Grave by Joan Frances Turner Page A

breath as it went, then tossed it back to me as an afterthought. I pulled myself upright, whipping my head around to take in the woods to my left, bluish silhouette of dead steel mills on the horizon to my right, the sands themselves and the now-empty dune ridges above and the dark undisturbed tidal sweep of lake waters. I squinted and then stared into the swelling blood-orange sun, in search of his lingering, thieving shadow—and there was nothing. He—it—had passed straight through me, and was gone.
    God damn you, Renee. God damn you for being right.
    With gleaming spots still dancing before my eyes, I rushed back up the ridge, urgent strides kicking up cascades and miniature sandstorms with every step, and back on level ground I ran past the thickening clumps of dune grass, down the dirty sand that became sandy dirt with each new step, along the trodden-down path our feet had made before Lisa’s empty beach house, Renee’s, the one Linc and I shared. I nearly thudded straight into Linc as I rounded the corner of our house, the one farthest in the woods and nearest the outside road. When he instinctively threw his hands out in self-defense, I grabbed his forearms, let my fingertips sink in to assure myself he really was flesh, that he wasn’t that sunset specter that could take the form of anything that’d died.
    “Down on the beach,” I managed, out of breath, cursing the fucking air for crippling me once again. “I saw—”
    “Tell me later,” Linc said, glancing over his shoulder. “I was just about to find you.”
    “What d’you mean, ‘tell me later’? Linc, down on the beach, what Renee said, I saw—”
    “Jessie?” He jerked his chin toward the trees. “It’s just right now we’ve got company. Hoo company.”
    “Oh, fuck.” I started laughing again because this was too much, too goddamned much in one day. “For the love of God, tell them to fuck off back to their little Garden of Eden, right now I can’t take any of their—”
    “It’s not them,” Linc said, his face closing up like it always did when something beyond him had him angry. “Just... come with me.”
    He turned for the woods. I followed, puzzled, brushing off drying sand as we passed the cottonwoods and oak that grew thickly in this part of the forest, the little cluster of pine trees that signaled the approach of the white gravel roadside and the faded, weatherbeaten sign marking the beach. The trees were still shedding pale new spring leaves for the fuller deeper growth of approaching summer, growing so close together they made a natural green-tinged tunnel of the road. As we emerged, Renee was standing there, looking tense and lost for words, and as the last sunspot streaks faded from my vision, I could see why.
    Weighted down by a half-dozen backpacks bursting at the seams, her eyes ringed bruise-blue from fatigue, Lisa swayed from foot to foot on the gravel like she was poised for flight, like the backpacks were folded-up wings that would unfurl and carry her up toward the dying sun. Standing next to her was a little knot of strangers, humans I hadn’t seen in the settlement down the road: a red-haired girl maybe the age I was when I died; older skewbald-redhead, obviously a sister or mother; tall skinny boy with dark hair and a tense, wary face; a kiddie not more than seven clutching hard at Lisa’s hand. A great black dog, shaggy-furred and with watery, red-rimmed, strangely beatific eyes, sitting obediently by the red-haired girl’s side, watching the hoos do their hoodom thing with an expression of elevated patience.
    All of them, except the dog, looked like they might drop where they stood; all of them, except the dog, kept glancing from Lisa to me and back like they were expecting bad trouble, like they’d been told to anticipate a fight. Because fucking with humans is still one of the few pleasures we’ve all got left, I gave them a deliberate, calculated smile, a sarcastic little bow of the head. Lisa