'Sheer guts,' Hiram granted.
Fifteen minutes later, Billy was standing with Bonnie beside his mother's grave. His father was buried a few feet away. Pine needles covered the ground, and the chill wind whispered softly through the trees. Billy could smell pine sap: the aroma of life, waiting to burst free in April.
A stone marker had been planted at the head of Ramona's grave. It was fine cut, simple but proud. It gave her name, her date of birth and death, and underneath that, in expertly etched block letters: daughter of hawthorne.
Billy put his arm around Bonnie. His mother wasn't here, he knew; her body was, returning now to the earth as all bodies must, but her soul—that part of her that had made her very special—was somewhere else, still carrying on her Mystery Walk. And his would go on too, from this place and moment. He would meet the shape changer again, because it was part of the Evil that lived in the world, but he knew now that, though it couldn't be totally destroyed, it could be
A few tough stalks of goldenrod grew in the brush a few feet from Ramona's grave. Billy picked some, scattering the yellow wild flowers over the earth. 'Flowers for the dead,' he said, 'and for the living.' He gave Bonnie the remaining stalk, and saw her strange and beautiful eyes shine.
They stood together, as the clouds moved overhead in a slow and graceful panorama of white and gray. Snow flurries began to spin before the wind, clinging to their hair and eyelashes, and Billy remembered the infant step of his Mystery Walk—when he and his father had left the cabin to walk in the snow and had passed the Booker house. Now he had someone else to walk beside—someone who could understand him and believe in him, as much as he in her.
'I knew you'd come back,' Bonnie said. 'I knew it. You left the piece of coal, and I didn't think you'd leave without it. I kept it by my bed all the time, until one morning when I woke up and it wasn't there. I had a dream that night. . . .'
'About what?'
'You,' she replied. 'And me, too. We were . . . together, and we were old. We were tired, but it was a good tired, like you've done a hard day's work and you know you'll have a peaceful sleep. I don't know where we were, but we were sitting in the sun and we could see the ocean. We were holding hands.' She shrugged, a blush creeping across her freckled cheeks. 'I don't know, but . . . after that dream, I knew you'd be all right. I knew you'd come back. Funny, huh?'
'Why?'
'It's the first dream I ever had that I wasn't afraid of,' Bonnie said.
It was time to go. They walked down the hill to the car and got in. His Mystery Walk was about to carry him—and possibly Bonnie as well—far away from Hawthorne, he realized. Life and Death were part of the same puzzle, part of the same strange and miraculous process of growth. He hoped someday to work in the parapsychology labs himself, to go to school, to study as much as he could; he wanted to help others understand that Death wasn't an ending, and that Life itself was a wonderful mystery full of chances and challenges.
'Have you ever wanted to see England?' he asked her.
'Why?'
He smiled faintly. 'Dr. Hillburn told me there are supposed to be more haunted houses in England than in any country on earth.'
They drove away from the cemetery. Billy looked back over his shoulder, through the snow's thin white curtain, until the marble marker was out of sight. So much to be done! he thought. So much to be learned!
Billy turned his attention to the road that stretched out ahead, out of Hawthorne and into the world. And he would carry with him his mother's words of courage:
Robert R. McCammon majored in journalism at the University of Alabama. After graduation, he worked at various jobs before being hired by
