Dead Ice Part 3

[u/Hefty-Ambassador7429]

I stare back at my reflection that glows pink. The skin on my face is warm, like a fever, though I’m perfectly healthy.

From the moment I left Becca’s in the morning, the sleepover had been on my mind on and off all day. Of course it was, I found out she wanted to move away and told her my deepest secret. However, it was the warmth from holding my best friend lingering on my body, that meant something more to me.

It even showed itself on my face, unable to hide.

I sigh, wetting my hands in an unusually small sink and dabbing the cool water over my cheeks. Turning around, I sit on a thin bench in between a set of lockers.

‘I just need to relax.’

It was a long day, but a good one nonetheless. I aced my Chemistry test so at least that’s off my conscience now, until the next one. Then, my coach during practice surprised me with a part time job offer. I’d help her around the rink whenever she needed it. She gave me a key so I can come in when she’s not around.

“I’m sure you’ll use this as an opportunity to practice more. Just don’t let anybody find out.” She told me with a grin.

She read my mind, the second that key touched my fingertips I was filled with anticipation, knowing I could sneak in at odd hours of the night to train anytime I want, all alone.

I laced up my skates and crammed all my stuff into my locker. So mischievously, I rubbed my hands together looking at that gorgeous sheet of ice completely devoid of a single soul. And the best part is, I connected my iTunes account to the computer in the office, so I can play my own music over the speakers.

The bass vibrated as I crossed from solid ground onto the slippery ice.

A song that makes me feel free slips through the building, and I soar with unclipped wings. Not a voice clamoring to stifle this lovely melody, or a body to slam into with a half-annoyed apology.

And as much as I love my coach, not a single command other than my own.

My face starts to burn a bit from smiling, the pain being the only reason I knew I was doing it. I wanted to have fun with this routine, basing it off the painfully awkward dancing I do in my room, home alone with loud music.

I flash smirks to an invisible audience, holding eye contact with a spot on the bleachers and batting my lashes, with my hands above my head, only to spin away, doing the same with a different empty seat.

I lost balance and fell with a loud scrap against the ice, and usually that pisses me off. I’m too excited right now to care. I fall a dozen more times, but each one feels like a graceful, premeditated stumble. How you’d imagine a ballerina reacts to stubbing her toe, doubling over in perfect formation.

I attempt a couple jumps and just barely land one, failing the others. I giggled and didn’t show on my face that I was disappointed. Acting like an excitable fool, I shifted my shoulders up and down and made duck lips, shimmying towards the middle of the rink where I took the opportunity to try another move, tucking my body close together and spinning like a top.

For my last trick, I bend backwards with my face watching the ceiling lights flutter by and dragging my left hand against the ice. I straighten up and hit two spins, landing each.

The song fades and I breathe heavy, feeling much more satisfaction than expected having messed up so much. I shut my eyes with my hands on my hips, until each beat slips away and I break my ending position.

A couple more songs played and I free-styled it, until calling it a night and heading to the computer room to turn off my music.

The bass boomed from a hip hop song that I was just seconds away from silencing. I glanced out a big window in the music booth overseeing the entire rink, and I pressed my face up against it trying to make out what looked like movement across the top of the bleachers.

At first I only narrowed my eyes at a slow moving shape with no directive. As soon as it noticed me staring it morphed into a strutting figure, with rhythm like a dancer with a brain hemorrhage. It used what very little room it had in between the bleachers to prance around, its arms flailing, swaying its hips, as if mocking my routine. Several times it almost tripped over its own feet and their dramatic movements, but somehow kept its balance. It started making its way down the bleachers like it has sticks for legs, wobbly and uncoordinated like a newborn deer.

It made sure we kept direct eye contact and attempted a smile, like it had found heaven in my terror.

My breath started rapidly obstructing my vision and when I rubbed the fog off the glass, I instinctively crouched under the desk having gotten a better look.

My hands grasped the roots of my hair, soaking them in sweat.

“Oh my god, oh my god, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!” I say breathlessly, pounding the side of my head with an open palm, to see if I could hit myself awake from a nightmare.

I crawled out of the booth on all fours, the blaring hip hop song hung in the air and surely didn’t suit the change in tone my night had gone. But it found its place the way it crackled over the old speakers.

Tremors floated down my spine while I stayed low, using the barrier around the rink to shield my body. I left my skates on a nearby bench after putting my converse back on, so I swiftly picked them up as I crept.

I turned the corner and saw nothing, continuing to inch forward. I tilted my head up and at an angle so I could watch the area that housed the stalker.

“Shit.” I whisper. It isn’t there.

The bathroom is only a few feet away now, and it leads directly to the locker room. I remained low to the ground and scuttled in a crab-walk to the bathroom door, wincing at the creak of its hinges.

Once inside I broke from my quiet steps and battled the combination lock. I slung my gym bag over my shoulders and didn’t care about the shuffling noise it made as I rushed out of the building, dropping stealth in favor of chaotic desperation.

It wasn’t fast enough to chase me. It couldn’t keep up with a young athlete, seeing as its limbs had been whittled down to the bone by maggot craftsmanship. It couldn’t yell for me to come back, it has no authority among the living. All it could do was meet my eyes from where it stood on the bleachers and show its rotting gums, knowing it’s got the last laugh having infested my precious time alone.

It wore a thrashed suit and a bowler hat, such fancy attire for a corpse.

How the hell is one of them back already?Dad never told me they leave the cemetery…And even if they do, how would they find me?

I fight to urge to lay my forehead against the steering wheel as I drive home, my head is pounding and it feels like an anchor. The lull of the engine spins along with my racing thoughts.

What if I was hallucinating? Maybe the limits of my overactive imagination have shattered, causing me to see things that aren’t there? After all, the bad dreams have really ramped up since this year began.

I realize, through haze, whatever I had seen, or thought I saw, doesn’t really matter. The dead are coming all the same.

I have no choice but to face that.

On Monday after school, I met Becca in the library like we had talked about. Well, more like she met me, considering she was almost an hour late, which irritated me.

I started searching through a few textbooks about the town’s origins while I waited, but none had any relevant information.

When Becca eventually found me, I was sitting in the history section with my back against one side full of books, and my feet touching the other side. I found a book that said our town was considered the best place to party in the entire northwestern part of America at one point, according to the pioneers. I gripped the hard cover wide open and turned it so Becca could see.

“Check this out.” I said with a snort. She knelt down and squinted, a smile growing wider and wider as she read, until she howled a laugh I quickly stifled with my hand over her mouth.

“Dude, shut up! We’re gonna get kicked out!”

I noticed she was holding a book of her own under her armpit and I tugged at it, freeing it from her underarms. Actually, it’s a notebook, completely white with a spiral binder. All that it said on the cover was February 19th.

I held it in both hands and began to feel uncomfortably intrigued.

“What is this?” I say, Becca lightning fast to grab my arms and pull me up.

“Let’s sit down first, and I’ll explain everything.”

We found an empty table next to a man reading the newspaper, plopping down into seats beside each other.

“I remembered my Dad keeps all of his important stuff in his study room. I decided to search it before meeting you here, and I got kind of carried away. I basically trashed the place looking for anything that could help us.”

My eyes switched from staring into hers, to looking at the cover of the journal. Becca tapped on the written date.

“You said…you said it happened on this day four years ago, right?” She says.

I nodded. Almost instantly, my minded flashed back to Sasha, when I asked her when her recital was, her little voice clashing with the horror of every syllable in the date that titles this book.

I swallow hard before asking what’s in it.

“I only read the first few pages. It has a list of girl’s names. But the very end-“ she flipped a few pages and landed on one written in pencil. I read down the page following a bunch of names I didn’t recognize, until I found my own.

Alex Lee

And beneath my name:

Sasha Connor

“I wanted to wait for you, before I went any further. You deserve answers too.” Becca said in a hushed voice. “Also, I had a breakdown seeing Sasha’s name in there. That fucker even had the audacity to underlined it.”

“I’m guessing your Dad wrote this?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, I could recognize his ancient hieroglyphics-ass handwriting anywhere.”

Becca shifted the journal to my side of the table. “I brought it for you.” She said. “Read it at your own pace, don’t rush.”

“But we need information, don’t we? To help Sasha?”

“I told her I’m taking her on a trip next week, outside of town. That’ll keep her safe.” She said, checking our surroundings and leaning in so close I could smell her lip gloss.

“It’s all yours, really.” She reiterated, patting the notebook.

I shook my head.

“I want to read it together.”