PROLOGUE Emma doesn't really notice the cold night air or the damp grass beneath her feet. Only the howling sound in her ears. That same sound dragged her out of bed a while ago. It made her walk downstairs and go outside to the shed where her dad keeps the old splintery shovel. That sound is the reason she has to keep digging -- to find out what it wants.
Her arms move up and down fast. The scoop of the shovel bites into the brittle earth, and the muscles in her lower back burn. Dirt is piling up next to her. Some of it has even started to spill back into the ground.
"Em?"
The voice is barely audible above the howling. She doesn't answer. She's too afraid to speak. Then something grabs her. It claws into each arm before spinning her around.
"What are you doing?" the figure in front of her asks.
"I have to find him," she says flatly.
"Who?"
The kitchen door slams suddenly, and the noise wakes Emma from her trance. She stands there, looking first at the surprise on her father's face and then over at her little sister, Gwen, who is standing in the doorway. The yellow-white light from inside makes her sister's nightgown glow.
"Go back to bed," Dad calls out to Gwen. He puts his arm around Emma's shoulders.
He leads her inside the house and up the stairs, carefully -- just the way he used to help Mom when she was sick for all those months, Emma remembers.
"She's sleepwalking...like the others," her dad whispers to his friend Dr. Feldman the next morning. They're sitting in the living room as Emma stands on the staircase -- out of sight but close enough to hear. Besides, her father is the worst whisperer in the world. He tries so hard to sound quiet that his voice just gets louder. The doctor wonders if their next-door neighbor, Ms. Martinique Dupré, is to blame. Everyone in town knows that she practices "the voodoo," though no one has actually seen her do it. Like Emma and Gwen and Dad, Ms. Dupré moved to Sea Cliff from the South. She lived in New Orleans until Katrina.
Emma thinks Ms. Dupré is okay; she doesn't care one iota -- as her dad likes to say -- if the woman practices voodoo or plays the accordion, which Emma considers the worstsounding instrument ever invented. Still, Ms. Dupré's place does smell like incense when you walk by, and that can make folks wonder. It sure doesn't stop people from visiting her to have their fortunes told, though.
"Do you think your daughter is depressed?" Dr. Feldman asks, and Mr. Montgomery answers without his whispering voice.
"She lost her mother fourteen months ago, Jack. But that doesn't mean she's fixing to hurt herself...or somebody else."
Dr. Feldman doesn't say anything for a while. When he finally speaks, his voice is too soft to hear, as if he knows someone might be listening. His words run together faster now, and Emma can't concentrate anymore. She hurries downstairs and into the kitchen. The room feels hot. Her forehead is damp with sweat, and she wonders if the oven is on. No. They hardly cook anymore. Not without Mom around.
Emma bumps into the table, tipping over the chair. She feels dizzy and off balance. This can't be happening to me, she tells herself. She doesn't want to end up like Selene, like those other students at Saint Opportuna High. All of a sudden Emma wishes her mom were here right now. She would know what to do.
Emma hurries outside.
A cool, playful wind whips past the oak tree in the middle of the backyard. Orange-red leaves cling to the tree branches, and they shake nervously with every gust. Emma steps over to the place where she was digging last night and notices the upturned soil. Dad must have filled the hole sometime this morning, she figures. The brown, rectangular patch looks like a Band-Aid.
Her stomach knots. Something about the filled-in hole makes her uneasy. Emma gets down on her knees and grabs a handful of dirt. It feels moist and thick and heavy. Then she puts her ear against the ground. She doesn't want to, but she can't stop herself. She has to know something.
Emma presses the side of her face harder against the ground. There seems to be a murmur somewhere beneath her. She closes her eyes to concentrate, but the wind just gets louder in her ears.
Emma pushes herself away from the spot and gets to her feet. She takes a few steps back toward the house and turns --
A set of piercing black eyes hovers right in front of her. Staring. A ghost, Emma thinks, as her body stiffens. She struggles to breathe.
No, she realizes. It's not a ghost at all. It's Ms. Dupré, standing on the back porch of her house and looking over the short row of hedges that separates their yards. Some kind of gray paste covers the old woman's face, and her body is cloaked in a gown of deep purple. She isn't watching Emma, though. She seems to be looking through her, looking at something much farther away.
The wind kicks up again, and Emma turns back to the spot where she was digging. Something terrible is about to happen, she realizes. In truth she knew it as soon as the howling sounds began. She knew it as soon as Dad found her in the backyard last night. Just like she knows it now.
Someone else will die soon, she tells herself. Someone else will die, and I'll be responsible. A few days after the first time you walk in your sleep, you kill someone.
That's how the end begins.
Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Fahy
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