Page 38 of A Winding Wave of Magic
“Just a few forms need to be signed, and we, ah, need to know what you’d like to have done with the body once the autopsy is finished. I see your grandmother wasn’t an organ donor.”
No, she wouldn’t have been. There was no way my suspicious Gran would want any part of her body given to anyone else, for any purpose.
I nodded, and he zipped up the bag and pushed Gran back into her drawer. I followed him back to his office where we sat down at the large desk strewn with wrinkled papers.
“Typically we send the deceased to the local funerary home, where they prepare the bodies for burial?—”
“That won’t be necessary,” I cut in. “She wanted cremation.”
He nodded. “I’ll give you their contact information to make those arrangements.”
With a few more instructions, I bid the doctor farewell, then signed a few papers with Gladys, who took my credit card along with them.
“The autopsy will be completed by Friday, so please arrange for the funeral services to pick up her body at that point,” she said. “You’ll receive the report within six to eight weeks.”
It couldn’t come soon enough. Or, I reflected on the drive back to Manzanita, maybe it would be better if I didn’t get the news at all.
12
FROM THE DREAM JOURNAL OF CASSANDRA WHELAN
Last night, I dreamed of the Thing that’s been chasing me, even when I’m awake. It wasn’t a hint or a memory. It was real.
I was sprinting down a winding road that looked sometimes like the path around the Chestnut Hill reservoir, sometimes like one of the trails on the north side of the mountain. My pursuer was black. Sometimes gray or swirling blue when moonlight snuck through the trees, but mostly a matte, dusty black.
There were a few glimmers ahead. Dappled gleams, sequins in the distance. But then they disappeared.
Where was I? All I knew was that I had to get away, escape from whatever was following me.
Because there was something following me. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name.
I stopped and looked behind. More darkness, but even then, I could see a shadow, something blacker than black. It wore ahat, the same I had seen through Gran’s body. A fedora, the kind most men used to wear until the sixties. Old-fashioned. No one looks like that anymore.
The shadow flew toward me. It had no legs and stretched like most shadows as if it was connected to something else. It went on forever.
It raced toward me, looming through the night. Daggers of menace raced ahead of it, surging into my heart. Terror.
“No!” I screamed and kept running as fast as I could.
It was a street. A light blinked on at the end, and the trail turned to cobblestones, big, uneven, and slippery with age. Too old for this part of the world. The cobbles in Boston aren’t this big…New York, maybe? Philadelphia? It was too dark to tell.
I continued on until a big stone tripped me and sent me face-first into the ground. My nose bled everywhere. I thought it was broken.
The shadow was upon me in a second, and I felt something not-quite-solid wrap around my neck. I struggled, trying to claw at it but only succeeding in gouging myself.
“Help!” I tried to scream, but the words were stuck in my throat, trapped with the air in my windpipe.
The shadow gripped tighter and tighter. I searched for its thoughts, but nothing reached me but my own fear as I realized that this thing, this apparition, was going to kill me.
“Hush,” said a voice. “Give me the Secret.”
He—can you call a shadow he?—had a thick English accent, deep and arrogant. One I had heard before.
Quiet now, I thought. This is it. I allowed limbs to relax, welcoming the new darkness, somehow blacker than everything else, seeping into my brain in place of oxygen.
Suddenly, the constriction was gone. I could breathe again. Something slammed into a wall next to me, and a distinctly feline yowl pierced the night air. I heaved, seeing spots, willing my vision to return.
Another hiss, another yowl. Another slam against the stones. Panicked, I pulled myself off the ground and backed into a corner, where I could cower against the rough brick. I tried to scream for help, but my throat was too badly bruised to make a noise.
