My Student Who Died in a Car Crash Actually Called Me

I'm an elementary school homeroom teacher.

Every summer, I remind my students again and again: no swimming on your own, no going out alone.

Less than a month into break, one of my well-behaved girls sent me a video of herself swimming in a backwoods pond.

It scared the life out of me. I called her right away and spent over an hour talking her into going home.

That night I brought it up in the class group chat a few more times, calling her out by name. But her mother's reply made my skin crawl

"Ms. Rodriguez, you are so negligent, so heartless. Vivi died in a car crash three days ago, and you're still here scolding her?"

I froze, and a cold wave went straight down my spine.

Then who was the person I'd talked to for over an hour that afternoon?

...

I couldn't say a word for several minutes.

It was the middle of summer, I didn't even have the air conditioning on, yet my whole body had gone cold.

Then, without warning

The ringtone made me jump. Hilary Perry's face was there on the screen, the icon trembling with the call.

She was a girl who loved to laugh, two little snaggleteeth showing when she smiled, so cute.

But right now, the more I looked, the more my scalp prickled.

The second I answered, mournful, heavy funeral music came through, the wail of a horn rising and falling, near then far, and it terrified me even more.

"Ms. Rodriguez! What exactly is your problem? Vivi is dead, and you're still scolding her? Do you want her spirit to have no peace?"

"No, no, I really didn't know."

I apologized fast, so frightened I could barely string words together.

The call log from midday was still there. It really had lasted over an hour.

The call had come from Hilary Perry's kids' smartwatch. I checked. Not a single digit was wrong.

But how could any of this be real?

I couldn't believe it, so I asked her mother again.

"Vivi's mother, I honestly didn't know. You're saying Vivi died in a car crash three days ago?"

"That's right! She went out to buy her little brother some popsicles, and this horrible thing happened. And the driver hit and ran. They still haven't found him."

Her mother was beside herself, sobbing and shouting until her voice cracked, and still she kept crying out, like someone had a hand around her throat.

"You have no idea how terribly Vivi died! That driver hit her and ran, and then, too scared to take the blame, he dragged her off to somewhere with no one around and left her there to die alone."

"In heat like that, over a hundred degrees! She was knocked unconscious, and then her fever climbed until her organs were practically cooking She was gone within two hours of reaching the hospital."

"God! How could anyone do that to my daughter? And you, her own teacher, scolding a dead child in the group chat! What is wrong with you? You have no heart at all!"

She tore into me, and I didn't dare argue back, my mind still stuck on that phone call.

To get to the bottom of it, and to apologize to Hilary Perry's mother, I asked for her address and made the trip out the next day.

Ina Henson, our class life supervisor, came with me.

On the way there Ina looked strange too. Whenever I spoke to her she was somewhere else entirely, her eyes wide with fear.

I pressed her a little, then told her about the video and the call Hilary had sent me the day before, and Ina grabbed my hand like she'd just seen a ghost!

It startled me into slamming the brakes, and I nearly hit the median strip.

"You got a call too?!"

Ina was stunned.

"What do you mean? You got a call from Hilary Perry too?"

"Yes."

Ina nodded, even more frightened than I was.

"Not just during the day yesterday. I got another call from her at night, I swear. I didn't sleep a wink."

"Could it be some prank of theirs? Maybe when we get there we'll find out it's all a misunderstanding!"

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.