NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(3)

Almost. There’s only been a few break-through episodes. And a few periods of depression. And a few delusions.

Other than that, he’s been fine.

“Except for the times that he’s not fine,” my mom answers.

“But…”

“No buts, Calla,” she shuts me down, quickly and efficiently. “Honey, we’ve talked this into the ground. Now, I’ve gotta go. I forgot my reading glasses so I’m on my way back to get them. But the rain is bad so I need to focus on the road—“

She interrupts her own sentence with a scream.

A shrill, loud, high-pitched shriek. It almost punctures my ear-drums with its intensity and before I can make heads or tails of it, it breaks off mid-way through. And I realize that I heard something else in the background.

The sound of metal and glass being crunched and broken.

Then nothing.

“Mom?”

There’s no answer, only loaded pregnant silence.

My hands shake as I wait for what seems like an eternity, but is actually only a second.

“Mom?” I demand, scared now.

Still nothing.

Chills run up and down my back, and goose-bumps form on my arms because I somehow know that she won’t be answering.

And I’m right.

Mom died as she was screaming, as the metal crunched and the glass broke. The EMTs say that when they found her at the bottom of the ravine, the phone was somehow still in her hand.





2


DUO



Calla



-AFTER-





Astoria smells like dying.

At least, it does to me.

Embalming chemicals. Carnations. Roses. Stargazers. These things mix with the sea breeze and pine trees blowing through the open windows, forming an olfactory cocktail that smells like a funeral to me. That’s fitting, I suppose, since I live in a funeral home. And my mother recently died.

Everything reminds me of a funeral because I’m surrounded by death.

Or mortem, as Finn would say. He’s obsessed with learning Latin, and has been for the past two years. I don’t know why, considering it’s a dead language. But then again, I guess that makes total sense around here.

My brother, on the other hand, only makes sense part of the time. We’re supposed to be preparing for college, but all he’s interested in is scribbling in his journal, learning Latin and looking up morbid facts about death.

His journal.

The mere thought of the battered leather book sends a shudder down my spine. It’s tangible proof of how crazy his thoughts can be, and because of that (and the fact that I promised him I wouldn’t), I don’t look into it.

Not anymore.

It scares me too much.

With a sigh, I stare down at him from my bedroom windows, down at the lawns of the funeral home. From here, I can see Finn and my father working on the landscaping, bent over in the early morning Oregon sun as they pull weeds from the flowerbeds that surround the house.

Finn’s arms are skinny, his skin pale as he tugs at the roots, then drops the dusty weeds into a pile of wilted greens. I watch him for a minute, not with the eyes of his sister, but with the objective eyes of someone who might be seeing him for the first time.

My brother is slender and clean-cut, with an array of sandy brown curls haphazardly arranged in a halo. His eyes are pale blue, his smile is wide and bright, and he’s beautiful in an artist kind of way.

You know, the kind of artist who forgets to eat because they’re so passionate about their work… and because they forget to eat, they’re slender and sinewy, all angles and bone. Finn’s handsome though, sweet and quirky.

And I’m not just saying that because we’re twins.

We don’t look anything alike. The only thing we share is skin the color of cream and the same shape of nose, straight, aquiline, with a slight tilt on the end. Otherwise, I have green eyes and dark red hair, just like our mother.

Our mother.

I ignore the lump that forms in my throat when I think about her and I desperately try to put her out of my mind. Immediately. Because whenever I think about her, all I can think about is the hand that I played in her car crash. If I hadn’t called her… if she hadn’t answered…. she’d still be here right now.

Alive and breathing.

But she’s not.

That weight threatens to crush my chest, and so instead of focusing on the guilt that blinds me, I focus on getting dressed. Because focusing on something, concentrating on monotony, sometimes distracts me from the grief.

Sometimes.

I throw some clothes on, yank my hair into a ponytail, and clatter down the gleaming mahogany steps, which incidentally, are the same exact shade as my mother’s casket.

God, Calla. Why does every freaking thing have to come back to that?

I grit my teeth and force my stubborn mind to think of other things, but that’s hard in a funeral home. Especially as I may my way out of the private part of the house and into the public areas.

All I can do is keep my eyes pointed forward.

Because even though no one is here yet today, there are two Viewing Rooms straddling this hall. There’s a body in each one, laid out in their finest for all of their acquaintances to stare at.

They’re dead, of course, with spiked plastic disks inside their eyelids holding them closed and thick pancake makeup smeared on their faces to give them some semblance of living color. It’s a major fail, by the way.