“It’s the whole being-dead thing that’s messing with my head,” said Dave. “I’m seventeen, and we’re not supposed to have a sell-by date, you know?”
“Everyone dies,” said Eileen, matter-of-fact as always.
“Death is a doorway,” countered Melissa.
Dave shook his head. “Maybe it is. But if so, what’s on the other side?”
“We transform and reincarnate,” said Melissa. “We return to source and then take a new form in order to continue our journey to enlightenment.”
Dana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Eileen looked away for a moment, and Dana figured she was rolling her eyes.
“Maybe,” Dave said again, “but that’s just a theory. And, hey, I try to keep an open mind and all, but none of us really know what it’s like to be dead.”
“I guess we’ll all find out,” said Eileen.
“Doesn’t make it any easier to process what happened last night,” said Dave. “Maisie went to our school, she lived in this neighborhood. We knew her. Not real well, but enough. Enough for her to be alive in our world … if that makes sense.”
Dana glanced at him in surprise and walked a few steps in silence, reappraising him. She did know what he meant, and she knew that it was a very deep question. It was a frightening question, too. When she was little, she’d believed in the Sunday school version of heaven. Her beliefs had evolved as she’d grown older, read more, thought more deeply, and considered such matters with a serious mind.
The conversation continued, and she drifted along with the others but tuned them out as she listened to her own thoughts. Dave had struck a nerve. None of us really know what it’s like to be dead. Was Maisie’s consciousness, her soul, still out there, up there, wherever, remembering the crash, the twisted metal, the pain, the dying? It was a horrifying thought.
They talked about Maisie all the way to school. To Dana it felt like Death was walking right beside them the whole way.
CHAPTER 8
Francis Scott Key Regional High School
7:06 A.M.
School was school.
Classes started with ringing bells. Hallways filled and emptied, filled and emptied. The principal made incoherent announcements through bad speakers mounted to classroom walls. Teachers attempted to teach, and students—mostly but not entirely—tried not to be taught. Normal.
Except that it wasn’t.
There was a subsurface stream of conversation, speculation, and gossip. The girls who were friends or semi-friends with Maisie held court and were extravagantly tragic. Dana observed it all but did not play the game. She had never met Maisie, didn’t even know what she looked like. And somehow she felt guilty for not knowing a fellow student who’d died. It seemed somehow disrespectful, though Dana could not figure out why. She decided that she’d go to church on Sunday and light a candle for her.
As the day played out, she realized just how little she had become involved in this school. She wasn’t part of any clique; she didn’t have a circle of friends. Even Dave and Eileen wouldn’t have told her about Maisie if Dave didn’t have a crush on Melissa. Dana felt invisible at times. Like a ghost, she thought, but thinking that creeped her out.
Between English and gym she had a free period, so she spent part of it in the library, looking for books on religious visions—there were none— psychological damage—ditto—and dreams—nothing. Frustrated, she left the library and went down to the gym to change early. She didn’t like changing when all the other girls were around. Unlike her sister, Dana was shy about even being in her underwear around anyone. She was tiny, skinny, and didn’t have much in the way of curves. Not yet. Mom said that puberty sometimes took its time, but that it always caught up. Melissa had looked twenty when she was twelve. Mom tried to tell Dana that looking like a grown woman at that age wasn’t a blessing, but Dana always envied Melissa’s figure. Charm, an outgoing personality, a great sense of humor, and boobs, mused Dana, cataloging her sister’s assets. And what do I have? Moodiness? Better grades? A big dose of being weird? Yeah, that’ll win over all the boys.
The last gym class was still going on and the locker room was empty, so Dana opened her locker and undressed quickly and pulled on the sleeveless, legless, ugly blue onesie that was the girls’ gym uniform. The only good thing about the garment was that no one—not even Donna Bertram, who looked like Farrah Fawcett—looked good in it. She thought she was totally alone until a locker door opened behind her with a soft click. Dana turned, startled, and saw a girl she didn’t know standing there, peering into the crammed locker.
“Oh, sorry,” said Dana, though she had no idea what she was sorry for.
The girl fished for something inside the locker. “It’s cool. I thought I was alone in here.”
“Me too.”
The girl was about Dana’s height, but with a bigger build and lots of thick black hair. She wore a pretty blue blouse and a skirt that was so short Dana wondered if one of the teachers had yelled at her for it. Pantyhose, too, which was equally odd for school. And really nice shoes. Around her neck the girl wore an unusual pendant—a black onyx disk surrounded by stylized flames done in curls of gold, like a total solar eclipse. Even though Dana had never seen that particular piece of jewelry before, there was something strikingly familiar about it.
Dana turned away and began buttoning up her gym suit. The silence of the locker room seemed big, and it felt like it ought to be filled with something. Dana was terrible at small talk, usually falling into the bad habit of commenting on the weather. Today was different, of course, and Dana grabbed the big topic for want of something else to say.
“That was such a shame about what happened to Maisie, wasn’t it?”
The sounds of rummaging stopped. “Maisie? Why? What happened to her?”
“Oh … didn’t you hear?” She looked over her shoulder, but the girl still faced the other way, one hand inside the locker.
“No. What happened?”
“There was a car accident,” said Dana, “and she was killed.”
“Car accident?” said the girl.
“That’s what they’re saying. She was at a party and she hit a tree. So sad. Did you know her?”
The girl withdrew her hand from the locker and stood with her arms hanging loosely at her sides, shoulders slumped, head bowed.
“That’s how Maisie died?” she asked, still not turning around.
“That’s what they said.”
“Who?”
“What?” asked Dana.
“Who said that’s what happened?”
“I don’t know.… Everyone, I guess. It’s all over the school.”
She saw the girl’s shoulders begin to tremble even before she heard the first sob. The girl balled her hands into fists and seemed to cave inward as if punched in the stomach, bent almost double by the news.
“I’m so sorry,” cried Dana. “Was she a friend of yours?”
The sobs were horrible to hear. Deep, broken, bottomless. Dana took a small step toward her, reaching out, almost touching her, but crippled by her own discomfort. Melissa would know what to say, but she did not.
All she could think to do was say, “I’m sorry.” Over and over again.
A split second later, a sudden and unexpected pain flared on Dana’s chest right over her heart. It was as intense as a burn, but the moment Dana touched the spot, the pain vanished. Then the girl turned around and screamed.
It was the loudest sound Dana had ever heard. It filled the whole room and slammed into her like a wave, hit her ears like punches, drove her backward and away, all the way to her own row of lockers. She crashed against the cold metal, clamping her hands to her ears.
And froze.
The girl stood there, facing her, no longer slumped, head up, arms thrown wide, fists open and fingers splayed. Her eyes were so wide that the whites showed all around the brown irises. Her thick hair hung in streamers, partly obscuring her face, the tips moving as if there was a stiff
breeze in the room, which there absolutely was not.
Dana could not move. All she could do was stare, her mouth hanging open, eyes as wide as the girl’s.
She saw the pale face, pale skin, but now it was all different, changed.
The girl’s blouse was torn. So was her skirt. Her pantyhose had runs in them, and the expensive shoes were scuffed and dirty, the pendant was gone, and there was a red welt on her neck as if the chain had been forcibly torn away. And the girl was bleeding.
It started with a single drop that slipped from the dark tangle of her hair and ran down her forehead and then soaked into one eyebrow. The blood was a dark red, thick and glistening.
“You’re…,” began Dana, but anything else she might have said died in her throat as a second drop of blood fell down that pale forehead. A third. A fourth. More, the fat drops racing down the girl’s face. “Oh no … what happened? Are you okay…?”
Her words trailed off as she saw the girl’s wrists. At first they were unmarked, smooth … and then the skin seemed to pucker inward as if poked by something.
Something sharp.
The skin dimpled, then broke, and blood welled from each wrist.
Dana felt panic flaring in her chest as shock, fear, and the desperate need to do something, anything, warred with each other.
“Help me…,” whispered the girl, and now her voice was so soft, almost distant, but filled with raw pain.
“We need to get you to the nurse,” said Dana as she broke free from the paralysis of shock and hurried over to the injured girl.
“No!” shrieked the girl. “Don’t touch me!”
Then she shuddered as the fabric of her dress ripped along the left side of her torso, and more red welled from a deep and savage puncture.
Dana skidded to a stop, sickened and shocked. “We need to get to the nurse’s office. Can you walk?”
That was when she saw the blood on the floor. It ran from horrible wounds on the tops of the girl’s feet and into her shoes, and overflowed to pool on the floor. Dana’s stomach lurched, her breakfast surging up and bile burning in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard and recoiled from the spreading pool of red.
“Please,” she begged, “how can I help?”
The girl was sagging again, her head falling on a limp neck, but her arms remained outstretched as if something held her hands to the lockers. No, not her hands … her wrists. The hands twitched, the fingers curling like dying spiders, but the wrists were pressed firmly and immovably against the metal. As if welded there, as if pinned. Dana made a grab for her arm, thinking that she was stuck on something, a piece of broken metal, something …
“NO!” howled the girl. “Please … stop … Don’t do this … please…”
The words jolted Dana again, her hands raised to touch, to help. “I can help,” she said.
But the girl shook her head. “Why are you doing this? I didn’t tell anyone about the Red Age, I swear. Please, God, don’t…”
“I’ll get help!” cried Dana, not knowing what else to do. “Hold on … please, just hold on.”
And it was in that terrible moment that Dana realized that the girl was not merely hurt. The wounds on her head, side, wrists, and feet were not random injuries.
They were stigmata.
They were the wounds of Jesus Christ. The crown of thorns, the spear thrust to the side, and the nails that held Jesus to the cross. All of it was right there. All of it was real, and it was beyond horrible.
She whirled and ran, screaming for help, for teachers, for the nurse, for anyone. Behind her, the girl babbled, still telling Dana not to touch her, not to hurt her. Begging her.
Dana burst through into the gym, where sixty other girls were in teams playing dodgeball under the benign, bored eye of Mrs. Frazer, the gym teacher.
“Help!” screamed Dana.
Everything stopped, everyone turned, a thrown ball hit a girl on the shoulder and bounced away, making a series of diminishing thumps that were the only sounds in the gym other than the echo of her scream.
Then everyone was in motion, running, yelling, with the short, squat Mrs. Frazer outrunning them all. Dana spun again, and they followed her like an incoming tide into the hall between the big room and the locker room.
“In here,” yelled Dana, pointing. “She’s bleeding. She’s been hurt.”
“Show me,” barked Mrs. Frazer. “Everyone else stay back.”
The order was fierce and was entirely ignored as the girls crammed into the hall and then burst out into the locker room.
“Next row,” puffed Dana, out of breath and so scared that she had done the wrong thing. Should she have stayed and given first aid? She knew how. Both she and Melissa had been certified by one of their father’s sailors back in San Diego. What if leaving the girl meant that she’d bled to death?
Those questions banged around in her head as they wheeled around the end of the first row of lockers to where she’d left the injured girl.
Mrs. Frazer pushed past her but then stopped dead in her tracks. Dana careened into her and rebounded as severely as if she’d walked into a fireplug. The other girls collided and bumped and stopped in a bunch. Everyone stared.
At nothing.
At a completely empty row of lockers.
At a clean floor.
Not one single drop of blood on the fronts of the lockers. No pool of red on the linoleum. There was absolutely nothing there.
“But—but—” stammered Dana. She bolted and checked the next row, even though she was positive this was where she’d seen the girl. Even though her own locker stood open, the sleeve of her sweater hanging out. The next row was empty, and the next. The teacher strode through the room behind her, looking down each row, checking the bathroom, in each stall. In the laundry room. In the foyer that led back to the main hallway of the school’s basement.
Nothing.
The girls crowded around, scared and confused, looking with puzzled expressions at the empty rows of lockers.
Mrs. Frazer turned very slowly toward Dana. “If this is a joke,” she said in the coldest voice in town, “it’s neither funny nor appreciated.”
The other girls moved away from Dana and regrouped around the teacher. There was doubt on some faces, anger on others. A few leaned their heads close to each other, whispering and giggling.
“But I saw her,” insisted Dana. “She was hurt. She was bleeding all over. She was right there.”
“Right where?”
Dana hurried back to the row of lockers against which the girl had stood and placed her hand on one closed door. “Right here. She had this locker open.”
Mrs. Frazer stiffened, and Dana heard several of the girls gasp. Dana looked at the other girls. No one was laughing now. Some stood with hands over their mouths, eyes wide. Two of them had tears in their eyes. A few looked really angry, like they wanted to hit her.
Mrs. Frazer stepped close to Dana. She was only half an inch taller, but she seemed to tower above Dana, her eyes hot, cheeks flushed, one finger hovering like a snake inches from Dana’s face.
“If this is some kind of cruel prank, girl…,” she said, and left the rest to hang, the meaning quite clear.
“What do you mean?”
Mrs. Frazer suddenly slapped her hand against the locker so hard it was like a gunshot. It shocked everyone to silence and tore a yelp of fear and surprise from Dana.
“That poor girl may have made some mistakes,” said Mrs. Frazer. “Maybe she shouldn’t have been at that party, and maybe she was smoking dope. We don’t know what went on … but that doesn’t give you the right to play a horrible joke like this.”
“Joke? I don’t … Wait, what girl? Whose locker is this?”
But Dana already knew.
She looked at the closed and locked metal door, then down at the floor where the blood had pooled, and then up into Mrs. Frazer’s hard eyes.
“Maisie…?” she whispered.
CHAPTER 9
/> Craiger, Maryland
2:19 P.M.
“Hysteria?” said Melissa. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Dana growled. They were outside the school, walking along the street toward the center of town.
“What did they do?”
Dana snorted. “First they took me to the office so the principal could bark at me.”
“Mr. Sternholtz is an orc. I don’t think he ever smiles. Not sure he can.”
“Then they made me lie down for an hour in the nurse’s office. And they called Mom, of course. Not sure what she said, but when he hung up, Mr. Sternholtz looked like he’d been mugged in an alley.”
“That’s Mom.”
They both nodded. Their mother was generally a quiet, almost passive woman, but not when someone said anything about her children. She never raised her voice, never cursed, never made threats, but somehow the message was always conveyed. Back off.
They reached their destination, which had become the center of their lives over the last few months. It was an old peach-colored building that stood alone on the corner of what passed for the center of Craiger. The name BEYOND BEYOND had been painted on the wood above the front window, the letters swirling with rainbow colors and dusted with glitter. There were two doors. The big one on Main Street led to a store that sold incense, healing crystals, albums of Tibetan monks chanting, folk instruments like Australian didgeridoos and Chilean pan flutes, bead jewelry from Africa and Costa Rica, and icons from every religion in the world and some, Dana suspected, that had been made up recently. Long glass cases lined the walls, and lots of small display tables created a haphazard maze for browsers. A smaller side door on Calliope Avenue was used mostly for students and participants in the various groups and classes that met there, which ranged from yoga and meditation to Reiki massage and even a local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. The two halves of the store were separated by an arched doorway, above which was a sign for the COFFEE BAR, flanked by dozens of hand-painted Malaysian flying figures—sphinxes, dragons, and bats.
The girls went in the side and straight to their favorite booth, which was right past the arch. There were two checkout registers, one up front for the store and one under the arch, separated from their booth by a thin canvas screen, so the cha-chings punctuated everything Dana and Melissa said.