Page 2 of The Spirit Key
“Then prove it, chicken.”
“Fine!”
I stormed over to the rope and took hold of it. I glanced down into the murky pit, and my heart stuttered once more.
“Come on, Scott. It’s fun!”
Tim came jogging over, water sluicing down his chest, his hair matted to his forehead. Weirdly, that stray thought about Cole? Yeah, so over it. Now it was Tim that I was staring at.
“Okay.”
I was going to make Tim proud of me. I didn’t understand why, but thinking of him running over and hugging me, telling me how great I’d done? It became the only thought in my head at the moment.
I turned back and set myself, ready to do it. One quick glance at Tim, who nodded at me, and I rushed to the edge, jumped, and flew.
It was amazing. One second gravity has been conquered, and you’re flying up, up,up. Then you remember that everyone is gravity’s bitch, and you’re jerked back down. I hit the water, flush with pride over having done it.
When I flapped my arms to go back to the surface, though, that was when shit got real.
I couldn’t move my foot. Something had wrapped around it and held me below the surface. In my mind, a shark had grabbed me and was dragging me down. I struggled, trying to swim up, and my lungs burned.
You have to know, at this time, my mind had refused to believe I was going to die. It kept screaming for me to fight, to do whatever the hell I had to in order to get back to the surface. And I fought as hard as I could. Only….
At one point, I thought I’d gotten free, and my struggles to swim back to the surface intensified. I pushed hard against the water, trying to get up, back into the sun, but then I knew I was still stuck, and I had no more breath in my lungs.
I remember opening my mouth to scream for Tim to help me, but the murky water rushed in, and I choked, which led to more water being drawn into my body. Everything sort of went hazy and then shifted to black.
I’d died.
Now, before you ask—no, there was no white light to go into. I don’t recall seeing my grandma or grandpa, who had died years earlier. No flashes of past lives. Nothing. Not until my eyes fluttered open and I found myself in a room with a rather stern nurse standing over me.
My lungs burned like they had lava in them. I coughed and tried to sit up, but she put a hand on my shoulder.
“You need to lie still. You’ve had a bad accident, and you’re in the hospital.”
Accident? No, I died. Hadn’t I?
It only took a few moments before I drifted off to sleep again, her words playing through my mind.An accident. Hospital. Accident.
When I woke up again, my mother was sitting next to me. She looked awful. Her hair, which she always had stylishly done, was stringy and shiny. Her eyes were red and puffy. It definitely wasn’t her best look. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but just like before, I was pulled back under before I could say anything.
This went on and on. I’d wake up, see a bunch of different people, and open my mouth to speak, only to go back to sleep almost immediately. It frustrated me because I wanted to know what was wrong and why I was there. I mean, I was dead.
Unless….
Holy shit, I was a zombie! That was the only explanation. I’d died and come back as a brain-eating zombie like in the comic books.
Hey, I was eight. No one said I was logical.
Finally came a day when I woke and stayed awake. My mother still sat at my bedside, looking worse than she had the last time I remembered seeing her. I reached out, my hand shaking, and touched her arm. Her eyes popped open, and her gaze locked on me.
“M-m-om?” My throat ached, and I couldn’t stop the cough.
She leaped out of her chair, the exhaustion of a moment ago replaced by elation. She wrapped her fingers around my hand and leaned in to kiss my face, murmuring my name.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have sent you out swimming. I’m sorry, Scotty.”
She cried, bawling onto my chest. I’d seen her cry before, but never like this. I had no idea what to do. A couple of moments later, hands wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her away. My dad stood there, and she spun around and threw herself at him.
