My Student Who Died in a Car Crash Actually Called Me

Ina and I nodded at each other, both of us letting out a breath, and stepped on the gas to get to Hilary's house fast. We'd barely reached the edge of the village when we saw scraps of white funeral paper scattered across the ground, and the broken wail of a horn drifting into our ears. Under the big tree at the entrance, a few old men and women sat gossiping about it. "That Perry child really was short-lived. A thing like this taking her life, a healthy girl just gone like that." "I know it. She died with such grievance, so much resentment left in her. I reckon the kids in this village will be scared out of their wits for months." "It's fine, didn't her family hire a medium to send her off? I heard they brought the body back from the funeral home yesterday." "But they still haven't found the driver who did it! In a world this advanced, if you can't find him in three days, you usually never will." ... They went back and forth in scraps of talk, and it sank Ina's heart and mine right down to the bottom. We stumbled into Hilary's house and saw white cloth hung everywhere. An ice-packed coffin sat in the main room, her parents keeping vigil beside it, both of them crying. The moment they saw us, Hilary's mother rushed over with red eyes and demanded to know why I'd scolded Hilary. She grabbed my hand and shoved me toward the coffin. I lost my footing, and suddenly I was face to face with Hilary through the glass! "Ah——" I couldn't help the scream that tore out of me, scared out of my skin. The girl in that coffin really was Hilary! That cheerful, lively student of mine, her face gray now, cheek marked with an injury, lying inside. Terrified, I hurried to apologize. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to scold Vivi. I only said a few words because yesterday I got a call from her, and she sent me a video of herself swimming in the backwoods pond." "Nonsense!" Hilary's mother went ashen with fright. "My Vivi was in a car crash three days ago. She's dead, so how could she call you or send you a video?" Ina nodded desperately and tried to explain too. "Yes! Yes! I got a call from Hilary last night as well. She was laughing, telling me all about going swimming during the day." "That's exactly why we came today, to find out what's going on! It's the honest truth, both of us got the calls." The second Ina and I said it, every eye in the room changed. They stared at us, cold as ice, and pushed us into a room, calling in that medium to take a look and tell us what this was. First we checked the call log and dialed the number back, but no one ever picked up. Then I went to replay the video, but the screen filled with static, not a single image left. Turned all the way up, all I could hear was a "glug, glug" sound underwater, completely different from the first time I'd watched it. The medium listened carefully, counted on his fingers, and nodded like he understood. "The child doesn't want to leave. She died with too much grievance, the driver still hasn't been found, so her resentment runs deep. But her awareness isn't strong yet, she still senses that she's already dead." "So she took water as a medium to carry her through, wanting to share the fun she'd had with the people she loved most, and she called the two of you teachers! Looks like this child was very fond of you both." "Go and look now. Isn't there a river or pond near the crash site? There must have been heavy rain that washed the child's blood from the accident into that pond." Hearing the medium say those few words, Ina and I were scared nearly out of our souls. We wanted to leave right then, but Hilary's parents stopped us. "Ms. Rodriguez, Ms. Henson, you can't go yet. You have to stay here for the night!" "Why?" "The medium says the child can't bear to part with you. She wants you to see her off at the funeral, so she can leave with peace of mind."

They wouldn't budge, and they'd even brought in two relatives to watch us. In the end they simply kept us there. A length of white mourning cloth was draped over our shoulders, and two chairs were set on either side of Hilary's coffin, one left, one right, boxing it in. They told me and Ina to sit right there and keep vigil, saying that once we made it through tonight, everything would be fine. Neither of us had ever felt so wretched. Sitting in those chairs, every inch of me felt wrong, my mind stretched taut to the breaking point. The whole family piled onto their scooters and set off for the riverside pond, and the horn band went off to rest too, ready to come back and play loud and long through the night. That left only me and Ina in the main hall, and the body in the ice coffin. We hardly dared to breathe. All we could hear was the low roar of the ice coffin running. A dozen or so minutes later, the roar cut off all at once. Ina and I both froze. We glanced at each other and realized the power had gone out. Before long, corpse fluid began leaking from the ice coffin, and a foul smell spread through the whole hall in an instant. "Ms. Rodriguez..." Ina's voice trembled uncontrollably. She'd been on the verge of tears for a while. "Let's go, please? Let's go while they're not here! Just now I felt like the two of us, sitting stock-still by this ice coffin, were like a pair of paper effigies. I'm so scared." Honestly, I felt the same way. I wanted to leave too, but given who I was, I couldn't. If we just walked out, they'd probably call the school to complain again. "Hold on a little longer! If we go back and they call the school to complain, we'll likely both get written up. Something that was nothing turns into something." "But I'm really scared. What if Hilary follows us?" "Come on! We never wronged Hilary and she never wronged us. She was a good kid. She wouldn't do anything to us." As I said it, the two of us turned at the same moment to look at the ice coffin, meaning to steady our nerves. Instead we caught sight of something horrifying. With the cold gone and nothing to hold its temperature, water kept beading up all over the surface of Hilary's body, slick and oozing oil, as if it were melting. Her head slipped somehow, and all of her hair slid slowly off, exposing a bare, bald scalp. The sight rocked me. Ina was too terrified to even turn her head, her whole body rigid. "That's it, that's it. Did Hilary hear us? Did she get angry thinking we're leaving?" "Don't talk nonsense!" I snapped at her and fixed my eyes on Hilary, looking closely. After a moment I realized something was wrong with the body. "That's a wig she's wearing. There's a scar on her scalp. It looks surgical, running across the top of her head. The wound doesn't look that old, it hasn't fully healed yet." "How is that possible? Did she have some major surgery? Or is it a scar from the accident?" "No, it's not from the accident. This has already closed up. It just hasn't healed completely." Thinking back, Hilary had always been healthy. She'd never had any major surgery, and her family had never said a word about anything like that. So the body in front of us wasn't Hilary? The moment the thought surfaced, my heart lurched with fright. I asked Ina to help me. I wanted to open the ice coffin and take a look.

"Don't... please don't! Ms. Rodriguez, don't do it, I'm really scared, this has nothing to do with us, let's not open the coffin, I'm begging you." "But something's wrong. This doesn't look like Hilary." "How could it not be her? She looks exactly like Hilary! And she's already dead. The dead don't come back. Let's stop messing around!" Ina was crying with fright, over and over telling me not to touch it, and then the sound of an electric scooter came from outside. There was nothing I could do but let it go. After Hilary's family got back, they checked the meter and found the electric bill hadn't been paid. Once they settled it, everything went back to normal. Near where the accident happened, they found Hilary's phone-watch in the pond. They pulled the SIM card out, put it in a phone, and called mine and Ina's numbers. When the screen showed the same number that had called me yesterday, every hair on my body stood up. The self-styled medium drifted around beside us, still explaining, insisting Hilary really had called us last night. "Like I said, this child loved you two teachers very much, so she used water as her medium, hiding in the water to call you!" "It's fine, don't be afraid. The child doesn't even know she's dead. She only knows she found something fun and wanted to share it with you." Hearing that didn't put us at ease. It only made us more afraid. A dead student, laughing while she called us, for over an hour. Nobody could stay calm through that. That night the medium set up in the main hall, said it was a rite to send Hilary's soul on, so she wouldn't cause any more trouble, so the children in the house and the village would all be safe and free from fright. Ina and I were taken back to Hilary's room, where her parents brought out two documents and asked us to sign. They were applications for accident settlement, and they needed us, her teachers, to sign so they could collect the payout on Hilary's accident insurance. One was a year-long student accident policy, still within the coverage period. The other was an accident policy the family had bought for Hilary on their own, also still in effect. "Ms. Rodriguez, Ms. Henson, don't worry, it's just the normal procedure. If you sign, it makes everything simpler, and it won't affect either of you. It only shows you were aware of it." Ina couldn't grab the pen fast enough. She was nearly at her breaking point. "So if we sign, can we leave?" "Of course you can leave. It's just that it's dark now, driving isn't safe, and the medium is still setting up his rite, so we shouldn't interrupt. Wait a few more hours until dawn, then we send off the body and you can go." "Fine, fine, we'll sign, we'll sign and leave the moment the sun's up. It's just that some things at home piled up all at once and held us here." Ina signed both documents with shaking hands, then handed the pen to me, pressing me to sign quickly too. I gripped the pen and was about to sign when I heard the strange noise from the ceiling again. It was an odd sound, chaotic, and only when I listened closely did it register: someone kicking a shuttlecock. Hilary's mother lifted her head grieving at the ceiling and choked out a line. "It's late. Vivi's come back. She always loved kicking her shuttlecock upstairs." Ina went white with fear, but the more I listened, the more wrong it felt. A person is dead, and can still make that much of a racket? I didn't quite believe it. "I'll go up and take a look. Say a few words to Vivi." I tested them, deliberately moving to run upstairs, and Hilary's mother caught me in one grab. "No, you can't go up! The medium said Vivi would come back tonight, we can't frighten her, let her stay a while longer before we send her off." I didn't listen. I was set on running up there. When I reached the foot of the stairs, Hilary's father and several of her uncles blocked the stairway and surrounded me! I hadn't even meant to look up the stairs when a white figure flashed past... And then the shuttlecock dropped down through the gap in the stairs! "Someone's there? There's someone upstairs?!"