Beyond The Grave
Mara Purnhagen
I can't move forward with my life, until I know my demons are confined to the past…Being Charlotte Silver, the daughter of famous paranormal investigators, means my life isn't like that of other teenage girls. Especially after what happened to my parents. Things changed. I missed prom and deferred my big college plans. But I still have my boyfriend, Noah. He's everything I could want—if I can figure out what's up with him.Suddenly Noah is secretive. I fear it has something to do with what happened to us three months ago. The bruise Noah suffered during a paranormal attack has never completely faded. Now I've learned Noah is researching demons. And when he disappears, it's up to me to find him—before something else does.
“What are we doing?” Noah whispered, his lips brushing my ear. I shivered with delight and turned the handle. The door opened, and I pulled Noah inside.
“I’m giving you the tour,” I replied in the same soft whisper. “I thought you might like to see where I take English.”
“But I can’t see anything.” His backpack hit the floor with a soft thud. Then his hands were in my hair as he placed gentle kisses all over my face.
I pushed him against a wall. “Then I’ll describe it for you.” I nuzzled against his neck. “There’s a big desk at the front of the room, and a bunch of smaller desks in the back.” We kissed, and I melted into his warm embrace, overcome by the feeling of being so close to him. Then his lips moved to my neck and he began planting soft kisses there, a sensation I craved. He moved back, but as I leaned in to kiss him again, he pulled away.
“Something’s wrong.”
I thought he meant that someone was walking toward the classroom. I listened, expecting to hear approaching footsteps or voices in the hallway.
“We’re alone,” I assured him. “Everything’s fine.”
“No, we’re not. Someone’s here.”
Beyond the Grave
Mara Purnhagen
www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)
For spending over a decade putting up with thousands of bizarre, inane, and downright frustrating questions, this one is for Joe Purnhagen, who always has the answers I need.
one
I never should have sent my boyfriend to the electric chair. Watching Noah from a monitor in the next room, I felt awful for him. Frayed leather straps restrained his arms. Shackles held his legs in place and, even though his eyes were squeezed shut, I knew he was anxious and uncomfortable.
“Was it really necessary to restrain him?” I asked Shane.
“We’re keeping it authentic,” he replied.
Mr. Pate, the prison historian, scoffed. “Then you shoulda put the blindfold on him like I suggested.”
I ignored him. We’d been Pate’s guests at the Southern State Penitentiary for only three hours, but he’d already managed to completely offend me at least a hundred times. It wasn’t just that he insisted on referring to me as “little lady,” or that he was constantly snorting instead of blowing his nose into a tissue. What bugged me most was that he refused to leave us alone for even a second. He was openly suspicious of me and Shane and Noah, as if he thought we might try to steal something from the nearly barren building. As far as I could tell, the only things left in the abandoned prison were rusty metal bunk-bed frames and hungry rats.
And one antique electric chair.
“How much longer?” I asked Shane.
He glanced at his watch. “A few more minutes should do it.”
On the monitor, Noah swallowed hard. Guilt flared through me and I fidgeted with my bracelet, the one Noah had given me on my birthday. I was the one who had convinced him to come along on this last-minute trip, even though four months ago I’d sworn off ever participating in another investigation. I reasoned that this was not a true investigation, but simply an outing to piece together needed footage. And it was Shane who organized the whole thing.
My family was semifamous because of my parents’ work as paranormal investigators. Mom and Dad spent decades together debunking ghost stories and working under the theory that all hauntings were actually the effects of residual energy manifesting itself in different ways. Their career crossed over into book deals, DVDs and cable-TV specials and made all five of us—Mom, Dad, me, my older sister, Annalise, and our longtime cameraman, Shane—into dependable fixtures during Halloween TV marathons. I thought it would always be that way. It had never occurred to me that the Silver family would change the way we had—suddenly, and soaked in blood.
Four months earlier, Mom had been attacked in our home by a strange entity calling itself the Watcher. The head trauma she’d suffered had left her in a deep coma and doctors had warned us that even if she woke up, she might never be the same. I knew I had moved past the denial stage of grief, but there were still days when it didn’t feel real. It had only been a week earlier that I had spotted a pair of her worn blue slippers tucked under a computer desk in the living room. I had thought of her sliding them on while she worked, and the way they looked as if they were simply waiting for her to return. I had left them where they were.
My injuries from that night had faded, but my memories had not. I often awoke in the middle of the night, my hand throbbing with a phantom pain. I had wallowed in guilt for months, convinced that everything was my fault, including the death of Marcus, the young man the Watcher had possessed. Mine was the last hand to touch him. Now that hand was scarred and Marcus was dead and I felt like a dull photocopy of the person I’d been before it had all happened, someone who was trying to hold on to anything familiar before it shattered into unrecognizable pieces. Because the truth was, I may have stopped the Watcher, but I wasn’t sure if I had destroyed it. I doubted if such a thing could be destroyed, and that thought was enough to make me tremble.
Since the attack, Dad spent most of his time at the care center where Mom had been transferred a month before. He slept on a cot in her room during the week, and came home on weekends. At first, he had said it was a temporary arrangement. But days folded into weeks, and Dad’s computers remained turned off, his files untouched. We all noticed but no one knew what to say, not even Shane, who was like Dad’s brother. I didn’t know what would happen to the Silver Spirits franchise or the hours of video footage that sat, unedited, in our living room.
It was strange to wake up each morning to a quiet house, but even stranger was the absence of anyone sitting at a computer with earphones on, editing footage. There was something so unsettling and somber about those blank computer screens that I tried to avoid the living room completely. It was no longer the heart of our house; instead, it was more like a sort of graveyard, with the monitors serving as tombstones.
One evening, Shane pulled me aside. “I need to complete the DVD your parents were working on before everything happened,” he told me after dinner at Trisha’s apartment. Since their engagement, Shane and Trisha had insisted on hosting a Sunday-night supper every week. I liked it, not just because it gave me a chance to see Noah, but because it provided a rare opportunity to be with Dad, as well.
“Edit the footage,” I told Shane. “Dad won’t care if you come over and use the computers.”
“I need more than that.” Shane downed the last of his red wine—ever since he’d met Trisha, he had given up beer with dinner for a good Cabernet—and looked at me. “I need to go back to that old prison we visited last year. The video I took didn’t come out right. I have to redo it.”
“So redo it.”
“We were supposed to film a reenactment scene. I need Noah to fill in.” He glanced over at Trisha as she set a peach cobbler on the table, then turned back to me. “I need you to convince Noah to help me with this one. He said he’d go only if you were okay with it.”
I refused. There was no way I was dragging my wonderful new boyfriend, the guy who had stood with me during my darkest days and was still by my side, to an old prison where people reported hearing the wails of dying inmates. We’d been through too much, and I wasn’t eager to throw myself again into anything even resembling a paranormal investigation for a long, long time—if ever—and there was nothing Shane could say that would change my mind.
But Trisha could. “I know you’ve been through so much, Charlotte, and the last thing on your mind is stepping into a strange situation,” she said. “But it means the world to Shane. He thinks that if he can complete this DVD, he’ll be doing something for your mom, something she would be proud of.” She lowered her voice. “And he doesn’t want to worry you, but the production company needs the DVD completed before Halloween. Your family is under contract, but Shane doesn’t want your dad to have to deal with it right now.”
The practical importance of fulfilling a contract was one of the business aspects of my family’s work that I was actually familiar with. Growing up I had witnessed my parents pulling all-nighters to get their work turned in. The house would fill with the scent of coffee, Mom and Dad would wear the same baggy sweatpants for days on end, tensions would rise and then, finally, the work would be completed and we would all go out to a fancy dinner to celebrate.
I missed those dinners.
“No pressure,” Trisha said. “But please think about it, okay?”
And I did think about it. I thought about how Shane had been a constant presence in my life, how he would do anything for me. Now I had a chance to do something for him—and for the rest of my family.
Mom had always been in charge of the finances. I didn’t know how much money we earned from DVDs, but I knew it was the most vital source of our livelihood. And while I was sure my parents had a savings account and we weren’t drowning in debt—they were frugal people whose only indulgence was state-of-the-art equipment—I also knew that Mom’s medical bills would be staggering, even with decent insurance. Meeting a deadline meant earning a paycheck, one I was sure we would need.
But I wasn’t entirely comfortable with walking into an abandoned prison, and I suspected that Trisha had no clue that her youngest son would be an integral part of the investigation. I called Beth, my mom’s friend and owner of a shop called Potion, to get her advice. I trusted her and her knowledge about the Watcher.
“Do you think we’ll be in danger if we do this?” I asked her. Part of me hoped she would say yes, that the Watcher was asleep for the moment but if I did this he’d wake up. I didn’t really believe that, though, and if I was truly concerned about rousing a demon, I wouldn’t be conducting my secret late-night experiments on the floor of my bedroom. I realized that I needed Beth to tell me that everything was okay. Because if it wasn’t, I had been putting myself in danger for weeks.
“I honestly believe that you subdued him for a good long while,” she’d assured me. Her voice had a soothing, confident quality that acted like a bandage wrapped around my nervous mind, despite the fact that she had said subdued. Not destroyed or vanquished or incinerated. “This work is a part of your life,” Beth continued. “The longer you stay away from it, the more scared of it you may become. Don’t let the fear chase you, Charlotte. This could be a good thing for you.”
A good thing for me would be to have my mom home, safe and recovering. I could almost hear her voice reciting words she’d spoken ever since I could remember:
Don’t let fear guide you, Charlotte. Don’t let it make your decisions for you.
In the end, I agreed, which was how I had ended up listening to the tired tales of Mr. Wilbur Pate, whose father and grandfather had worked as prison guards at the penitentiary.
I watched the monitor closely for any signs that Noah was in distress. He was alone in the execution chamber, with only a tripod camera stationed in front of him, but it was creepy to think that he sat in a chair in which hundreds of lives had come to their violent ends. I twisted my bracelet, feeling the cool black stones that circled my wrist, and turned to Shane. “We have enough footage,” I said. “Please. Let him out of there.”
“One more minute.”
I narrowed my eyes. “In one more minute, I’m calling your fiancée.”
The threat worked. Shane hurried out of the room, appearing a second later on the screen. I knew he was trying to recreate the execution of a young man, and that with his brown hair and medium build, Noah fit the description, but I wished we had spent a little money and hired an actor. Noah didn’t mind, though. “It’s initiation,” he told me. “I’ll feel like I’m a real member of the team.”
I didn’t have it in me to tell him that there was no more team. Once Mom had been hurt, it was over. But finishing the final DVD was important, and it only required Noah’s presence for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon.
Shane released Noah from the chair and returned to the viewing area with him.
“Noah!” I flung my arms around him, careful to avoid touching his neck, and planted a kiss on his cheek. He cleared his throat and stepped back.
“That was intense,” he said, keeping one arm around me.
Mr. Pate snorted, and I cringed when he loudly swallowed. “You was only in there for ten minutes. Anyone can sit in an ol’ chair for ten minutes.”
“Really?” I challenged. “Could you do it for ten minutes?”
Pate moved his mouth like a cow chewing his cud. “I do believe I could, little lady.”
While Shane strapped Pate in the chair, I turned to Noah. “Was it terrible?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “I can think of better ways to spend an afternoon.”
I tried not to look at the little bruise on Noah’s neck. It was the size of a thumbprint, and midnight-black in color, almost like the stones on my bracelet. I knew how he’d gotten it, but I didn’t understand why, after more than four months, it still remained. The other bruises had faded after a couple weeks, but this one refused to disappear.
“He’s strapped in as tight as I could get it,” Shane announced when he returned from the execution chamber.
“Good,” I muttered. Maybe a few minutes in the chair would strip away some of the tough-guy veneer Mr. Pate had been shoving in our faces. When we’d arrived, he had slapped Shane on the shoulder so hard that he’d stumbled a little.
“We could just leave,” Noah suggested. “Let him spend the night here.”
“Be nice.” Shane adjusted the color on the monitor. “He’s doing me a favor by letting us in here.”
“I think he’s getting more out of it than we are,” I said. “I mean, how often does he get to lead people through his empty building and bore them with stories about his grandfather shooting a rowdy inmate to death?”
Noah shook his head. “That was bad. Did he really have to imitate a death rattle?”
“Look.” Shane pointed to the monitor. Pate was squirming and flexing his fingers.
I scoffed. “It’s only been three minutes.”
Noah peered over my shoulder at the screen, which sent a warm, tingly wave over me. “Ten bucks says he won’t make it a full five minutes.”
“I’ll give him six,” Shane said, his eyes on the monitor.
“You’re both wrong,” I announced. “He’ll be screaming like a baby in thirty seconds.”
Exactly twenty-nine seconds later, Pate was thrashing his head from side to side and straining his arms against the straps. I actually felt a pang of pity for him.
So did Shane. He rushed into the execution chamber and quickly released Pate from the chair.
“Looks like you win the bet,” Noah said. “I owe you ten dollars.”
I smiled at him. “Take me out for pizza and we’ll call it even.”
The door opened. Shane was holding up Pate, who panted as if he’d just participated in a marathon. “I heard voices,” he gasped. Shane helped him to a folding chair, and I handed him a bottle of lukewarm water. He gulped it down noisily.
“There were voices. I heard them.”
“Try to breathe normally,” Shane instructed.
“They were real! You have to believe me!”
“Of course we believe you,” I said. “Tell us what the voices said.”
Pate’s face burned bright red. He wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “They were whispering to me. They said no. Then they said out.” He groaned. “They want us to leave!” He scrambled to his feet, knocking over the metal chair. “I’m getting out of here.”
“We need a few minutes to take down our equipment,” Shane said. We were in no rush. The debunker in me thought that Pate had probably overheard the wind. When the four of us had first entered the execution chamber, I had noticed small cracks in the concrete bricks. When I’d put my hand over one of them I’d felt a trickle of cool air. It wouldn’t take much for a freaked-out imagination to interpret the whistle of wind as a voice. Besides, Pate had heard only two words, and simple ones at that. If he’d heard a sentence, I might reconsider the possibility that irate inmates were demanding his immediate departure.
Pate was still red and sweaty. “I never experienced nothin’ in this place before,” he said, his voice shaky. “I heard the stories but that’s all they were. And then your family—” he pointed a chubby finger at me “—they come in here last year and now there’s voices telling me to get out.”
Noah stepped in front of Pate. “You might want to reconsider pointing at her like that.” His voice was low and deadly serious, almost a growl. I’d never heard him sound like that, as if he was ready to punch someone.
“Okay, okay.” Shane put his hand on Noah’s shoulder. “Sorry, Mr. Pate. I know you’ve had a bad experience. We’ll hurry up and be out of here in five minutes.”
Noah stared hard until Pate looked away. “Five minutes,” he mumbled. “I’ll wait outside.” He lumbered off, his heavy footsteps echoing through the hallway.
We automatically began the task of taking everything down. I knew Shane was upset by Noah’s outburst—he considered it unprofessional to display a temper to anyone outside of the team—but he said nothing.
As Noah took down the tripod in the execution chamber, I asked him what was wrong. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so angry,” I said.
“I’ve had enough of that guy.” He shook his head. “Let’s get this done and get out of here.”
We worked quickly to finish the job. It wasn’t fast enough, though, because Pate began bellowing at us from inside the front door. “Hurry up or I’m locking y’all inside!”
Shane handed me a case of cable and the small monitor. “Why don’t you head out so he knows we’re making progress?”
“Sure.” I lugged the equipment down the dark halls. The prison didn’t scare me, but there was something undeniably creepy about the walls, which were moldy and covered with satanic-themed graffiti. I was happy to reach the front doors and step outside into the bright August afternoon. From the outside, the prison resembled an ancient mansion, complete with stone walls and narrow turrets. A barbed-wire fence enclosed the back of the property, but in the front, a graceful wrought-iron gate greeted visitors. The delicate curves of the iron provided an ironic contrast to what lay behind them.
Pate leaned against a wall and watched me as I slid open the van door and carefully placed the monitor and cables inside. I took my time, hoping Pate would get bored or that Shane and Noah would join me. Neither happened. Instead, Pate ambled over and peered inside the van.
“Fancy,” he remarked. It was clear by his tone that “fancy” was not a compliment.
“The others will be here in a minute.” I touched my bracelet and tried to push back the discomfort I felt at having Pate stand so close to me. He was still breathing hard and obviously did not use mouthwash. Or deodorant.
“Never shoulda let you people in here,” Pate said. I kept my eyes down and pretended I was securing the monitor. “Everything was just fine. Never heard no voices before. But you roused ‘em up, didn’t you? You and all that fancy equipment.”
He moved closer to me and I stepped to the side. “Nothing was roused up, sir.” I kept my voice quiet and tried not to further agitate him.
“Don’t you tell me lies, girl.” I felt his finger jab me in the shoulder and I winced. Where were Noah and Shane? I was two seconds away from kicking this guy in the crotch.
“Mr. Pate, I’m very sorry you thought you heard something in there,” I began.
“I don’t think, girl. I know. Just like I know you got something to do with all this. Your family’s cursed, and a curse attracts the spirits.”
A drop of spittle landed on my cheek when he said “spirits.” I felt my rage grow like a heat inside my chest and gripped the van’s bumper.
“And another thing.” He poked me again. Before he could say anything else, Noah was there, shoving Pate with both hands.
“Don’t touch her!” he yelled.
Pate stumbled backward and landed on the pavement. Shane ran out of the building, his cameras left behind on the front steps. The wide wooden door of the prison was open, but it slowly began to close. As Shane pulled Noah off Pate, who was kicking his legs wildly as he lay on the ground, the door slammed shut, creating a cracking sound that reverberated in the air. Noah and Shane froze and looked at me. Pate scrambled to get on his feet.
The noise hung in the air, an echo that wouldn’t die. I became dizzy and had trouble breathing. I tried to say Noah’s name, but I couldn’t. Black dots swam in front of my eyes, the world around me began to go dark, and the last thing I remembered before passing out was the sensation of falling—and of Noah catching me before I hit the ground.
two
For our final dinner together before Annalise returned to college, I displayed my culinary talents by throwing a bunch of stuff into a bowl. It had been almost a full week since the visit to Pate’s prison, a week I had tried to fill by spending time with my sister, texting Avery at college and struggling to find moments for Noah and me.
“Is that parsley?” Annalise wrinkled her nose. “You’re putting parsley in the salad?”
“It’s green, isn’t it?” I tossed in chopped walnuts, apple wedges and sliced carrots. If it had been sitting in the crisper drawer of the fridge, it was now part of my experimental dish.
A timer went off, and Annalise opened the oven to inspect her lasagna. “A couple more minutes, I think.”
“I’m impressed, you know.” I opened a bag of store-bought rolls. “I never knew you could cook.”
“Mills and I took a couple’s cooking class together last semester.”
I liked my sister’s boyfriend. He’d been so kind to me after Mom’s injury, often staying up with me as I’d sat next to her hospital bed. We had talked a lot over the past few months, and he was starting to feel like family.
Annalise frowned as I arranged the rolls on a plate and shoved them into the microwave. “Maybe we should pop those in the oven,” she suggested.
“No time.” I pointed to the clock. “Everyone will be here soon.”
Our guest list for the evening included Shane, Trisha and Noah. It occurred to me that out of the group, Dad would be the only one who had no idea that I had been having panic attacks.
Four months had passed since I’d witnessed the attack on my parents. Four months, one week and three days. And during that time I’d experienced six panic attacks, each one brought on by the sound of something cracking, each one jamming my mind with the agonizing echo of a metal fire poker smashing my mother’s skull.
The first one had occurred when I was at home by myself. The second time, I’d been grocery shopping with Noah. A little kid had bumped into a display of canned vegetables, and the sound of the cans crashing had caused me to double over. Noah had practically carried me to the car, leaving our shopping cart behind as he’d whispered, “Please be okay, please be okay.”
I understood the cause of the panic attacks, but I had no idea how to stop them. Annalise thought it was a classic case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. She consulted her former roommate, a psychology major, through daily emails and forced me to participate in annoying mental health exercises. I complained about it constantly to my best friend.
“She’s your sister,” Avery said as we sat in her room one day, organizing the things she was going to take with her to college. “She feels helpless and wants to do something for you.
Let her. She’ll feel better and maybe she’ll find something that helps you, too.”
“I had to draw a picture of sadness for her.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, that’s bad. What’d you draw?”
“A crying clown.”
We burst into giggles. It felt good to laugh, especially with Avery. She was going to be leaving soon for college, and I couldn’t bear to think about saying goodbye. It would be another absence to adjust to. We planned to call and email and stay in close touch, but I knew it was easy to make promises like that. Once she started school and her busy new life, would she have time for our long-distance friendship?
Satisfied that my salad was complete, I pulled the steaming rolls from the microwave. Dad walked into the kitchen and clapped his hands together. “Smells great!” I winced at his forced enthusiasm. Without Mom, he was miserable, but he tried to keep up a positive front for everyone. It had to be exhausting to pretend so much.
“It’s all Annalise,” I said, knowing that I was pretending, too.
My sister smiled. “Charlotte made the salad.”
I couldn’t tell if she was trying to warn Dad or give me credit for helping with dinner.
“Shane called,” Dad said. “They’re running a few minutes behind. Trisha got a call from Ryan as they were leaving.”
Ryan was Trisha’s oldest son. He was serving in Afghanistan, and a call from him was a big deal. She hadn’t seen him in over a year, but he was finally coming back this summer. So was Jeff, Trisha’s other son, who was also serving in the military. Trisha was planning her wedding to Shane around her sons’ return so that all three of her kids would be there for the big event. “I don’t care if it rains or snows or the reception hall catches fire,” she told us. “As long as I have Shane and my boys there, it will be perfect.”
Also as long as Mom was there, I wanted to add. It couldn’t be perfect without her. But the doctors had warned us that she might never wake up. Then they spoke to Dad in hushed voices, advising him of the “options.” I knew what that word meant—it meant pulling out the feeding tube and wires that kept Mom alive. It meant giving up and letting her die.
Dad said no. After Mom was transferred to the long-term care facility, he had to endure more kind yet firm speeches from a new team of doctors. They somehow convinced him that if Mom didn’t show any brain activity within the next six months, they would need to “reevaluate the options.” Six months, and there would be no options left. It was a death sentence, like pleasant words wrapped in shiny paper. Mom had until January to get better, even if it was only minor improvement.
For now, our lives were on hold, and that included the wedding. Shane had promised me that. “She’ll be there no matter what,” he’d said after the engagement was announced. “We won’t have the ceremony without her.”
It was a promise I was going to make him keep, although I wondered what he meant by “no matter what.” At first, I thought he meant that she would be there even if we had to push her in a wheelchair. But maybe not. Maybe Shane didn’t think she would come out of the coma. Maybe he thought Mom would be there in spirit, not in person.
“You haven’t given up on her, have you?” I asked him.
The question earned me a look of sad shock. “No,” he said, pulling me into a hug. “I have not given up. And don’t you give up, either. Keep hoping. It’s all we can do.”
Maybe it was all he could do, but I had other plans. Despite my fear of accidentally triggering the Watcher, I was determined to help my mom. I was the reason, the main reason why she was lying in a hospital bed, which meant that I had to try my best to get her out of it.
Annalise checked on her lasagna and turned the heat down on the oven. “I can keep this warm until they get here. Any idea how long that will be?”
“Soon.” Dad peered at my salad. “This is very colorful, Charlotte.”
He sounded apprehensive, but I knew he would like it. Annalise had given me a foolproof job. How could I mess up salad?
“Have you guys given any more thought to your living arrangements?” Annalise asked. She tried to sound casual, but I could hear the worry in her voice.
“I thought we’d settled all that,” Dad said. “Shane will be staying here with Charlotte while I’m gone. In fact, he’s moving out of his apartment next week.”
Annalise busied herself with selecting a salad dressing from the fridge. Her lack of response made it clear that she was not happy with Dad’s decision, a decision he had made weeks ago but one my sister was hoping could be reversed through persistent questions.
It had begun after Mom was transferred to the long-term care facility near Charleston. It was the best place for her to heal and recover, but the distance meant that Dad would need to commute over an hour each way. He decided that he wanted to stay with Mom in her room during the week. Annalise would be able to visit often, as well, and promised that when Dad wasn’t there, she would be.
Then there was me. My plans for the future had changed overnight. I deferred acceptance to college and instead decided to take courses at the local community college. I talked with an admissions officer, who told me as long as I got C’s in my classes, the credits would transfer. I was staying home for at least one more year and filling my schedule with the basics: English 101, Calculus 101, Biology 102. I reasoned that my schedule would let me begin at a university as a sophomore and I could take the interesting electives there. Dad didn’t protest too much when I told him my new college plan. He barely said anything at all.
Annalise, however, had a lot to say. “You can’t stop living!” she cried when I told her about my revised educational plan. “Mom would want you to move forward.”
“I am moving forward.” I appreciated my sister’s concern, even if it seemed a tad too dramatic, but she was beginning to border on the controlling. I was eighteen now. I didn’t need permission from her to live at home. I changed my tactic. “Dad needs me,” I said. “I can take care of the house. Do you really want him to be stressed about that?”
She backed down. “No. No, that’s not what I want.” She sighed. “I worry, though. Dad’s so withdrawn and you’re having panic attacks and if you need me I’ll be hours away.”
“You’ll be a phone call away.”
“It’s not the same.”
It wasn’t, but it was all we had for now. I did not want to move to Charleston, which was Annalise’s first suggestion. So much had happened in such a short amount of time that I decided I would not willingly make any more changes for a while, so when my sister came up with the idea that we should sell the house and relocate to a town closer to the treatment facility, I bristled. So did Dad, and I wondered if it was for the same reason: moving toward Mom meant that we were giving up on her ever getting better. And she had to get better. Although doctors couldn’t tell us when, or how, or anything other than that she was stable, we believed that she was strong enough to come out of it.
“Charlotte and I have no plans to move,” Dad told Annalise now. He looked over at me, and I nodded to show that, yes, I absolutely agreed with him. I wasn’t going anywhere. My sister leaned against the fridge and folded her arms across her chest.
“But this can’t be healthy, living in the same place you were attacked.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Mom wouldn’t want this. She wouldn’t want you to live like this.”
Dad averted his gaze. I knew it was difficult for him to look at her. Annalise looked so much like our mother. They shared the same clear eyes, the same wavy black hair. It was probably harder for him to look at his oldest daughter than it was to look at Mom, pale and motionless in her hospital bed.
“This is her home,” Dad finally said. “This is where we’re going to bring her when she recovers. I’m not leaving.”
I nodded. “Neither am I.”
The doorbell rang, and a moment later Shane’s voice boomed from the foyer. “We’re here!”
We turned to greet our guests with the happy smiles we’d all perfected. I didn’t have to fake mine so much when I saw Noah. While everyone else helped bring food to the table, Noah and I hung behind. “You look great,” he whispered.
I looked down at my jeans and white T-shirt. “I’m not wearing anything special.” Except the bracelet. I always wore that.
“Doesn’t matter. You still look great.”
“If you really want to flatter me, you’ll try my salad.”
He kissed my ear, sending a little shiver down my back. “I’m sure it’s fantastic.”
Dinner was filled with bright conversation about Trisha’s phone call with her son, Annalise’s upcoming semester and the courses she would be taking, and how Noah would be starting school as a senior in a few weeks. I watched as everyone sampled my cuisine, taking careful bites and picking out the random unwanted fruit or vegetable. Noah ate three servings, so I was happy.
Trisha also talked about the wedding. “I know we don’t have a firm date yet, but I want everything to be in order,” she said. “When we have a date that accommodates everyone, I want to move forward with lightning speed.”
I looked at Shane, who nodded. He was keeping his promise.
After everyone left, Dad retreated to the living room to watch TV while Annalise and I washed the dishes. “How do you do it?” she asked. My hands were immersed in soapy water and at first, I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I use the scrubber sponge.” I rinsed a plate and handed it to Annalise to dry. We had a dishwasher, but I actually liked washing dishes sometimes. The warm, bubbly water and simple repetition of the chore relaxed me.
“I’m not talking about dishes.” Annalise sighed. “I mean, how do you live in this house? How do you pass by the dining room every single day and not think about what happened there? I wasn’t even here, and I think about it constantly.”
“I do think about it.” I held a fork to the light so I could make sure I had thoroughly cleaned it, then dumped it back into the hot water for one more rinse. “But if I didn’t live here, I’d still think about it. At least here, I can face it. I’m not running from anything, and I think Mom would be proud of that.” Again, I could almost hear her voice: Don’t let fear make your decisions for you.
“Maybe.” Annalise had been drying the same plate for a while now, rubbing it slowly with the dish towel. I put my hand on hers and she looked up, startled. “I don’t want to leave tomorrow,” she whispered. “If I go, I don’t know how I’ll be able to come back here again.”
“You can come back with Mom.” I hoped she believed me. I wasn’t sure I trusted my own words, but if Annalise did, maybe they could be real.
“At least you’ll be able to drive yourself to school,” she said as she put away the small stack of clean plates.
“You’re not mad about that, are you?” My eighteenth birthday in June had almost completely escaped my mind, the first time I could ever remember not being excited about the day. In fact, when I’d realized it was coming up, I’d cried. It was the first birthday without Mom, and after enduring the torture of graduation without her face in the crowd, I was not ready to tackle another milestone so soon.
Annalise had stepped in and made a sugary pink cake, Trisha had brought over a dozen fat balloons, and Noah had given me the bracelet from Potion. I wasn’t expecting anything from Dad, as he was spending most of his time either asleep or sitting at Mom’s bedside, but he’d surprised me by leading me out of the house and handing me the keys to his car. His gorgeous, shiny silver BMW, the one that I wasn’t allowed to wash, much less drive. But with a quick kiss on my cheek, Dad had announced that it was time I had my own form of transportation. He’d dropped the keys into my hand, told me to drive safely, and was back inside the house before I could squeal with joy.
“I’ve already told you a hundred times,” Annalise said. “I’m not mad about the car. I’m glad you can finally drive yourself around.” She wiped at the wet silverware.
“Then what is it? I know something’s bothering you.”
She glanced toward the living room. The lights were off, with only the blue glow from the TV illuminating the room. “He loved that car. It was a gift from Mom. Why wouldn’t he want to keep it for himself?”
I didn’t know. He had bought a new car the following week, a little black hybrid.
“He needs time,” I said quietly. “We all do.”
“I know.” Annalise put the silverware away. When she turned back around, her eyes were filled with tears. “I worry about you. Both of you.”
I gave my sister a hug. “Well, I worry about you.”
She sniffed and pulled away. “I’ll manage. I have school and my friends and Mills.”
“And I have school and my friends and Noah,” I reminded her.
“But you also have—” she looked around the room “—this. You’re stuck here, where she was hurt. I can remove myself from it. You can’t.”
What I couldn’t make Annalise understand was that I did not want to remove myself from it. Yes, the house held horrible memories, but also good ones, and I couldn’t separate the two. My life was formed by both, and I wasn’t willing to let any of it go.
“I’m going to call you every day,” I told Annalise. “And you’d better answer the phone.”
She hugged me again. “I promise.”
Later, after I was sure that Dad was asleep in his room and Annalise was asleep in hers, I pulled out the box I kept under my bed. Hidden beneath a bunch of wrinkled T-shirts were a few pieces of equipment my parents had used in their paranormal investigations. I turned on the EMF reader first and set it on my nightstand. Then I checked the battery on the digital recorder. Finally, I brought out my thermal imaging camera and turned it on.
“Is anyone here?” I whispered. In my parents’ show, they always called out in a loud, clear voice, but that was to ensure the sound quality of the program. For my purposes, I only needed to be loud enough for the sensitive recorder to pick up my voice. “Can you hear me?”
I waited, as I had nearly every night for weeks. Only one light shone on the EMF reader, the one signaling that it was on.
“I need to know if someone’s here.”
I had been doing this for so long it felt like a sacred ritual. After I could no longer bear the daily visits to Mom’s bedside, I decided that I could do something else to help her, something more powerful than my somber hand-holding. And even though nothing had happened yet, I still believed that I was helping her. I held on to the possibility that the answers I needed could be discovered if only I tried hard enough. Mom had suffered serious injury because of a paranormal entity. With her doctors at a loss for how to help her, I had to find a way they wouldn’t dream of. If the cause of her suffering was paranormal, couldn’t the cure be paranormal, as well?
My work was done in secret and in the dark. Not even Noah knew about it. After what had happened, it would freak everyone out. It freaked me out, at first. What if I contacted the Watcher or something like it? I wasn’t even sure that the thing that had attacked my family was gone. Not even Beth, who knew more about the paranormal than anyone I’d ever met, could tell me that I was safe. She could only say that for now the Watcher was subdued, which made me think of it as being held back, but still struggling to escape.
Something had been after me and I’d stopped it, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t find a way back. It was my worst fear, and a solid reason to stay away from trying to make contact with the paranormal, but my fear was eclipsed by a powerful need to help Mom.
I waited, watching the lights on the meter and wanting so much for all of them to light up, but they didn’t, and I felt defeated because I knew I was just a desperate girl whispering in the dark and asking for something I might never get. But there was still a voice inside me, quiet and insistent, telling me to try one more time. I clutched the EMF reader more tightly in my hand. “Please.”
And something happened. Two things, right at the same time. Three lights on the meter lit up just as my cell phone buzzed on the nightstand. I ignored the phone and stared at the meter, willing it to light up again. Then I heard the tinkle of chimes from my phone alerting me to the fact that someone had left a message.
I stood up and, still holding the EMF reader, grabbed my phone, never once taking my eyes off the lights. I flipped open the phone and listened to Noah’s voice.
“Hey. I thought you might still be up. Call me if you are, okay?”
Four lights flickered this time, and I took out the digital recorder and began speaking. “Is anyone here with me?”
It was how we always began an EVP session. The goal was to ask simple questions, wait for a few silent seconds, and then play back the recording to determine if it had captured an electronic voice phenomenon.
“Can you help me?” The EMF reader was showing only two lights now. I asked a few more questions, and by the time I was done, all signs of activity had vanished. Still, I was happy that after months of trying, it appeared that I had finally reached something.
After attaching headphones to the recorder, I sat back down on the floor and listened to what I had captured.
My first few questions seemed to go unanswered. The highly sensitive device picked up the sound of my own breathing, but not much else. I had been expecting more, even if it was an undecipherable voice, but on the tape I was already asking my final question.
“Can you help me?”
And then, after a few seconds, a high-pitched whisper responded.
I am trying.
three
Annalise returned to Charleston the next morning. She engulfed me in a firm hug and blinked back tears, then turned away before I could see her cry. I watched her car pull away, waving until it turned the corner and disappeared, and then walked down the hill to Avery’s house. I pulled out my key, unlocked the front door and stepped inside. A low whimper greeted me from the top of the stairs.
“It’s just me, Dante,” I called. When Avery’s little dog didn’t appear right away, I sighed and trudged upstairs to find him. He always hid in the same place: underneath Avery’s empty bed.
It had taken only moments for the airy pink room I had spent so much time in to transform into something completely different. Gone were the delicate silver picture frames that used to dot Avery’s dresser. The closet held several dangling hangers and a single formal dress from Homecoming. Even the bookshelf had been stripped of all but a few titles. It wasn’t her room anymore, I thought. It was the space that used to be her room.
I had helped her pack the week before, pulling clothes out of her dresser and stacking books she thought she’d need.
“This should be enough, right?” Avery had surveyed the half-dozen plastic storage bins that sat on her bedroom floor. They’d reminded me of oversize building blocks. “I mean, I’ll be back over Labor Day weekend if I need anything.”
“I don’t know,” I’d said. “I don’t think they have stores in Ohio. You might be in trouble with only—” I pried open the lid closest to me “—twenty pairs of shoes? Wow.”
“I need those.” Avery swatted at my hand. “Besides, it took a lot of work to get them all into one bin, so don’t mess anything up.”
I wished that I could mess everything up. I wished I could make Avery stay here instead of driving off to Ohio for college. I wished I could keep at least some things in my life the same instead of sitting back and watching one more person slip away.
Avery sat on the floor, labeling her bins with a squeaky black marker. “That’s it,” she said. “Last one.” We were quiet for a moment, both of us staring at the containers. Half her life and most of her room was packed inside them. They would be stuffed into the back of her mom’s car and travel six hundred miles north. Six hundred miles away from me.
“Part of me wishes I wasn’t going,” she said. I looked up, surprised. “I mean, what if I have a crazy roommate? What if the classes are completely over my head? I thought I was ready for this, but now that’s it’s almost here …” Her voice trailed off.
I fought the urge to say that her concerns were totally justified and that she should stay home and take the year off. Instead, I forced a smile. “It’s going to be great,” I said. “You have nothing to worry about. And you won’t be alone.”
The day Avery announced her college choice was also the day that Jared revealed that he had been accepted to the same school. He and Avery would be in different dorms, but they would be able to see each other every day.
“You won’t be alone, either,” Avery reminded me. “And with Shane and Trisha getting married, Noah will be like family.”
“So I’m dating a relative? Nice.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Avery pushed a bin off to the side. “He’ll be around more. You can spend time with him.”
“Yeah, but it’s time spent with everyone else, too. I want more alone time with him.”
I couldn’t remember the last time we’d gone out to dinner, just the two of us. Even the simplest moments, like making sandwiches in the kitchen, turned into a group event. Shane would show up or Dad would wander in or Trisha would require my opinion on wedding favors, and whatever conversation Noah and I had been having stalled.
Dante had trotted into the room. He ignored me and immediately went to Avery and curled up in her lap. “What’s going to happen to him?” I asked.
“He’s going to have a rough adjustment.” Avery scratched behind Dante’s ears. “Unless I can convince my very best friend to stop by once in a while and check on him?”
“He hates me.” And I wasn’t too fond of him. We’d reached a strange understanding: he acted as if I didn’t exist and I pretended not to notice.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Avery said. “And once I leave, he’ll be lonely. Mom will be at work all the time, so it’d be nice if you came by to walk him, you know?”
“I didn’t think Dante took walks,” I said. “I thought he ran around in a hamster wheel.”
“Funny.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “Please? For me?”
“That pleading look doesn’t work on me.” I shook my head. “But you’re my best friend, so yes, I’ll do it.”
She clapped her hands together, startling Dante. “But if he bites me it’s over,” I said. “Got that, Dante? I bite back.”
Now I was in the empty room, crouched on my hands and knees in an effort to coax Dante out from beneath the bed. “Come on,” I urged. “One little walk. I promised Avery, okay? Do it for her.”
The mention of his owner’s name caused Dante’s ears to prick up. Finally, he emerged. I gently scooped him up and took him downstairs, where his powder-blue leash dangled from a hook by the front door.
“It’s nice outside,” I told him. “You’ll see.” He gave me an unconvinced look. I was sure he blamed me for Avery leaving, and now he was resigned to putting up with the brief walks and random treats I offered him. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize.
Outside, it was warm but not too hot yet. I slipped on my sunglasses and began walking up the hill, Dante trotting in front of me. The neighborhood slumbered in typical Sunday-morning mode. I let Dante determine our slow pace, which gave me the opportunity to gaze at the houses that made up my familiar street. Each house followed the same nonthreatening neutral color palette. Personal touches included a few cement lawn ornaments or decorative rocks or a basket of flowers.
I liked our neighborhood, even if I didn’t feel as if I completely belonged here. I didn’t know any of my neighbors by name. There was Lady Who Always Sat on Her Porch Talking on Her Cell Phone, Man Who Washed His Car Three Times a Week and Family With Screaming Twin Boys. I wondered who I was to them. Girl Who Walked Best Friend’s Dog? No, they probably knew my face from what had happened inside our house months earlier. Girl Whose Mother Was Attacked.
When we were halfway up the hill, Dante came to an abrupt stop. He sniffed the air, then whimpered.
“What is it? You smell a bigger dog? A squirrel?” He was looking at the street. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I won’t let a squirrel get you.”
Dante responded by crouching down. His eyes were still focused on the street, trained toward the top of the hill, but I didn’t see anything unusual.
“Come on, there’s nothing there.” I tugged at the leash, and Dante whimpered again. “I can see my house from here. If you walk with me, we’ll stop there and I’ll give you a treat.”
As I was debating whether to drag him up the hill or carry him, a car came into view. Sunlight glared off the windshield, so I couldn’t see the driver. The car crawled forward slowly, as if the driver was searching for a particular address and was afraid he’d go too far and miss it. The car stopped in front of my house. A camera emerged from the side window and the driver snapped some pictures.
I angrily scooped up Dante and stomped up the hill. If some guy was going to take pictures of my house, I wanted to know who he was and what he wanted. But as I got closer to the burgundy-colored vehicle, its driver noticed me. Suddenly, the car lurched forward and sped past me. Dante burrowed in my arms as I watched the car reach the bottom of the street, turn around too quickly and speed back up the hill. Its tires squealed as it flew past me. The darkly tinted windows made it impossible to see anything inside, and the space where the license plate should have been was occupied by a paper temporary tag.
It took only a second for the car to vanish. I stood there, petting Dante’s coarse fur in an effort to calm him down. He was shaking as I carried him into my house and placed him gingerly on a kitchen chair while I searched the fridge for a treat that he would like. My own hands were shaking a little as I sifted through the drawer where we kept the cold cuts. What was going on? Maybe it was a curious fan, but if so, would he have sped away as soon as he saw me?
It’s not the Watcher, I told myself. He’s not driving around in a car. Calm down.
“Oh, good. There you are.” Dad walked into the kitchen and tossed a pile of mail onto the counter. He saw the plastic deli bag I’d retrieved from the fridge. “Making a sandwich?”
“Sort of. But it’s not for me.” I motioned toward Dante, who was still curled up in a quivering ball of rattled nerves. “He got scared by a car,” I explained. There was no reason to tell Dad anything. He had enough to worry about, and if the demented driver was simply an embarrassed fan, I would be causing him unnecessary stress.
Dad sat in a chair across from Dante while I placed a pile of smoked turkey on a napkin. “So, I’ve decided to go see Mom,” he said. “I’m leaving in an hour. Can you be ready by then?”
A trip to see Mom took hours. We wouldn’t return until close to midnight. “I start school tomorrow, remember?”
Dad nodded. “Right. Of course. Your first day of college.”
He had forgotten. I placed the meat in front of Dante, who sniffed at it, then began to lick it. “I guess I could go. If you think we can be back by dinner.”
There was no way that would happen, and we both knew it, but I didn’t want Dad to think I was trying to get out of the visit. We were quiet, both of us watching Dante eat as if it were the most interesting event in the world.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Dad asked.
The question felt like a shove to the chest. I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t prepared. “Couple weeks ago. I went with Annalise.”
It had been a brief visit, one that my sister had insisted on. While she made a consistent effort to see Mom twice a week, I often found reasons why I couldn’t go. During the first month after she had been hurt, I went to the hospital every day. I spent hours in her room, feeling the rhythm of the machines that kept her alive. Her heart monitor was a drum, softly tapping out a beat. Nurses checked her vitals every hour. They would smile at me before reaching for Mom’s limp wrist. She was so pale, so still. She would look exactly the same if we laid her in a coffin, I thought.
Days passed, then weeks. The hopeful doctors decided that they’d done all they could and said Mom would be better off in a long-term care facility. Long-term. The suggestion behind the word terrified me. Would she remain in this motionless state for months? Years? Forever? The doctors didn’t know. She had survived the critical first twenty-four hours. Only time would tell, they said. Head trauma took time to heal. But no one could tell us how much time. And after months of minuscule success—her finger twitched once when I held her hand—a part of me gave up.
How long can a person cling to hope before it becomes too much? I wanted to remember Mom as the laughing, determined person she had been, not the helpless body she had become. Seeing her lying in the crisp white bed, the monitors beeping steadily, reminded me that she was not the person I had always known. It hurt. And I was tired of hurting. I wouldn’t give up on her, but it was easier to hold on to hope when I didn’t have to look at her.
“I know it can be difficult,” Dad said, his voice soft. “But I also know that it matters. Us being there matters. I believe that.”
Did he? Before the attack, Dad had never trusted anything that wasn’t based purely in science. When had he transformed? I almost wished that he hadn’t. Everyone was changing without me.
“I’ll go next time,” I said. “I promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.” Dad crossed the room and kissed my forehead. “See you tomorrow, Charlotte.”
“Have a good trip, Dad.”
After he left, I flipped through the mail. A thick white envelope had already been opened. I checked the return address. It was from the insurance company. I stole a glance at the bill enclosed and gasped when I saw the amount due. Dad’s car didn’t cost that much. I resolved to assist Shane more. The looming DVD deadline had to be met.
Dante finished scarfing down his turkey and I walked him back down the hill. Avery’s mom was away for the weekend, so I made sure Dante had fresh water and added some kibble to his dish. Then I took him upstairs and put him on Avery’s bed. He liked to be petted as he fell asleep, a job I hated at first but now found somewhat soothing. As the little dog drifted off into sleep, I looked around at the bare room. Avery had left behind so little. Just pink walls and a depressed pet.
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed her number. It went straight to voice mail, but I didn’t leave a message. Before I allowed myself to plunge deeper into pity, I called Noah. He picked up on the second ring, and before he even said a word, I felt better.
“Rough day?” he asked.
“You could say that.” I told him all about the strange burgundy car. Noah was one of the few people I trusted completely, and he was the only one who knew my biggest secret: I had seen the other side, and that brief experience had triggered the Watcher.
“If you see it again, you let me know, okay?” Noah shifted into protective mode, something he seemed to do a lot lately.
“I will.” I looked out Avery’s window. There wasn’t much of a view, just the side yard and part of her neighbor’s house. “What about you?” I asked. “How was your day?”
“Interesting. I spoke to Jeff.”
“Your brother?” Noah didn’t talk about his older brothers much. I knew that they had both left home as soon as they’d graduated high school and enlisted in the army. Noah rarely saw them.
“Yeah. He called from someplace near Kandahar. I don’t think I’m supposed to know that, though.” He chuckled. “Everything with him is always so top secret.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
He paused. “Our dad.”
Noah had mentioned his father to me only once. He had left the family when Noah was very young and moved to parts unknown, randomly contacting his sons with a card every few years. The last time his father had reached out was with a postcard, sent a week after Noah’s eleventh birthday.
“Why did Jeff want to talk about your dad?” I asked cautiously.
“Because he found Jeff.” He sighed. “He Googled him, can you believe that? Found out about Jeff being in the army and got in touch with him. Jeff was always his favorite.”
“Wow.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Noah’s voice didn’t reveal any clear emotion, but I knew he must be struggling with this new development.
“I’ll tell you something,” he said, and I could hear a fierce determination in his words. “I’ll never be that guy. I’ll never have to search for my kids on a computer, and they won’t ever have to search for me.”
“You’re not him,” I said. “You could never be like that.”
Noah didn’t respond. His silence was a sign that he was angrily mulling things over. “I could come over,” I offered. “We could hang out.”
“Sorry, I have some things to do. Thanks, though.”
It was rare for Noah to not want to get together. He was really upset, and I felt helpless. I didn’t know how to make him feel better, and I hated the idea of him sitting alone with his angry thoughts.
“Maybe later, then. I can swing by for a few—”
“No,” he interrupted. I was taken aback by the force of his refusal, but then he softened. “I appreciate the offer, Charlotte, I do. But I want to be alone, and I have a ton of work to do tonight. I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Sure. Okay.”
We hung up. I remained sitting on Avery’s bed, watching Dante and twisting my bracelet around my wrist. I knew Noah wasn’t mad at me, and there was nothing I could really do for him except give him the space he needed. But he was holding back with me, not telling me what he was feeling or what he was doing, exactly.
Dante whined in his sleep and I reached over to give him a reassuring pat. “Everything’s fine,” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
After all, I thought, there was no place to go. I was settling into limbo, but as long as everyone else was there with me, I would be fine.
I hoped.
four
Like any normal person, I dreaded the first day at a new school. I told myself that this time was different because it was college, but I still felt the uncomfortably familiar clenching of my stomach as I parked the car, glanced over the campus map and gathered up my purse and backpack. I was marching into unfamiliar territory. Again. When was it going to get easier? I could picture myself at eighty, pushing a metal walker across the floral carpeting of a nursing home for the first time and feeling the exact same way I did now.
Better sleep would have helped my nervous mood. I had gone to bed early the night before after spending an exasperating hour working with my secret stash of equipment. My attempts to contact something had been unsuccessful, though, so I’d given up and gone to bed, only to be awakened at two in the morning by a strange sound coming from downstairs.
I had listened to the rumbling noise for a while before figuring out that it was Shane, who could snore loud enough to drown out power tools. If Shane was spending the night on our sofa, it meant that Dad had decided to stay with Mom.
Shane had made me an omelet when I’d woken up. I’d told him about the burgundy car from the day before, and he’d listened with serious interest. “I’ll keep an eye out,” he’d promised. “You let me know if you see it again, okay?”
“Absolutely.” I’d remembered the medical bill from yesterday. “Are you working on the DVD today?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Need help?”
He’d beamed. “That would be great.”
I’d finished my breakfast and headed out for the first day of school. Now I was on campus, trying to locate the Yerian Building on a wrinkled map so I could make it on time for my first class of the day. My first college class, I mentally corrected as I hurried across the crowded walkways. It wasn’t that I was in a rush to get to English 101, but the late-August sun, combined with South Carolina’s thick humidity, was already causing my T-shirt to cling to my back. I hoped the classrooms were equipped with intense air-conditioning.
I was in luck. As soon as I pushed through the glass door of the Yerian Building, I felt air so cold I was sure the school sponsored a penguin breeding program.
The building’s lobby reminded me of a decent hotel. Clusters of beige sofas surrounded wide coffee tables and potted plants too green to be real. I pretended to look for Room 107, but in reality, I was stealthily checking out the other students.
An interesting mix of people roamed the large lobby. Silver-haired women mingled with tattooed guys. A boy about my age nodded as he talked to a man who was old enough to be his grandfather. There were more than a few pregnant women and fortysomething guys. There was no one type, I realized. Everyone was so different that everyone was normal. Including me.
My stomach began to unclench. This was good, I decided. No obnoxious frat boys, no glittery cliques. I could be whoever I wanted to be. It was a clean slate, devoid of rumors or speculation or pity.
Then I spotted a girl near the back of the lobby, gazing out the tall windows. I wouldn’t have noticed her at all, but she was dressed head to toe in sky-blue. She turned her face slightly, and I immediately recognized her.
“Bliss!” My voice echoed throughout the two-story room. A few people turned their heads, and I blushed. I strode over to the windows, trying to appear confident instead of completely mortified.
“Charlotte, hi.” Bliss fidgeted with her purse—a tiny satchel also sky-blue in color—and cleared her throat. “What are you doing here?”
Bliss Reynolds and I did not share a positive history. We’d both spent the previous school year as seniors at Lincoln High School, where she’d worked hard as the school news anchor and I’d edited her stories with Noah. She viewed me as a constant threat to her position as lead anchor, while I saw her as merely annoying. When her grandfather had died in March and she was out of school for a week, I had taken over her job. It wasn’t something I’d wanted to do, but our teacher had insisted. Despite my best efforts to be mediocre, I had won rave reviews from the student body—and jealous anger from Bliss. I had thought she would never let it go, but Bliss had proved to be a better person than I’d given her credit for. After my mother’s injury, she’d stayed late every day to make sure my work got done. And when I’d returned to school two weeks later, she was nothing but nice to me. I almost missed her snarky comments. Almost.
“I’m taking classes here this year,” I told her now. It was crazy how happy I was to see a former classmate, even if it was one I didn’t get along with well.
“Me, too.” She snapped the clasp on her purse. “I was supposed to go out of state, but then my grandfather died, and my mom needs me right now. I’m helping her out and earning some credits here so they’ll transfer next semester, maybe.”
I nodded. “Same with me. Although I’ll probably be here all year.”
“Oh.” Bliss smiled hesitantly. “So, is it a long commute for you?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not at all. We live over on Woodlyn. It’s my grandfather’s house, actually.” She got a kind of faraway look in her eyes.
“We still have all his garden gnomes in the front yard, even though my mom hates them.”
I thought of Mom’s blue slippers sitting under the computer desk. Would she ever wear them again? Or would they remain there forever, a curious monument to remind us of how she used to be?
Bliss and I chatted a little longer. “Maybe we could have lunch sometime,” I suggested. “That is, if the cafeteria here isn’t like the one at Lincoln.”
She laughed. “I already checked it out. Not sure about the hot food, but they have an impressive salad bar.”
“Sounds good. We should do that sometime.”
“Sure.”
I waited for her to suggest a day we could meet, but she didn’t say anything more. She was being polite, I realized, but had no intention of actually hanging out with me.
“It was nice to see you, Bliss.”
She nodded. “See you around, Charlotte.”
We went in opposite directions to our classrooms. I was right on time for my first class, which I enjoyed simply because all I had to do was sit back, listen to the lecture and take notes. It wasn’t high school. There were no late passes or slamming lockers or people whispering rumors to each other about who did what behind the bleachers last Friday. I had entered into a drama-free zone, where everyone was too occupied with real, adult life to worry about the eighteen-year-old girl sitting in the middle of the room. I was wonderfully anonymous, and as long as I completed my work and didn’t bother anyone, I would stay that way.
The only person who knew me was Bliss, and I guessed she was as alone here as I was. And maybe she was reluctant to be friends with a former high school classmate she barely knew, but that could change. I really did want to have lunch with her. Noah was at school every day until three-thirty and Dad was usually with Mom. It would be good not to have to eat alone every single day.
Class ended and I shut my notebook. My momentary good mood had faded with the thought of Dad sitting by Mom’s bedside. He was still asking me when I was going to visit. It would need to be soon—I was running out of valid excuses.
I was typing a quick text to Avery—survived first class, will check on Dante later—when I became aware that someone else was still in the classroom. I glanced to my left, where a tall, lanky guy was gathering up his books. He appeared to be about twenty and was dressed in khaki pants and a white T-shirt. He looked up, and our eyes met.
“Hey.” His voice was deep but friendly. I nodded, put my phone away and checked my schedule.
“Need help?” the guy asked. “Finding your next class, I mean.”
“No, thanks.” I held up my schedule. “There’s a very informative map on the back of this thing.”
“Yeah, well, if you need anything …” His voice trailed off. Was this guy hitting on me? Avery had told me all about the perils a freshman coed faced. She said the upper classmen referred to them as “fresh meat.” Luckily, she had Jared by her side at every party, so she didn’t have to worry too much about being a target for drunk and disorderly frat boys.
“I’m good,” I assured the guy. “Thanks anyways.”
He nodded and walked out of the room. I waited a moment before following. As I approached the door, something on the floor caught my eye. It was a business card. A very familiar one. I knelt down and picked it up. Potion was typed across the cream-colored front in swirly purple letters.
“Weird.” Potion was a store I knew well, but it was located about an hour away. It seemed strange that Beth’s business card had found its way here, to my classroom.
I flipped the card over, hoping to find a message, but it was blank. Had the too-helpful guy dropped it? Or did it belong to someone else? It was an odd coincidence.
When I returned home after my day of classes, I found Trisha sitting at the kitchen counter with over a dozen plates arranged in front of her. On each plate sat a single piece of cake.
“I was planning on having an apple,” I said, pulling up a stool. “But this looks good, too.”
Trisha gave me a weary smile. “I’m trying to decide on the wedding cake.” She glanced toward the living room and raised her voice. “But someone is refusing to help me even though it’s his wedding, too!”
I heard a chair push back. Shane appeared in the doorway a moment later. “I told you, I’m not a cake person. Whatever you decide will be fine with me.”
“We’re supposed to be doing this together!” Trisha seemed genuinely upset. “We need to make a decision.”
I hated to see Trisha stressed, and not just because she was Noah’s mother and Shane’s fiancée. She had been a comforting presence in my life after the attack, handling everything we were too numb to remember. She had answered our phone—which never seemed to stop ringing—responded to an avalanche of email messages, and still found time to make dinner for everyone. She had stepped in long after the initial wave of concerned friends and neighbors had returned to their lives, leaving behind half-eaten casseroles and promises to check in on us.
When Shane had announced that he had proposed and Trisha held out her hand to reveal a single sparkly diamond, it was the first time in months that everyone in my family felt a real moment of happiness. Annalise and I hugged her, Dad shook Shane’s hand, and we all sipped champagne from coffee mugs because we didn’t have wineglasses. The wedding preparations had begun the very next day, with Trisha bringing over a stack of thick bridal magazines that she and Annalise flipped through, circling everything they thought was pretty or elegant or festive.
Noah had rolled his eyes. “She’s gone insane,” he’d told me as we watched a movie in the next room. “She’s already picked out my cummerbund.”
I had giggled, and he had pointed a finger at me. “She’s picking out a dress for you, so don’t laugh.”
Terrifying visions of puffy taffeta had filled my mind as I heard Annalise squeal over a veil. I had stopped giggling.
I understood Trisha’s enthusiasm—she had eloped with Noah’s father at age eighteen wearing jeans and a T-shirt—but I didn’t understand the rush to get everything done. They had months and months before the big day, a date picked because it would coincide with Ryan’s leave from the army, but also because it would allow time for Mom to heal.
I turned my attention back to the slabs of wedding cake. “How about this? Trish and I will narrow the cakes down to three. Then you can pick your favorite.”
Shane beamed. “Great! That okay with you, hon?”
Trisha considered it, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would work.”
Shane gave me a thumbs-up and went back to editing footage.
“Where’s my dad?” I asked Trisha.
She handed me a fork. “Taking a nap. Shane is supposed to wake him before dinner.”
I wanted to tell him all about my first day at school, but it could wait.
“So, I think we should take a bite from each piece and rate them on a scale of one to ten.” Trish pulled out a notepad. “I’ll keep score.”
We spent the next half hour stuffing ourselves with the sweet samples. We agreed that the slices covered with fondant were out. They looked nice, but neither one of us could stomach the fondant, which was a tasteless, rubbery skin stretched across a thin layer of frosting. We also agreed to eliminate chocolate and anything with a fruity filling. Finally we had it down to three samples and called Shane in to taste.
Trisha watched her fiancée with anxious eyes. She had a favorite and was hoping it would be his, as well. Shane took his time, and I couldn’t decide if he was torturing us or really trying to take the task seriously. He put down his fork.
“This one.” He held up the remains of a white slice.
Trisha squealed. “That’s my favorite, too!” She jumped up from her chair and hugged him, then grabbed her phone to call the bakery.
Shane smiled at me. “Thanks, kid. I owe you one.”
“Yeah, well, I owe you about a thousand.” I looked at the kitchen clock. It was after three. “Will you tell Trish I’ll pick up Noah from school?” I grabbed my keys and purse off the counter. “We’ll see you for dinner and maybe we can work on the DVD afterwards.”
“Sounds good. Do you have a minute, though? I need to talk to you about something.”
I glanced at the clock again. “Sure. I have a minute.” I sat back down and braced myself for an onslaught of wedding details.
“I got a call today,” Shane began. “You remember Pate?” “The prison guy?”
“Yeah. His lawyer contacted me. Seems our favorite prison historian is suffering from emotional distress since our visit and is demanding compensation.”
“Great. A lawsuit.” It had happened before, and usually didn’t go anywhere. People thought we were loaded and they were looking for easy money. “Can’t we threaten to sue him for menacing me?”
Shane nodded. “That’s my plan. I’m hoping to put an end to this before it gets off the ground.” He paused. “I haven’t mentioned any of this to your dad.”
“Good. He doesn’t need the stress.”
“There’s something else, Charlotte. Pate claims that there’s been damage done to the prison since we visited. He says he saw our van in the area last night.”
“He’s lying!”
“Yeah, I know. But he’s not letting go. Promise me you won’t go anywhere near the place.”
“No problem,” I said, getting up from the table. “I have no intention to ever return there.”
“Noah’s been talking about it, though. If he wants to swing by there, talk him out of it, okay?”
“Of course.” I thought Shane had misinterpreted something. There was no way Noah would want to drive an hour to gaze at the creepy old prison. “Do you think that burgundy car I saw had something to do with Pate?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do. Maybe he hired a private investigator.”
“What a creep.”
Shane followed me to the front door. “Drive carefully.” He planted a quick kiss on my forehead.
As I got into my car, I thought about how Shane would make a great dad. Then I wondered if that was going to happen. Trisha already had three sons. Would she want another one? I shook my head and backed out of the driveway. It was too much change to digest.
I was able to get to Lincoln High before the final bell rang, which meant traffic wasn’t crazy yet. I parked across the street and stood next to my car. Ripples of heat danced on the street. The final bell rang from within the school building, and almost immediately, students flooded the parking lot. I watched them, the way they walked in groups and laughed. It made me a little envious. I had been one of them a few months earlier. This place had belonged to me. Now I was an alumnus, a word that made me sound older than I felt.
After a few minutes I spotted Noah. He was talking to a boy I recognized from last year’s AV class. Noah pointed to one of the back doors and the boy nodded. They were probably planning on taking footage the next day for the school news, and Noah was explaining where he wanted the camera.
As Noah was talking, another boy rushed past him, toward the bus line. His huge backpack knocked into Noah’s shoulder. Noah stumbled slightly, then reached out and grabbed the boy by his backpack.
“What’s your problem?” Noah yelled so loudly that I could hear him from across the street. People stopped and turned to look. The boy, who seemed like a typical nervous freshman, glanced around, confused.
“I’m late for my bus,” he stammered.
“So you thought it would be okay to knock into people?” Noah was now gripping the front of the boy’s shirt. “I’m sorry.”
A teacher rushed over. “What’s going on?” she demanded.
Noah released the boy. “Nothing. He’s late for his bus.”
The boy ran for the bus line. Noah said something to his AV partner, then began walking in my direction. He hadn’t seen me yet. I watched him, thinking that he looked different somehow. His face was lined with anger. And there was something else, something that wasn’t right, but I couldn’t identify it. He looked around.
“Noah!” I waved. “Over here!”
He saw me and smiled. Just like that, the anger disappeared. He looked perfectly normal as he strode toward me.
“Hey!” He kissed me softly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“What happened back there?”
“Back where?” He looked over his shoulder. “Something happened?”
I was completely confused. “You almost got into a fight.”
He frowned. “That was nothing.”
“You were yelling.” The only other times I had heard Noah yell was when my family was being attacked and when Pate had gotten in my face. He was one of the most laid-back guys I’d ever met, someone who was comfortable with who he was. He didn’t take unintentional bumps personally, and he definitely didn’t become enraged over them.
Until now.
He opened the passenger door. “Let’s get out of here. It’s too hot.”
I got in and turned on the ignition. A lukewarm gust of air-conditioning blew at my face. I sat there, letting a long stream of cars drive past.
“You okay?” Noah asked.
“I don’t like seeing you so angry over something so stupid,” I said. “It’s not like you.”
“Charlotte, it was no big deal. I wasn’t even that mad.”
“You seemed mad. I thought you were going to punch that kid.”
Noah laughed. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I think you read too much into what you saw. Seriously, it was nothing.” He took my hand in his. “You know me. I’m not that way.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe I’d seen it wrong. There were so many people wandering around. But my instincts told me that wasn’t it. I glanced at the bruise on Noah’s neck, the constant reminder that he had been touched by evil. Had some of that evil seeped through him? It seemed ridiculous, but it was an idea I couldn’t get past.
I reined myself in before I could concoct any more wild concepts. This was Noah. Getting frustrated by a clumsy kid was not evil. It was human. Still, I hated to see him riled up, and I didn’t like the way he was dismissing the incident as if it was nothing.
“I heard you yell. I could hear you all the way across the street.”
He kissed my hand. “I did yell, you’re right. I was irritated is all. It’s been a long day and that kid’s backpack must’ve weighed a hundred pounds. It really hurt my shoulder.” He pulled the neck of his T-shirt down a little to reveal a red mark forming on his skin. “Great,” he muttered. “That’s gonna bruise.”
I automatically looked at his neck again.
“Does it hurt?” My concern over his outburst had morphed into concern over his shoulder.
“It’s sore.” He smiled. “But I know how you can make it better.”
I returned his smile. “We have two hours until dinner. Where do you want to go?” “You decide.”
I wanted to be alone with Noah. Someplace cool, with lots of shade, but quiet, as well. An oasis away from everyone else.
“I know a place,” I said as I put the car in Drive. “It’s crowded, but no one will say a word to us. It’s perfect.”
five
On the evening of my eighteenth birthday I sat behind the wheel of my car, the big present that wasn’t quite new but just as nice, while Noah sat in the passenger seat. We watched the June sun as it sank behind the trees, Noah’s arm draped over my shoulder. After the final sliver of sun had melted into a dark puddle over the hill, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver box wrapped in white ribbon.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
I kissed his cheek and reached for the box, but he stopped me. “Before you open your gift, I need to tell you the story behind it.”
I sat back against the soft leather of the seat and waited. Noah seemed nervous, as if he was afraid he might use the wrong words.
“I heard a story once. I think my dad told it to me, but I can’t be sure,” he began, then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. A long time ago, there was a group of Apache warriors. They were attacked by a military settlement. Most of the Apaches were killed right away, but there were a few survivors.” He shifted in his seat. “And instead of letting themselves be captured or killed by others, these survivors chose to jump off a cliff.”
“This isn’t exactly a happy story,” I said.
“No, it’s not.” Noah offered me a rueful smile. “But there’s a point, I promise.” He looked at the box in his hands. “Everyone who had loved the warriors—their family and friends—spent a month mourning the loss. And their grief was so real and so pure that God preserved their tears inside special stones.” He placed the box in my hand. “For you.”
I untied the ribbon and took off the lid and there, sitting in a pillow of tissue paper, was a circle of shiny black stones. I picked up the bracelet, marveling at how each stone was different from the others. They were not perfectly round. Each held its own strange shape, but they were silky smooth under my fingers. “I love it.”
“They’re called Apache tears. And the best part—” Noah gently took the bracelet from me. He flicked on the overhead light in the car and held the bracelet up to the light. I could look through the stones, to the very heart of each one, where I could see a single clear tear. “It’s a promise,” Noah said as he fastened the bracelet around my wrist. “I will never make you cry.”
I felt my eyes water. “I think that’s a promise you may have just broken.”
He laughed. “Okay, then. How about this? I will never be the source of unhappy tears. Only good ones.”
And we kissed under the dim light for what seemed like hours. His mouth was warm and his hands even warmer as they circled my back and pressed me closer to him. We were breathing in sync, I realized with happiness. I wondered if we could keep it up forever.
Now I touched the bracelet lightly as Noah and I headed toward a familiar place so that we could be alone.
“We’re here,” I announced.
I had always loved cemeteries. Whereas some people automatically associated the places with rotting corpses and despairing ghosts, I saw them as quiet, peaceful islands slipped inside the forgotten corners of every busy city.
I knew from listening to my dad’s lectures that for centuries, cemeteries were used as parks. Pathways were constructed to be wide enough for horse-drawn carriages to move through, and families would often picnic next to the stones of their deceased relatives. It was considered respectful to lay flowers before the grave and then stay a while to enjoy the afternoon. Now people assumed you were a morbid freak if you mentioned spending a few hours in the company of the dead.
Noah didn’t think that way. When I suggested we spend our precious alone time at a tiny local cemetery, he’d cheerfully agreed. We’d both been there months before and knew the caretaker, Mr. Kitsman. After parking the car we went to his house and rang the bell, but he wasn’t home, so we crossed his backyard and climbed the dozen stone steps that led to the entrance. Just beyond a weathered iron gate, surrounded by slouching trees, were a couple dozen old headstones, their names and dates almost unreadable. But I knew their names.
Noah spread out his jacket on the grass and sat down. I sat with my back to his chest. “You make a nice chair.” I sighed happily.
He kissed the top of my head. “You make a nice everything.”
I settled into him. I could feel his heart beating beneath his shirt. We talked about our days and I told him about seeing Bliss.
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good, actually. I like knowing at least one other person there.”
Noah ran his hand over the back of my head, letting his fingers sift slowly through my hair. I closed my eyes, relaxing at the sensation. We were removed from noisy traffic and hectic wedding plans and crowded school campuses. It was just him and me, and I felt certain I could spend the night like this, warm and calm.
We talked about school and how Mr. Morley had asked Noah to train a new group of freshman boys about to maintain the cameras. Noah mentioned that his computer needed to be replaced soon and that his mom was hinting that she might get him a car before the wedding.
“Which would be great, because then you wouldn’t have to work as my chauffeur all the time.”
“I like being your chauffeur,” I said. “It’s nice to be needed.”
He buried his face in my hair. “I need you for other things.”
I laughed. “A new car would be great. As long as you don’t drive out to the old prison.”
Noah froze. “What are you talking about?” He pulled away so he could look me in the eyes. “Why would I go back to the prison?”
“It’s something Shane said.” I told him about Pate’s potential lawsuit and how Pate was claiming he’d spotted the van and that someone had damaged the interior of the prison.
“I don’t know how he can say that the inside was damaged,” I said. “It was pretty bad to begin with. But he thinks one of us is behind it.” I nudged him. “So where were you on Saturday night?” I asked jokingly.
But Noah didn’t respond right away. “I don’t know,” he said softly. He pulled away from me even more and ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, I was at home, but I woke up at three in the morning. I was standing in the living room.”
“You were sleepwalking? Has that ever happened before?”
“No, not that I remember.” He looked down at the ground. “I keep waking up feeling exhausted, like I haven’t slept at all.”
I felt a rush of concern and placed my hand on his arm. “When did this start happening?”
“A few nights after … you know.”
Noah and I never talked about the night we were attacked. We saw the same things: my dad thrown across the room, my mother struck on the head so hard she nearly died. He had tried to help, but the thing that called itself the Watcher had grabbed Noah by the throat and lifted him from the floor.
The permanent bruise, the sleepwalking—what had the Watcher done to Noah? Again, I made myself stop. A little sleepwalking wasn’t a catastrophe. His interrupted rest was probably the result of stress, not demonic possession. I was looking for problems that didn’t exist. In fact, I decided, the only real problem was me. The past year had been crazy. Maybe I’d gotten used to drama. Maybe my instincts were not as sharp because I had seen too much.
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He wrapped his arms around me. “Just stay here with me for a little while.”
We listened to the birds and the distant traffic. I put my ear to his chest so I could hear his heart beating. I wondered if my heart was thumping in time to his. It felt like it.
“Any more panic attacks?” he asked, breaking the comfortable silence.
“Not since the prison.” I sighed. “Pate was so rattled. He was sure I’d caused something to happen.”
Noah squeezed me. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“What if he was right? I’ve caused other things to happen.”
Noah turned toward me. “None of it was your fault. You didn’t choose it.”
That was true, but it didn’t mean much. I might not have chosen what had happened to my family, but it had still happened because of me. I could not escape that one terrible, simple truth. I didn’t contradict Noah, though. We’d had this discussion before, and I knew he worried about me. I didn’t want to add to that worry, so I stayed quiet and enjoyed our moment together.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said.
“Earlier?”
“The guy at school. I shouldn’t have let him get to me.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
There was no excuse for his sudden aggression. But this was Noah. He was allowed to make a mistake. I didn’t want to dwell on his odd outburst. He was sorry, and that’s what mattered most.
“We have to get back soon,” I murmured. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”
“Let them wait.” Noah kissed me softly. “There are more important things.”
THERE WERE MORE important things. And the most important one was to help my mom. That night, after Dad had retreated to his room, I reached under my bed and pulled out the box of paranormal supplies I kept there. I would not give up, I vowed. I could make something happen if I invested my energy and concentrated hard enough. As I retrieved the tools I wanted to use, my bracelet clinked against them. I carefully unclasped it and set it on my nightstand.
I was turning on the K2 EMF reader when my cell phone buzzed. It was Annalise.
“You’re up late,” I said, glancing at the bedside clock. It was past midnight.
“I figured you’d be up.” My sister yawned. “I wanted to hear all about your first day at college.”
I filled her in quickly, having regurgitated the boring details to Dad and Shane and Trisha over dinner earlier. Then I had endured endless wedding talk, a topic that I was beyond being sick of. I’d wondered how Trisha could even make all these plans and decisions when no date had been set. I couldn’t listen to one more conversation about the pros and cons of blowing bubbles instead of throwing confetti at the happy couple after they recited their vows.
While I talked to Annalise, I kept my eyes on the EMF reader. One green light showed that it was operational, and I was hoping at least one more would illuminate. I thought I saw a second light flicker.
“Sounds nice,” Annalise said. “So, have you been to see Mom yet?”
So that’s why she was really calling. I should have known it was a trap. “Not yet.”
“But you’ll go soon, right? You promised.”
“Yes, I’ll go soon.”
Annalise picked up on the irritation in my voice. “I’m not trying to nag,” she said. “But I think it would be good—for both of you.”
It would also be good for both of us if I could get back to work. True spiritual help might be waiting for the right time to intercede, and chatting about school with my sister was holding me back from finding a possible answer.
“I said I would and I meant it.” I was tired of the conversation.
“Okay. You promised, and that’s enough for me. I’ll let you go. Good night, Charlotte.”
“‘Night, Annalise.”
I returned to the EMF reader, convinced that I had seen a second light blink. I stared at the gray box, focused on seeing another bulb come to life.
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