Song for the Dead

A searingly original story of the tragedies and indomitable ecstasies of youth on the verge of adulthood, Song for the Dead captures the tempest of being a seventeen-year-old boy in a haunting and lyrical still frame.

Declan cannot accept the loss of his older brother Mason. Mason’s suicide note said only: I AM NOT GONE, which tortures Declan with the possibility that his brother ran away, that the footage of the boy jumping from the bridge was someone else, and somehow Mason is still alive.

For Declan the possibility is both hope and torture. He wants so badly to believe it that he cannot accept the reality of life without Mason. Declan seeks only to escape the present by taking refuge in the past or running headlong into the future. Mason exists in the past and the future, but not in the devastation of the present.

Declan can’t move on. Mason seems to be all around him, walking beside him, playing along at band practice, looking out over the water with him at their old surfing spot on the Jersey shore. A song that Mason wrote is growing in popularity and may become a breakthrough hit. Someone is sending him messages on Instagram, claiming to be Mason. It is only a cruel hoax, Declan thinks, but the Instagram ghost knows secrets only Mason could know. Could it be true? Is Mason alive? Maybe Declan can reach Mason somehow, or manage to let him go, if he finishes his brother’s last song.

Andrew Cusick lives and teaches on the Jersey Shore. His work has been published in Booth, The Hunger, Sky Island Journal, trampset, and elsewhere, and he has previously been nominated for Best Small Fictions. Song For The Dead is his debut novel.