Raising the Dead (2 page)

I curled a strand of hair around my finger. “He’s up there right now. That’s a good sign, right?”

“No.”

“What?” I was confused. Why wasn’t Avery excited for me?

She sighed. “I don’t think it’s a sign of anything, Charlotte.”

“But—“

“Look, I know you like him, but I think you’re setting yourself up to get hurt.” She cleared her throat. “I need to tell you something. You’re not going to like it, which I why I didn’t tell you earlier.”

I listened carefully as Avery described an encounter she had with Noah during the homecoming dance. She had watched as Noah and I danced to a slow song. When the song ended, I had gone over to talk with Callie and some of our other friends while Noah went to get us drinks. Avery went up to him. She mentioned that we seemed to be hitting it off, but Noah had shaken his head. “We’re friends only,” he said. His voice, Avery said, was emphatic. “She knows that, right?” he’d asked her. “That we’re friends and nothing more?” Avery said that I did know that. She then asked Noah to go out to her car and get a jacket for her. “I wanted to talk with you right away,” she said, “but then Jared and I started talking and I got distracted.”

“Oh.” The giddiness that had consumed me earlier evaporated.

“This is a good thing, Charlotte.”

“How is this a good thing? The guy I like wants nothing to do with me.”

“That’s not true. He likes you, but not in the way you want.”

“Again—how is that a good thing?”

Avery was quiet for a second. When she spoke, her voice was softer. “Charlotte, now you know. Now you can move on and find someone who wants to be more than a friend. Instead of focusing on a relationship that will never happen, you can open to the possibility of someone else.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Not exactly.” She sighed. “I tried setting up Callie with someone once. She was really into him, but he didn’t return the feelings. It was a disaster.”

Now it was my turn to be quiet. Maybe Avery was right. It was time to accept a nice, simple friendship with Noah and put my romantic energy into someone else.

“You’re my friend,” Avery said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s the only reason I’m telling you this.”

“I know.” I could hear everyone in the dining room discussing the storm. Then I heard Noah walking down the stairs. “I have to go. Noah’s awake.”

“Sure. And remember—there’s nothing wrong with having a great guy friend.”

“Right.”

“Besides,” Avery continued. “Callie says she knows a football player who would be good for you.”

We said goodbye and I hung up. Noah walked into the kitchen, his hair pressed to one side from where he’d slept on it. I resisted the urge to brush my fingers through it.

“How was the nap?” I asked.

“Good. I’m starving, though.”

I got up from the table. “I’ll reheat the pizza for you.”

He sat down, still looking sleepy. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” I took the pizza out of the fridge. “After all, what are friends for?”

The rain stopped roaring on Sunday night. By Monday, it was barely a drizzle. The sky still loomed gray and bloated clouds moved fast and low, but the worst was finally over.

“I guess we’ll be leaving,” Trisha announced after breakfast on Monday. I had gotten used to having everyone around. We had developed a cozy routine revolving around simple meals and old movies. The house would seem empty without our guests, but part of me was relieved: it was difficult to be around Noah all the time. I kept noticing little things about him that I liked, such as the way he was careful to always clean up after himself and help my mom, and how he laughed at something on TV. It would be easier to see him as just a friend, I decided, once there was some distance between us.

With school officially canceled, I focused on helping my parents, who had reached out to overwhelmed authorities and offered to assist in their casket cleanup efforts. Over two dozen coffins had been unearthed during the storm, and it was essential to get them back to their proper burial spaces. One had been discovered wedged in the cart corral at a grocery store. Two were found lodged between trees at a local playground. And several had floated all the way to the high school, where they came to a strange stop on the drenched football field. The image of the splintered wooden boxes sitting near the 50-yard mark dominated the local media. Dad was not amused.

“There are thousands of people without power right now, and this is what makes the news?”

Despite the fact that he made a living off people’s intense interest in life after death, he was constantly annoyed by public fascination with the subject.

Mom researched local cemeteries, made endless calls, and confirmed that the coffins had come from a tiny graveyard a mile away.

“Some of them are from before the Civil War,” she told me and Dad. I had raided the pantry to produce dinner, which consisted of canned spaghetti with meatballs and buttered wheat bread. After a weekend without a trip to the store, canned goods were all we had left, but it was practically gourmet by my family’s standards.

I automatically grabbed ginger ale out of the fridge because I knew Noah liked it, then put it back when I remembered that he was gone. He was probably sick of sleeping on the couch and being surrounded by Shane and my family all day, I reasoned. He was probably sick of me, for that matter. After the time we spent in my room and his nap on my bed, he had seemed extra distant. Maybe he had sensed my crush, and was trying to define clearer boundaries. He wouldn’t need to worry about me, though—I was determined to take Avery’s advice and move on to someone who was interested.

“The police have taken custody of a dozen coffins so far,” Mom continued. “They moved them to the morgue already.”

“How?” Dad asked. I couldn’t imagine a flatbed truck stacked with century-old caskets driving through town. That was definitely an image that would attract the local news. Mom’s reply surprised me.

“Garbage trucks.”

“They put them on
garbage
trucks?” I couldn’t disguise the disgust in my voice. It seemed so disrespectful.

“Yes,” Mom confirmed. “The trucks are big enough to hold the coffins and don’t attract attention.”

“Still,” I said. “It seems so gross.”

“It’s practical,” Dad said. “These people have been dead for so long that they have no family members who would remember them. It’s the best way to transport them without attracting unnecessary attention.” He nodded, satisfied. “Very smart.”

It may have been practical and smart, but I couldn’t help think of the other Charlotte, the girl who had died over a hundred years earlier and who had spoken to me in Charleston. I wouldn’t want her thrown into the back of a garbage truck. I wouldn’t want anyone carted around that way. It was dehumanizing.

“We’ll meet with the caretaker tomorrow morning,” Mom said. “It’s such an old, tiny little cemetery that it’s basically been forgotten. The man I spoke with mows the grass twice a year, and that’s about it. This whole situation has him rattled.”

“But he’s willing to accept our help?” Dad asked.

“Yes.” Mom played with her fork. I was pleased to see that she had eaten all of the dinner I had single-handedly prepared, even if it was simply canned food heated in the oven. “He understands that the bodies need to be interred as quickly as possible. He also understands that we have an historical interest in the work.”

Historical interest. It was a fancy way of saying that my parents like to look at old dead bodies. One of Mom’s stock lectures focused on historical burial rites and practices. This was like winning the corpse research lottery.

She explained that she wanted to visit the cemetery first. A geological survey team would be there to make sure the ground was safe and that the caskets could be returned to the earth.

“How are you going to match the bodies with their gravestones?” I asked.

“That’s where my expertise comes in.” Mom finished her dinner and moved her plate to the side. “We’ll start by examining artifacts left with the bodies. How they’re dressed will help narrow down a time frame, as well. But we may not be able to correctly identify each one.”

“We’re talking about centuries-old wood,” Dad said. “How many even survived the flood intact?”

“Not many. But there’s about a dozen complete caskets. Cracked, but whole.”

“So some of the caskets aren’t whole?” I looked down at my half-eaten spaghetti. I wasn’t so hungry anymore.

“No. Most of them were damaged too heavily. Chances are the remains inside weren’t substantial, though.”

I hoped not. I could imagine someone emerging from their house after days stuck inside, only to discover a withered arm resting on the sopping wet lawn. My parents’ task was a strange one, but it held importance. It helped restore a kind of peace.

“How can I help?”

Mom and Dad looked at me. “We weren’t planning on having you help,” Dad said.

“We didn’t think this would be something you would be interested in,” Mom rushed to add.

“I’m not.” I had no intention of lifting coffin lids and peeking in. But I was used to being a part of the family team. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be involved in some small way. “I was thinking of clerical stuff or research or whatever. But if you don’t need me, that’s fine.”

“Clerical work,” Mom repeated. “I’m sure we could come up with something.”

“You could work from home.” Dad smiled. “We’ll call you if we need anything.”

It was a brush-off, and despite the fact that this was not a project I was eager to get too involved with, my parents’ quick dismissal of me stung. After dinner I went to my room and called Annalise.

“I need some big sister wisdom,” I told her.

“And you called me?”

“Ha. Seriously, do you have a minute?”

“I always have a minute for you. Talk to me and I’ll do my best to impart my wealth of knowledge and experience upon you.”

Annalise already knew about the flooding and the damaged graveyard. She had talked with Mom several times a day since the storm began to assure her that everything was fine and she was riding out the storm. I suspected she had spent the weekend curled up with her boyfriend, Mills, and had barely noticed the weather outside her apartment. She was lucky—the guy she liked was definitely into her as much as she was into him.

I explained everything to my sister, particularly my hurt feelings at Mom and Dad’s brush-off.

“I don’t know why this bothers me,” I said. “I’m not even remotely interested in any of this.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Um, no. I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Ready for some big sister wisdom?”

“I truly regret ever using that term.”

“Live with it. Here’s what I think.”

What Annalise thought
was
important to me. As my only sibling, she had been my constant companion on hundreds of our parents’ research trips, from crumbling castles in Europe to hollow prisons in North America. She was the only one who truly understood me, so her opinion carried more weight than anyone else’s.

“You haven’t processed everything that happened in Charleston,” Annalise said. “These coffins are from about the same era as the family we were researching. You feel a connection to them and want to know more. That’s why this project is important to you.”

She was right. She was right and I knew it and I hated to say it, but that was the reason I had called: I needed Annalise to clarify something I felt but could not put into words.

“Well?” she asked.

“I don’t like the term ‘process.’ Since when does everyone need to process everything?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’m right.”

“Fine.” I looked over to my nightstand, which was still covered in a silk scarf. If I tugged at the scarf, it would reveal the wood underneath, and I did not want to see it, did not want to be reminded of the jagged words that were etched there.

“You’re right,” I told Annalise. “I feel like I need to know more. And somehow, this—this
incident,
has occurred, and I wonder if I’m supposed to help, supposed to follow where this leads.”

Annalise was quiet for a few seconds. “You already know the answer to that.”

“Yeah. I guess I do.” I’d needed my sister to say it, though. It was time to help my parents.

It was time to open the lid and look inside.

For months I’d seen a dead girl in my dreams. She wore a pink dress and shared my name, and she’d reached out to me, asking for my help. And I’d helped her, even though I hadn’t really had a choice. I reunited her with the spirits of her long-dead parents. My reward was a moment spent on the other side.

I thought.

With each day, the memory of that strange experience became foggier. At the time, it had felt so real, so authentic. I had seen a glimpse of life after death. But then doubt began to sink its teeth in me. It had been a long day. I was tired and hungry and maybe my mind had conjured it all up using pieces of what I had heard throughout my life about other people’s views of ghosts. Maybe none of it had been real. There was no proof. The video cameras had malfunctioned, failing to capture the lights we had all seen. And no one but me saw the girl. As the days went by, I wondered: was my experience real or a very detailed figment of my subconscious?

Real or not, that moment had changed me, and something about the flooded graveyard awakened the investigative instinct inside me. As grotesque as it sounded, I wanted to look inside those caskets. More than that, I wanted to make sure that the people inside them were returned to their rightful places. It mattered. Maybe not to them, but to me. Dad always said we held funerals to comfort the living and not to appease the dead. Well, I was living and I wanted the assurance that everything was being done right for the remains of the dead.

The next morning I approached Mom as she sipped her coffee in the kitchen.

“Mom?”

“Morning, Charlotte.”

I sat across the table from her. “So what time do you leave?”

She glanced at the clock. “We meet with the caretaker in an hour.”

An hour. That was enough time for me to shower and dress and be ready to go. I wasn’t quite ready to ask, though.

“Can you get there?” I asked. “I mean, are the roads okay? Because on the news last night everything was still flooded and they were telling people not to drive.”

Mom set down her coffee mug. “Charlotte, is there something on your mind?”

I was a terrible liar with no acting ability whatsoever. I couldn’t dance around the issue. If I wanted something, I had to ask. I took a deep breath.

“I want to come with you.”

“Can I ask why? This isn’t the type of investigation you’re normally interested in.”

How could I explain? No one knew about my otherworldly encounter. I still struggled with it. But I agreed with Annalise: maybe immersing myself in a project involving people from the same era would help me to understand.

“I just want to.” I looked at my hands. “And I don’t have school all week, so it wouldn’t interfere with that. Can I go?”

Mom considered my request. “I suppose it would be okay.” Before I could thank her, she held up a hand. “But Charlotte, this is very sensitive. We’re dealing with actual human remains here, not an empty house. I expect absolute professionalism.”

“Of course.”

“In fact, that’s the reason why Dad and I didn’t ask you to join us yesterday. You haven’t participated in something like this before, and it’s a very different project than what we normally work on.”

“I can handle it,” I assured her. I stood up, ready to prepare for the day, and began to walk towards the stairs.

“Charlotte?”

I turned around. Mom stared back at me. “When you’re ready to tell me the real reason why you want to go with us, I’m here to listen, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Mom’s response was unsettling, but at least I could go with them. Maybe the experience would help me, maybe it wouldn’t. I had to try something, I thought, something to settle my confused mind.

I was ready in less than an hour and waiting in the dining room while my parents packed their computers and cameras and files. Dad didn’t ask about my joining them, so I guessed Mom had briefed him while I was in the shower. He did have a request for me, though.

“I want you to keep an eye out for people who might be hanging around,” he said.

“Weirdos?”

“Yes.” Dad gathered up his bags. “There’s been plenty of media coverage. I’m worried that it might attract onlookers with a morbid curiosity.”

Like me, I thought. After all, I had no practical reason for tagging along with my parents. Was it merely a sick curiosity? Or did I really think I could find answers? I had no idea, but my gut instinct told me to go with them, to follow the path that had unexpectedly appeared in front of me.

It was a short drive to the cemetery, if you could really call it that. It was basically a plot of land about the size of our backyard and situated in a rural area. We passed a small lake and a lot of woods. It seemed as if no one would live out in the remote area, but a white farmhouse appeared, and we pulled into the driveway. A white-haired man greeted us before Dad put the car in park.

“Hello!” he called out from his wide front porch. The yard was filled with deep puddles, the same as all the other flooded yards. I’d worn red rain boots at the insistence of my parents, who’d both dressed in rubber overalls and hooded jackets.

“Mr. Kitsman!” Mom acted like they were old friends. She waved from the passenger seat and when she got out of the car, she hugged the man, then introduced me and Dad. Mr. Kitsman shook Dad’s hand and nodded at me. “So glad you’re here.”

Shane arrived moments later in the Doubt van. I waited an anxious second to see if Noah and Trisha were with him, but they weren’t. After the introductions, Mr. Kitsman got down to business.

“The county surveyors were here yesterday,” he said, growing serious. “Let me show you.”

He led us through his soggy backyard and up a short hill, where crumbling stone steps ended at the entrance to the graveyard. As we walked, he told us how he’d been raised here and spent his whole life in the house. “Everything you see here has belonged to my family for over a hundred years,” he said, waving an arm. “Hundreds of acres. The woods and even the lake are in our name.” The woods formed a horseshoe shape around the cemetery, almost like the trees were protecting the parcel of land. From the top of the hill, no other houses were visible.

Mr. Kitsman explained that living on the property came with the solemn responsibility of caring for the cemetery. He hung a wreath on the stone fence every Christmas, and mowed the property during the summer. He also kept an eye out for people who lingered too close for too long, especially around Halloween.

“Two dozen souls rest here,” Mr. Kitsman told us. “After the storm, we were missing twenty-three. As you can see, most of the grave markers were damaged.”

The thin tombstones were either lying flat on the muddy ground or tipped at unnatural angles. “I know this place,” Mr. Kitsman announced. “Know it well. My great-great-grandfather was buried here. A few other ancestors, too.” He looked around at the swamp of stones. “These people deserve to rest in peace. And for decades I’ve made sure that was the case.” He turned his attention to the four of us. “Now I need your help to make sure that continues.”

Mom stepped forward. “You can count on us,” she said. “We’ll do what we can.”

A large chunk of the hill had been washed away, taking the coffins and half the gravestones with it. Wooden stakes had been planted along the property by the geological survey crew. They’d spent several hours there the day before, working into the night. “A good thing, too,” Mr. Kitsman said. “Some strange fella dressed in a long black coat kept driving by. Said he was lost.” His gaze lingered over the tombstones. “He wasn’t lost. He knew exactly where he was.”

Dad looked at me. “See? Too much media coverage.” He turned to Mr. Kitsman. “Let’s get down to business. Where would you like us to start?”

I knew this was merely a formality. Dad already had a plan in mind, but asking the property owner always helped things move more smoothly.

“I’ve put back the stones as best I could in their correct places. I need help making ‘em straight.”

Shane stepped forward. “I can do that.”

“And it’s all right with you if we film some footage?” Dad asked.

Mr. Kitsman nodded. “Of course.”

I acknowledged Dad with a slight dip of my head. I knew he wanted everything captured on film, and I had hoped he would ask me to help. I was good behind a camera. It was a familiar friend, and it offered me a comfortable distance from the project.

Most of the stones were slanted to the side. I positioned the camera and panned across the area slowly, zooming in on individual stones. After a few minutes of this, I turned off the camera. I knelt before one of the stones, careful not to let my knee touch the muddy ground. The name and dates etched into the gray slab were worn and faded, making the words difficult to read. Cracks ran through like the lines on my hand. I touched the letters.

“Who were you?” I asked softly.

“That’s Jeremiah Pickett.” Mr. Kitsman was standing behind me. “He was a Confederate soldier. Killed in battle when he was nineteen.” He sighed. “So young. I doubt he understood what he was fighting for—or against, for that matter.”

“How do you know?” I stood up. “I mean, I can’t really read it.”

“I did a rubbing of each of these stones decades ago,” Mr. Kitsman said. “I researched the names, tried to determine who they were. I knew I had family buried here, but until I looked ‘em up, I had no idea how many cousins! Jeremiah is one of them. I’ll bet it sounds strange that I feel a kinship to a boy I never knew.”

“That doesn’t sound strange to me.”

He smiled. “Well, good. And thank you, young lady, for helping out here.”

I held out my hand. “Charlotte.”

He returned the gesture. “A pleasure. And please, call me William.”

William and I righted Jeremiah’s gravestone, then moved on to help the others. We consulted a map William had made, and within a couple hours, each stone was in place. Some
had suffered deep cracks and one had broken in half, but the cemetery was looking more like it should when we were done.

Above us, heavy clouds darkened the skies. We gathered toward the front of the graveyard. “Ready for the next step?” Dad asked.

The next step involved driving to the morgue. The next step meant viewing the remains of men, women and children. I was not ready for any of it, but I followed the others down the stone steps and back to William’s house. As we filed through the back door, I turned and looked at the cemetery perched at the top of the little hill. Dark clouds created an appropriately dreary backdrop to the scene.

And then I saw movement. A flash of black moving swiftly through the cemetery, like a person hunched over. The figure glided past the stones and into the nearby woods so quickly that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d seen it. But I could see the flicker of something between the gaps in the trees.

I tugged at Shane’s jacket. “I think someone’s up there,” I whispered, pointing toward the hill.

The others were already in the house. Shane stopped and followed my gaze. “I don’t see anything.”

“Something was moving around. It went into the woods.”

We stood next to each other for another minute, waiting. “You sure you saw a person?”

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know what it was. Could have been a large animal, but I don’t think so.”

Shane ushered me into the house. “I’ll check the woods tomorrow, see if there’s footprints. Let’s not say anything to William until we have something concrete to tell him though, okay?”

“Okay.”

It made sense to me. I didn’t want to worry an old man over nothing. But I knew I had seen someone, maybe even the same guy William saw hanging around the day before. The only direct path that led to the cemetery was up the hill behind William’s house. Beyond the property were several square miles full of woods, and past that was a river. So if someone was on William’s land, it meant they either lived in the area or had come from the woods. A curious neighbor was one thing. A strange man emerging from behind the trees? The thought made me shiver.

No one had come up the hill while we were there. If someone had been hiding in the woods, it meant they had probably been there all day, watching us and waiting for us to leave. If that was the case, I didn’t want to go back. But I also wanted to know what the strange figure was looking for—and I wondered if we would find it first.