What Stays Buried


 
 
 Dedication
 In loving memory of my grandmother Josephine Parzych.
 Grateful for every moment.
 
 
 
 1
 CALISTA WYNN KNEW the boy was dead before she even opened her eyes. He whispered her name again, soft and far away, how all ghosts sound even when they’re right next to your ear. An echo through the veil of this life and the otherworld.
 Calista’s eyes fluttered open, but she didn’t turn to the boy right away. It was too early for a communication. Most ghosts had the decency to let her sleep until her alarm sounded for school. She hadn’t been sleeping well, not these past few weeks, at least. She would have appreciated another fifteen minutes of rest.
 Finally, already awake, Calista turned on her side without lifting her head off the pillow. Right there, inches away, was a pale-faced kid with cropped blond hair and dark blue eyes. The collar of his shirt was stiff with speckles of blood.
 “You can see me, right?” the boy asked, hopeful. Calista felt a stab of sympathy for him. He’d probably been searching for a medium for years, decades, before finding her. That was usually how it worked. Word of mouth in the ghost world took awhile. It wasn’t like they could text.
 “Yeah, I can see you,” Calista said, sitting up.
 She cracked her neck and blinked her eyes open wider, sleep still on the corners of her vision. Morning sunlight filtered through her bedroom curtains as a prism of colors danced on her ceiling from a hanging suncatcher. Cast in blues and purples, Calista shivered once in the chilly air before turning back to the boy. Ghosts always brought the cold with them.
 “How can I help you?” Calista asked, her voice coming out with white puffs of air.
 The spirit smiled, a little kid’s smile, although he’d probably been Calista’s age when he died, thirteen or fourteen, she guessed. “I . . .” the boy started, and then furrowed his blond brows. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been looking for someone. . . . I forgot why.”
 This was also not unusual. After a while, ghosts began to forget things, much like the living. Although ghosts were stuck at the age they had been when they died, they kept . . . going. Imagine spending seventy years as a fourteen-year-old boy? Calista thought. Yikes.
 “Are you looking for your mom?” Calista asked. This was typically the case with boys, searching for their mother’s care. A kiss on a bruised knee.
 The ghost’s face lit up. “Yes,” he said, smiling. “Yes, my mom! Can you help me find my mom?”
 Calista exhaled heavily. She had no idea what time period this boy was from—it was hard to tell sometimes. With the exception of the ’80s, hairstyles didn’t change too drastically, especially for boys. And it was entirely possible that this ghost’s mother had already passed away years before, and that would make things difficult. Not all of the departed became ghosts.
 Calista noticed the time on her alarm clock and reached to switch it off before it could sound. “Why don’t you come back after school?” she suggested to the spirit. “I’ll help you then.” She could at least point him to some other relatives if his mother was no longer around.
 The boy stared blankly at Calista, maybe forgetting the concept of mornings and going to school. She pointed toward the window. “You go,” she said clearly. “And I’ll summon you when I get home.”
 He nodded, disappointed, but seeming to understand. And then, the boy evaporated.
 Calista sat there a moment, the room warming now that the spirit was gone. She was tempted to lie back down, sleep that extra fifteen minutes, but it would take her at least that long to fall asleep again. It was time to start the day.
 She got out of bed and headed toward the shower, yawning as she scratched at her messy black hair. In a week, I won’t have to deal with dead boys anymore, she thought. But the second it crossed her mind, grief lay heavy on her chest. She could dress up the idea all she liked, but Calista didn’t want to lose her gift. It was part of who she was. She’d be losing herself.
 Calista Wynn had discovered she was a medium the same way most mediums did: as a child—in Calista’s particular case, in the bathtub, just as a ghost began massaging shampoo into her hair from behind. That extra set of fingers touching hers through the suds, that moment of confusion . . . Are these my fingers? Are these . . . ?
 Followed by screaming. Shouting. And a dead woman smiling at her from the floor of her bathroom in a Victorian-era burial dress.
 Oh, yeah. That was the fun part. Sometimes, ghosts could touch her.
 After that, Calista began seeing ghosts all the time. She’d known it was coming, of course. She was descended from a long line of mediums on her father’s side. It was weird enough, being from a family that talks to ghosts. But even weirder was that, although they were powerful, the only spiritual mediums left in the Wynn family were the children.
 Calista’s grandmother claimed it started after she lost her daughter many years ago. But Calista’s mother, Nora, who didn’t possess any supernatural gifts, suggested it was more likely something in their genes. Either way, there was one hard truth that had become apparent: at thirteen years old, all of the mediums in the Wynn family lost their ability to see ghosts. It had happened to Calista’s father, Mac, and to all five of his younger siblings. And soon, it would happen to her. Sure, the Wynns still had other gifts, other intuitions, but the ghosts stopped appearing to them.
 Calista had one more week of seeing ghosts until her birthday. And then . . . Well, she didn’t want to