Over Your Dead Body

  “He’s always in charge,” said Sister Debbie. “Always and everywhere, over everything there is. I love him so much.” She smiled. “Isn’t it great to be alive?”

  “You’re asking the wrong people,” I said, pulling Nobody to her feet. “It’s time for us to go.”

  We picked up our packs and left the house. No one followed us. We left the farm and followed the road until we could no longer see to walk, then curled up together against the trunk of a tree, my arm around Brooke’s shoulders.

  “I didn’t like that,” she whispered.

  “Neither did I.” I wanted to like it. Killing was an important thing to do; killing was necessary. Killing demons made the world a better place, and the actual act of killing, well … I knew I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it, but I did. Usually. The sharp thrill of it, of watching a living person turn into a dead one. I’d grown up in a mortuary, surrounded by my parents’ work, more at home with the dead than the living, but Withered didn’t turn into dead bodies, they just melted into ash. Everything I wanted, except none of it at all.

  I wanted to light a fire.

  Had it really been that easy? Was Yashodh really gone forever? All he’d wanted was for someone to love him because he couldn’t love himself. Ten thousand years staving off death one whispered adulation at a time, only to end here. Shot in his own home by a stranger he thought was a friend.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Brooke.

  “Only a few left,” I said.

  “There will always be a few more left.”

  “Attina,” I said. “And then … whoever’s chasing us.”

  “The FBI is chasing us,” said Brooke. “Please don’t kill them.”

  “Of course I’m not going to kill them,” I said. “I’ve never killed a human.” Well, never a good one.

  “But you want to,” she said.

  “That’s how you know I’ll never do it.”

  She started crying again. “Is this all there is? Dirt on old roads, secret pockets full of bullets…”

  “I want to give you a real life—”

  “Because I can’t handle this one,” she said, and all the alarms in my head went off.

  “You were a superstar back there,” I told her, trying to feed her self-worth. “That could have taken us weeks, maybe months to figure out, but you got him talking in five minutes. In two. I never would have just told him who we were—you’re brilliant, Brooke.”

  She growled her answer through clenched teeth. “My name is Nobody.”

  “You are brilliant,” I said again. “You said you’d protect me and you did. Partners to the end. I could never do this alone.”

  “Do you think that’s going to make me happy?” she asked. She wrenched away from me, and I could see her silhouette in the starlight, sitting in the dirt a foot away. “I just told you that I hate this, that I never want to do it again, that I don’t want to be a killer and watch anybody die, human or demon or anything else, not a bird or a bug or germ in my blood, and all you can think of to tell me is how good I am at it, how responsible I am for all the blood on all our hands—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, “and you know it. You know how good this is. You saw those people, without … without a brain between them, and you know that if Yashodh had lived he’d have done it to more of them, that he’d already done it to tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of people, a giant parade of brainwashed nobodies stretching back to the beginning of time, and it ended tonight.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be f— What does funny have to do with it?”

  “You called them brainwashed Nobodies,” said Brooke. “I am not brainwashed.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you—”

  “Then don’t use my name!” she shouted. She stood up, and I rose with her, terrified of what she might do. There were no trucks to jump in front of on this empty road, but the area might hold a dozen other ways to kill yourself. “I am Nobody!” she screamed. “It’s my name and my job and my entire wasted life! I can’t be you, John, I can’t just … turn off my heart whenever it hurts.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Then why don’t you love me?”

  I thought she would run, but she grabbed my arms, squeezing with her fingers and shaking us both. “Why am I so horrible that you won’t even love me when I’m the only one around, the only friend you have, the last girl in your entire world and you still won’t love me!”

  I wrapped her in a hug, hoping the physical contact might help to bring her back and calm her down. I pressed my cheek against hers, felt her trembling and sobbing, felt cold tears on her skin. I held her and shushed her and calmed her, rocking her slowly, sitting us down again, trying to think of something I could do to make her happy again. I wanted to love her—I wanted it more than anything—but I couldn’t tell her that. It would only make it worse that I didn’t.

  “I suck at loving people,” I said at last. “I did it once, and she’s dead now.”

  “That’s why you can’t give her up,” Brooke croaked. “A corpse is your perfect woman.”

  “I’m the most screwed up loser you’ve ever met,” I said. “My perfect woman is the last thing you want to be.”

  “One day I’m going to do it,” she whispered. “I’m going to kill myself, and you won’t be around to stop me.”

  “Then I’ll go into Hell,” I said, “and I’ll bring you back.”

  We leaned against that tree for another hour before she finally fell asleep. I stared at the empty sky above us. She’d said couldn’t do it anymore, and I honestly didn’t know if I could, either. I needed to light a fire. I shifted her gently, inch by inch, until I was out from underneath her, and I laid her down with her head on my backpack. She moved in her sleep, finding a better position, but she didn’t wake up. I crawled through the dirt on my knees, gathering twigs and pinecones fallen from the branches above us, finding them all by touch in the darkness. I piled them up in a tent shape, barely the size of my fists, and pulled a matchbook from the pocket of my jeans. I lit a match and it flared to life, brilliant in the blackness. I tried it in the kindling but it didn’t catch so I dropped it in the center of my pile and lit another, bright and orange, like a beacon of life in a sea of nothing. I shielded the flame with my hand and put it in the heart of the kindling, and this time it worked, spreading slowly from match to dead grass to stick. I tended the flame carefully, feeding it more fuel, watching the wood turn black and the grass curl up. It caught in the heart of a pinecone and burned it from the inside out, bits of wood and sap snapping and crackling in the heat. It wasn’t a big fire, but I didn’t need it for warmth. I just needed it. I watched it burn and listened to its voice, and when it went to sleep I did too, curled up on the ground next to Brooke and Boy Dog, my messed up little family in the middle of nowhere.

  When I woke up Brooke was still there, breathing softly. We’d made it through another night. I watched the sky grow lighter, the black mass of the horizon slowly resolving into a row of trees on the edge of a field. A crow hopped on a fencepost, watching us from the other side of the road, then cawed roughly and flapped away. I let Brooke sleep as long as I could, and when she stirred she looked at me blearily.

  “Where to next?”

  “Attina,” I said.

  She nodded. “No one’s heard from him in decades, but the last contact was in a town called Dillon.”

  “What do you remember about him?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Brooke watched the sky, though there wasn’t anything in it. “Attina doesn’t come from my past, just my memories of Kanta’s notes—all I remember is one line: ‘Last seen in Dillon, Oklahoma. Probably useless.’ I don’t know what he can do, how he can do it, or anything.”

  “That’s not much to work with,” I said.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said quickly. “We have a location, so we go there and start looking.
”

  We walked along the back road for an hour before we reached a two-lane highway, and then walked another hour before a car picked us up. We told the driver we didn’t care where he was going, we just needed a town, and he dropped us at a gas station on the edge of a town called Forest Dell. We cleaned up in the restroom, changed into our cleanest-looking clothes, and I spent some of our precious money on two bags of peanuts and bottle of vitamins. We drank from the hose before the owner drove us off, and while we waited for another ride I studied the worn map I kept in my bag. Dillon was close, relatively speaking. A few hundred miles, but a mostly straight shot. We found a trucker willing to take us to the highway junction, and hitched another ride from there to just outside of town. Brooke was quiet all day—not depressed but simply solemn, lost in thought. I fed Boy Dog beef jerky from my pack and watched the wide, flat country roll by.

  When we reached Dillon it was night again, the sky black and the stars half-shrouded in wisps of cloud. The light from the moon turned the clouds a pale gray, and they were so transparent they seemed to hang behind the moon instead of in front of it, like the cold, slate wall of a closed universe. The driver asked if we had a place to stay, and I assured her we did, because the last thing we needed was a Good Samaritan calling Child Protective Services, trying to “help” us. We were eighteen years old and legally independent, but we didn’t look it and we had no ID to prove it. The woman drove away, and I looked around at the nearest buildings: a low barn, a closed barbershop, an old drive-in movie theater. There was a high wooden wall around it, but the wooden screen was even higher; it loomed above the rest of the area like a pale giant. There was no movie playing on it, and white paper hung from it in wrinkled tears.

  “We can stay there.”

  Brooke stood still, looking at her arms as if she’d never seen them before.

  “There’s probably an old concession stand inside,” I said. “Or a ticket booth at the very least. If we can’t get inside we can sleep in the lee of it—it’ll block the wind.”

  “John,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “John Cleaver?”

  I looked at her more closely. “Who are you now?”

  She smiled, more widely than I’d seen in weeks. “John, it’s me. I mean, it doesn’t look like me, and I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but … it’s me inside.” She ran toward me, and wrapped me in a hug. “You’re back,” she murmured. “Or I am.”

  I felt a cold fear wash through me. “Who are you?”

  “This body has everyone Nobody ever killed. Every memory, every personality, right up until she left Brooke’s body. This is Brooke’s body, isn’t it? I totally recognize it now.”

  I shook my head, seeing the truth, not knowing if I should shout for joy or turn and run away forever.

  Not this. This was too much.

  “It’s me, John,” said Brooke. “It’s Marci.”

  5

  I backed away from her.

  “I know this is weird,” said Marci.

  “Weird is the least of what’s wrong with this.”

  “It’s so … dark in there,” said Marci. “In here, I mean; in Brooke. There’s so many of us, all trapped, all together but all alone. I remember when Nobody came to me that night—”

  “Please don’t.”

  “It was the night of the dance. You took me home, and you kissed me again, and it was the most perfect night of the world and I never wanted it to end, but then I went into my house and there she was. Some kind of big, black blob. Soulstuff, I guess they call it. It was behind me and around me and I fought it with everything I had but I couldn’t make it stop, and I couldn’t get away—”

  “Please don’t.” I was crying now.

  “She came in through my mouth, and my nose, and even my ears,” said Marci. “You know what it’s like, because she tried to take you, too, before your mom saved you. I know that because Brooke knows that. I didn’t have anyone there to help me, so she came inside and … then I wasn’t me anymore. I was just watching. It took her a while to get control, but I was lost right then. Right at the beginning. That was the worst part, really—being in there for days and hearing her talk to you, and I screamed to try to warn you, but nothing worked, and you never knew, and then she decided she wanted Brooke instead, and there was nothing I could do to stop her from killing us.” She paused. “They’re all in there, you know, just like that. Some of them can hear us, some of them can’t. Maybe Brooke is listening—”

  “Just stop!” I shouted. “Please just stop. I didn’t want to hurt you, and I didn’t want you to die, and I’m sorry I didn’t see it coming sooner but please just…” I didn’t know what to say. Marci was everything I’d ever wanted, but she was gone, and her absence defined my life. Having her back again like this, in my best friend’s stolen body, was as wrenching a change as losing her had ever been.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, walking toward me, reaching out to hold me. I backed away, crying harder, swatting weakly at her hands—but when I touched her I thought of Marci’s hands, and the peace I used to feel when I was holding them, and I closed my eyes and broke down in sobs. Brooke’s body caught me and held me, soothing me like I’d soothed her last night.

  Boy Dog whined at the stars, and I cried until my tears ran dry.

  “You’ve changed,” said Marci, stepping back to look at me but still holding my shoulders. I looked into Brooke’s eyes and wondered how many girls were looking back out, trying to talk to me, screaming in the darkness. And how many were just lost, buried like Marci had been, waiting to wake up and look around and wonder where they’d been?

  When would she wake up as a thousand-year-old girl I couldn’t even talk to, and I’d lose both Brooke and Marci forever?

  “You never used to cry,” said Marci.

  “You did that,” I said. “Or my mom did, I guess. You died, and I broke, and now I feel things differently but I … am not really good at it.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “She’s not—” And then another wave of emotion gripped me. “She’s not in there too, is she?”

  “No,” said Marci, shaking Brooke’s head. “Nobody took your mom after she left Brooke—whatever new thoughts she had in those few seconds, and whatever she gained from your mom, was all lost in the fire.” She put Brooke’s hand on my face. “I’m sorry.”

  I pulled away, slower than before but still deliberate. I couldn’t process this yet: Marci, back again. It had always been a possibility, of course, but I had never dared to think of it because I had never dared to think of Marci. I hadn’t made a healthy personal connection in years, maybe in my whole life, but I had with her, and then I’d lost it, and now to have it back in the worst possible way.…

  “Do we have a place to stay?” asked Marci. She looked around at the darkened town; we could see streetlights in the distance, closer to the center, but here on the edge it was lifeless and empty.

  “How much do you know?” I asked. “A lot of the memories seem to blend together for Brooke; one personality dominates for a while, but they all seem to share certain—” And then I had to stop because I knew she was only going to leave me again. “How long will you be here?”

  “As long as I can be,” she said.

  “How long is that?”

  She spoke softly. “I don’t know.” She looked away again. “I think it’s like you say: I have some of her memories, but nothing concrete. Impressions, mostly. The last thing I remember clearly was the suicide, when Nobody slit my wrists. But it’s not like I jumped straight from that moment to this one, you know? I’m aware, somehow, that time has passed, and that I’m in another body, and that there are other girls in here with us.”

  “Did you … talk to them?”

  “It’s not like that,” said Marci, “it’s more of a … I don’t know. I think I was aware of everything Nobody did in my body because it was my body, and I was still in there, but now I’m not … I’m
not me, I guess. I’m my memories. Maybe I’m actually Brooke and I only think I’m Marci, but I remember everything—things Brooke never knew, things nobody ever knew—and I feel like me. The body’s weird, I’ll grant you—I was never this thin—but I really feel like me. My personality, my habits, my … self. I guess I just contradicted myself, like, five times in one breath, but … does that make sense?”

  “No,” I said quickly, then shook my head and sighed. “But none of this does, and it hasn’t for years.”

  “We’re hunting demons, right?” said Marci.

  “We were,” I said, “but that’s because Brooke wanted to. If you’re you now—”

  “Come on,” said Marci, “remember who you’re talking to. The cop’s daughter and the mortician’s son, together again.” She raised her eyebrows with a mischievous smile, then shrugged. “This isn’t really how I imagined our TV series would go, though.”

  “Nothing’s gone the way we wanted,” I said.

  Boy Dog wandered toward us, back from exploring the smells of the area, and I gestured toward him. “By the way, this is Boy Dog. Boy Dog, Marci.”

  “His name is Boy Dog?”

  “I didn’t name him,” I said.

  “Obviously you would have gone with Harvey.”

  “Obviously.” She knew me better than I remembered.

  She crouched down and Boy Dog padded toward her and licked her hands and face. “Good boy,” she said, scratching his ears. “Good Boy Dog. This is…” Her voice trailed off, and she put her hand on the asphalt.

  And held it there, seconds ticking by into minutes, closing her eyes and simply … being.

  “The road’s warm,” she said at last. “Just a little, but you can feel it. Asphalt traps the heat from the sun. And the breeze is cool, and it smells like … cows.” She laughed, her eyes still closed. “Chlorophyll. I can smell cut grass and motor oil and lilacs. I haven’t smelled a lilac in … how long has it been?”

  “Two years,” I whispered.

  “Two years.” She stood up slowly, opening her eyes to stare up at the sky. Boy Dog flopped to his belly, resting on her toes protectively. “Two years. The twins’ll be six.”