CHAPTER 14

THE DEAD FOREST

ON THE FIFTH DAY I woke up to two knocks on the door. Wearily, I opened my eyes. In front of me the screen had turned to a scrambled static. Before I could answer, Dustin opened the door, holding a shotgun. I winced at the sudden stream of sunlight. “Miss Winters,” he said. “I was wondering if you might accompany me while I hunt for wild game?”

Rubbing my eyes, I gazed from the screen to the gun. It was a bizarre sight, though after watching almost forty hours of horror movies, it didn’t seem that weird. I pulled myself off the couch. “Okay.”

“Renée,” my grandfather said, delighted to see me at breakfast. “How are you feeling?”

“I could be better.”

“I hear there’s a boy calling for you,” he said over his newspaper.

I shrugged, patting down my hair, which at this point felt like a bird’s nest.

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s no one.”

My grandfather gave me a knowing look. “No one indeed. I once heard that from your mother. Two weeks later she had eloped and moved to California, with nothing but your father and the clothes on her back.”

I stopped chewing. My parents had eloped? They’d never told me that. “Well, I don’t want to talk to him. I’ve already told Dustin.”

“I see,” he said, frowning. “Might this have something do with the films you’ve been watching, and our chat the other night?”

I narrowed my eyes. “No.”

Just in time, Dustin walked into the room, armed with the long-barrelled gun, a goose whistle, a bag marked Shells, and two brown paper bags.

“Whenever you’re ready, Miss Winters.”

“I’m ready now,” I said, eager to leave the questioning eyes of my grandfather, who was definitely not going to let Dante go unnoticed.

He clasped his hands over one knee. “What is it today, Dustin?”

“Wild snow geese, sir.”

“Excellent. Excellent. Well, have a good time. Try not to shoot any people, now. And if you do, bury them.” He winked at me, but I didn’t appreciate his humour.

Donning a pair of high rubber boots, a fur-lined parka and earmuffs, I set out with Dustin to the grounds behind the estate. The sky was a cloudless blue, the branches of the evergreens around us heavy with snow. Dustin showed me how to blow the goose whistle, and we followed the sounds of their response calls until we reached a frozen pond.

“Be very still,” Dustin said, crouching low while looking through his binoculars at a flock of geese pecking at the snow by the edge of the water. Slowly, he took the duck gun from his shoulder and handed it to me. “Now, all you have to do is aim in their general direction and pull the trigger.”

I stared at the gun as if it were a foreign object, not realizing that I was supposed to do the shooting. “I…um…I don’t think I can…I mean, I don’t really want to kill anything.”

“As you wish,” he said, handing me his lunch bag. Putting on his goggles, he squinted along the barrel of the gun and aimed it at the pond. And fired.

The birds scattered into the air, flying frantically towards the trees above us. Without flinching, Dustin aimed again, this time almost directly up. There was a squawk, followed by a cloud of feathers. Dustin ripped off his goggles and searched the sky.

“Call!” he shouted.

I looked up. Suddenly I heard something descend through the air. My arms moved without me, and before I knew it, the dead goose dropped into my arms, a flurry of blood and down.

Dustin turned to me, a smile spreading across his face. I screamed and dropped it, shaking the feathers off my hands in a panic.

“An excellent catch, Miss Winters! Excellent!”

“Just Renée,” I said, correcting him as I wiped my hands on my jacket. “And nice shot.”

“Why, thank you,” he said, slinging the bird over his shoulder. “In my time, I was a great skeet proficient.”

I nodded, having no clue what he was talking about.

We ate lunch by the pond. Since I didn’t want to shoot anything, we ended up sitting by the water, feeding the remaining geese bits of our sandwiches instead.

“Thanks for taking me out here,” I said. “It’s a nice change of scenery.”

“It’s my pleasure. I thought you might need a bit of fresh air after all of those films.”

I let out a laugh. “Yeah. They were pretty bad.” I threw a piece of bread onto the snow.

“Miss Winters—”

“Just Renée,” I interjected.

“Very well, then…Renée. I feel compelled to tell you that movies often do not depict reality. The people in your life are still the same people you knew before.”

“Except they’re not people.”

Dustin gazed out over the lake.

“This Mr. Berlin. Has he offended you in some way?”

“He lied to me about who he was. He made me think I was losing my mind and seeing things, when he knew I wasn’t.”

Dustin frowned and hoisted himself up. “I see. Well, I suppose it’s settled, then. Shall we pack up and head back?”

I let my eyes wander over the geese still grazing by my feet, realizing that I didn’t want it to be settled. “Yeah, I guess so.” And in the dwindling afternoon light we made our way back to the mansion.

“Dustin, did you know about…?” I asked him before we went inside.

“About what?”

“I know you were listening at breakfast. You were there, in the corner. You must know.”

“I have been aware of the existence of the Undead since…since I was your age,” he said, opening the door for me. “And yet I still trust your grandfather with your safety.”

Wiping my boots on the mat, I stepped inside, peeling off my outerwear piece by piece. Normally, my grandfather worked with talk radio on, but now the house was strangely silent. “Hello?” I called out as Dustin unloaded our gear and brought the goose to the kitchen to be defeathered.

As I took my hat off, my hair wild with static, I noticed a note on the foyer side table. It was on my grandfather’s stationery.

R,

Left on business. Dustin will see you back to school.

– BW

January was blustery and bleak. Dustin drove me back to school, where, against his protests, I dragged my suitcase up to my room. The snow moved like sand dunes in the wind, and icicles hung tenuously from the roof, thick and irregular. Everything was white, even the sky, the clouds blurring the horizon into an endless barren landscape.

Even though the investigation about Eleanor was technically still going on, with no leads, no suspects and no evidence, it had degenerated into guesswork and speculation. A few students didn’t come back to school because their parents thought it was too dangerous. In response, Gottfried tightened its security by increasing the number of guards both on campus and around the wall, and by enforcing stricter rules for day students entering and exiting the campus.

Although I had no decent theories, my discovery of the Undead made everything more logical. Gideon and the rest of the Latin club had to be Undead. It fitted with their behaviour – and their files. And if Benjamin had died of Basium Mortis, that could mean that Cassandra had taken her boyfriend’s soul. But who killed Cassandra? And was the same person behind Eleanor’s disappearance?

After spending winter break recovering at her mother’s house, Eleanor returned to Gottfried. She burst into the room and was about to give me a hug when she stopped as if she had changed her mind, and pulled away before we touched. “Is everything all right?” I asked, giving her a weird look. It wasn’t like Eleanor to be stand-offish.

“Yeah,” she said. “I just have a cold. I don’t want you to catch it.”

“We’re living in the same room,” I said with a laugh. “I’ll probably catch it anyway.”

For a moment we stood in silence, Eleanor looking uncharacteristically humourless. I didn’t know what to say, and small talk had never been my forte. So I just asked her what was on my mind.

“Eleanor, what happened?”

She took off her beret.

“You have to tell me,” I said. “I know that look. You’re hiding something.”

She sighed and sat on her bed. “Okay, so don’t get mad at me, but this past semester, I was secretly dating…” She closed her eyes and bit her lip, bracing herself for my reaction…“Brett.”

“What?” I said, too loudly. It was so far from what I was expecting that I couldn’t help but stare, waiting for her to confirm that I had heard correctly. “Brett Steyers? You and Brett Steyers?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I liked the idea of a secret fling. It was so exciting and romantic to think we could get caught. And then when they found me, I didn’t want to tell anyone what really happened because they might suspect him, and it wasn’t his fault.”

“What do you mean ‘what really happened’?”

“On Grub Day I went to the library to study. Later, I snuck out to meet Brett, then tried to sneak back into the dorm through the basement. But just after I stepped inside, someone locked the door behind me. I tried to climb into the chimney to get back to our room, but the flue was closed. I heard four loud bangs, like a hammer on metal, and water came rushing in from somewhere in the ceiling. I tried going to the furnace room to find another way out, but the basement was already filling with water. I screamed and screamed, but the water was too loud for anyone to hear me.”

“How did you get out?”

She shrugged. “One day I just woke up and the flue was open, so I climbed out.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I didn’t want them to know about the chimney. It’s our only way out. And I didn’t want anyone to suspect Brett.”

“But what if it was Brett?”

Eleanor shook her head. “It wasn’t. Because I was coming back from meeting him when it happened. He would have had to be in two places at once to have broken the pipes while I was in there. Besides, why would he want to kill me?”

“So are you guys still…you know?”

Eleanor sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him yet,” she said, and unzipped her bag.

Sitting on the bed while she unpacked and told me about her winter vacation, I wanted to believe that nothing had changed, that we were back to the first day of school, before the flood, before Dante, before everything got complicated. But it wasn’t true. She avoided talking about the flood any further, and remembering what it felt like after my parents died, I didn’t ask. Whatever happened in the basement had changed her. It was something about the way she carried herself, the way she now slouched and dragged her feet, the way her smile seemed thinner and crooked. They were subtle differences, barely noticeable to anyone except me. It was as if she had been replaced by a twin, identical, yet essentially different. So instead of talking about what happened, we went to lunch.

“So how was your break?” she asked as we sat in the dining hall. Groups of students gathered in clusters at the tables around us.

More than anything, I wanted to tell her about what I had learned at my grandfather’s house. “I was at home and I found this book,” I said, trying to figure out how best to explain everything. Where to begin? Should I start with the Seventh Meditation, or just skip ahead to what the Undead were and how everything in the book described Dante? “So you know how Dante has all of these inexplicable things about him – like his cold skin and the fact that he never…he never…” My voice trailed off as Eleanor’s plate caught my eyes.

“Renée?” she said to me. “Hello? You were saying something?”

“Ate anything,” I said blankly. Eleanor’s plate was virtually empty. Putting my cup down, I studied her again. Could it be?

“You’re not eating anything,” I said quietly as I tried to remember how many days Eleanor had been in the basement. Ten?

Eleanor looked at her plate. “I sort of lost my appetite since the flood.”

“And you didn’t wear a coat when we walked over here.”

Eleanor didn’t notice until I pointed it out to her. “I guess you’re right,” she said, looking at the thin sweater covering her arms with surprise. “I didn’t even realize. Anyway, what were you saying about Dante and something about a book?”

Should I tell her about it? I wasn’t sure that Eleanor even knew what she was yet, and I definitely wasn’t the right person to tell her. But I also didn’t want to get accidentally killed. “Oh, um, nothing. Nothing.”

That night she didn’t sleep. She tossed around in bed, tangling herself in the sheets, while I had nightmares of zombies running towards me from every direction, their faces blank and emotionless. Every so often I would wake up in the middle of the night, my pyjamas drenched in sweat. I’d kick off the covers and sit up, unable to stop thinking about all the things my grandfather had told me about Gottfried. And then I would stare at Eleanor and wonder if she was feeling the impulse to take my soul.

Suddenly she stood up and started pacing around the room.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Startled, she turned to me. “I don’t know. I have to think about it,” she murmured as if she were talking in her sleep, the hem of her nightgown fluttering around her legs in the moonlight.

The next morning I woke up early to go to Horticulture. It was our first day back in classes. Eleanor was in bed, curled up, facing the wall. I prodded her gently. “Eleanor, get up. We have Horticulture at six.”

Eleanor lay with her back to me. “I’m not going,” she said miserably. “I’m not in that class any more.”

“What?”

“They switched my schedule. Just go without me.”

I waited a moment to see if she would roll over, but she didn’t move; and with nothing else to do, I left for class without her.

That morning we gathered by the chapel, until Professor Mumm showed up and led us out the gates of the campus.

“Renée,” Brett called out to me as we walked.

I stopped, looking at him in a new light. “Oh hi, Brett.”

He jogged up to me, looking like a robust ski instructor in a winter coat and a blue-and-yellow Gottfried scarf, his brown curls emerging from the bottom of a knit hat. “How’s it going?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You know, I’ve been better.”

“Break wasn’t so great?”

I laughed and shook my head. “That’s the understatement of the year. But I did watch a lot of movies.”

“Trashy horror movies, I bet.”

I looked up at him, surprised.

He shrugged, pleased with himself. “You seem like the type.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you do always seem to find dead things whenever we’re in class.”

I bit my lip, thinking back to the first day of class, when I found the dead fawn, or later in the semester when I found the carcass of a bird when we were supposed to be collecting baby saplings; or when I found a frozen squirrel when we were supposed to be learning about seasonal mosses. “I guess you’re right.”

Brett stuffed his hands in his pockets. “It’s not a bad thing. Professor Mumm loves you; you’re like her prodigy. Maybe it’s some sort of special talent.”

Letting out a laugh, I said, “Yeah, right. More like a curse. A Gottfried Curse.”

I looked at him to see if he recognized the term, but he didn’t seem to be familiar with it.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Brett said. “About Eleanor.”

I smiled, unexpectedly comforted by normal conversation. “Thanks.”

“How is she?” His forehead was furrowed with worry.

How to respond? “She’s…different. Quieter. I think she’s traumatized,” I said, which was partially the truth.

“How was her break? Was she at home with her mother? Or was she in the hospital?”

“I think she was with her mom. It sounded like her break wasn’t so great. Recovering and all. Why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. Is her brother around a lot?”

Brandon had been hanging around Eleanor a lot these days, looking even more stern and angry than normal. And who could blame him? His sister had probably died, and from the scrutinizing look he gave anyone who talked to her, it was clear that he was certain someone was responsible, and was determined to find out who it was and punish them. “He is.”

Brett shrugged. “I figured as much. Did she say anything about how it happened?”

I shook my head. “She doesn’t know.”

We stopped just at the edge of the woods. Professor Mumm cleared her throat. “Today we’ll be learning how to read snow. Like soil, the texture and topography of snow and ice can tell us what lies beneath. A dune, a crevasse; whether the snow is powdery or packed, blue or creamy or a brilliant white – each of these characteristics can tell us what’s hidden beneath” – she held up an index finger – “if we learn how to read them. Now, what I want you to do is partner up.”

Brett elbowed me. “You and me?”

I smiled.

When I got out of class, Dante was leaning on the stone at the entrance to Horace Hall, waiting for me, as beautiful as ever. He looked up at me as I approached, his face young and dark and gallant, his hair pulled back like an Italian model. If I hadn’t known everything that he was, I would have fallen in love with him all over again. He was wearing a crisp blue shirt and tie. Only a thin coat, no scarf. Snowflakes collected on his hair. Everything about him reminded me of how different we were.

“Renée,” he called out, but I kept walking. “Renée, wait. Why won’t you talk to me?” He reached out and grabbed my arm.

Unprepared for the coldness of his skin, I pulled my arm away and stared at him as if he were a stranger. For the briefest moment our eyes met, and a flicker of understanding passed between us before I looked away.

What does it feel like to discover that your boyfriend is Undead? Shocking. Unfair. But mostly disturbing. How was it possible that I had spent so much time with Dante without knowing what he truly was? I couldn’t decide which was more disturbing – that he was dying, or that a killer was dormant inside him. Was there a part of him that wanted my soul? I thought back to every time we almost kissed. I shivered at how close he had come to taking my life. Could he do it? I didn’t want to ask him or talk about it. What could I possibly say? I was alive, he was dead, and no amount of words would change that.

“Renée, please,” he said as I turned to go. “Just listen to me. Talk to me. I’ve been trying to call—” But I was already gone.

“How was Horticulture?” Eleanor asked while we were sitting in Philosophy, waiting for class to start.

“We had it in the forest,” I said.

Eleanor’s eyes went wide. “What was it like? What did you do?”

“Snow topography. With partners.”

Nathaniel frowned. “What does that have to do with horticulture?” He looked at Eleanor. “So you weren’t there?”

I shrugged. “It’s pretty useful. You can figure out what the terrain is like below the snow, or if there’s stuff buried beneath it, or what the temperature of the ground is.”

“They switched me out,” Eleanor said. “Now I’m in something called Elementary Advanced Tongues. What does it even mean for a class to be elementary and advanced at the same time?”

“I was in that last year,” Nathaniel said, giving her a quizzical look, while I gave him a quizzical look. Was he Undead too? I ran through the criteria in my head, my mouth forming a tiny pink O as he spoke. His skin was cold, his senses were terrible, yet he was incredibly smart. “It’s Latin. Sort of.” He was fluent in Latin.

Eleanor rolled her eyes and collapsed back into her chair. “Great. When they said I didn’t have to take Elementary Latin, I thought they were giving me a break after what happened in the basement.”

I had been trying to figure out if Eleanor knew she was Undead. So far, the verdict was no.

Nathaniel and I went quiet at her mention of the flood, waiting to see if she would talk about it. I hadn’t talked to Nathaniel about it. I thought about telling Miss LaBarge, but assumed that the school knew, especially since they had switched Eleanor’s courses. I tried calling my grandfather, but he was away. So instead I tried to stay up as late as I could with Eleanor every night so she would have someone to talk to, hoping that when she did learn what she was, she would confide in me. Plus, it wasn’t exactly easy sleeping in a room with someone who I knew had the urge to kill me.

Eleanor looked between us. “What? You’d think a near-death experience would at least exempt me from the most boring class of all time.”

Slowly she smiled. I did too, as did Nathaniel, which quickly degenerated into laughter, and for the first time in a long while, even if just for a moment, I felt carefree again.

I didn’t see Dante again until last period. When I got to Crude Sciences, he was already sitting at our lab bench, looking statuesque as he leaned back in his chair, his tie and oxford artfully crinkled around the musculature of his neck. In front of him was a tray, upon which a neat row of medical tools was arranged: a scalpel, a pair of tweezers, a needle and hook, and a spindle of string.

Without a word, I sat down next to him, trying with all my will to keep my eyes on the board. Dante turned to me. “Renée, I meant to tell you, but every time I tried, something always interrupt—” Ironically, before he could finish, the bell rang and Professor Starking walked in carrying a large plastic tub. He set it on his desk.

“Life sciences,” he said. “Otherwise known as Scientiae Vitae, the counterpart to Disciplina Mortuorum, or Science of the Dead.” He hoisted the tub from his desk and walked down the aisles. Using tongs, he fished around inside until he emerged with a dead frog.

“I tried to stay away from you,” Dante said. “The beginning of the year. I kept my distance because I didn’t want to put you in danger.”

“We can’t study life sciences until we study death,” Professor Starking said while he walked. “I have given each of you a frog. This is your vessel.”

“But I couldn’t stay away. I still can’t stay away from you. I wanted to tell you, I planned on telling you, but I didn’t want to lose you.”

I blinked back angry tears as I stared at our frog. It gazed back at me with glassy eyes. It wasn’t fair. Maybe it wasn’t Dante’s fault that he was dead, but it was his fault for involving me when he knew what he was.

“Renée? Say something.”

“Who can tell me what some of the characteristics of decay are?” Professor Starking looked around the room.

“Cold skin,” I whispered to Dante, looking at him from the periphery as I steadied my voice. “Stiff limbs. No sensation. Disconnected from the rest of the world.”

“Living people can have those characteristics too,” Dante replied.

“The paper cut? The séance? You knew and you let me second-guess myself all semester.”

“I tried to tell you—”

“You make me feel alive?” I said, repeating what he had told me that night in Attica Falls. “I thought that was so romantic. I didn’t realize you were being literal.”

“Why does that have to make it mean less?”

“Have you killed anyone?” I asked quietly.

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“Will you kill anyone?”

“No.”

My lip quivered. “Will you die?”

Dante didn’t say anything for a long time. “Yes. But one day you will too. It isn’t so different.”

“Everything is different,” I said loudly. In the background, Professor Starking had stopped lecturing and was telling us to quiet down, but I didn’t care. “You’re…you’re…” I looked at the frog. “I don’t even know what you are.”

The class erupted in murmurs. Professor Starking anxiously tried to calm everyone down and get the class under control.

“I’m still the same person I was before—”

“You’re not a person!” I said, my eyes watering as they searched his for an answer that would help me understand what he was. Suddenly the room seemed incredibly silent. The entire class was looking at us.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Professor Starking said nervously from the front of the class, “but you can figure out your differences in work detail.”

We walked in silence to the headmistress’s office, me three paces ahead. The secretary asked us to wait outside while she fetched Headmistress Von Laark, so I sat on the far side of the bench, arms crossed.

The office door opened. “Come in,” Headmistress Von Laark’s voice said soothingly. “Both of you.”

When we were seated in front of her, she asked us what happened. After a moment, we both spoke at the same time.

“He provoked me…I was answering a question and he interrupted me,” I said.

“I provoked her,” Dante said. “It was my fault.”

Surprised at his selflessness, I suddenly felt embarrassed for blaming him. But it was his fault, I reassured myself. He did provoke me. If he hadn’t been dead, and if he hadn’t kept it from me, we never would have been in this situation. I crossed my arms, trying to convince myself that I was right, but quickly felt overwhelmed with guilt.

“I see,” the headmistress said. “Still, since you disrupted class together, you will both have to serve a work detail. Five o’clock tonight. The fourth floor of Horace Hall. Room eight, north wing.”

I left without saying a word to Dante because I didn’t know what to say. Not wanting to walk in the same direction as him, I went to Horace Hall. I couldn’t confide in Eleanor because she already had enough problems of her own, and Nathaniel just wouldn’t understand. The bell rang as I entered the building, and I waited for all the students to empty out before I climbed up the stairs to see Miss LaBarge.

The floorboards creaked as I walked down the narrow hallway that led to her office. It was tucked into the corner, a thin strip of light peeking out from beneath the door. I knocked.

Miss LaBarge’s voice floated through the wood. “Come in.”

She was sitting in an armchair under a yellow cone of light, reading. When she saw me, she smiled and stood up. “Renée,” she said, taking off her reading glasses. “What a pleasant surprise.”

I wiped my shoes on the doormat and stepped inside. Her office had a warm glow to it, and smelled like cinnamon and burning wood.

“Have a seat.”

I took off my scarf and sat in the love seat across from her. A thick hardcover book sat on the ottoman between us, a ribbon resting in its crease.

“What are you reading?”

Miss LaBarge picked it up. “Oh, just some silly stuff. Beyond Good and Evil, by a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. It’s about how to decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“That doesn’t sound silly at all.”

She frowned. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“How do you tell the difference?”

She closed the book and put it on the side table. “Sometimes you can’t.”

“So…say you’re dating a boy, and he tells you that he’s something, but it turns out that he’s actually something else. Is that wrong?”

“Would this supposed boy have a good reason for keeping it a secret?”

I thought about it. Dante probably hadn’t told me because he thought it would scare me. And he was right. “I guess so. But it’s still lying, isn’t it?”

“It is, but if the lie is meant to protect the other person from harm or pain, is it really that bad?”

“But I didn’t want to be protected; I wanted to know the truth,” I blurted out.

She shrugged. “Sometimes there isn’t just one truth. Just because you discovered more about him doesn’t mean the person that he was before was a lie. You just had a less complete picture of him.”

I wanted to believe that what Dante and I had had before was real; that the things he’d said and done were still genuine even though he was Undead. But even if I could, that reality was slipping through my fingers. Dante had an expiration date, and there was no way I could help him.

“But what if I know we can never be together?”

“Hmm. That’s tricky. I think this calls for some tea. Hold on to that thought.” She got up and disappeared into the anteroom. I heard water running and then the sound of steam hissing out of a kettle, the clatter of dishes, the delicate clinking of a spoon against porcelain. She returned holding two cups and a teapot. “Chamomile?”

I nodded.

“Never only exists in your head. Anything is possible.”

“But what if he’s too…too different?”

“Do you still have feelings for him? Even after knowing who he is?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.” And then I thought about it. “Well, maybe…Yes.”

“Then you’ve answered your question. In love, everyone does things that hurt the other person, so really there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. You just have to decide what you’re willing to forgive.”

“But what if I know it’s not going to last?”

“Then savour every moment.”

The pitter-patter of footsteps reverberated from the floor above us. I cradled the cup of tea in my lap. “Have you ever been in love?”

She smiled. “Oh, I’d like to believe that I’m always in love with something. After all, what else is there?”

Professor Urquette was assigned to oversee our work detail. She was our Art and Humanities teacher. Her body was shaped like an eggplant, which she emphasized by always wearing multiple shades of purple and green. Even though she’d never married, she had the je ne sais quoi of a jaded divorcée. She hid the baggy skin on her throat beneath crocheted shawls and velvety scarves, and held her pen in the side of her mouth like a long cigarette. Her greying hair was kinky and defied all laws of gravity by puffing upwards, making her seem eight centimetres taller than she was. Every few months she dyed it back to its original colour – red – and when the grey grew in beneath it, her head looked like it was on fire.

I arrived at her office a few minutes before five o’clock. Dante was already there, sitting at the desk by the door. Embarrassed about how I’d behaved earlier, I hesitated before going to the opposite end of the classroom and sitting by the window. Outside it was a beautiful clear day, and I could see Eleanor walking down the path with some girls from our floor. A cool breeze blew in, and I felt the tickling inkling of a sneeze. I tried to hold it in, but it came out suddenly, loud and unflattering. My face grew red and I began to rummage through my backpack for a tissue.

“Bless you,” Dante said quietly from across the room.

I looked up at him with surprise. “Thanks.”

We sat in silence until the door opened. Professor Urquette bounded into the room, wheezing from walking up the stairs. After dropping her bags on the desk, she collapsed into her chair and let herself catch her breath. Delicately, she patted her hair, making sure it was still in place.

“I understand you were both disrupting a school lecture?”

Neither of us said anything.

“Okay,” she said, hoisting herself up. “Normally I wouldn’t do this, but the school play is nearly upon us and we need wood to start building the set.”

We stared at her blankly.

“Well, gather your things. We’re going into the woods.”

The forest was on the other side of the wall, the strictly prohibited side. But apparently, even the most stringent rules had exceptions. When we got to the school entrance, Professor Urquette nodded at the guard, who opened the gates.

She brought us to the outskirts of the woods, holding her skirt up as she stepped through the snow in galoshes. Behind the trees, the White Mountains jutted up from the horizon. After walking a couple of metres, we stopped. Professor Urquette hung her bag on the crook of a tree and bent over. Grunting, she picked up a stick and hoisted herself back up.

“You’re looking for sticks, the thicker the better,” she said, snapping the twig in half and handing each of us a burlap bag. “Meet me back here in two hours. And don’t be late, or you’ll be in the woods after dark. I’ll be waiting by the entrance. If you need help, just holler.” With that, she waddled back to the guard’s hut by the gate.

I turned to Dante, wondering if he was angry, if he would forgive me. I tried to think of a way to apologize, but before I could say anything, he looked away and ventured into the woods, leaving me alone. Stung by his coldness, I waited until he was a few paces ahead, then headed through the trees in the opposite direction.

The ground was covered in snow, which I sunk in up to my shins. The oaks were naked, their branches sticking into the sky like fingers. Oddly shaped mushrooms clung to the trunks, creating yellow staircases that spiralled up the bark. Taking giant strides, I walked into the confusing maze that made up the forest.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Dante called out to me.

“We’re picking up sticks. There is no wrong way.”

Shaking his head, he changed his course to my direction. Suddenly, an odd whiteness peeked through the trees. I walked towards it. As I approached, the number of trees diminished until there were barely any. It wasn’t until I was standing directly in front of it that I realized that it wasn’t a clearing. It was the Dead Forest.

I stopped at its outskirts. The landscape was vast and desolate, the snow peppered with splintered wood. The trees were white, and had no branches or leaves. They littered the horizon like toothpicks. Decaying stumps stood beside them, their bark charred a permanent black.

“The Dead Forest,” Dante said beside me, staring out into the abyss of trees. “I knew you were going the wrong way.”

“What are you talking about? This place is full of wood.”

“It’s all rotten,” he said. We exchanged an uncomfortable look before I trudged forward.

“So it’s true,” I said softly, my nose running as I stopped beneath the trunk of a tree that leaned tenuously over the ground like the lip of a bridge.

Dante stepped closer. “That I could hurt you?”

He took another step. “That I would never hurt you?”

Everything was silent except for the hollow echo of the wind. “Yes,” he said.

My hair blew around my face in the wind. “That you feel sensation around all humans?” I asked.

He reached out to touch my face, but let his hand hover just centimetres away. “No. Only you.”

I let out a breath, unsure of whether or not I should believe him. “That you’re dead?”

Dante ran his hand up my back, so gently it could have been the wind.

“The paper cut. The séance. The night in Attica Falls. It’s all true?”

“Yes.”

My lips trembled as I turned to him, my eyes searching the familiar contours of his face for some sign of death. “Show me.”

Suddenly, I heard a crack, and with the full force of gravity, the dead tree above me began to fall. Underneath it, a nest of moths burst out of a hole in the trunk and flapped around me. I screamed and fell into the snow.

It all happened quickly. With inhuman strength, Dante caught the tree before it crushed my body. With two hands, he lifted the trunk as if it were weightless and threw it to the ground. And in no time he was beside me, cradling me in his arms.

I stared at his face in disbelief.

“When we reanimate, we’re born into the best version of ourselves,” he explained. “The strongest. The smartest. The most beautiful. Whatever your best qualities were when you were alive, those would be augmented.”

“Why me?” I said. “Why did you keep calling me? Keep waiting for me?”

“I couldn’t help it. I had to see you,” he said. “I know my situation is…unusual, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

When I finally spoke, my voice was so small I could barely hear it. “How do you feel about me?”

Dante took a step closer. “I miss you.” He spoke gently, his words delicate, as if he wasn’t ready to part with them yet. “I miss everything about you. Your laugh, your voice. The way I never know what you’re going to say next. It’s like the entire world is dead, and you’re the only one living…” His voice trailed off; he seemed embarrassed to have said so much. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I just want you to know that. That I’m sorry. For everything.”

I didn’t want to blink, didn’t want to close my eyes for a minute. I raised my hand and touched his cheek, feeling the coldness of his skin for what seemed like the first time. He smelled like earth, like pine and grass and soil.

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“I am,” he said, closing his eyes.

And just like that, he became human again.