The Haunted - Jessica Verday [44]
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Anytime you need me, you call. And you’re the best great-niece I’ve ever had too.”
She said her good-byes, and I hung up the phone. I had a full mind and heavy heart.
I bided my time the next day, willing two thirty to come faster. For some odd reason I’d decided that two thirty was the perfect time to head to the cemetery, and I was counting down the seconds.
Finally, at two p.m., I changed into a red-and-white checkered sundress and spent an inor-dinate amount of time on my hair. It was precisely 2:32 when I left the house, and I told myself to try to walk at a normal pace.
But when those cemetery gates came into view, my heart flip-flopped inside my chest, and I quickened my speed. My feet flew as I followed the path, and I found myself standing in front of Caspian’s mausoleum.
Tugging nervously at my dress, I moved to the door and opened it. Then I realized what I’d forgotten to do, and stopped to glance behind me. No one was in sight, so I slipped inside.
I noticed right away that he’d lit more candles. The room was now clearly illuminated.
Caspian was bent over one of his makeshift tables, with a candle resting on the box before him. He held up a finger to motion for me to wait.
“I didn’t know when you’d get here. I’m almost done.” His hands were shaping something.
Flashes of silver caught the light, and I noticed a peculiar scent in the air. Like a wire burning.
“What’s that smell?”
“It’s my soldering iron. I was using it earlier.” He held whatever it was he’d been working on up to the light and inspected it. A moment later he nodded and then turned to me.
I suddenly grew shy. “Hi.…”
“Hi.” He palmed the item and walked over. “I thought you might change your mind. Why’d you come back, Abbey?”
How do I answer that? “Curiosity,” I blurted out. “I have lots of questions.”
“Oh. Right.” His face fell, and he turned away. I took a step forward and put a hand out to touch him, then let it fall to my side.
“What do you want to know?” He shoved the item he’d been holding into his back pocket.
“Tell me what that first day was like. The car crash. And after. What do you remember?
How did you get here?” Are you buried here? was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back.
Caspian glanced up and then ran his fingers through his hair. “You don’t start with the easy ones, do you? What’s my favorite color, when’s my birthday…”
“Oh, I want to know those things too, but later.”
He closed his eyes. “It was the day after Halloween. I remember that.… My dad wanted me to get a part for him at a junkyard. I went to go pick it up, but I got the wrong one. When I got home, Dad yelled that I’d never learn, never get a real job, if I didn’t start paying attention.
I shot back some smart-ass comment about how I didn’t want to be a grease-monkey like him. Didn’t want dirty fingernails and split knuckles for the rest of my life. Then I took off.” He opened his eyes and looked at me, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing me.
“I was going to go back and get the right part. I don’t know if he ever knew that. I never told him.…” Sadness was all over his face, and I ached to put my arms around him.
But I couldn’t.
“The next thing I remember… I was sitting on the side of the road. Just sitting there. It was dark, and when I tried to figure out where I was, I had this big, gaping hole in my memory. It was like the hangover from hell without the nausea.” Since my alcohol experience was limited to occasional sips of wine at special dinners and weddings, I didn’t know what the hangover from hell felt like. But I did know about that gaping black hole. I’d experienced the same thing when Kristen died.
“Was there anyone around? Cops, firemen, random people?” Caspian shook his head. “No. I was alone, and my car was gone. Now that I think about it, there wasn’t even any glass or anything on the road. I don’t know how much time had passed.
I just ended up walking back to the house. Dad was asleep when I got there, so I went to bed too. Figured I’d get my car