Exhumation

She wandered with no direction or purpose. She had no memory of who she was, where she had come from, why she was walking along a totally unfamiliar street - nothing she saw or heard was familiar. As clean as an erased flash drive, her mind contained no data.

She was a young woman of perhaps nineteen or twenty, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She strolled along a sidewalk in the downtown section of a small city, past little stores and other places of business. People she passed stared at her. A few held their noses and backed away. She stared back at them, wondering what it was about her they found offensive.

A policeman noticed her and parked his patrol car by the curb. He got out and walked toward her. He was young, in his early twenties, with brown hair and eyes.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I don't know." Her voice sounded strange to her, weak and hoarse.

"Do you know where you are?" She shook her head, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

"What's your name?"

"I don't remember." It was almost a whisper.

The young man took her hand and said, "Come with me." He helped her into his patrol car, fastened her seat belt, and drove her to a hospital, where the nurse on duty weighed her and took her vital signs.

"Your blood pressure is extremely low," the nurse told her.

She took a blood sample and told the girl to sit in a chair and wait for the results. When they came back, the physician on duty stared at them with bulging eyes as he gasped.

"Well, it's no wonder your blood pressure is so low! You're severely anemic. So much so that I frankly can't understand how you could be up and walking around. I'm admitting you immediately and putting you on a hemoglobin drip."

With assistance, the girl removed her clothing, then was given a bath and helped into a hospital gown. Although everyone else was dressed warmly, she felt strangely unaffected by the emergency room's frigid temperature. She lay down on the examining table as she was told and accepted the offered blanket, although she didn't really feel she needed it. After some difficulty, the nurse found a vein and started an IV.

A few feet away, a nurse wrinkled her nose as she gestured toward the pile of clothes the girl had removed and, so as not to be heard by the girl, whispered, "Those really should be burned; they smell like someone was buried in them."

"And not very recently either," another nurse agreed with a shudder.

"No, Derek, no!" she screamed, frantically trying to reach the car keys, which he deftly held just out of her reach. "Let me drive! You've had too much to drink!"

"Nah, I only had a couple of beers. I can hold my liquor. You know that!"

"You've had more than that." She crossed her arms and stalked away from him a couple of paces. "Well, I'm not getting into that car with you."

"Guess you'll have to walk home then." He jangled the car keys in his hand triumphantly. "Looong way."

"I'll get someone else to drive me home, then."

Derek gave a cruel laugh. "You don't even know any of those people, Ashley. What are you gonna say? 'I'm scared to ride with my boyfriend cause he had a couple of beers.' They'll laugh right in your face." He guffawed.

She didn't say anything. It was true; she didn't know any of the other guests, and most of them had drank heavily too, anyway.

"Come, Cinderella. Your carriage awaits. Better hurry before it turns into a pumpkin. Or shall I tell your parents that you let another guy take you home?"

That did it. If Derek told her parents that she had left with another boy, she's never be allowed to go to another party. With a sigh of defeat, she opened the passenger's side door and got in the car.

My name is Ashley. It came to her with a start. But who was Derek? And why had she been with him? She lifted an arm, the one that didn't have the IV. She was amazed at how emaciated it appeared, and her skin was as dry as parchment.

"Hi there." She turned her head and was pleasantly surprised to see the policeman who'd brought her to the hospital the previous day standing in the doorway.

"I wanted to come by to see how you were doing. You were pretty out of it yesterday."

Having just remembered her name and fearing she'd forget it again, she blurted out, "My name is Ashley." There was wonder and awe in her voice, as if she had just discovered an amazing fact.

The policeman smiled, and right away, she felt more comfortable. "Nice to meet you, Ashley. My name is Timothy Baker, but most people call me Tim."

She managed a small smile.

"Well, you look like you need your rest. I'll come to see you again later."

"Thanks for helping me, Tim."

"Hey, it's my job." He grinned and waved good-bye to her.

Fifteen minutes later, a nurse, accompanied by a student nurse, came to take her temperature and blood pressure. The student nurse looked vaguely familiar to Ashley, although she couldn't imagine why.

"I just remembered that my name's Ashley."

"Ashley." The nurse repeated the name. "Do you remember anything else?"

Ashley shook her head.

After they'd left the room, the student nurse said, "You know, I went to school with a blue-eyed blonde named Ashley. Ashley Kirton."

"Is that right?" The nurse raised her eyebrows.

"It couldn't be her, though." The student nurse shook her head.

"Why not?"

"Ashley Kirton's been dead for more than two years. She was killed in a car crash coming back from a party with her boyfriend."

She had to get away from the fire. Each time she tried to inhale, hot air burned her lungs, sending her into coughing spasms. Frantically she felt around for a doorknob, overwhelmed with relief when her hand encountered one and found it unlocked. Twisting the knob, she threw the door open, then burst from the house. Once outside, she stood there for a moment, inhaling fresh gulps of clean air.

Mike Sanders. He had been the bane of her existence since the first year of high school. His hair always looked as if he used Vaseline as a gel, he picked his nose in public and wiped his hands on his clothes afterwards, and he found it hilarious to pass gas in public or put thumbtacks on people's chairs.

The first time she had seen him, she had been walking toward the school with an armload of books, while he stood on the top porch step with a group of boys in black leather jackets with punk hairstyles. He had sauntered over to her smiling as if he knew something important she didn't.

"Hey baby, how about a date?"

"Um...no thanks, I don't think so."

"Well, I think you're making a big mistake." With that he had strutted away while the boys he had been with laughed rudely.

He never gave up. No matter how many times she politely declined his invitations, he always asked her out again the following weekend.

"I don't get it, Ashley. Are you a dyke or something?" he asked her once.

"No!" she gasped, her eyes drilling holes through him.

In her senior year she started dating Derek.

"What's he got that I ain't got?" Mike asked.

"Me!" she replied.

"Mike Sanders was there," Ashley told Tim when he visited her the next day.

"Mike Sanders was where? Who's Mike Sanders?" Her statement puzzled Tim.

"A guy I used to know in high school. He was always bugging me to go out with him. He was in the house where the fire was."

"Why did the house catch fire? What were you doing in there with him?"

"I can't remember!" Ashley was near tears.

"It's all right, Ashley, everything is going to be just fine." Tim said as he placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled. His smile always made her feel better.

Tim remembered that there had indeed been a recent house fire in the area. A couple of his co-workers had investigated it, and an incident report had been submitted. After he finished his beat, he went to the clerical department in the police station.

"Hi Mary," he said to the middle-aged clerk on duty.

"Hi Tim. What's up?"

"Just want to check something really quick." It took him only five minutes to find the report. He poured himself a cup of coffee before sitting down to read it.

According to the report, there had been no fatalities in the fire. Had Ashley just imagined that she had been there? He didn't think so. Nor did he suspect Ashley had lied about being there. What reason would she have had to lie?

Tim decided to interview the neighbors on either side of where the house had been to inquire if they could shed any light on the mystery.

Ashley was indeed a mystery.

"He was a strange one," Maggie Spencer, Mike Sanders' elderly neighbor, told Tim. "Never said a word to anyone, not even an occasional hello. He went out with Roy Patterson's girl Sheila for a while. I hadn't seen her over there lately, so I guess they must of broke up. I'm sorry officer, but I really didn't know him that well. Sad about the fire though."

"Thank you for talking to me, Mrs. Spencer. You were a lot of help," Tim told her with a smile.

Ashley became a ward of the state upon her release from the hospital. Welfare officials sent her to live in a halfway house for women with various mental disorders. Her dental records had been compared with those of young women who had been reported missing from all over the country, and to date, no match had been found. Tim still visited her every day, not out of any professional obligation, but because he was genuinely concerned about her welfare.

"I really appreciate your coming to see me every day. I know you don't have to," Ashley told him.

"It's no problem at all, Ashley. I enjoy spending time with you. I like the way your face always lights up every time I come to visit you."

Ashley smiled and, conscious of her inner thoughts, blushed and turned her face away, hoping Tim wouldn't notice. Tim laughed at her embarrassment. It was a nervous laugh - he had thoughts of his own. Little did he know, his thoughts were not that far removed from hers.

"Are they still treating you well here?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. Everyone is always so kind. They're very helpful and make me feel welcome, but every day becomes more frustrating than the last. I can remember silly little things that aren't really important, like when I was six years old I had a rag doll named Betsy who had red hair, but as for the really important stuff, like my birthday, where I live, my parents' names..." She shrugged and started to cry. Tim wanted to take her in his arms and tell her everything would be OK, but he dared not. He felt helpless. Not knowing what to do, he smiled and said, "Don't worry. everything is going to be just fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I thought he was such a nice guy at first," Sheila Patterson said in answer to Tim's question. "But then he turned all weird on me. Got involved in the occult and all. Started talking about spells and incantations to do this or that. He just wasn't the same Mike anymore, and I couldn't stand to see the person he'd become. Finally, I told him he would have to choose between his new hobby or me. He told me if I wanted to leave he wouldn't beg me to stay, because within twenty-four hours he'd have a new girlfriend. He said he had just found out about a spell that could bring a dead person back to life. I told him he was full of it. He said there was this girl he had liked all through high school but she would never go out with him. He said she had died a couple of years ago, but he was going to bring her back. He said the time she had spent in the grave would have erased her memory, and he knew she would be so grateful to him for bringing her back to life she would go with him now. What he said made me feel really scared. I told him not to mess with stuff like that, that it was dangerous. He laughed in my face, and I ran out of the house. That was the last time I ever saw him."

"Did Mike tell you the girl's name?"

"Um...let me think. Oh yeah. It was Ashley something, Ashley Kirton I think."

After careful consideration, Tim became convinced there was one more dental record that needed to be compared with Ashley's. As much as he tried telling himself that would be a really crazy idea, he had a feeling about it that he just couldn't shake. Reaching a decision, he began his search. As the subject of the additional dental record had never been declared missing, the record itself was considerably more difficult to obtain than the others had been, but after much perseverance, he located it. The wait for the result nearly drove him crazy, and when it was finally in he nodded grimly. Although he didn't want to admit it, a part of him had known all along what he would find.

Tim and Ashley waited beside Ashley Kirton's grave. A judge had signed an order to open the tomb. A mortician, a representative of the court, the sexton, and the county commissioner were all on hand.

"I"m not sure it's a good idea for you to come along," Tim said to Ashley before they drove to the cemetery.

"I have to see for myself," she had insisted. So here she was, torn by inner turmoil, yet knowing she could not lay the matter to rest until she knew.

Everyone watched as gravediggers turned the first shovel of dirt. Moments later, they heard the sound of the shovels hitting the lid of the burial vault.

A backhoe was used to lift the cement lid. Ashley watched as the vault lid swung up and clear of the grave, and the top of the casket became visible.

Ashley's heart pounded madly, and her breathing grew ragged as the workers lifted the light pink casket from the vault and sat it beside the grave. As the workers slowly opened the lid, she wanted desperately to close her eyes but was unable to. When the lid was finally open, everyone present gasped.

There in the casket lay the body of a young man dressed in blue jeans and a t shirt, looking as if he'd just been buried.

"It's Mike Sanders!" Ashley cried.

"That's funny." Tim scratched his head. "I don't remember anyone ever reporting him missing."

The court representative snorted. "Guess that proves how popular he was, or wasn't, rather."

"So that's how the spell worked," the mortician mused. "A soul for a soul. I guess poor Mike here didn't realize, when you're dealing with the supernatural, you never get something for nothing."

Ashley began to sob, hard. A few moments later, she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and turned to look into Tim's gentle blue eyes, which were soft with compassion.

"How can you stand to be around me?" she sobbed. "I'm a corpse! A dirty, filthy, stinky, rotten corpse!"

"Ashley." Tim shook his head as he patted her shoulder and looked into her tormented eyes. "There's nothing dirty, filthy, stinky, or rotten about you at all. You're a lovely young woman who's just as alive as I am. A corpse can't eat, talk, cry, or laugh. I've seen you do all of those things, and much more."

"But I was in the ground rotting for two years before Mike brought me back!"

"Ashley, I don't understand it any better than you do. But to me, it doesn't matter where you came from or what happened to you. All that matters is that you're alive now, and you have the same rights as any other living person, including the right to be loved."

"Who could ever love me?" Tears streamed down Ashley's face as Tim put his arms around her and held her close.

"You're one of the most lovable people I've ever met, Ashley." He smiled gently. "Think of it this way. You've been given a second chance, an opportunity to live your life all over again. How many people does that happen to?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Ashley looked up at him with a weak smile. "But where will I go? What will I do?"

"You'll have plenty of time to figure all that out." Tim smiled and took her hand. "In the meantime, always remember that you have a friend who's more than happy to help you in any way possible."

Hand in hand, they walked away from the open grave and toward whatever the future held.