The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“You’re serious.”


I stare at her. Her skin looks translucent in the late morning sun. Flecks of golden light are caught in her hair. I can see her chest rise and fall with her breath, the soft swell of her breasts in that oddly constructed dress she’s wearing. She can’t be. It’s not possible.

“You mean to tell me you’re a—”

“Please don’t say it.” She cuts me off.

“B-b-but—” I sputter.

“Please.” She stares into the sky again so she doesn’t have to meet my eye. “I’m sorry. I can’t have you saying it.”

I start to reach over to touch her arm, but something stops me. I realize that I’m afraid of what will happen, when my hand touches her arm. What will she feel like? Is this even real?

“You’re sure,” I say, wondering if there is any room for this to be some colossal mistake. It’s got to be a mistake. This stuff doesn’t really happen. In movies, okay. It’s standard. A sheet with eyeholes. A rattling chain. Scooby jumping into Shaggy’s arms, yelling, Zoinks! Maybe a girl with her hair in her face climbing in sped-up motion out of a Korean well. But not in real life. In real life, when people die, they’re just . . . They just . . .

“You don’t think there could be some other explanation? I mean, no offense or anything, but what if you’re just crazy?” It pops out before I can stop myself, and I immediately clap my mouth shut. Oh my God, I have got to learn how not to have verbal diarrhea. But she laughs.

“I considered that,” she says. “But I’m afraid the carving on the marble slab isn’t.”

I stare at her dumbly.

“It’s my name,” she clarifies. “My name’s on the slab.”

She jerks her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the abandoned park. Which I have just realized isn’t a park at all. With a sickening shudder I consider that she’s in there, right now. She’s in there, yet she’s right here.

My mouth opens and closes, fishlike, until I realize that I’m not actually saying anything, and I shut it.

“I’ve found,” she says slowly, “that I can’t think about it too closely. I can’t . . .” She trails off. Then she tries again. “If you look too closely, you’ll see too much.”

“What do you mean, look too closely?” I whisper.

She watches me out of the corner of her eye. We’re both sitting in dappled summer shade, and there’s a pool of sunlight splashed on the sidewalk between us.

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asks me.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to be sure of. But I say yes, anyway.

She lifts a hand from where it’s resting on her knee. Slowly, deliberately, she moves her hand from the dappled shade into the hot pool of sunlight.

When her fingertip reaches the light, I see something begin to change. The very tip of her finger blackens with soot. When her whole hand is in the light, the nails all turn black, the skin scorched and stained. Her arm moves deeper into the sunlight, dark mottling traveling up her skin, and when the lacy edge of sleeve at her elbow reaches the light, I see clearly that it’s tattered. Rotting.

I have to turn my head away and swallow a bubble of nausea. It’s too much. I can’t think about it. I can’t look.

Without a word she withdraws her arm and rests her hand back on her knee. In the dappled shade, her skin is buttermilk perfect. Her dress looks old, antique, even, it’s true—Eastlin was right! Well, sort of right—but not destroyed. Not . . . rotting.

“The sun does that?” I say, horrified.