Apparition (4 page)

“Your dinner’s still in the oven,” she says, sounding almost friendly, and she walks away.

As soon as I say hello, I know something isn’t right.

“Hello, Amelia?” The voice is slow and gravelly and deep, like the voice of a weary old cowboy from a Hollywood movie. It isn’t Mr. Chambers.

“Yes?”

“Amelia, I’m sorry I had to lie. I was afraid you wouldn’t take a call from a stranger. I was at the funeral earlier today. I … I think you saw me.”

Somehow I know it’s the man on the sidewalk. Should I just hang up?

“My name is Morris Dyson,” he continues. “I’m a writer. I write a column for the local paper. Mostly short history pieces.”

The name sounds familiar. He pauses and I’m wondering what I should do. I don’t want to talk to this guy.

“I just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all. It’s not for print. It’s not for an article.” There’s a long pause. “I have a personal interest.”

“Well, I really can’t talk right now. Sorry.” And before I know it, I’ve hung up. I’m totally surprised I did that. It’s not like me.

Immediately the phone rings again, and I suddenly realize where I’ve seen him before. I answer it.

“Amelia?” He starts speaking before I even say hello, talking faster. “I’m sorry but I think something very strange happened to your friend Matthew.” He pauses. I’m holding my breath. “And I don’t think the police are going to figure out what it was.”

“You were at my mother’s funeral too. I remember you standing at the back of the church.”

He almost stutters. “I … yes … I knew your mother … I did.”

“I don’t understand why you’re calling me.”

“If you think about it, you probably do.… You know why I’m calling you.”

All I can think about is hanging up again, but then he asks me, “Aren’t you curious about what
D-O-T
means?”

“Sorry?”

“
D-O-T
. Dot. I saw it in the police report.”

“The carving in Matthew’s desk? I don’t know anything about that.”

“But I’ve heard you and Matthew were close.”

“Obviously not
that
close.”

“Why do you say that?”

I hesitate. “Because he was off to meet some girl that night.”

“Do you really believe that?”

My throat constricts. My eyes sting. No, I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. But all I can say is “I don’t know.”

“Well, did you think he was suicidal? Did he seem depressed?”

Of course not. Not Matthew. “I always thought he was a happy enough person, whatever that means.” But what do I know? Not much, it seems.

“You know what I think? I think that if he’d had a secret girlfriend, you’d have been suspicious before Saturday. I think that if he’d been a suicide risk, you might have sensed something was
wrong. Amelia, something’s not right here, and I want to figure out what really happened.”

“Why?”

“Because … his isn’t the first strange death to take place in that barn.”

My stomach sinks. I swear I don’t want to know, but I hear myself ask, “Who else?”

“Do you know Hank Telford, the farmer? His son, Paul, was my best friend. Back in March
1980
, he died in that barn. He was nineteen years old. They said it was suicide, but I never bought it. So you might say I’m on a personal quest. I think there’s something going on in there. Something paranormal.”

I feel a sensation like cold water is creeping up the back of my head. “Why are you telling me this? What do you want from me?”

“I know you’re afraid, Amelia. I think it’s because you know something—maybe more than you realize.”

“I don’t know anything, and I have to go. I’m sorry.”

I hang up, shut the door and sit down on my bed before my shaky legs give way. He doesn’t call back, but I can still hear his voice over my pounding heart.
There’s something going on in there
.

T
he leaves are red and yellow and orange but soon they’ll be gone, leaving black skeleton branches against the grey clouds. The apple orchards look best in fall. All bare, twisted and tortured. Makes you wonder if Tim Burton grew up in Grey County.

The news that the police think Matthew committed suicide was a big relief to a lot of people. At first. That meant there was no insane killer out there. The rest of us were safe. But after a week or so, people began saying it didn’t make sense. Not Matthew. He was a pretty cheerful guy. He got on with everyone well enough. He seemed to like his parents. He didn’t seem like the type.

But everyone talks about the possibility anyway. In some places teenage suicide is an epidemic, they say. One of the leading causes of death among young men. Some people think that if you talk about one suicide, you’ll encourage others to follow suit. Like they do it out of boredom or something. Well, not everyone wants to live all the time. I don’t know, but I think adults don’t take wanting to be dead very seriously. Not unless it’s close to home.

Our school had an assembly on Monday. They brought in a counsellor to talk to us about the dangers of keeping emotional problems bottled up inside until you crack under the pressure and think death is your only escape. She talked for an hour about all the horrible things that can make us want to end our lives. An hour of her and I felt like
I
was going to crack. She encouraged us to open up and talk to a responsible adult about our painful little secrets, like sexual abuse, bullying, domestic violence, drug problems or drinking, and homosexuality.

Sure. Look what happened to me when I told Joyce about seeing Mom’s ghost. It only freaked her out.

The counsellor got really pumped talking about kids who commit suicide because they’re afraid of being gay. After that, there were rumours that Matthew was gay and was afraid to tell his strict, religious parents. I had a pretty strong hunch that wasn’t true, but I kept it to myself. The rumour lasted only a couple of days. Then there was a shift, and kids started wondering if he’d just gone psycho. Maybe he was hearing voices. Maybe he thought the Devil had told him to kill himself. Explains the pitchfork, for sure. But the Matthew I knew didn’t kill himself.

A week or so after the assembly, I woke up from a bad night’s sleep and decided to visit the town cemetery. It just seemed like something I should do again. It’d been a while.

I walked over after school, to the south end of town, at the top of the hill. There are about a dozen steps up from the sidewalk to the wrought-iron entrance gate. You can see the Sound from the highest point. You can almost see Georgian Bay. It’s a beautiful place, really. I could never figure out why the movies make cemeteries look scary. They’ve always felt sad and beautiful to me. Cemeteries are just there so the people who’ve been left behind have a nice place to hang out.

The first thing I did was find my mother’s grave. It looked fine, but I should have brought flowers. She loved flowers. Sometimes I think it was her flower garden that kept her alive for so long after they told her the cancer was terminal. Even when she was too sick to do anything else, she’d sit on a lawn chair in the back garden, wrapped up in a blanket. Every once in a while, she would get to her feet and shuffle over to the flower bed and pull out a weed that had caught her eye. As if flowers alone could make life worth living. It must piss her off, how we’ve let the garden go.

There were only two gravesites where the soil looked freshly turned, and one of them had
MATTHEW JAMES SORENSON
carved into the headstone. There were lots of flowers. Some were already dark and wilted, but some were fresh and colourful. Looking at the darker soil in front of the gravestone, I tried to imagine the casket six feet under me. Then I tried to imagine something inside the casket. I couldn’t, so I gave up and took a wander around, heading for an older section of the cemetery where the stones looked much more weather-worn, mossy and even cracked. They’re my favourites.

I walked slowly through the rows, reading names and dates. The oldest gravestones were from the late
1800S
. Most of the people buried there died in their sixties or seventies, but there were also a number of babies and small children. I looked for teenagers among the stones but I only found one girl. She died in
1932
, at sixteen, same age as me. There was a separate area for local soldiers at the other end of the cemetery, and I was willing to bet there were some teenage boys over there. But in this section, where people died upstairs in their beds or suddenly in the cornfield or wrapped in a blanket by the fire in the kitchen, they seem to be either really old or really young.

Dr. Krantz had worried that I was suicidal, just because I was obsessed with dead people and thought I could see ghosts. Like it
was my fault I saw my mother checking up on her garden once in a while. It’s true that I did think a lot about the whole option of being dead, especially after Mom died. But it was Matthew who talked me out of it, not Dr. Krantz, and without even trying. It was one of our first mega-discussions. He said suicide was just another form of murder. He said life was a gift and only God should decide when to end it. But his best argument was that suicide was the ultimate act of hopelessness, which was an irrational position, since there was always hope, no matter how little. In my life, he was walking proof of that. He made life seem hopeful, even by saying nothing at all. I started to see suicide as a “bad mood” thing, and moods don’t last forever. They come and go. Besides, even if death isn’t the end of life, that doesn’t mean it’s an improvement.

When Matthew told me Mom was up in heaven, it sounded so sweet. Nicer than the idea of being a ghost. He didn’t have a clue about me and ghosts, and I would have died before telling him. He couldn’t have handled it. Instead, I started paying more attention to how I dressed for school in the morning. And I started trying to stand straighter when he was around, and not slouch so much. Turns out good posture’s not a bad idea after all. One day I got up the nerve to wear diamond-patterned green tights under a short denim skirt, and even though I felt self-conscious all day long, it was worth it. Sitting beside Matthew in class, I saw him checking out my legs from the corner of my eye. The embarrassment on his face when he knew he’d been caught, now
that
was sweet. Of course, I was embarrassed too, knowing I was trying to turn him on. He quickly looked away but he couldn’t help grinning, and that was
my
idea of heaven.

I found a bench near the back edge of the cemetery and sat down, facing the oldest gravestones. From there I could see the whole cemetery, and in the distance, Matthew’s fresh grave.
I’m wondering,
Matthew, if anyone could have saved you that night. Me, for instance. What if I had been more honest, sitting in the truck in front of my house? What if I’d screamed and cried and called you names? Smacked you across the head, even? Told you how much I loved you? Could something like that have snapped you out of that awful mood you were in?

Should I have reached over and grabbed the keys out of the ignition? I could have screamed out of the car window until Ethan, spying on us from the front room, came outside to see what the ruckus was about.
Call 911, Ethan!
I could have yelled.
Matthew’s not himself tonight!
But that’s just it—the Matthew I knew wouldn’t have killed himself.

When I finally looked up, I saw I wasn’t alone. There was a woman in the distance, over by the war monument. She looked like she was crying, standing there with her head in her hands. A fresh wave of sadness and loss washed over me. I tried to see her more clearly. She was dressed in one of those cool retro jackets, fitted at the waist with a slight flare at the bottom and a stylish little fur collar, like in the
1940
s. I wondered vaguely where she’d bought it—not in town. But I wouldn’t want that colour. It was brown, like the dead leaves on the ground.

It’s getting dark already, Matthew. I’d better go home
.

I walked back through the rows of gravestones, thinking about the woman’s brown coat again. I remembered how my mother once talked about getting her “colours” done in the city when she was a teenager. It was all the rage, she said. Experts analyzed your skin tone and told you what colours of clothing suited you best. They assigned everyone to a season. My mother said I was like her, a “winter”—pale skin, dark hair. She said I should stay away from earth tones, they’d make me look sick. Of course, colours can only do so much when you really are sick, the way she got sick.

It wasn’t until I reached the gate that I looked back at the woman at the war monument. She was still there, half-hidden by a gravestone, camouflaged by autumn colours. But the pain in her face was so fresh that I could practically see her husband face down in a muddy trench, bleeding. I descended the steps from the cemetery two at a time and ran back toward town like there was a German fighter plane overhead, aiming its machine guns at my back. Trouble is, I see things sometimes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I’m pretty sure that the woman in the cemetery wasn’t really there.

T
oday is October
21
, and that means moving day.

For weeks I’ve been looking out my bedroom window into the backyard, hoping to see my mother. She hasn’t been there since the morning after Matthew died, more than a month ago. I can’t imagine her anywhere else but in that garden, so I need to see her one last time, before we’re gone for good.
Where are you? Don’t you realize we’re moving? Don’t you care?

We finished packing last night. We lined the whole front hall with boxes, with Magic Marker labels like
Living Room
and
Kitchen
and
Ethan’s Room
. And the dining room was filled with dozens more, in piles three or four high. You could tell Jack’s boxes by how none of the tops closed flat. That’s because he has so much sports equipment that doesn’t quite fit—goalie pads and a couple of hockey and lacrosse sticks and a baseball bat. Jack inherited all the athletic ability in the family. He’s probably the best athlete in our entire school. He’s not too tall, but he’s all muscle—which is why his nickname’s “The Hulk.” Unfortunately for him, that
hasn’t been enough to win Morgan over. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the broken nose that never healed quite right? Personally, I like Jack’s nose.