Passing Strange (11 page)

I
WALKED HOME THROUGH
the woods. The neighborhood where I’d had Pete drop me off wasn’t the one I lived in. The whole way home I couldn’t stop thinking,
I just made out with Pete Martinsburg.

It was gross in so many ways. I guess it’s a good thing that zombies can’t throw up.

After his initial kiss, which kind of took me by surprise, I resisted, and of course that only got him going even more. He was that type; the type who believed that no was just a more challenging stage of yes.

Toward the end—and although in my head it seemed like an eternity, it really didn’t last long—I managed to give him the impression that I was enjoying it. I guess I can act. And then he sat back like the conquering hero, like he’s such a good kisser and a stud that he broke down all my resistance. I’m sure that when he came up for air he thought I was the one left wanting more.

I wondered what it was like for him. Were my lips cold, less responsive than a living girl’s? I tried to think of beaches, of kittens, of warm fuzzy sweaters—but did he feel how cool I was when he touched my skin? Did he notice that sometimes I forgot to breathe, or did he think passion was making me breathless?

Ick
.

Walking home through the woods, the places where he’d touched me felt like they’d been splashed with acid. Of course I couldn’t taste anymore—except sometimes strawberries when I ate a whole bunch of them—but I had this weird sensation in my mouth, akin to the feeling you’d get from biting on tinfoil. That’s how attracted I was to Pete Martinsburg.

This was going to be harder than I thought.

But now I had even more reason to play girl detective, more than just getting to the bottom of his previous crimes. He was planning to do something to Phoebe and Adam, and whatever it was, it was something I couldn’t allow to happen. I couldn’t tell them just yet, though. Not until I could prove that he framed my friends for the Guttridge murders. Until I could do that, zombies would never be free. My people would remain underground.

The house was quiet and everyone asleep when I finally made it home. I crept upstairs to look in on Katy, hoping that there weren’t any monsters walking around in her dreams.

The next day, my father asked me if I wanted to go for a spin. Mom and Katy were out shopping.

“Sure,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, tossing me the keys. “You drive.”

And it was just like falling off a log. Or like riding a bicycle, whichever. Actually I think we dead folk would have a tougher time with the bicycle.

I used to be a good driver. My reflexes were a bit slower now, but I managed.

I thought maybe we were going to have a deep conversation, but we didn’t talk much at all. He mentioned work and I mentioned work, and we sort of pretended I was normal.

When we were headed home, a squirrel ran out in front of the car, and I was quick enough to hit the brakes and avoid squishing his furry little head. Maybe a little too quick; the road was icy, but luckily we didn’t shimmy or swerve.

Dad frowned at me. “Next time, kill the squirrel.”

“I couldn’t do that!” I told him.

“Better him than us.”

I smiled.

“Squirrels don’t come back,” I told him.

Dad turned red. He really was forgetting I was anything but normal.

“Damn shame,” he said before the silence could grow too thick.

When we got home he told me he thought it would be okay if I took the car out every so often.

“Are you sure?” I said. “That’s illegal in about half a dozen ways.”

He shrugged. “Fight the power.”

I asked him if Mom was okay with it.

“I think she will be,” he said, without elaboration. “Just give it some time.”

He pushed the front door open. It wasn’t often I entered our house through the front door. Upstairs we could hear Katy shouting with joy and running down the hall to welcome us.

“She’ll come around,” he said.

Time, I had. Or so I thought.

The first time my father let me take the car out, it wasn’t so I could go to work, but so I could go visit a friend. Other than Adam and Secret Agent K. DeSonne, Melissa was the only zombie in the Winford/Oakvale area that wasn’t underground. The poor girl had come out on the lawn in front of St. Jude’s just before we got shot to pieces, and likely would have been shot herself had the priest there, Father Fitzpatrick, not thrown himself across her body. That story should be told: a human—a trad, a bleeder, a beating heart—threw himself in harm’s way to protect a girl who was already dead. People should know about that type of love.

Melissa wasn’t in on the plan that night. I mean she wasn’t part of the group that was setting up the art installation, a Son of Romero. I think she just came outside because she was curious about what we were doing. And about George. Call me crazy, but I detected a certain chemistry between those two when we had an open house for the Hunters over at our old crib. She wears a mask to cover her scars, and George’s face is so zomboid the only expression he wears is “scary,” so how could I tell?

Well, Auntie Karen knows. I can sense these things.

Oh, poor George. Poor Melissa, to have to see what they did to him.

Father Fitzpatrick refused to turn Melissa over to the cops, even though lots of people in his own church weren’t happy with him, just like they weren’t happy that he performed the funeral service for Evan Talbot. Eventually the police who arrested George issued a statement that they didn’t believe that Melissa was involved in the crimes against the Guttridges, and the case cooled as a media story. I guess whoever is pulling the strings figured it was a huge mistake to go toe-to-toe with a Catholic priest. I think they didn’t want the attention, or for the details of what happened to Melissa at Dickinson House to get out. It wasn’t enough that the poor girl had to endure being a zombie; now she had to live with the disfigurement that she received when bioists torched her home and retermed almost all of her friends. The flames took away her ability to speak, and she hides her face behind masks. Her hair was all burned off, and she wears a red wig. But that story, in short, would be too likely to generate sympathy for our cause. So they froze it out.

St. Jude’s Mission is in the heart of Winford, in the basement of the squat gray building that served as the rectory for the cathedral next door.

I’d never been inside the cathedral before, the steeple of which towered far above any of the other buildings in the town. I parked the car on the street and stared up at the stone Christ high above, His arms wide and welcoming. An elderly couple had just begun the trek up the lengthy flight of steps that led to the massive wooden doors. They were hunched and leaning on each other for support, wearing heavy wool coats that they’d cinched to keep the chill out. The man had a battered gray hat covering his head. They looked adorable.

There wasn’t any trace of the artwork that Popeye had done; rumor had it that Father Fitzpatrick insisted that both our scene and the manger, bullet holes and all, be left up throughout the holidays, as a reminder of the crime he felt had been committed against us, but a well-meaning (perhaps) parishioner cleaned up the ruin of splintered wood and toppled figures.

I locked the car, crossed the street, and followed a short walkway lined with tall arborvitae. The rectory door was unlocked, and I stepped inside, nearly crashing into a figure in black who was moving swiftly toward me.

“Pardon me,” the figure said. If I had to breathe I would have been holding my breath just then.

I looked up and saw that the man, a priest, was trying to get his collar into place. I recognized him immediately; it was Father Fitzpatrick.

“I nearly bowled you over,” he said. “I’m so sorry; I’m late for my turn in the confessional, as usual.”

Confession. The thought of the elderly couple taking their turns in the confessional made me smile. “Father forgive me, for I have sinned,” Grandpa would say. “I just don’t
like
Gertie’s lasagna.”

“No worries,” I said, “seeing how you’re in such a hurry to save souls.”

His laugh was rich and sincere, laugh lines deepened around his eyes as he rocked back and forth. “Absolutely,” he said, regaining his composure. I could still see the light of mirth dancing in his eyes as he peered into my face with sudden interest. My wonderings about my trad facade as he scrutinized me disappeared with his next statement.

“We’ve met,” he said, and he lifted his hand to his chin as he thought about where or when that event might have occurred. I shrugged as though to convey that I didn’t recall our meeting.

“Karen,” he said. “Karen DeSonne. We met at the funeral of your friend. The Talbot boy. The contact lenses threw me.”

“You have a good memory…for faces,” I said. (I paused because, for some reason, his authority or his knowledge that I wasn’t alive threw me.)

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Are you here for Melissa?”

“Yes, Father,” I said.

“Excellent.” He beamed at me for a moment before checking his watch. “I’ve got to go. Miss Riley is in the basement; the stairs are at the end of the hall. I think she’ll be pleased to have a visitor. I’m off to save some souls, as you say. Good-bye, Karen.”

“Good-bye,” I said, watching him hurry down the steps and then jog down the walkway. I started down the dim hallway, passing beneath a huge portrait of Mary. There was a ghostly amber halo around Mary’s blue-veiled head, and the artist had imbued her expression with a lifelike peacefulness and compassion, but I felt only anxiety as I passed beneath her loving gaze. There was a statue of a bearded saint on a pedestal at the end of the corridor, the green paint flaking off his robes in scales. I wasn’t sure that I liked the way he was staring at me. I also didn’t like the way the heels of my boots sounded in the hollow hallway, and I made an extra effort to keep silent as I descended the stairs to the basement, which was dark except for dim red exit signs on either end.

“Melissa?” I said, my voice echoing. Dark as it was, my dead eyes could see everything. The rectory basement was basically one long open room, with sofas and beds, bookshelves, and a large round table ringed by metal folding chairs. There was a television cabinet in one corner, a monstrous relic of another era. It stood on a braided rug, and a few battered recliners gathered around it like faithful dogs awaiting command. The room must have been styled by the same decorator and yard-sale aficionado that worked his threadbare “magic” on the encounter room of the Hunter Foundation.

“Melissa?” I repeated. She was across the room, sitting on an old couch. I could see the pale green flash of her eyes from within the white mask that she wore, the lone spot of color in the room save for the feeble glow of the exit signs. “Melissa, can I come talk to you?”

The white mask—different than the one she’d worn to class—lowered and raised in a nod. The mouth of this mask curled slightly upward in a smile. Melissa reached up and clicked on a floor lamp standing beside the couch. As I made my way around the random groupings of furnishings and support poles I saw that Melissa was holding a whiteboard that was a little larger than a spiral notebook. She began writing on it with a green marker. When she was finished she held it up for me to see.

She’d written Hi Karen in tall streaky letters, the curves in the e and the r giving her a little trouble.

“Hi, yourself,” I said, sitting on her sofa. I greeted most of my friends, dead or alive, with a hug, but there was something standoffish in the way she sat, as though she were constantly trying to pull her limbs into her body, that made me think a hug would not be welcome—no matter how it was needed.

The light from the floor lamp cast shadows in the eyeholes of the mask, so now even Melissa’s green eyes were hidden from my view.

“My friend Mal used to stay here,” I said. “And a girl name Sylvia. We talked about her at the Hunter Foundation. Colette and Kevin, too. You know them from class.”

I guess it was a little awkward. I realized that I was talking to her as though she were about six years old and couldn’t remember anything prior to the event on the church lawn. She just nodded at me, the red corona of her hair bobbing with the gentle motion. She probably thought I was an idiot.

“Are you okay?” I asked. What else could I say? “You know, relatively speaking?”

Melissa erased my name and wrote something new on her board.

OK she’d written.

“That’s good. Really good. I’m sure you’re lonely here and all. I’m lonely, too. I live…I stay with my parents and my sister, but there aren’t any dead people around anymore, you know? I guess it isn’t the same kind of lonely, but…I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

Melissa gave one slow nod of her head. She erased her board but didn’t write anything.

Melissa tapped her pad twice before writing. The words took a little longer, and she stopped at different points to cross words out.

Its XXXX okay here. Father Fitzgerald is awesome. I XXXX miss XXXX Cooper.

Then

He wouldn’t come w/ me when I left the Foundation, and we had a fight. I get XXX lonely.

She waited until I had read the whole page, before erasing and writing some more.

“You didn’t want to stay at the Foundation?” I asked.

Melissa shook her head with a little more vigor this time.

“How come?”

Melissa took a few moments before writing.

Its haunted is what she wrote. She underlined the word haunted three times.

“Haunted?” I asked. Without the benefit of inflection or expression, it was difficult to tell what she was thinking. I guess that’s how the trads felt most of the time when talking to us. “As in, ghosts and stuff?”

Melissa nodded again.

“Have you been able to get out much?”

Squeak, squeak, write, write.

I’d ♥ 2 get out
, she wrote. The ♥ was underlined.
Fr. Fitz thinks too dangerous.

“He’s probably right,” I said, which kicked off another flurry of erasing and writing. I looked around the room. There was another portrait of Mary, a smaller version of the one upstairs on the wall behind them, and this time her beatific gaze was trained on a portrait of Jesus done in the same style a few feet away.