The Last Relay

The first time I saw the dead was in the summer I turned eight. My grandmother had just died, and my parents had sent me to stay with my aunt in the hills, where the air smelled of pine and rot. I was playing in the creek behind her cabin, turning over stones to find crayfish, when I looked up and saw a woman in a white shift standing on the bank. She was translucent, like a heat shimmer, and she was holding a hand-painted sign that read ‘KEEP OUT’. I blinked, and she was gone. I told my aunt, and she laughed and said, ‘That’s just the old hermit who used to live up the ridge. He’s been dead since before you were born.’ I didn’t sleep well that night.

When I was twelve, my uncle’s pack of hunting dogs—a motley crew of hounds and terriers—refused to enter the barn. They whined and pulled at their leashes, eyes rolling, until my uncle cussed and dragged them away. That night, I dreamed of a man with his throat cut, standing in the hayloft, pointing at the ceiling. The next morning, we found a nest of rats in the rafters, and my uncle said it was a good thing the dogs hadn’t gone in. But I knew what I’d seen.

At fourteen, I started feeling the dread. It would come on like a cold hand on the back of my neck, usually before someone I knew died. I’d wake up at 3 a.m. with a metallic taste in my mouth, and within a week, a distant cousin would pass, or a neighbor’s mother, or the old postman who’d waved at me every day for years. I told my best friend, Liam, and he called me a liar. Then his dog got hit by a car, and he stopped laughing. He started avoiding me.

Now I’m sixteen, and I’ve learned to live with it, mostly. I see them—the dead—in the corner of my eye, or feel them brush past me like a draft. They never speak, but sometimes they leave things. A wilted flower. A small, smooth stone. Once, a key. They’re not malicious, but they’re not friendly either. They’re just… there.

The worst was the accident on the mountain road. My school bus skidded off a hairpin turn, and I saw the ghost of a fireman standing in the ditch, waving his arms. I screamed, but the driver didn’t hear me. The bus flipped, and I woke up in a hospital bed with a broken arm and a concussion. They said I was lucky. I didn’t feel lucky. I felt the dead pressing in on me, all those new ghosts, all those confused faces staring at me like I was one of them.

It’s been six months since I last saw an animal refuse to come near me, and I’ve started to think maybe it’s over. Maybe the gift is fading. I’m walking home from a friend’s house, cutting through the old churchyard, when I smell something burning. Not wood, not plastic—something earthier, like sulfur. I stop, and I hear a sound like a thousand tiny footsteps, coming closer. The trees around the graveyard are suddenly full of crows, silent, all facing me.

In the center of the cemetery, a hole has opened in the ground. It’s not deep; it looks like a fresh grave, but there’s no coffin, no liner. Just a black pit that seems to swallow light. And from that pit, a hand reaches up—pale, skeletal, the fingers too long. It claws at the dirt, then another hand, and then a head emerges, the skin pulled taut over the skull, the eyes empty. It drags itself out, and I see it’s wearing a soiled dress, like a bridesmaid’s gown, torn and stained. It stands, twists its neck, and looks directly at me.

For the first time in my life, I want to run. But my legs won’t move. The crows take flight, a thunder of wings, and the creature—the thing that was buried—opens its mouth. No sound comes out, but I feel the words in my head: ‘You are my last relay. You will carry my message.’

I wake up in my bed, drenched in sweat, but I know it wasn’t a dream. There’s dirt under my fingernails, and on my nightstand, a small, hand-painted sign: ‘KEEP OUT’.

I haven’t left my house in three days. The dogs down the block won’t stop barking at my door. And every night, I hear scratching, like claws on wood, coming from beneath the floorboards.

I don’t know what it wants me to carry. But I know it will not stop. It chose me, and I can feel it closing in, waiting for me to accept its burden.

This is the last night I’ll spend in my own bed. Tomorrow, I’ll walk into the woods behind my house, where the trees are so thick the sun never reaches the ground. And I’ll find the wagon—the one that’s been there since the town was founded, always empty. Maybe that’s where I’ll need to go.

The dead have never lied to me. They just don’t tell the whole truth. And this one is telling me it’s my turn.

I look at my hands, and I see the outline of a key burned into my palm. It appeared last night. I don’t know what it unlocks, but I know it’s the key to the door I’ve been waiting to find. The door to the world between worlds, where the dead and the living meet, and where I’ll finally understand why I was born with these eyes.

Maybe then, I can finally rest.