CHAPTER 16 GRANDPA REDWOOD, 1947–2000
Our car idles in a parking spot just outside the entrance to Ithaca City Cemetery. Me, Noah, and my mom sit in complete silence for probably a solid minute. I don’t even look out the window, but Noah does. He stares up the walkway at the place where he’s supposed to be buried.
“I’m supposed to be in a coffin in that tomb,” he says softly.
“You were never actually in there, right?” I ask.
Noah shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
My mom clears her throat. “He wasn’t.”
“But I—I saw him in his coffin,” I say.
“We had to make it seem like we had prepped him,” Mom says. “It was all about maintaining the lie.” The way she says “lie” is like a curse. It feels heavier than it should.
Noah leans forward from his seat in the back and puts his face very close to mine. “I—I’m so sorry, Meeks.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I thought it was the last time I was ever gonna see you. I almost didn’t go down to the prep room because I was afraid, but I didn’t want you to be alone down there. I didn’t want to be afraid of you.”
Noah’s lips part just slightly and he gently touches my shoulder. I put my hand over his. With every passing moment, I care less and less about the strangeness of this situation and try to keep myself focused on the next task.
“Grandpa Redwood is in the mausoleum at the top of the hill,” my mom says. “He’s in a vault.”
“And he’s been in there since when?” I ask. He died before I was born. It’s strange to think his body’s been in a tomb right around the corner from my house this whole time.
“He’s been there since he died in 2000,” my mom says.
“And we’re sure he’s dead,” Noah says. “Not—not like us?”
My mom hesitates. “Jonathan has never even suggested that Grandpa Redwood was reanimated but I guess stranger things have happened.”
“Have they?” I ask. “How much stranger? Because I can’t imagine it gets weirder than all of this.”
“You saw the blond guy’s arm?” my mom says. “You said it was different from the rest of him.”
I nod. “It’s like it didn’t match.”
“I’d bet any amount of money the arm didn’t belong to him at all,” Mom says.
“I maintain my body, with all its original parts, but I’ve thought about what would happen if something catastrophic happened.
How could a lost limb be fixed if it was damaged beyond repair, that type of thing.
I’m not going to die from it, so how would I fix it?
When I talked to your dad about it, he said a transplant might work but the question then became where would the spare part come from? ”
“Mrs. Redwood,” Noah says, his tone serious. “Are you saying these people are snatching people’s body parts off?”
I stare at my mom, waiting for her to deny it, but to my horror, she doesn’t.
“I don’t know for sure,” she says. “But you asked what could be stranger? What could be more awful? I think something like that might do it.”
The knife-wielding Mr. Lions had said something about being cut into pieces and I wonder if maybe he had a point. I suddenly feel sick to my stomach.
My mom opens her door. “Come on. Keep your eyes up when we’re out here, okay?”
We follow her out into the frigid night air. There is an eerie silence in the dark of the cemetery broken only by the crunching of our shoes across the snow and the calling of ravens circling overhead. In their cacophony, I’m almost certain I can hear something that sounds like a human voice.
We pass under the iron latticework of the cemetery’s archway and as we pass the Cliff family tomb, Noah hangs back. I slip my hand into his.
“It’s just weird, you know?” Noah says. “I should be in there, right? Like, that’s the way this was supposed to work.”
It puts an ache in my chest to think about it.
“We’re way past doing things by the book.
You should be in that tomb and I should be mourning you forever.
Is that really how it was supposed to be?
” I’d lived in that terrible reality for months.
“I don’t care what was supposed to happen. You’re here now.”
Noah squeezes my hand and nods.
We continue up the path that leads to the top of the hill.
The snow lies like a blanket across the dozens of graves that butt up to the walkway.
Some of the grave markers are crumbling, with no discernible names or dates on them.
Others look new, with the name of the deceased laser-etched on the stone.
Towering birch trees, their branches bare, their pale trunks like shards of bone sticking out of the ground, sway gently in a stiff and frigid breeze.
Breath pumps out of me in billowing clouds but nothing is coming from Noah as he huffs along beside me.
I glance at my mom. She’s trekking through the snow, too, her chest rising and falling, but there’s no halo of warm breath in the cold air surrounding her.
They also don’t seem to be as cold as I am.
I’m pulling my hood in around my face like my life depends on it.
My fingers are numb. Mom and Noah don’t even have their coats zipped.
“Do y’all just not feel the cold?” I ask.
Mom slows her pace but doesn’t turn around. “Not really,” she says. “My arms and legs feel a little stiffer than they normally do.”
Noah inhales sharply. I catch a glimpse of his expression as he turns his face away from me. He opens and closes his hands and tilts his head up toward the dark sky. I can’t imagine what learning all of this for the first time is doing to him.
“And the breathing?” I ask. “No heartbeats, but breathing?”
“It’s more of a habit,” Mom calls back. “Probably a good one to have otherwise we’d be too still, too dead looking.”
I decide I’m not going to ask any more questions I don’t want honest answers to.
At the top of the hill, a rectangular stone structure emerges from the dark. Its gray stone exterior is festooned with vines that snake up and across the arched entryway. The surrounding grounds are littered with an overgrowth of prickly bracken.
Mom looks around cautiously as she approaches. I do the same. The cemetery is silent, unmoving except for the tree branches shifting in the wind. Shadowy shapes lurk in every darkened corner and I have to shake myself to get out of my own head. Noah takes my hand, gripping it tightly.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I think.”
I smile even though this isn’t the time or place. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He shakes his head. “I guess not.”
I squeeze his hand. “I’m scared. You’re scared. Let’s just be scared together.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Noah says. He kisses my cheek and I pull him toward the gray stone mausoleum.
Mom gently pushes the heavy doors of the crypt inward and disappears inside. A moment later she pops her head out.
“It’s all clear,” she says, gesturing for us to follow her.
As I step over the threshold, the musty air envelops me. It smells like rotted leaves, moisture, and dirt. There is a faint whiff of decay. I take short, shallow breaths to keep from tasting the air on the back of my tongue.
The interior of the mausoleum is cloaked in somber darkness, with the only light coming from the moon as its glow spills through a few circular windows high up on the wall.
Vaults, in a checkerboard pattern, line the walls.
My mom takes out her phone and cuts on her flashlight.
She sweeps the cone of light across the rear wall.
Names and dates materialize—Henry Hullman 1856–1903, Margaret Ellen Gordon 1936–1989, Martin F. Tompkins 1874–1952.
“Mrs. Redwood,” Noah says. “I—I don’t think I can stay in here too long. This place is . . . I don’t know. Something’s off.”
I can feel it too. It’s like a silent vibration permeates the space and I’m having a hard time figuring out if I’m also hearing the hum or just sensing it.
Noah presses his shoulder into mine as my mom moves to the wall on the right side of the mausoleum.
She shines her light on a vault at the bottom of the wall.
Clarence D. Redwood
1947–2000
Death is not an end, but a beginning.
“Found him,” my mom says.
Noah and I join her at the wall. Grandpa Redwood’s grave marker is covered in a slick of green moss and the letters of his name are mostly chipped away.
Mom sweeps the light across the tomb and something catches my eye.
Usually, in a vault, the granite-facing stone that has the person’s name on it is set in place and secured by a small plate in each of the four corners.
In older tombs, like this one, the facing stones are held in place with mortar.
Grandpa Redwood has a few neighbors in this dark and dank place.
The mortar on their graves is nearly black with grime and age.
Grandpa Redwood’s, however, is a pearly white.
“Somebody’s been in here recently,” I say. “It had to be Dad.”
Mom takes a long, deep breath. “The only question is why? Either the book is in there or maybe . . .” she trails off.
“Maybe he brought his dad back from the grave?” Noah offers.
I shake my head. “No. No way. He wouldn’t have done that, right? Could he even do that? Grandpa Redwood’s been dead for twenty-five years.”
I look to my mom. “Maybe,” she says. “I don’t really know.”
“How’s that work?” I ask in stunned disbelief. “Dad could bring somebody back when they’ve been dead that long?”
“He could but he shouldn’t,” Mom says. “He wouldn’t.
Remember what I said about having to work with the body?
Your decayed corpse could come back but then you’d have to maintain an already rotted body.
You couldn’t pass for a living human being at all.
Who would want that? You’d have to stay in the shadows. You’d have to be a recluse.”
Noah holds up his hand. “I’m gonna throw up.”
“No, you’re not,” Mom says. “You can’t. Not really.”
Noah takes a step back from the vault.