Passing Strange (2 page)

I
T WAS A LONG WALK FROM
Winford to Oakvale, especially after being shot three times. It was weird, too, because I didn’t feel anything. There wasn’t any pain—physical pain, anyhow—from the two wounds in my body or the even more gruesome one in my face. The flow of blue fluid seemed to have stopped, but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I was moving very slowly, too, which was scaring me, because most days I can beat a slow trad in a footrace. I started to think really bad thoughts, and I couldn’t help but wonder if each step I took would be my last. We aren’t even supposed to be up and walking around; maybe there were methods other than headshots to shut us off.

I took my time once I reached the Oxoboxo woods. I knew I should have gone straight to the Haunted House to warn my friends, but I was too scared. My friends think I’m this incredibly brave person for all of the odd things I do, but it’s all show.
All
show. I’m one of the most cowardly people to walk the earth; most certainly the most cowardly person to walk the earth twice. For the things that count I’m just a scared little girl. The police could have been over there right then, rounding up all of my friends or worse, and what was I doing? Hiding. Cowering in the brush, afraid to be seen. Always hiding, that’s little Miss Karen DeSonne.

I watched the sun rise from the relative safety of the trees. There were shorter routes I could have taken home but I wasn’t prepared to see living people just yet. At one point I stumbled and tried willing my body to get up, but it just wasn’t listening.

I don’t want to die again, I thought. I’m sorry. Over and over. The sentiment was becoming my mantra. I might even have been saying it out loud while crawling along the frozen ground toward my house.

I don’t want to die again I’m sorry I don’t want to die again I’m sorry I don’t want to die…

And then I was there, on my own private doorstep at the back of my house.

Dad had a door installed there so I could come and go as I pleased without disturbing anyone above. Sort of like a doggy door for his dead daughter. I’m quite nocturnal. I think Mom would just as soon have barred all the doors and windows to keep me out, but Dad does what he can to improve my quality of “life.” One of the first things that he twigged to was how restless I’d get at night when everyone in the world is supposed to be asleep. We talked about it a little and he thought it might be better for me if I made use of the small hours, and I told him about my friends and the Haunted House and everything, and he must have thought it was a good thing for me to spend my time with others like me. “You need friends,” I think is what he actually said.

Sometimes he’d drop little pieces of regret like that into our conversations, because I know that what he was saying was that I’d needed friends, past tense, as in “when I was alive.” As though my lack of friends was his fault or his responsibility.

One of the worst things about killing yourself and coming back is seeing how everyone around you assumes responsibility for your selfish act. “If only I’d said, if only I’d done…”
I
wasn’t even really responsible for it at the end; how could they be? I mean, obviously I had some kind of sickness, some mental imbalance. How could they know?

I think that’s why my mom avoids me now—the guilt. It makes people angry and it makes people cold. That part of it
is
my fault.

I saw that the back porch light was on. Right after I’d started spending my nights and early mornings at the Haunted House, I’d start noticing all of these little signs that, dead or not, someone was still worried about me. Someone still cared. Lights that had been doused when I left the house were turned on. Magazines and books were moved from coffee table to couch. A milk-stained glass would appear in the sink.

Mom doesn’t drink milk.

I let myself in and dragged myself into my basement abode. Phoebe tells me that my room is musty (it is a basement, after all), and for her to say anything at all, it must be really bad. The room probably smells because it flooded a few years ago and never really dried out properly. My room is dank. Dank and rank. And it stank. I call it the tomb.

I sat down at the vanity opposite my bed and looked at myself in the mirror. You would have thought I’d have other concerns at that moment—concerns about my friends and my family, concerns that I wasn’t the only one shot and pursued by angry authorities, but no.

I was concerned with what I looked like.

The damage was much worse than I’d even imagined. It was as if I were looking at myself through a broken mirror, but it wasn’t the mirror that was broken. It was me.

Half of my face was pushed in, the white skin of my cheek all mottled and stained dark blue from the weird zombie blood. I suppose there’d have been swelling if I were alive, but instead my face seemed deflated, and all sorts of strange things happened with the muscles in my face when I frowned. Atop my newly hideous face sat a platinum blond fright wig that looked as if it had been used to sweep the forest floor.

I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at myself. Pretty long, I guess.

Eventually I remembered I’d been shot three times, that the wreck of my face wasn’t the only damage. I reached for the third button on my blouse—the first two weren’t buttoned, naturally—and then decided to just rip the shirt open, popping half the buttons off as I did.

Why not? It wasn’t like I’d be wearing it again, anyhow, with it full of bullet holes.

I was full of bullet holes, too. Swiss cheese.

A round hole, the same color as my bra, was above my left breast. There was a second hole, this one an exit wound, higher up and further to the left, just under my clavicle. I turned in the mirror and saw where the bullet had gone in. There was no exit wound for the bullet that hit my face, meaning it was still rattling around somewhere inside me.

I put my index finger over the first hole. Adam’s life had bled out of a hole very similar to that one. I thought it looked as if it had gone through at an upward angle, which I took to mean that whoever fired it was trying to kill me with a head-shot. Nice. I looked a thousand times worse than Tak, and a couple dozen times scarier than George. Worse even than poor Sylvia.

Sylvia, I thought, somewhat guiltily. Here I was fretting and moaning about my shattered face, and that poor girl had been taken apart—literally—and was supposedly being put back together, Dumpty-esque, by all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Well, by Alish and Angela Hunter, anyhow, and the other witch doctors at the Hunter Foundation. I didn’t think I’d be around when the Hunters released her in a few weeks. Assuming, of course, that they had any real intention of releasing her at all.

I heard the floorboards—my ceiling—creaking as some-one—my father, most likely—began to shuffle around the kitchen. Before his morning coffee my father walked not unlike a zombie, whereas my mother was swift from the moment she sprang out of bed.

And then I heard the
thump thump thump
of tiny feet, and panicked.

Every morning upon waking, Kaitlyn runs down the hall and the two flights of stairs that separate our bedrooms to come see me in my cellar lair. It drove my mother crazy, I’m sure. On the rare occasions I’d come upstairs before she left for work, I’d see Mom bustling about, her movements clipped, her mouth a thin line. Dad was usually a bit more generous; he would at least say good morning, and might even make some small talk if the caffeine had kicked in. But Kaitlyn—Kaitlyn was consistent in the morning.

Kaitlyn’s thumping was getting closer—she would be at the cellar door soon.

I couldn’t let her see me like this.

My quarters didn’t offer much in the way of hiding places; the only option I had was the closet beneath the stairs, which was usually filled with Christmas ornaments and decorations, but now held only the empty boxes and bins they spent the other eleven months of the year packed away in. I ran to the closet just as I heard the cellar door swing open, and I went inside, hoping that the boxes I was forced to lean against didn’t rustle too much as I slowly drew the closet door closed.

“Caring? Caring?” My sister’s high, sweet voice drifted down to my hiding place, and I prayed she wouldn’t come downstairs. I loved the way she said my name; I felt like every time she said it my heart broke and then healed stronger than before.

“Caring?” I heard her step, cautious now, on the creaky stairs above my head. At least I didn’t have to worry about my breathing giving me away.

I heard her come down the rest of the stairs. If she were to find me in the closet, face ruined, shirt ripped and buttonless, lying on boxes in the dark…I couldn’t imagine how her tiny growing mind would recover from the trauma. I held on to the doorknob and pulled back so her tiny hands wouldn’t be able to turn it.

But it could be just as bad if she tried to turn it and couldn’t, because then she’d probably run upstairs and tell Dad, and then they’d both come down and…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was even more frightened of my sister seeing me in my ruined state than I was of actually being in that ruined state.

Kaitlyn. I could hear the soft scratch of her footy pajamas on the thin, padless carpeting of my bedroom.

I had a very clear image of her just then, as though I could see right through the wall. Her long blond hair would be sleep-tangled and static-y on one side, her lips pouty with concentration. Her footy pajamas were white, with a pattern of round, Hello Kitty!-esque panda bears. Katy likes the ones that are upside down the most, because she says that when she’s wearing the pajamas they look right side up to her.

I knew that Katy liked to go into my room when I wasn’t home, which, if my mother ever found out, would bring me to the point of eviction and would surely mean some form of minor punishment for Katy, who has been warned not to go down there. Mom probably sees it as the equivalent of letting Katy play in a crypt, one that has worse things dwelling within than spiders and the occasional bat or rat.

But Katy braves whatever threats that have been offered, and I know this because there’s evidence of her visits. The blankets of my bed pulled back, the satin pillow on the floor, a drawer open. Once for three days running there was a new stuffed animal propped up on my pillows, and when I asked her about it, she said that she was worried I’d be lonely in the cellar by myself.

“Caring’s still not home!” she called. I couldn’t make out the muffled reply that answered her, but it was probably a command for her to leave my room. My tomb.

I heard her steps recede slightly, and then a hollow clunk, and I knew that she’d taken the seat that I’d just vacated in front of the vanity. I pressed my ear to the door and heard the rough whisk of my brush through her hair. A box shifted beneath me, and the brushing stopped.

“Caring?”

I pretended to have rigor mortis. I was totally motionless. A moment later there was another clunk followed by the sound of Kaitlyn’s feet scraping along the carpet, then thudding on the stairs. I was relieved she’d gone but also worried that I might have scared her.

She
is
gone, I sighed. I still practice breathing and facial exercises. Shallow breaths, deep breaths, three stage breaths. Popeye makes fun of me when he catches me doing it—“What, you aren’t relaxed enough?” he’ll say. But the breathing does something for me. I don’t know what, exactly, but I think it’s good to fill my body with the things it used to need to operate, like air. Maybe I’m hoping my body will remember.

After my nice long sigh I listened to my sister’s voice greeting my father. His response was a low rumble, the male version of Charlie Brown teacher-speak, but her voice was loud and sharp as she told him again that I wasn’t home. Sometime later I heard them leave the house, he on his way to work, she on her way to day care.

I heard the door slam shut behind him and felt an enormous sense of relief. But I also felt something else, something I haven’t felt since I died.

I felt tired.

The feeling covered me like a shroud. It was as if whatever spark had kept me going all these post-death months was suddenly extinguished. I took one step, and it felt like I was dragging a train behind me. I sat down on my bed, my arms and legs heavy, wondering if the bullet that had smashed my face was still somewhere in my head, worming around. Maybe I was on the slow path to retermination, my number up a second time. I felt like maybe the bullets had gotten me and that it was time to lie down and let go.

I lay back on the bed and rested my head on the square silk pillow.

I closed my eyes.

But I’m not ready this time, I thought.

And then, nothing.

* * *

I fell asleep. I mean I
really
fell asleep, with dreams and everything! My psychology teacher told me we only dream in black and white. I’ve always disputed that idea. My first dream as a zombie was definitely in color, bright vibrant color. I was standing on a beach, looking out at the most sparkling blue water I’d ever seen. The sun was just beginning to rise, its rays dappling the waves with shining light. I stared at the water while the wind was blowing back my hair and pulling at my clothes, and I lifted my arms, half expecting to be scooped up and carried into the sky like a kite.

I heard someone behind me whisper my name, and turned around. There, at the edge of a thick band of vibrant tropical foliage, came Mal, shouldering his way through some Jurassic-looking fronds. He was smiling. Mal was smiling!

The moment his foot stepped onto the white sand beach, other zombies began to appear from the “forest primeval,” walking through the brush and onto the sand. Colette, Adam, Popeye—people I recognized from the Wall, the room in the Haunted House where we hung photos and notes from zombies all over America. There were also people I’d never seen before. Melissa, who I saw first as a shock of red hair and a white Greek comedy mask. She dropped the mask when our eyes met, and she was so beautiful it made me want to cry.

Tommy was there, and Sylvia, and Kevin, and just about everyone I know. Tayshawn. Jacinta. They all kept walking toward the sea. Some of them touched me as they passed, lightly, on the hands or the cheek. When I turned around some had just begun to walk into the water; I remember Cooper Wilson breaking into a run, splashing around and flopping face-first into the light surf. It was so beautiful watching all of us together.