What Gifts She Carried Read online

  “She did,” Tram said, marching past me. “Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

  “No.” Ms. Hansen looked from him to what she aimed the rubber hose at and shook her head. “Nothing. Who could’ve brought someone else back from the dead?”

  Tram stopped in front of the cage then looked over his shoulder at me. The thin line of his lips prickled goose bumps over my skin. The answer wasn’t hidden behind the cage at the end of this tunnel. Someone else was bringing the dead back to life. Someone else could bring back Mom again.

  A surge of heat through my gut propelled me forward. The air charged with the weight of glowing blue eyes that waited for me. The hairs along my neck lifted. Dirt rained down in showers, running in rivers down my cheeks. The last time they saw me, they’d leaned over my grave, watching me die as dirt fell from above. Like it was doing now. A tremor shook through my shoulders, but I stiffened my arms to stop it.

  Before I reached the cage, my demand came tumbling out, “Who’s raising the dead?”

  One’s bright eyes locked on mine from her dismembered head on the floor of the cage. Red hair fell in limp pieces over her bone white skin and snaked across the dirt on the ground. The black abyss of her mouth slumped open, her chin propping up her head so she looked skyward. Her body stood behind the head like she’d been expecting me. Scraps of gray clothing hung from her scrawny frame. Dark power seemed to radiate off her, filling up the entire cage. Somehow the cell looked much too small, even for her wasted body.

  I risked a glance behind her, at the crumpled body of Two on the ground. Her eyes were almost closed; just a thin slice of blue blazed from them. Her mouth had wilted into a wrinkled, black oval. She was nearly dead again, I guessed, courtesy of Ica at the graveyard battle.

  “Who was it?” I asked. “Whisper it to me. Possess me if you have to, just tell me.”

  Tram stepped up beside me and put a hand on my elbow. “She can’t. All her power is contained behind the roots.”

  “But she knows.” She had to. She and Gretchen and Gretchen’s cult had all been scooped from the same pile of crazy. No more dead people could come back. Mom couldn’t come back again. I linked my fingertips over the roots in the cage and stepped closer. “Tell me.”

  A pale hand zipped out and caught me by the chin. Cold fingers clawed at my mouth and wrenched it open with iron strength.

  Tram lunged forward. “Let her go,” he shouted. Roots tightened over the slits in the wall, cuffing over her wrists and loosening her grip.

  I jerked backward and spit out the rotten taste of Sorceressi fingers. Blood pounded to my ears so quickly, it rushed red across my vision. I leaped toward the floor of the cage, snagged a chunk of One’s hair, and yanked. Her head beat into the door, but not hard enough. Tram and Ms. Hansen were already dragging me away, though.

  “Tell me who it is,” I yelled.

  She opened her mouth wider, like she was grinning, mocking me, but no hiss came out.

  My turn. I tightened my hands into fists and let loose a hiss. Her arms scraped backward through the roots holding them inside the cage wall. Black fluid oozed from the cuts along her gray skin. Her head, which now rocked on its side so her cheek pressed to the dirt, glared up at me with eyes flaring with rage.

  But she wouldn’t talk. Even if we set her free, she still wouldn’t. Why would she? She would rather kill me than tell me all her secrets.

  “We’re leaving.” Tram took my arm and nodded to Ms. Hansen. “Keep me posted.”

  “Of course, Our Trammeler.” She settled herself next to the flashlight and adjusted the rubber hose in her hand while she cast worried glances in my direction.

  Tram led me away in silence, his shoulders stiff, mouth set in a grim line. I wished he would say something to drown out the splatters of dirt peppering my head and shoulders.

  If I opened my mouth, it would all be empty words: We’ll find out who’s doing this. No one else will come back from the dead. Everything will be okay.

  Bullshit.

  Chapter 9

  Thump.

  A sunflower field bobbed in gliding waves around my hips. Their brilliant yellow matched the sun in a clear blue sky, but the daylight didn’t blind me. I drank in its warmth until my stomach felt full.

  A light breeze weaved whispers through the leaves and petals, so close to words, but I still couldn’t understand. I tilted my head to listen while my hair played across my face.

  Thump-thump.

  Clouds swirled gray through the sky. The wind kicked up, slapping happy sunflowers against Mom’s gravestone at my feet. I knew this place, or this mishmash of places, and I didn’t want to be at any of them anymore, in my dreams or otherwise.

  Mom and I always went to the sunflower patch when I was younger, and I loved it until the day I got lost. When I met the twisted face of the scarecrow, my scream alerted everyone who had ears. Mom, panicked and out of breath when she found me, promised never to take me back there.

  Thump. Thud.

  Why was I dreaming about that? And what was that sound? I blinked my eyes open and stared into darkness. Carpet fibers stabbed into my back. I raised a hesitant hand, and when it touched something solid, I smothered my sharp inhale with my other one. My heart slammed into the floor.

  I remembered crawling into Darby’s bed last night after I’d crept through my window, and I sort of remembered falling out or being kicked out. But why hide under the bed? Was this some kind of weird, protective thing my subconscious wanted to experiment with? Or had my mind been so damaged from being buried alive that I needed to reenact it every night to remind myself I’d survived? Or was this how I escaped the nightmares that would haunt me otherwise? I had no idea.

  I dragged my fingers down my shirt until they ripped me a hole and I could breathe semi-easy again. God, I was messed up.

  My ears on high alert, I scooted myself out. Halfway there, I stopped, waiting for the sounds to come again. Sunlight zigzagged across my fingers. The color reminded me of scarecrows and sunflowers, so I curled my hand away from it.

  Something creaked from above. Darby’s bed. Soft snores eased some of the tension from my body, and I matched my breaths with each of hers.

  My messed up brain must have dreamed those sounds. I sure wished my gut agreed with that conclusion, but I didn’t hear anything strange now.

  I pulled myself into a sitting position and tucked my chin over her mattress. A couple broken crayons had somehow slipped themselves under her shoulder. Her lips pushed out in a pout, as though whatever she dreamed about didn’t have mermaids and rainbows in it either. I planted a soft kiss on her cheek then crept out the door to my bedroom.

  Dirt smudged the wall under my window where I’d slid myself back inside last night. My clothes I’d worn lay in a wrinkled bundle on the floor. They looked as if I’d painted them with two coats of extra-gritty brown. How did Tram always look so spotless? Did Whaty-Whats sell...? Oh, right. They didn’t sell anything anymore.

  After a trip to the bathroom, I slammed right into Dad in the hallway. “Ahh,” I whisper-shouted. “What are you doing just standing here?”

  He tilted his head to the ceiling and put a finger to his lips. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Like ...I don’t know,” he said. “Squirrels, maybe.”

  If anyone was a professional weird sound hearer, it was me. But I didn’t hear anything right then. Unless my dream hadn’t been a dream, and I really did hear something.

  “You think it’s squirrels? Not spiders?” Because what if he was wrong and it was a thousand more spiders? Or a giant granny twin one?

  Dad folded me into his side, probably at the shake in my voice. “Spiders don’t make a lot of sound, honey.”

  They did if they were enormous. What if it was up there? I pressed my face into Dad’s t-shirt and squeezed my eyes closed. Whatever it was, I knew at some point I would have to climb up there and see for myself. Sooner rather than later.


  “I’ll call someone. Hopefully they can come out right away,” Dad said and rubbed a hand over his chin, pulling his entire face into a frown. “Can you get your sister up?’

  “Yeah.”

  He disappeared into the bathroom, leaving my mind alone to whirl. Maybe it was just squirrels up there. Four legs were way better than eight. But what if it was something else entirely? I was sure it had everything to do with me because of the cascade of prickles down my back. Squirrels or not, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Not anymore.

  I turned and knocked on Darby’s door. When she didn’t answer, half of me peered inside so only half of me might get rejected if she didn’t want me in there. I tried to make my face look as though I hadn’t just been sleeping under her bed. Whatever that looked like.

  “Hey. You awake?” I asked.

  Sunlight slanted through the cracks in her blinds and striped yellow bars over her purple mermaid pillow. She blinked up at the ceiling. “No.”

  “No?” I dodged to the window and tightened the blinds over the bed to block the glare. “Then why are your eyes open and your mouth is moving?”

  She yawned and rolled away from me. “I’m really tired. I want to go back to sleep.”

  Probably because of all the trips to the bathroom she’d taken the night before. According to Callum, that was the only thing that had happened while he’d stalked my house. Just repeated trips to pee or to the kitchen for water.

  “Tough cookies.” I untucked her from the blanket burrito and pried the third Before Merlin’s Beard book out of her grip. “You have school, and I have places to go.”

  “Like school?” The blankets she kept tugging up to her chin muffled her voice.

  “Sure,” I said absently. Eventually. I plucked her glasses from the bedside table and yanked the sheets back. A dozen more broken crayons lay scattered around her feet. “Darby, you have to stop coloring in bed.”

  “Uh-huh.” Half-moons darkened the area under her eyes. She really did look tired.

  “You feel okay?” I asked.

  She shrugged, and her knobby shoulder slipped free from her nightgown. She quickly adjusted it back into place.

  “Well, hold still so I don’t stab your eye out.”

  When her glasses were safely perched on her nose, she met my gaze. “If you did stab my eye out, it would roll around on the floor like a tough cookie,” she said.

  I pulled her into a sitting position. “Exactly like a tough cookie.”

  “Tough cookies hurt my teeth. I don’t like them.”

  “Fair enough.” I rooted through her closet until I found a pair of jeans and her favorite Books Are My Oxygen t-shirt. “No tough cookies will enter this house or your mouth or roll around with your eyeballs on the floor.”

  Darby gave a mix between a sigh and a chuckle. “I’m really tired.”

  I studied the small space between her bed and the floor with a sigh. “Me, too.”

  IF I WAS REALLY GOING to do this, I needed to hurry. But every time I neared the video store that was just down the street from Heartland Cemetery, dread spiked my heartbeat and froze my legs. I had to swerve my bike into parked cars so I wouldn’t topple over. And that was just from seeing the video store.

  The thought of visiting Mom again inched me closer, though. I could see her smiling face inside the picture of her gravestone, talk to her, ask her questions, and while she may not be able to answer me except with a white card, I knew she would be listening. She might as well be hugging me for all the comfort that offered.

  That, and the relentless creep of the sun and the eternal eight o’clock school bell urged me forward.

  I drifted past the video store. The empty flagpoles that lined the inside of the graveyard’s gates clanged a steady warning. My handlebars wavered under my trembling grip. I buried my fingernails into the rubber and concentrated on keeping the bike upright.

  Gravestones behind the chain fence appeared from the corner of my eye. Deep shudders rolled up and down my skin. Everything inside me screamed to turn around without even a glance back, but I had to ignore that urge. Too many questions needed answered. Besides, Tram was right. I’d survived absolute terror before. This simple visit to a graveyard would seem like a roll in the park, along with Darby’s eyes and some tough cookies. I could do this.

  My legs disagreed with each wobbly step to the gate. I straightened my spine to mimic the steel poles barring me from going inside and then took the ax I’d stolen from my backpack.

  The brand new padlock glinted in the sun. I’d entered the graveyard before pre-business hours but never broken and entered. But I didn’t have time to climb the fence again and monkey around in trees to get in. With glances over both shoulders, I tightened my grip on the handle. Then I let the ax loose. Metal clashed against metal, and the broken lock dropped at my feet. The graveyard gates creaked open, an invitation I didn’t know if I wanted to take.

  Back on my bike again, the rocky path inside bumped air into my lungs. The graveyard looked fresh and clean, not like a major battle to the death had happened here just days before. Tram had said he’d brought back all the greenery inside the Trinity, but who brought back the rest of it? Like Sarah’s and my yard? Would the questions ever stop? Probably not.

  I savored the sweet taste of spring and breathed as much of it in as I could. As long as One and Two were below Tram’s roots, as long as Ica was trapped inside her tree, as long as Mom stayed put, as long I could breathe all the air I wanted, I could do this. That was a lot of ‘as long as’s’, but I had the right to a long list of requirements.

  I let my bike coast me along the path toward Mom’s grave. Seeing her tucked inside her burrito would give me the strength I needed to push farther into the graveyard.

  New grass had been rolled over her grave. If I didn’t know any better, I would say she had been sleeping underneath her soft green blanket the whole time. I stopped my bike and squeezed my eyes shut until I was sure those memories wouldn’t overwhelm me.

  Mom, I ESP’d to her while I eased myself off my bike. It’s me. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come see you, but...well, you know why I haven’t come.

  I locked eyes with her happy ones set in the picture in her gravestone. Sunlight caught the edges of the photo, throwing an ethereal glow across her face.

  Do you know who’s bringing everything back to life? Is it the same person bringing all of the grass and everything back?

  I kneeled at her side and searched the ground for a white card that might contain an answer to at least one of my questions. On the side of her headstone rested a wreath made of leaves, and underneath it, twists of grass gripped something white.

  Baby book, the card read. I switched two of them. I traced the scrawled letters, trying to memorize their curves as if that might help me understand the woman who wrote them. She wanted me to look in my baby book? Or someone else’s if she’d switched them? But why would she do that?

  Up the path, a crumpled old beer can scraped over the rocks in a clumsy roll. Tram usually kept the graveyard in pristine condition, but since he was out patrolling the streets for Gretchen’s cult, he probably didn’t have much time now to keep it litter-free. He needed someone like Jo, but I wouldn’t even allow her to say the word graveyard anymore, let alone come here. As the wind picked up, the beer can swept past.

  Hidden behind my sunglasses, I squinted in the direction of the sun and stood.

  Your notes are the only tie with you I have left. Please keep sending them. However you do that. Is it some form of written Trammeler Sorceress telepathy or something? I thought what I was doing, speaking to you like this in my head, made me some kind of lunatic, but...if it works...sign me up for the loony bin. A faint smile tugged over my lips. Don’t go anywhere, okay? I’ll be back.

  Keeping my gaze centered on my boots, I concentrated on putting one in front of the other. Nausea rumbled my insides, but I didn’t slow down. Not until I felt something dark towering over me
.

  I snapped my head up and came face to face with Ica’s tree. My breath hitched, and I stumbled back.

  Her dead trunk leaned out over...over my grave. I swallowed the bile climbing up my throat. Sweat leaked down my sides. I twisted my hands around the wooden handle while I reminded myself that I was the one with the ax.

  She looked bigger than I remembered, though I tried to fog that memory from my brain. Black smoke coiled from in and around the large hole carved inside the trunk, darkening the sky between her bare, twisted branches, and wound over the curves of the three tattoo singed into her bark.

  Two of her spidery arms had plunged into the earth where she’d tried to snatch me from inside the grave. Burnt bark now covered them. There wasn’t any trace of a hole below her that led to the bathroom at Whaty-Whats. It had likely been filled in.

  If I came any closer to her gaping black mouth, she might swoop down and swallow me whole. I shivered as a sharp wind gusted from behind her tree and whistled through the jagged branches. It sounded like screaming.

  “Scream all you want, Ica,” I warned. “But you’re staying here.”

  Another blast of wind shrieked. Its strength whipped over my face, tilting my sunglasses, and tossed through my hair. A swipe of the ax would really make her sing, but I didn’t know what that would do to her. Another hole in her bark might help her escape somehow.

  Tram had said that he’d purposefully left her tree dead and smoking inside the Trinity. If the tree was dead, it wouldn’t yield to her and it would keep her inside.

  I raked my hair from my face and righted my sunglasses then circled around her. But something wet and sticky smacked my cheek. Did Tree Ica just hawk a loogie at me?

  “Oh,” I said, my voice shaking through gritted teeth. “You’re such a bitch.” I brushed it away and flicked my hand in disgust, but stopped. Blood smudged my skin, and for once, it wasn’t mine.