Rain Mirror

Lungs heaving, I tear through the knee-high grass of Tamarack Bay’s oldest cemetery. A broken marker catches my foot, its cracked edge gouging another chunk from my shin. I gasp but bite my lip so I don’t cry out.

The Ice Wraiths are somewhere behind me, stalking me through the maze of stones.

For one endless second, the world is a silent abyss. No roaring power mowers. No birds. No leaves crunching beneath my feet. Just my breath, my blood, and the rain.

Then laughter erupts behind me.

The Wraiths weave between the headstones with dark bottles in their hands. Jon, Gabe, and Chad. Each name tastes sour on my tongue. Three hockey thugs who won’t stop until I’m roadkill.

The cloud faucet opens full force. Rain batters me and the gravestones as I collapse behind the monument bearing my grandparents’ names. My books and binders tumble into the grass.

I yank up my hood and press myself against the wet stone.

       ####

The cemetery has been my safe place for as long as I can remember, but today it feels dark and strange. Crooked headstones blur through the downpour, their names and dates disappearing beneath streams of water that flow like icy fingers searching the grooves.

Puddles swell between the graves, catching broken reflections of the stones.

For a moment, I imagine the dead looking up through those rain mirrors, envying my breath.

The rain begins to ease, but an icy wind rattles the branches above me. The air stinks of earthworms, old stone, and rot. Leaves and water have swallowed the cobbled footpaths. It is as though the thin line between this world and the next is dissolving.

I peer around the monument.

The Ice Wraiths have changed course. They stagger toward me, their laughter growing louder.

I nestle into the sodden grass, twigs stabbing through my shirt, sick with mold, pollen, and rage.

“Are those boys bothering you?”

I spin around.

A man stands on the other side of the monument. I gasp so sharply that I inhale rainwater and begin choking.

“Are those boys pestering you?” he repeats.

His husky voice sounds almost alien.

He lifts me to my feet and pounds my back until I can breathe again. He is tall but stooped, dressed in green work clothes that might have been fashionable sometime before electricity. Mud cakes his boots. His skin has the bluish pallor of skim milk.

He carries a pair of hedge clippers.

The man turns toward the approaching trio.

“Hey, kids! Pick up your litter and beat it!”

He clacks the blades like giant scissors and grins like a movie maniac.

“Who says ‘beat it’ these days?” I wonder aloud.

The Wraiths laugh.

“Who’re you calling kids?” Chad shouts.

The groundskeeper, if that’s what he is, launches himself forward. He leaps over a grave like a hungry wolf cutting down a deer.

No, not a deer.

A moose.

The Wraiths scatter. Gabe slips in the grass, loses a shoe, and keeps running. Jon flings his bottle at the groundskeeper. It passes through the man’s chest and shatters against Papa Gunnar’s monument.

Everybody freezes.

The groundskeeper looks down at the hole in his body.

“Well,” he says. “That was rude.”

Jon screams.

The three Wraiths flee, vaulting markers and tripping over flowerpots until the rain swallows them.

I stare at the groundskeeper.

“You’re dead.”

He prods the broken glass with one muddy boot.

“Observant.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“I prefer custodian.”

He kneels beside my grandparents’ monument and picks the shards from the grass. His fingers flicker each time they touch the stone.

“Did you know them?” I ask.

“Everyone comes through my gates eventually.”

That is not an answer, but before I can say so, a low moan rolls through the cemetery. It seems to rise from beneath every grave at once.

The groundskeeper closes his eyes.

“What was that?”

“Closing time.”

“For the cemetery?”

“For me.”

He sits at the base of the monument. His body is fading, rain and darkness showing through his clothes.

“I’ve tended this place for one hundred years,” he says. “At the end of my service, I may grant one wish to one living soul.”

“Any wish?”

“Within reason. No immortality. No ruling the world. No turning hockey players into toads.”

I glance toward the gates where the Ice Wraiths disappeared.

“There goes my first choice.”

“You must decide before the storm ends.”

A pale clearing has already appeared between the clouds.

I touch my grandparents’ names. They died ten months apart, leaving me alone with a father who communicates in grunts and weather reports. Since then, I have come here whenever school becomes unbearable.

“I wish Grandma Edie and Papa Gunnar were alive again.”

The groundskeeper studies me sadly.

I can almost hear Grandma humming in her kitchen. I can smell Papa’s pipe tobacco and the cinnamon buns he pretended not to steal. I imagine them taking me home, wrapping me in blankets, telling me everything will be fine.

Then I notice the graves surrounding us.

Thousands of names.

Thousands of people who must have begged for the same impossible thing.

The groundskeeper lifts one translucent hand.

“Speak carefully.”

A shout comes from the cemetery gates.

The Wraiths are returning.

They have hockey sticks now.

Chad marches in front, fury twisting his face. Gabe is still missing a shoe.

“Last chance,” the groundskeeper says.

I think about wishing the Wraiths away. I could erase them, crush them, or make them run forever. Yet even now, with weapons in their hands, they’re laughing.

They have no idea what it feels like to be hunted.

To dread every hallway.

To calculate which washroom is safest.

To pretend you don’t hear the whispers because admitting you hear them would somehow make everything worse.

The final drops fall from the branches.

“I wish they knew what it felt like to be me.”

The groundskeeper’s expression changes.

For the first time, he looks afraid.

“That,” he whispers, “I can grant.”

He touches two fingers to my forehead.

The cemetery turns inside out.

Suddenly, I am standing at the gates, gripping a hockey stick.

Except I am not me.

I am Chad.

I feel his rage pounding through me, but beneath it is something smaller and colder. Fear. Not of me. Of Jon and Gabe. Fear that if he stops laughing, they will laugh at him instead.

Then I am Gabe, running with one wet sock. I feel every joke he makes before anyone can make one about him.

Then Jon. His anger burns hottest, but it is wrapped around a hollow place that nothing seems to fill.

Their feelings strike me like hail.

At the same time, they feel mine.

Chad drops his hockey stick.

Gabe bends over, gasping.

Jon stumbles backward, staring at me as if I am the ghost.

The wish releases us.

I collapse beside my grandparents’ grave. Across the cemetery, the three boys stand in horrified silence.

“Make it stop,” Gabe whispers.

“It has stopped,” says the groundskeeper.

Chad looks at me. Rain runs down his face, but he might be crying. I cannot tell, and I decide not to look too closely.

“We were only messing around,” Jon says.

“No,” Chad replies.

Jon turns on him. “What?”

Chad’s voice breaks. “We weren’t.”

He picks up the bottles and broken glass. Gabe gathers my muddy books. Jon remains motionless until the others stare at him. Then he retrieves the hockey sticks.

None of them apologizes.

An apology would be too easy.

They leave my books beside the monument and walk toward the gates without speaking.

The groundskeeper is almost invisible now.

“Will they change?” I ask.

“People aren’t wishes,” he says. “They take work.”

“Will I keep feeling what they feel?”

“No. But you’ll remember.”

I am not sure whether that is a gift or a punishment.

Behind him, shapes gather in the rain. A woman wearing a flowered dress. A broad-shouldered man with a pipe tucked into his shirt pocket.

Grandma Edie and Papa Gunnar.

They stand just beyond the rain mirror, smiling.

I lunge toward them, but the groundskeeper raises his hand.

“Some lines must hold.”

Papa touches two fingers to his heart. Grandma blows me a kiss. Then the wind passes through the cemetery, scattering their reflections across the puddles.

The groundskeeper fades with them.

By Monday, the story around school is that the Ice Wraiths got drunk in the cemetery and frightened themselves senseless.

They never chase me again.

Gabe nods when we pass in the hall. Chad quits laughing at Jon’s jokes. Jon avoids my eyes.

Nothing becomes perfect. They are not suddenly my friends, and I am not suddenly fearless.

But sometimes courage is simply knowing that the monsters are frightened too.

Months later, I return to the cemetery during the first spring rain. Near my grandparents’ monument stands a small stone I have never noticed before.

It bears no dates, only a title:

**THE CUSTODIAN**

Someone has left a rusted pair of hedge clippers beneath it.

I sit between my grandparents and the groundskeeper while rain gathers in the grass. Their names gleam beneath the water, clear and deep.

For the first time, I don’t imagine the dead looking up and envying my breath.

I imagine them reminding me to use it.