The Haunted (17 page)

“What’s wrong?” Caspian said.

I wanted to run into his arms and be told everything was okay. “I had a bad dream. Couldn’t sleep.”

“So you came
here
?”

Had I made a mistake? “Sorry,” I whispered. “I just wanted to see you, but I shouldn’t have—”

“No, no, it’s good. I’m glad you came to see me. But won’t your parents find out?”

I shook my head, then realized he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “I snuck out my window. They’ll never notice, and I won’t stay long.” I shifted awkwardly. “Can you, um, light some candles? My dream was pretty scary.”

“Oh, yeah.” He moved, and then there was a soft scratching sound. The bright flare of a flame burst to life at the end of a match, and he lit two candles on my left. “Do you want to sit down on the bench?”

I nodded and followed him, waiting as he lit several more candles that sputtered and shed their light across the empty tomb. He slid down into a sitting position against the wall next to me. It was deadly quiet in our little space, and I tried to imagine him here day after day, all alone. It would drive me to the edge in no time.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked. “The dream?”

I draped my arm across the back of the bench. The metal was
cool through the thickness of my sweatshirt. “It was awful. Dark things were chasing me into dark alleys. And I couldn’t defend myself. Then this monster swooped down on me, and…”

Caspian got up and moved over to one of the boxes. Reaching down, he pulled out two items and then came back to me. “Here.” He held out a shirt. “You’re cold. You’re shivering.”

I wasn’t going to argue that it was just because of the dream, so I took it. It was a button-down, and felt like fleece under my fingertips. Tilting my head back, I said, “Thank you.”

Then he placed a small brown paper bag next to me. “Second, a distraction. Sorry it’s not wrapped nicer. This was the best I could do. Happy birthday, Astrid.”

He’d
gotten
me something? I opened the bag and looked down into it. A book with a colorful illustration of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman lay there. “Ohhhhh,” I whispered, pulling it out reverently.

“It’s a kids’-book version,” he admitted, with a bashful smile. “I hope that’s okay.”

I flipped through the pages. It was an old book, copyright 1932, and crisp with age. Every third page had a gorgeous black-and-white illustration on it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “It’s
perfect
,” I said. “‘Thank you’ seems so inadequate. Where did you get it?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he replied. “I’m just glad you like it.”

I hugged it to my chest. “I love it.”

He stood over me for a minute, looking down with a strange expression on his face. “Every guy’s dream,” he muttered softly. “To be the one the girl comes running to when she wants to be saved. And I can’t even do anything about it.…”

His eyes were intense, holding me captive. My breath caught in my throat. “You can come sit by me,” I offered. “Keep me company.” But he moved back toward the wall, reclaiming his seat on the floor.

“It’s better if I stay here. Easier that way.”

Better for who?
I wanted to say, but I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face and busied myself with wrapping his shirt around me. “So how come you can touch things, but not me? Um… people. People, I mean.”

Caspian spread his hands out in front of him and looked at them. “I don’t know why I can move boxes, pick up my charcoal, snap a pencil, break a twig… but can’t touch you. Maybe it’s the rule of this place, or whatever I am. I’m not sure.”

“Have you tried to touch anyone else?”

“Yeah. Kids at the high school, my dad, strangers on the street… Hell, I even went church-hopping. Figured for sure
that if anyone could see me or touch me, it would be a priest. But they slipped between my hands just as easy as the rest.”

I thought back to that night in my room, and the next day at the library when he’d kissed me. “How were you able to… ?” I felt myself blushing. “How could you kiss me at the library? Shouldn’t that have been impossible? And before I left, that day at the river when I found you in the rain, you said you could only touch me for one day. What does that mean?”

He looked away, and I had to strain to hear his answer. “I can only touch you on my death day. November first. I touched your face in your room because it was after midnight. And that’s why I wanted you to meet me at the library that day. Why I was so adamant that you didn’t forget.”

“Why didn’t you stay longer? In my room? If you could only touch me then, why were you in such a hurry to… leave?”

“I wasn’t sure how much,
exactly
, I could… do,” he said. “That’s why I picked the library. Public place and all.”

My ears grew warmer as I realized what he meant. I coughed once and cleared my throat. “How did you figure it out? The first time. How did you know you could touch me on that day?”

“On the first anniversary of my death, the year before, I was downtown. I didn’t even know what day it was, but I bumped
into someone. Literally. Normally, I’d just pass right through them, but that day I didn’t.

“At first I thought something had changed. People saw me. They heard me. For the first time in a whole year.” His eyes grew sad. “Then I passed a newspaper stand and saw that it was November first. I put two and two together.”

He looked up at me. “I wanted to go see my dad. Almost did, too. I wanted to tell him what had happened to me, and that I was sorry. But then I thought about how traumatic it would be seeing your dead son a year after his car accident, so I didn’t. I ended up just sitting in a park all day. Doing what I did every other day. Watching the people go by.”

“That must have been hard,” I said. “To finally be a part of it, and yet still be on the outside.”

Caspian nodded.

“And then the next day? It was the same again?”

Another nod. “Back to being a ghost.”

I looked down at my hands. “When did you find me?”

“Last year. It was spring. I followed you, but then you left. I remember, because I could see the flowers blooming. They were pink. I knew right away that something with you was different.”

“What is it with colors? You said something before about seeing colors around me.”

He nodded and ran his fingers through his hair. In the half-light, the white-blond strands were muted. But that black streak was still as bold as ever.

“I can’t see colors anywhere else except around you. Normally everything I see is gray. It’s like living in this shadow world. But around you…” He made an arching shape with his hands. “There’s a… bubble or something that surrounds you. Your eyes, your hair, your clothes.” He laughed. “Even the tree you stood next to shared your color. When you moved, I could see the green grass under your feet.”

He stopped suddenly and leaned forward, saying very intently, “It’s exhilarating, Abbey.
You
exhilarate me.”

My heart lurched, and I gave him a stern look. “There you go again. Saying things that make me—”A huge yawn interrupted me, and I broke off, embarrassed beyond belief.

“Why don’t you lie down on the bench?” Caspian suggested. “I have a pillow.” He stood up again and went to a spot on the far side of the room. Then he brought back not only a pillow, but also the black jacket I’d picked up before.

He held both out to me. “Even though I don’t need to sleep, it helps to have something that reminds me of… before. Sorry, I don’t have a blanket. Will this jacket be okay?”

“Yes, on one condition.”

He cocked his head at me, waiting for me to go on.

“Can you come over here? To sit on the floor by the bench?”

He came closer, and I took the pillow first. Then I took the jacket and pulled my feet up, shifting to a lying-down position. Caspian knelt on the floor beside me, smiling as he tugged on a piece of the jacket that was hanging on the floor.

Good
Lord,
he is gorgeous when he smiles.

I smiled shyly back at him and arranged the jacket around me before turning to put my head on the pillow. He was close enough to reach out and touch… and I bit my lip at the sudden sadness that overwhelmed me.

“Can you do shadow puppets?” I whispered to him, desperate to make the sad feeling go away.

He hooked his two thumbs together and flapped his fingers, angling his body so that the shape he was creating showed up on the wall. “Kee-yar, kee-yar,” he said softly.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s the sound a hawk makes. That’s what my shadow puppet was—a hawk.”

“I thought it was a bluebird,” I teased. “Do it again.”

He made the shadow again, this time making it flap its wings fiercely. I giggled, and then he moved his fingers, casting
some bizarre round-shaped thing on the wall. “Three guesses what this one is.”

I studied it carefully. “Bunny?”

“Nope.” He wiggled his hand to simulate movement.

“Puppy?”

He laughed. “
Where
did you see a puppy there?”

“I don’t know. Okay, last guess, um… a turtle?”

“Ehhhhhhh, wrong answer. It’s an armadillo.”

“An
armadillo
? How did you learn how to make an armadillo shadow puppet?”

His face turned bashful. “Okay, you got me. I made that up. I didn’t know
what
that one was.”

I snuggled deeper under his jacket. My eyelids were starting to get heavy. Caspian arranged his fingers into an intricate pattern.

“There you go. I’ll make ’em, and then tell you what they are. No more guessing.”

I fought back another yawn. “Okay.”

“First obligatory shadow puppet is… an incredibly self-conscious clown.” He wiggled his fingers. “Second one…”

My left eyelid drooped. Then my right. I blinked heavily, and the walls shifted around him.

“… Three-legged panda bear.”

My eyes stayed closed, and I felt myself sliding toward the edge of sleep.

“Scrambled eggs… bacon on the side.” His voice ebbed and flowed around me. “Are you falling asleep, Abbey?”

I fought to stay awake. “Noooo… ,” I heard myself saying. “Caspian, don’t leave, ’kay? I don’t want them to get me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you.”

Everything was fuzzy now, but I tried to stay awake long enough to tell him one more thing. “Glad you… see… my colors, Caspian.”

“Me too, Abbey,” he said softly. “Sweet dreams.”

O
LD
F
RIENDS

The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late… ; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.

—“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Abbey… Abbey…”

My eyes opened slowly, and Caspian’s face came into view. “What are you doing here?” I asked, rubbing one eye. My hair was in my face, and I pushed it away.

“I’m here because this is my place, remember? You came to see me.”

Right
. I’d snuck out of the house. “Crap! I have to get back. What time is it? My parents are going to kill me!”

“It’s okay. You’ve only been asleep for an hour. You have plenty of time to get back before they wake up.”

I groaned and rolled my stiff neck from side to side. Already my brain was waking up and slamming into overdrive.
Is my hair a mess? Do I have morning breath? What about drool…
I hope I didn’t drool. Oh God, do I snore?

Not knowing what to say, I carefully folded up the jacket and then the shirt. Would “Thanks for letting me sleep in your crypt” work?

But what came out was, “Did you stay awake the whole time?” I wanted to kick myself as soon as I said those words.
Why can’t I be witty?
I was perpetually cursed with nonwittiness.

Caspian smiled at me. “Yeah, I stayed awake. I didn’t want to close my eyes and fall into the… darkness.” Then he blurted, “I didn’t, uh, sit here looking at you, or anything weird like that. I had a book.”

Well, that was oddly comforting and disappointing at the same time. “I hope I didn’t snore.”

“Nope. Did you have any more bad dreams?”

“No. No more dreams.”

He stood up and shuffled his feet. “I don’t want you to think I’m kicking you out or anything, but you should probably be on your way home before your parents wake up.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I handed him back the jacket, then glanced down at his shirt I still had on. “Can I, um… Would it
be okay if I… keep this?” That sounded so lame, but I wanted to have some small piece of him.

“Sure. Although I don’t know why you’d want to.”

Because it’s yours
… I kept that thought to myself. “Thanks.”

Caspian walked me out of the mausoleum, and the early-morning air was cool. We both moved in silence until we got to the gate.

Jamming my hands into the pockets of my hoodie, I turned to face him. “Thanks for letting me sleep over. It was… nice.”

He snorted. “Yeah. I’m sure spending the night in a creepy tomb is every girl’s idea of the perfect date.”