Call Me Grim (25 page)

I nod, lift my balled fist to the door, and pause. What am I supposed to say to this woman? I’ve never met her in my life. She’s going to think I’m insane, or worse, that I’m playing a really cruel prank on her. My fist loosens and drops to my side, and I turn away to think.

“Libbi, please.” Aaron grabs my arm. “You asked me last night why I did this job for so many years. Why I didn’t just get out of it the first time a teen was scheduled to die. Well, it’s because of her. I stayed to watch over my little sister. It’s the least I could do, after all I’ve done.”

Aaron releases his grip on my arm, but the urgency in his voice keeps me captive. “Sara is the reason I saved your life. She’s why I offered you my job and why I have to die. It’s the only way I can talk to her, Libbi, to talk her out of it. She’s a suicide, an unscheduled death. I don’t have twenty-four hours before her death to talk to her, like I do with scheduled deaths. I have to wait until she’s dead. Then it’s too late.”

He takes my hand again, his eyes pleading with me. “Help me talk to her. Please? I can’t do it without you.”

I know what he says is true. I can see it in the concerned wrinkle of his brow and the way he fidgets with the last button on his shirt. Everything Aaron did this week led to this moment. He saved my life, not because he wants to die, but because he wants to talk to his suicidal sister. To save her from the Blackness.

Like I want to save Kyle from the Blackness.

“I promised to help you yesterday, Aaron.” I rap my knuckles against the door and the sound echoes through the house. “When will you learn that I do what I say I’ll do?”

The wrinkle disappears from Aaron’s brow and he smiles.

“Thank you,” he says.

The front door inches open revealing a vertical stripe of the darkened interior. A silver security chain pulls taut across the divide and, below that, the cold steel of a double-barreled shotgun aimed at my chest.

“Who are you and how did you get onto my property?” The voice of an older woman drifts through the opening. The owner of the voice remains hidden. All I can see of her are her hands gripping the gun and the glow of her soul radiating from behind the door.

“Um, my name is—” I begin, but I have to stop to clear my throat. I can feel her staring at me through the peephole in the door. “My name is Libbi Piper. I’m from town. It’s really important I talk to you, Miss Shepherd.”

“How did you get in here?” The gun jabs forward. I take a step back and bump into Aaron’s chest.

“She can’t kill you,” Aaron whispers in my ear. “Your death is postponed, remember?”

“Is there a break in my barbed wire or something?” Sara continues from behind the door. “You’re too clean to have tunneled under the wall.”

“And, knowing Sara, the gun’s probably not even loaded,” Aaron says.

“Probably?” I ask him.

“Probably, what?” Sara pokes the gun at me again. “The barbed wire’s broken?”

“No, the barbed wire’s fine,” I say. “I’ll explain how I got in and why I’m here, if you put the gun away. Okay?”

“What? Do you think I’m stupid?” The glow of her soul shifts and the gun slides toward me a few more inches.

“No, but I bet you’re curious about what happened to your brother, Aaron.”

The barrel drops, but only a fractional amount, then it snaps back up and she aims it between my eyes.

“You go away now,” she seethes. “I’m not interested in your silly tricks and games.”

I lean back and Aaron grasps my shoulders, his fingers dig into my skin. “She won’t hurt you, Libbi. Be confident. Tell her you know where I went after her parents died.”

I straighten my posture and smooth down my shirt. He’s right; she can’t hurt me if I’m prepared. I may have left a bruise or two on Aaron when I punched him without warning, but he was able to jump off a bridge without a bungee cord and survived. His death is postponed and, as the future Carroll Falls Grim Reaper, my death is too. She can’t hurt me.

“It’s not a trick or a game, Sara.” I step closer to her and the gun, which is now only inches from my forehead. “I can tell you anything you need to know. I even know where Aaron went after your parents died.”

“Stop talking about Aaron like you knew him! You’re all of what? Seventeen? He died forty years ago.”

She thrusts the barrel of the gun forward with enough force to at least leave a lump on my forehead, but I’m ready for it. I let the barrel slide through the center of my forehead, just as I let Sara’s gate and the guardrail slide through my body when I walked through them.

“Holy God!” Sara gasps and the shotgun clatters to the ground at her feet. I reach down, yank it the rest of the way through the door and throw it into the bushes next to the rainbow steps. I know my death is postponed, but it just makes me feel better to know the gun is far from Sara’s reach.

“Oh, great!” Aaron throws up his hands. “Way to ease her into the idea. Why not just walk through the door then?”

“What was I supposed to do? Let her brain me?”

“How did you do that?” Sara whispers from the other side of the door. “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend,” I say, trying to regain my composure. “And you’re right. I didn’t know your brother forty years ago. I know him now. He’s here with me.”

“That’s impossible,” she says, but the top of her head and one blue eye peeks from the dark space between the door and the doorjamb and searches the porch. “Are you some cruel magician here to torture me or something?”

“No,” I say. “I’m just a normal girl.”

“I doubt that.” She narrows her visible eye and scans me from head to toe. “My gun just went through your head.”

“Well, I may be able to do a few things, but deep down I’m the same as you.” I hold my hands out, palms toward her in a nothing-to-hide gesture, hoping she understands I’m harmless. “Please, let us in. Aaron has to talk to you.”

“He has to talk to me, huh? Well, if Aaron’s here with you, where is he? I don’t see him.”

“I’m right here, Sara,” Aaron says as the invisible-to-visible crackling sound fills the air beside me.

“Oh!” Sara stumbles back. A thump and then something glass crashes to the floor. She leaps away from the scattered shards of whatever she knocked over and into my direct line of view. I catch my first glimpse of Sara’s face.

Her graying, black braid swings forward as her wide eyes, the same faded blue as Aaron’s, lock on him. But I can’t assess any other similarities because other than her hair and eyes, her features are hidden. From the bridge of her nose to the tip of her chin, her glowing soul has broken away and exposed a black, pulsing river of sludge that makes Kyle’s mark look like a beauty mark in comparison.

“This can’t be happening,” she says. “You’re dead.” The goop moves with the motion of her mouth, but I can’t see her lips. It’s like she’s wearing an evil, oily veil.

“Maybe you should sit down, Sara. You look like you might pass out.” Aaron, no longer concerned with an invite, walks through the door and the fastened security chain and rushes to his sister’s side.

I enter the house behind him, and even though it’s not the best time, my eyes scan the paintings that completely cover the walls. Aaron said he thinks I’m talented, but compared to his sister I’m an amateur. Amazing. Sara’s work is amazing.

Sara scoots away before Aaron can touch her and her eyes dart between us. She backs down the hallway, her hand on the wall for support. When the backs of her legs hit the sofa in the middle of her sun-drenched living room, she stops.

“I must be dreaming.” She sits on the arm of the couch and rubs her eyes. “This has to be some screwed up trick of my overactive psyche.”

“It’s not a dream.” Aaron glides to her side. “Do you want to know how you can tell?”

She turns to him but doesn’t answer. At least she’s not trying to run away.

“Libbi threw your shotgun into the bushes. Also, you broke the vase Aunt Millie gave you for Christmas last year. If this is a dream, when you wake up, the gun will be back in the corner next to the door, where it always is, and the vase won’t be broken. Right? So there’s your proof.”

Sara searches Aaron’s face. She wants to believe him, but I see doubt in the deep wrinkles of her forehead and the sharp scrutiny of her eyes.

“All I ask is that you listen and believe me for now,” Aaron says. “You can decide if it’s all a dream later. Will you do that for me?”

Sara watches him for a moment, then she nods. Tears glisten in her dark eyelashes.

“Libbi? Could you step outside? I’d like to talk to my sister in private.” Aaron takes my hand and leads me to the massive sliding glass door that takes up most of the living room wall. He unlocks the door and yanks it open.

“Good luck.” I squeeze his fingers once, reassuringly, and step onto the large, wooden deck. He leans out and gives me a soft peck on the cheek.

“Thank you,” he says in my ear, “for everything.” He slides the door closed and pulls the slated blinds over the windows, cutting off my view of the living room.

I turn from the house, close my eyes, and lean my back against the glass. The soft tones of Sara’s voice seep through the window, but I can’t quite make out what she’s saying. Not that I’m trying to listen or anything. Then I hear Aaron and my eyes pop open. His voice is too clear to be coming through the glass of the sliding door. There must be a window open somewhere.

I spin around and search the back of the house. The hushed sound of their voices drifts from the open kitchen window set into the weathered flagstone. The deck’s floorboards creak as I inch my way to the window. I get up on tiptoe and peek over the windowsill.

It’s a clear shot. Thanks to Sara’s open floor plan, I can see the whole house.

Sara sits on the arm of the sofa looking up at Aaron in disbelief. He stands next to her, his hands loose at his sides.

I shouldn’t watch this. Aaron wanted privacy and I’m violating that. I push back from the window.

But if I return to my spot by the sliding glass door, I might never know what happened to the Shepherds and how Aaron is involved. I might never know why Mrs. Lutz is marked and why Aaron feels responsible. He’ll never tell me and Mrs. Lutz doesn’t know.

It may be awful of me, but there is no way I’m moving from this window. I have to hear what Aaron has to say.

“You’re so young.” Sara lifts her hand and touches Aaron’s stubbly cheek with her fingertips. “Where have you been?”

“Ever since you moved back to Carroll Falls, I’ve lived here, in this house, with you.” Aaron covers her hand on his cheek with his. She gasps and pulls away, like he burned her.

Aaron lives here? He said he lives close to Jumpers’ Bridge. I turn away from the window and scan the view from the deck. The green-painted back of Jumpers’ Bridge curves over the top of the tree line like a monster breaking the surface of a lake. I can’t see the river or the waterfall through the foliage, but I can imagine in the winter, when the leaves have fallen, the view is spectacular.

“You’ve been haunting me?” Sara says.

“No.” Aaron chuckles softly. “I’ve been watching over you.”

But Sara continues on as if she didn’t hear him. “I guess a haunting makes sense. You must be angry for what I did to you.” Tears shimmer and spill over her eyelids, but I can’t follow the trails they make because they slip under the black mark and disappear. “I didn’t know he would kill you, Aaron. I would have told him the truth. I would have told him I did it.”

“I’m not dead,” Aaron says, but Sara shakes her head.

“You may not realize it, but you are. Only ghosts could stay seventeen for forty years. Only ghosts can walk through solid doors.” Her voice trembles as she studies her folded hands. “A few weeks ago, Margie told me what her father did to you. Before then, I always figured you ran away. I’d have fantasies of you lounging on a beach somewhere with a drink with one of those tiny umbrellas in it.” She laughs hollowly then looks up at him.

“I don’t know if you’ll remember this, since you think you’re still alive,” Sara continues, “but you told me to tell the police you did it if they ever got suspicious. I didn’t want to tell Margie’s father that, but he was so frightening. He asked all of these questions and I had the murder weapon hidden in the back of the closet, right behind me, and I panicked. At that moment, with that man—that
police
man—looming over me, I didn’t know what to say or do, so I said what you told me to say. I said you did it.”

Sara buries her face in her hands and sobs, her back heaving with each soggy breath. “Oh God, Aaron, I’m so, so, sorry. It’s my fault you’re dead. I killed my father and told Margie’s father you did it. He thought you killed them both, and he went after you and he killed you too.”

“And that’s why you want to kill yourself, isn’t it? Because of what Margie told you about her father?” Aaron places his hand on her quivering shoulder. Her head snaps up and she gawps at him. “I know what you have planned. I’ve been here all along, watching you prepare. I read your suicide note. But you have no reason to kill yourself, Sara. You did nothing wrong and I’m not dead. If I were dead, would you feel this?” Aaron grabs Sara’s hand and squeezes. “Would you have been able to touch my cheek earlier? I’m not dead. I know what Margie thinks happened, but she’s wrong. Margie’s father didn’t kill me. And you didn’t kill your father.” He closes his eyes and bows his head. “I did.”

Sara stares at him. I can’t see her mouth through the sludge of her mark, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s hanging open in astonishment. I know my mouth is. I was convinced she had killed them both, nine-year-old kid or not, and Aaron had felt responsible for not stopping it.

“No, Aaron.” She shakes her head slowly. “Don’t you remember? By the time you and Margie showed up, Mom was barely hanging on and Dad was already dead. I hit him over the head with my snow globe to get him to stop hitting her.”

“I do remember. I remember everything about that night, but you don’t know the whole story. And neither does Margie.” Aaron kneels in front of his younger sister and takes her hands, like a boy about to propose to a much older woman. “Do you remember when I went to Jumpers’ Bridge with a bunch of my friends, about a week before the night they died?”