OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller by TAYLOR ADAMS Page A
Book: OUR LAST NIGHT: an edge of your seat ghost story thriller by TAYLOR ADAMS
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Authors: TAYLOR ADAMS
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half-second of almost. We could almost see her face. She could almost see us. Almost , forever.
It shattered me. It hurt worse than a million preppy yearbook photos, because she was real in it. She’s not smiling, she’s not posing, she’s not wearing mascara, she’s not even aware she’s being immortalized for her own funeral slideshow. She’s just Addie, just the woman I wanted to marry, with the sun in her eyes and a red zit on her cheek, leaning to step over a dead tree.
I’ll find you , I promised her.
I’ll see you again .
Someone blew his nose, an abrupt goose honk.
Now Green Day closed the final chorus about hoping you’ve had the time of your life, and sure enough, that haunting Mount St. Helens pic was the one her parents had chosen to end the slideshow on. Fading in, stenciled in white Tahoma font: ADELAIDE LYNNE RADNOR. ALIVE IN OUR MEMORY.
As I kept going and crashed through the church’s double doors, on to the next train car down, I realized that was literally the plan. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Alive in memory? Let’s hope so.
Keep going . . .
But I looked back — one final sidelong glance at Addie’s funeral, to see if the Gasman’s snouted face had joined the grieving crowd behind me — and I noticed another message had appeared on the projector screen, below the original. Same Tahoma font. But this one was new, unpunctuated, shouting in breathless caps-lock:
DAN TURN AROUND DON’T GO ANY FURTHER—
Nope. I let the heavy church doors swing shut behind me.
I’m coming, Addie.
I’ll see you again.
* * *
From the funeral on, times and places smear together. I didn’t stop for anything. I couldn’t. The emotions were too fresh, too new. I just kept sprinting from place to place, kept hurtling forward (which was really backward); no time to examine my surroundings, no time to think or even change direction. The past is sticky. Like a basilisk running on water, you have to keep going or you sink.
Just flashes; embedded sense memories. The jungle-green linoleum and cheaply lacquered wood panels of the ICU. The rhythmic chime of a heart monitor. The sigh of a ventilator. Whispers, stiff hugs, greasy fast-food breakfasts. Motel lobbies in Boise, an ugly city of exposed brick and potholes. Myself, alone in my Celica, punching my steering wheel until a knuckle pops and bleeds. The heart-plunging way the trauma doctor had hesitated when Adelaide’s mother asked about brain damage, and then said: We’re not really concerned about that right now. The starchy odors of pressed bed sheets, bleach, and urine. The way her dad had to leave the room, stand in the cornered hallway by the restrooms, and cry where no one could see.
She was somewhere ahead. The Gasman was somewhere behind.
You know how if you watch a movie in reverse, the meaning changes? This would be like watching Addie slowly come back to life. In a sick way, it was exhilarating, and I ran faster, sprinting, barreling dangerously through time and space.
Don’t stop. Don’t look.
Somehow, I was everywhere at once. I was in the waiting room but I wasn’t. I was in the aid car but I wasn’t. I could feel the bruised car door, the whiplash of impact, the gummy cubes of safety glass the paramedics had picked out of her blonde hair, tangled and matted in clots of hardening blood. It hadn’t even looked like Addie on that bed, her colorless skin pierced with needles, IV tubes and hanging bags, and her head had been so collapsed . Like a stomped beach ball. I remember not believing her face could possibly be attached to it. I remember being certain they had the wrong person. I remember wishing they had.
I was everywhere, and nowhere, and almost there—
NEW TEXT MESSAGE
SENDER: “Holden” (509) 555-8727
SENT: 7:18 a.m. Mar 20 2015
Dan wake up turn on the news. Clerk at joes guns shot himself with pistol last night. They’re showing a photo was he the one who sold u that mosinnagant????
5 Hours, 9
It shattered me. It hurt worse than a million preppy yearbook photos, because she was real in it. She’s not smiling, she’s not posing, she’s not wearing mascara, she’s not even aware she’s being immortalized for her own funeral slideshow. She’s just Addie, just the woman I wanted to marry, with the sun in her eyes and a red zit on her cheek, leaning to step over a dead tree.
I’ll find you , I promised her.
I’ll see you again .
Someone blew his nose, an abrupt goose honk.
Now Green Day closed the final chorus about hoping you’ve had the time of your life, and sure enough, that haunting Mount St. Helens pic was the one her parents had chosen to end the slideshow on. Fading in, stenciled in white Tahoma font: ADELAIDE LYNNE RADNOR. ALIVE IN OUR MEMORY.
As I kept going and crashed through the church’s double doors, on to the next train car down, I realized that was literally the plan. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Alive in memory? Let’s hope so.
Keep going . . .
But I looked back — one final sidelong glance at Addie’s funeral, to see if the Gasman’s snouted face had joined the grieving crowd behind me — and I noticed another message had appeared on the projector screen, below the original. Same Tahoma font. But this one was new, unpunctuated, shouting in breathless caps-lock:
DAN TURN AROUND DON’T GO ANY FURTHER—
Nope. I let the heavy church doors swing shut behind me.
I’m coming, Addie.
I’ll see you again.
* * *
From the funeral on, times and places smear together. I didn’t stop for anything. I couldn’t. The emotions were too fresh, too new. I just kept sprinting from place to place, kept hurtling forward (which was really backward); no time to examine my surroundings, no time to think or even change direction. The past is sticky. Like a basilisk running on water, you have to keep going or you sink.
Just flashes; embedded sense memories. The jungle-green linoleum and cheaply lacquered wood panels of the ICU. The rhythmic chime of a heart monitor. The sigh of a ventilator. Whispers, stiff hugs, greasy fast-food breakfasts. Motel lobbies in Boise, an ugly city of exposed brick and potholes. Myself, alone in my Celica, punching my steering wheel until a knuckle pops and bleeds. The heart-plunging way the trauma doctor had hesitated when Adelaide’s mother asked about brain damage, and then said: We’re not really concerned about that right now. The starchy odors of pressed bed sheets, bleach, and urine. The way her dad had to leave the room, stand in the cornered hallway by the restrooms, and cry where no one could see.
She was somewhere ahead. The Gasman was somewhere behind.
You know how if you watch a movie in reverse, the meaning changes? This would be like watching Addie slowly come back to life. In a sick way, it was exhilarating, and I ran faster, sprinting, barreling dangerously through time and space.
Don’t stop. Don’t look.
Somehow, I was everywhere at once. I was in the waiting room but I wasn’t. I was in the aid car but I wasn’t. I could feel the bruised car door, the whiplash of impact, the gummy cubes of safety glass the paramedics had picked out of her blonde hair, tangled and matted in clots of hardening blood. It hadn’t even looked like Addie on that bed, her colorless skin pierced with needles, IV tubes and hanging bags, and her head had been so collapsed . Like a stomped beach ball. I remember not believing her face could possibly be attached to it. I remember being certain they had the wrong person. I remember wishing they had.
I was everywhere, and nowhere, and almost there—
NEW TEXT MESSAGE
SENDER: “Holden” (509) 555-8727
SENT: 7:18 a.m. Mar 20 2015
Dan wake up turn on the news. Clerk at joes guns shot himself with pistol last night. They’re showing a photo was he the one who sold u that mosinnagant????
5 Hours, 9
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