Deeper Than the Dead

3

At first, all Tommy could see was that the woman was pretty. She looked peaceful, like in The Lady of the Lake. Her skin was pale and kind of blue. Her eyes were closed.

Then slowly other things came into focus: blood that had drizzled down her chin and dried, a slash mark across one cheek, ants marching into and out of her nostrils.

Tommy’s stomach flipped over.

“Holy shit!” Dennis exclaimed as he came to stand beside the grave.

Cody Roache, dirt on his face, glasses askew, screamed like a girl, bolted, and ran back the way they had come.

Wendy was as white as a sheet as she stared at the dead woman, but, as always, she had her wits about her. She turned to Dennis and said, “You have to go call your dad.”

Dennis wasn’t listening to her. He got down on his hands and knees for a closer look. “Is she really dead?”

“Don’t touch her!” Tommy snapped as Dennis reached out a grubby finger to poke at the woman’s face.

He had only ever seen one dead person in his whole life—his grand-mother on his father’s side—and she was in a coffin. But he knew it just wasn’t right to touch this woman. It was disrespectful or something.

“What if she’s just asleep?” Dennis said. “What if she was buried alive and she’s in a coma?”

He tried to push up one of the woman’s eyelids, but it wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the woman’s face.

To Tommy it looked as if something had been digging at the grave. One of the woman’s hands was out of the dirt, as if she had been trying to reach out for help. The hand was mangled, like maybe some animal had chewed on her fingers, tearing flesh and exposing bones.

He had fallen right on top of a dead woman. His head swam. He felt like someone had just poured cold water over him.

As Dennis reached out to touch the woman again, a dog stepped out of some bushes on the other side of the body and growled deep in its throat.

None of them moved then. The dog was mean-looking, white with a big black spot around one beady eye and over the small ear. The dog moved forward. The kids moved backward.

“He’s protecting her,” Tommy said.

“Maybe he killed her,” Dennis said. “Maybe he killed her and buried her like a bone, and now he’s back to eat the body.”

He said it as if he hoped that was the case, and he couldn’t wait to watch the next gruesome scene.

Then as suddenly as it had appeared, the dog stepped back into the bushes and was gone.

In the next second, a man in a sheriff’s deputy’s uniform appeared at the top of the bank the kids had tumbled over. He looked like a giant looking down at them, his hair buzzed flat on top, his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses. He was Dennis Farman’s father.

Tommy stood well back from the deputies who had come with yellow crime-scene tape to mark off the area around the shallow grave. He should have been home by now. His mother was going to be really mad. He had a piano lesson at five. But he couldn’t seem to make himself leave, and he thought maybe he wasn’t supposed to.

The light was fading in the thick woods. Somewhere out there was a mad dog, and maybe even a murderer. He didn’t want to walk home anymore.

The adults on the other side of the tape weren’t paying any attention to him or Wendy. Dennis hung around just outside the tape, trying to get a better look as the deputies did their jobs.

Cody Roache had run all the way back to the street and nearly got himself run over by Dennis’s father in his squad car. Tommy had heard the deputies telling each other. Mr. Farman had come straight to the scene, but Cody had not come back.

“I wonder who she is,” Wendy said quietly. She sat on the stump of a tree that had been cut down over the summer. “I wonder how she died.”

“Somebody killed her,” Tommy said.

“I think I want to go home now,” Wendy said. “Don’t you?”

Tommy didn’t answer her. He felt like he was inside of a bubble, and if he tried to move the bubble would burst and all sorts of feelings would wash over him and drown him.

People had come into the park to see what was going on. They stood up on the bank—teenagers, a mailman, one of the janitors from school.

As he watched them, Miss Navarre appeared at the edge of the group. She spotted him and Wendy right away and made her way down to them.

“Are you guys all right?” she asked.

“Tommy fell on a dead person!” Wendy said.

Tommy said nothing. He had started to shake all over. Inside his head all he could see was the dead woman’s face—the blood, the gash in her cheek, the ants crawling on her.

“A deputy came into the school and said something had happened,” Miss Navarre said, looking over at the place where the dead lady was. She turned back then and touched Tommy’s forehead and brushed some dead leaves out of his hair. “You’re really pale, Tommy. You should sit down.”

Dutifully he sat down on the stump beside Wendy. Miss Navarre looked as pale as either of them, but there was no more room on the stump.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

The tale spilled out of Wendy like rushing water. When she came to the part where Tommy fell on the grave, Miss Navarre closed her eyes and said, “Oh my God.”

She bent down to Tommy’s level and looked him straight in the eyes. “Are you all right?”

Tommy gave the smallest nod. “I’m okay.”

His voice sounded like it came from far away.

“Wait here,” she said. “I’m going to ask the deputies if I can take you home.”

She walked over to the yellow tape stretched between the trees and tried to get the attention of Dennis Farman’s dad, who seemed to be the big shot on the scene.

The two exchanged words. Miss Navarre gestured toward Dennis. Farman’s father shook his head. They were arguing. Tommy could tell by the way they were standing—Miss Navarre with her hands on her hips, Mr. Farman puffing himself up and leaning over her. Then Miss Navarre raised a hand and ended the discussion.

She was angry when she came back, although she did her best to hide it. Tommy could feel it all around her like frozen air.

“Come on,” she said, reaching out her hands to them. “I’m taking you home.”

At ten Tommy generally considered himself too old to hold hands with an adult. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had held his hand. Kindergarten, maybe. But he didn’t feel so grown-up now, and he took Miss Navarre’s soft, smooth hand and held on tight as she led them away from the terrible scene and out of the woods.

But the scene came with Tommy, stuck in his head; he felt sick at the idea that it might never go away.