They Called My Death a Tantrum, So I Stayed Dead novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Locked Door

At home Cadence knocks on Ewan's door with the ring while Ewan finds his own body and a ghost named Ada explains his seven nights, until a crash in the kitchen shakes the house.

They all came in through the front door of the house on Larch Street, talking at once.

My mother carried two paper bags of gifts she said she had bought for me months ago.

My father carried the cake box.

Cadence carried a small velvet box in both hands.

I knew what was inside it.

It was the ring I had spent five years saving to give her.

I had left it in my sock drawer, and she had found it.

Pierce took his shoes off by the door and called out, "Mom, I'm starving."

"Sit, sit," my mother said. "I'll make you a plate."

She had never once made me a plate in my own house.

Cadence stopped outside my bedroom.

The door was shut, the way I had left it.

She knocked twice with the tips of her fingers.

"Ewan? Open up, please."

There was no answer, and there never would be.

"I'm sorry about today," she said to the wood. "I need to explain it right. And I have something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time."

She waited.

My throat was dead, but I said, "I'm right here, Cadence."

She did not turn her head.

"Ewan, don't do this," she said. "Not today."

I went through the door.

It took less than a step, and the wood did not even feel like wood.

The room was dim, and the curtains were drawn the way I always drew them.

I was on the bed.

I lay on my side under the thick blanket, with my right arm folded in against my chest.

My face was gray, and my mouth was a little open.

I looked at it for a long time.

It was the strangest part, how ordinary it was.

I had always thought my own death would feel larger.

"First one's the hardest," a voice said behind me.

An old woman sat in my desk chair in a faded blue housecoat, with a white braid over one shoulder.

I could see the lamp through her.

"You can see me," I said.

"Seems so," she said. "Ada Brisk. I died in this house in nineteen ninety-five, and I've been here ever since. You're the third to come through since the Fairbanks bought the place."

"The third what?"

"Ghost. The other two stayed one night each." She nodded at the bed. "How long?"

"Since last night. Nine forty-six."

"And they haven't opened the door."

"They think I'm sulking."

Ada made a small unhappy noise in her throat.

"They left me two days," she said. "I'd had a stroke at the kitchen table, and they thought I was ignoring the phone."

I turned to look at her.

She shrugged.

"I'll give you the rules fast," she said, "because this house is about to get loud."

"Loud how?"

"That girl won't stop knocking. Listen. The living can't see you or hear you. Nothing you do touches them."

"I figured that out in the parking lot."

"You get seven nights in this house, counted from the night you died. Tonight is the second. On the seventh night, the gate opens and they take you."

"Who's they?"

"Whoever runs the gate. I never saw them. Mine opened and I wasn't ready."

"Why didn't you go?"

"I had something to tell my daughter," she said. "I stood at the end of her bed for a week and she never woke up."

I did not say anything.

Out in the hall, Cadence knocked again, a little harder.

"Ewan, please. Everyone's coming. I did all of this for you."

My mother's voice came from the kitchen.

"Cadence, honey, let him be. He'll come out when he's hungry."

"There's one more thing," Ada said, and her eyes went to the bed. "The dying hear us. The dying see us. Anyone whose time's nearly up can look at you and talk back."

"Who's dying?"

"I don't know yet. I only know the house has felt wrong for three weeks."

"Pierce said the master bedroom had better light."

"And your mother moved out of it into the small room for him."

"Yes."

"Your father had your name taken off the records for him."

"Yes."

"And they gave him your girl."

I shut my eyes.

"I've been listening through the walls for three weeks," Ada said. "Every time he asks for something, something in this house gets quieter."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Ada said. "But I know that sound. I heard it once, right before I died."

A crash shook the house.

Something large had hit the kitchen floor, and a plate broke, and a man's voice shouted, "Mom! Dad! Look what he did to me!"

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