In the Dead of Summer (Fiction)

***

“Summer is when dead things come alive,” Olivia whispered. It was in a voice intentionally pitched low, a half whisper. Theatrical. Everyone said Olivia should be an actress when she grew up. Sometimes they said it in an encouraging way, and sometimes they said it like it was the least destructive option. Like it was actress or con woman.

Olivia was three years older than Gracie, which meant Olivia was three times cooler than Gracie, and three times more grown up, too. Olivia bought the clothes Gracie would later receive as hand-me-downs. Aunt Rebecca let Olivia ride her bike to the mall and the pool by herself, something Olivia spoke of casually, and Gracie was so jealous of that sometimes it rose up in her throat and was actually painful. She was going into seventh grade, which meant she already had a year of middle school under her belt, while Gracie could only imagine what it would be like to have finished elementary school. So when Olivia told her summer was when the dead rose again, Gracie believed her.

It wouldn’t have been an issue at all if Olivia didn’t sound so serious when she said it. Gracie could usually tell when her cousin was joking. Sometimes she even let Gracie in on the joke, like when she lifted Grandpa’s sunglasses to show that he was sleeping, and then they pulled back what was left of his hair with barrettes. They all had a good laugh when he woke up.

But this time, Olivia was serious. Deadly serious. She said it to Gracie when they were unloading the cars at the cabin. Gracie picked up a solid-looking black flashlight, her hands nearly touching her toes from its weight, and swung it upwards.

“What do you need something like this for?” she asked incredulously. She let it roll towards Olivia, who picked it up, but only after exerting great effort.

“Oh, for anything that comes knocking at the door when it shouldn’t,” came Olivia’s nonchalant reply.

“Like burglars?” Gracie’s heart pounded at the thought. They came to the cabin every year, and it was always safe, unless someone thought Gracie was too much of a kid to know the truth.

“No, like for something that comes knocking at the door when it shouldn’t be alive.”

“It’s July, Olivia. Too early for Halloween.” And nothing came knocking on Halloween other than kids in search of candy. The scariest thing Gracie had to think about was a stranger offering her candy with razor blades or pins in them, or snatching her off the street into their dingy white vans. And even that was something she had yet to see, and had only heard about from her concerned mother and classmates at school who swore their cousin’s friend’s babysitter knew someone who was kidnapped.

“Halloween’s not when you have to be most afraid.” Olivia leaned in close, like she was letting Gracie in on a big secret. “Summer’s when you have to be the most careful. Because you think you’re safe.”

Gracie rolled her eyes. “Cut it out,” she said, thrusting a bag of sunscreen and bug spray into Olivia’s chest.

“When you hear three knocks in the middle of the night outside your window, you’ll be glad I warned you,” Olivia said, and, dropping the flashlight back into the trunk of the car for someone else to carry, she took off towards the cabin.

Gracie was left standing there, paralyzed. She didn’t want to believe Olivia, but her cousin had no trace of mirth on her face. And when Uncle Bill came by and picked up the big flashlight, he didn’t complain about how it was too heavy, or unnecessary, nor did he remark that Olivia was being dramatic or practicing for a career in the theater, which he often said.

The cousins all shared the attic space upstairs. This was partly because it was more fun to spend every vacation having an eternal sleepover, and partly because the aunts and uncles and grandparents said that by virtue of being older, they had the rights to the actual proper beds in civilized bedrooms, with air conditioning units in the windows and easy access to a bathroom.

The attic was only accessible by a thick ladder pulled down from the ceiling, so once it was shut at night, the cousins knew they would have no parental oversight unless they screamed very loud, if it was a dire emergency. This suited them just fine, of course, and led to contraband games of Cards Against Humanity played by the older cousins while Gracie and her younger sister Maddie watched, unsure what any of the cards meant, or why people were laughing so hard. It also led to games of Truth or Dare played late in the night, which culminated in Noah sneaking into Aunt Laura and Uncle Mark’s room in an attempt to steal the set of false front teeth that Aunt Laura supposedly wore, and scaring them half to death in the wide-brimmed hat he had used to conceal his identity. That episode had nearly resulted in either the trip being canceled early or the attic sleepover disbanded, and the children forced to sleep in the same rooms as their parents. Since then, it was considerably quieter at night. No one was sneaking out anymore.

There was also the legendary three AM Ouija board session that four of the cousins—Noah, Megan, Bryce, and Olivia—point blank refused to discuss, which only added to the mystery surrounding the event. Gracie wasn’t so sure it had actually happened, especially with Olivia’s track record of exaggeration, although Megan’s involvement lent some credence to the tale. Megan was ordinarily a very rational person.

Most of the time in the attic was spent playing board games, gossiping, complaining about the various sets of parents, and other mundane activities. Putting Olivia’s words out of her mind, Gracie hauled her suitcase to the bottom of the ladder. Dad would take care of it later. He was too afraid that if Gracie tried to do it herself, she would fall and crack her head open. She was worried about that as well.

The cousins busied themselves with transferring luggage to the cabin, and once they finished with their own bags, they helped their parents, which none of them ever wanted to do but found themselves doing anyway. Then everyone had to officially say hello to one another. Grandma and Grandpa exclaimed how each of the grandchildren had grown. Then the children proceeded to beg their parents to take them to the diner with the canoe suspended from the ceiling and little paddles engraved with order numbers, which they looked forward to every year. They received a resounding no and an explanation that they would all go a different night when they hadn’t been driving for half the day. The children slunk away to the attic to complain. All of this was so familiar that it could have been any year of Gracie’s life.

Evening fell, and the cousins were called to dinner: barbecue, just like it was every year on the first night of vacation. Chaos ensued, because even with a spacious kitchen, it was still difficult for sixteen people to get their food and make their way to the table without at least one spill and one argument. The conversation filled the room to overflowing and the smell of the food worked itself into the gaps between words.

After dinner came the inevitable campfire. The children were sent out into the trees surrounding the house to gather sticks for kindling. Megan and Noah, the two oldest, grumbled that they were too old for such a chore, but Gracie didn’t mind. She and Olivia always tried to find the biggest stick, and after Olivia had scared her earlier, she wanted to get even with her cousin. Gracie grabbed for the outstretched arms of a larger stick, but it wouldn’t budge. She tugged again, harder, and the earth ripped, a section of the stick rising as she did, covered in clods of soft dirt. 

In an instant, Olivia was beside her. “That’s not fair! That’s a root, not a stick, so it doesn’t count!”

Gracie gave one final pull, and with a snap, the root broke free. “I picked it up, and it works as kindling, so it does count!” She waved her stick for emphasis, the smaller twigs branching out dancing as she did. “These look like fingers,” she said, thrusting the stick towards Olivia like a sword.

“Rotting fingers.” Olivia stepped closer to Gracie. “Fingers rising from the grave.” She lowered her voice as she spoke with the same cadence she had used earlier. “Clawing their way out of their coffins. Breaking their nails on the wood. Coating themselves with dirt as they pull themselves up. And then tapping on your window.” She gave three slow taps on the tree next to them for emphasis. It didn’t have quite the effect she had intended because Olivia’s nails were short, her hands were clean, and most importantly, she was a living girl, not a dead thing eerily walking again.

Still, Gracie shivered. “What happens if you open the window?” She knew what her parents would say, and she knew what Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Bill would say if she asked them about their daughter.

Don’t listen to Olivia. She loves to tell stories, and she loves to get a reaction out of them. She’s making this up to scare you. But Olivia wasn’t mean. Olivia wouldn’t lie to her just to make her scared. And there was something about Olivia’s earnest expression, her slightly fearful eyes, and the enthralling pitch of her voice that made the cousins believe anything she said, and also made her one of the most popular girls at her school.

“If you open your window, then you let them in,” Olivia whispered. She seemed genuinely afraid at the thought of it. “Even if you go over to your window to look, they’ll take it as an invitation, and they won’t just tap at your window anymore. They’ll claw at it like how they clawed at their coffins. They’ll keep going until it breaks. And they’ll feed off of your fear. The more scared you are, the hungrier they get. They can’t eat normal food, you know. Because they’re dead. But they have to eat something.”

Gracie was rooted to the spot in terror, and the only thing that could have made her move again was someone coming along and pulling her like she had pulled the stick.

“First they come for your fear. Then they come for you,” Olivia said, so quiet it was little more than an exhale. Her eyes were so wide that Gracie would have laughed in any other circumstance.

Gracie was dizzy. No wonder Uncle Bill had made sure to pack that heavy flashlight! No wonder all the children slept in the attic! The higher up they were, the safer they would be, right? And it was no wonder none of the adults had ever said anything about it—they knew how afraid Gracie was of the dark. It was only within the last few years that Gracie could stand to sit at the campfires past dark. She still had a night light plugged in. Megan had complained and now slept with an eye mask, so she wouldn’t be kept awake.

“Have you seen them?” was all Gracie could get out. She dropped the root, forgotten, to the ground. She didn’t think she could look at it anymore. It seemed as though the twigs—the fingers—were crawling along the ground, like the walking corpses might soon be.

Olivia shook her head. “But I heard them. I always pretend not to. I pretend it’s just branches against the window, and I close my eyes. I never let myself look. I know what can happen if I do.” There were no trees next to the house. There weren’t any branches to scrape against the window.

Olivia took a breath. “Do you remember the time me and Noah and Megan and Bryce played the Ouija Board?”

Gracie nodded. Despite herself, she felt a thrill of excitement in her stomach. Was she finally old enough to hear the story?

“Well, we asked for a sign that we were talking to something. It said it came from the cemetery by the church down the road. And it said ‘three minutes.’ We all sat there waiting, and then we heard three long scratches. The next day, Megan went and ran her fingers down the windowpane, and then did it again with a branch. They made completely different sounds. All of us were too afraid to look when it happened. But it started happening again and again. Every night, at the same time. The others won’t mention it anymore. I think they’re hoping if they stop talking about it, then it will all go away. But I can still hear it.”

Olivia wasn’t being theatrical anymore. The cadence of her voice had changed. She didn’t sound like someone putting on a show, trying to scare a younger cousin. She sounded like a frightened girl. She sounded like someone who had made a terrible, terrible mistake, didn’t know how to fix it, and couldn’t tell anyone about it.

“Olivia!” Both Gracie and Olivia turned. It was Evan, Olivia’s younger brother, sprinting full force at them, a perplexed smile on his round, freckled face. “Where are you? Dad says he’s waiting for your sticks. You’ve been out here forever!”

“We’re coming!” Olivia called back, clearly trying to sound as nonchalant as possible in front of her brother. It didn’t work. Her voice was somewhat strangled. Evan looked at her like he wanted to say something, but at the last second, he turned around and headed back for the campfire.

“Hurry up. I want s’mores!” he called over his shoulder as he went.

“You can’t tell him,” Olivia hissed. “Do you promise?”

Gracie nodded. The girls locked pinkies, which felt strange, a childish ritual in the face of something so malevolent. Olivia snatched up Gracie’s root cluster and fled towards the safety of the promised fire.

She just wanted the bigger stick, Gracie tried to tell herself. She wanted me to forget about the one I found. Gracie stopped to pick up a few smaller sticks as she walked back to the family.

Olivia never said a word about who found the biggest stick. Not even when Noah claimed it was him, which was one of the most egregious lies Gracie had ever heard. But Olivia didn’t protest.

Despite the campfire, Gracie had goosebumps down her arms and her spine. But Gracie kept her promises, so she didn’t say a word to anyone. And when her mother asked if she was feeling alright, Gracie said she was just tired. And Mom believed her, because Gracie never lied.

When they went to sleep that night, Gracie did so with nausea roiling beneath her stomach. When they arrived at the cabin that morning, Gracie had only half believed her cousin’s story. It was a fun game she finally got to be included in, because she was old enough. But now, lying in the dark, Gracie felt like the time she played volleyball in the pool, before she learned how to swim, and accidentally went past where she could touch the bottom. She hadn’t been able to call out for help. All she was able to do was feel the spiking panic in her veins as she started to sink, and take a big breath of air before she went under. But then Dad grabbed her by the back of the swimsuit and hauled her out. He sat with her while she cried and coughed up water.

Gracie couldn’t say anything to him now. Not after promising Olivia, and not when she knew Dad wouldn’t believe her.

Somehow, Gracie slipped off to sleep, a welcome relief. Like that first breath of air after Dad pulled her out of the pool. Everything was alright. Olivia just loved drama.

Gracie woke with a start. The room was dim, illuminated only by her night light, which reached just a few feet in each direction. Soft snores came from Maddie’s bed, and there was a rustle from the corner as Megan turned over in her sleep. For a moment, Gracie wasn’t sure what had woken her.

Then she heard it.

Tap. Scrape. Silence.

Gracie’s breath caught in her throat.

Tap. Scrape.

Silence.

Her back arched, a shiver creeping down it.

Tap.

Scrape.

Silence.

Her hands trembled. She pressed them to her mouth, so she didn’t scream.

“Olivia,” Gracie hissed, but there was no response. Olivia was not awake to hear the tapping.

Gracie dug her nails into her palm. It hurt. She wasn’t dreaming.

She remembered what Olivia had told her. She should lay back down, close her eyes, and pretend she never heard anything. She should tell herself a tree had magically sprung up outside the window, and the calm night had become dangerously windy. She should wake up in the morning and smile to herself at what a strange dream she had.

But she did none of those things. She looked out the window and almost threw up.

It was worse than the roots on the tree branch. It was worse than what Olivia had described. It was worse than the horror movie she accidentally caught a glimpse of while her parents were watching it last October, when she needed a glass of water after going to bed. It was worse than the illustrations in the book of scary stories she had seen in the school library and couldn’t help but pick up.

It clung to the log walls like some kind of ghastly undead spider, but there was no doubt that it was human. The limbs were proportional, and it had all the facial features a human was supposed to have. It was even wearing tattered clothes. But its flesh was half rotted off, the empty space filled in by maggots and crawling beetles. Ribbons of flesh. Graying, rotting. Hanging in shreds from the face.

It looked up and grinned at her.

Its hands were patchy with bubbling flesh and bleached bone. Claw-like nails left scratches down the glass.

Then it lifted both hands from the window, and Gracie was flooded with relief. Now it would fall. Now it would be gone.

Instead, it remained clinging to the side of the house and waved at her.

Gracie was rooted to the spot. She wanted to call out for someone to save her, for her parents to sense her distress and come running. But how could Mom and Dad fight this walking corpse? What power did they have against it? She would not wake the house and risk everyone else being eaten.

The dead-thing-come-alive tapped the window again, ever so softly, as if it, too, was trying not to wake anyone else.

With a rush of air, the floor rose up to meet Gracie, and everything went blissfully dark.

When she dared to open her eyes again, she was lying in bed, sun streaming through the windows. The ladder was already down, and several of the beds were empty. No one was screaming. No one was upset. In fact, Gracie could hear the clink of dishes, animated talking, and laughter down below.

She gave a smile of relief, though it felt a little forced. Her nightmare had been utterly terrifying, but it was only a dream. Olivia had totally fooled her. She would make a great actress someday.

Gracie pushed back the blankets and got out of bed. Before she backed down the ladder, she had to do one thing. It was silly, really, but she couldn’t help herself. She went over to the window and touched a hand to the pane.

Three long scratches were gouged into glass from the outside.

“Gracie?” Maddie’s voice from the ladder made her jump. She smacked her head into the glass and bolted backwards, shuddering, remembering the way those claws sounded dragging down the glass.

“What?” Gracie’s voice was more frantic than the day before, snapping in all the wrong places. 

Maddie recoiled at her tone.

“What’s wrong? You look so scared.”

Maddie was only three years younger, but looking at her, Gracie thought it may as well be an eon. She could never tell Maddie the truth. They never kept secrets from each other, and this was a horrible one. Just thinking about it made her want to throw up, like when she first looked at the dead thing on the window, but she would keep the secret just the same.

Gracie hid her hands behind her back. “Nothing, I just had a bad dream. What’s for breakfast? I’m so… hungry.”

A smile split Maddie’s face. “Pumpkin bread! Grandma’s recipe!” Her head disappeared like a gopher’s back down the attic ladder, and Gracie listened for the thump as Maddie jumped to the ground before following her sister. Climbing onto the ladder, Gracie practiced her brightest, most unbothered smile. The familiar scent of pumpkin bread and her family’s warmth wafted up to meet her.

Claire Orlikowski is a college student studying creative writing, classical humanities, religious studies, medieval studies, and folklore. A lifelong literary enthusiast, she is fascinated by history and mythology, and writes a combination of mythology retellings, fantasy, and historical fiction. Her time spent reading and translating ancient Greek often makes it into her writing. She has been telling stories since before she learned to write and can often be found with a book in hand.