Marcie shivered and clutched at the loose fabric around her chest. The turbulent winds that blew through the parking lot of Cove Beach made her shirt flap in and out of the empty space. Strands caught on her lowest rib and the sensation of cloth hitting her ribcage and deflated lungs was agonizing. Not because it was particularly painful; it was just unlike any sensation she’d ever felt before.

She had handled Hunter’s nervous breakdown that morning when he thought someone was going to track his license plate after the gunshot debacle from the day before. Grant seemed to be ghosting them which did nothing to soothe that anxiety and she had to talk Hunter down from sending his fifth voicemail in a row. She only had a moment of peace when Hunter got another text from his dad to complete a second round of mandatory house work.

Grant finally responded, days later, saying he wanted to show them something at the old boardwalk where she’d died and come back to life. He also said to bring supplies to go ‘digging’ which was cryptic to say the least.

Now, the chilling gusts made her clothes uncomfortable and holding them made it so the stuffed supplies bag Hunter had given to her to hold kept slipping off her shoulder. He’d overpacked for whatever this occasion was: flashlights, a magnifying glass (which Marcie distinctly remembered gifting to him as part of a forensics-for-kids playset in third grade), a couple of gardening trowels for digging, and a little notebook he’d started writing in of all the details of the spells he remembered from the Necronomicon. That bag alone was heavy.

Hunter hefted a backpack onto his shoulders before shutting the trunk. She didn’t even know what Hunter was lugging around. Hopefully food. All of this to say that she was cold, hungry, and frustrated.

Grant was waiting for them on the sand, carrying no supplies with him at all. Marcie must have had a foul look on her face, considering the first thing Grant said in lieu of a greeting was:

“Mar’s not going to bite me, is she?”

Marcie’s scowl deepened. She turned to Hunter. “I take it back. Grant was a bad idea. Can I kill him?”

Grant, acutely aware of her ability to follow through on her threats, put up pleading hands. “Woah, woah.”

Upon seeing the panic on Grant’s face, Marcie and Hunter cracked. A snort escaped both of them as they cackled together.

“Hey,” Grant whined. “Come on guys.”

Fond memories of the two of them messing with Grant when they were kids resurfaced in Marcie’s mind. One time they convinced him that Mama made mole out of human blood. They would also frequently show him all the spiders they found around the Campbell family’s property knowing Grant hated them. The best memory was when they made Grant go through the haunted house attraction on the boardwalk. He actually ended up enjoying that one.

Those memories were soured by the Grant she knew now. The Grant that took her textbooks out of her locker and threw them in Ridgeview’s courtyard fountain. The Grant that wrote “Border Hopper” on the desks he knew she sat in. The Grant that sat back and said nothing to push back against every rumor Julie, Edith, and Annabelle spread about her and her family.

How did she ever forgive this guy?

Marcie walked up to him, her grimace returning to her face, “I’m joking, meathead. Now what did you want to show us?”

“Nope. Nuh uh.” Grant halted her in her tracks. Not very successfully—Marcie pushed right past his outstretched arm—but it was the effort that counted. “You guys still have a lot of explaining to do.”

The crash of an ocean wave filled the quiet air between them. Marcie supposed he was owed some sort of explanation, if she was going to ask him to help a murdered girl out.

“What do you wanna know?” asked Marcie, between shoulder raises to keep her bag from slipping off again.

“Why do you look like that?” Grant started.

“Dead?” asked Marcie.

Grant clarified, “No–well, yeah–but no. Why are you dressed like you actually enjoyed Ridgeview?”

“People might recognize the dead girl if I looked like I did in the news,” she answered, with the implication of a ‘duh’ laden in her tone. “It’s a disguise.”

“Like Clark Kent.” Hunter assisted.

“So you're really dead?” Grant asked.

“As dirt.” Marcie nodded.

He turned to Hunter. “And you used some satanic black magic B.S. to bring her back?”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Hunter asked nobody in particular.

“Dude! Have you seen the cover? There are literally satanic symbols on it.” Marcie flicked Hunter’s forehead.

Grant went on. “And this isn’t like ‘I faked my death’ or some sort of hoax?”

Marcie rolled her eye. “You think I had a bungee cord setup or something?”

“Well I don’t know! I didn’t even see what happened, just–” Grant grunted. “Just what you looked like afterwards.”

“So you saw my body! Apparently you also held my goddamn suicide note in your hands—which doesn’t make any sense, by the way, seeing as I–didn’t–kill–myself. How bout ya stop asking stupid questions so we can get on with whatever you dragged us out here for.”

Grant seemed more lost than when he started his questioning. “Wait, you didn’t jump?”

“What did I just say! Agh, estupido!” Marcie threw up her arms and let the bag of random crap drop to the ground.

She left the boys there dumbfounded. It wasn’t immediately clear why she was so upset anymore. The fabric of her new Hunter-imagined wardrobe was woolen and scratchy. Sand was creeping into her shoes. It was cold. So cold.

In the distance, a spec moved across tide pool rocks. Some sort of beach-dwelling creature skittered, glistening a delicious-looking reddish-purple. Her eye had locked onto it and her impulses threw her so fast towards what was distinctly a crab that her bones fractured at the force of pounding her feet into the sand. Still, she felt sluggish like whatever glue was holding her together was starting to unstick.

Marcie made it to the crab in what felt like milliseconds and caught it with both hands before it could crawl back under its rocky hideaway. Without so much as a single thought, she took a bite out of its arm, straight through the shell, and tore it clean off its body. Fragments of shell exploded from the crab as she indiscriminately crunched down as if chomping straight through a tootsie-pop. The boys approached as she was partway through cracking the carapace.

“What the!” Grant yelled at the sight of the scene. “Is it just me or is her skin melting off?”

“Oh shit.” Hunter said, sliding to the ground and frantically rummaging through his backpack.

Out of it he pulled out a produce bag and tossed Marcie three raw pork chops. Hunger raged through her stomach. She didn’t care that the crab tasted nauseatingly of the ocean or that the texture of raw meat was too gummy.

After ravaging the pork, Marcie’s mind settled. All her anger and discomfort washed away. The wind felt normal against her skin. Her flesh and tendons felt more attached.

Hunter put a gentle hand to Marcie’s knee. “I’ll pick this all up. I think Grant here might have another meltdown, so maybe it’s time we start talking.” He began to pick up the trash, including the eviscerated crab carcass which he held at arm's length, pinched between his thumb and pointer finger, and walked away to find a can.

Marcie peered directly into Grant's eyes. He was still stricken, standing uncomfortably on the rocks, with the tide lapping against his shoes. It was then that Marcie noticed her pants were soaked from wading into the tide pool. Marcie pushed herself to her feet and Grant helped her get back onto drier sand. She had to face him.

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“So, yeah. That happens sometimes.” She said.

“Sometimes?”

“It happened for the first time a couple days after I came back. I just got really cold and I couldn’t tell why. Hunter knew some stuff about it from his grimoire or whatever he calls it.”

“Grimoire?”

“Okay. I think I’ll just start at the beginning.”

Marcie explained everything to Grant: waking up on the carousel, the days spent binging nearly every new show on Netflix, her lack of memories, and the discovery of her self-described superpowers. Hunter returned from finding a trash can about partway through her retelling of the suitcase incident and accompanying demonstration.

“Knock it off and unfold yourself,” said Hunter. “You’re gonna make Grant puke.”

Hunter joined in detailing the rest of the events that unfolded in the last week. Things got a bit more convoluted when describing the man Hunter met and the monster that kidnapped Marty.

“Wait! Wait! Wait! You know where Marty went?” Grant stopped them. “We’ve been trying to figure out where he’s been for the last few days. No one can get a hold of him.”

“We don’t know where Marty went exactly. That thing took off with him, don’t know where,” said Hunter, defeated. “Look, I don’t like the guy, but if I knew more, I’d tell you.”

“No, I believe you,” Grant said, attempting to smile through the swirling concern and disbelief.

There was the question of what they were supposed to do about Marty Gillman. This was not going to be a low-profile case. He was the son of the CEO of one of the richest agricultural companies in California. With those kinds of family ties, it was only a matter of time before police were involved. She and Hunter were the last people who saw him, but who would believe that he was just whisked away into the night by an entity made of pure darkness in a mid-size sedan. And, as Hunter had told her, there was no longer any evidence of the crash. Nothing was left of an incident perpetrated by a demon.

“I’m sure the Gillmans will put in a missing persons report,” Grant concluded.

“What do you know about the night I died?” asked Marcie, sparked by an intuition.

“Oh. You remember. It was after we made up. Julie, Curt, and everyone was there when…” Grant trailed off. “You don’t remember. Do you?”

“Nope. Just feelings,” she confirmed. “I vaguely remember you were there, now that you’ve told me. But any of the events from that night are just so obscured. The only thing that’s clear at all is the fall. And even then, I can’t see the cliff. I can’t see the ocean or the sand or the carousel coming towards me. But I know I didn’t jump.”

A doubtful expression flashed across Grant’s face. She could always tell what he was going to say next. Still, that never stopped what he said from pinching a nerve.

“How do you know for sure?” he asked.

“I just do!” The words burst from her chest. “Okay? I’m not going through this again.”

Grant looked to Hunter for backup, but only received a stern raise of the eyebrows.

“You heard the lady,” Hunter said.

Grant scratched at his neck, wiping away beads of sweat with his hand. “I’ll tell you what I know. Follow me, I’ll lead you to what I wanted to show you guys.”

He took them down the beach, past the carousel and behind the rock formations, all the while explaining his side of the story.

“Two months before you died, you were placed in the same marketing class as Annabelle, Curt, and I. Annabelle was actually the one that suggested we invite you to some hangs. I’m not sure what sparked it. But you got closer with us for a bit after. Then the kickback happened at the parking lot.” Grant avoided meeting Marcie’s eye.

Maybe she was wrong. Something about him was different. Before, Marcie could do nothing but associate him with the rest of the popular crowd. He went from Grant, her childhood friend, to another preppy douchebag among a gaggle of the preppiest douche-iest bags. Now, the detatchment in his gaze and the distance he put between himself and her gave off the aura of someone who felt better off alone.

“For what it’s worth,” he continued. “I’m glad we reconnected. I think I needed to address a lot of shit that I’d been ignoring for a long time.”

“I’m glad you figured your shit out, I guess,” she offered.

How was she supposed to take that? Without the memory of those conversations, all she had to work with was this new energy he had. Hunter was even more skeptical. Protective as ever, he was walking between them, close beside Marcie. As he listened, though, something must have clicked for him that wasn’t clicking for her. Hunter drifted from Marcie’s side and looked at her, deep in thought.

Hunter murmured quietly to himself. He must have thought he was the only one who could hear, drowned out by the winds and the raging ocean. But Marcie heard. “You never told me.”

And now how in the hell was she supposed to take that? She still hated Julie and her posse as much as she ever did. Cozying up with Annabelle of all people was impossible. And yet, she knew deep down Grant wasn’t lying. There was nothing she could do.

They made the rest of the way to a shallow divot in the cliffside where the sand was perpetually damp. Grant bent down and stuck a hand out.

“Shovel me,” he said.

Hunter pulled a trowel out of the bag—which Marcie probably should’ve been carrying—and handed it to Grant. He dug for a moment before turning to face her again.

“After you died, we all panicked. There was a lot to lose if anyone found out we were associated with your death so we hid the evidence. We buried anything that would connect you to us or any indication that we were even there that night: some of your belongings, some of our belongings, a bunch of beer cans, some joints, and your suicide note,” he said.

That still made absolutely no sense to Marcie. Why would she write a note?She was so sure that she didn’t kill herself but Grant’s insistence was the first thing to make her question that certainty She had to admit that her memory was cloudy and unreliable. It was a miracle anyone believed her.

“I wanna see this letter,” Marcie said, taking a trowel and crouching down as well.

She only had to dig about a foot down before she started to bring up soggy garbage. What most likely used to be cigarette butts, cardboard beer carriers, and snack bags had deteriorated into a sludge. The misguided hope of finding answers left her as she kept digging. She’d find nothing here. The paper would have degraded or the ink smudged into incomprehensible puddles. It was no use.

“Where is it?” She turned back. “I need to read it. Where is it?”

Only then did she realize Grant had been trying to explain something to her the whole time she was digging.

“Julie had it last. But it wasn’t the same note. Your handwriting was different. I think someone tried to forge it,” he said.

“Wait, what’s that?” Hunter pointed to something deep in the sand.

The small corner of a piece of paper stuck out ever so slightly. Marcie pulled it out to reveal a fully intact page from a notebook. While it read like a suicide note, judging from Grant’s reaction, it was not what they were looking for.

On the page, two words were written over and over again.

I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.

I’m Sorry.

I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.

I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.

Marcie’s eye was drawn to a pop of color. Unearthed with the note was a small hair clip. She tossed aside the note and held the clip in her hand. A year underground had faded the color and grainy sand clung to it like lice.

Hunter peered over her shoulder. “Isn’t that–”

“Handwriting from Julie’s note,” Grant finished.

“He meant the hair clip,” Marcie clarified, “It’s the one Annabelle gave to me.”

Hunter held more concern in his gaze than he’d ever had before. “She gave that to you?”

A rush of images flashed in Marcie’s mind. Murky memories of Annabelle handing her the clip, inviting her to her house, and driving her to parties phased in and out of focus. Marcie clawed at her chest, her clothes tapping wildly against her insides again as the wind blustered violently. Sand kicked up around them.

An agonized yelp escaped her and she fell to the ground. Hunter and Grant rushed to her side just as her cries started to join in dissonant harmony with another noise. Another cry.

Through her pain and squinted eye she saw another animal at the distant shoreline. A harbor seal moaned in horrific pain. It rolled wildly, revealing massive chunks of flesh ripped out of its sides. Then another cry came, this time from a porpoise with similar injuries, washed ashore. More and more dying or dead fish, marine mammals, and gulls piled onto the beach. The waves, tinged red, appeared more carcass than water.

The windswept sand blinded the three of them. Marcie could barely move her body. She cried out one last time as her vision went hazy. The last thing she heard before succumbing to the pounding ache in her chest, was the chorus of death and her own voice rising to join it.