Graveminder

Chapter 13

DAISHA STAYED OUT OF SIGHT DURING THE FUNERAL. SHE’D STOLEN A black hoodie and jeans— and some food— from a woman who’d been taking out her trash that morning. The woman didn’t stand up after Daisha had finished eating, but her heart was still beating. And most of her skin was still on her. The thought of skin and blood shouldn’t make Daisha’s stomach growl, but it did. Afterward, the thought of it was gross, but in the moment, it was ... exactly right.

It made her mind clearer, too. That part was important. The longer she went between meals, the less focus she had. Less body, too. She felt like she was being pulled and pushed in every direction all at once. Earlier she’d fallen apart, scattered like smoke in the breeze.

This morning she stood in a cemetery and watched them put Maylene in the ground. It seemed so permanent, being killed and being buried, but obviously it wasn’t.

Daisha kept herself behind a tree as she watched. She’d had to come. When she’d heard the bell, her body was as pulled to this spot as it had been when she’d met Maylene there. The inability to refuse the strange compulsions, the impossibility of holding on to thoughts or memories, the hungers that filled her, everything had become wrong. Daisha wanted answers, wanted company, wanted to be right . Only Maylene had understood, but she was dead now.

Maybe Maylene will wake up, too.

Daisha stood waiting, but no one stepped up out of the earth. No one came to join her. She was as alone now as she’d been when she was alive for real. Daisha didn’t remember crawling out of the ground. She didn’t really know when she’d woken up, but she was awake. That part she knew.

She leaned her head against the tree.

The shrieking woman was carrying on something fierce, and the Undertaker was scowling at her. He had scanned the crowd and the cemetery. Every so often, his gaze had paused on the woman who had come to stay in Maylene’s house.

Now she glowed like Maylene had. Maylene’s skin seemed to be filled with moonlight, a beacon that drew Daisha even before she saw her. All Daisha had known was that there was a light, and she had to go toward it. As the new woman had poured her flask onto the soil, she had started glowing until her whole body was filled with brightness.

The rest of the mourners had left, but even if they weren’t gone, Daisha couldn’t walk up to them and ask. Only the Undertaker and the wailing woman waited.

Daisha started shaking, and the focus that she’d had started to fade. She started to fade, so she fled before her body could dissipate again.