What Lies Beneath (7 page)

I knocked a trash can lid open with a sleeve wrapped around my knuckles, careful not to touch it with my skin. I guess I inherited my fear of germs from my mom. I was about to hurl the trash bag into the can when I noticed something. It was a white medium sized teddy bear sitting on top of a trash bag. It had a red ribbon tied around its neck in a bow and white hearts printed on the material.

It was a Valentine’s Day bear and I’d never seen it before. It sure enough didn’t belong to my parents. My dad never bought stuffed animals for my mom. It was always roses. I sat the trash bag down and suspiciously retrieved the bear from the can. Directly in the middle of its chest, in black cursive stitching it read:
Blair
.

I sucked in a horrified breath and saw that there was a tag dangling from the left ear. I was about to read it when the back door opened and my mom stepped out, her eyes on me and the bear in my hands. I somehow knew it was something from Dylan, like the note. My mom walked down the steps and came toward me, her hair blowing in the wind.

“Blair, come inside. And where did that come from?”

My dad was in the kitchen when I came back in, my mom behind me. He noticed the bear in my hands and the faint smile on his face slowly disappeared. I lifted the tag and read it to myself, my eyes expanding with each word.
Squeeze me hard and I just might tell you something.
My dad made a grab for the bear, but I was too quick. I pulled away from him and my mom looked down at it.

“It’s from Dylan,” I said. I watched my mom as she put a hand over her mouth and started to cry. My dad hurried over to my mom and took her into his arms. She probably did think I was going crazy.

“What does it say, Blair?” my dad asked.

“Squeeze me hard and I just might tell you something.” I figured it was one of those talking bears and that when I did squeeze it; it was going to say something disturbing.

My dad nodded at the bear and I braced myself for what it was about to say. I gripped the bear by its sides and squeezed the living hell out of it. Just then something burst from within the animal and red liquid poured out from the back of the bear.

It splashed onto kitchen floor, covering my slippers and coating the floor in front of me. Blood. My mom screamed into my dad’s shoulder as blood covered my hands and the front of my pajama pants. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move.

I just stared as a large puddle formed on the ground, the smell, so metallic and coppery ravaging my nostrils. Tears began to escape my eyes and that was when I noticed a piece of white paper in the puddle.

I pushed myself to move and squatted down to the floor and picked the piece of paper out of the blood. It was a small laminated note and in the same typewriter writing it read: 

FOREVER AND ALWAYS.

8

             
It was animal blood. At least that is what the sheriff told us. It had been an entire week since I received the teddy bear and my mom was still on edge, she didn’t even step anywhere near where the blood had been. My dad arranged for a police officer to keep surveillance on our house for a while and I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unless my mom or Max came with me.

The crazy thing is, I haven’t seen or heard from Max since the day we went to Pearl’s and I’m beginning to grow nervous. This wasn’t like him and I couldn’t help but think something happened to him and it was because of me. Something just didn’t feel right.

I stared down at my laptop screen, my eyes wide and alert. I was reading about paranormal occurrences and I had come upon something that made me tighten the quilt around my body. It was an article published by a girl who called herself FoxRose209.

In the article she explained that when she was thirteen she had been hit by a car while on her bike. The doctor had told her that she died for a bit but the lord gave her a second chance. Soon after she went home and settled down, she began to see apparitions.

The first one was a dead boy who had gotten cut to pieces by a child killer in her town, and the second was her best friend who had died a few months before. It got me wondering if maybe that night at the lake I died for a while like her and now I can see the dead. It also got me thinking of Caroline. After looking up her name the night after I got the bear, I came to find that she had slit her own wrists in the bathtub here in Hanson in 1963.

It took me a bit to comprehend the fact I was seeing someone who was dead. It would have been more difficult to believe if I hadn’t already been up to my nose in paranormal crap. But why was she coming to me? What could I do for her? And what had she meant by me figuring something out before someone came for me.

It just didn’t make sense to me and it was all I could think about, besides the bloody bear and Max. From the corner of my eye I saw my door swing open and my dad walk in. My heart jumped in my chest and I turned away from my laptop.

“Max’s mother said he went to visit his aunt for a couple of weeks. She’s going through chemo.” Max would have told me if he was leaving, he tells me everything. My stomach suddenly felt weird and I knew, for some reason, that he was not with his aunt.

Something awful had happened to him. “And there’s a boy in front waiting for you. He said the day you left the thrift store you forgot something. I told him I’d come up and get you.” my head snapped up and I looked out from the attic window above my desk, the quilt around me falling to the ground. Outside next to the police car was a faded red Volkswagen and talking to the Ben, the officer, was Tate.

The front screen door clacked shut behind me as I caught Tate’s attention from officer Ben. He quickly shook hands with Ben and headed over to me. He was dressed like he’d just time traveled from the 1950s, his high wire brown slacks showcasing some black loafers. Something about him made my blood run cold and butterflies erupt in my stomach.

He had this vintage look to him that I admired and never saw in boys these days. It was like an old soul was trapped in a teenage boy’s body. I came down the porch steps, my pajama bottoms brushing against the dead grass. The Saturday afternoon sun was obscured by the rainy clouds and I could smell the rain getting ready to plow us in next to no time. October rain was insane in our parts.

“I don’t remember buying anything that day,” I said as he stopped directly in front of me. A flash of that day shot by. I was acting completely out of it when I found that note. I was crying like a lunatic and I’m pretty sure he saw me leave the store flipped out of my damn mind.

“You didn’t. But you were looking at the typewriter and I could tell that you really wanted it, so I decided to buy it for you and bring it here. Mr. Allen told me where you lived and I wanted to drop it off to you,” Tate explained as he rocked himself back and forth the heels of his shoes.

“Thank you.” Was all I could push out. No one had ever done anything like that for me, not even Dylan. I smiled up at him and he grinned down at me, nodding to his car.

“It’s in my trunk,” he said excitedly as I followed him over to his car and he popped open the trunk. This was really nice of him, but I wondered if he was doing this because he was being kind, or he felt bad for me for that day. He brought the typewriter out from his trunk, straddling it in his arms. “Where do I put it?” he asked in a raspy breath. I could tell it was a little too heavy for him.

“Bring it inside,” I said and led him to the front door, hearing him breathe even harder as he came up the porch steps. I pulled open the screen door and guided him inside, my dad getting up out of his car.

“Dad, this is Tate Nance. He works with Mr. Allen at the Discovery Shop and he brought me this typewriter. Can he bring it up to my room?” My dad slowly walked over to Tate, his eyes narrowing on me. Right now probably wasn’t the right time to invite a boy into my room, but he had brought me a gift and he was dying from holding it so I just wanted to be nice.

“Hello, Mr. Lewis.” Tate’s voice came out from behind the typewriter.

“Fine. But hurry back down,” my dad said and I led Tate the rest of the way up the stairs and to my room, my dad staring at us like a hawk from the bottom of the stairs.

I opened my bedroom door, and I was happy that I hadn’t left it in a mess. Tate sat the typewriter down on my dresser, where it actually looked decent, and rubbed his hands off on his pants. His hands were as red as beets when he finally wiped some excess ink from them. I was surprised his shirt didn’t get filthy.

He was wheezing loudly and I watched as he retrieved a yellow inhaler from a pocket. He was breathing just fine a few moments after he used it and I suddenly felt bad for making him carry the typewriter to my room.

“Oh my god. I’m sorry I didn’t know you had asthma I wouldn’t have let you carry that thing all the way up here.” I collapsed into my desk chair and felt like crap. He looked at me as he pocketed his inhaler and laughed to himself for a moment.

“I don’t like telling people because they treat me different after they know. Promise you won’t treat me like I’m crippled for now on,” he said, smiling at me. There had been a girl, whose name I forgot, but it was in middle school and she had asthma.

We used to run around playing tether ball and she would just sit there and stare at us. We did treat her different, we let her cut in front of us in line and we watched her closely when she tried jogging with us. I still felt bad for Tate, but I would try my best not to treat him different.

“I won’t. After the incident at the store I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I thought maybe since you saw me go crazy you wouldn’t bother with me.”

“I know what happened to you, so I don’t blame you. After you left the store these two girls were going on about you, saying that you were scarred for life and all. I’m sorry about what he did to you. People like that are what makes this world so frightening, you know? It’s a fucked up world,” He said and thought for a moment to himself. He quickly shook his head as if he just realized something and smacked himself on the knee. “I’m sorry, that came out a little too raw.”

“Oh, it’s a fucked up world, Tate. But it’s people like us who make it worthwhile.” I smiled and he seemed to relax. I felt better with him now, staring down at me as if I was a long time friend, he wasn’t even a bit nervous about being in my room. “I never got to ask what school you went to.”

“I graduated two years ago, actually. I moved here with my grandmother from Maine a couple of months ago and I started working at the Discovery Shop because Mr. Allen is pretty interested in my grandmother. See, my parents died when I was younger. They were in a bank when it got robbed and they both didn’t make it out. So I moved in my grandmother and now I’m here. I keep forgetting we don’t know much about each other. We’re practically strangers.” Tate laughed, but I could see sadness in his eyes. He had been reminded of his parents and I couldn’t help but feel for him. I had both of mine, but I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost them.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” I said.

“What about you? What’s your story, besides the whole Dylan thing?” He tried to be slick and wipe away some tears from his eyes. I smiled up at him.

“I moved here seven years ago from California. My dad bought the Crow Mill near the town mall and we made the move. I’ve got to be honest and say that I hated it at first, but it grew on me. I graduated from Hanson high in May and now I’m just freeloading off of my parents with my dream of marrying David Tennant. You know, the usual.”

“Nice,” he laughed and stared over my shoulder, narrowing his eyes. “So, you’re into the paranormal?” he asked, noticing the blinking ghost on the webpage I had been on. I turned and closed the laptop, abruptly feeling uncomfortable. I didn’t need someone else thinking I was whacked out. “That was probably none of my business. But I’ve seen stuff before, in the store. I watch all the paranormal shows and I even have a ghost box.”

“What’s a ghost box?” I asked, trying to sway the conversation away from my beliefs. I didn’t know how he would take what had been going on. If he wanted to know, I’d have to tell him at least a little of what I was experiencing. He got instantly excited and leaned against my dresser.