Oblivion by Kelly Creagh

Her surroundings felt wrong. The conversation felt wrong.
    She wasn’t dreaming, though. She couldn’t be.
    â€œYou found him,” Gwen said. “You talked to him. I know you did.”
    Feeling suddenly too warm in her coat, Isobel pressed her forehead to the cold window, wanting out—out of the car, out of this cemetery, out of her own skin.
    â€œFine,” Gwen snapped. “Let’s skip that one and come back. Moving on to the more immediate question. Whose boot prints were those in the hall?”
    Nausea crept over her, causing her head to swim. Saliva rushed into her mouth.
    â€œStop the car,” Isobel said, but Gwen sped up, taking the twisting turns harder.
    On either side of the winding blacktop, endless granite markers and squat tombstones dotted the hilly landscape, crowding all the way to where pavement met with grass. No cemetery could be this big, could it? And that obelisk . . . Hadn’t they passed it already?
    â€œTell me what happened,” Gwen demanded, her voice trembling with equal parts hurt and fear. “I deserve to know.”
    In the distance, Isobel spotted an awning tent. Beneath it, an open pit. A pile of fresh red earth waited to one side and, next to that, rolls of fake green turf meant to make things appear more natural. The scene flew by and dizziness slammed into her, bringing with it the memory of being buried alive in just such a trench, dirt pouring over her in heavy clods, pressing her down, crushing her chest and filling her mouth.
    The cemetery around her became a rolling sea of stone and grass. Craggy trees cropped up with more frequency, blurry black skeletons between the markers that seemed to creep ever closer. Or was the lane growing narrower?
    Robed statues sprang up everywhere, some with wings, others without, some holding rings of flowers, others clinging to crosses, all of them looking straight at her.
    She was awake. She knew she was.
    Wasn’t she?
    â€œIsobel!”
    â€œStop. Please. I need to get out.”
    â€œNot until—”
    â€œI said stop the car!” Isobel screeched.
    Gwen hit the brakes, causing the tires to scream. The sound, combined with the lurching halt of the Cadillac, prompted Isobel to inhale at last. She gasped for air, and then she gasped again. And again.
    All this time, she hadn’t been able to take a single breath. She’d forgotten to try, but now she was breathing too much, too fast.
    The cab of the car seemed to squeeze inward, the roof threatening to collapse.
    Isobel pulled on the sweat-slicked handle still in her fist and the door swung open. She unlatched her seat belt and stumbled out into the winter air.
    Her feet found the lawn, but her cold surroundings continued to orbit her. Names and dates swirled in her vision. Bile rose in the back of her throat and she staggered to one side, afraid she might hurl right there on Eloise McClain’s name plaque.
    Instead she started running, bolting headlong through the rows of graves, the wind licking sweat from her skin.
    â€œIsobel!” she heard Gwen shout.
    Isobel dodged headstone after headstone. Then the terrain dipped. She felt her ankle twist. Faltering, she cried out before dropping, nearly tumbling into the stump of a stone topped by a tiny, acid-rain-eaten lamb—an infant’s grave.
    She gripped the grass beneath her, crawling away from the distorted marker until her back met with the cold side of another.
    Unable to look away from the child’s stone, Isobel covered her eyes.
    â€œIsobel!” The sound of feet rushing over grass grew louder, and Isobel heard Gwen fall to her knees at her side, her bracelets clanging. Isobel dared not lower her hands to look, however, too fearful that Gwen would be like the paper people she’d seen in the hall—that her friend’s face would erode right before her, another nightmare she couldn’t escape.
    â€œWhat,” Gwen huffed, “are you