Life Eternal

  “The victim was discovered on the beach, her mouth stuffed with some sort of white cloth, which authorities believe to be gauze. Although the cause of death is still unclear, initial police reports indicate that her body was severely bruised and scratched, possibly by fingernails. These reports have aroused strong suspicions of foul play.”

  I stared at the screen, unable to believe what I was seeing. Behind the reporter was a familiar scene. A rocky beach, the coast guard, a thicket of trees in the background. A red rowboat was tipped on its side near an area blocked off with caution tape.

  “It can’t be,” I murmured, but no one in the kitchen seemed to hear me.

  “The boat left on the island had been rented from a company just a few miles away. The man who was working there attested that Annette LaBarge was alone when she rented it late last Friday. Authorities still do not know why the woman rowed to the island on her own. No suspects have been identified yet.”

  Gauze in her mouth. My parents had died like that, too, their souls sucked out by the Undead they had been tracking. That was the danger with the Undead—some of them took souls at random to get a momentary burst of life. Miss LaBarge was a Monitor, just like my parents. Could she have died in a Monitoring accident? Is that what I had seen in my dream?

  “The island, known locally as Little Sister Island, is a small and deserted outcrop in Lake Erie, where there have recently been a startling number of reported sightings of unidentified objects floating in the water. Are they sea creatures? Mythical beasts? Or something far more sinister than just the monsters of the tabloids?”

  The camera panned away to a bumpy shot of the shoreline, where two uniformed men were carrying a heavy stretcher onto a patrol boat. “It can’t be her,” I whispered, my eyes darting across the screen, trying to wrap my mind around what I was seeing. How could I reconcile the body on the stretcher with Miss LaBarge, the woman who loved English breakfast tea and Nietzsche; who was the only voice of reason when nothing else made sense, and the only professor at Gottfried whom I considered a friend?

  “There must have been a mistake,” I said, turning to Dustin. “I mean, are they even sure it’s her?” He didn’t answer, so I pressed. “Maybe they identified the wrong person. It doesn’t sound like her. Monitors always work in pairs. Miss LaBarge would never have gone out alone.”

  “It’s possible,” he offered, but didn’t look me in the eye.

  The camera swept back to the scene on the beach. I shuddered as it lingered for the briefest moment on the zigzag of footprints scrawled in the rocky sand like a message.

  We stayed glued to the television, waiting for some kind of explanation, but it repeated the same story before moving on to a commercial break and the daily programs, which were almost offensive in their normality. Had what I dreamed actually happened? Had I somehow foreseen Miss LaBarge’s last moments?

  “Turn it off,” I said, but my voice was so small that no one heard me. “Turn it off,” I repeated. “Please.”

  When no one moved, I lunged forward and hit the power button. Stunned, the staff stared at me. Dustin reached for my arm, but I pulled away.

  I can only remember snippets of what happened after that. Dustin rattling the knob on the library door after I locked myself inside; the feeling of dust on my palms as I pulled out all the philosophy books on dreams and death from my grandfather’s collection and piled them around me; the roughness of the rug as I collapsed on the floor among them, too exhausted to do anything but feel them surrounding me like the scraps of people I had once known.

  I stayed there until the hallway went quiet. All I could think about was my dream: the look on my teacher’s face as she turned to me with her flashlight and said, “You,” the water lapping against my face as I swam after her boat, the slick creatures that climbed onto the beach in front of me. If I hadn’t woken up, what would I have done? What would I have seen? “Nothing,” I said out loud. I was a Monitor; I could sense death, but I couldn’t predict it. No one could. “It was just a bad dream.” But still, I wasn’t sure I believed it.

  Dustin, apparently still hovering outside the library, responded through the door. “Renée? Are you all right? Will you let me in?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Everything is going to be all right, Renée,” Dustin said, his voice gentle. “It was an accident. A Monitoring accident. She was probably killed by the Undead she was hunting. These things happen sometimes.”

  I stared at the light peeking in beneath the door, but didn’t move.

  Dustin sighed. “Well, I’m here.”

  I was still here too, I thought, but last night I had drifted somewhere else. Was it an accident? In my dream, it didn’t seem like she was hunting anyone. It seemed like I was hunting her.

  I didn’t open the door. Instead, I sat against the wall beneath the window, listening to the rain trickle down the side of the house until I fell asleep.

  When I woke up, the rain had stopped and the house was quiet. I rubbed my eyes and stood up, unlocking the door and nearly tripping over Dustin, who was sitting on the floor outside, dozing off next to a tray with a teapot, two cups, and a plate of butter cookies.

  “Renée,” he said, shaking himself awake. Hoisting himself up, he reached for the tray. “I thought you might need something to warm you up,” he said, and carried it into the library.

  He folded his legs into the small space beside me and sat down between the piles of books. There he adjusted his jacket and gave me a sad smile. “This is a cozy spot you’ve made. A nice reading selection,” he said, gesturing to a pile of books by Aristotle. He used them as a table while he poured me a cup of tea, which was now cold. “You know, Annette LaBarge came to the house with your mother every summer when they were at Gottfried together,” he said, gazing out the window at the wet, green lawn. “She was a lovely girl.”

  “It feels like everyone around me is dying,” I murmured.

  “That’s what happens when you get older.”

  “But I’m not old.”

  “You’re a Monitor. I used to be one too, you know, and look at me.” Wincing, he adjusted his knees. “Time passes differently with us. Life, death—sometimes it all seems like a dream.”

  His words made me shudder. “A dream?”

  Dustin nodded.

  I wanted to tell him what I had seen in my sleep, and to ask him what it meant. I wanted him to tell me that it wasn’t my fault, that it was a coincidence. But I couldn’t. What if he told my grandfather? That would only add to my problems.

  I studied his fleshy hands, the skin covered with age spots. “You were a Monitor?”

  “I was.” He leaned over and took two cookies from the plate, offering me one. “Go on.”

  I turned away, unable to look at it. “What if I don’t know how to?”

  Dustin furrowed his brow. “Don’t know how to what?”

  “Just go on.”

  “It will happen whether you know how to or not,” he said. “After all, what else can we do?”

  I WOKE UP IN THE LIBRARY, MY FACE PLANTED IN the middle of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, to the sound of a horn honking. After my conversation with Dustin, time had seemed stretched out, as though the forty-eight hours had been one unbearably long moment. I had wandered in and out of the library in a daze, hoping the news of Miss LaBarge’s death had been a nightmare, but it wasn’t. The seventeen-item breakfast that Dustin had prepared for me had sat on the kitchen counter until one of the cooks scraped it into the garbage. Even though the staff was going about their normal work, knowing that Miss LaBarge was dead made the mansion feel drafty and deserted, as if everyone else had died along with her.

  Miss LaBarge had an accident while hunting an Undead. That’s what Dustin kept telling me. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Why had she been there alone, when I knew that Monitors always worked in pairs? Or more importantly, why had she been hunting at all? The little I’d gleaned from my mother’s Monit
oring books had taught me that all Monitors eventually specialized—burying, researching, judging, teaching, coffin building.…There was an order to tracking and hunting the Undead; we didn’t just go out and bury them. Especially not professors, like Miss LaBarge, who had dedicated their lives to teaching the Undead and Monitors how to coexist. So why would she have traveled across several states to hunt one?

  “Why?” I’d begged Dustin, when he couldn’t give me an explanation. As if finding out the answer would somehow erase her mistakes.

  Leaning over, I pushed the curtains aside and peered out the window. It was a crisp, blue day, so bright it made me wince. My grandfather’s car was parked at the end of the crescent driveway, the doors open as Dustin struggled to carry in two stacks of papers, a briefcase, and a traveling bag.

  I went into the hall just as my grandfather thrust himself into the foyer, his coattails swooping in behind him. His wrinkled face was tanned, like his old leather briefcase.

  “Did you hear that Miss LaBarge—” I started to say, but my grandfather waved his hand to quiet me.

  “I’m aware of what happened.” He took off his coat and draped it over the pile of things Dustin was balancing in his arms.

  “Do they know who—”

  “I don’t know, Renée,” he said, his face softening while he studied me. “I’m sorry.” He took off his hat and dropped it on top of his coat. Dustin gave him a perfunctory nod before whisking everything away.

  “Where were you?” I persisted, walking behind him.

  “I’ll explain later,” he said, without turning around. “There are things I need to attend to now.”

  I stood in the doorway of his study while he sifted through the papers on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. Ignoring me, he picked up the phone and dialed a number written on the page.

  “Yes, hello. Is this the LaBarge residence?” With one hand he loosened his tie.

  “Who is that?” I mouthed.

  “Yes, thank you,” my grandfather continued, and, leaning over the desk, he shooed me out into the hall. As his office door closed, I could hear him say, “Jeffrey, hello. This is Brownell Winters speaking. I’m so sorry for your loss….”

  With nothing else to do, I slid to the floor and waited. I tried to listen in, but all I could hear were occasional phrases. “I see.” “How odd.” “Yes, I would very much like to see it, if it’s not too much of an imposition.”

  His muffled voice faded in and out until the door opened.

  “Oh, Renée,” my grandfather said, bumping into me. “You’re still here.”

  “Of course I’m still here. What was that about?”

  Instead of answering my question, he rolled down his shirtsleeves and fastened them at the wrists with cuff links. “Get dressed,” he said. “We’re going on a trip.”

  • • •

  Vermont was green and rolling. I spent half the drive dozing in and out of sleep, my dreams permeated by dairy farms and grain silos, garage sales and lawn ornaments. The car sagged in the back with my grandfather’s shovels and Monitoring supplies, which made a loud thumping sound every time we drove over a bump. He had brought them along just in case we encountered any Undead; though it seemed pretty unlikely that the Undead who killed Miss LaBarge would come to her childhood home. I had been trying not to think about where we were going, but everything around us reminded me of Miss LaBarge: the yarn stores and bakeries, where I could almost see her in a window, wearing an oversized sweater as she nibbled on a scone.

  Her house was off of a pastoral road riddled with potholes. It was a weathered wood cottage burrowed into a hillside, the roof almost completely overgrown with grass. There was one car in the driveway; otherwise, it looked deserted. Two of the front windows were broken.

  We pulled up next to the house, in front of a small vegetable garden. “After we give our condolences to her family, I’ll have to spend a few minutes examining her house to search for any information on the Undead she was hunting, per Monitor protocol,” my grandfather said as we made our way up the stone path to the front door. “I’d like for you to join me.”

  “Monitor protocol?” I asked. “You do this for every Monitor that’s killed?”

  “I don’t, but someone from the High Monitor Court does. I used to be a member, and now that I’m retired I only take cases that are especially close to me. Annette LaBarge was one of your mother’s best friends. It’s the least I can do to honor her memory.”

  Climbing roses curled their tendrils around the railing as if trying to pull the house into the ground. Swallowing, I gave my grandfather a brief nod and smoothed out my skirt, feeling unsure about what I was supposed to say or do once we went inside. “Just be yourself,” my grandfather said, as though reading my mind.

  Just before he swung the knocker, the door opened, and a stout man wearing a baggy sweater greeted us. “You must be Brownell,” he said with a smile. He had the smooth face of a baby, but had to be at least forty years old.

  My grandfather took off his sunglasses.

  “I’m Jeffrey,” the man said, holding out his hand first to my grandfather, then to me. “Annette’s mother’s nurse. She was too ill to make the journey, so I’m here in her stead. Please, come in,” he said, and showed us into the front of the cottage. In the living room, a couch was positioned oddly next to a few overturned stools; a bland print of a landscape leaned on the floor in the hallway, as if it had been knocked off the wall; and a pile of broken dishes had been swept into the corner of the kitchen.

  “The front of the house was ravaged when the police got here,” Jeffrey said. “The windows were broken, the furniture was all over the place….They think it happened after her death; someone trying to steal her things. Thankfully there wasn’t much here, and whoever it was didn’t touch the back rooms.”

  “Where is everyone?” I asked, realizing we were the only ones there. “Her family? Friends?”

  Jeffrey clasped his hands behind his back. “Annette wasn’t close with her family. I don’t think any of them have been in touch for years. This cottage, which belongs to her mother, is really their only connection. Annette spent summers here, when she was away from Gottfried.”

  By my grandfather’s foot was a shard of pottery. He picked it up and tossed it into a nearby dustpan, which contained the remains of a broken vase. “Remind me, what was her mother’s name?”

  “Henriette LaBarge. She’s been living in a nursing home for twelve years.” Jeffrey reached for a tin kettle steaming on the stove. It was dented and was missing its lid. “Can I offer you tea?”

  We nodded, and he took out two chipped mugs from the cabinet and dropped tea bags inside. When he opened the refrigerator for milk, he winced at the smell.

  This didn’t seem like Miss LaBarge at all. Where were her books? Her photographs and tapestries and figurines? Her teacups?

  “Twelve years?” my grandfather said. “That’s quite a bit of time. I hope you won’t take offense, but I was surprised to receive your message, especially since I’ve never heard about you before.”

  Jeffrey smiled. “With Annette gone, there’s no one left to take care of the house, which is why I came. I contacted you first because Annette had your number listed as her emergency contact, though under the name of Lydia Winters.”

  I nearly dropped my mug at the mention of my mother’s name. My grandfather frowned. “I see.”

  “I only arrived this morning, and barely had to time to make the front rooms presentable again. The police have come and gone, so feel free to touch what you wish.”

  “I appreciate that. We’ll be out of your way soon.”

  I followed my grandfather down the hallway. He opened doors here and there. A dining room. A bathroom. A coat closet. The ceilings were low and the rooms were small and dark. Still, this part of the house seemed far more welcoming than the front. There were pictures on the walls: watercolors, needlepoints, and photographs of Miss LaBarge as a child, jumping throu
gh a sprinkler or sitting in the garden playing with a shovel. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smile or cry.

  “Pay attention, Renée,” my grandfather said over his shoulder.

  I frowned. “I am paying attention.”

  “Do you notice anything?” he said, his voice low.

  “Not really,” I murmured, shoving my hands into my pockets.

  He turned around. “You’re not even trying.”

  I let my arms drop to my sides in frustration. “Trying to do what?” I asked. I was trying as hard as I could to keep myself together, to appear normal.

  “Don’t you want to learn from her death?”

  “Why does everything have to be a learning experience? Why does everything have to lead to something else? Why can’t I just be?” I knew I sounded childish, but I couldn’t help it.

  Glancing down the hall, my grandfather took me by the arm and pulled me aside. Lowering his voice, he growled, “Who do you think broke into this cottage? Who do you think rooted through all of Annette’s things?” His jowls shook. When I didn’t respond, he answered his own question. “The Undead. Don’t you want to find the Undead who killed a Monitor and then invaded her home? Don’t you want to bury the Undead who would do a thing like that? If we don’t, any of us could be next. You could be next.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why would I be next—”

  My grandfather cut me off. “Renée, you can keep fooling yourself into thinking you’re a normal teenager. The truth is, you’re not. You’re a Monitor now. Start thinking like one.”

  I wriggled out of his grip.

  “Now, what do you see?” he asked.

  I crossed my arms and glanced at the decorations. It almost felt like I was in the creaky corridor in Horace Hall that led to Miss LaBarge’s office. “There are more of her things here. It feels more like her.”

  My grandfather nodded and began walking. “Why do you think that is?”

  I followed him until we reached the end of the hallway, where there stood a single door. On the floor was a mat identical to the one in Miss LaBarge’s office at Gottfried. It said: WELCOME FRIENDS. I stepped before it, wishing that she would open the door, a plate of cookies in one hand, a book in the other. Only Miss LaBarge would have a welcome mat in the middle of her house. My grandfather stepped across it and opened the door. The room beyond was pitch black.