“Harold!”
I opened my eyes. The dogs were barking like crazy, and Suzie was leaning over me, shaking me by the shoulders.
“Did she attack you?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Her! The zombie ghost lady. Did she attack you?”
“No,” I said, touching my face and then rubbing my eyes. “I don’t think so.” I looked up at the sky. The stars, the moon, the tombstones, the church: everything was back. I was lying on the grass, my wheelchair on its side next to me. My earphones were there beside the chair, too. I picked them up and dangled the cord right in front of my eyes.
“Did you knock your head or something?” Suzie asked, snatching the earphones. She set my chair back on its wheels. “Can you pull yourself up in it?”
I looked at my legs and tried as hard as I could to move them, but the magic was gone. “It was just a dream,” I said.
“It wasn’t a dream. I saw her, too. She came out of the light. She screamed at me. And then she was gone. I saw her.”
I grabbed the arms of the chair while she held it steady, then lifted myself up and set my bum on the seat before pulling on my legs. “You saw who? Your mother?”
“It wasn’t my mother. My mother was beautiful. This one was disgusting, like she was all dead and rotten and falling apart and just …” Suzie made a monstrous face, baring her teeth and curving her fingers into claws. “She was horrible! And she attacked me, like she wanted to get the Stone away from me. My mother would never attack me. She probably attacked you, too. You don’t remember, that’s all.”
She went behind the chair and started pushing, jostling so much I nearly fell out.
“Easy!” I shouted. “Let me do it.” I took charge of the chair and we left the cemetery under a concert of barking dogs.
“Tell me what happened on your side of the wall,” I said, once we were back on the road.
“Didn’t you see the lights? You must have seen the lights. They were flashing like lightning and they were coming from outside, from about where you were.”
“I saw a light,” I said. “It wasn’t flashing though.”
“It was flashing! I went to the window to try to see where it was coming from. That’s when she showed up. She was inside the church with me. Did you see her?”
“I saw something. But it wasn’t a person,” I said.
“She attacked me,” she repeated. “I jumped into the hole on the floor just before she could grab me or the Stone. I heard you scream. I thought she’d gotten you. I crawled out to help and found you on the ground all passed out.”
I was still lost in the memory of standing up. It had felt so good I wanted to cry. “We better not say anything about all this to Ilona or your father.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Ilona would never stop yapping about it if she found out what we did.”
“Yeah, right,” she said and rolled her eyes. “You’re really bad at hiding things. It took me two seconds to find the Stone. We’re totally in this together.”
When we reached our houses, Suzie turned to run inside.
“Suzie!”
She stopped. “Yeah?”
“The Stone.”
“Oh.” She fished it out of her coat pocket and held it for a moment before reluctantly handing it over. I watched her run to her house. Then I took a good look at the Stone.
“Can you make me stand again?” I asked it. It didn’t answer. I dropped it on my lap and went home.
The Stone was on my desk and I was staring at it from the other side of the room. My bedside lamp lit our strange tête-à-tête with a soft orange glow. Come and play with me, the Stone of the Dead seemed to say.
“You’re evil, and I know it,” I said out loud.
It felt like the Stone was smiling at me, biding its time until I gave in and started turning the dials to see if it could deliver another miracle.
“I’m putting you back where you belong.” I nodded toward my underwear drawer. “So don’t try any funny business with me.”
I moved slowly toward the desk. I knew I was the one turning the wheels, but it felt like I was being pulled toward the Stone by an irresistible dark force.
I grabbed the Stone, breathing heavily, my fingers clutching the dials. I closed my eyes and pictured myself getting up out of my chair, pushing it away, and walking out of my room and into Mum’s to show her what a miracle looked like. I remembered the sensation of standing on my own legs in the cemetery right before the bright light sucked me in. It was the most marvelous feeling ever. I felt the dials twist slightly. My fingers had decided to activate the Stone while my brain was still resisting.
“It will bring her back. It will bring back the zombie ghost lady,” I said, using Suzie’s exact words, trying to scare myself out of doing what I knew I was going to do.
I turned the dials in opposite directions, again and again, feeling an intense sense of joy and relief each time. Guilt was gone. Fear wasn’t even a thing. The Stone was laughing now, and I felt like laughing with it.
“Make me walk,” I said. “Please!”
I kept turning the dials until they clicked and locked into place.
The orange glow of my lamp grew brighter as the bulb started a high-pitched hum. I tried to turn the dials again, but they were stuck. Now I knew that I had done something deeply wrong. I also knew it was too late.
The hum turned into a hiss, and the light got so bright I had to put my hand over my eyes.
“Oh, Harold,” I said. “What have you done now?”
I was clutching the Stone hard in one hand, my fingers cramping around it. I brought my other hand to my ear and closed my eyes as the hiss grew higher and higher until the sound became painful. And then, with a blop!, it stopped. I opened my eyes and lowered my hand. The lamp had become a miniature sun, bathing my room in a bright white light, exactly like the one in the cemetery. I decided this was my cue. I pushed myself up. The chair rolled back. I was standing in the middle of my room, holding the miraculous Stone of the Dead.
“Oh, crap, this feels good!” I whispered and ZOOM! The entire room expanded into nothingness, then came crashing back and settled into place. I wobbled and collapsed onto the floor like an overboiled noodle.
The Stone fell from my hand and rolled away. The glow of the lamp had returned to its familiar pale yellow, and my legs were numb again. The fantasy was over. I was back in reality. And reality sucked in all sorts of ways.
I lifted myself back into my chair and picked up the Stone. I knew that the attic lady could show up again, like she had every other time someone had played with the Stone, but I didn’t care. My skin was still buzzing with the memory of standing. I held the Stone up right in front of my eyes.
“You are AWESOME,” I told it. But it wasn’t radiating, or calling me, or smiling at me anymore. Now it felt dead and empty. I tried to turn it, but the dials wouldn’t budge, however hard I tried.
“Okay, I get it,” I said. “You need time to reload or something, right?” I went to my dresser, leaning down and picking up my Superman boxers on the way. I wrapped the Stone and buried it deep in the drawer of T-shirts and underwear.
But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the half-open drawer.
The Stone inside it was the best thing ever. If it could make me stand, there could be a million other things it could do. It could give me superpowers for all I knew.
And my life would be the thrilling, high-velocity ride it was meant to be.