beatirce mills |
In his haste, he'd mistyped. Wirt hurriedly corrected the mistake and hit 'enter', a little bit more forceful than necessary. After a second, the results appeared - none of them even close to what he was looking for. There was a countess from the 1920s, a daughter of a pop star, and a few Facebook profiles; not one of them matched the red-haired girl from the hospital.
Biting his lip, Wirt leaned back in his chair. How to clarify his search…?
He furrowed his brow and added:
beatrice mills coma |
Enter.
But then he pouted. Same pop star, same Facebook profiles. Maybe if he included his town name?
"Wirt-o! Come downstairs, please!"
He didn't look up from the keyboard. "Uh, okay, Mom, I'll be right there - "
"Hurry! I have a time-sensitive favor to ask of thee!"
Wirt hesitated. He didn't know exactly why his mom chose to talk weird like that sometimes, but somehow it always added a sense of urgency to her requests. Sighing, he pushed away from the computer and followed his mother's voice.
Downstairs, Thomas and Greg were at the table; father with a newspaper, son with a coloring book. Mom was in the doorway, dressed for work with the car keys in one hand and a manila folder in the other.
"I need to help Grandpa with a funeral real quick," she said. "Would you drive me to the cemetery, por favor?"
Wirt pursed his lips. His family had only moved to this town a couple years ago, but Grandpa and his funeral home had been here his whole life. Maybe he knew something about Beatrice Mills.
"Yeah," he said, taking the keys. "I want to talk to Grandpa about something anyway."
It was a good thing Wirt had gotten his driver's license a couple weeks ago - Mom didn't like driving, so she had never gotten her license. The town was small, so she usually was fine just walking; when she absolutely needed a ride, Thomas could drive. But Wirt liked driving, which added an extra layer of convenience.
Not to mention it had proved useful at John Crops' place.
Wirt got in the car, turned the keys in the ignition, and firmly resolved not to have any flashback hallucinations of giant crows. A metal car would be much harder to fix than a vegetable one.
At the cemetery, Mom thanked him for the ride and made a beeline for a group of people under a plastic canopy. Wirt started to follow her, but then hung back, leaning against the car. Grandpa was busy right now. He'd have to wait until after the funeral to ask him anything.
Might as well wander around while I wait.
It was a little weird for him to be back in the graveyard so soon after Halloween. Fortunately there was nothing here now to send his nerves all psycho and prompt him to jump over the wall.
He meandered over to the stone angel Sara and Jason Funderberker had sat under that night. The name etched on the gravestone belonged to an old relative of one of his classmates, no doubt - nearly everyone living here had been here forever.
That was another thing that felt weird to him about this cemetery: he didn't know anyone who was buried here. The only dead person he even remotely knew was his dad, and he was buried in Japan.
Probably.
Wirt glanced across the graveyard to the funeral. Then he looked down at the ground and leaned against the angel.
In all honesty, he didn't know exactly where his father was buried. He knew next to nothing about the man. Sure, he knew his name, and the basic story of how he and Mom met - she was a missionary from Utah, he was a cop from Tokyo, they fell in love, she came back to Japan after her mission ended and they got married, he passed away a few months before Wirt was born. But Mom never said anything about how he died or what he was like or why she didn't keep any pictures of him.
He had clues, of course. The times when Mom would look at something Wirt did for school and sigh and get a distant look in her eyes. The times she would laugh at how different her sons were and say each took after his father. The times she would ruffle his hair a certain way and then give a sad little smile.
There was one moment in particular that always stood out in his memory - one moment that, for no real reason, felt like a major tie to his dad. It was when he was about five years old, living in California with his mom - just the two of them together - shortly before they moved to Florida and she met Thomas. He remembered running off the bus when he got home from school, excited to show her a picture he'd drawn, and immediately being lifted into a teary bear hug as soon as he came through the door. When he asked her what was going on, she just said she'd received some very good news.
"You're safe now. You're safe now," she had sobbed into his hair. "Your daddy's okay now. You're safe."
It was a strange little moment that his mom never really explained. He'd never felt like it was ever the right moment to ask about it.
"So you wanted to talk to me?"
Wirt yelped and jumped. For an older fella, his grandfather had a knack for stealth.
"Why do you have to sneak up on me like that all the time?" Wirt accused, brushing off his sweater.
Grandpa chuckled. It was a raspy but hearty chuckle, the exact sound you'd expect from a cheerful, portly funeral director with thinning gray hair and glasses. "You're too easy to sneak up on. Always lost in a daydream. So what's on your mind today?"
Forget about Dad. He's long gone.
Beatrice...might not be.
He exhaled. "Do you happen to know anything about someone named Beatrice Mills?"
Grandpa furrowed his brow and rubbed his jaw, thinking. "Mills...I remember doing funerals for a few Millses around Christmas last year. Big family. Sad story."
Big family.
How many bluebirds were huddled around me in that tree? Ten? Fifteen?
Wait...if he did funerals for them, does that mean…
"W-what kind of sad story?" he asked hesitantly.
"Well, there was a car accident," Grandpa sighed. He absent-mindedly ran his hand along the top of the gravestone beside him. "A bad one. Snowstorm, icy roads, dark night - too many kids packed into too small a car. Some of them were killed on impact. The rest were taken to the hospital, but none of them lasted longer than a few days."
But - they can't be dead. I saw them. I spoke to Beatrice's mother -
Maybe it's a different Mills family. It's a pretty common last name, right?
"I saw a girl named Beatrice Mills in the hospital yesterday," Wirt said. "She was in a coma, but she wasn't dead. She must've been a different Mills, right?"
Grandpa raised an eyebrow. "Was she a redhead?"
Wirt nodded.
"Same Mills. The whole family's ginger." Grandpa shrugged. "But it's entirely possible she's staying alive this long. Good for her. She might even stick around. But, of course, in the end, we all go the way of old - " he glanced at the gravestone he was leaning on - "Quincy Endicott here."
Wirt's heart fumbled a little.
"Quincy Endicott?"
Grandpa tapped the grave. "That's what it says. He's been here much longer than I have, though."
It's a different Mills, it's a different Quincy Endicott -
It can't be a different Mills. Grandpa knows what he's talking about. And it can't be a different Beatrice - I was the one who clipped her wings just before we went home, I saw her real form - that was definitely my Beatrice in the hospital.
Besides, how many Quincy Endicotts could there possibly be?
But does that mean -
"Do you know what his story was?" he asked, both anticipating and dreading the answer.
"Hmm, that one's more of a ghost story. According to town legend, he had this big old mansion that he believed was haunted. He was always ranting and raving about a beautiful ghost that he'd fallen in love with - everyone thought he was completely mad. Eventually it led him to hang himself, and when poor Miss Marguerite Grey - " he tapped the grave on the other side of him - "found his body, she promptly died of fright."
They're all dead.
Skeletons wearing pumpkins. The Highwayman drawing his finger across his throat. Waking up in the hospital.
Wirt leaned more heavily against the stone angel, then sank to the ground.
How could I have not realized it before?
"Wirt? Hey, are you okay?"
His grandfather's voice floated away on the air, barely reaching Wirt's ears. Wirt buried his hands in his hair, his mind spinning.
They're dead. They're all dead.
"I'd fallen in love...with a ghost."
That's why they all seemed to be from different time periods. That's why Pottsfield was full of skeletons. That's why nobody ever ate anything, that's why when we got home we were in the hospital - we were dead -
But we came back. We found the way home.
Beatrice isn't dead yet.
"Hey, what's wrong?" Grandpa bent and put a hand on Wirt's shoulder. "Did I spook you too bad with that story or something?"
Wirt looked up.
Then he stood and ran toward the car.
"I need to talk to Greg," he called back at his grandfather. "Tell Mom she can walk home. Or, you can give her a ride. Bye!"
