Phantom [h.s]

Twenty Four

I lay on flat on my back on top of my bed, my mind racing. The crickets chirp outside as the sun sinks lazily toward the horizon, and the entire house itself is silent with solitude.

The sun is setting outside the window, casting dim pinkish-orange light into the room. The sky looks painted, autumn leaving its mark among the clouds in strokes of orange and yellow. I've always marveled at how the sun rises and sets with a change so great in the color of the sky that you would never know it was ever blue.

Harry stands leaning against my bookshelf, looking at the floor.

He was in here when my mother and I got back from the police station a few hours ago, looking at some of the pictures set on my dresser. I don't know how long he had been here, but I don't mind. This was his room before it was mine, anyway.

"Cold case," Harry says. "Cold case, how could it have been a cold case?"

I watch him silently, my head turning so I have a better view of him. I had told him what Detective Whitmore said about his murder case at the station, and he's been silent since.

"I don't get it," I say and he lifts his gaze from the floor to lock eyes with me.

"Don't get what?"

"If your body was never recovered, how did everyone know you were dead?"

"I don't know," he says. "Everyone just seemed to know. I never understood it-why wasn't I just reported as a missing person?" He shakes his head. "But I saw the funeral, I saw the stone set with my name on it. They knew, somehow, that I was dead."

I sit up on the bed. "Do you think it might have to do with the police force? Someone may have tipped them off."

He frowns. "I don't know. None of it makes any sense."

I sigh. "I wish we had some sort of lead, or something."

He nods. "Yeah."

I all of a sudden remember the necklace in my pocket and pull it out, standing and walking over to Harry.

"I got it back," I say, dropping it into his opened hand. "Maybe you should keep it from now on."

I watch Harry examine it, holding it up in front of him. The delicate silver chain holds the skull pendant, the tiny crossbones shining in the dim light of my room. I know what Harry's doing. He's making sure it isn't fake.

"This is the one," he says, nodding.

"How can you tell?" I ask him.

He smiles crookedly, taking the pendant into his hand and turning it over. He points to the back of the two bones, where they cross behind the skull.

"Look closely," he says.

I squint at the little bones, and I can faintly see letters engraved, two words on each bone.

"Mors non est finis," Harry reads, his deep voice low, like the words mean a great deal to him. He looks into my eyes. "Death is not the end."

The short phrase enchants me, the small lettering so neat and aligned on each bone.

"It's engraved in Latin," Harry says, running his thumb over the words. "I don't know why or how my grandmother engraved it, but she told me when she gave it to me that she had always believed in life after death." He turns the pendant back over, still running his fingers over it as though he wished he could feel the cool metal on his skin again like he used to.

"How old were you when she died?" I ask him.

"Sixteen," he answers.

I am silent. I had always thought he had been younger.