Mara Purnhagen - Raising The Dead

More thunder growled outside, this time so close that I was sure the storm was directly over the building. The lights blinked but stayed on.

“Charlotte?” Dad stood in the doorway. He was putting on his trench coat. “We need to go. It’s really coming down.”

“Sure.” My hopes of a possible kiss and a romantic beginning to a new relationship officially dashed, I hopped off the stage. “Can we give Noah a ride?”

Dad was examining his cell phone. “I have a text here from Trisha. She’s with Shane at our house. Noah’s coming with us.”

Noah lowered himself from the stage and stood next to me. “Great,” he muttered. “More quality time with Shane.”

“It’s fine,” I said as we began walking down the aisle. I carried the box of props while Noah held the computer. “I doubt they’ll be making out with everyone around.”

Noah snickered. “You underestimate them.”

I laughed, but when Dad held open the doors leading outside, I stopped. Rain slammed the ground as if it was being fired from a machine gun. “I’ll get the car!” Dad yelled. He darted toward the parking lot and disappeared in the wall of water gushing from the sky.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” I had to practically scream at Noah so that he could hear me over the roar of rain.

“Welcome to hurricane season in South Carolina!”

Dad pulled the car around a few minutes later. Already the water was several inches deep. Noah opened the back door and I dove in. He tucked the computer under his jacket and followed. Inside the car, it was quieter, but Dad had the wipers going at full speed and they were barely clearing his window.

“We don’t need a car to get home,” I joked. “We need a boat.”

Dad didn’t even smile. Around us, people raced to get to their cars. “I can’t believe this,” Dad said. “We were only in there for three hours.”

He drove slowly, stopping several times when he couldn’t see the road. Our house was less than five miles away, but it felt like a hundred. I held the wet box of props in my lap and tried to look out my window, but the streetlights were just a blur against the rain.

Dad’s phone rang. He handed it to me.

“Charlotte, where are you?”

“Hi, Mom. We’re in the car. It’s taking a while.”

“Tell your father to drive slowly.”

“He is, don’t worry.”

Dad stopped again. I automatically looked behind us to make sure no one was driving too close. I couldn’t see any headlights. I couldn’t see anything.

“Mom? I’ll call you when we’re close, okay?” I snapped shut the phone. Dad was staring out his side window.

“Do you see it?” He pointed.

I leaned over Noah to look out the window. Something was in the road, bobbing along the water.

“Looks like a little canoe,” Noah said.

“That’s not a canoe,” Dad said. “That’s a coffin.”

Coffins continued to float down Main Street throughout the night, bobbing along the raging brown water until they lodged in between buildings or came to rest against fallen trees. We watched the macabre footage from home, where Noah, Trisha and Shane had been stuck with us since Friday evening.

“Are you seeing this?” I asked Avery. On the TV, a newscaster dressed in a bright yellow poncho tried to shield his face from the pounding rain.

“It’s crazy,” my best friend agreed. Avery lived at the bottom of our neighborhood hill. I had called her right away, concerned that the water was running down our street and into her front yard. It was, but so far her house was holding up against the flood.

“Think they’ll cancel school on Monday?” I asked her.

“Definitely. No one can drive in this. And if it keeps up, they’ll probably cancel Halloween next week, too.”

That wouldn’t be a bad thing, in my opinion. I hated dealing with people on Halloween. Our house always drew a crowd, even though we didn’t decorate and tended to keep the lights off. People associated my family with the paranormal, so they would show up and linger on the front lawn, snapping pictures in the dark and waiting for something to happen. Did they really think a gang of ghosts was going to visit us on Halloween?

The raging flood wasn’t the only reason I was calling Avery. Seeing a coffin carried by the river that was Main Street automatically made me think of Avery’s late boyfriend, Adam, who was buried in a local cemetery. I didn’t know where the caskets were coming from, but I was sure that Adam’s cemetery was not the source. I wanted to make sure Avery knew that.

“So listen,” I began. “The flash floods have gotten really bad.”

“Uh-huh.” I could hear Avery’s TV in the background.

“And they’re saying that it’s affected some cemeteries.”

The TV went silent. “Who’s saying that?”

“The local news.” I paused. “And we saw a casket in the street when we were driving home last night.”

“Oh.”

“The flood is hitting an older cemetery,” I rushed to say. “My mom is looking into it. She works with preservation societies all the time, and she’s seen this kind of thing before. I don’t want you to worry, okay?”

“Sure.” Avery’s voice was listless.

“Modern burials are different now,” I explained. “They don’t just dig a hole and throw a coffin in.” I cringed at my own words. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be insensitive.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“What I mean is, coffins today are put into a cement vault, then covered with dirt. Adam’s cemetery isn’t the source, I promise.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She hung up, and I returned to the dining room, which my family used as a den, and where everyone was now gathered, their attention focused on the local news.

“So far, over a dozen caskets have washed away,” the rain-soaked newscaster announced.

“Authorities are determining their point of origin. Stay tuned for dramatic—and exclusive—footage of a man and his dog being rescued from their submerged car.”

Mom hit the mute button. “Who wants to help me with dinner?”

Trisha and I immediately went to the kitchen, leaving Dad, Shane and Noah in front of the TV. I was happy to leave the local news behind and focus on something else instead.

“So,” I said. “What are we making?”

I knew better than anyone that my mom did not cook. Her culinary talents included reheating restaurant leftovers in the microwave and turning on the coffeemaker in the morning.

Trisha opened the freezer. “How does pizza sound?”

“Perfect,” Mom said. “I’ll see if we have enough to make a salad.”

I wasn’t about to return to watching the local news, so I offered to set the table. While I went about my chore, I listened to Mom and Trisha chat. They talked about the incessant rain, with Trisha apologizing for taking over the guest room and Mom assuring her that it was no problem, and how the town would clean up after the storm passed.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I was able to relax and let my mind wander. I thought of Noah in the next room, stuck with my dad and Shane and the endless news broadcast, which trumped the reruns of sitcoms that normally aired during weekend dinnertime. I worried about Avery and hoped that her house would be safe from severe water damage. And, as it had happened so often over the past few weeks, I thought about Charleston and the girl in the pink dress.

It had been only three weeks since I had stepped into the afterlife. Three weeks, and already a part of me was doubting the details of the experience. Had I really spoken to a dead girl? If so, I had achieved more contact with the paranormal in a moment than my parents had throughout their decades-long career. I hadn’t told anyone about it, not even my parents, mainly because I was trying to make sense of it.