Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

We made our way past the mausoleum, heading toward the back wall, where the white headstone sat small and pale in the dark.

At the edge of the grave, Emma dropped the tarp, then reached into the bag and started bringing out hand tools. She lined them up across the canvas like she was doing surgery. “Hold the light close to the ground.”

I shone the beam over the grave, muddy and bare, still waiting for the turf to be laid over it. After we’d scraped the worst of the mud away, Emma adjusted her tarp, lining it up along one side of the grave. “Shovel onto that and try to keep it neat. That way we can put things back when we’re done.”

Roswell and I took turns, trading out while Emma stood up on the edge of the grave, keeping track of the dirt and handing down tools.

The night seemed to stretch out forever. I was in the little grave, digging deeper, deeper. Like the hole was so deep that I wouldn’t ever be able to get out. The dirt piled up on the tarp and trickled back down in streams, getting all over my hair and my clothes and the ladder.

The air was cold and smoky. My arms and back hurt, and even through the chill, I was starting to sweat when my shovel hit something hard and flat. I scraped the dirt away and Roswell jumped down to help me.

The box was small, maybe four feet long. It was heavier than it looked, but we got it loose between us, levering with the shovels, then getting under one end and shoving it up onto the grass. The wood was damp, slick with grave mold or moss. It had only been in the ground a few days, but it already smelled like it was starting to rot.

“It’s a cremation casket,” Emma said in a voice so low that I could barely hear her. She was kneeling down, running her hand over the lid. “It’s not a real burial casket.”

“They’re cheaper,” Roswell whispered, and he sounded hoarse.

Emma picked up a screwdriver and started working at the latch. It had already begun to rust. When the screws stripped, she jammed the blade between the metal and the wood. Suddenly, she gasped and the whole latch peeled away with a squealing sound.

We just sat there for a minute, kneeling in the grass, looking at the closed casket.

Then Emma took a deep breath. “Okay, hand me the flashlight.” Her hands were steady, but her voice was high pitched.

I gave her the light and she inched forward and lifted the lid.

The body was small and weirdly perfect. Then Emma shone the beam over its face and the eerie sense of flawlessness was gone.

The nose was losing its shape, starting to collapse. The smell came rushing out of the open box, rising in clouds. The odor on top was thin, a sweet layer of rot that seemed to float and twinkle in the air, and under that, a hard, chemical stink that might have been embalming fluid.

Emma was on her feet, stumbling back. The flashlight fell and rolled across the grass. Light splashed over the headstones and the weedy graves. She had both hands against her mouth like she was trying to cover her own screams.

Roswell stepped around the pile of dirt and reached to grab her, but I couldn’t move. I stood looking down at the little body, half in shadow on the satin lining. “We have to take it out.” The sound of my own voice seemed flat and far away.

“You okay?” Roswell asked, looking over at me, covering his mouth and nose.

I nodded. The rain made everything waver and blur, and three of us stood looking at the body.

After a second, I collected the dropped flashlight and stood over the casket, too numb to tell that I was shaking except for the way the light jumped and fluttered. I tried to hold it steady, but I couldn’t feel my hands.

Roswell was the one who got down on his knees and reached into the casket for the body. For the baby. He leaned over the casket, wincing, but reaching in anyway, gentle, cautious. He was so brave I felt sick.

I held the barrel of the flashlight tighter and cleared my throat. “Will it be okay, or is it too rotten to pass?”

“No,” he said, with his fingertips under its chin. “It’s in really good shape. Really good. I don’t think there’s any way it could have been human.”

His voice was like cotton, like it was coming from far away.

I handed Emma the light and put my hands over my face. I’d known. Of course I’d known. Hearing him say it just made it the truth. Someone would send a baby out to suffer and die in a poisonous world without regretting it, without feeling guilty at all. It might as well have been me.

Roswell straightened and then got to his feet. “Mackie.”

I didn’t answer. My throat was so tight it hurt to breathe.

He stepped around the casket and hugged me. I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to let me stand back in the shadows and be nothing. I wanted to stop seeing. Roswell was always hugging somebody, but not seriously, not like it meant anything. This time, he pulled me hard against his shoulder, holding on to the back of my jacket even when I tried to pull away.

All my life, Roswell had been rescuing the moment, saying the right thing, but this time he didn’t say anything. The rain was slow and cold and I didn’t think I could stand it if he tried to make things better.

Then Emma was there, reaching for me. She had both arms around me and was pressing her face against my shoulder. I let her hold on to me and she was warm through her sweatshirt. She smelled like autumn and dirt and home, like the burned-out church and the grave. I leaned against her, thinking how strange it was that I hadn’t ended up in a little wooden box years ago, that anyone in the world loved me that much.

When she let me go, I felt light and far away, numb from the cold. Numb enough to touch the body. It lay in the box, chilly and stiff like a doll. Roswell and Emma looked up at me expectantly from where they knelt on either side of it, not speaking.

Finally, Emma took a little hitching breath and whispered, “Should we take it out?”

We lifted the body from the coffin liner and wrapped it carefully in Roswell’s jacket. Its hair was dark and thick but brittle. Its skin was gray. It was nothing like the true, living girl tied to the Lady’s armchair.

Emma stroked the dull hair, cradling the body in her lap. After a minute, I tied the charm around its wrist, not knowing what else to do. The body lay stiffly in Emma’s arms, looking pathetic and horrific in the ruffled funeral dress and the makeshift bracelet.

I stood over them. “What now?”

Emma looked into the emaciated face. “In the stories, people talk to them, but none of the accounts have a script or anything. I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay. I think I do.”

I leaned down and whispered in the replacement’s ear all the things I’d wanted to tell the blue girl in the House of Mayhem. What someone else had done to her, and it was okay to be gruesome and frightening because it wasn’t her fault.

When the bundle in Emma’s arms began to move, I wanted to look someplace else. The squirming body was worse than the still, tragic one. It fidgeted in Emma’s lap and she stared up at me with a mute, hopeless expression.

I crouched over it and pulled Roswell’s jacket open.

The thing was small and delicate, almost like a real kid. It wasn’t a perfect replica, but it resembled Natalie. It blinked slowly at me, reaching up with a tiny hand. Its eyes were blank and a little cloudy, but they were hazel like Natalie’s. Like Tate’s.

“We have to hurry,” I whispered, thinking of Emma’s hands when the blue girls had taken her gloves. How they’d started rotting.

Emma breathed out in a long, slow sigh. She held the wriggling, squirming thing in her lap, looking up at me from the muddy ground. Her eyes were full of tears, like she wanted to put it down.