The Replacement

  Emma sat rigidly against the headboard of her bed with her hands cupping her elbows. “Why did they do that to me?”

  “Because I pissed someone off.”

  “Was it over something important?” Then she turned so I couldn’t see her face, looking away, in the direction of the window. I didn’t know what to say. I’d thought so at the time, but what had I really accomplished?

  “I got your gloves back.” I pulled them out of my pocket and tossed them on the bed next to her, and then they just sat there, pink and dirty.

  Emma picked them up. After a second, she put them on.

  I sat next to her and looked around at all her clutter. There were books spread open on the desk and the floor, pages marked with sticky notes and colored paper clips. Volumes of chemistry and folklore and a little dog-eared paperback of The Ballad of Tam Lin.

  Emma slumped next to me. She rested her head on my shoulder and took a deep breath. “What’s happening, Mackie?”

  Her voice was barely a whisper, and she sounded sad, like she knew there was no way the answer would be good.

  I leaned my cheek on the top of her head. “The same thing that always happens.”

  Emma nodded and I wondered if she knew what it was that always happened or if that was part of the creepy thing about Gentry. You always knew that something was happening, but you never knew what it was.

  “I know what’s wrong with Mom,” I said.

  “A little chunk of granite where her heart should be?”

  “Sort of, yeah. You know how I came from somewhere else? For her, it’s backward. They stole her away, then brought her back, and she couldn’t ever figure out how to be normal after that.”

  Emma was still watching the pink gloves. “Are you sure?” she said.

  I nodded.

  She leaned against me suddenly, letting her head drop against my shoulder. We sat like that, leaning against each other. Outside, the sky was dark and heavy. Rain pattered on the window and ran down the glass, reflecting yellow and red in the light from the street.

  “We have to do something terrible,” I said. “We have to dig up—” I stopped. “There was this thing that replaced Tate’s sister. We have to dig it up.”

  Emma pulled away from me. “What are you talking about?”

  I didn’t want to take the conversation any further. Digging up a grave was the worst kind of desecration, but I knew there was no other choice. Even if I stood back and let Natalie die, none of the bad things would stop. Kids would keep being replaced. Gentry would keep looking the other way, just like it always had. Except that then, I’d have to live with myself.

  I took a deep breath. “Natalie Stewart’s alive and I think we can save her. But we can’t do it unless we have something to leave in her place. If we can get the body back, there are ways of waking them up. I’m not sure how, but I know there are ways.”

  Emma’s gaze drifted to her bookshelves. “I’ve read about replacements coming back from the dead, but you need the blood, or sometimes the possessions, of the people they replaced. We’d need something of Natalie’s. You could call Tate, right?”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Anyway, I’ve already got something.” I took the zipper pull out of my pocket. “It’s not much, but it’s Natalie’s.”

  Emma gave it a doubtful look. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll start going through folk stories, scholarly essays, anything that might give us instructions. But this is going to be pretty bad. And it’s going to mean a lot of digging.”

  “I know. I think we should call Roswell.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’ll help,” I said. “He might not be thrilled about it, but he’ll help.”

  Emma sat very still, eyes fixed on some unlikely point just past my shoulder. Finally, she pushed away the quilt and stood up. She yanked her hair back into a ponytail with one hand and went to her dresser for a rubber band. Her face was sober and her hair was already slipping down again, drifting in mousy wisps around her clenched fist.

  “Okay,” she said, snapping the band around her hair. “Okay, but we need a plan. This is serious, what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, but it’s not a break-in.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “It’s not black ops. Everyone in charge of anything is down at the hospital or the police station, Dad’s at home, the church is wrecked. We’ll wait until dark and then sneak in. No one’s going to be looking out for trespassing or vandalism. The whole town is too busted up to care what someone’s doing in the graveyard.”

  I lay on my bed, trying to get some sleep and failing completely. Planning to dig up a body pretty much ruled out any peace of mind.

  Tate called twice, but I didn’t answer and didn’t listen to her messages. It was hard enough to contemplate the night’s work without her getting involved. If she knew what I was going to do, she’d be horrified. Or worse, she’d want to help.

  After half an hour of dozing off and immediately jerking awake again, I got up and went downstairs. I found my dad in the kitchen. The kettle was still rattling on the burner and he hadn’t moved since the last time I’d looked in.

  I crossed to the stove and turned it off. “Dad?”

  He glanced up and his face was hollow, raw around the eyes. “Yes?”

  “The building doesn’t matter.”

  He straightened in his chair, looking up at me like he was trying to figure out if he should be angry or hurt or something else just as bad.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said again. “The church is you and the town. Where doesn’t matter. You’ll build a new one and the congregation will be there with you, and that’s what you love. Them, not the building. It will be as good as it always was.”

  For a second, I thought he’d tell me I was disrespectful, out of line, that I didn’t understand how important that building had been. That someone like me could never understand. He sat with his hands resting slack on his knees and his jaw working. Then he stood up.

  He crossed the kitchen and I tried not to tense my shoulders. I was completely unsure about what was going to happen, and for a second, the look on his face was so intense, I thought he was going to shake or hit me. Instead, he grabbed me in a rough hug, one hand on the back of my head, fingers digging into my scalp. He smelled sharp and exhausted and everything was still acrid with smoke. We both were. He was leaning against me, holding on like he was looking for rescue.

  I stood out in the driveway, waiting for Roswell and holding my dad’s work gloves. It was nine o’clock and pitch dark. The cloud cover was heavy and the drizzle made puddles and soggy places on the lawn. The teddy bear charm was in my pocket and my heart was beating hard with the idea of digging up something that ought to be buried. This was the kind of thing that only desperate people did. The last resort, the only thing left, and so I must be desperate.

  When Roswell pulled up to the house, he was wearing his other jacket. The black one. I hadn’t said anything about appropriate clothing.

  We stood in the street, looking at each other over the hood of his car. The neighborhood was silent. No other cars, no wanderers. Gentry knew enough to be afraid of the dark. A few jack-o’-lanterns still glowed on porches, grinning crumpled grins.

  “What’s up?” he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and to bring a shovel.

  I swallowed, trying to keep back the panic that was rising in my chest. “I need your help. We have to do a bad thing. We have to dig up a grave. Don’t look at me like that—the girl who’s supposed to be buried isn’t dead. I saw her tonight. But we need what’s in the box.”

  Roswell didn’t look confused and he didn’t ask me to repeat anything. “Grave robbing. That’s what you’re talking about.”

  I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids. “They kidnapped Tate’s sister and we can’t get her back unless we have the thing that was buried in her place.”
r />   When I took my hands away, Roswell was still watching me, but I couldn’t look at him. I stared across the street at the Donnellys’ jack-o’-lantern.

  “They?” he said, sounding apprehensive.

  “Me. They’re like me.”

  “Don’t be a jackass,” Roswell said, but not meanly. “No one’s like you.”

  Emma came around the corner of the house, dragging the stepladder behind her. She was carrying a roll of canvas under her other arm. She had a duffel bag hooked over one shoulder and a scarf tied over her hair.

  Roswell glanced from me to her. “We’re really doing this, then?”

  And I’d known he’d come through, because he always did, but I was still so unbelievably relieved to hear him say we.

  Emma handed me the ladder. Her expression was tense and her hands were shaking. She hitched the duffel bag higher on her shoulder, and when she looked at Roswell, he took the bundle of canvas and tools without having to be asked. The three of us stood in the yard, watching each other. Then, without saying anything, we stepped off the curb and started for the church.

  At the cemetery gate, Emma dug around in the duffel bag, took out a flashlight, and handed it to me. The lens was covered with a sheet of heavy paper and when I switched it on, the light shone through in a narrow beam. It sliced palely through the gloom, sweeping over the ground. Everything else was dark. My dad’s church was gone, but the graves were untouched. The only part of his whole life’s calling that had survived was the dead part.

  I held the doctored flashlight up to my face. “How are you suddenly an expert on breaking into cemeteries?”

  “I don’t like to go into things unprepared.” She held up the keys. “And it’s like you said, we’re not breaking in.”

  When she turned the lock, the gate squealed open. It was the strangest feeling, standing there on the footpath. I’d never been in a cemetery in my life. We stuck to the unconsecrated side, following the northern path that ran by the unnamed graves and the crypt. I could smell the smoke, much stronger now that we were near the black wreckage of the church. It sank into the town, leaving the air stale and unbreathable. The whole place was still and eerie. Completely silent, like the silence before an electrical storm, like everything was hunkered down, waiting for the worst of it to pass. It occurred to me that it was completely irrational to think that way about dead people. This was how they always sounded.

  Emma led the way toward the back of the cemetery, picking her way between the headstones where the ground was unconsecrated, reserved for suicides and stillbirths. But that wasn’t the truth, was it? It was reserved, but for abandoned monsters in borrowed clothes.

  We made our way past the mausoleum, heading toward the back wall, where the white headstone sat small and pale in the dark.

  At the edge of the grave, Emma dropped the tarp, then reached into the bag and started bringing out hand tools. She lined them up across the canvas like she was doing surgery. “Hold the light close to the ground.”

  I shone the beam over the grave, muddy and bare, still waiting for the turf to be laid over it. After we’d scraped the worst of the mud away, Emma adjusted her tarp, lining it up along one side of the grave. “Shovel onto that and try to keep it neat. That way we can put things back when we’re done.”

  Roswell and I took turns, trading out while Emma stood up on the edge of the grave, keeping track of the dirt and handing down tools.

  The night seemed to stretch out forever. I was in the little grave, digging deeper, deeper. Like the hole was so deep that I wouldn’t ever be able to get out. The dirt piled up on the tarp and trickled back down in streams, getting all over my hair and my clothes and the ladder.

  The air was cold and smoky. My arms and back hurt, and even through the chill, I was starting to sweat when my shovel hit something hard and flat. I scraped the dirt away and Roswell jumped down to help me.

  The box was small, maybe four feet long. It was heavier than it looked, but we got it loose between us, levering with the shovels, then getting under one end and shoving it up onto the grass. The wood was damp, slick with grave mold or moss. It had only been in the ground a few days, but it already smelled like it was starting to rot.

  “It’s a cremation casket,” Emma said in a voice so low that I could barely hear her. She was kneeling down, running her hand over the lid. “It’s not a real burial casket.”

  “They’re cheaper,” Roswell whispered, and he sounded hoarse.

  Emma picked up a screwdriver and started working at the latch. It had already begun to rust. When the screws stripped, she jammed the blade between the metal and the wood. Suddenly, she gasped and the whole latch peeled away with a squealing sound.

  We just sat there for a minute, kneeling in the grass, looking at the closed casket.

  Then Emma took a deep breath. “Okay, hand me the flashlight.” Her hands were steady, but her voice was high pitched.

  I gave her the light and she inched forward and lifted the lid.

  The body was small and weirdly perfect. Then Emma shone the beam over its face and the eerie sense of flawlessness was gone.

  The nose was losing its shape, starting to collapse. The smell came rushing out of the open box, rising in clouds. The odor on top was thin, a sweet layer of rot that seemed to float and twinkle in the air, and under that, a hard, chemical stink that might have been embalming fluid.

  Emma was on her feet, stumbling back. The flashlight fell and rolled across the grass. Light splashed over the headstones and the weedy graves. She had both hands against her mouth like she was trying to cover her own screams.

  Roswell stepped around the pile of dirt and reached to grab her, but I couldn’t move. I stood looking down at the little body, half in shadow on the satin lining. “We have to take it out.” The sound of my own voice seemed flat and far away.

  “You okay?” Roswell asked, looking over at me, covering his mouth and nose.

  I nodded. The rain made everything waver and blur, and three of us stood looking at the body.

  After a second, I collected the dropped flashlight and stood over the casket, too numb to tell that I was shaking except for the way the light jumped and fluttered. I tried to hold it steady, but I couldn’t feel my hands.

  Roswell was the one who got down on his knees and reached into the casket for the body. For the baby. He leaned over the casket, wincing, but reaching in anyway, gentle, cautious. He was so brave I felt sick.

  I held the barrel of the flashlight tighter and cleared my throat. “Will it be okay, or is it too rotten to pass?”

  “No,” he said, with his fingertips under its chin. “It’s in really good shape. Really good. I don’t think there’s any way it could have been human.”

  His voice was like cotton, like it was coming from far away.

  I handed Emma the light and put my hands over my face. I’d known. Of course I’d known. Hearing him say it just made it the truth. Someone would send a baby out to suffer and die in a poisonous world without regretting it, without feeling guilty at all. It might as well have been me.

  Roswell straightened and then got to his feet. “Mackie.”

  I didn’t answer. My throat was so tight it hurt to breathe.

  He stepped around the casket and hugged me. I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to let me stand back in the shadows and be nothing. I wanted to stop seeing. Roswell was always hugging somebody, but not seriously, not like it meant anything. This time, he pulled me hard against his shoulder, holding on to the back of my jacket even when I tried to pull away.

  All my life, Roswell had been rescuing the moment, saying the right thing, but this time he didn’t say anything. The rain was slow and cold and I didn’t think I could stand it if he tried to make things better.

  Then Emma was there, reaching for me. She had both arms around me and was pressing her face against my shoulder. I let her hold on to me and she was warm through her sweatshirt. She smelled like autumn and dirt and home, like the b
urned-out church and the grave. I leaned against her, thinking how strange it was that I hadn’t ended up in a little wooden box years ago, that anyone in the world loved me that much.

  When she let me go, I felt light and far away, numb from the cold. Numb enough to touch the body. It lay in the box, chilly and stiff like a doll. Roswell and Emma looked up at me expectantly from where they knelt on either side of it, not speaking.

  Finally, Emma took a little hitching breath and whispered, “Should we take it out?”

  We lifted the body from the coffin liner and wrapped it carefully in Roswell’s jacket. Its hair was dark and thick but brittle. Its skin was gray. It was nothing like the true, living girl tied to the Lady’s armchair.

  Emma stroked the dull hair, cradling the body in her lap. After a minute, I tied the charm around its wrist, not knowing what else to do. The body lay stiffly in Emma’s arms, looking pathetic and horrific in the ruffled funeral dress and the makeshift bracelet.

  I stood over them. “What now?”

  Emma looked into the emaciated face. “In the stories, people talk to them, but none of the accounts have a script or anything. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay. I think I do.”

  I leaned down and whispered in the replacement’s ear all the things I’d wanted to tell the blue girl in the House of Mayhem. What someone else had done to her, and it was okay to be gruesome and frightening because it wasn’t her fault.

  When the bundle in Emma’s arms began to move, I wanted to look someplace else. The squirming body was worse than the still, tragic one. It fidgeted in Emma’s lap and she stared up at me with a mute, hopeless expression.

  I crouched over it and pulled Roswell’s jacket open.

  The thing was small and delicate, almost like a real kid. It wasn’t a perfect replica, but it resembled Natalie. It blinked slowly at me, reaching up with a tiny hand. Its eyes were blank and a little cloudy, but they were hazel like Natalie’s. Like Tate’s.