This is Cast of Wonders, the young adult fiction podcast featuring stories of the fantastic. Welcome. Episode 636. I'm Alicia Caporasso, Assistant Editor at Cast of Wonders. Our story for today is Whatever Remains of the Dead by Lindsay Silveira, a Cast of Wonders original.
Lindsay Silvira is a writer and librarian living in Southern California. She has too many hobbies and not enough time, and almost too many books in her to-be-read pile. Her work has previously appeared in Mythic Delirium and Recomposed. As Laura Cabral, she writes horror and dark fantasy with a story featured in the No Sleep podcast. This story is narrated by Kara Grace.
Kara Grace is a green witch from Michigan. As you listen to this, she is probably in the woods somewhere, wading through the lily pads in a quiet pond, or laughing at an inside joke with her favorite grove of trees.
she is a geographer during the day a fine dining waitress by night and an aspiring artist of botanical and prismatic magic every other moment she can find She loves the written word in every form, whether it be poetry, podcasts, fiction, or taking a moment to spin a world with words herself. She has enjoyed reading aloud since she was in middle school, hand in the air every time the teachers asked who wanted to read next.
She loves bringing life to words and sees it as a form of magical alchemy. She loves to cultivate all kinds of herbs and flowers, but her favorite is Datura, sacred moonflowers that only bloom at night during the warm months. You can catch her on X at Datura Delfina. And if you're interested in a celestial sun catcher, head over to her soon-to-be-stocked Etsy shop at Datura Grove, or on Instagram at the same name.
Content warning for the story for gun violence, death, funerals, and the aftermath of school shootings. And now, we have a tale to tell. Whatever Remains of the Dead by Lindsay Silveira Narrated by Kara Gray I fish a black dress from the back of my closet, all bunched up and wrinkled after its long exile. I get out the ironing board and try to iron it without burning.
Mom comes in as I'm cursing under my breath at a wrinkle that won't go away. This small struggle is a nice reprieve from everything. I don't even want to go to the funeral, to any of them, but I don't have an excuse. I wasn't injured. She watches me for a moment and says, in that quiet, gentle tone that's beginning to grate on me, that everyone seems to use around me, you don't have to go, you know.
I do, I reply. His family isn't going to any of the funerals. Not going makes me look guilty. No one thinks that you're... I cut her off. I necromanced their children's corpses, she went. It probably wasn't the best choice of words on my part. And you saved your classmates. She says it with conviction. Like she's proud of me. And it makes me wish I could find it in me to cry.
Not all of them. A beat. I stare down at the black fabric, smoothing it down. I'm going. She nods. All right. While you're at it, you can iron my slug. That's a bad idea. She smiles, probably thinking that if I can still banter, I must be doing okay. I'm not sure exactly how funerals work until we're there.
I have vague memories of going to a great aunt's funeral when I was maybe three or four. That would have been a better way to discover my gift, I think. Making his distant relative that I didn't really care about sit up in her open coffin. It would have been kind of funny, maybe, in hindsight, but...
People's gifts, if they have them, most often show up when they're in a stressful situation or when they're desperate. Most people go through their entire lives without learning that they have powers like mine. Lucky me, I was in a stressful situation and surrounded by dead bodies. Hannah's yearbook picture is blown up and displayed at the altar surrounded by flowers, but the casket is closed. I am glad that this is the only image I have of her. Smiling, wearing a nice purple blouse.
We were in debate together and first period math. I didn't see her fall to the ground. I didn't see her blood, her brains, seeping into the shitty industrial carpet. She was in the other classroom. She might still be alive, for all I know, and whatever is in that casket is just a dummy or a fake or someone I didn't know, as callous as that sounds. But it's not.
That's her mom and dad leaning on each other in the front row. Her dad chaperoned one of our middle school field trips. And there will be more of these funerals. That's when it really hits home that my classmates aren't coming back. It's not fair that I can make the dead walk again, but their parents and all the people who cared about them can't hug them again or say goodbye in any meaningful way.
I keep forgetting that I'm an angry crier. I bawl at injustice, at things that shouldn't be the way they are, and he stole these kids from their parents, from the rest of us. And even though it pales in comparison to what these other people are going through, he stole my old life too. There is a press of people around the door after the service finishes and the family and close friends prepare to go to the cemetery. It makes me nervous. It makes me feel vulnerable.
There were police present, guarding the door and in the crowd, but they waited too long to come save us when we needed them. The dead took better care. Someone takes my wrist and I make to pull away. It takes me a moment to recognize her. Leah's mom. The expression on her face is easily one of the most terrible things I've ever seen. She's broken in a way that maybe no one can fix. She can't finish the question. Can't even express her wish, her hope. Her mouth won't hold it. It's too painful.
I don't know how to tell her that they didn't really come back. They were just puppets of my rage and desperation and need to survive. And maybe there was something in that. Maybe they'd let me take control to avenge them or protect whoever was left or maybe not. Maybe there was no cosmic meaning in any of this. No one really knows how any of this works.
My dad pulls me away, and we make our way through the crowd. Gabby approaches me. I wave half-heartedly at her parents, and her mom smiles at me. Want to have lunch? Why not? But I want a table on the back somewhere people can't see me. Gabby purses her lips for a second. I thought you were going to say close to an emergency exit. Thought to.
Gabby was in P.E. when it happened. Her entire class dispersed into the neighborhood around the school like we'd been trained to do. Some of them ran all the way home. They were apparently the first to raise the alarm that there was a shooting at the school. We go to a diner not too far from the church. It's getting hot, and neither of us can drive on our own yet, but there's plenty of trees downtown to shade us. I feel conspicuous and black, but we're not the only ones in black here.
I don't recognize anyone from school but I refuse to look at anyone except the lady taking orders at the counter. Sometimes people our age come here but it's mostly seniors right now. We pick a table at the back. It's not as isolated as I'd like but I think it's because everyone else had the same idea. It probably would have been better if I asked my mom to pick us up something and we went to my house, Gabby says apologetically. It's fine. I needed to get outside.
I want to think I'm imagining the scrutiny I'm feeling. Surely the only people who know are the cops who eventually showed up and the survivors from my classroom. And Leah's mom, somehow. But if she knows, there would have to be others. It's not a big town, and rumors can spread quickly. I told Gabby what happened, but I know she wouldn't tell anyone. When her food arrives, I can do little more than pick.
The running eggs aren't appealing somehow. I can tell Gabby wants to say something but doesn't want to say it with an audience. We're both nearly silent. I don't know if I'll ever recover my ability to make small... I manage to finish most of the food, and then we pay and leave. On the way out the door, I say, let's go to the pharmacy. I need to pick up a few things.
It's a short walk away. I browse the aisles, picking up some skin care products and some painkillers. I've been having awful headaches lately, but the real reason I'm here is for the rack of newspapers by the register. My parents were once religious readers of the local newspaper, particularly the shrinking gardening section, but I haven't been able to find a copy in the house since it happened. They've been hiding them or throwing them...
Gabby shoots me a look as I grab today's edition. I avoid looking at her, and I'm too focused on the faces of the dead on the front page. The last time I saw Caden's face was when his corpse rose from the ground next to me. Some of the others weren't recognizable when they answered my call. After I pay and we walk out, she waits a bit and then says, so what if people know? I look at her. I want to know what they're saying. Not knowing and wondering is worse.
I scan the front page. I'm not named, but of course I'm not. I'm a minor. In fact, all it says is that a student stopped the shooter. I skim the rest of the article, which continues on another page, but it's all information I already know. I think your parents think they're doing the right thing. I'm not sure how much they're even keeping from you. Yeah, I reply, but I want you to tell me what people are saying. Are you sure you want to know?
That makes my stomach do an uncomfortable flip. I wouldn't have asked you if I wasn't. I don't want to wonder about it, like I said. People don't blame you for what you did to him. It seems like a few people are uncomfortable with it, those who heard what the scene looked like, but the consensus is that he deserved it after what he did. I processed that for a moment. It could have been worse.
The weird thing is, I'm not sure I did it. I don't remember ordering them to do that or anything. On some level, I think I wanted them to hurt him but I didn't give them any specific ideas. People often have hazy memories of traumatic stuff. Maybe. Some people even think you're a hero. I don't like that word. It comes with expectations I'm not sure I live up to. That's worse. We could stop talking about it. I don't know what else we'll talk about, but... yeah.
We go to her house and watch a stupid movie. On some level, I'm aware that I'm just doing things to fill time to get through the day until I can sleep again. And maybe I'll dream about things like not being prepared for a test or showing up to school in my pajamas and not the sound a bone makes when it breaks. or the way he screamed when they hadn't killed him yet. Maybe after enough nights, life will look something like normal again.
There are two funerals today. Three, really. Jay and Sam were best friends since kindergarten, and their parents decided to have a joint funeral. They wouldn't be buried together, but their families could mourn together. This church is smaller, and I'm sitting closer to the coffins this time.
I'd be more comfortable sitting in the back farther from the family but none of them seemed to recognize me. I had a few classes with Jay and Sam but we didn't really hang out. I had the kind of relationship with them where we nod at each other in the hall and work together in class.
I never thought it was possible to mourn someone who is little more than an acquaintance, but maybe watching someone die does that to you. You start to realize how much that person was a part of the fabric of your life when that fabric is ripped beyond repair. Sam was killed on his way back from the bathroom. Jay was in class with me.
Jay didn't turn his phone off. He never did. Teachers rarely caught him on it, but he had some of the best grades anyways. I think he was one of the first shot in our classroom, and I think it was quick. When I collapsed to play dead, his phone was near my head.
When there was a lull in the shooting, I opened my eyes just a crack, trying to figure out what was happening without giving myself away. Was he done? Was he reloading? Was he waiting for me and the others who might be alive to show some signs of life? All I could see was the screen on Jay's phone lighting up with message after message as whoever was texting him realized he wouldn't be replying and that was what did it, I think.
That was the moment my power rose in me like a bloody tide and sunk little hooks into the corpses of my class. They rose with me, shielding me from the killer's bullets before they closed in on him. One of them knocked the gun out of his hands and the rest showed him just how weak he was without it. That's what no one's talking about. By the time my classmates were done with him, by the time I was done with him, he was as wrecked as any corpse in the room.
It will be a closed casket for him, too. I don't even know when he's being buried, but I don't need or want to. Maybe I should feel worse about it. He has a family, too. No one wants to see their child like him. As one of Sam's cousins goes up to sing, tears already running down her face, I become aware of something. I get the distinct impression that someone is knocking at my subconscious, trying to let me know they're there. It takes me a while to recognize it or admit he's there.
It's Jay, or some peace, or echo, or ghost. I don't know how I know, but I know. He's as familiar to me as the sensation of my arm resting on a wooden desk. the faint sensation that lets me know where it is and that it exists. The connection's still there. I could make him walk again, but no one wants to see that. There's too much of him missing. And the longer I pay attention to it, I start to realize I can sense Sam too. The connection is weaker, but it's there.
Dad shifts next to me, reminding me of where I am. I hold it together for the rest of the funeral. It's not like I'm going to accidentally raise a corpse, but the connection is bothering me. When we get home, Dad catches me on the way from the bathroom to my room. I know it's time for an impromptu father-daughter heart-to-heart, but I don't know how to feel about it. I've been keeping my distance a bit. I was sure you didn't want me to read my thoughts.
Dad's gift is mild telepathy. He confessed once that it emerged in college when he was taking a test he hadn't studied for. He can't read minds per se, but he has a good idea of what's on someone's mind. Yes, but I couldn't help but notice you were distressed earlier. I guess I should have asked him about gift related things earlier.
Maybe he knows something. The internet didn't turn up all that much information. This is one of their rare gifts. I start out. Hannah wasn't in my classroom. Neither was Sam. Jay was. And the connection was still there. I could send Sam's body too. I mean, it sounds stupid. I knew there was a body there, but I can't even finish myself. It didn't... Did it hurt? Was it scary?
I let out a breath. Glad he's not freaking out about this. Mom would probably freak out about this. Want me to talk to an expert or something, even though there is no expert to turn to. It's going to sound weird, but it was just insistent, constantly at the back of my mind. I don't want this. Dad leans against the wall. I know. I'm grateful you're alive. I'm grateful that no one else was killed, but I know this is a lot for you.
And I feel like I shouldn't be complaining, like I'm being self-centered, thinking about myself and what this power means. Typical teenager. That's just a part of grieving. You lost your classmates and so much more. I look at him skeptically. None of my close friends died. I don't think that matters. You saw things you shouldn't have to see.
i haven't heard anyone phrase it like that yet but he's right none of us should have had to see what we saw i don't want anyone to call me brave i don't want anyone to call us strong we shouldn't have to be Do you need some time? He asks. No, no, I'm good. He already knows I'm an angry crier. Some kids would hate having a telepath dad, but it has its perks. Built-in emotional intelligence is the best one.
If it helps, if your gift is anything like mine, the feeling will become easier to ignore over time. It's not every day you're around a human body, but I think you'll acclimate. I know. I'm not going to become an EMT or anything. Probably not a good choice for you either way. I shake my head, smiling a bit. I just wish there was more information about it. There is a lot of hearsay, which you probably already looked into.
Some people even think necromancy is a suite of abilities, including mediumship and the ability to invoke the spirits of the dead. Not everyone has the trifecta, though. Trifecta? Mediumship, speaking to the dead, and the ability to raise corporations. Oh, this might not be on the internet, but there were more than a few necromancers in the generations that came back from World War II and the Cold War conflicts. It made sense. Dad works at a clinic that sees a lot of...
Before we wrap up this talk, Dad says, who's tomorrow? Everyone called Coach Fletcher Coach for some reason. I barely knew him aside from passing interactions. Coach tried to stop the shooter. He was getting something from his car during his prep period and they just happened to run into each other in the parking lot.
If Coach had waited a few more minutes or gone earlier, he might still be alive. Any disaster is full of stories like this, of people who avoided dying by mere chance and those who didn't. You can sit it out if you want to. No need to. I'm going to see this through to the end. Even though the series of funerals seemed endless, it wasn't.
The summer inched on. When the shooting happened, we had two weeks of sophomore year left. The seniors were off campus already, and we wanted to be too. Now, I just want to have less time to myself. Gabby and her family go on vacation for a week. They had the tickets and everything bought back in April. She offers to stay behind, but I insist that she goes. No one else tries to make plans with me, but I've kind of shut myself off from everyone, and that's partly honest.
Maybe it'll be easier to reconnect with people once we go back to school. When Gabby gets back, we meet up at the park. I'm okay with going there because there's an area where we can sit that's mostly screened by bushes where no one will bother us. It's dark and almost cool in the shadows of the leaves. How was it? I asked, once we settled in with our beach towels and smoothies. Not bad.
a little boring if anything boring is good yes boring is good i could be fine with boring for the rest of my life I never thought I would say this but I want to go back to school. It'll be weird but... She shook her head. People are saying we're never going back to that school again. They're going to send us all to another one. That's what always happens. I guess I never thought about that before. What happens to a school building after a shooting happens?
What happens when there are too many bullet holes, too many bloodstains, too many tiny fragments of bones just waiting to be discovered? And what happens to everyone left behind? No news on where that will be? Gabby shrugged. We sipped our smoothies in silence for a bit. I'm hoping we end up at the same school, but there's no way we're all going to be sent to one school.
You know what's weird to me? No one seems to talk about Isabella, Gabby says after a time in a quieter voice, like this is a secret. What do you mean? Maybe they're trying not to talk about him, give him more attention than he deserves, you know? But he killed her, and the rest of the people he shot at were collateral damage. I finish for her. Bonus, in his mind, I think. It's weird that when we talk about him, he doesn't have a name anymore. I kind of knew him.
and he had heard the rumors about how he acted towards girls. Isabella wasn't the first girl to tell him no, apparently, but something about her rejection had been the last straw. Maybe he thought she was pretty enough to reject him. She was pretty, of course, but maybe not in his mind.
He was looking for her when he came into my classroom, and he found her. But it doesn't matter why he did it, whatever excuse he had, whatever pain or shame was too great for him to bear. I don't think he ever talked to me, I say. Lucky you. I look over at her. She's wearing big sunglasses so I can't quite read her expression.
what did he do hard to give him the cold shoulder it took a while for him to get the message her voice is flat but it wobbles a bit at the end maybe she's thinking that he might have been hunting for her too I had no idea. I'm not sure if I should hug her or something. I was in PE with him freshman year. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, not until lately, and I never really told anyone, but some of the other girls started hanging out with me to scare him off.
I want to change the subject. This is making me think too much about what could have happened. I think for a second. I talked to Dad about my gift. What did he say? I summarize the conversation for her and tell her about what I sensed at Jay and Sam's funeral. Maybe that means you can speak to the dead or act as a medium too, right?
Or it just means that raising the debt isn't a one-time deal. Not everyone can, but there's a chance, she pauses, thinking it over. So now the question is, do you even want to test it out? I think over the possibilities. People could get to say goodbye if they wanted to, and it's not fair that the victim's families never got the chance to look the shooter in the eye and see him face justice, but I don't want to contact him.
And if the spirits of the victims are hanging around, there's a chance that his is as well. I'm not sure. I don't know how I'd make sure that I get in touch with the right spirit. She nods sharply. You're right. But, using someone's full name could work. That should be enough. Calling his spirit by its true name is good enough in the movie. If it works like that, if the ghosts even want to speak to you or anyone else, Gabby says, it's a good point. Maybe they're gone to wherever the dead go.
Do you think we could get into the school? I ask. Gabby shakes her head. They've removed the police tape, but it's all fenced in. Maybe getting close is enough. Maybe, but sleep on it before you decide anything. I know you probably want to understand what you can do but it shouldn't come at the cost of your mental health. You don't know what's going to happen but you'll find out. It's weighing on my mental health not knowing. I get why you want to understand what happened and make some meaning.
Either way, I'm here to help if you need it. I nod. I think I should have someone there, if I try to talk to the dead or channel a spirit. She nods. There might be some way to snap you out of it, but I'm worried. There's so much we don't know. No one knows much. I'll think about it, though, like you said. I spent the next few days thinking about it and come to the conclusion that I knew I would. I have to do it.
We tell our parents we're going to the movies. My parents seem a little skeptical because I haven't been to the theater in town since before the shooting, but I convince them that spending time in public places is the next step in my recovery. A part of me thinks that I should tell them what we're up to, but they'd probably stop me. At the very least, because what we're doing might be trespassing. And even if they didn't stop me, they'd want a long, awkward conversation I don't want to have.
Dad probably gets a little flash of guilt from me but I try to control it as much as I can. We don't see any signs telling us to keep back, so we walk to the back of the school on an access road by the field. A chain link fence separates us from the campus. There's no one else around, and all lights aside from the streetlights are off. It's jarring to see the school at night, and to not see some of the lights on in the main building. Gabby keeps rubbing her arms. The breeze is getting chilly.
It's only once we sit down on the cement of the sidewalk that I realize I really have no idea what I'm doing. Is there some kind of chant or ritual I need to perform to make a connection with the spirit? Do I call their names? Light a candle? Should I already be feeling something right now? I don't feel the tug at the back of my mind. Either this is something I have complete control over, or it's something I just can't do. Gabby is watching me intently, her eyebrows furrowed below her bank.
Nothing so far. I'm going to try, um, extending my consciousness, I guess? Like astral travel? Kind of. Maybe. I close my eyes, thinking that might help. I picture myself drifting over the fence onto the grass of the field towards the school building. No one and nothing greets me. In my mind, I hesitate at one of the entrances leading into the main school building and then pass through the door. Floating down the hall in my mind's eye, I wonder if I'm remembering it right now.
Maybe that's why this isn't working, because I haven't been here in months. Or maybe because all I can do is turn the dead into a puppet. I open my eyes. There is no ghost, no faint outline of the spirit beside me. I feel no different than before. I don't think you're possessed, Gabby says after a moment. I don't think so either, and it's probably for the back. Gabby waits until I stand and dust off my shorts before she gets up to. She seems relieved but concerned.
We walk back around the front of the school slowly, taking our time. This might be our last good look at it before it's torn down or renovated. I feel a twinge of something. It's not a spirit. It's fragments of bone or blood or teeth in the front parking lot. Tiny. Probably not even visible with the naked eye. I wish this was something deeper, that my connection with the dead wasn't only with their bodies or the remnants of their bodies, but life's not fair.
I paused for a second, wondering if there's something I can do to erase this connection. If... If there's some funerary ritual needed. If the fragments only want to be reunited with the rest of the body. Gabby waits behind me. I focus on the connection. In daytime, I wouldn't see anything, but I can see a fine ribbon of dust rise from the asphalt of the lack. I can't make out the color or the consistency of it. It looks like silver in the moonlight and the faint light from the streetlight.
what is it gabby asks she's looking towards the parking lot shifting her head up and down and side to side trying to figure out what i'm looking at or sensing it's not a spirit it I read through what I could say to her that would make this less disturbing. Tiny pieces. Stuff the cops missed. Gabby pales and then starts crying. I put my arm around her. The dust filters back down without my attention. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do with it.
Maybe we don't need to know what anyone's last moments or final thoughts were. Maybe my imagination is enough. Whatever remains of the dead tells the story and it's awful. Either way, our parts in it are done and we have to navigate what comes next the best we can. We walk back home. I went to high school in the early 90s. My class had about 600 students in it, with a total of about 2,500 students across all four grades.
it was a big school with that many students i didn't know everyone in my class let alone the whole school Most kids in my high school previously attended one of two feeder middle schools. I was an athlete and academically gifted, so the kids I knew and spent time with were those who had gone to my middle school, those who were in my classes, and other athletes.
From my high school experience of 30 plus years ago, we didn't wear ID badges. There were no bag checks or scanners, the doors remained open, and visitors could come at any time. Juniors and seniors could come and go if they didn't have class. In fact, during one quarter of my senior year, I used to go home for two and a half hours in the middle of the day.
and there were no security guards. By the time my youngest sister started high school five years later, the students had to wear IDs to get into the building, and building access was controlled. Students were no longer allowed to come and go during the day. That isn't to say bad things never happened. My freshman year, a boy killed his horribly abusive mother. And a girl died in a one-car accident on the interstate.
But I didn't know either of those kids. And of course, neither of these things happened at the school. When I was in high school, the thought that someone, student or stranger, might come into the school with a gun and start shooting never once crossed my mind. We held fire drills, tornado drills, but never any active shooter drills. I was in college when the Columbine High School massacre occurred on April 20, 1999.
studying abroad in Switzerland, actually. Of course, school shootings had happened before, but Columbine seemed to demarcate the start of the modern pandemic of school shootings in the United States. or at least those that have happened in the age of social media. I felt so far removed from that event, being across an ocean in a country where the idea of that occurring there was an anathema, and more or less still is.
Today it seems that most Americans, if not themselves, are connected to a school or know a person who has been affected by a school shooting. and that includes my own high school. In 2011, a senior walked into the school during lunchtime, shot the principal and vice principal in killing the vice principal, then walked out and killed himself in a parking lot. He had been suspended earlier for driving his car on the football field.
He posted a suicide note to Facebook just before he did it. From Columbine to smaller, though no less tragic events like the shooting in my high school, the news cycle tends to focus on the perpetrators and the victims. What this story does so masterfully is focus on the students who are there in the middle of it all. The immediacy of it, the intimacy of it, and especially the burden of it.
I can't imagine overlaying it onto my lived experience of high school. It is what every kid in America lives with every day. It shouldn't have to be the burden. Join us again soon. We love bringing you the best audio fiction week after week, but we can't do it without your support. Your donations pay our authors, our narrators, our servers and our staff. Please consider supporting us with a monthly donation through either PayPal or Patreon.
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