Hello again! As we approach Release Day for That the Dead May Rest, I continue to post excerpts. This two scenes will introduce you to Janna, the teenaged girl whose twin sister died of anorexia. (If you've read many of my books, you may have noticed my fascination with identical twins.) After today, I'll focus less on characters and more on events.
First, here's the introduction to Janna and her sister.
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It never surprised Janna to dream about her sister. In fact, it would have terrified her if she stopped dreaming about Jeri. They had, after all, been together since the moment that one small cluster of cells had decided to become two. And while they hadn’t spent every minute, or even every day, at each other’s sides, separation had always felt temporary, even when Jeri’s anorexia had become so extreme that an ambulance screamed its way to the hospital, carrying her out of reach until Janna could get someone to drive her there.
And then she’d died, and Janna’s world had fractured into unrecognizable pieces — but at least she had her dreams.
In this one they were watching TV, but not in the hospital. She wasn’t even sitting on Jeri’s bed, the way they had that last year. Instead, they were curled up on the living room couch, sharing the big fuzzy blanket, watching Ghostbusters: Afterlife and sharing a big bowl of popcorn —
Janna couldn’t help it — she jerked herself awake. Popcorn? Jeri sitting there casually snacking? And they hadn’t been little kids. They’d been about the age Janna was now. What the hell?
And there’d been something else. Jeri hadn’t looked exactly healthy, the way she was in some dreams, the ones it hurt to wake up from. But she hadn’t been the near-skeleton Janna had seen so often, and which Jeri had somehow never been able to see. Yes, she’d been thin, but not thin enough to make anyone wonder, let alone worry or stare. And her hair had color in it, the brown-red their mother liked to call auburn, and the bit of wave that made it different from Janna’s, instead of hanging dark and colorless and breaking off like worn-out thread.
But that wasn’t all. There’d been one more thing, but what was it? She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrated hard, and then she had it — and it made chills run down her spine and then settle in her stomach. Jeri’s clothes. She’d been wearing the outfit their parents had bought for her, the dark orange corduroys and forest green pullover that would’ve fit Janna, that they bought for the day they couldn’t stop hoping for, the day Jeri would come home to stay. They’d insisted in dressing Jeri in it for the funeral, even though it was so much too big. She’d been wearing it in the dream, sitting there next to Janna under the blanket, eating popcorn . . . and it had only been a little loose.
Janna fell back down on the bed and curled up small. It should be real. That should be their life, and it wasn’t and never would be again. She slammed her fist into the mattress and let the tears come.
This next scene takes place after the spirits have started trying to reach the living.
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In this dream, Jeri had sent Janna a postcard. But it wasn’t a postcard she’d ever seen in a drugstore or tourist shop. The postcards she was used to seeing had landmarks, or ocean scenes, or mountains, or cute animals like kittens and puppies. This postcard startled her, even in the dream, because it was so far from panoramic, showing only a few details, and yet looked exactly like the twins’ secret hideaway. The picture would have to have been taken from the base of the willow tree, looking up and outward through the swaying green branches with the spray of the waterfall visible between them. The warm glow of the light — “golden hour” light — brought back memories of brownie-and-cookie picnics, gobbled greedily while their mother called out to them that dinner was ready. . . .
Dream-Janna turned the postcard over, only to find another image. This one was no photograph, but a tarot card. She and Jeri had just started learning about tarot when Jeri went to the hospital the last time, the time she never came back. Janna had brought a Starlit Twins tarot deck with her to the hospital on a couple of visits, using her phone to call up one of the online guides to the different cards. This card looked like The Tower, which could mean too many things — from danger or crisis to more positive changes. What was Jeri trying to say?
Then the card changed, morphing into another: Strength. They’d laughed about this one (though Jeri’s laugh had an awful rattling sound that stopped Janna’s laughter) because, in the deck Janna had brought, the figure on the card looked a little like them. At least, like both of them before Jeri had started to look more like the skeleton on an antique Death card.
And then it shifted again, into a card from some other deck she couldn’t identify. It might be the Judgment card. She couldn’t remember what that would mean, but it must mean something other than the picture on it. Because the picture showed people standing up in their graves. What did it mean?
She woke up with that question echoing in her ears.
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