling … if that’s what you mean by vibe. Like there’s still something missing.”

“Missing?”

Megan nodded as she looked past Abby and down at the beach. The tide was out, and a long stretch of dark brown sand and tangled seaweed marked the fringe. The water was steel-gray, and a thick fog bank loomed far out on the horizon. A foghorn kept sounding, faint with distance.

“I think there …” She frowned and scratched her head. “There’s something out there that, I dunno, maybe will help me.”

Abby smiled, thinking this was good. Pushing aside, for now, any thoughts about Jim Burke, she reached out for Megan’s hand and said, “Come on, then. Let’s take a walk. ”

“Are you sure it’s safe now?” Megan’s voice was pinched with fear, and Abby couldn’t help but wonder what exactly she had seen and heard last night to frighten her so. Maybe Reverend Wheeler had spoken with her, or maybe she had seen some of the other lost and lonely souls outside the graveyard.

“We’ll be all right,” she said, and together, hand in hand, they drifted out of the cemetery and down to the beach. As they walked, Abby noticed that with every other step, Megan’s bare foot made a high-pitched squeaking sound in the singing sands. She kept glancing down at the girl’s bare foot, and was convinced all the more that her missing sneaker had something to do with what had happened to her.

With luck, it might even be the answer they were looking for.

— 4 —

Detective Gray was steaming as he sat in his office and stared at the stack of papers on his desk. They were the printed copies of the e-mail exchanges between Andrew Collins and Megan McGowan, and they made for some fairly twisted reading. Lot of sick bastards in the world, he thought.

The cup of coffee at his elbow had long since gone cold as he read through the e-mails again. For the first time in a long time, he wished he hadn’t quit smoking. He sure could use a cigarette right about now. It might help him concentrate.

This Collins guy was a tough nut, and a sick-o to boot. Throughout the interrogation last night and into this morning, he had maintained his innocence, but he had done it with such a smug arrogance Gray was convinced he was guilty of Megan’s murder and putting up a brave front. Then again, he might be telling the truth and so scared he was acting guilty. He might not have had a thing to do with Megan’s death.

In and of themselves, the e-mails, while incriminating, certainly didn’t prove a damned thing. They wouldn’t stand up in court. Although the tone of them didn’t sit well with Gray, they weren’t proof positive that Collins had actually met up with Megan, either the day she died or any other day. The two of them had flirted on-line, and that could very well have been the full extent of it. Lots of people adopted personae on-line and talked about doing things they would never actually do.

So, was Collins sick?

Absolutely.

Anyone who wrote sexually suggestive e-mails to underage girls had something wrong.

And Megan had obviously been aware of what Collins was hinting at. But they never closed the deal, as far as Gray could see. In the e-mails Jesse, the IT guy, had pulled up, there was only one mention of meeting at the park, but they hadn’t settled on a time or day. Jesse was working on the drive to see if he could retrieve any other files that might have been deleted. What frustrated Gray was that he had no probable cause to confiscate Collins’ computer. And he was sure that the first thing Collins did this morning when he got back to his apartment was delete any and all exchanges he’d had with Megan McGowan.

If Collins had killed Megan McGowan, Gray was going to have to prove it by doing some good old-fashioned police work.

And if Collins didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s murder, then Gray was back to square one without a damned clue.

— 5 —

Ever on the alert for Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds, Abby and Megan crossed the beach until they reached the shadows under the towering cliffs that wound along the coast from Fort Williams to Portland Head Light. They moved slowly along the margin of rocks and sand exposed by the ebbing tide. Megan limped along with her one bare foot, but Abby knew she was doing this only out of memory and force of habit. There was no way she could really feel any pain from the sharp rocks.

The sun was breaking through the clouds, and all the living people at the park looked happy. The leaves of the sumac had turned blaze red with approaching autumn, making the cliffs look like they were on fire. Up above, kids were running around with their families, and young couples strolled along the winding dirt paths, holding hands and looking for privacy. Close to the water’s edge, a group of teenage boys were goofing around on some rocks as surf washed up around them, splashing them. White flashes of sea gulls wheeled about overhead, their calls carried on the wind. On one rocky ledge exposed only at low tide, a harbor seal was sunning himself after a satisfying breakfast of clams and mussels.

Abby studied Megan, trying to see how much the scene was affecting her. Like Abby, she seemed to have been a quiet and thoughtful girl in life, maybe a little withdrawn. She kept her eyes downcast as though contemplating everything she had recently lost. Although they could see and hear people around them, neither one of them could feel the cool, gentle breeze blowing in off the water or the waves of heat from the autumn sun.

All of this was lost to them.

“Woo-hoo! Check it out!” one of the boys down by the water suddenly shouted. His voice was dull with distance, but Megan became suddenly alert. She squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the water and looked at the boys.

There were five of them, all in their early to midteens. They all wore the teenaged boy’s uniform—faded jeans, t-shirts with rock group logos, expensive sneakers, and baseball caps on backwards. One boy in particular, the heavyset one with dark hair who had shouted, drew Megan’s attention. Abby followed her gaze down to the rocks.

The boy was holding something in his hand—a flat, somewhat rounded object.

“Looks like a girl’s,” one of the other boys shouted, and he watched as the first boy bent down and, cocking his body to one side, spun around quickly and threw whatever it was he had found. It hit the flat plane of the water, dimpling it, and then skipped once … twice … three times before stopping.

“What a pussy throw that was,” one of the other boys shouted, and they all started whooping and howling like apes as they moved away, leaping from rock to rock.

But Abby didn’t watch them go. She was focused on Megan, who was staring out across the water with the most peculiar expression on her face. Her lower lip was trembling, and she looked like she was about to cry. If she had been alive, she very well might have. She was staring at the object the boy had thrown. It looked like a tiny, dark canoe, drifting and rocking with the tide.

“What is it?” Abby asked, but Megan didn’t answer. She was focused on the object less than fifty feet from the shore.

“Megan …?” Abby said, her voice edged with concern. “What is it?”

But Megan kept watching the object as it dipped and rose on the waves, drawing closer to the shore with each swell. By now, the teenage boys were long gone, out of sight around an outcropping of rock. Abby could still hear their raucous laughter.

She tensed as Megan started along the shore on a course that would intercept that object as it drifted ever closer to shore. Time seemed to slow down. The people roaming the cliffs above moved in sludgy slow motion, their voices and laughter muted by distance. The air grew heavy, almost stifling. Megan was moving faster than Abby, so she reached the object just as a tiny wave lifted it up onto a rock that angled out into the water. When Abby joined her, she saw for the first time what the object was.

It was Megan’s other sneaker—the one for her bare right foot.

She recognized the multicolored lacings with dangling colored plastic beads on the ends. The fabric was smudged with dirt, strands of lime-green slime attached to it. Megan was transfixed as another wave pushed the sneaker further up onto the rock and deposited it as if by an unseen hand at Megan’s feet. If she had been alive, she could have picked it up and put it on her right foot.

Sadness and utter confusion filled Megan’s eyes as she looked from the sneaker to Abby. Her lower lip was trembling when she said, “This is the real one of the one I’m wearing.”

Abby nodded but said nothing. She knew what Megan was thinking because it was exactly what she was thinking:

So where is her other sneaker … the left one … the one that fell off her foot before she died?

Abby

Yup, that’s my photograph in the locket.

I was thirteen years old when it was taken. My parents and I went to Richmond that summer. It’s the only time I’d ever been away from home, other than when I left to come to Maine with my uncle. I was excited, being in the big city. It was the biggest one I’d ever seen until we sailed past New York City. I couldn’t believe how big that city was. It must be incredibly large now.

While we were in Richmond, my father was supposedly off doing some business, but we found out later he spent all his time in a tavern. My mother took me to a photography studio and had that picture of me taken. I understand it cost a lot of money, but she had saved up over several years. She never told me how much it cost. All I know is that when we got back home and my father found out about it, he got real angry. That night, after he’d been drinking, he went after my mother again. I hid in the barn until he was done.

I’m glad you didn’t give it to your mother, though.

It’s better if you keep it. Maybe we can figure out why it’s so important to me.

I don’t know why, other than sentimental reasons. It’s all I have left of my life. Even the dress I’m wearing. It’s not real. It’s an illusion of the clothes I was buried in. That locket and the hair and key are the only things I have left to cling to. They’re all that’s left to prove I used to be alive.

I don’t always know where the locket is all the time, but I get these feelings. A while ago, I heard some call it a ‘vibe.’ I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like I’m filled with sadness, but that feeling is mixed with a sense of urgency and, maybe, I don’t know … maybe protectiveness.

Do you get what I mean?

It’s complicated, I know.

I had already died by the time the scavengers found the wreck after the storm. I watched as two older men and a boy a little younger than I was arrived in a little boat. It was still dark, and by lantern light, they went through the wreckage. I was watching when they found my uncle’s body, all tangled up in the ropes and stuff. I’ll never forget the expression on his face. His skin was bone-white, and his eyes were wide open as though he was startled to realize he was dead. His mouth was hanging open like he was frozen in the middle of a scream. That’s the face I see whenever he comes to me and tells me to come with him.

Before the constable and other people arrived to sort through the wreckage, these two men and the boy searched through the pockets and belongings of all the drowned people they found washed up on the shore. The boy found the locket and key in the Reverend’s coat pocket, and he hid them from the other two. I don’t know why. Maybe he knew or sensed they were important.

Like I said, I was watching all of this, but I was so upset and confused by what was happening. I didn’t realize I was dead, too.

I know. It seems odd that I can talk about it so matter-of-factly now, but I’ve been dead a long time. I guess I’ve gotten used to it, but there are some things I still don’t understand.

Anyway, I lingered on the shore, watching as other scavengers arrived and collected as much loot as they could before the constable and other citizens came to get the bodies. Everyone on board was dead. It was only when I saw someone—a middle-aged man with long dark hair and a beard—fish something out of the water that I began to fully realize what had happened.

Terrified and sad, I watched in stunned disbelief as he used a gaff—You know what a gaff is, right? One of those long poles with a metal hook on the end that people use down on the docks to catch mooring lines and such. Well, this man used a gaff to drag my body out of the surf and up onto the beach. It was terrifying to watch.

Chapter 9
12:34

—1—

Megan sat in a darkened corner at the back of the church and listened to the funeral service. It pained her to see her mother so broken down, and her heart went out to her little brother, who was pale with grief. Her father, on the other hand, looked more in control of himself. He sat with his arm around his wife, but his eyes were flat and empty. They looked like wet marbles.

Megan tried to describe how she felt about the rest of the people who were there, but there were too many of them, and her feelings ran the gamut from sadness to anger to humor. Take Mr. Healey, her science teacher, for instance. He had consistently given her nothing but grief in class, insisting that she had too good a brain to let it “lie fallow there between her ears,” as he always said. Now, here he was, wearing a shirt whose collar was too tight for him, his face flushed bright red from crying—actually crying in public. Judging by the way he had treated her in class, Megan had never suspected he experienced any emotions so deeply.

Or take her Aunt Nancy and Uncle Dave Crosby and their twins, Larry and Billy, who were a year older than Megan. They lived in Melbourne, Florida, so the family rarely saw them except for one winter a few years ago when Megan and her family had gone down to Florida for a week, and the “Crosby Clan,” as her father called them, met them one day at Disney World. The twins treated Megan with aloof disregard, and truth to tell, Megan had never really liked either one of them—they both were so arrogant and downright mean to her. But now, all four of them sat huddled on the pew right behind her mother, father, and brothers, clinging to each other because they knew, if circumstances had been different, it might have been one of them lying there in that closed, wooden box at the front of the church.

And there were so many others. Megan tried to tell Abby who everyone was, but she couldn’t keep up. The church was filled to capacity with standing room only. Megan wondered, as she and Abby pressed back into the darkest corner, if anyone had even an inkling they were there. She listened to the Reverend Kennedy—the same man who had conducted the nighttime service at the cliffs—intone about how Megan had gone “to a better place” and “to her eternal reward.” She reflected, sadly, that he had no idea what he was talking about. The music was nice, if a bit somber, but none of it touched Megan as deeply as it apparently touched many of the people gathered there. So many of them were crying and hugging each other, and sometimes they laughed when someone reminisced about something humorous that had involved Megan. Mostly, though, Megan felt the same way she always felt when her parents had made her come to church.

She wanted to get the heck out of there!

“Can we bolt now?” she whispered to Abby, who was watching the proceedings. A man she didn’t recognize who was standing in the corner near them shifted as though uncomfortable and glanced in their direction. Megan wondered if he had sensed them.

Abby had a perplexed expression when she asked, “What do you mean, ‘bolt’?”

“Leave … Get the Christ out of here.”

“You don’t want to hear what they say?”

Megan paused and considered for a moment, then shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it’s nice and all, but what good does it do?”

Abby wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she said, “I think it’s more for them than it is for you.”

“That’s what I mean,” Megan replied. She wasn’t sure why, but the urgency to leave was suddenly strong. She felt as though she had forgotten something important. “I feel like there’s something else I should be doing.”

Abby smiled wanly and said, “We can leave. Where do you want to go?”

“Not back to the cemetery,” Megan said, “that’s for sure. It’s still daylight, and I can’t help but feel like there’s something I forgot to do.”

Abby didn’t doubt that it had something to do with her other sneaker. All she could do was go along, hope she could help figure it out, and protect her as best she could from any dangers, especially Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds.

— 2 —

Abby was waiting with Megan at the house when Megan’s family and friends returned from the burial. Abby was surprised that Megan had wanted to go. She wondered if she truly didn’t care or if she was deeply afraid to actually see the coffin containing her body lowered into the ground.

In recent years, funeral directors had begun holding off from lowering the coffin into the ground while the family was still present. They waited, instead, until the people had dispersed. She assumed this was to protect the family from any trauma of actually seeing their loved one go down into the cold, dark earth. But during her time in the Dead Lands, Abby had found that this was often the precise moment when the lost soul was finally free and willing to leave with a Reaper.

Abby was sure it was because she still didn’t understand, or admit, what had happened when she died.

Family and close friends showed up at the house, and food and drink were served. There were tears and laughter and muffled conversations and even some veiled hostility among the people, but Abby followed Megan up the stairs to the second floor of the house.

“That’s my bedroom,” she said, indicating a closed door to the right at the top of the stairs. “At least it was. You wanna see it?”

Without waiting for a reply, she shifted through the closed door, and Abby followed her.

“Oh my God,” Megan said when she entered the room. “It ... it’s just like when I left.” A trace of sadness tinged her voice as she looked all around.

Abby was astonished by how beautiful the room was. She couldn’t help but compare it to the tiny room she’d had under the eaves in the house back in Waynesboro. This bedroom looked like it belonged to a princess. The bed had a lacy white canopy and a frilly, white bedspread that reached to the floor. On the bed was a heap of stuffed animals—a large, green Teddy bear and several others along with a few dolls. All of the furniture was painted white, as were the walls and ceiling. The window looked out onto a backyard that stretched about a hundred feet to the border of a wooded hill.

“It’s beautiful … absolutely amazing,” Abby said. “I can’t imagine having a bedroom like this. It’s like in a fairy tale.”

Megan looked at her curiously but didn’t say a word. But she seemed somehow unmoved by being here, too. Detached.

“Yeah … it’s okay, I guess,” she finally said.

They both started when they heard the tread of footsteps on the stairs.

“That’s Mike, my brother,” Megan said. “I recognize the way he walks.”

Before she could say anything else, she passed through the door and out into the hallway. Abby followed just in time to see Mike trudging up the stairs, head bowed and shoulders slumped.

He raised his hand, slipped his forefinger under the collar of his shirt and, after loosening his tie, slipped it off from around his neck. He cracked it once, like a whip, and then stuffed it into his coat pocket. The sadness of his expression touched Abby, and when she looked at Megan, she saw tears gathering like drops of mercury in her eyes.

“Mikey,” she whispered as she moved close to him.

He shuddered with deep emotion but obviously didn’t see her or Abby as he walked past them, opened his bedroom door, and went inside. The door latch clicked softly when he swung the door shut behind him.

Abby looked at Megan. Sometimes, she found it best to leave a person—a soul—alone with their grief; other times, she found it was much better to talk it out. Judging by Megan’s reactions throughout the funeral service and here at the house, she wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Finally, Megan sighed and said, “I wish there was some way I could talk to him.”

“Maybe you can,” Abby said, raising her hand and placing it lightly on Megan’s shoulder. It hovered there like a wisp of smoke, but the girl reacted as if she could actually feel the pressure. “You just have to try to find a way.”

Megan looked at her, hope brightening her eyes. Then she pulled away from Abby and went to the closed door. As if functioning on automatic, she raised her hand and tried to turn the doorknob, but her fingers passed through it. She chuckled softly, and after shooting Abby another quick glance, she passed through the solid wood door.

Abby debated whether or not to follow her into the room. It seemed appropriate to give them some time alone, but when she considered that in all likelihood there was no way Megan would be able to communicate with her brother, Abby followed her into the room.

Mike was sitting on the bed, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed as he idly flipped his necktie back and forth, running it between his fingers. Megan stood close beside him, one hand hovering over his shoulder as though she wanted to touch him, was desperate to touch him, but didn’t quite dare to.

“It’s okay,” Abby said, reading the meaning behind Megan’s hesitation. The girl was afraid of a possible reaction from her brother. “We could both touch him and yell and scream all we want, and chances are he wouldn’t have the slightest idea we’re here.

“It’s so … ” Megan said. “He looks so sad.”

“You guys were close?” Abby asked.

Megan considered for a few seconds, her face registering the conflicting thoughts that passed through her mind.

“Sometimes. He got on my nerves lots,” she said. “I mean, he was your typical little brother, you know?”

Abby smiled wanly and shook her head. “I never had a brother or sister.”

“Well—you know, he was always tagging along and irritating the crap out of me, and he sure tried to get me into trouble instead of taking the rap when he did something wrong. He’d start something and then, when I got pissed and started yelling at him or hit him, he’d run to Mom—always his Mom—and say I started it.”

She paused and looked at Mike. Then she knelt down in front of him and put both hands on his shoulders as if trying to get him to look her straight in the eyes. Again, he shuddered and then sighed.

“Do you think he felt that?” Megan asked, her eyes brightening with hope. “I think he just got a sense I was here.”

Abby shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“I’m right here, Mikey,” Megan said, leaning so close her ghostly lips brushed against his ear. “I’ll watch over you and make sure nothing bad happens to you like it did to—”

She cut herself short and cast a furtive glance at Abby, who noticed that she hadn’t finished her sentence. Something bad, indeed, had happened to Megan, and unless or until she found out what it was or admitted it to herself, she wasn’t going to find any rest in the afterlife. Her worries for her little brother and the aching loneliness she was feeling missing him, at least, in the land of the living would only get worse until she became—

Abby shivered, not wanting even to think about what might become of Megan if she didn’t deal with the circumstances of her death. The memory of that lonely woman, staring sadly from the upstairs window of the lighthouse keeper’s house sprang to mind. A yearning sadness for Megan filled her, and she vowed once again to do everything she possibly could to help Megan figure it out.

Megan suddenly jumped back, startled, when Mike shifted off the bed and stood up. Abby didn’t hear anyone coming up the stairs, although if she listened carefully, she could still hear people talking and laughing downstairs. It always struck her as odd how some people joked at such gatherings after a funeral. Laughter was like whistling as you walked past a graveyard, she guessed … a way for people to relieve the tension and grief they felt in the presence of death.

Both Megan and Abby watched as Mike went to his bedroom door, opened it, and looked out into the hallway. After checking that there was no one in either direction, he closed the door again and walked back to his bed. Abby thought he was going to sit down again, but he dropped down to his hands and knees and then, supporting himself on one hand, felt around under the bed with the other hand.

Abby could have easily looked underneath the bed to see what he was trying to find, but she held back, watching Megan’s reaction. She was watching, too, her face creased with concern. But her expression shifted quickly into one of shocked surprise when she saw what Mike pulled out from under the bed.

It was her left sneaker, the one that had fallen off her foot as she ran toward the cliff.

All three of them jumped when a heavy knock sounded on Mike’s bedroom door. Then the door opened to reveal Mike’s father, glaring.

— 3 —

“So. What have you got there?” Mike’s father asked as he looked at the sneaker Mike was holding with both hands on his lap.

The blood drained out of Mike’s face as he looked up at his father, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. His hands started to tremble, and tears sprang to his eyes.

“Noth—nothing,” he stammered. He fought the impulse to try to hide the sneaker, knowing it was already too late. His father had seen it, but maybe—hopefully—he didn’t realize what it was.

“Is that …?”

His father started to move toward him. Mike was trying desperately to think of something to say or do to distract his father, but it was already too late. His shoulders slumped like a prisoner in the dock who had just heard a sentence of execution read by a judge.

“It—that looks like Megan’s,” his father said.

“I … She … I kept this because I … it reminds me of her.”

“Her sneaker?” his father said, frowning skeptically as he held his hand out for Mike to give it to him.

“I … I gave her these—the beads for the laces, and I wanted to … wanted to have them to … to remind me of her.”

“Really?” his father said, still frowning as if he didn’t believe a single word he said.

And why should he?

There was no way Mike could tell the truth about how he had found this sneaker—not without revealing what—and who—he saw that day.

“Give it to me,” his father said.

Mike’s hand was shaking out of control as he handed the sneaker over to him.

“Looks kinda muddy to me,” his father said as he inspected the sole of the sneaker. He kept glancing from the sneaker to Mike and back to the sneaker again, all the while frowning as though deep in thought.

“You find it in her closet?” his father asked.

Mike nodded, but instantly wished he hadn’t because he knew what the next logical question was, and he braced himself for it.

“So where’s the other sneaker?” his father said, his voice echoing in Mike’s ear like a roll of thunder.

“The other?” he asked in a high, pinched voice.

“Sneakers usually come in pairs. Do you have the other one hidden someplace, too?”

Biting down on his lower lip, Mike shook his head, unable to speak.

“Kinda peculiar, don’t ‘cha think?” his father said. “What the hell would you want with just one sneaker?”

Mike started to say it was all he needed to remember Megan by, but he knew even before he said it how lame that would sound, so he remained perfectly silent as his father continued to inspect it. His body was shaking like a tree in a gale, so he sat down on his bed, withering under the steady stare of his father.

“You know, that day at the hospital, after your mother and I made a positive identification of Megan’s body, they gave us a bag with her possessions in it, and do you want to know something odd?” Mike didn’t speak. “There weren’t any sneakers or shoes in that bag. She was barefoot when they found her.”

Mike swallowed so hard his throat made a funny gulping noise.

“Yeah. No sneakers. And you know, this one looks kinda muddy.”

His father was frowning as he shifted toward him gripping the sneaker in one hand and holding it like a club he was going to use to smack Mike. But he was smiling as he came over to the bed and sat down next to Mike, resting his hand gently but firmly on his shoulder.

“Would you care to tell me how you really came to have this sneaker?”

His voice was as hard as chromed steel, and his eyes were even harder as he looked squarely at Mike.

Mike found he couldn’t maintain eye contact for very long, and he shifted his gaze to the window. For just an instant, a haze of darkness clouded his vision, but then he focused on the clear blue sky outside and wished he could fly off into it.

His father’s grip on his shoulder tightened just enough to make him wince.

“You know, Mikey,” he said. “If there’s something you haven’t told us or if there’s something weighing on your mind, you might want to tell me about it now.”

Mike couldn’t force himself to look into his father’s eyes again, so he fastened his gaze on the floor and stared at it until it dissolved in the tears that were gathering.

“Wha—what do you mean?” he finally managed to say. He hated the way his voice sounded like he was a scared little kid.

His father straightened up and took a deep breath that hissed in his nostrils. Then he signed and shook his head.

“If you haven’t told us, your mother and me and the police, everything you know about what happened that day … if maybe over the last few days you’ve remembered something … some important detail, say, that might have slipped your mind at the time, it’d be for your own good to tell me now.”

Mike knew his father wouldn’t be convinced by any denial he made now. He knew Mike was hiding something. The problem was, Mike had no idea what it was other than a vague sense that he hadn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together. Was it that he still didn’t fully realize the significance of what he had seen that day? Or was it that he was blocking it, denying it because it was too terrible to think?

“Well, then,” his father said, shifting forward and standing up. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

Mike looked up at him vacantly and nodded, his mind a roaring blank.

“You don’t mind if I keep this, do you?” His father tossed the sneaker into the air and caught it. The rubber made a loud smacking sound when it hit the palm of his hand.

All Mike could do was shake his head, no. He watched and didn’t say a word when his father left the room, closing the door shut behind him. Once he was alone, the sounds of the get-together downstairs seemed louder, but it was all a garbled buzz as he sank facedown onto his bed, put his hands over his head, and sobbed so hard it hurt.

He was unaware of the two shadowy presences that hovered beside him for several minutes before moving away as the day darkened, and nighttime slowly came on.

— 4 —

It was getting on towards midnight. The street outside Andrew Collins’ apartment was quiet except for the occasional car passing by. Somewhere off in the distance, a dog was barking. The sound echoed in the air, making Collins shiver in his darkened living room, a glass half-filled with whiskey in his right hand. Beside him on the couch was his .38 Smith & Wesson. It was loaded. He kept picking it up and putting it down every few minutes, ever since he’d started drinking.

Looking at the luminous digital display on his cable TV box, he noted the time. It was strange, he thought, how every time he checked the time, he noticed certain patterns. When he had first sat down, it had been 10:09 … like a countdown—ten, nine, eight, seven. The next time he had checked, it was 11:11—a simple enough pattern. He kept drinking and fondling his revolver staring off at nothing and thinking about how, no matter what he did with the rest of his life, what had happened—

No, he reminded himself. You have to own it!

—what he had done was going to follow him to his grave.

It was bad enough that he served time, and it was absolutely true what they said about child molesters in jail. The majority of inmates looked down on child molesters as if they gave honest, decent criminals a bad reputation. He’d suffered more than his share of threats and beatings doing his time. He considered himself lucky to have made it out alive.

But what good did that do?

Here he was, getting picked up and harassed by the cops just because one of the people—

No! Own it!—one of the little girls.

—he’d exchanged e-mails with and—Yes … Admit it!—had tried to meet up with had ended up dead on the same day he was supposed to have met her out at Fort Williams Park.

He took another gulp of booze and sighed and sat there, mulling things over.

Okay, at least he held up pretty damned well with that detective. The jerk hadn’t gotten a thing out of him. They didn’t even realize he had been out there that day, and that he had seen Megan McGowan, and that he had started toward her when he saw someone else following her.

Another man!

His next gulp of whiskey was large enough to make his eyes water, and a queasy sense of discomfort—no, of actual dread rippled through him when he glanced at the digital clock again and saw the time.

It was 12:34.

Collins snorted but resisted the urge to spit. He couldn’t believe he’d been sitting here that long without moving. Maybe the clock was playing tricks on him.

The first thought he’d had out at the park that day was that Megan McGowan was a little slut who had lured not just him, but someone else out there at the same time.

What kind of game was she playing?

Or was it a sting to nab him?

Was she working with the cops to entrap him and send him back to prison for the rest of his life?

He couldn’t survive that, and now, even though he had gotten away free and clear that day, here’s Detective Gray, hounding him as if a few e-mails were proof he was Megan McGowan’s killer.

He knew he wasn’t.

If the other guy he had seen hadn’t been a cop, then he must have killed the girl, unless she’d fallen from the cliff by accident.

Collins knew in his bones that wasn’t what happened.

The guy was wearing a yellow raincoat. No one undercover would wear a bright color like that, so he must have been the killer. The man’s posture alone gave him away, the way he moved like he was stalking her.

So in the end, maybe Megan McGowan got exactly what was coming to her. She shouldn’t have been writing the kinds of e-mails she did, cock-teasing and loaded with enough innuendo to drive any man nuts, and she sure as hell shouldn’t be luring men to out-of-the-way places to meet her … not unless she wanted to end up dead.

The problem was, Collins was furious that suspicion had fallen on him.

How was that fair?

He saw that his glass was empty and started to pour more whiskey but then decided to hell with it and threw the glass to the floor and took several large gulps from the bottle. The booze exploded in his brain like fireworks. He felt the couch shift beneath him, and the room began to spin in a slow, stomach-churning glide. When he pulled the bottle away from his lips, he was smiling, but the smile slowly melted when his eyes went to the digital clock again, and he saw the time.

It was 1:01.

“Damn it,” he whispered, and he picked up the revolver, squeezing the handle hard enough to make his knuckles ache.

He wondered if the next time he looked up, would it be 1:11 or 1:23 or 2:22 or 2:34?

Was it just coincidence? Or did these patterns have some hidden meaning.

It was enough to drive anyone crazy!

His body was shaking as he considered what he was thinking of doing.

No, he told himself. Own it! Don’t take the chicken-shit way out!

But there was no way he could come clean. Not now. If he told Gray what he had seen, Gray would accuse him of making it up. Saying he’d seen someone wearing a yellow raincoat would only cast more suspicion onto him.

And if Collins left town now, Gray would take that as an admission of guilt, too, and no matter what he said or did, no matter where he went, the cops and the press and everyone in town would eventually hang that girl’s death on him.

“No way,” Collins muttered. “It ain’t gonna happen.”

He chuckled at the sound of his slurred voice and then suddenly lurched to his feet. Reaching out with both hands for balance—the gun in one hand, the nearly empty whiskey bottle in the other—he staggered into the kitchen, tripping and stumbling the whole way. He collapsed forward onto the counter, supporting himself on his elbows and panting hard. With a snort, he wiped away a trail of saliva that dangled from his chin and tried to concentrate, focusing on the pad of paper he kept there. His hand was shaking as he put down the bottle and picked up a pen. But then he glanced at the clock on the wall above the stove.

The time was 1:23.

“I’m not gonna beat it,” he muttered to himself, his voice sounding like someone else, speaking in the room. “I’m gonna beat ‘em all, damnit!”

He picked up a pen, gripping it so hard in his hand he bent the plastic tube, but he managed to scrawl a few words onto the pad of paper.

“I SWARE TO CHRIST I DIDN’T DO IT!”

He pushed the pad of paper away and then, without thinking, he put the barrel of the revolver into his mouth. He chipped a tooth as he bit down on the metal and then, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, pulled the trigger.

He never heard the sound of the gun when it went off.

Abby

It’s weird how, even after all these years, I still have some … I guess you’d call them ‘habits’ of a living person. What’s even stranger here in the Dead Lands is how even the landscape both day and night seems to reflect how you’re feeling.

I feel sad pretty much every day I’m not asleep in my grave. On sunny days, I hang around the beach—not too far from the cemetery—and watch people swimming and playing in the water or lying in the sand. There are some unusual games you play these days, like those things that look like pie plates that people throw to each other and catch. I’m amazed how those things float on the air.

It still strikes me as strange, though, how so many people, young and old, lie out in the sun to get their skin tanned. They do it on purpose. Back in my day, it was a sign of beauty and high class not to have a tan. If your skin was as white as could be, it proved you didn’t have to work outside, in the fields, like poor people and, until the War, the slaves did.

No, we never owned slaves. We were too poor and, to be honest, I always felt sorry for them. Friends and neighbors called them all sorts of terrible names. Lots of people in my area treated their former slaves like animals. I could never understand why.

But I was telling you about some of the ways I still feel alive. It isn’t just that when I’m lying in my grave, I hear a mockingbird singing and then rise up. As far as I know, I’m the only person this happens to, but I haven’t traveled very far from the cemetery, so I don’t know for sure. There might be other ghosts like me.

On sunny days, I miss the warmth of the sun; and on rainy days—days that, when I was alive, I would have found so dreary and depressing—I wish I could feel the gentle patter of rain on my skin. Just once. And snow. We never got much snow where I lived, so you can imagine how amazing the world looks to me when it’s covered by a thick blanket of snow. Even during the worst blizzard, and there are some strong ones that come in off the ocean, if I’m not asleep in my grave, I wish and pray that for just one minute I could feel that cold, raw wind blowing against my face.

At night, of course, it’s much different … much scarier.

One reason I never travel far is because I’m afraid of my uncle and his Hell Hounds. But I never forget that I was coming to Maine to live in a town called Windam.

Have you heard of that place?

Does it still exist?

Whenever I come out of my grave, I can’t help but think I should try to find Windham if only to see what it looks like now. I’m sure the place has changed a lot. Even here, near the cemetery, I’ve seen tons of new houses built. Some of them are huge, too. I often wonder if the house I would have lived in is still standing. I doubt it … but maybe.

The saddest thing of all is when I think about the life I might have lived. Then, even if it’s the sunniest day you can imagine, I look up at the sky and all I see are dark clouds.

Chapter 10
Confession

—1—

“I think we have to talk about this,” Mike’s father said.

Mike, his mother, and his father were gathered in the living room. It was late afternoon, the day after Megan’s funeral. The atmosphere in the house still seemed stifled and stale to Mike. He was sure the absence of his older sister was what made things seem so weird. He wondered if that feeling of emptiness would ever pass. With time, would he get used to Megan not being here?

He doubted it.

“I’m still not satisfied with your explanation for how you got this!”

His father’s face was furrowed with barely repressed anger as he held out Megan’s sneaker and shook it inches beneath Mike’s nose.

“I already told you,” Mike said, cringing at the quaver in his voice.

“You say you took it from her closet as a memento.” His father shook his head. “I still don’t see how the sneaker Megan was wearing the day she—” He paused and, casting a quick glance at his wife, refrained from saying the word, died. “How her sneaker ended up in your room, hidden away under your bed like it was a … a—what?”

Mike twisted his hands in his lap, finding it impossible to look his father or mother straight in the eyes.

“Mikey?” his mother said. Her voice was low and pleading, like she was asking him a favor, but he was sure she was just as suspicious of him as his father. They had already talked about it, and he had poisoned her thoughts against him.

His father began pacing back and forth in front of the chair where Mike was sitting. With every other step, he slapped the sneaker in cadence into the palm of his hand. Mike couldn’t help but wince with each slap, and all he could imagine was that next, it would be his face his father slapped.

“I really don’t want to get the police involved here if we don’t have to,” his father said, “but I have to say—something like this makes me wonder exactly what might have happened out there that day.”

Mike started shaking his head from side to side. Bones in his spine snapped, sending tiny jolts of pain down to his shoulders.

“N-n-nothing happened …” he said, his voice raw and croaking. “Nothing at all ... Honest.”

His father exhaled through his nostrils and then stopped pacing and stood glaring at Mike for several long seconds. Finally, he spoke.

“Something sure as hell did happen. Your sister died out there!”

From the corner of his eye, Mike saw his mother jump as though she’d received an electric shock. She choked back a strangled cry as her shoulders slumped forward.

“I mean to get to the bottom of this, young man,” his father said, “so you’d best tell me right now everything you know. If I have to get the police involved … I … I don’t know what …”

A cold, sinking sensation filled Mike’s chest as if he’d swallowed a handful of ice cubes. The back of his neck flushed, and his stomach tightened as he prepared to be slapped.

After a long, terrible moment, his father straightened up and resumed pacing, all the while slapping the sole of Megan’s sneaker against his hand. Tears blurred Mike’s vision, and he caught glimpses of shadows, shifting around him like clouds passing in front of the setting sun.

When his father stopped pacing, he stood in front of Mike, towering over him. Mike could feel his father’s breath against his forehead as he panted heavily, like a horse that had just run a race.

“You want to know what I think?” his father said, but before Mike or his mother could speak, he continued, “I—I don’t dare tell you what I think, but I have to say it.” Turning to his wife, he added, “I have to say it out loud, Caroline.”

Mike glanced at his mother and saw her face go bone pale. Her lower lip began to tremble, and a faint hitching sound came from deep in her throat.

“I think you do know what happened out there.” His father’s voice was cold and dispassionate. “In fact, I even think you may have had something to do with it.”

His mother let out a gasp, and for an instant, Mike was more concerned for her than he was for himself. She looked like she either was going to faint on the spot or else leap to her feet and start screaming like an insane woman. There was only so much grief she or anyone could take. Seeing his mother suffering like this and being so vulnerable cut him deeply. But he remained perfectly still as fragments of memories from that day flashed through his mind.

“I hate to say this. You have no idea how much it pains me to say this, but I have to ask you, Mikey …” His father dropped down to one knee and took Mike’s arms, his viselike grip squeezing his biceps. “Did you have anything to do with what happened to Megan?”

Mike shook his head from side to side in adamant denial. Tears gushed from his eyes and spilled down his cheeks as he looked at his father. Behind him, all around him, he saw dim, gauzy clots of shadows shifting back and forth whenever he shifted his eyes.

“If you did …” his father went on, “if you were—I don’t know, mad at her about something, or maybe you guys had an argument, and maybe you didn’t mean to do it, but maybe you pushed her, and she lost her balance and she fell. Is that what happened?”

Mike let loose a wailing cry that tore his throat as another fragment of memory came back to him. He realized the memory had been too frightening, and he had suppressed it, trying to convince himself he hadn’t seen what he thought he had seen, but now, he knew with total certainty that the man he had seen out there that day had not just looked like his father …

It had been his father!

— 2 —

“That’s not fair,” Megan said, her voice almost a twisted shriek.

Abby was standing by the living room window. She looked at Megan and felt deep sadness. An emotional outburst like that had to have a deep source, and the strength of it convinced Abby that what was going on here was connected to what was keeping Megan here in the Dead Lands.

“What’s not fair?” Abby whispered as she shifted across the floor toward her. She raised a hand and placed it on Megan’s shoulder. When the girl looked her in the eyes, she saw the depths of her suffering.

Megan looked away from Abby to her mother, father, and brother, who were gathered in the living room. They had lurked there, unseen and unheard, throughout the conversation. Neither one of them had reacted until Megan’s outburst just now.

“The way he’s treating him! Threatening him! He—he’s all but accusing Mikey of … of killing me!”

“And you know he didn’t, right?” Abby said.

Megan didn’t answer her.

“You were running, and you tripped and fell. You were by yourself.”

“Yes! Yes!” Megan shrieked, but she wasn’t entirely convincing.

Abby knew not to press too hard. It was always up to the recently deceased to come to the realization on their own. It wouldn’t work out well if she pushed things along. It could make the situation worse.

“So why does talking about it upset you so much?” Abby asked, wondering even as she did if this constituted pushing too hard.

“I don’t know. It just does!”

Megan shifted forward and reached out to Mike, but her fingers passed through him like vapor. He and his parents—his father, at least—kept right on talking, but their words sounded distant and muffled.

Abby noticed how Megan’s mother just sat there, staring off into space. She knew, from experience, that sometimes this was when people could see or at least get a hint that one or more ghosts were present, but Megan’s mother seemed not to react to their presence in the least.

“If we have to get the police involved … I don’t know … I just don’t know,” Mike’s father said.

Megan’s mother suddenly jumped as though she had received an electrical shock. She looked, wide-eyed, at her husband and said, “I can’t believe you’re even suggesting such a thing.”

“See?” Megan said, turning to Abby. “She knows the truth. She knows Mikey would never do anything to hurt me.”

Abby nodded and said softly, “But did someone else?”

“What do you mean? Did someone what?” Megan shouted, turning on her.

Her voice must have been loud because her mother tilted her head to one side and said, “What was that?”

“What was what?” Mike’s father said, looking around.

“I thought I heard something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Megan’s mother eased herself up from the couch and took a few unsteady steps toward the window, looking around and cocking her head from side to side. She reminded Abby of the way a bird tilts its head when looking for worms and bugs in the grass.

“I thought I heard … a voice,” her mother said, but that was all. She shook her head and turned to look at Mike again, who was still sitting in the chair, staring straight ahead and looking stunned.

“I know,” Mike said under his breath. Neither of his parents seemed to hear him.

“He knows what?” Abby whispered to Megan.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Megan replied, but her tone of voice and her demeanor were unconvincing. Abby was sure, now, something that needed to be said still hadn’t been said, and it was up to her to get Megan to say it.

“Well-l-l-l, young man,” Mike’s father said, ignoring his wife and turning his full attention back to Mike. “I want you to think long and hard about what you did that day, and I want you to tell the truth, no matter how painful it is.”

“Really?” Mike said, his voice was shaking, but it also had a hint of resolution.

“Really,” his father replied.

All the while, his mother was glaring at her husband with deep pain in her eyes. Without another word, she started toward the door and left the living room. For a count of ten, Mike’s father just stood there, staring at him. He still gripped Megan’s sneaker in one hand and looked like he might use it to throttle Mike. But then his posture relaxed, and he also left the room.

Once they were gone, Megan shifted close to Mike and, bending over him, tried to hug him with both arms. Mike didn’t react in the slightest.

“You’re right,” Abby finally said. “It isn’t fair.”

Megan glanced at her but said nothing. Her body was trembling as if she were still alive and had been caught in a winter gale.

“Your father’s treating your brother way too mean,” Abby added.

Megan scowled at her and then said softly, “He’s not my father! Remember? He’s not my real father.”

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“My real father divorced my mother years ago, and the last I heard was living in Denver. I never see—never saw him after I was three years old. I have no memory of what he looks like.”

Abby nodded, but she knew this wasn’t the confession she wanted to hear or the one that Megan needed to make.

“Well, he sure didn’t have anything to do with what happened,” Abby said.

“Of course he didn’t! And neither did Mikey!”

“So who did?” Abby sensed that Megan was close to breaking through. She could all but see her confession bubbling up inside her. “You didn’t fall or jump, did you?”

Megan didn’t say a word. She stood there, looking helplessly at her brother, his shoulders shaking violently as he sobbed.

“Your father’s right,” Abby said, still pushing her. “There was someone else out there, wasn’t there?”

Megan squinted as though fighting back tears of her own. She started backing away from Abby, her hands upraised as though to push her away.

“And you know who it was, don’t you?” Abby resisted the urge to move closer to Megan. She knew how difficult this was for her, and she didn’t want her to be frightened any more than she already was.

Finally, Megan stopped moving back at the living room wall as if that physical barrier could actually contain her. She sighed, and the sound blended ever so gradually into a low moan. Mike stirred but didn’t look up.

“Yes … yes … yes,” Megan said, her voice heavy with resignation. Her eyes were shiny and blank as she shook her head from side to side.

“Yes what?” Abby asked, knowing this was the moment she had been waiting for.

“There was someone else out there, and I didn’t fall … or jump.” She paused as if taking a breath. “My stepfather … he’s the one … He pushed me off the cliff.”

— 3 —

Jim Burke was lying on his bed in the darkness of his bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. It wasn’t very late, only a little after ten o’clock, but he’d told his mother he wasn’t feeling well  and wanted to get some extra sleep.

The glow of the streetlight outside his window cast a distorted rectangle across the windowsill and floor. A corner of the light reached his bed, and from time to time he raised his hand and stared at it in the bluish glow. It looked ghostly, and he tried to imagine what it would be like to be a ghost and be able to see through your own hand.

After what had happened the night before, throughout the day, he had become more and more convinced he either imagined seeing and talking to a ghost or else he was cracking up. Maybe he had listened to a bit more of that crazy psychic talk his mother engaged in than was good for him.

There was no ghost girl named Abby Cummings. There couldn’t be. And there certainly was nothing supernatural connected to the locket he had bought to give to his mother.

He should forget about the whole thing.

“That way lies madness,” he whispered into the darkness. But when he inhaled and then exhaled softly, he could feel a faint stirring in his chest, a loose fluttering sensation, like his belly was full of tiny bubbles.

“So where are you now?” he asked, raising his hand and flexing his fingers. He wondered what—if anything—he would feel if he took hold of that ghost girl’s hand.

Would it be cold and clammy, like a dead fish? Would a chill pass through him? Or would there be absolutely nothing? Like touching fog or smoke?

He suspected nothing, because that’s what was happening here …

Absolutely nothing.

He was sleep-deprived because of school and homework and football practice and spending endless hours playing World of Warcraft on his computer. It was the weekend, and what he needed was a good night’s sleep or else he really would get sick. He needed to chill.

So why couldn’t he get that girl out of his mind?

Why couldn’t he just dismiss what had happened as an aberration or a dream that had seemed real at the time and was nothing more?

A sudden chill ran through him, and an odd tightness gripped his stomach so hard it actually pained him. Groaning softly, he sat up on his bed and looked around, trying to pierce the surrounding darkness. The house was quiet except for the faint buzz of voices from the TV in his mother’s bedroom. He tried to block out that sound as he scanned his room. His heart skipped a beat when he saw a luminous glow at the foot of the bed.

He pulled away as a tightening sensation squeezed his throat. He wanted to cry out but couldn’t as a face, softly lit and out of focus, resolved from the darkness until two glowing eyes were staring at him.

“Hello,” said a voice, light and airy.

Jim tried once more to speak, but the only sound that came from his throat was a ragged gasp.

“I wanted to see you again,” the ghost girl said.

“Abby?” Jim said. His voice was muffled, as if coming from far away. “Is it really—?”

The ghost girl nodded as a warm smile spread across her face.

“I wanted to … to see you again, too,” he managed to say.

The ghost girl’s smile widened even more, and she shifted closer to him, apparently without moving. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw her whole body. She was still at the foot of the bed, but he experienced an odd sense of closeness with her.

“You remind me of someone I used to care a lot about,” she said.

“Really? Who?”

Abby reached one hand out to him. It hovered like radiant mist in the darkness. Jim wanted to reach out and touch her, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to feel anything.

“Remember that boy I told you about, my friend Jon Hilton?”

“The one who died in the fire because he thought you were in the house?”

“Yes. Him. You look an awful lot like him. Maybe that’s why I was drawn here. Maybe it has nothing to do with my locket.”

“I dunno,” Jim said, not sure how to react to what she was saying. The truth was, he could finally admit to himself that—as crazy as it seemed—he felt a strong attraction to her.

Could he fall in love with someone in an antique photograph?

That was crazy.

“You do look a lot like him,” Abby said, “and you—I feel a little bit sad, but in a good way, if you get what I mean, because you … you remind me of him.”

“When you were alive,” Jim said. He couldn’t stop staring at her luminous face hovering in the darkness, and all he could think about was how beautiful she was.

“Maybe I’m … Do you think I could be the reincarnation of this person you used to know?” he asked.

Abby smiled at that and shrugged, her shoulders rising almost to her ears.

“I have no idea, but I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“But you haven’t passed on,” Jim said, both thrilled and frightened by the prospect. “So maybe that’s what’s still waiting for you once you finally let go.”

Sadness dimmed Abby’s eyes, and Jim was suddenly fearful that she was going to fade away like she had the night before. He reached out to her and said, “Wait … Stay with me. I want to help you.”

Abby’s expressions softened, but terrible sadness lingered in her eyes.

“How could you help me?” she asked, her voice an airy whisper that seemed to be all around him in the darkness.

“I don’t know, but I—something. I have to be able to do something.”

Abby was silent for a moment or two and then nodded.

“I’ll do anything for you ... anything you ask,” he said.

He was still reaching out to her, and now she raised her hand. They both watched, amazed, as their fingers entwined, but Jim felt his hand closing on empty air, and the disappointment in Abby’s eyes told him she felt the same thing … nothing.

“Please don’t go,” he said. “I want to be with you. I’ll do anything to be with you.”

Abby’s expression suddenly froze, and she shook her head.

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” she said, her voice stronger and angry and fearful.

“I would, though,” Jim said, his heart suddenly filling with a desperate need to be with this girl. “Is that possible? If I … if I killed myself, could I be with you?”

“No!” Abby said, shaking her head vigorously from side to side. Jim felt the cold blast of her breath waft against his face, and a chill ran through him like a dash of ice water. He clutched his shoulders as he shivered. “You can’t do that! You can never do something like that!”

The look of abject terror on her face frightened Jim, but that didn’t make him want to be with her any less. If anything, he was spurred to protect her and comfort her all the more, if he could.

“I didn’t really mean it,” he said. “I was just saying …” He suddenly felt foolish. If anyone had seen him, standing here, carrying on a one-way conversation with empty space, they would have thrown the net and dragged him off to the loony bin.

“You can’t ever think about killing yourself. Ever! You have no idea what happens to people who—” Before she could finish, a shudder ran through her.

Jim watched as Abby began to fade from sight, receding like a light that was moving deeper and deeper into a dense fog. Her eyes were the last thing to disappear, and just before they winked out, he whispered softly, “Come back to me.”

When it came, the reply was so soft he thought he might have imagined rather than heard Abby say, “I will … if I can …”

— 4 —

Abby stood outside Jim Burke’s house, head tilted back, staring up at his darkened bedroom window. The streetlight was haloed with a glowing mist.

She was angry and frightened that Jim would suggest he would kill himself in order to be with her. The thought of anyone voluntarily ending his or her life was too much for her to handle. She was so lost in thought that she never noticed the cloaked figure that slid through the night toward her until it was right behind her. She let out an involuntary shriek when she turned and faced it.

The dark figure didn’t say a word as it raised a slim, white hand to where its face should be. Only there was no face to see, even in the glow of the streetlight. A thin veil of black silk hung down, covering the figure’s features beneath its wide-brimmed hat.

Abby was shocked. She started to ask why he was there, but she already knew the answer. This Reaper was her friend, and he only appeared when she was in immediate danger.

But what was the danger?

“Is Reverend Wheeler coming?” she asked, looking frantically up and down the street. The line of streetlights created tiny pools of light at regular intervals along the pavement. Between them, the darkness swirled like dense smoke, but try as she might to discern what was wrong and identify the source of danger, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“I don’t hear his Hell Hounds,” she said.

The figure remained motionless, his hand raised to where its lips would be, cautioning her to remain silent. The silk veil swayed as he turned his head left and then right. Holding his hand out to her, he indicated that he wanted her to take it.

Is this it? Abby wondered. Is he finally going to take me away?

A thrill of excitement coursed through her, but she knew in her heart of hearts that this wasn’t the right time. There were still too many things unresolved. Maybe once she finished helping Megan, or if she—maybe with Jim Burke’s help—figured out what the significance was of her locket and key … But not now. She wanted to say that out loud, but she remained silent as she slid her hand into the Reaper’s cold, bony grip.

The instant she touched his hand, she felt light. The night began to spiral around her like a carousel, and she tightened her grip simply to keep from falling down. Nonetheless, she was swept up into a spinning, silent whirlwind that caught her and the Reaper and carried them along. In an instant, they were moving like they were trying to outrace an approaching thunderstorm.

Abby had never experienced flight like this. Usually, getting about in the Dead Lands involved simply walking from one place to another, although it was walking with a strange, unearthly sensation. The closest comparison Abby could come up with was the giddy feeling she’d gotten the one time she had tried ice skating as a child.

But flying like this was entirely new.

After a few seconds of vertigo, Abby had the courage to look around, hoping to get her bearings. The landscape looked so strange from this high up, like a checkerboard painted with shadow and light, some of which moved along on the street below. She wondered, not if, but where Reverend Wheeler was down there. She knew he was still hunting for her. He would never stop, but right now, she felt absolutely safe.

A long distance off to her left, Abby saw the ocean. Even this far away, she could see the dark waves churning and hear the crashing of the foam on the shore. She had been expecting the Reaper to head toward the sea, back to the safety of the cemetery, but she realized with a sudden sinking in her heart that he was heading away from the ocean.

Desperate to ask him where he was taking her, she closed her eyes, trusting that wherever it was, she would be safe as long as she was with him. The whirling, dizzying sensation continued for a while, but then abruptly ended. Abby opened her eyes when she realized she was no longer flying and was standing on solid ground.

Her first shock was seeing Megan, standing close by. The second shock was realizing she was in a room she didn’t recognize. She looked around for the Reaper who had brought her here, but he was nowhere to be seen. For a terrifying moment, Abby wondered if she was somehow dreaming this. She had never experienced what she remembered as “dreams” since she had died, but then again, the Reaper had never “flown” her anywhere before, either.

“Are you—?” she started to say, but Megan shot a surprised look at her as though she hadn’t known Abby was there until the instant she spoke.

“How did you get here?” Megan said. The expression on her face was a curious mixture of surprise and anger.

Abby had no idea how to reply to that, but she instantly assumed that Megan had caught no hint the Reaper had been here, either. She took a moment to survey her surroundings. The room was small. One wall was lined with an overflowing bookcase. Most of the shelves held file folders instead of books. Close to one wall was a desk angled so that whoever sat there could see out the large bay window. On the desk was a small lamp that had a lampshade made of molded dark green glass. But that wasn’t the only source of light in the room. There was also one of those machines Abby knew people called “computers,” and Megan’s stepfather, Bob Ryder, was seated at the desk. His elbows were braced on the edge of the desk as he leaned forward and studied what was on the computer screen.

“I’ve been dead for a long time,” Abby said, once she had appraised the situation and felt relatively safe. “I know my way around the Dead Lands. What are you doing here? I told you to wait for me at the cemetery.”

Megan cast her gaze down to the floor, and Abby had the distinct impression she wasn’t telling the entire truth when she said, “I was going to, but something drew me here.”

“What’s ‘here’?”

“This is my stepfather’s office,” Megan said, indicating the room with a wide sweep of her hand. “He runs his plumbing company from here.”

“That’s a computer he’s using, right?”

Megan nodded.

“Can you see what he’s doing?” Abby asked.

Shifting closer to the desk and moving behind Megan’s stepfather, Abby stared at the screen, but light kept flickering like a wildfire, making her feel dizzy. She couldn’t make out anything, pictures or words, on the screen.

“I … I can’t focus on it,” she said. “Is it different for you?”

“No,” Megan said. “It looks … It’s not working right or something, but it’s supposed to display pictures and videos, and you can e-mail people and play games and all sorts of things.”

Abby had no idea what she was talking about. As the years progressed, she had seen some amazing things—cars and airplanes, for instance. She had heard about computers and knew they were some sort of communication device, like the telephone—which she had never seen when alive.

“He’s reading stuff,” Megan said, craning her head forward and looking at the screen. Her face appeared a ghostly blue in the light of the computer. “I’d guess it’s something to do with … I’m not sure … I can’t make it out. It’s flickering too much, but it’s probably something to do with his company. That’s usually what he uses it for.”

“It’s almost midnight,” Abby said, glancing over her shoulder at the clock on the wall. “Why’s he working so late?”

“Oh, he works all the time,” Megan replied. “My mother complains that he’s a workaholic, but lately, she’d been complaining more than usual.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Before I died, I heard them arguing a lot.”

“About what?”

“Money, mostly. What else? His company was losing lots of money, from what I heard them say, and my mom was nagging him to sell the business and do something else before we lost the house.”

“Lost the house? You mean they—you wouldn’t have been able to live here anymore?”

Megan nodded, her eyes glazed like moonlight on snow.

“So maybe he’s working late, trying to sell the business,” Abby said.

But Megan shook her head tightly as she stared at the screen. Her eyes widened as she concentrated until, finally, she let out a soft gasp. For an instant, her stepfather seemed to respond to her presence. He shivered and glanced over at the window as if expecting to see that it had been left open.

“What is it?” Abby asked, suddenly fearful because of the expression on Megan’s face. She looked stunned, and then her eyes began to mist over with tears that would never fall.

“Megan? What is it? What did you see?”

“I think I saw … I could kinda make it out,” Megan said as she moved away from the desk, all the while shaking her head and staring wide-eyed at her stepfather.

“How could you,” she whispered, and then, without another word, she passed through the wall, disappearing so fast she was gone before Abby could react. She was left standing there alone in the darkened room with Megan’s stepfather. She was convinced she would know what had really happened to Megan if only she could see what he was looking at on that madly flickering screen.

Abby

You’re sure … You still can’t see it?

I was hoping you could, but then again, why would you? It has nothing to do with you. One thing I’m convinced of is that, at least here in the Dead Lands—maybe in the living world, too—you make your own reality. You see and experience what you expect to see and experience.

Take emotions.

We’re so used to how we react when we’re alive—like laughing and crying and being afraid—that when we’re dead, we still feel those emotions, and react the same way we did when we were alive.

Like when I feel sad. I feel sad a lot because I’m way too aware of the things I lost when I died, and I still miss them … But when I’m sad, I cry, and I convince myself that real tears are flowing from my eyes and running down my cheeks.

But how can that be?

I don’t have any skin or any tears … I don’t have any physical sensations at all. I’m frickin’ dead, and everything I knew and had that made me human died along with me, so everything I am now and everything I feel now is just an illusion.

And that makes me wonder how much of life is an illusion. It all seems like a dream to me now, a wonderful dream, but one that’s fading away because in a sense I ‘woke up’ when I died.

Maybe how I am now in the Dead Lands is more real than ‘real’ life, you know? Maybe it’s ‘truer’ because I don’t have anything physical weighing me down. I’m a purer form of energy and emotion and life.

Does that make any sense at all?

Maybe not, but I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here on such a rotten day. I can see how much you’re shivering, but I was hoping, because we can hear and see each other, that you’d be able to experience at least a little bit of what it’s like for me. If you could see the shipwreck, you might be able to understand a little better what I’m going through.

I’ll tell you this, though. In the hundred or more years since I died, I’ve never met anyone like you. I feel like there’s something different about you, and I’m glad we can see each other and talk. You have no idea what a relief it is after all this time to actually talk to someone who’s still alive.

It makes me feel alive … at least a little bit.

Chapter 11
Shadow Man

—1—

Abby and Megan were walking along the beach. It was a cold day with thin, gray clouds overhead. Abby knew it was cold because there weren’t many people walking the beach, and those few who were wore heavy jackets. Some even had on scarves and gloves or mittens. One couple was walking behind a golden retriever that kept plunging into the water and then racing out, pausing only long enough to shake the water from his fur in a wide, white spray, and then running back into the water again.

With every other step she took, Megan’s bare foot squeaked in the “singing sands.” Abby found the rhythmic sound soothing, but something about it gnawed at her mind. She knew Megan had to figure out how and why she had died, and that her missing sneaker was the key.

Like the key with my locket. She grew wistful, thinking about Jim Burke and wondering when or if she would see him again. She wanted to tonight, but there was no telling what would happen between now and then. One thing for sure, she couldn’t trust Megan to stay put in the cemetery … not that she blamed her. But outside of the cemetery at night was a scary proposition.

“So are you going to tell me what you saw on your stepfather’s computer?”

Megan pursed her lips and was resolutely silent as she stared straight ahead. From time to time, she would glance out to sea where the waves broke on the seaweed-wreathed rocks. A few seagulls circled overhead, their cries carried away by the breeze.

“When I looked at it,” Abby continued, hoping to draw her out, “All I saw was a flickering light that made me feel … really funny. I didn’t see any pictures or anything.”

Megan grunted but said nothing, not bothering to look at Abby. Her downturned face was set with a deep scowl. Abby wanted to do whatever she could to relieve the negativity Megan was feeling, but she knew she couldn’t force her to talk.

With a start, Abby realized they had already crossed the beach and were standing in the shadows beneath the cliffs where Megan had died. She looked up the steep angle of jagged rock and saw the gray sky above. For a moment, she had the dizzying sensation that she was looking down, not up, and quickly shifted her gaze to reorient herself.

“You already said you think he was the one who pushed you,” Abby said.

“I don’t think … I know he did it!” Megan’s voice echoed from the side of the cliff.

“All right, then,” Abby said, nodding. “You know he did it. Do you have any idea why?”

“I didn’t until last night,” Meagan said. “But I—like you, the computer screen was all screwed up. I’m not sure I saw what I think I saw.”

She was staring straight ahead, her eyes wide and glistening in the dimming daylight. Abby turned slowly and followed her gaze until she saw what Megan was looking at.

It was a small sneaker, washed up on the rocks. It must have been carried up there by a particularly high wave, because it was above the dark line on the rock that marked high tide.

That can’t be …, Abby thought, but didn’t say, as a thrill of excitement passed through her. It couldn’t really be her other sneaker.

What were the chances?

“So you know he did it, but do you know why?”

She was sure this was the answer they were looking for, but she couldn’t force it.

Megan shifted her eyes without turning her head and stared at Abby, obviously tormented inside. Finally, she said softly, “I have no idea.”

“Are you sure?”

Megan nodded.

“I don’t believe you,” Abby said. “You saw something on that computer that I didn’t. What was it?”

Megan turned away from her and didn’t answer.

Abby knew this was important. Megan had lied to her before, and if Abby went too far, she had no doubt Megan would lie to her again.

“I always thought …” Megan’s voice trailed away, but only for a moment. “He always said he … he loved me … even though I wasn’t his real daughter, biologically, but he said all the time how much he loved me as if I was really his kid, and I believed him, and I never thought he’d do anything to … to hurt me. He was—he was—”

But she couldn’t continue. Her voice choked off, the feeble echo of it rebounding from the nearby rocks. Her eyes were shining like polished steel as she looked again at the sneaker lying on the rocks.

“That’s yours, isn’t it?” Abby said, already knowing the answer.

“Yeah?” Megan’s voice was so faint it was whisked away by the wind.

“So. We know where both sneakers are, and they don’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘they’?”

“Your parents. Your brother. The police. Anyone else. There isn’t a single living person who knows where both of your sneakers are. Mike had one of them until your stepfather found it. But no one knows this one is out here.”

Megan shook her head before turning to look at Abby.

“So what? It doesn’t mean a damned thing… I don’t mean a damned thing to them … to anybody!”

“You do to me.” Abby shifted closer and placed a hand on Megan’s shoulder. “Remember how many people were out here for your candlelight vigil? Remember how many people, friends and relatives and teachers and students from your school, showed up for your funeral? A lot of people miss you.”

“So what? I mean, get real.” Megan’s voice was heavy with defeat. “I’m dead and gone to every damned one of them, and all I do is hang around with you and miss being alive … miss being able to be with the few, the very few, people I really cared about.”

“Like who?” Abby asked.

“Like Mikey and my mother. I miss both of them so much it hurts, and, you know what? Honestly, I think that’s all.”

“Don’t you think they would be more at peace if they knew what really happened to you?”

The question caught Megan up short.

“Umm, yeah,” she said, looking bewildered. “I guess so, but—” She gazed out over the ocean as tears filled her eyes. “But maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they’d be better off if, you know, if they didn’t know the truth.”

Abby didn’t reply. What did it matter what she thought? It was up to Megan to figure out what would bring her peace. It wasn’t up to Abby or anyone else to impose it on her. Megan had to see for herself.

“I mean, really,” Megan continued. “What good can it possibly do for my mother to know that her husband, her husband who was supposed to support and protect her and her family was the one who killed me? I can’t do it … I just can’t …”

Her shoulders sagged forward and shook. Abby followed her gaze and saw that it was fixed again on her sneaker. Waves smacked up against the rocks, sending plumes of white foam into the air, but the sneaker was above the reach of the surging tide. Abby was convinced everything revolved around that sneaker, but it was up to Megan to put the pieces together.

“Can we—why can’t we pick things up? Can we?” Megan asked, her voice edged with pleading.

“I don’t know why, but no, we can’t.”

“But we’re standing on the ground and we climb up stairs or whatever as if they’re solid. But they’re not. So why don’t we just fall through things?”

Abby shook her head and said, “It’s just the way it is. A wall may look solid, but we can pass through it if we want to.”

“But if we stand on the ground, why can’t we touch and pick up other things in the real world? Why, f’rinstance, can’t I pick up that sneaker?”

“I think you could if you concentrated hard enough—if you believe you can to the core of your being, you might be able to eventually. I’ve seen other ghosts move things, but usually it’s when they’re angry. I’ve heard the word ‘poltergeist’ used in connection with these kinds of ghosts.”

“So it’s only if I get angry I could do something that someone still alive could do?”

Abby shrugged and said, “I think so.” She had tried too many times to count in the past hundred or more years to influence the world of the living, but she’d never been able to. That was why she was so amazed that she and Jim Burke could actually see and hear each other. It was something new, and she wondered if, after all this time, her situation was finally changing. It was both exciting and scary.

“Why do you want to pick it up … the sneaker, I mean?” Abby asked. “What would you do with it?”

Megan’s eyes clouded with thought. She was silent as she drifted over the rocks to the sneaker and stared down at it. After a long time, she leaned forward and extended her fingers toward the sneaker. If Abby had a breath to hold, she would have as she watched Megan’s hand get closer and closer … and then pass through the dirt-stained white shoe as if it wasn’t there. Megan’s hand paused, the fingers out of sight up to the middle knuckles.

“I can’t feel it. Not at all,” she said, as much to herself as Abby.

She moved her arm from side to side, watching as her fingers reappeared and then disappeared inside the sneaker. Her body began to vibrate, and for a moment or two, Abby was afraid she would disappear right then and there; but then she turned and looked at Abby with a most peculiar expression.

“We have to let them know,” she said. “Somehow.”

Abby didn’t say a word. She just stood there, watching Megan.

“We have to let my mother and the police know what he did to me.”

Her expression contracted into a snarl that exposed her top and bottom teeth. Her eyes got hard, like flint striking sparks from steel, and her body continued to vibrate. Against the vastness of the ocean behind her, she looked like a leaf on a tree, shaking in a blast of cold, autumn wind.

“Can you help me?” she asked. “Can you help me figure out what we have to do so someone knows what he did?”

Abby felt a blade of cold inside her. The anger, pain, and betrayal raging inside Megan frightened her, but she nodded solemnly and said, “Yeah. I’ll do what I can. For now, though, it’s getting dark. We should get back to the cemetery.”

— 2 —

“So that’s it? We just close the case?”

Detective Gray was sitting in the chair next to the desk of his supervisor, Chief Patterson. Patterson, a pale, beefy man, was silent for a long moment. He clenched his left fist and pressed it against his chin. His elbow rested on the desk.

“What else have we got?” Patterson raised his eyebrows so they looked like two wooly, white caterpillars crawling on his forehead. The overhead light in the office gleamed on his balding head like sunlight reflecting off pond ice.

Gray was stumped. He had to admit it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Andrew Collins’ suicide wasn’t the end he was looking for with this case. Cops call it their “blue sense,” when they know something but don’t know how they know it. Well, his blue sense was telling him there was more to Megan McGowan’s death.

Collins killing himself was too pat … too easy.

Gray cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in the chair.

“When I interviewed the guy the other day, it was just—I have a feeling, a hunch, he isn’t our guy.”

“I need more than a hunch.” Patterson sniffed as he shook his head. “You’re not giving me a helluva lot to go on here. ‘N your ‘hunches’ ain’t gonna amount to squat in court.”

“Then let’s get a warrant and go through Collins’ computer files,” Gray suggested. “Jesse, down in IT can pull up files even if they’re erased.”

Patterson seemed not to consider the suggestion. He shook his head tightly and pushed away from the desk. Without a word, he walked over to the table by the window where a half-filled pot of coffee was steaming away on a hot plate. It looked like it had been there since morning. He glanced back at Gray and held up an empty cup, but Gray shook his head no. Patterson poured a cup for himself and then turned around and leaned against the table.

“You can keep poking around if you want to,” he said after taking a slurping sip and wincing. “But we’ve got enough other shit to deal with. I don’t want this eating up your time.”

He took another sip and winced again. Gray wondered why he drank the stuff if it tasted as rank as, apparently, it did.

“Usually, a guy pops himself when he’s under investigation—that’s a pretty good sign he might’ve been feeling a little bit guilty or afraid.”

“Not a guy like Collins,” Gray said firmly. “He had some other issues he was dealing with.”

“’Issues?’” Patterson said derisively.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, so if he wasn’t the perp, you got anyone else?”

Gray was stumped on that, but he didn’t want to admit it to his supervisor. As much as a creep like Collins got under his skin and maybe even deserved what had happened to him, it just didn’t add up. He never cracked, not even a little, during interrogation, so why put a gun in his mouth later?

The real problem was, Gray didn’t have the faintest clue where to go from here … other than a hunch.

— 3 —

The night was dark, and clouds covered the moon and stars. A high wind blew through the trees, scattering leaves along the road where they rattled like old bones against the pavement.

Abby moved slowly up the street, poised and ready for any sign of danger. Megan had promised to stay in the cemetery tonight, and after all she had been through, Abby was confident she would. She needed time to process what she had been through today, and she needed to figure out what—if anything—she would do next.

“Do you remember me?”

The voice, speaking so suddenly in the darkness, startled Abby. She turned and looked to see a middle-aged woman standing in the darkness under some trees. Behind her was a small wooden cross, painted white, and several bouquets, some of them wilted and brown.

“What?” Abby asked.

“Do you remember me?” the woman said again. It was obvious she was dead. Her pale face and blank expression indicated that she still hadn’t realized or accepted that she was dead.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” the dead woman said. “I’ve been waiting here … I don’t know how long. I saw my husband here once, and my two children came by and left those flowers, but they didn’t talk to me, even when I spoke directly to them. They ignored me.”

Abby realized what had happened here, but she couldn’t get involved now. She had to get back to the cemetery and see how Megan was doing.

“Why are you ignoring me?” the woman said, her voice sharp with anger.

“I’m not ignoring you,” Abby said even as she shifted away from the woman. “I just have to do something … a favor for someone, and then I’ll come back and see how you’re doing.”

“I just don’t understand why no one’s come to pick me up?” the woman said. “I can’t walk. It’s too far. And I don’t dare leave here because this is where they’ll be looking for me.”

“I understand,” Abby said, and then she turned and walked away. The dead woman’s voice gradually faded into the night.

Abby felt pity for the dead woman and wished she could have helped her, but she had problems of her own. That’s why she had left the cemetery, even though she knew it was dangerous. She wanted to ask Jim if there was anything he could do to help her and Megan. Also, she really wanted to see Jim again. She couldn’t quite admit to herself how much Jim reminded her of Jon Hilton—so much so, in fact, that she wondered if he might actually be Jon’s reincarnation, if that were even possible. There was still so much Abby didn’t understand about life and life after death.

Before she turned the corner, she looked back and caught a glimpse of the dead woman. Her figure was nothing more than a gauzy white smear in the darkness, and her voice was so faint with distance Abby couldn’t hear what she said.

When she got to Jim’s house, she saw that all of the lights were off. Either Jim and his mother weren’t home, or else everyone had already gone to bed. As she moved closer to the house, a hint of motion off to her right drew her attention. She wondered if that dead woman had followed her as she dropped into a crouch. Her eyes shifted back and forth as she looked for somewhere to run when she heard a low, rumbling growl.

If that was a Hell Hound, she thought, there would be others nearby, and that meant Reverend Wheeler was close by, too. She was too far away from the cemetery to get back there safely. They’d run her down long before she made it, and she couldn’t count on her friendly Reaper to show up just in the nick of the time.

An intense tingling sensation like an electric current jolted her body as she crouched low to the ground, scanning the dark yard across the street where she had seen the motion. A porch light was on, and a single light shone in one downstairs window, but they weren’t bright enough to illuminate the whole yard. Abby was sure she had seen … something moving in the shadows at the edge of that yard.

She couldn’t decide if she should get up and run, or stay where she was and hope that whatever it was would go away. Tension built up inside her, and she jumped involuntarily when a large, dark shape moved within the shadows. The growling sound got louder.

Abby wondered if she would be safe inside Jim’s house.

Would the Reverend and his Hounds dare pursue here there?

Even if they struggled right there inside the house, would Jim or his mother have even the faintest idea what was going on?

Abby was ready to run when the shape burst through a gap in the hedge and leapt into the street. She let out a shriek but also immediately felt a huge sense of relief when she realized it wasn’t a Hell Hound at all. One of the neighbors had let his dog out to “do his business” before he went to bed.

The night was filled with angry growling and yipping when, in the yard next door, a raccoon suddenly broke cover and ran in a waddling gait down the street. In a wild scramble of paws that clicked on the pavement, the dog—Abby could see now that it was a black Lab—went racing after the raccoon. The front door of the house flung open, and a young man rushed out onto the porch.

“Rufus! Damnit! Rufus, get back here right now!”

The dog ignored his master until he whistled shrilly. This stopped the dog in its tracks. He turned and started back, but then looked back and watched, whimpering, as the raccoon waddled around behind the neighbor’s garage and was gone.

“Bad dog, Rufus!” the man said as the dog sidled up onto the porch. “You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood, you damned fool dog.”

Relieved, Abby watched them both go back inside. The door shut, and a few seconds later, the light in the living room window winked off, plunging the front yard into darkness.

Abby moved slowly, keeping to the shadows. Just because this had been a false alarm didn’t mean she was out of danger. Reverend Wheeler could be closing in on her even now. A deep chill ran through the center of her being as she looked up at Jim’s darkened bedroom window. Then, holding her arms out wide as if to embrace the night, she willed herself to rise into the air.

— 4 —

“I wasn’t sure you’d make it tonight,” Jim said.

He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, still wearing the clothes he’d worn that day. It was late. The clock beside his bed read 11:53. He had to get up for school in the morning, but he’d been waiting, hoping Abby would return tonight … and every night.

“It’s not really safe for me to be out so late,” she said, “but I think I need your help.”

“Sure,” he said, clasping his hands to his shoulders and rubbing them. “Anything.” The room always got chillier when Abby was there. He didn’t mind it, though. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.

“I have this friend,” Abby said.

“Is she dead, too?”

Abby nodded, and then said the name, “Megan McGowan.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “I heard something about her on the news or something. She’s the girl who got killed out by the lighthouse, right?”

“Yes. Did you know her?”

Jim shook his head. “She didn’t go to my school. She went to that snooty private school over in Cape Elizabeth. So—” He frowned and scratched behind his left ear, looking at her like he was wondering where this was all going.

Abby told him what she knew about Megan, about what had happened, especially the bit about how Megan’s brother having one of the sneakers his sister had been wearing the day she died, and how the other one had washed up on the shore not far from the cliff where Megan was pushed.

“Holy shit,” Jim said when she was finished. His face hovered in the darkness like a full moon, shining through a raft of clouds.

“You’re saying you’re positive this girl—her father killed her?” He heaved a shuddering sigh. “I saw something on the news about it. The police had a suspect, but he killed himself.”

Abby nodded and said, “I’m certain Megan’s telling the truth now. It took a while to get it out of her. First she said she slipped and fell. Then she said she jumped on purpose because she wanted to kill herself. Finally, she admitted that someone attacked her and pushed her, and that she recognized her father. The thing of it is, I think her missing sneaker is the key to it all.”

“I don’t see how,” Jim said.

He wondered if his mother could hear them talking—or at least him—through the wall. She was a sound sleeper, but if she woke up and heard him talking to someone—especially if he was carrying on a one-way conversation—she might begin to wonder.

“How?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I mean, I don’t see how finding her other sneaker is going to get the police to believe her father did it.”

Abby stared at him for a long time, her expression utterly blank. Her image began to waver, and Jim was suddenly afraid she was going to disappear.

“Abby?” he said, relieved when her image became more clearly defined. He still couldn’t get used to the idea of seeing his bedroom wall directly through her, but her beautiful face enthralled him. As much as he tried to deny it, he had to admit he might even be in love with her—a dead girl. He would do anything and everything he could to help her.

“So what can I do?” he said. “What can we do?”

“For starters, you could go down to the cliff and get that sneaker if it’s still there.”

“What good will that do?” Jim shivered at a thought. “What if the police find me with it? They might think I pushed her.”

Abby’s expression froze again. Jim was sure this was what happened whenever she was thinking, but he also had the clear impression something else had caught her attention and was drawing her away from him.

“I certainly don’t want you to get into trouble,” Abby said.

Her face darkened as if a cloud had shifted between her and the streetlight outside. Jim glanced out his bedroom window, jumping when a low, keen howling sound wafted through the night.

“Did you hear that?” Abby asked, her eyes widening with fear.

Jim nodded slowly as a tingle of apprehension rippled up his back. Cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

“I did,” he said. “What was it?” When Abby didn’t answer right away, he added, “Probably just the neighbor’s dog. He lets him out at all hours of the night, and that fu—that idiot barks its fool head off.”

“No. That wasn’t the neighbor’s dog.”

She didn’t have to explain. She had already told Jim about Reverend Wheeler’s Hell Hounds, and she was sure that’s what they had heard.

“You have to go,” Jim said as he leaped off the bed and clenched his fists, ready to defend her. Even he knew the absurdity of that. If Reverend Wheeler was after Abby and wanted to take her, there was nothing he could do to stop him.

“I do,” Abby said, nodding and then glancing out the window at the night. “But we have to figure out what to do. We have to find a way of letting Megan’s mother or brother or the police know what really happened. I think only then will Megan be able to rest in peace.”

With that, Abby’s face and figure melted into the darkness; but before she was gone entirely, Jim heard her say so softly it was at the edge of understanding, “I’ll be back.”

He reached out to where she had been, but when he closed his hand, it clasped nothing but air.  A wild shiver ran up his back as the howling came again, much louder this time.

Jim ran to his bedroom window and, crouching low, peered outside. At first, he could see nothing—just the quiet street below, lit intermittently by the line of streetlights on the opposite side. But then, on the street between two of his neighbor’s houses, he saw … something.

He repositioned himself, watching as the shadows moved, dark shifting against dark. He stared so hard his eyes began to water. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. First one—then two—then half a dozen dark blurs that had vague hints of huge dog-shaped shadows blended out of the darkness and moved across the street like rapidly spreading ink stains.

Run, Abby … Run! he thought, but he didn’t even dare breathe as the shadows melted into the night. Seconds later, the silhouette of an old man, hunched over and wearing a long, flowing cloak, flitted out of the emptiness and crossed the street. Jim held his breath as the shadow followed after the dogs, but then, when he was in the middle of the street, he hesitated.

A chill wound up inside Jim, and even though he couldn’t make out the figure with any clarity—it kept shifting and changing—he was suddenly convinced that whoever or whatever that was out there was looking at him. Jim’s heart started racing even faster. He wanted to move away from the window, duck out of sight, but he stayed where he was, afraid even the slightest motion would draw the attention of the shadow man lurking down there.

And then the figure moved, but instead of passing by, it shifted in the direction of Jim’s house.

A tight, choking sensation took hold of Jim’s throat as he watched the shadow stretch out, reaching toward the front yard. It moved with a hazy, rippling motion, like dark water surging from underground. Jim pressed his face against the cold glass of the window and watched as the indistinct shape reached the foundation of the house and then started shifting up the wall.

Rigid with panic, Jim pulled away from the window and watched in mute terror as an unaccountable darkness filled the lower half of his window. The two-dimensional shadow was darker than the night as it swept across the floor. It moved toward Jim with apparent purpose, its vaguely human silhouette distorted as though a light shined behind the body that cast the shadow.

Jim didn’t know if he should run screaming from his room or stay where he was. Could this thing hurt him? Or was it part of another world—a world that couldn’t influence him? He watched in horror as the shadow rippled over his feet and then slid slowly up his body. Biting cold embraced him, and he was dimly aware that a deep, sonorous voice was whispering to him with the harshness of sandpaper rubbing on wood.

He couldn’t make out any of the words, but his heart stopped when he thought he heard the name “Abby.” His breathing caught in his throat, and he grew dizzy with panic until he heard his pulse start beating again.

And then the shadow passed over him or around or through him. Somehow, Jim found the strength to turn and watch as the pitch-black, two-dimensional shape passed through his bedroom wall next to the door.

And then it was gone.

Abby

Even though it still scares me to think about it, I wonder all the time what happened to my mother and father. I told you how my father wasn’t what you would call a ‘good’ man, but he was my father, and I loved him in spite of it all. I was just a kid. I didn’t know any better.

I certainly didn’t know what I know now.

I’ve learned a lot since I died.

I’ve met tons of people who have died, and—like what I’m doing with Megan—I try to help them. But I’ve seen how badly people can be to each other, and—believe me, there are some people who have it much worse than my mother and I ever did.

I’m not saying what my father did was right. I’m just saying that he did the best he could with what he had, and isn’t that all you can do in life? The best you can? I suspect, when my father was growing up, he was treated the same way. All the kids I knew growing up—although there weren’t that many out where I lived—we all got whooped whenever we misbehaved. That’s just the way it was.

Sure, I agree—it wasn’t fair the way my father treated my mother. It wasn’t right at all. And yes, she probably should have left him when it got so bad her life was in danger, but like him, she just didn’t know any better. People didn’t get divorced back then like they do now. I don’t know which is worse—people staying in horrible, maybe dangerous situations because they can’t or don’t want to end the marriage, or people leaving their spouses for whatever reason.

To tell you the truth—and I firmly believe this although I don’t know it for sure… I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but I have no doubt that when he died, my father was taken away into the shadows by the Reapers. You can’t live the way he did—bullying anyone, even one single person—and not pay for it after you die.

As for my mother … well, I know she felt terrible about my father’s death. But he was a victim of his own violence, so as much as I’m sure it grieved her that he was dead, I think she was relieved and maybe even happy when she was finally free of him.

I know, in her own way, she loved him.

I don’t know what happened to her after she died, either. I was still alive when she died, and I had no idea back then about anything that happens in the Dead Lands. At the time, I believed what the minister at our church said, that after we die, we either go to Heaven or Hell, depending on how we lived our lives.

And in the end, maybe that’s still true.

I don’t know because I can’t get out of the Dead Lands. I have just as little idea about what happens after that than you do. It’s just that, now that I’m dead, I don’t find thinking about it all that scary anymore.

But I do still miss my parents—both of them, and I wonder about what happened to them when they died.

I’ll probably never know.

Chapter 12
E-mails from the Dead

—1—

“I’ll be home for lunch,” Mike called as he walked out the back door, letting it slam shut behind him before either his mother or father could ask where he was going.

The truth was, he had no idea.

All he knew was that he had to get out of the house and escape from his mother’s grief and his father’s seething anger. He couldn’t stop feeling as if both of them still blamed him for what had happened to his sister, even though he knew for a fact that he hadn’t had anything to do with it.

They were going to blame him and load on the guilt, and he would have to carry this around with him for the rest of his life, no matter what he really saw out there that day and no matter what he said because no one was ever going to believe him.

It was a surprisingly warm day for this late in October. Indian Summer. He crossed the driveway and got his bike from the garage just as the back door swung open. His heart gave a cold squeeze when his father came out and stood by the porch railing, watching him.

“Where you off to?” he called out, his voice sounding as threatening as thunder on the horizon.

“Just going for a ride,” he shouted back, his voice quavering.

His hands were slick with sweat as he squeezed the handlebar grips, and his legs felt like jelly. He was convinced they were going to fold up on him before he could get onto his bike and pedal away. His father’s cold, steady stare bored into his back, making the hairs on the back of his neck stir.

“Don’t go far,” his father said. “And make damned sure you don’t go out to the lighthouse.”

Mike nodded. The lighthouse and the cliffs were the last place he wanted to go because he was worried that the person he had seen out there that day, the person who must have pushed Megan off the cliff, might still be out there and might push him off a cliff, too.

“Just going to Chucky’s,” he said.

“Be back in an hour,” his father shouted. “You hear me?”

Mike nodded and started running down the driveway alongside his bike. When he was halfway to the street, he leaped up onto the seat and started pedaling as fast as he could to get away.

He didn’t have to turn around to know that his father had gone through the house and was now either at one of the living room windows or on the front porch, watching him. Even if he wasn’t, Mike could feel his father’s gaze sliding over him like the cold, dry skin of a snake crawling up his back.

Within seconds, he was out of breath from pedaling so hard. He raced down the street, the wind tearing at his face. The warm autumn air made his eyes water, and he tried to convince himself that’s all it was. He wasn’t really crying, but there was no way Chucky or any other of his friends could see him right now. Even though they all knew his sister had died, he wasn’t going to let them catch him crying. So for the next hour, all he did was race his bike around the block and hope none of his friends saw him or wanted to talk.

— 2 —

Sunlight glittered like a million diamonds scattered on the ocean. Blue waves surged gently, whispering like tearing paper as they washed against the shore. Abby could tell it was a nice day because so many people were out walking the beach. Couples holding hands, groups of older people, some walking their dogs and some not, and a few teenagers roamed the beach. A few of the youngest kids—hard souls or idiots—actually splashed around in the water.

Abby and Megan were sitting on the grassy ridge overlooking Mockingbird Bay. Megan sat there, moving her hand from side to side, watching everything.

“One thing I still can’t get used to is not casting a shadow,” she said.

Abby nodded and said, “That’s because you’re not really here.”

Megan stared at her for a moment as if letting that thought sink in, but then she smiled and nodded.

“Or maybe,” she continued, “we’re the only real things here, and everything else is an illusion.”

“Could be,” Abby said. Years ago, she had stopped thinking too deeply about such things.

“I guess it’s not so bad,” Megan said as she waved her hand back and forth, letting it drift loosely in front of her face like a wind-tossed leaf.

Just then, a Monarch butterfly fluttered by and perched for a moment on a branch of the apple tree above Abby’s grave. It moved its wings slowly up and down as though cooling off. Abby looked at it for a long time, thinking how sad it was that even something as simple as a butterfly had something she didn’t.

Life.

As gorgeous as the day was, though, Abby couldn’t dispel the dark thoughts that were twisting inside her. She still worried about Megan because she wasn’t supposed to be here. Like everyone else who died, everyone except her, anyway, Megan was supposed to move on to whatever came next in the afterlife.

“You know,” Abby said, “I’ve been thinking about that machine your father was using.”

“You mean the computer.”

Abby nodded and said, “I’ve heard about them before from some other people, but I’ve never seen one until we were at your house. What exactly does it do?”

“Pretty much anything you want it to,” Megan replied with a casual shrug. “You can e-mail and post stuff on Myspace and Facebook and look at videos and pictures.”

“Videos?” Abby said.

“You know, like movies … pictures that move.”

Abby nodded as if she understood, though she had no idea what Megan was talking about.

“So what’s e-mail? And you say ‘my face’?”

“Facebook,” Megan said as a hint of frustration crossed her face. She looked like she had just bitten into a lemon. Abby sensed that she didn’t want to talk about any of this. She was still waving her hand in the air as though seeing it move was the most miraculous thing in the world. Maybe talking about computers made Megan miss being alive too much.

“E-mail is like sending a letter, only the letter doesn’t even exist in the real world. It just exists electronically, inside the computer and over the internet.

“Like you and I don’t exist in the real world,” Abby said.

“I dunno. Maybe. You can send a letter to anyone you want if you know their e-mail address, and on Facebook, you write things and post them so anyone who’s your friend can read them.”

“Is it cool to have a my face page?”

Megan lowered her gaze and shook her head.

“It’s how you get the letter to travel from one computer to anyone over the internet, so whoever you sent it to can read it.”

Abby nodded as if she finally understood, but she still had only a vague idea what Megan was talking about. She had never heard of the internet before, but like a lot of things, she decided she had to see it work before she could begin to understand it. She was silent for a long time, but then she had to say something because it was bothering her.

“Why couldn’t I see what was on the—what did you call it? The ‘computer screen’?”

“I have no idea,” Megan said. “I couldn’t, either. That was freaky, wasn’t it?”

Megan was still staring at her hand, but a faint sneer wrinkled her face as though she found Abby’s questions tedious.

“All I could see was, like, a flickering light flashing on and off really fast. It made me dizzy.”

Megan sighed and, shaking her head, said, “I told you I have no idea what was there.”

“I never said you did,” Abby said.

Wanting to drop the subject, she shifted her gaze out across the water. She didn’t find the view relaxing or enjoyable because she fixed instantly on the blackened wreck of the Faire Child on the distant rocks. The dark, weather-beaten hull was rocking slowly back and forth with each wave, and Abby could almost hear the low, steady grinding sounds the ships timbers made when they rolled against the seaweed-crusted granite. She was about to ask Megan if she could see the shipwreck, too, but decided not to. Megan was in a foul enough mood as it was.

So Abby shifted her gaze over to the cliffs where a faint haze rose like thin smoke from the sea where warmer seawater touched the cool air. In the shifting mist, Abby could easily imagine forms and faces resolving from the mist and then disappearing as the wind wafted the images away. She wondered if Megan’s sneaker was still there on the rocks, or if the high tide had carried it away or, perhaps, someone had found it and tossed it back into the water, not having any idea of its significance.

She jumped when an idea hit her, but when she glanced over at Megan, she saw that Megan was still transfixed by her waving hand. Abby was convinced that sneaker was important.

If only the right person would find it, Abby thought, but who was that?

“I was wondering …” she said, turning to face Megan.

“’Bout what?” Megan asked, her voice as faint and drifting as the tide.

“These ‘e-mails,’ as you call them. Does everyone who has a computer use them instead of writing letters or talking on the phone?”

“Pretty much. That and texting and tweeting,” Megan said with a shrug.

“Tweeting?”

“Sending messages over your cell phone.”

Abby nodded, thinking she understood. The last time she had awakened, she had noticed a lot of people when they walked on the beach held small devices up to the ears into which they talked.

“So everyone does it?” Abby asked.

An idea was forming in her mind, strengthened when Megan nodded to answer her question, but she didn’t want to tell Megan about it. Not just yet.

“I may have to leave the cemetery again tonight,” Abby suddenly said.

Megan snorted and shook her head.

“How come you can leave every night and I can’t?” she said.

“You have no idea how dangerous the Dead Lands are.”

“And you do?” Megan’s face scrunched with irritation. “You’re not afraid Reverend Wheeler will come and git yah?” She raised her hands and curled her fingers like claws while making a snarling sound that actually unnerved Abby.

Abby chuckled to relieve the tension, but the plan stirring inside her wouldn’t let go. She had no idea if she could really pull this off, but if she did, it just might solve everything.

“You saw him and his Hell Hounds,” Abby said, lowering her voice suggestively. She wanted Megan to remember how frightened she had been when Reverend Wheeler had been chasing them, and they had to hide in the lighthouse. Hopefully, that would be enough to keep Megan in the cemetery where she’d be safe at night.

“How come you’re not afraid, then?” Megan asked, looking appropriately cowed.

“I am. Trust me,” Abby said as a shiver ran through her. “It’s just … I gotta do what I gotta do.”

“And what’s that?”

Abby didn’t say another word. Instead, she turned and looked back at the shipwreck again and allowed herself to feel the sadness of how much she missed her mother and—yes, even her father.

“You’re not gonna ditch me again,” Megan said after another long silence. “I’m coming with you.”

Abby looked at her, so surprised she couldn’t reply right away.

“I know what you’re doing has something to do with me, and I want to be there.”

“No. You can’t come,” Abby said firmly.

“Oh, yeah?” Megan’s face darkened. “You just watch me.”

Abby knew when she was beat, so she lowered her head and nodded.

“Okay, then,” she said, “but let’s go do it now, while it’s still daylight. Let’s go to your house first.”

— 3 —

Detective Gray was stumped, and he didn’t like being stumped. As far as his supervisor was concerned, Andrew Collins’ suicide put the McGowan case to rest. Unless or until another incident came along, something that had the same MO, then that was that.

Still, he couldn’t stop thinking something didn’t feel right, so late that afternoon, he drove over to the Ryders’ house and rang the doorbell.

Caroline answered. The first thing that popped into Gray’s mind was: “She looks like Hell had hit her and ran.” She’d gotten much worse since he had last seen her. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy from crying; her face was much thinner than before and had a gray, washed-out look, the kind he’d seen on seriously ill people. Her expression didn’t alter one iota when she opened the door and saw him standing there. Her voice was flat and lifeless when she said, “Good afternoon, Detective Gray. What brings you by?”

Gray wanted to appear confident, and certainly he was about to admit defeat in the case, but he had to tell her that there had been no new developments, and now that Collins was dead, the investigation was closed.

“I was hoping you or your husband, or maybe your son, had remembered something—anything else that might help.”

Caroline stared straight into his eyes, but before she could speak, her husband shouted from somewhere in the house, “Who is it, hon?” A moment later, he appeared in the kitchen doorway. As soon as Bob Ryder saw him, his expression darkened.

“Detective Gray,” he said, his voice low and hollow as he came forward.

“Mr. Ryder.” Gray nodded curtly. “I just dropped by to let you know that the prime suspect in the case has killed himself.”

“He what?” Caroline said, her face going even paler, if that were possible.

Bob was drying his hands on a small, blue hand towel. Gray watched him carefully, analyzing how he took the news.

“Last night, Andrew Collins shot himself in the head.”

“Oh, my God. That’s terrible,” Caroline said, covering her face with both hands and letting out a loud, racking sob. Bob moved closer, still wiping his hands on the blue dishtowel. His mouth was hanging open in a wide “O.”

“So is that it?” he asked. “Case closed?”

As much as he hated to do it, Gray nodded. As far as he was concerned, this case or any case involving murder would remain open until there was a trial and conviction. But he had bupkis to go on, and he had to let it go cold and work on other, more pressing cases.

“We’ve been over the crime scene a dozen times, and since the rain the other day, anything of value has washed away if it hasn’t been trampled by people hiking around out there. Unless a witness comes forward or something, I’m sorry.” He shrugged and held his hands out, palms up. “I’ve got nothing else to go on.”

Bob nodded solemnly, but Caroline just kept staring at him with those vacant, unbelieving eyes. Her lower lip was pale and trembling, and he realized she might even blame him, in some twisted way, for what had happened to her daughter.

“My baby,” she finally whispered in a voice raw with emotion.

Bob moved up behind her and placed an arm around her waist, drawing her close. This apparently signaled that she could collapse emotionally because she turned around, buried her face against his chest, and started sobbing. Her shoulders shook as she wept.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” she kept saying, her voice muffled against her husband’s chest. He was patting her on the back and looking at Gray as though helpless.

Gray remained detached. He had to. He couldn’t do his job if he let himself get involved emotionally. Still, how could he not feel her pain and suffering, and how could he not understand the utter frustration she was experiencing?

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish I had better news.”

Gray and Bob locked eyes, and what struck the detective was how emotionless the man seemed. It was as if he wasn’t feeling anything. Even his voice had a curious detachment when he said, “Well, then—I guess that’s the end of it.”

Gray nodded, then turned and left the house, feeling empty but knowing this wasn’t the end of it. The sad truth, though, was that he had absolutely no idea where to go from here.

— 4 —

“So how does it work?” Abby asked.

They were standing next to the desk in Megan’s stepfather’s office because, to Megan’s surprise, her computer wasn’t in her bedroom. They had arrived in time to see the encounter between Detective Gray and Megan’s parents just moments ago. They were both surprised to hear the news about Andrew Collins’ suicide.

Abby was saddened by the news, but Megan had reacted strangely. She had gotten angry. Several times, while her parents were talking to the detective, she had moved as close to Detective Gray as she could and, leaning close to his ear, at first whispered and then ended up shouting and finally screaming at him that the killer was right there in front of him. Her stepfather—the man he was talking to right now!—was the murderer he was looking for.

Other than a few physical ticks, Gray gave no indication he could hear her. It was only after Abby told her she had an idea, that Megan finally calmed down.

“Well, then,” Megan said, looking at the computer on her stepfather’s desk. “If I was still alive, I’d click a button on the mouse or hit a key on the keyboard to wake it up.”

Abby had no idea what she meant by that, but as Megan spoke, she ran her fingertips over the computer keyboard. Her hand moved like the faint curl of smoke when someone blows out a candle, and her touch had absolutely no effect on the keys or the computer. The machine was humming softly, what Megan said was “sleep mode,” but the screen wasn’t on.

“We have to figure out some way to tell that detective about your sneaker,” Abby said.

Megan glanced up at her and said, “What good will that do? It’s just a friggin’ sneaker.”

“And your stepfather took the other one from your brother,” Abby said. “If only we could—”

Before she finished the sentence, an idea struck her. She looked at Megan, who was still trying in vain to get the computer to respond to her touch. Leaning forward, she tapped her on the shoulder.

“I know what we have to do, where we have to go,” she said.

“Right now?”

Abby nodded and said, “Uh-huh … before it’s too late.”

— 5 —

Jim had spent most of the day in his room on his computer. This wasn’t too much of a surprise since he did that a lot, especially in the winter, but on a beautiful, warm day, no doubt one of the last summery days of the year, his mother was pestering him to go outside and get some fresh air. He told her he would, but he stayed right where he was, surfing the web.

He hadn’t found much about any of the things Abby had told him, but there were a few articles on some local historical sites about shipwrecks off the coast of Maine. One of them mentioned in passing the wreck of the Faire Child in 1878 on Cushing’s Island, between Portland Harbor and Portland Head Light, but there weren’t many details. No list of passengers or people who perished.

This didn’t prove anything, Jim knew. He could have heard about the wreck years ago and just now dredged it out of his subconscious.

But it didn’t disprove anything, either. He wondered if he was imagining these encounters with Abby. In the clear light of day, he could see that it was—well, maybe not impossible, but certainly highly improbable that the ghost of a girl who had been dead for over a hundred years might appear to him.

Why him?

Was it all just because of the stupid locket?

Was he making all of this up, imagining it because of some silly picture in a locket?

If any one of his friends had told him the same story, he would have laughed his ass off at them.

But seeing, as they say, is believing, and he was positive he had seen and talked with Abby, not imagined or dreamed her.

Even crazier were the feelings he couldn’t deny he had for this girl, even though she was dead. It was crazy and impossible that he would have a crush on her … that maybe he was even falling in love with her, but the attraction he felt for her was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

If it wasn’t love, then what was it?

Why else would he spend such a beautiful day in his room, messing around with his computer instead of hanging out with his friends, maybe going to the mall or down to the park to play ultimate Frisbee or something? He wanted to find out as much as he could about her, and then …

Yeah, then what?

What good would it do either of them?

You sure as hell can’t go on a date with someone who’s been dead for over a hundred years.

Where was the future in that?

“ … Jim …”

The voice was so faint at first that he didn’t hear it, but then it came again.

“ … Jim …”

He reacted. Chills traveled up and down his spine, and a curious prickling sensation gripped the back of his neck like unseen fingers, brushing against his skin. His heart started thumping hard in his chest, and his throat closed off as he turned slowly in his chair and scanned the bedroom.

It was sunny outside, but the bedroom shades were drawn, and a dull, gray haze filled the room. The corners of the bedroom in particular were dark and foreboding. He wondered if he even had the breath to speak before he whispered, “Abby?”

“I’m here,” she said, her voice a bit clearer now, closer than seemed possible. Why couldn’t he see her? “I have a friend with me.”

“A friend?”

“Remember that girl I told you about?”

Jim nodded and said, “You mean the girl who was—” He couldn’t finish.

“Yeah. She’s here with me now … Can you see her?”

“I can’t even see you.”

“Say something to him, Megan,” Abby said in a whisper.

There followed a long silence in which Jim strained to hear, but the only sounds were the ordinary sounds of the day—a car passing by outside and a bird singing far off in the distance.

“Nope … Can’t hear a thing,” he finally said.

“That’s weird,” Abby said. “How come you can hear me but not her?”

“Maybe different wavelengths or something,” Jim offered, but he had no idea what was or wasn’t possible in the Dead Lands. “Say something again.”

After another pause. Abby’s voice said softly, “She says she is sad you can’t hear her.”

“What? Then you’ll have to be our intermediary,” Jim said.

He was surprised how easily and natural it felt to be talking to Abby like this. The feeling that they had been friends a long time ago was impossible to ignore. When Jim remembered what had happened last night, he knew he had to tell Abby right away. He described the things he had seen shortly after she had left, and the dreadfully cold sensation he’d gotten when the shadow passed over—or through—him.

“That must have been Reverend Wheeler,” Abby said. “Obviously, I made it back to the cemetery safely, but I heard Hell Hounds chasing after me, so I knew he wasn’t far behind.”

“Please be more careful,” Jim said. “I think … I had this feeling that he, like, could read my mind when he passed through me. I’m sure he knows you were here.”

Abby was silent long enough for Jim to wonder if she had gone, but then he heard her sigh, and a cool breath washed over his face.

“I can’t worry about him right now because I—we, Megan and I, need your help.”

“Anything.”

“Megan explained how e-mail works, and even though I don’t understand it all, do you know how to use it?”

“Sure. Everyone does. Hell, even my mother has a Facebook page.”

“I want you to send an e-mail to someone … to Detective Gray at the Cape Elizabeth Police Department.”

Jim felt suddenly uncomfortable.

“He’s investigating Megan’s—what happened to Megan. He’s been dealing with her family, but he doesn’t know what really happened to her.”

Jim was flustered. No matter how much he wanted to help, and as much as he would do anything for Abby, he certainly didn’t want to start getting involved in a murder investigation.

“All you have to do is let him know that Megan’s other sneaker washed up at the bottom of the cliff where she … was pushed,” Abby said.

“I can’t just call up or send him an e-mail and say that! They’d talk to me and ask me how I know this stuff, and maybe I’d be a suspect or something.”

“Can you send an e-mail that he won’t know came from you?”

Almost automatically, Jim was about to say there was no way, but he knew about a site where he could get an anonymous e-mail account. He could open it just for as long as it took him to e-mail Detective Gray and then close it. He was confident it would be untraceable, even for a cop.

“Hold on,” he said, and he spun around in his chair and faced his computer. It took him a while to find the website, and shortly after that, he had set up a bogus account. Simple research got him Detective Gray’s e-mail address at the police station, and he was ready to go.

“All right,” he said, sitting back and cracking his knuckles, “what do I tell him?”

Before Abby could answer, Jim’s bedroom door creaked open, and his mother poked her head into the room.

“Who are you talking to, honey?” she asked, glancing around the dimly lit room as if expecting to see one of his friends there.

“Huh? Oh … No one. Just myself.”

His mother shot him a crooked smile as she shook her head.

“Well, I’m heading off to work. I pulled an evening shift because Valerie called in sick again. I won’t be home ‘till after midnight, so don’t wait up. There’s leftovers in the fridge for supper.”

“Sure thing,” Jim said, barely hearing her litany of instructions.

“Love you,” she said. Then she closed the door and was gone. From behind the closed door, she shouted, “And get outside while the weather’s still nice!”

“I will,” he shouted back, but his fingers were already poised over the keyboard. After a quick glance over his shoulder, he said, “All right. What do you want me to say?”

Abby

I don’t know much about Reverend Wheeler, at least not from when he was alive. He was married to my mother’s sister, Lily, but they moved from Virginia to Maine before I was born, so I only knew about him from what my mother told me.

Different people had different opinions.

My mother, for instance, never said a bad word about him, no matter what, but I could tell by the way she spoke about him that there was something she didn’t quite like or trust. She would never come right out and tell Lily she had made a mistake marrying him, but my mother never showed any interest in hearing news about him, either.

One summer, the only time Aunt Lily came back to Virginia to visit, the Reverend didn’t come with her. I remember her saying how he was ‘always about doing the Lord’s work’ and he couldn’t tear himself away from ‘tending his flock.’

My father, on the other hand, called the Reverend a ‘high-faluting hypocritical pompous ass.’ My father—especially when he’d been drinking—had a certain way with words. I’ve learned a lot about how people talk now, but I’d never heard a man who could use swear words in such unique combinations.

Of course, I never gave Reverend Wheeler much thought. As far as I was concerned, Maine was somewhere up near the North Pole, and my aunt and uncle who lived up there were Yankees. After my father died, though, my mother was upset, and she told me that, if anything happened to her, if there was an accident or whatever, I should take the locket with the lock of hair and the key with me to Maine.

Of course, it’s that locket—the one you have—that my uncle accused me of stealing. As much as I don’t like saying it, I believe he thought it was a key to some fortune my mother had put aside. I’m convinced he wanted to take whatever inheritance my mother had left me and use it himself. I’d read of such situations in novels, where one family member steals another’s inheritance and all the troubles that follow. Of course, once I was on my way to Maine with Reverend Wheeler, he demanded that I no longer read novels because they were “stewed,” as he put it, in sin.

So I have no idea what kind of man Reverend Wheeler really was when he was alive. I can’t imagine he was very pleasant to be around because I never heard anyone say a kind word about him and seem to mean it.

But I do know what kind of person—well, he’s not really a person anymore—what kind of a being he is now.

He’s pure evil.

Whatever happened to him, before or after he died, has twisted him so much he’s dangerous … to me, anyway.

I have no idea how to get away from him.

He doesn’t seem to ever give up, maybe not even when—or if—I pass on. All I know for sure is that he frightens me more than anything else I’ve encountered in the Dead Lands.

Chapter 13
A Friend Indeed

—1—

“WANT THE OTHER SNEAKER? MEET ME AT THE CLIFFS THIS AFTERNOON. BRING HELP.”

Detective Gray sat stunned at his desk and stared at the e-mail he’d received moments ago. The return address wasn’t anything he recognized—“friendinneed.”

“Friend in need ... Friend in need,” he muttered, and he stared at the screen until his eyes began to water.

He knew exactly what this was about. It had to do with the McGowan murder, but who had sent it? And why? And what was at the cliffs? How did whoever sent this message even know about the missing sneaker?

There was only one way to find out, of course, and that was to go there, but it specifically said “this afternoon.” It was only a little past ten o’clock. Plenty of time to see if Jesse, down in IT, could trace the e-mail account back and get the user’s name. If he knew who sent it, he might have a better idea what to expect this afternoon.

Could this be something Andrew Collins sent before he offed himself?

Was it possible to send an e-mail with some kind of delay?

Did Collins have an accomplice who had sent this as a tease, now that Collins was dead?

Or was Collins really innocent, and this was from the real killer—or maybe a witness who had been afraid to come forward until now.

There was no doubt Collins was dead. Gray had gone to the apartment when the landlord called in that he’d heard a single gunshot in the middle of the night. Collins was dead, all right, so it was highly unlikely he had set something up to taunt the police once he was gone.

Gray stood up from his desk and began pacing back and forth, his mind seething with questions, none of which had any clear answers.

Could this e-mail have come from one of Megan’s parents or her brother? Did one of them know something and was only willing to say it now?

“Damn it,” Gray said as he clenched his fist and punched his upper thigh hard enough to hurt.

“Hate to say ‘I told you so,’” he whispered, but down deep, he had known all along that this case wasn’t going to go away as easily as Collins popping himself.

There was nothing to do now but wait until afternoon. Maybe around two o’clock, he’d ask one of the patrolmen—probably Pete Murray; he was a solid, dependable guy—to come with him out to the cliffs.

Then they’d see what, if anything, was going down.

— 2 —

Bob Ryder was in a panic.

Somebody knew something, and he had no idea who it was or what, exactly, they knew, but it had everything to do with him.

The e-mail had arrived early this morning from an address he didn’t recognize. He had almost deleted it without checking, thinking it must be spam, but then he had opened it.

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not. It might have been better to ignore it. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. Besides, this could just be some bizarre coincidence that had nothing to do with Megan. Someone could be “pranking” him for whatever reason. Or, worst-case scenario, someone had seen him out there on the cliff that day and was going to try to use it against him … maybe blackmail him.

But he’d received no demands for money. There was just a brief note from someone named friendinneed, telling him to get rid of the sneaker and that he might want to check out around the cliff ‘one last time.’”

Bob considered that the message was from his son, Mike. After all, his son had found the sneaker first, and Bob had taken it from him. It was stashed in his bedroom closet now, but what if the police knew about it? What if Mike had mentioned it to that detective, and now that detective intended to come over with a search warrant.

What if he found it?

How would Bob explain that?

If the cops were already on to him, maybe they were already watching him. If he threw the sneaker out with the trash on Monday morning, would they go through the garbage bag and find the sneaker?

How incriminating would that be?

It was, after all, his daughter’s sneaker. He could declare that they were getting rid of Megan’s things because of the painful reminders about what had happened, but was it too soon for that?

His wife was still an emotional wreck, and the big question anyone with any sense would ask would be: “Where is the other sneaker?”

Is that what the mysterious e-mailer meant by “check around the cliff?”

Why was he so nervous, having just one of the sneakers?

There was no way having it in his possession—even hiding it in his closet—was proof of anything … especially not that he had anything to do with Megan’s death.

But that e-mail was upsetting because it proved someone knew something.

Should he follow the advice and get rid of the sneaker?

How and where?

Or was this a setup?

Was whoever sent this trying to get him to make a mistake?

Maybe the worst thing he could do was to get rid of the sneaker.

If the police came around asking for it, would it be better to be able to produce it for them? He could claim he was saving it for sentimental reasons, because she was wearing it the day she died.

There was nothing wrong with that.

Was there?

He sat at his desk most of the day, trying to get his paperwork in order, but he found it impossible to concentrate because he was stewing about what he should or shouldn’t do. Finally, around one o’clock, he went upstairs and got the sneaker. Hiding it in his jacket pocket, he told Caroline he was going for a walk. He’d be back within the hour.

Caroline was in the living room, sitting on the couch with a magazine opened but unread on her lap. The TV was on, but the sound was almost all the way down, and she never glanced at the screen. She looked up at him with glassy eyes, her lower lip trembling as she nodded. She looked out of it, and he wondered if she’d even heard what he said, but what did it matter?

Bob left by the back door, forcing himself not to run down to the street. He kept glancing around as he started toward the cliffs, which were about a mile away. As he walked, he clutched the sneaker to his side like a football player, tucking the ball into the basket of his arms as he drove for the goal line.

At the park entrance, he scanned the area carefully, looking for any indication that someone was watching him. There were a few parked cars in the parking lot, and a couple was strolling toward the old fort. On the expanse of lawn, a group of teenagers were playing Ultimate Frisbee. When Bob passed one of the park’s trashcans, he hesitated and, after a quick look around, slipped the sneaker out of his pocket and stuffed it into the trashcan. He buried it as deep as he could under the smelly trash, disturbing a gaggle of flies in the process. They buzzed and swarmed before finally settling back down. Bob looked around again, relieved and confident now that no one had noticed him.

Is that enough? he wondered, suddenly panicking that someone—maybe a bum, rummaging through the trash for returnable bottles and cans—might find the sneaker and somehow recognize its significance.

Maybe this wasn’t enough. Maybe I should have burned the damned thing, or thrown it into the ocean.

He started walking away from the trashcan as fast as he could. As he headed toward the cliff, he kept casting furtive glances all around. As far as he could see, he was a nonentity to anyone in the vicinity.

“Good … good …” he whispered, allowing himself a half-smile as he walked briskly up the hill, heading toward the lighthouse and the trails that wound along the cliffs.

It’s over and done with, he kept telling himself.

He could relax. No matter what that jerk who’d sent that e-mail said or did now, there was no incriminating evidence. He could keep playing it off the way he had been, as the grieving stepfather.

He paused when he arrived at the head of the path leading down to the cliffs. An electric tingle zipped up his back, and his throat tightened.

Returning to the scene of the crime, he thought and couldn’t help but laugh.

He cast a furtive glance left and right and saw that—for the moment, at least—he was totally alone. The choking sensation in his throat intensified as he started along the hard-packed path. On both sides, the vegetation was a riot of reds, oranges, and yellows mixed with the seared brown leaves that had already fallen. Focusing on the view of the ocean up ahead, he followed the trail to the cliff’s edge.

Bob halted at the cliff edge and stared out across the churning waves while listening to the lonely cry of the gulls that circled overhead. The smell of salt spray was strong, and the wind tore at his face with icy hands. His heart filled with mixed emotions as the reality of what he had done hit him—hard. No amount of trying to convince himself that it had been necessary—that it was the only way out, at least that he could see—made him feel any better.

He couldn’t keep his emotions in check. They welled up inside him as if someone was standing there next to him, whispering into his ear, reminding him about the horrible deed he had done. Tears gathered in his eyes and flowed down his face.

When his focus shifted to the base of the cliff, he didn’t realize for a long time what he was staring at down at the foot of the cliff … something that didn’t look like a rock. Then a wave rolled over it, flipping it so it was right side up.

It was a sneaker!

A chill cut through Bob with the sting of a razor slice.

No … That’s … impossible!

He leaned forward, his eyes straining to see it clearly, to make sure this wasn’t an optical illusion. Finally, he had to admit that—as impossible as it was—he had found Megan’s other sneaker.

— 3 —

The wind off the water was cold. Abby knew that because of the way Detective Gray pulled his collar up tightly around his neck and hunkered down between two large rocks at the base of the cliff. Every now and then, a wave would crash, sending twisting ropes of foam high into the air and splashing Gray; but he stayed where he was, his gaze fixed on the sneaker on the rock at the water’s edge.

“What’s this gonna prove?” Megan asked Abby. She was standing a little way behind her, staring out over the ocean. The wind was blowing straight into her face, but her hair was unruffled.

“Probably nothing,” Abby said, “but I can’t help but feel as though …” She squinted and looked up at the edge of the bluff towering above them. It blotted out a part of the sky. “There’s something happening. Something important.”

“Bullshit,” Megan said.

Suddenly a scurrying motion on the bluff above drew Abby’s attention. She saw that Detective Gray noticed it, too. Seconds later, Megan’s stepfather broke into view. His face was pale as old bone as he stared down at the sneaker on the rock below.

“Well, now,” Detective Gray said softly as he shifted forward, ready to move when and if he had to.

“Megan,” Abby called out in a harsh whisper. When the girl finally turned and looked at her, she also saw her stepfather. The placid expression on her face instantly hardened, and pain filled her eyes.

Abby, Megan, and Detective Gray all watched as Megan’s stepfather started down the face of the cliff, working his way slowly along the line of least resistance. Loose shale broke off in his hands, and a few times his foot slipped and he almost fell, but after a bit of a struggle, he made it down to the rocks. They were wet from the spray and slippery with tangles of wet bladder weed.

“What’s he doing here?” Megan asked.

“What do you think?” Abby replied. She watched him climbing down, keenly aware that neither of the men could see or hear them.

They all watched as Bob Ryder clambered up the rock and stood there, looking down at the sneaker. The expression on his face was almost impossible to read. Abby saw amazement along with rising fear bordering on panic.

“It can’t be,” he said, his voice whisked away by the wind.

He slowly bent over and reached his hand out. He looked as though he thought the sneaker was a snake that was going to strike him without warning, and he kept pulling his hand back as though afraid to touch it, afraid it would burn him or that it wasn’t real.

All the while, he was grunting and making a soft groaning sound as he shook his head, his eyes wide with amazement.  Finally, he picked up the sneaker and just stood still for the longest time, staring at it and turning it over and over in his hand.

In an instant, his expression froze, and he glanced around as though expecting to see that he was being watched. Detective Gray ducked back out of sight behind a rock as Megan’s stepfather jumped down to a small stretch of gravelly beach. There were various-sized pieces of broken shale lying about, and he studied these. Still gripping the sneaker with one hand, he found what he was looking for—a blade-shaped piece of rock that was about the size of the sneaker.

Grunting with satisfaction, he loosened the laces of the sneaker and slipped the rock inside like it was a foot. Bending down and supporting the sneaker on his thigh, he pulled the laces as tightly as he could and then tied them in a double knot. When he was finished with that, he straightened up and walked close to the water’s edge. Taking a solid stance with is feet apart, he hefted the sneaker in his hand like a baseball or a hand grenade, and then he swung his arm back and flung the sneaker out over the water.

Abby and Megan along with Detective Gray and Megan’s stepfather all watched the sneaker as it arced through the air in slow motion and then landed with a splat in the water. It sank fast, disappearing beneath the surging green surface.

“Why’d he do that?” Megan whispered, her voice as hollow as the wind piping across the rocks.

“So no one will ever find it,” Abby replied, then froze when she saw Detective Gray push himself off the rocks. He walked toward Megan’s stepfather, who was standing with his back to him.

“You got a good arm there,” Gray said when he was about fifty feet away.

Megan’s stepfather jumped with a start and wheeled around, his face going instantly pale.

“What the—” he said, but that was all he could manage. His eyes were all but popping from his head, and his mouth gaped open.

“Bitch of a cold day, ain’t it?” Gray said, slapping his hands against his upper arms to warm them. “I should’a made Murray hang down here while I sat nice and warm in the cruiser drinking coffee.”

Megan’s stepfather still couldn’t say anything. He stood there, gaping at him like he didn’t understand English.

Brushing his fingers reassuringly across the grip of his service revolver, Gray moved closer to Bob, being careful as he navigated the jumble of rocks. They were slick in places, and he had a tough time trying to maintain his balance while keeping an eye on Bob. When he was about ten feet away from Megan’s stepfather, Gray stopped and stood there, gazing at him with a cold, distant stare.

“Well,” he finally said, “as Ricky Ricardo used to say to Lucy—‘You got some ‘splainin’ to do.’”

— 4 —

“I’m sorry,” Bob Ryder said after a long, tense silence during which the only sounds were the rolling surf and the breeze hissing in the crevasses between the rocks. “I was …”

His voice trailed away because his mind was drawing a blank. He was angry at himself for not thinking this through, for not seeing it as the setup it obviously was. The back of his neck was burning; his stomach felt fluttery.

“At the very least, I could write you up for littering,” Detective Gray said. “But unless I’m completely off the mark, here, that looked like it might have been Megan’s missing sneaker. Am I right?”

Bob’s throat was frozen shut, but his mind was racing as he nodded once and then raised his head and stared back at the detective.

“What do you think the odds are?” Gray continued. “What are the chances a sneaker that’s been missing for—how many days now? Four?”

“Five,” Bob corrected him.

“Five days … lost for five days, and here it is, washed up on the rocks. And you just happened to be out here to find it. And then you not take it home or anything, but weigh it down and toss it back into the ocean … Curiouser and curiouser.”

Bob licked his lips, swallowed hard, and took a breath. He was running through any number of excuses. He could run or try to fight with the detective. Kill him if he had to. But the detective’s hand was hovering close to the revolver in his holster, and fighting him hand to hand could easily end badly. The cop was older than he was but obviously in much better shape. So if he ruled out fighting or running, that left just one thing.

He had to bullshit his way out of this.

And that was one thing Bob Ryder thought he was better at than most people.

“I had to do it,” he said, his nervous voice adding to his meekness rather than detracting from it.

“Had to?” Gray echoed, his eyes narrowing with doubt.

“It was … it’s my son … Michael.” Bob’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. There was no way it was originating in his throat, and no way he was saying this. Hell, there was no way he should even be thinking what he was about to say, but what choice did he have?

“What does Mike have to do with this?” Gray asked flatly.

“I think he …” Bob’s voice choked off, and he milked it for all the emotion he could get. After taking a moment to compose his thoughts—to make sure he had this right—he said, “I think he may have done it.”

“Done what?”

Bob couldn’t believe the cop was playing dumb like this. Of course he knew what he meant, but the son of a bitch was going to make him come out and say it, wasn’t he? And since this was the best he could come up with, he had to play this out. His mind was racing as he tried to think through everything he had to say so there would be no loose ends.

“I’m afraid he may have pushed his sister,” Bob said in a broken, strained voice.

Once the words were out of his mouth, there was no taking them back, and Bob felt a sudden rush of empowerment. There was no way he was going to take the rap for what he had done to Megan. And he could easily play the role of distraught parent who was doing anything and everything he could to protect his own son.

“Really?” Gray asked, his voice still low and flat, barely audible above the waves.

There was no way of knowing if the detective believed him even for a second, but Bob was committed, now. He had to take it to the end, whatever it was and no matter the consequences. It tore his heart that he was betraying his son—his own flesh and blood—like this, but what were his options?

Confess and go to jail for the rest of his life?

Not likely.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’m not absolutely sure, but I—he had one of his sister’s sneakers in his room the other day. I caught him hiding it under his bed the day after she—after Megan died. I asked him about it, but he didn’t have a good explanation, and as much as it tormented me even to consider it, I had to suspect that he had … he had more to do with it than he was admitting.”

Wind whipped his face like a cold, stinging lash, and he found it almost impossible to take a deep enough breath. His head was spinning, and bright dots of light spiraled across his vision.

“It’s a tough thing—pretty much impossible for a parent to even consider his child might be a … might be a murderer.”

“I can’t imagine,” Detective Gray said, shaking his head, but there was still a lack of sincerity or conviction in his voice.

“I … I was just out for a walk,” Bob said. “I’ve done that a lot since Megan died … to clear my head and to … to try to let it sink in that she’s really gone. You know, maybe that sneaker didn’t wash up just today. Maybe Mike came out here and threw it into the water, trying to … to get rid of any evidence, you know?”

“I’m trying to piece it together myself,” Gray replied. “But you’re the one I saw throwing it into the water, so I can’t help but wonder why.”

Bob’s breath was jammed in his chest, and he wasn’t sure he could speak, but he was surprised by the strength of his voice when he said, “I did it to protect my son.”

Detective Gray was silent for a long time. Bob didn’t like the way he kept staring at him as though he could see through him and discern the depths of his soul. He felt dirty beneath the detective’s cold, steady stare.

“Well, then,” the detective finally said, and for the first time his voice sounded light and friendly. “The only thing to do is go back to your house and have a talk with your son.”

“I guess so,” was all Bob could manage to say before he turned and started clambering over the rocks with the detective a few paces behind him, no doubt keeping an eye on him, a hand on his revolver.

— 5 —

“Why would he say anything like that?” Megan asked.

She and Abby were in the front entryway of the house, waiting for Detective Gray and Megan’s stepfather to arrive. They had traveled to the house as fast as storm-tossed leaves. In the short time since they had been down on the shore, clouds had blown in and covered the sun.

“Why do you think?” Abby asked.

“Do you really think he’d do something like that? Blame Mikey just to save himself?”

Abby had seen a lot over the last hundred plus years, and yes, she’d seen worse, but she said nothing. They both stepped back when the front door opened, and Megan’s stepfather entered, followed by Detective Gray. Down by the curb, a police cruiser was waiting, engine still running. A short, stocky man neither Abby nor Megan recognized sat behind the steering wheel. Maybe he was the man “Murray” that Gray had mentioned on the beach.

“Hey, Caroline?” Bob shouted as he closed the door behind them.

Megan’s mother entered the hallway from the kitchen. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, looking like she had just finished a crying jag. Abby felt sorrow for her now and even worse for how she was going to feel in a few minutes.

“Is Mikey home?” Bob asked.

“I think he’s upstairs,” Caroline said, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

Megan’s stepfather walked over to the foot of the stairs. Grasping the end of the railing, he leaned forward and shouted, “Hey, Mikey! Come on down here!”

“What’s this all about?” Caroline asked, her face going paler.

“Detective Gray wants to ask Mikey a few questions, is all,” Bob said, his voice snapping like a bullwhip.

The only answer from upstairs was a loud thump, and then the sound of feet scuffing the carpet as Mike walked down the hall to the head of the stairs. He looked down at his father and mother and the detective.

“What is it?” he asked feebly.

Megan glanced at Abby. Her face was a distraught mask when she said, “I wish to God I could talk to him right now and warn him what he’s gonna do.”

Abby didn’t have to ask her who she meant by “he.”

“We’ve tried to get through,” she said. “This is the only way I could think of to make it so they all found out who—what really happened.”

“But what if he gets blamed for it?” Megan asked. The panic rising up inside her was palpable. “What if he, like, goes to jail for something he didn’t do?”

Abby was also concerned. There was no guarantee Detective Gray would realize who the real killer was. Simply finding a sneaker wasn’t going to be enough to convict anyone, including Megan’s stepfather. What if Mike wasn’t tough enough to stand up and defend himself? Abby was beginning to think she might have miscalculated terribly. She should have thought of some other way to reveal Megan’s real killer.

“Detective Gray wants to talk to you,” Megan’s stepfather said curtly.

All eyes were focused on Mike as he started slowly down the stairs.

“This isn’t fair!” Megan shouted, clenching her fists and shaking them wildly. “This isn’t fair!”

The sudden sound of a door slamming shut came from somewhere upstairs, catching everyone by surprise. They all looked upstairs, but no one could have known or guessed that the source of the sound had been Megan’s sudden rush of anger and fear about what was going on.

“Did I do that?” Megan asked Abby.

“I think you might have. Sometimes … if you get really—”

“Can I do it again? Can I make stuff like that happen?”

“I dunno. It’s hard to do, but yes, if you get upset enough, then maybe. You can’t think about it too much. You have to be … detached, but I’m not sure what good it will do.”

“Do you have a window open upstairs?” Caroline asked Mike.

He shook his head in denial, his eyes wide with shock and fear that the detective was here to talk to him. He glanced back and forth between Gray and his father, his body all the while tingling with rising tension.

“I want to ask you about a certain sneaker,” Detective Gray said in a kindly voice. “It’s one that belonged to your sister.”

Mike’s face visibly blanched, and he cast his eyes rapidly back and forth like a trapped animal looking for an escape route, even if it meant chewing his own leg off.

“Wha—what about it?” Mike said.

Megan shifted closer to her brother so she was standing directly behind him. Her arms were waving in a blur as she tried to touch him. She leaned as close as she could to his ear and yelled at him to stand up for himself, but her voice was as empty and hollow as the wind blowing outside the house.

“I met your father out on the rocks today, and I saw him throw a sneaker into the ocean to sink it. When I asked him why, he said he was protecting you.”

“Me?” Mike’s eyes popped wide open; his face creased with concern.

“He said, as terrible as the thought is, he’s afraid you might have had something to do with Megan’s fall … maybe accidentally.”

“No … no way … I didn’t … I wouldn’t … I would never do anything to hurt Megan …”

“Mikey,” Megan’s stepfather said patiently as he moved a little closer to his son. When he put his hand on Mike’s shoulder to reassure him, Abby saw how he flinched.

“If you have anything to say,” Detective Gray continued, “you know it would be best to say it now.”

“No … I didn’t … I never … never—”

His voice choked off as he stared blankly straight ahead and shook his head.

“You bastard! How could you?” Megan’s mother said, turning to her husband. Her face was pinched tightly, and her body was shaking as she gaped at him. “How could you even suggest that Mike would—that he would do anything like that?”

Megan’s stepfather shrugged and held his hand out, palms up, as though it was all out of his hands now, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared at her, his eyes as glazed as small mirrors.

Detective Gray stepped closer to Mike, his eyes softening with sympathy as he said, “Is there anything more you want to say about what happened?”

Mike didn’t say a word.

“Do you remember anything … anything at all that might help us find out what really happened?”

“It was him,” Mike said in a low, trembling voice.

Abby couldn’t believe her ears. She looked from Mike to Megan and then at Mike again, unable to believe what she had just heard.

Did he know?

Had he seen their father out there that day?

How could he have and not said anything until now?

“What’d you say, son?” Detective Gray leaned closer.

Bob’s face drained of blood in an instant, and it was easy for Abby to figure out why. He was trying hard to pretend he hadn’t heard what Mike had just said.

For his part, Mike looked even more like a frightened animal who wanted to bolt but wasn’t able to. His eyes shifted back and forth, and his body was tensed and trembling, like he was ready to make a run for it. His breath came in tiny, hitching gulps that caught in his throat.

“You’d better be very careful what you say next, boy,” Bob said, his voice so low and threatening no one in the room could miss it.

Mike looked at his father with a steady stare. Even though his face was pale with fright, he said it louder now. “I saw him there—” He raised his hand and pointed at his father. “He was out there that day. I saw him.”

Bob flushed with anger as he regarded his son. He looked like he was getting ready to grab him by the throat and rip his head off.

“If you did what I think you did,” Bob said, his voice so tightly controlled it almost broke, “you’d better be very careful what you say next.”

Mike stared at his father and seemed to wither under his steady gaze, but then he clenched his fists and said, “No! I know you did it! I saw you out there!”

Detective Gray shot a look at Bob as if challenging him to contradict the accusation. The men held each other’s gazes until—finally—Bob cracked. His face appeared to be frozen in stunned awe, but then, very gradually, it shifted to an expression of stark horror.

“Bob …?” Caroline said.

Bob looked at his wife but wasn’t able to withstand her steady gaze for long.

Megan looked at Abby with an expression of mixed joy and fear.

“He really did it,” she whispered, and both of the dead girls noticed when Mike reacted. He looked around as if he had heard her—or something. And then, suddenly, he looked up the stairway.

“You were there, and I know what you did,” he said, “and I can prove it.”

“The hell you can!”

Bob made a move as if to grab Mike, but he backed off, his face twisted with resolve when Mike said, “I can so.”

“How would you do that?” Detective Gray asked mildly.

Mike swallowed and then said, “His raincoat … it’s in the closet upstairs.”

“What about it?” Detective Gray asked.

“It’s ripped.” Mike shied away from his father. “I think, when he pushed her off the cliff, she grabbed him and caught his raincoat. She tore the sleeve.”

“Can we have a look at that raincoat?” Detective Gray asked, turning to Megan’s stepfather, who was pale now and trembling. But he braced himself, his face suddenly as rigid as steel.

“Sure, but it don’t prove a thing.”

“What doesn’t?”

“My raincoat … even if the sleeve’s torn … That doesn’t prove a goddamned thing. How could you even suggest that I would …”

“You accused your own son of the murder,” Detective Gray said. He looked at Caroline, who appeared to be sinking deeply into grief and confusion.

“How could you,” she said in a voice close to breaking.

“How could I what?” Bob took a few steps back toward the closed front door. He was licking his lips rapidly, and his hands were shaking as he fumbled with his shirt collar.

“How could you even suggest that Michael would do something like that?”

“I … I didn’t say he did … I just said … I thought it was a— There’s a possibility that he …”

Caroline froze, looking so fragile a sudden gust of wind could have blown her away.

“You did do it,” Megan shouted, and once again Mike reacted as though he had heard her. But Megan’s mother kept speaking. “I believe him. And I know why you did it.”

All the while, Bob was shaking his head as though he was denying accusations only he could hear. The flesh of his face trembled and seethed.

“You did it for the money!”

“No, I—”

Bob kept shaking his head in adamant denial, but no one else in the room believed him.

“For the last year or two, you were always telling me how bad our finances were, and ever since—ever since Megan died, you haven’t mentioned them even once.”

“I had … I was grieving … I was as upset as you.”

“How could you? … My daughter? You … you killed my daughter!”

Unseen, Megan reached out to her mother, her arms drifting in the air like fog that was rapidly dissipating in the sunlight. Tears gleamed like liquid silver in her eyes, and Abby ached with sadness for what she was going through.

“Perhaps you’d come down to the station and answer some questions,” Detective Gray said to Bob. His smooth tone of voice broke the tension in the room as everyone looked at him. Then Bob lowered his head, his shoulders slumped like he was trying to disappear inside himself. And then, ever so slowly, he nodded and let out a low, agonized sigh.

Looking out the windows on either side of the front door, Abby and Megan watched as Detective Gray led Bob down to the waiting cruiser. Neither of the dead girls said a word as they watched Bob get into the back seat. Then Detective Gray swung the door shut, but before he left, he came back to the house. Accompanied by Megan’s mother and brother, they went upstairs to the closet and took out a yellow raincoat. It had a torn left sleeve. Gray carefully placed the raincoat into a large evidence bag and then left without another word.

Abby and Megan watched all of this in utter silence. Abby wanted to tell Megan that she was free now. As painful as it was, they had done what they had to do. Now that her killer had been arrested, she would find true peace.

— 6 —

“I’m gonna miss you,” Megan said.

“And I’ll miss you,” Abby replied.

They were standing on the crest of the hill inside the Old Settlers’ Cemetery, looking down at Mockingbird Bay. It was twilight. Not much moved on this cold autumn evening as blue shadows stretched across the sand. The sea was rough, and waves crashed and roared against the shore. Wind whipped the dead and dying bushes and grass, hissing and howling like souls in pain.

“What do you think will happen … to my stepfather, I mean?” Megan asked.

“He’ll be put on trial and, if he’s convicted, I’d guess they’ll either execute him or send him off to prison for the rest of his life. Either way, it won’t be pleasant for him.”

“I don’t think they execute people in Maine,” Megan said with a shiver. “But if they do … when he dies, do you think I’ll meet him here?”

“You’ll probably be long gone,” Abby said, and even as she spoke, a hint of motion behind Megan drew her attention.

A shadow, deeper than the other shadows, resolved into the shape of a person. Abby knew this wasn’t any ordinary person.

It was a Reaper.

As the figure became more clearly defined against the gathering night, she realized it was the Reaper she considered her friend. A veil of black silk hung down from the inside brim of his slouch hat.

“What about my mother? And Mikey? Is there any way I can—”

Even before she finished her question, Abby shook her head and said, “There’s nothing more you can do, but don’t worry. I’ll watch over them. I promise.”

As painful as it was, this was something Megan was going to have to accept, and the sooner the better. She was leaving behind her mother and brother and everyone else she had known and loved in life. There was no way Abby could know if, after Megan “passed on,” she would be reunited with her loved ones. That was beyond her knowledge or experience. She only did what she had to do here; for the rest, she chose to let the mystery be.

Abby was surprised that Megan hadn’t yet realized that a Reaper was moving up behind her. Her face was downcast. If anything, she looked like a sleepy child. Abby watched with mounting suspense as the Reaper raised one pale, skeletal hand and placed it gently on Megan’s shoulder. Megan reacted instantly. She slumped as her eyes narrowed to mere slits. Then she let out a long, slow gasp that rattled in her chest like her last breath.

“I feel kinda … funny,” she said, her voice becoming a dreamy whisper that was almost lost beneath the sound of the wind swishing through the dead grass.

Abby watched with growing interest as the Reaper moved around so he was standing at Megan’s side. Hooking his arm through hers, he turned and started to lead her away without a word.

“Why won’t you take me?” Abby asked, her voice pleading.

The Reaper stopped, turned, and even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she could feel his gaze penetrating her. Then, ever so subtly, his head downcast, he shook his head from side to side.

“It’s the locket, the key,” Megan said, her voice distant and dreamy. “You have to … find out … what lock … that … key … opens.”

Abby watched silently as Megan and the Reaper started down the slope. About halfway down to the beach, something amazing happened. A glow of bright light suddenly swelled around the Reaper and Megan. It grew steadily brighter until it was like staring into the sun. The figures were soon lost inside the light, and then it faded away, leaving behind a bright blue afterimage. Abby was glad it was the light, not the shadows, that had taken Megan.

— 7 —

“So you really have to go?”

Abby lowered her gaze and nodded.

“But—why? I mean … We could … we could …”

Jim let his words drift away because he had no idea how to finish what he’d started to say. It was foolish bordering on insane to feel what he felt about Abby.

She was dead.

She had been dead for over a hundred years. There was no way—no way in Heaven or on Earth they could be together any more than they were now, and now that she had told him she had to “go away for a while,” he felt utterly bereft.

“How long will you be gone?” he asked. Even now, her figure was growing transparent as she faded away.

“I have no idea. I’m never sure. But when I come back, I’ll look for you. I’ll find you.”

“But what if I—” He swallowed hard, and a burning sensation filled his throat. “What if it’s years from now, or I’ve moved or … or gone off to college or gotten sick or died or something?”

Her figure was fading rapidly now. It wasn’t an illusion. She really was leaving him, and the cold hollowness that thought left inside his chest was almost too painful to bear. Tears rolled from his eyes, carving warm, wet tracks down his face.

“Don’t worry. I’ll find you. We have … we have something holding us together … something bonding us …”

And then she was gone, leaving Jim to stare at the dark wall of his bedroom, blinking his eyes rapidly, forcing more tears to fall.

— 8 —

“Now will you come willing with me, girl?”

Reverend Wheeler’s voice, coming suddenly out of the darkness, startled Abby. She squealed and spun around to see him standing just outside the cemetery gate. She had made it from Jim’s house to the cemetery without hearing any Hell Hounds or having any other indication that he—or anything else—was pursuing her.

But there he was.

Two pinpoints of red glowed like dying embers beneath the shadow of his slouch hat as he glared at her. He extended his left hand to her, but she noticed that he didn’t dare let it pass inside the confines of the cemetery.

“Never,” Abby whispered as the initial jolt of fear gradually subsided.

“Never is a very long time, young lady,” Reverend Wheeler said, his low voice sounding like rocks rumbling down a hillside. “You must realize that sooner or later I will get you and I will force you to confess all of your sins to me and my Master.”

“I know who you serve!” Abby said. She involuntarily backed away from him, her feet scratching across the dead and dying grass. She wanted to deny the rush of guilt and fear his words had made her feel, but on some deep level, she wondered if he was right.

Was it just a matter of time until he claimed her?

Why else would she be trapped here in the Dead Lands all this time when so many other souls she met—like Megan—moved on relatively quickly? Maybe her unfinished business was to go with Reverend Wheeler, no matter where he took her.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Abby said softly, not caring whether he heard her or not. Still feeling the emptiness of loss … of missing both Megan and Jim, she turned and drifted over to her grave. She knew that only after she passed through the earth and lay down inside her coffin would she find at least a modicum of peace.

But that peace would only last until the mockingbird sang again.

Abby

What’s it like being dead?

It’s like … nothing.

I mean, there’s no time, no sense of anything. I guess you could say it’s like sleeping, only even when you’re asleep, you have dreams.

When I’m down there in my grave, I don’t even dream, at least not that I remember.

Maybe I do dream, and I just forget them, but it’s more like … like I close my eyes, and when I open them again, when the mockingbird sings, it’s like no time whatsoever has passed. I could have been down there for a day or fifty years. It’s all the same. It feels as though all I did was blink my eyes, and I’m back in the Dead Lands. No time has passed.

Time’s a weird thing.

Then again, so is being dead.

It’s scary when I think about it, but when it’s happening, it’s not scary at all.

It’s just … nothing.

I don’t know if maybe this is the eternal rest people go to once the Reapers come and take them away or not. Maybe it’s like what I experience, but they never wake up—the mockingbird doesn’t sing for them, so they simply are gone forever.

Then again, there’s a good chance they’re still aware on some plane of existence—like I am in the Dead Lands—only they don’t experience any misery or fear or sadness. Maybe they find themselves in a state of total bliss, if they lived a good life.

And if they lived a not-so-good life?

Maybe there really is Hell where they’re tortured and burned for all eternity. I don’t believe that. I can’t imagine a truly loving, caring God and Creator would do that to his creations. At the very worst, I would think what people who have led bad lives experience is a lack of bliss. An emptiness in their souls. That would be Hell enough, and then maybe—after a certain period of suffering—they, too, experience eternal bliss.

Or maybe it really is oblivion, and once we’re gone we don’t even know we’re gone, and we’re never coming back.

I don’t know.

All I know is that, when the mockingbird sings, I’ll return to the Dead Lands, and when I do, I’ll have to figure out what I have to do next.

The mockingbird will sing again.

The End

Table of Contents

- Copyright
- Mockingbird Bay
- Prolog Busted
- Chapter 1 Awakening
- Chapter 2 Meetings
- Chapter 3 Pursued
- Chapter 4 Vigil
- Chapter 5 Brief Candle
- Chapter 6 Trick of the Eye
- Chapter 7 Funeral
- Chapter 8 Drifting with the Tide
- Chapter 9 12:34
- Chapter 10 Confession
- Chapter 11 Shadow Man
- Chapter 12 E-mails from the Dead
- Chapter 13 A Friend Indeed