On the Day I Died

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Candace Fleming

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Jeremy Holmes

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Fleming, Candace.

  On the day I died : stories from the grave / Candace Fleming.—1st ed.

  v. cm.

  Summary: In a lonely Illinois cemetery one cold October night, teen ghosts recount the stories of their deaths in different time periods, from 1870 to the present, to sixteen-year-old Mike, who unknowingly picked up a phantom hitchhiker.

  Contents: Mike—Gina 1949–1964—Johnnie 1920–1936—Scott 1995–2012—David 1941–1956—Evelyn 1877–1893—Lily 1982–1999—Rich 1965–1981—Edgar 1853–1870—Tracy 1959–1974.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89863-1

  [1. Ghosts—Fiction. 2. Cemeteries—Fiction. 3. Illinois—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.F59936On 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011018661

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Mike and Scott, small parts of this book; big parts of my life

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Mike

  Gina 1949–1964

  Johnnie 1920–1936

  Scott 1995–2012

  David 1943–1958

  Evelyn 1877–1893

  Lily 1982–1999

  Rich 1965–1981

  Edgar 1853–1870

  Tracy 1959–1974

  Where the Bones Lie: A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  It was after midnight, and Mike Kowalski was driving fast—too fast—down County Line Road. He glanced at the dashboard clock and groaned.

  He was late.

  Again.

  His phone rang. It didn’t take ESP to know it was his mother. “She probably wants to get a jump start on her griping,” Mike muttered to himself.

  Earlier that evening, she’d told him to be in by midnight “or else.”

  “Midnight?” Mike had complained. “But I’m a junior!”

  His mother had rolled her eyes. “After the stunt you pulled this week, you’re lucky to be allowed out at all, so I’ll reiterate—midnight, or else.”

  Mike didn’t even want to think about what “or else” meant.

  Ignoring the call, he mashed down the accelerator. Maybe if he was only a little late …

  That was when the girl appeared in his headlights.

  One minute there was nothing but country road flanked by the thick woods of the Cook County Forest Preserve, with its one-lane bridge over Salt Creek just ahead; the next minute there she was, stumbling down the center line.

  Mike slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed as the car skidded.

  But the girl never flinched. Eyes wide, unblinking even in the glare of the headlights, she raised her hands palms up, pleading … but for what?

  Mike stuck his head out the driver’s-side window. The girl’s skin glowed marble white, and her long, dark hair, soaked, lay plastered against her skull. Her simple cotton dress was wet, too. Mike saw water dripping from the hem. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m cold.” Her voice was a whisper. “I need a ride home.”

  Mike glanced at the clock again and grimaced. He’d rather have a root canal than experience the torture his mother was sure to have in store for him. Then again, what difference would a few more minutes make? He was already in trouble. Besides, he couldn’t leave her out here alone, could he? He leaned across the front seat and opened the passenger door. “Climb in.”

  Wordlessly, the girl settled into the seat, and the car filled with the smell of lavender and wet leaves. Mike watched as she slipped off her shoes—a pair of old-fashioned black-and-white saddle shoes—and neatly laid them side by side on the floor of the car. “They’re brand-new,” she said. Then she folded her hands in her lap and waited.

  “Where to?” asked Mike. The girl’s strange behavior was beginning to freak him out a little. Was she sick, or suffering from a concussion, or amnesia, or something? “Do you need a doctor?”

  She pointed behind them.

  Mike turned the car around, driving more slowly this time. “What’s your name?”

  She looked straight ahead. “Carol Anne.”

  “I’m Mike. Mike Kowalski.” Eyes still on the road, he extended his right hand.

  She didn’t acknowledge the introduction, didn’t even look at him.

  Mike drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, curiosity getting the best of him. “So, what happened back there?”

  She let several long minutes pass before answering. “I was canoeing. On Hawthorn Lake.”

  “After midnight? In October?”

  She acted as if she hadn’t heard his question. “My canoe tipped. I couldn’t right it, and it was a long way to shore, too far to swim. All I could do was cling to the side and pray someone would find me. No one did.”

  “So how’d you finally get to shore?”

  She looked at him then, and in the green glow of the dashboard she appeared even paler, her skin almost translucent in its whiteness. “The current carried me in,” she answered, her voice sounding colder than the October lake. “I was in the water for a long, long time.”

  Mike swallowed hard. “That’s awful.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then she pointed. “Turn here.”

  Mike made a left onto a narrow gravel road. The car bumped along for a few miles, tree branches scratching at its paint, rocks skittering beneath its tires. It never ceased to amaze him how rural some parts of the Chicago area could be. It was like cruising through the Wisconsin wilderness or someplace.

  His phone rang again.

  He ignored it.

  They drove deeper and deeper into the woods.

  “Here,” said Carol Anne at last. “Stop here.”

  Mike braked. In the darkness, his headlights picked out a mailbox. It read MORRISSEY. Beside it he could just make out the start of a dirt driveway.

  “Is this where you live? Is that your last name? Morrissey?”

  “I’ll get out here,” said the girl. She opened the passenger door.

  “But why?” argued Mike. “It’s dark. Let me drive you down to your house, make sure you get in all right.”

  “You know my story now,” she said, climbing from the car. “But it’s not the only one. There are many of us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Mike.

  But she had already vanished.

  “Carol Anne?” he called into the darkness. “Hey, Carol Anne?”

  No one answered.

  Reluctantly, he headed for home.

  He was already back on County Line Road when he noticed her shoes—that perfect pair of saddle shoes—sitting in a puddle on the floor mat.

  Impulsively, he turned the car around and raced back toward the narrow gravel road and the even narrower dirt driveway with the mailbox marked MORRISSEY.

  He found himself
in front of a tired-looking farmhouse with a sagging front porch and peeling paint. In his headlights, long shadows from the surrounding trees gripped the colorless house. Every window was a dark hole, the family obviously asleep.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, Mike thought uneasily. Maybe I should come back in the morning.

  And yet he had the oddest feeling that someone was awake in that old house. He knew it made little sense. The place was as silent as a grave, yet he felt that someone was there. And that that someone was waiting for him.

  He got out of the car, taking the shoes with him, and mounted the porch stairs. As he raised his fist to knock, the curtain at the front window shifted. He heard a faint rustling behind the door.

  He knocked.

  The porch light snapped on. The door swung open. Standing there was a woman as tired and sagging as her old house. “You’ve come to return her shoes, haven’t you?”

  Mike stammered, “Y-yes, yes, how did you—”

  “Someone always returns her shoes,” the woman interrupted. “Always on October twenty-sixth. Every year on this very date.”

  “Mrs. Morrissey,” said Mike, “is Carol Anne still awake? Can I speak with her, please?”

  The woman gave a hollow laugh. “Carol Anne is dead, been dead fifty-six years this very night. Drowned in a canoeing accident over on Hawthorn Lake, she did. My poor baby. Her body was in that freezing water for hours.”

  “I … I don’t believe you. I just saw her. I just talked with her.”

  “None of you ever believe me,” the woman said. “But it’s God’s own truth. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. She’s dead.”

  Mike didn’t like looking at the woman’s white, sorrow-etched face. Her skin looked as if you could push a pencil through it and not draw any blood.

  She went on. “Every year on the anniversary of her accident she walks County Line Road, searching, I suppose, for the help that never came. And every year she leaves her shoes. New shoes they were, bought the very morning of the accident. Oh, Carol Anne loved those black-and-white saddle shoes. To this day, I don’t know why she wore them out canoeing.” The woman’s face seemed to collapse. “In truth, I don’t know why she even went canoeing that day. It was so cold.” She sniffled. “You know, I’ve been answering this door for decades now, reliving the horror of my baby girl’s death over and over again. I’m tired of it. I can’t take the grief anymore.” She moved to shut the door.

  “Wait!” cried Mike. “What about her shoes?”

  “You want to return them to her, you’ll have to take them over to the cemetery. She’s buried in a special plot reserved just for young folks. I thought she’d like that, resting with people her own age.”

  Mrs. Morrissey pointed back the way he’d come. “You just take a right out at the gravel road, go about four miles, then take a left onto an overgrown path. The cemetery entrance is a few feet down. Look close, it’s hard to spot. Not many folks go out there these days.” With that, she shut the door. The porch light snapped off.

  Mike made his way back to the car. His phone was ringing when he opened the door. He tossed it into the backseat. He needed to think.

  He didn’t know what was going on. But it couldn’t be what Mrs. Morrissey claimed it was, could it? That was impossible—as impossible as an alien invasion or the existence of Bigfoot.

  Yeah, if you say so, a voice whispered in his head. But if you go home now, you’ll wonder about it for the rest of your life. You’ll always regret that you didn’t seek out the truth.

  “Forget that,” Mike said aloud. Quickly, before he could change his mind, he hung a right and stepped on the accelerator.

  He almost missed the dirt path. It was too narrow for the car to get down. He parked at the side of the road and, grabbing the saddle shoes, got out of the car.

  From the backseat his phone went off again. Its ring sounded plaintive, beseeching.

  He stopped. He should answer it. Already, he could hear his mother crying, “Oh my God, Mikey,” the relief thick in her voice. “Where have you been? Come home this instant.” And for the first time in his entire teenage life, he would do exactly what she said. He would turn the car around, forget about Carol Anne and her shoes and go home.

  But the voice in his head whispered again, more loudly this time. It’ll only take ten minutes. What’s ten minutes? You’re already late. And then you’ll know for sure.

  “Right,” said Mike. He started to pick his way down the path, the sound of the ringing phone fading behind him.

  The path was little more than a suggestion. He fought his way through shrubs and buckthorn, the forest pressing in from both sides. At last, what nature had worked so hard to conceal came into view.

  WHITE CEMETERY. That was what the words on the metal archway read. A tall wrought-iron fence enclosed the graveyard, but the gates sagged open with age, and in places there were gaping holes where the rods had gone missing. Taking a steadying breath, Mike stepped through the gates onto consecrated ground.

  The sky was bright with moonlight, although he couldn’t see the moon itself; the tall trees ringing the cemetery had blotted it out. A ground mist, like vaporous tendrils, seeped from the loamy, weed-thick earth. He noticed how the path—the same one he had followed through the woods—ran like a church aisle down the center of the graveyard, ending at an algae-covered lagoon. He noticed also that nothing stirred—not the rustle of bats’ wings, or the hoot of an owl, or the sigh of the rising wind. It had obviously been a long time since anyone had placed flowers or pulled weeds here.

  Forgotten.

  The word popped into Mike’s head.

  These graves—and the people in them—had been forgotten.

  The headstones at the back of the cemetery near the lagoon looked especially old. They jutted from the earth like crooked teeth, some leaning sideways, others flat on their backs. The ones at the front were newer, and Mike bent, hands on knees, to take a closer look.

  Lily

  1982–1999

  Cold droplets of mist slithered down his neck.

  Seventeen, thought Mike, just a year older than me.

  He felt a sudden urge to flee.

  You’ve come this far, the voice in his head whispered. Don’t you want to know if she’s really here or not?

  “I do,” said Mike aloud, but his voice shook. All his senses were on high alert.

  Warily, he worked his way through the cemetery, row by row. Most of the headstones were simple marble or granite markers, chipped or cracked by time, some crusted with lichen. Others were shaped like hearts or crosses. A few more elaborate ones showed beatific angels soaring toward Heaven with children clutched to their chests. But all of them shared one thing: the person who occupied each grave was young, somewhere between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Fear, cold and heavy, pressed down on Mike. Now he understood what Mrs. Morrissey had meant by “people her own age.”

  This was a cemetery for teenagers!

  He backed away, suddenly all too aware that he was alone in a graveyard in the middle of the night. His thoughts whirled, his imagination blooming. Visions of rotting corpses filled his mind. He could see their greedy fingers straining through the soil and mist, groping for one of his shoes.

  In the shadowy darkness, he tripped over something, landing with a hollow thump beside a tall gravestone, roses and leaves carved deep into its granite face. Mike pushed himself to his knees and looked closer:

  Carol Anne Morrissey

  1941–1956

  He uttered a low cry as the truth struck him. He had given a ride to a ghost. But it wasn’t this that sent him reeling over the edge toward terror. No, it was the realization of what he had tripped over.

  Saddle shoes—fifty-five pairs of saddle shoes—lay scattered across the weed-choked mound of Carol Anne’s grave. One for every year she had been dead. Some had been exposed to the weather so long that they were nothing more than strips of shapeless leather. Others were newer, covered wit
h just a thin blush of mildew. But the newest pair—the brand-new pair—was the one Mike still clutched in his trembling hand.

  He screamed then, flinging the shoes and shattering the tomblike silence of the graveyard.

  Shhh, you’ll wake the dead, the voice in his head whispered.

  Too late.

  The surrounding trees closed in, and the shadows deepened. The weeds tangled around his feet and ankles as if to hold him in place. Then a cloud swallowed the moon and he was enveloped in total darkness.

  The wind rose suddenly, causing the tree branches to scratch and mutter.

  “Listen to us. Hear us.”

  Breathing rapidly, as if he’d just run a long race, Mike cried, “Is someone there?”

  “Listen to us. Hear us.”

  “Carol Anne?” he croaked. He looked around with wide, frightened eyes, his heart beating so hard he could feel it in his neck and wrists as well as his chest.

  “Listen to us. Hear us.”

  “Go away!” he tried to scream, but he could no longer speak. His heart was hammering at a terrified pace. Collapsing onto the mound of saddle shoes, he moaned. He could see them. They were all around him. Flickering shadows as insubstantial as drawings on air—a girl wearing a long, old-fashioned skirt, a boy with a camera looped around his neck. And others. A ring of wan shapes hovering on the fringes of the shifting shadows.

  It’s a sign when the dead appear, the voice in his head whispered. A sign of your own death.

  Mike moaned again.

  “Me first.” A girl moved close, and as she did, the moon reappeared, as bright and white as a polished bone. In its light, Mike could see she had on a school uniform—a cotton blouse beneath a blue plaid jumper. Around her neck she wore a string of cheap plastic pearls. She reached for Mike, her death-pale fingers trembling and eager.

  “No … please!” Crablike, he scrambled backward over the skittering saddle shoes till his back was pressed against Carol Anne’s gravestone.

  The girl’s hand fell to her side. “Am I as scary as that? I don’t mean to be. It’s just that I’ve been waiting such a long time, and … well …” Her words trailed away and she looked back at the others.