Scarlette’s eyes went wide. She tried to say something, but her hair lifted off her scalp, fanned out like she’d stuck her finger in an outlet. Blue sparks flickered at the tips of her fingers, and she stared, transfixed, as the arcs hopped from nail to nail. She choked out, “What the fuck is this?”
Celeste didn’t slow down. She snapped her fingers, and the tealights flared. The smoke thickened and swirled. The air got so dense I felt like I was breathing through wet velvet.
The taste hit then, sudden and total: dust, old paper, something bitter and wild, like chewing dandelions. I gagged and coughed. Scarlette did the same, but the sparks only got brighter.
Moab’s voice boomed through the haze, “You okay, Toolie?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. My tongue was numb. All I could do was press harder on the headstone, try to hold on.
That’s when the visions started.
Not memories, not exactly. More like watching home movies projected on the inside of the mist.
First, I saw Catherine, rain-slicked hair pasted to her cheek, eyes wild and lit from within. She ran through a field, skirt hitched above her knees, feet bare and mud-caked. Her laughter chased itself in circles, echoing around the graveyard until I couldn’t tell if it was real or just the wind.
Then it switched: Catherine at the hearth, hands kneading dough, flour dusting her nose, face split by a grin so bright it made me wince. She looked up and straight at me, as if she knew I was there on the other side.
The memories kept coming, faster now. Catherine in bed, curled against my side, her hand tracing the line of my jaw. Catherine screaming at English soldiers, fists balled, fearlesseven with the muzzle of a musket pressed to her breastbone. Catherine shoving me through a cellar door, slamming it shut, whispering, “Don’t let them find you, Sully, don’t let them—”
The air throbbed with every scene. The mist turned those flashes into afterimages, each one painting itself across the night for a heartbeat before vanishing.
Scarlette stared at the images, pupils blown wide. “I see her,” she whispered. “I see her, too.”
The static doubled. The hairs on my arms stood so tall they ached. My vision went blue-white around the edges. The taste of sage and dirt filled my nose, mouth, and sinuses. I couldn’t breathe anything but memory.
Moab shouted again, but this time I barely registered it.
Celeste’s voice cracked. She spat out three syllables like a command. The smoke sucked inward, toward the headstone, forming a column of twisting color—blue, green, dirty gold. The temperature dropped ten degrees in a second.
Something electric crawled up my wrist, into my shoulder, and parked itself at the base of my skull. For a second, I was certain Catherine was standing behind me, warm hand on my neck. I jerked around, but all I saw was fog and the flicker of tealights.
The ground hummed under my knees. The name O’Toole on the stone pulsed with a light from below, as if something was burning in the coffin beneath.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the visions didn’t stop. They bled through my eyelids, burned themselves into my retinas.
I saw Catherine’s face up close. The freckles. The cut on her lip. The way her lashes clumped when she cried.
I heard her voice. “Sully. Come home.”
Scarlette’s sparks snapped so loud they left smoke trails in the air. She dug her nails into her palm, but the blue glow just seeped from the wounds, mixing with the candlelight.
Celeste finally broke the chant. Her lips went slack, sweat running down her temples in sheets. She pointed at me, then at the headstone, and croaked, “Finish it.”
I didn’t know what to do. My hand felt welded to the rock. My whole body vibrated with the urge to run, but I stayed. I put my head to the stone. “Catherine Dunn,” I said. “I’m here.”
The air collapsed.
Every candle blew out at once, sucked down by a wind that came from the dirt, not the sky. The static vanished, leaving goosebumps and silence.
We sat in the darkness, panting.
Moab’s voice found us through the black: “Toolie?”
I opened my eyes. The mist was gone, burned away by the jolt. In its place stood a shape, not quite a shadow, not quite a person, hovering where the headstone met the earth.
Scarlette stared, jaw slack, hands still sparking.
Celeste’s head lolled, but she grinned with all her teeth. “That’s her,” she breathed. “You did it.”