Twenty-Two

I bring the entire box of Isabella's notebooks and papers back to my dorm room. I pull out the notebooks and typed pages, stacking them around me in untidy piles. I ought to be systematically searching for information here, but my head is already too full of what I learned from her birth certificate. I leaf idly through the notebooks, Isabella's tight, dramatically slanted cursive appearing like words in another language. The writing looks angry and deliberate, the pen gouging deep into the paper. Beyond that, I can't make much sense of her notebooks, only a few words here and there. It would practically take a historian to decipher them, I think. I abandon the notebooks and turn to the typed pages instead.

These were typed on a typewriter on yellowing paper, the ink faded with time. I read mostly without comprehension, too distracted and too tired to make meaning of Isabella's words, though these are printed clearly. I vaguely recognize some of what I read, as if I've read it before—a kind of déjà vu. From Isabella's mind? A published novel I read a long time ago?

Finally, I decide it doesn't matter. There's nothing here that can help me. The only thing this trove of her writing can do is sink me more deeply into her mind, which I'm realizing now is the very last thing I need. What I'm truly looking for is a way to get rid of her, and I won't find that here. I throw everything back into the box and kick the entire thing underneath my bed, too weary to take it back to the attic, where it belongs.

I go to the window and look out over the grounds, thinking hard. Isabella clearly loved this college and Magni Viri. So much that she wanted to be buried in the graveyard outside Denfeld Hall. So much that she clung to this place, bound her spirit to it.

But she didn't do it alone. No, Magni Viri made it possible. With those vows, that ceremony. Has she been lying in wait, all these years? Or am I just another of her victims? So many students have passed through this program. She could have possessed dozens by this point, made them write and publish her words. She could have possessed—

Meredith.

Of course. She must have possessed Meredith Brown. But Meredith's brain aneurysm ruptured before Isabella could finish her novella. Then Isabella needed a new vessel, so she attached herself to me. She followed me around, waiting for me to let her in too. Because so what if she lost Meredith, when there were so many others eager to take her place? There will always be more bodies. We are utterly replaceable.

But Isabella isn't. Magni animi numquam moriuntur.

Great minds never die.

She thinks she deserves an eternity more than I deserve my own life. More than all of us do. Look at her writing—O'Connor was right when he called it ruthless. She's ruthless. The fierce and bloodthirsty joy she takes in Eugenia's darkness, the vicious way she stuffs me into her coffin at night, the merciless way she robs me of health and sleep. She can't be reasoned with. There's no compromise to be had. She'll never stop unless someone makes her. Unless I make her.

I have two choices now. I can give up and go home to Gaiman with my tail between my legs, forfeiting my chance at a college degree and a better future. Or I can do what Mr. Hanks told me I should: fight for my life.

Isabella might be an angry, spiteful ghost hell-bent on immortality, but I am angry too. I want more than I've been given too. And I'm willing to fight for it. Haven't I clawed my way here to Corbin College? Haven't I had to blaze and rage too?

Isn't that why she picked me, at least in part? When she looked at me through Meredith's eyes at the reading, didn't she see something of herself in me? Didn't she see a little spark of herself in my eyes, hear it in my voice?

She thought I was someone whose resentment she could harness, whose weakness she could exploit. But I will turn that spark against her.

I will burn her out of my life. Tonight.

The cemetery is dark and dim, filled with the rustle of small animals. The only light comes from the moon, which is half-hidden behind a bank of clouds. But I'm glad it's not a bright night. I don't want anyone to see what I'm doing out here.

I find Isabella's grave quickly. And then I don't waste any time. I start to dig. The soil is much harder than I expected, tightly packed and cold. And I'm not exactly in the best shape of my life, having missed a few meals and a night of sleep, plus whatever sleep I ought to be getting right now.

But I can't think about that. I push the shovel in with the heel of my boot, scoop up a big tangle of dirt and roots, and toss it to one side. I do this over and over and over again. Soon, it becomes a rhythm, one I barely need to be conscious of. My body takes over, going on autopilot. I dig and dig and dig, and the moon moves across the sky, and the skittering in the bushes quiets down. My mind goes as blank as the darkness.

I'm halfway across the cemetery before I realize what I'm doing. What she is doing. My hands are empty. The shovel is gone.

"Fuck!" I whisper.

"What are you doing?" says a voice just to my right.

I swivel fast, my heart exploding, but I can't see who spoke. They're in the shadow of an oak, leaning against something. Cigarette smoke wafts toward me.

"Who's there?" I ask, my voice shaking.

They laugh. I recognize it.

"Neil," I say, releasing a breath. "Why are you out here?"

He peels away from the darkness and comes into the moonlight. I can just make out his silhouette—the peculiar slump of his narrow shoulders. He raises his cigarette to take a drag, and the tip burns bright red in the darkness.

"Why are you out here?" he echoes, releasing a cloud of smoke.

I cough. I'm so tired, I can't think straight. I can't think of a lie. "Are you following me, or what?"

He laughs again. "Not everything is about you, Tara. So conceited."

I'm covered in grave dirt, but it's too dark for him to see that. Maybe he hasn't noticed what I'm doing. Maybe he just came out for a smoke right as I left off digging. Maybe.

"You've been avoiding everyone," he says.

"So what?" I shoot back. "Miss me?"

"You're in the wrong program for going it alone," he says.

"Fuck off, Neil. Like you care."

"I never said I cared." He tosses his cigarette on the ground and stamps it out. "Sweet dreams, Tara." With that, he ambles away into the darkness, back toward Denfeld.

I let out a long breath. I don't know what the hell that was. What he was trying to say to me. And I don't care. I just need to get this done.

I stride back to the grave and search for the shovel. I don't see it anywhere. She must have made me throw it in the bushes. I shine my phone along the ground until I find it. Then I start digging again. I clearly hadn't been at it very long before she made me stop. I've barely made it a foot down and only in one small area. My arms already hurt. Even through my thick winter gloves, blisters are forming. Exhaustion looms, waiting for me to give up.

I grit my teeth and keep going. To avoid letting my mind drift, I recite every poem I can remember. Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay. It helps. I have to keep reaching for words I've forgotten. It keeps my mind occupied so she can't get a handhold. It keeps her in the dark where she belongs.

But after an hour of digging, I realize I won't be able to reach her casket tonight. What little strength I had is giving out, and I'm nowhere close to deep enough. I need help. But who could I possibly ask? There's no one. Only me.

A wave of despair engulfs me, washing away the earlier resolve that came with my anger. I sit down, hard, right in the hole I've been digging. Tears rise to my eyes. I glance at my phone's screen. It's two in the morning.

I don't know why I do it, but I pull up my contacts and scroll to Neil's name. Maybe it's because he's the only one who has never pretended to be my friend, who never hid his disdain. Come back to the graveyard, I text. Please.

The text status changes to "Read." But he doesn't respond. I groan and put my head back on my knees. I let my eyes close.

A few minutes later there are footsteps in the leaf litter. I look up to see a dark shape standing above me, a shovel thrown over its shoulder. "Get out of the fucking grave, Tara," Neil says.

I scurry up, nearly twisting my ankle in the process. "Why are you—"

"Don't say a word. Don't ask me anything. I am nothing but a shovel tonight. Deal?"

"Deal," I say, even though a hundred questions spring to my lips.

We dig for hours, the only sound the rasp and thud of our shovels, the spray of dirt as we toss each shovelful from the grave.

When my shovel strikes wood, splintering it, I nearly scream. We're only about four feet down. "Why's she so close to the surface?" I hiss at Neil.

He laughs. "What? You think she is willing herself out of the ground?"

"Shut up," I say tiredly, though that's not far off from what I was thinking.

"Probably water tables rising or storms disturbing the ground. I'm sure Jordan or Penny could explain it," Neil says.

"Not that we're going to ask them," I remind him. "This is between you and me."

"I'll keep your dirty secrets," Neil says with a lecherous purr in his voice.

"Keep digging," I respond, too exhausted for banter.

We widen the hole and scrape out the last of the dirt. It takes forever.

Neil climbs out of the grave. He turns on his phone's flashlight and shines it onto the casket. "Open it, then," he says.

I look up at him, his face lit from below. He looks sinister in this light, his eyebrows dark, his mouth a hard line.

I can't find the casket's clasp, but I don't need it. The wood is water warped, nearly rotted away. I pull the pieces off and toss them behind me.

A vague smell of damp and rot wafts up from the casket. Isabella is unrecognizable, little more than bone. There are nasty strands of what might be mummified skin or might be synthetic fibers that even a half century underground couldn't break down.

I stare at her, completely numb. I can't even summon disgust.

I glance back up at Neil. His face is twisted with hate. "We'd better hurry. It's going to be morning soon," he says.

I reach down to try to pick her up. She comes apart in my hands, sending up dust and mold. I turn my head away, coughing.

"Be right back," Neil says. He disappears, leaving me alone in the dark with Isabella. I try not to think of my dreams of being buried in this grave, how I battered the top of the casket with my fists and screamed until my voice gave out. How the cicadas sang around me, an underground symphony of horror.

When Neil returns, he tosses down brown paper leaf litter bags. "Put her in these. You can pass each one up to me."

I nod and start opening one of the bags. I realize how impossible this task would have been without Neil. Even if I'd managed to somehow dig the whole grave by myself, I would have had a hell of a time getting the body out once I'd finished.

I wrap my scarf around my nose and mouth and start stuffing bits of Isabella into the first bag. Her arms, her torso, her pelvis. I pass the bag up to Neil, who takes it without comment.

I put her legs into the next bag. One of the feet falls off, and I have to search around for it.

"Come on, Tara, hurry up," Neil says, his voice tight. I scramble around, exhausted, making sure I haven't missed any other pieces. I don't want any of Isabella left here.

I bag the last few pieces, which could be her clothes or her tendons, I don't even know. I take one last look at her empty, skeletal face before I drop her head into the bag. Then I pass it up to Neil. "That's everything," I say.

Without a word, he reaches down and helps pull me out of the grave. I collapse onto the dirt beside him.

"Look, go do what you have to do. I'll take care of refilling the grave," he says.

"Are you sure?"

"You've got about two hours before the sun comes up," he says. "Just go."

"Thanks," I say. "Seriously, Neil, I—"

"Fuck off," he says. He turns his back to me and starts shoveling dirt into the hole as fast as he can.

"Right." I grab the leaf litter bags, one in each hand, and take off at a trot. The body weighs barely anything now, all of its substance rotted away. I might as well be carrying actual leaves in these bags.

I keep to the shadows as much as I can. The last thing I need is for campus security to stop me. After what feels like an hour but is probably only fifteen minutes, I make it to the parking lot, the one everyone complains about because it's so poorly lit and they're afraid they'll be murdered getting out of their cars.

I toss the bags of Isabella into the trunk and start my engine. I sit for a moment while the car idles, my mind gauzy with exhaustion. Where should I take her?

God, I just want to sleep. I just want to be done with this.

I turn on the stereo, and Queen blares out. I haven't driven the car since taking Wren to the hospital. For the second time in a month, I leave campus with Freddie Mercury singing along to my frayed nerves.

I drive for a long time, barely paying attention to where I'm going. There are no cars on the road. The sky is dark, but there's the barest lightening on the horizon. The green-brown hills loom all around me, offering no easy place to stop the car. But finally, I come down a long, steep stretch of highway, and the forest opens up. I pull onto the shoulder of the road and grab the bags from the trunk. I march several yards into the trees, not even bothering to turn on a light.

I trip over a raised tree root and crash down hard onto my belly, dropping the bags.

I lie still, and for a moment I think about staying where I am. Just falling asleep here on the cold ground. But I grit my teeth and get back to my feet.

In the shadowy dawn, I find a dip in the ground between two trees that's full of leaves and woody debris. I open each of the bags and let Isabella's remains fall into the leaves. Then I scatter it all so that her body is covered again. Reburied. I rip the leaf litter bags into several pieces and throw the pieces into the wind, to be carried off.

That's the best that I can do. That's the best burial I can manage.

I sway on my feet as I stare down at the leaves. It looks the same as before, as if I'd never been here.

"Rest in peace, you heinous bitch," I say.

And then I stagger back to my car. I start the engine and do a U-turn. I drive back to campus, so exhausted I can hardly keep my car from swerving off the road. Thankfully, the police are scarce out here. I pull into the parking lot just as the sun comes over the hills, casting its golden light across the campus.

I am completely filthy, grime on my clothes and in my hair, smeared on my face, crusted beneath my nails. If I walk across campus like this, it's going to attract attention. I look in the back seat. There's a jacket that Jordan must have left behind. I shimmy out of my filthy coat and drop it onto the floor of the car. I grab a wet wipe from the glove compartment and scrub my face and hands with it. Then I put on Jordan's jacket.

I walk fast back to Denfeld, my hands in my pockets and my head down. I don't cross paths with anyone except for a professor who's too busy staring at his phone to notice me.

Denfeld is starting to stir, but there's no one on the stairs. I hurry up them and let myself into my room, my strange and sleepless night already feeling distant and unreal. Wren is asleep in bed. I should take a shower, but all my strength is gone. I pull off all my clothes and collapse into bed, pulling the covers over my head.

I shiver for a few minutes. My body wants to sleep, but I don't let it. I need to be sure that Isabella is gone.

I wait, trying to feel her presence. Trying to feel her slipping around the edges of my tired mind. But there's nothing. No one.

I am myself again. Isabella Snow is gone.

Relief spreads through me, the tight spiral of anxiety in my belly finally unwinding and letting my exhausted body relax for the first time in two days. I drop into a level of sleep so deep that even dreams cannot break into the darkness.