As Dead As It Gets

Lydia floated effortlessly beside me. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” I hauled myself up a set of steep stone stairs.

“She’s probably dead already,” Lydia said. “If she tried to hike this trail without water…and it’s actually kind of hot today.”

I silenced her with a pointed glare.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I see how you are when it’s somebody you like. Talking about death is only fu

“It’s not fu

She stopped. “Really?”

“Lydia, seriously?” I said. “Of course I do. Now keep moving.”

Mercifully, she retreated into thoughtful silence for a while, so I could save the air in my lungs for more important things than talking—like breathing. We made slow progress, stopping every twenty or thirty feet so I could take pictures.

I hadn’t hiked Maxwell Canyon since seventh grade, and experiencing the trail’s difficulty firsthand just added one more level of awe to Elliot’s already mystical aura of superiority. My thigh muscles screeched with pain, and my lungs would have been screeching, too—if they’d had any air to spare.

Lydia drifted away, and I kept going. I got into such a rhythm that it took me a moment to realize there was actually a person in my photographs.

Elliot.

My heart just about imploded.

“Lydia!” I called.

“What?” She came toward me so fast that for a moment she was just a gray blur.

“She’s dead.” My voice came out sounding sandpapered. “I saw her…She’s dead.”

I leaned down to look more closely.

“That? No, that’s not a ghost,” Lydia said. “I can see her, too!”

I dropped the camera. It swung from the end of the strap.

We looked at each other.

Elliot was alive.

I snapped into action. “You go ahead!” I said. “Go up the trail and find her. Stay with her. Don’t leave her. I’ll follow you!”

Lydia obeyed without a word, hurrying up the trail.

I opened my cell phone.

NO SERVICE.

“No, come on,” I said, shaking it.

But no bars appeared.

A minute later, I heard Lydia cry out in a panicky shriek. “Alexis! Alexis, come quick!”

I was already exhausted, but I forced myself to run, hurtling up the steep incline toward the sound of her voice.

Lydia intercepted me. “I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t—and it was so weird, it was, like, hot, and—something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong. Look.” She held up her arms.

Her hands were much fainter than the rest of her body.

Lydia looked like she was about to throw up. “It’s where I tried to grab her,” she said. “Everything went hot, and then…”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll figure it out. But first we have to stop Elliot. Which way did she go?”

“That way,” Lydia said, pointing with her barely there left hand.

I took off down the trail. Within a minute I saw Elliot—she was maybe seventy-five feet in front of me.

“Elliot!” I called. “Wait!”

She wasn’t ru

I caught up to her easily, grabbing her arm.

“Elliot, stop! It’s okay. You’re safe now.”

But she wouldn’t stop. It was almost like she couldn’t. Even when I got in front of her, she ran right into me. I lost my balance and fell, nearly landing on a cactus.

“See?” Lydia said. “She just keeps walking!”

I tried again to pull Elliot out of her stride, but it was useless. She never so much as raised a finger to fight back, but she was so much stronger than I was that she basically shrugged off everything I did to her.

“Come on,” I cried. “Please.”

We were on a long straight stretch of the trail, so I got in front of her and walked backward, thinking I’d be able to reason with her.

But as soon as I got a good look at her face, I knew there was no use.

Her eyes were glazed over. She didn’t even seem to see me. Her face was streaked with dried-out tearstains. She breathed through her mouth in a shaky, shallow rhythm, and her lips were dry and cracked, the corners coated in a crust of dried saliva, blood, and dust.

Her jaw trembled in silent, arid sobs.

She really couldn’t stop.

And she was terrified.

“Elliot, please, wait,” I said, grabbing her arm. It didn’t work; she just dragged me along with her.

If I couldn’t make her stop, I could at least keep her from dying of dehydration. I lifted my water bottle and poured some into her mouth.

But she didn’t make any effort to swallow it. It just leaked out all over her filthy sweatshirt.

“You have to stop her,” Lydia said. “It’s too hot. This trail’s too difficult. She’ll die of exhaustion.”

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t know how.”

“Can’t you block the path?”

“She’ll just go around me.”

“There’s a narrow pass a little way ahead. If you can block the far side and trap her in there, she won’t be able to keep going. She’ll have to stop.”

It was worth a try. I ran ahead.

The narrow pass was about twelve feet long and three feet wide, bordered on its sides by the cliff and a ten-foot boulder. I wedged a bunch of big branches between the rocks on the far side, blocking off the passage just where it started to widen again. Then I hung back and watched the trail for Elliot.

Finally, she came. She was slower now, growing weaker and weaker. In addition to the painful gasp of her breath, her lungs made a hollow wheezing sound, like a little sigh.

She went into the pass.

I stepped out behind her, setting another thick piece of brush across the near opening. I watched her get to the other end, bump up against the branches, and slowly turn around, dragging her left leg.

Her face was flushed red, but there were deep gray circles under her dull eyes.

“Elliot, stop,” I pleaded, as she got closer to me, foot by agonizing foot. “Please.”

Lydia appeared, her face pale with dread. “It’s not going to work.”

“Wait.” I turned to Lydia. “You can stop her. You stopped me that night I was walking outside. What did you do? Try it on Elliot!”

Lydia’s mouth dropped open. She glanced down at her hands. “It’s…different than with you. It’s…it’s…meaner now.”

Right. It was different because I was Lydia’s power center. She had to protect me in order to save herself.

“How can you be so selfish?” I said.

Her eyes flashed with pain.

“You’ll do it if it means saving yourself,” I said. “But to help an actual living person, you refuse?”

Lydia looked at me like I’d slapped her. “What do you mean?” she cried. “I was never trying to save myself!”

“Lydia, I’m begging you! Don’t let her die.”

I don’t know if ghosts can cry, but Lydia was about to. She gave me a hurt look, then grimaced, closed her eyes, and charged forward, plowing into Elliot.

But she didn’t go through her and come out the other side.

She disappeared completely.

Elliot stopped walking and swayed on her feet for a moment. Then she looked at me, and there was a glimmer of recognition in her eyes.

“Alexis,” she whispered. Her voice had a slight vibration to it, like when you talk into a fan. “Don’t come too close. It’s not safe.”

“Where have you been?” I asked. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t know.” Then suddenly she looked up at me, her dazed eyes full of hope. “This is a dream, isn’t it? It’s just a nightmare.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“It has to be.” She almost smiled. “That explains everything. I knew it wasn’t real. It’s too horrible to be real.”

“Come with me,” I said.

“No. I don’t have much time. I need to keep going.”

“Why, Elliot?”

She raised her finger to her lips, lost in thought. “I’m trying to get somewhere…trying to find something.”

“I’ll help you. Just come with me. Drink some water.”