Cuento de Mi Id

“The Funeral”

The four of them had rarely driven this far away from home before that day and since they were unfamiliar with the territory, it was no big surprise that they got lost. By the time they made it to the funeral home, it was after sunset and the service had already started so Ned and the others had to stand awkwardly outside the chapel until it was over.

Not that there was a large turnout. There were only a small handful of friends and relatives who turned out to wish a final farewell to the deceased, a young blonde women in her early twenties who had apparently fallen from a great height. Plus there was a British-looking gentleman in a tweed suit who looked like a high school librarian while in the corner, a white-haired man in a black leather coat stood against the wall while seeming to put a significant distance between him and the various containers of holy water near the chapel entrance.

Ned waited until the service was over and the crowd was leaving before he walked up to the coffin. After looking around to see if anyone was watching, he then gestured to his partner Emerson who got out his stop watch and waited for Ned to make his next move. Then Ned immediately touched his left forefinger to the corpse while his other two friends, Charlotte and Olive, stood and watched.

The young blonde woman in the coffin opened her eyes and looked around in panic.

"Where am I?" she asked. "How did I get here? What happened to Dawn?"

"I'm sorry, miss, but we only got a minute and we have some questions to ask you," said Ned.

"I don't understand," said the woman. "What did you do with my sister? Where are my friends? Who are you people?"

"Can't you see you're frightening the poor girl?" asked a voice from behind Ned.

Ned turned and saw that the white-haired man had not only stayed behind but was also walking toward him.

As he got closer, Ned just smiled and tried to look him in the eye. But the white-haired man just glared back at him.

"You don't understand," said Ned. "We suspect a case of foul play here and we have to ask the victim some questions before her time is up."

"Why would her time be up in a minute?" asked the man in a deceptively smooth tone.

"Because I have this ability," said Ned. "If I touch a dead person once, they come back to life. If I don't touch that person again within a minute and make him or her dead again, then something dies in his or her place."

"It's time," said Emerson.

"That's it," said Ned. "Time to touch her again."

At this point, the white-haired man smiled and said, "You try to do that and I'll break your bloody neck!"