Graveminder

Chapter 43

DAISHA RETURNED TO HER FORMER HOME. THE BODIES WERE GONE. She’d considered keeping them there, but the more she’d eaten, the more she’d remembered—and she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to remember much more. The people she’d met in town had helped her remember, so by the time she’d come to the trailer, she’d remembered so much more than she wished she had.

Leaves in her mouth.

Hands on her throat.

She knew that she had been killed.

She knew that when she woke up, she was stopped from coming home.

To find the shining woman. The Graveminder.

To hear the words, to find nourishment.

Someone had made it impossible for her to come back even though she’d felt the thread that grew from the center of her being, pulling her back to here, to home, to her . When she’d awakened, she had known where she was supposed to go.

Breath, drink, and food.

If she’d kept Gail and Paul here, they would’ve woken up in time: that’s why she’d called the tip line to have their bodies removed. I don’t want them to wake up. The Graveminder would stop that from happening. Daisha understood that now. She understood most everything: the longer she’d been re-alive, the more she re-knew. The better she was fed, the more she remembered.

She remembered the Cold Man. He was there, too.

And Daisha remembered her , the woman.

“Then let them go,” the woman had said. “They’ll fix everything, and when they’re done, we’ll kill them again.”

Daisha remembered the voice, the woman. She was why Daisha killed the last Graveminder: she had been sent to do just that.

It was why the woman made me dead.