The Dead Lands Read online

  Mike nodded but stopped himself before he asked, And what about me? You don’t care about what I’m feeling, do you?

  He knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  His father wouldn’t listen.

  He never did.

  — 3 —

  “Why won’t you tell me where you were last night?”

  Megan glared at Abby as she stood underneath the apple tree, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Do you think I enjoyed myself, being here alone all night?”

  Abby shook her head but still said nothing. There was no way she wanted to tell Megan about what had happened. Meeting Jim Burke—and realizing that he could actually see and hear her—had nothing to do with Megan.

  “It was scary here alone,” Megan went on, her tone wounded and petulant. “I saw and heard things.”

  “That’s why I told you to stay in the cemetery,” Abby said.

  Megan nodded but didn’t look mollified.

  “As long as you’re in the cemetery, you’re safe.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So how come you can leave whenever you want to? I thought you were afraid of that Reverend Wheeler. Were you just making all that that up?”

  A shiver ran through Abby at the sound of his name. She shook her head and said, “No way. But I know more about when it’s dangerous and when it’s sort of safe.”

  “You told me it was tough to communicate with anyone still living,” Megan said. “So how can anything be a threat to you or me? What else can happen? We’re already dead.”

  Abby was about to answer her but then decided it was just as well if Megan didn’t know. If she moved on soon, once they figured out the exact circumstances of her death, there was no point in frightening her any more. All she had to know was that, as long as she stayed in the cemetery at night, she would be safe.

  “I want to go to the cliffs again today,” Megan said.

  The sudden shift of topic took Abby by surprise. She was still thinking about what had happened between her and Jim last night that she had all but forgotten Megan’s problems.

  “Is there … Do you feel something? Are you getting a vibe?” Abby asked.

  “A vibe? That’s … I haven’t heard anyone say that in a while,” Megan said. Then she squinted as she considered the question and said, “I’m not sure. I still have this … feeling … if that’s what you mean by vibe. Like there’s still something missing.”

  “Missing?”

  Megan nodded as she looked past Abby and down at the beach. The tide was out, and a long stretch of dark brown sand and tangled seaweed marked the fringe. The water was steel-gray, and a thick fog bank loomed far out on the horizon. A foghorn kept sounding, faint with distance.

  “I think there …” She frowned and scratched her head. “There’s something out there that, I dunno, maybe will help me.”

  Abby smiled, thinking this was good. Pushing aside, for now, any thoughts about Jim Burke, she reached out for Megan’s hand and said, “Come on, then. Let’s take a walk. ”

  “Are you sure it’s safe now?” Megan’s voice was pinched with fear, and Abby couldn’t help but wonder what exactly she had seen and heard last night to frighten her so. Maybe Reverend Wheeler had spoken with her, or maybe she had seen some of the other lost and lonely souls outside the graveyard.

  “We’ll be all right,” she said, and together, hand in hand, they drifted out of the cemetery and down to the beach. As they walked, Abby noticed that with every other step, Megan’s bare foot made a high-pitched squeaking sound in the singing sands. She kept glancing down at the girl’s bare foot, and was convinced all the more that her missing sneaker had something to do with what had happened to her.

  With luck, it might even be the answer they were looking for.

  — 4 —

  Detective Gray was steaming as he sat in his office and stared at the stack of papers on his desk. They were the printed copies of the e-mail exchanges between Andrew Collins and Megan McGowan, and they made for some fairly twisted reading. Lot of sick bastards in the world, he thought.

  The cup of coffee at his elbow had long since gone cold as he read through the e-mails again. For the first time in a long time, he wished he hadn’t quit smoking. He sure could use a cigarette right about now. It might help him concentrate.

  This Collins guy was a tough nut, and a sick-o to boot. Throughout the interrogation last night and into this morning, he had maintained his innocence, but he had done it with such a smug arrogance Gray was convinced he was guilty of Megan’s murder and putting up a brave front. Then again, he might be telling the truth and so scared he was acting guilty. He might not have had a thing to do with Megan’s death.

  In and of themselves, the e-mails, while incriminating, certainly didn’t prove a damned thing. They wouldn’t stand up in court. Although the tone of them didn’t sit well with Gray, they weren’t proof positive that Collins had actually met up with Megan, either the day she died or any other day. The two of them had flirted on-line, and that could very well have been the full extent of it. Lots of people adopted personae on-line and talked about doing things they would never actually do.

  So, was Collins sick?

  Absolutely.

  Anyone who wrote sexually suggestive e-mails to underage girls had something wrong.

  And Megan had obviously been aware of what Collins was hinting at. But they never closed the deal, as far as Gray could see. In the e-mails Jesse, the IT guy, had pulled up, there was only one mention of meeting at the park, but they hadn’t settled on a time or day. Jesse was working on the drive to see if he could retrieve any other files that might have been deleted. What frustrated Gray was that he had no probable cause to confiscate Collins’ computer. And he was sure that the first thing Collins did this morning when he got back to his apartment was delete any and all exchanges he’d had with Megan McGowan.

  If Collins had killed Megan McGowan, Gray was going to have to prove it by doing some good old-fashioned police work.

  And if Collins didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s murder, then Gray was back to square one without a damned clue.

  — 5 —

  Ever on the alert for Reverend Wheeler and his Hell Hounds, Abby and Megan crossed the beach until they reached the shadows under the towering cliffs that wound along the coast from Fort Williams to Portland Head Light. They moved slowly along the margin of rocks and sand exposed by the ebbing tide. Megan limped along with her one bare foot, but Abby knew she was doing this only out of memory and force of habit. There was no way she could really feel any pain from the sharp rocks.

  The sun was breaking through the clouds, and all the living people at the park looked happy. The leaves of the sumac had turned blaze red with approaching autumn, making the cliffs look like they were on fire. Up above, kids were running around with their families, and young couples strolled along the winding dirt paths, holding hands and looking for privacy. Close to the water’s edge, a group of teenage boys were goofing around on some rocks as surf washed up around them, splashing them. White flashes of sea gulls wheeled about overhead, their calls carried on the wind. On one rocky ledge exposed only at low tide, a harbor seal was sunning himself after a satisfying breakfast of clams and mussels.

  Abby studied Megan, trying to see how much the scene was affecting her. Like Abby, she seemed to have been a quiet and thoughtful girl in life, maybe a little withdrawn. She kept her eyes downcast as though contemplating everything she had recently lost. Although they could see and hear people around them, neither one of them could feel the cool, gentle breeze blowing in off the water or the waves of heat from the autumn sun.

  All of this was lost to them.

  “Woo-hoo! Check it out!” one of the boys down by the water suddenly shouted. His voice was dull with distance, but Megan became suddenly alert. She squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the water and looked at the boys.

 
; There were five of them, all in their early to midteens. They all wore the teenaged boy’s uniform—faded jeans, t-shirts with rock group logos, expensive sneakers, and baseball caps on backwards. One boy in particular, the heavyset one with dark hair who had shouted, drew Megan’s attention. Abby followed her gaze down to the rocks.

  The boy was holding something in his hand—a flat, somewhat rounded object.

  “Looks like a girl’s,” one of the other boys shouted, and he watched as the first boy bent down and, cocking his body to one side, spun around quickly and threw whatever it was he had found. It hit the flat plane of the water, dimpling it, and then skipped once … twice … three times before stopping.

  “What a pussy throw that was,” one of the other boys shouted, and they all started whooping and howling like apes as they moved away, leaping from rock to rock.

  But Abby didn’t watch them go. She was focused on Megan, who was staring out across the water with the most peculiar expression on her face. Her lower lip was trembling, and she looked like she was about to cry. If she had been alive, she very well might have. She was staring at the object the boy had thrown. It looked like a tiny, dark canoe, drifting and rocking with the tide.

  “What is it?” Abby asked, but Megan didn’t answer. She was focused on the object less than fifty feet from the shore.

  “Megan …?” Abby said, her voice edged with concern. “What is it?”

  But Megan kept watching the object as it dipped and rose on the waves, drawing closer to the shore with each swell. By now, the teenage boys were long gone, out of sight around an outcropping of rock. Abby could still hear their raucous laughter.

  She tensed as Megan started along the shore on a course that would intercept that object as it drifted ever closer to shore. Time seemed to slow down. The people roaming the cliffs above moved in sludgy slow motion, their voices and laughter muted by distance. The air grew heavy, almost stifling. Megan was moving faster than Abby, so she reached the object just as a tiny wave lifted it up onto a rock that angled out into the water. When Abby joined her, she saw for the first time what the object was.

  It was Megan’s other sneaker—the one for her bare right foot.

  She recognized the multicolored lacings with dangling colored plastic beads on the ends. The fabric was smudged with dirt, strands of lime-green slime attached to it. Megan was transfixed as another wave pushed the sneaker further up onto the rock and deposited it as if by an unseen hand at Megan’s feet. If she had been alive, she could have picked it up and put it on her right foot.

  Sadness and utter confusion filled Megan’s eyes as she looked from the sneaker to Abby. Her lower lip was trembling when she said, “This is the real one of the one I’m wearing.”

  Abby nodded but said nothing. She knew what Megan was thinking because it was exactly what she was thinking:

  So where is her other sneaker … the left one … the one that fell off her foot before she died?

  Abby

  Yup, that’s my photograph in the locket.

  I was thirteen years old when it was taken. My parents and I went to Richmond that summer. It’s the only time I’d ever been away from home, other than when I left to come to Maine with my uncle. I was excited, being in the big city. It was the biggest one I’d ever seen until we sailed past New York City. I couldn’t believe how big that city was. It must be incredibly large now.

  While we were in Richmond, my father was supposedly off doing some business, but we found out later he spent all his time in a tavern. My mother took me to a photography studio and had that picture of me taken. I understand it cost a lot of money, but she had saved up over several years. She never told me how much it cost. All I know is that when we got back home and my father found out about it, he got real angry. That night, after he’d been drinking, he went after my mother again. I hid in the barn until he was done.

  I’m glad you didn’t give it to your mother, though.

  It’s better if you keep it. Maybe we can figure out why it’s so important to me.

  I don’t know why, other than sentimental reasons. It’s all I have left of my life. Even the dress I’m wearing. It’s not real. It’s an illusion of the clothes I was buried in. That locket and the hair and key are the only things I have left to cling to. They’re all that’s left to prove I used to be alive.

  I don’t always know where the locket is all the time, but I get these feelings. A while ago, I heard some call it a ‘vibe.’ I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s like I’m filled with sadness, but that feeling is mixed with a sense of urgency and, maybe, I don’t know … maybe protectiveness.

  Do you get what I mean?

  It’s complicated, I know.

  I had already died by the time the scavengers found the wreck after the storm. I watched as two older men and a boy a little younger than I was arrived in a little boat. It was still dark, and by lantern light, they went through the wreckage. I was watching when they found my uncle’s body, all tangled up in the ropes and stuff. I’ll never forget the expression on his face. His skin was bone-white, and his eyes were wide open as though he was startled to realize he was dead. His mouth was hanging open like he was frozen in the middle of a scream. That’s the face I see whenever he comes to me and tells me to come with him.

  Before the constable and other people arrived to sort through the wreckage, these two men and the boy searched through the pockets and belongings of all the drowned people they found washed up on the shore. The boy found the locket and key in the Reverend’s coat pocket, and he hid them from the other two. I don’t know why. Maybe he knew or sensed they were important.

  Like I said, I was watching all of this, but I was so upset and confused by what was happening. I didn’t realize I was dead, too.

  I know. It seems odd that I can talk about it so matter-of-factly now, but I’ve been dead a long time. I guess I’ve gotten used to it, but there are some things I still don’t understand.

  Anyway, I lingered on the shore, watching as other scavengers arrived and collected as much loot as they could before the constable and other citizens came to get the bodies. Everyone on board was dead. It was only when I saw someone—a middle-aged man with long dark hair and a beard—fish something out of the water that I began to fully realize what had happened.

  Terrified and sad, I watched in stunned disbelief as he used a gaff—You know what a gaff is, right? One of those long poles with a metal hook on the end that people use down on the docks to catch mooring lines and such. Well, this man used a gaff to drag my body out of the surf and up onto the beach. It was terrifying to watch.

  Chapter 9

  12:34

  —1—

  Megan sat in a darkened corner at the back of the church and listened to the funeral service. It pained her to see her mother so broken down, and her heart went out to her little brother, who was pale with grief. Her father, on the other hand, looked more in control of himself. He sat with his arm around his wife, but his eyes were flat and empty. They looked like wet marbles.

  Megan tried to describe how she felt about the rest of the people who were there, but there were too many of them, and her feelings ran the gamut from sadness to anger to humor. Take Mr. Healey, her science teacher, for instance. He had consistently given her nothing but grief in class, insisting that she had too good a brain to let it “lie fallow there between her ears,” as he always said. Now, here he was, wearing a shirt whose collar was too tight for him, his face flushed bright red from crying—actually crying in public. Judging by the way he had treated her in class, Megan had never suspected he experienced any emotions so deeply.

  Or take her Aunt Nancy and Uncle Dave Crosby and their twins, Larry and Billy, who were a year older than Megan. They lived in Melbourne, Florida, so the family rarely saw them except for one winter a few years ago when Megan and her family had gone down to Florida for a week, and the “Crosby Clan,” as her father called them, met them one day at Disney World. The twins treate
d Megan with aloof disregard, and truth to tell, Megan had never really liked either one of them—they both were so arrogant and downright mean to her. But now, all four of them sat huddled on the pew right behind her mother, father, and brothers, clinging to each other because they knew, if circumstances had been different, it might have been one of them lying there in that closed, wooden box at the front of the church.

  And there were so many others. Megan tried to tell Abby who everyone was, but she couldn’t keep up. The church was filled to capacity with standing room only. Megan wondered, as she and Abby pressed back into the darkest corner, if anyone had even an inkling they were there. She listened to the Reverend Kennedy—the same man who had conducted the nighttime service at the cliffs—intone about how Megan had gone “to a better place” and “to her eternal reward.” She reflected, sadly, that he had no idea what he was talking about. The music was nice, if a bit somber, but none of it touched Megan as deeply as it apparently touched many of the people gathered there. So many of them were crying and hugging each other, and sometimes they laughed when someone reminisced about something humorous that had involved Megan. Mostly, though, Megan felt the same way she always felt when her parents had made her come to church.

  She wanted to get the heck out of there!

  “Can we bolt now?” she whispered to Abby, who was watching the proceedings. A man she didn’t recognize who was standing in the corner near them shifted as though uncomfortable and glanced in their direction. Megan wondered if he had sensed them.

  Abby had a perplexed expression when she asked, “What do you mean, ‘bolt’?”

  “Leave … Get the Christ out of here.”