The scooter rumbled beneath me. Our eyes locked, Julian’s holding hallows of desperation. Julian Blackwell was afraid of heights. A fear so normal—so trivial coming from a man who had half the town in fear of him.
Heights, and this feeling came over me with his sudden confession.
I hopped off the scooter and took off toward Julian, who was straightening his posture. He didn’t even wait until I was in the shadows before he reached out into the light and grabbed my hand to pull me under with him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hands already on my face, my back already against the wall. “You have to know that it’s not what it seems.”
He flipped up his mask and nudged his lips against mine once before he was kissing me, and it pulled me into a whirlwind, like a snap of an elastic band. Time bounced with it, bringing me back to when we explored each other in the train car, the liberating and freeing night of us.
“They’re all liars, but we’re not. This isn’t a lie,” he groveled with a thickness in his throat. His tongue tasted mine, kissing me hard and deep as if I was going to disappear or turn to dust inside his arms.
With one hand clasped firmly on his neck, and the other flattened against his chest, I forced my head away. Even my mind and heart were at war. “Julian,” I said, and he dropped his head and settled it onto my shoulder. A groan vibrated from his chest down to the hips that were pinned to mine.
“I’m trying, Fallon,” he said, pushing “Fallon” into my ear.
“All I wanted was to be real with each other. Real with me, real with yourself. I need real,” I paused and pressed my face into his thick hair. I inhaled his scent, the smell of winter and woods, forcing myself to come out and say it. “Maybe it’s not heights you’re afraid of. Maybe you’re just afraid of falling.”
Julian lifted his head and stared into my eyes. I waited for him to say something, but he never did.
I slipped out from under him and ran back to the scooter, knowing he wouldn’t run after me.
“Fallon, you don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Julian shouted, smacking his palm against the brick wall as I pushed down my helmet and swung my leg over the scooter. “Don’t do this.”
I did, and both of us had lost.
Chapter 22
Fallon
I always wondered about the fascination around horror. Not just horror, but thrillers too. The suspense and gory bits … The very books that make me cringe, jump, hide, scream, and sleep with the lights on. The books that make my muscles tense and heart race and bats flap in the pit of my stomach. The same books that make my entire body react, fight-or-flight mode.
The same books that lined the shelves in Gramps’ study.
I’ve wondered about the fascination behind the love of horror, and now I understand.
Maybe it’s a way to distract or fill our heartbreak, our grief, our loneliness, that there’s something more than this. To remind ourselves that we aren’t really alone in all the times we are. Though most can’t see the things that walk beside us or hide before us daily, maybe the unseeable love exists all the same. Maybe if love had a face, it would look like an evil and addicting thing—an emotional monster with an unfathomable hunger.
Yes, maybe that’s why I love horror, because it makes my muscles tense and my heart race and butterflies, er bats, flap in the pit of my stomach. It makes my entire body react, flight-or-fight mode—like the way he does. For a fleeting moment, horror satisfies whatever it is inside me that starves to be filled, faced, or forgotten.
There was something about Freddy at five in the morning at the funeral home. The whispers of the electric strums spilled into the preparation room, playing my hollowed heart like an air guitar.
Darkness hugged all around me, aside from the single lamp over Beth Clayton’s stiff body that was lying on the cold metal table, but she wasn’t here. It was only me and an empty vessel. I clutched the tweezers between my fingers, pulling thread from her stubborn lips. I’d been eager to do this too, hoping she’d come back to me and spill the secrets trapped inside her soul. Maybe that was why her killer had sewn her lips shut … so that she couldn’t speak to me.
But since her killer had done that, it meant they knew I could talk to the dead. They, whoever it was, knew Beth Clayton would end up on my table, and her spirit would end up before my eyes.
No one could have known that.
My thoughts instantly went to Jury Smith and the people who had been there when I’d kicked everyone out of the room to talk to him. Monday, Officer Stoker, Earl Parish, Beck Parish, Jonah St. Christopher, Milo Andrews, Julian…Julian Blackwell.
Julian, Julian, Julian. “Could they hear me talking to the dead?” I shuddered at the thought.
I filled in her brows, painted light shadow over her lids, and rubbed the pads of my fingers over her cheekbones, applying thick layers to give her color. Beth Clayton was beautiful, sweet, sweet, beautiful, with her whole life in front of her. “What happened to you?”
Being a mortician wasn’t easy.
Seeing kids’ bodies pass over my tables was hard.
Young girls like Beth Clayton were harder, I thought.
I pressed my thumb to my lips, then to her forehead as I always did to each body I’d come across. “You’re free, sweet girl, nothing can hold you down now.”
A single sweet tear warmed the corner of my eye. Just one, like every other time, and I swiped it dry.
“That was nice,” a voice said. I turned, and Jonah was leaning in the doorway, his hair disheveled, but his wardrobe impeccable as always, with two coffees in his hands. He pushed off the wall and headed toward me. “You always do that?” he asked, handing me a cup.
“Yeah.”
His brow lifted as he held the mug at his lips. “A prayer for them?”
“Just a wish from the living to the dead, I suppose. Nothing special.”
“Sounded and looked pretty special to me.”
Smiling, I tapped the end of the table beside Beth’s body. “She’s ready to go for the funeral tomorrow.”
“You out of here already?” He jerked his wrist, and his watch shifted. “It’s six in the morning.”
“Five forty-five,” I corrected, standing and walking to the sink to flip the water on. “I’ve been here for about an hour now. I want to get back to Gramps and be there when he wakes.” I shook out my hands and grabbed paper towels from the dispenser. “I’ll be back later to clean the display and prep room. The Clayton’s should be here around ten.”
Jonah nodded, his gaze following me as I pulled the sheet over Beth’s body.
By six, I was at Mina’s diner as soon as it opened, grabbing my well-deserved hotcakes and two issues of the Daily Hollow. And by six-thirty, I was back at Gramps’, standing over the cliffs with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, watching the sunrise, waiting for him to wake.
This was my daily routine now, and I didn’t mind it. For the first time, in a long time, I wasn’t alone anymore. Gramps and I were getting along. Together, we found a rhythm. Though he never sent the letter to get me here, I couldn’t be more grateful to have this time with him. And the pang in my heart only grew larger each day knowing his were numbered.