The relationship between my mother and my grandmother hadn’t always been easy, but I knew how much they loved each other. Saying goodbye would break Mom’s heart, and I needed to be there to hold her hand.
The clock on the wall said 8:17 AM when we turned into the corridor that led to Gran’s room. Our footsteps echoed along the tiled floor, the pale yellow walls, the framed pictures of flowers and landscapes rushing by as the seconds trickled on.
“She didn’t suffer,” the nurse said as she stopped before the door, her hand resting on the yellow handle. Everything seemed too yellow for my taste, something I hadn’t noticed until today. “When we checked in this morning, she had passed on.”
“How do you know she didn’t suffer?” My words came out uncontrolled, harsh. As if it was the nurse’s fault Gran had finally surrendered to her condition.
The nurse squeezed my arm with a gentle hand and smiled, pity in her eyes. “Your grandmother has been struggling with her heart insufficiency for a long time. Our staff checked with her every hour or two during the nights with her since Mr. Frank’s death.” I remembered how affected she had been when he’d died. “She was fast asleep when I did my last round. She probably didn’t even wake up.”
Mom’s breath hitched beside me. “Can we … can we see her now?”
The nurse nodded, releasing my arm and pushing down the door handle. “We left everything as it was so you can say your goodbyes.”
Mom nodded at her and stepped through the door, one hand resting lightly at her throat, the other sliding out of my arm as she rushed to Gran’s side, picking up the gray hand of what had once been her mother.
On sluggish feet, I followed her into the room but didn’t get far, for by my grandmother’s bed, two young men were hovering, both of them seemingly unaware of my mother sitting right beside them as they loomed over Gran’s body with an eagerness of a scene of nightmares. One with fair hair, his shape familiar, standing with his back to me, and the other with hair black as the night, his eyes locking on mine in shock as he noticed I was staring.
Chapter Seven
For a long moment, I just stood, heart racing as I stared, unable to tear my gaze off the dark pits that were the boy’s eyes. But I wasn’t the only one who seemed to be in shock. The boy’s face was pale with the shock of being caught doing—what was it that he was doing there?—but there was also excitement in there, brightening his eyes as he stepped back from the bed and leaned against the pale yellow wall. He lifted a finger to his lips, gesturing for me to be quiet, and braced a foot behind him as he crossed his arms over his black-clad chest.
I swallowed and blinked as he freed me from his gaze, finally able to take in the second boy. The familiar one who had looked up at the other’s sudden retreat.
“Leon,” I whispered, and horror filled his eyes as he saw me there.
Mom didn’t react, probably not having heard me. She didn’t seem to notice the two boys either, her attention fully on the dead body.
Leon crossed the room and joined me by the door so fast it was impossible to follow his movements. “What are you doing here?” he whispered and glanced nervously back over his shoulder at the back-hard boy, who was watching intently and with no lack of amusement now.
I shook my head. “That’s what I was going to ask you,” I responded and wondered if I was hallucinating.
Mom looked up, her gaze finding me easily, unbothered by my tall, blond best friend who was partly blocking her from view. “What were you going to ask?”
Thick black lines of smeared mascara were now streaking down her cheeks.
I looked at Leon then at Mom and back at Leon. He shook his head at me, a plea in his eyes.
What was going on?
“Nothing, Mom.” I glanced over my shoulder as I stepped past Leon, who was holding out a hand as if to comfort me, but I didn’t let him touch me. There was something very wrong.
If Mom couldn’t see them—she obviously couldn’t, for she hadn’t even stopped a second to acknowledge Leon, nor his black-eyed companion, who was smirking from behind the bed, head now resting against the wall as he played with some strings of leather attached to his sleeve.
Cold rushed through me as I stepped beside my mother and finally turned my eyes away from the boys, taking in Gran’s ashen face, her closed eyes, relaxed, peaceful features.
No pain, the nurse had said. I dearly hoped for Gran that the woman had been right.
I more felt than saw Leon behind me, drifting closer with soundless steps.
“I will explain everything, Laney,” he whispered, and again, Mom didn’t react. And I did my best to ignore him. If Mom couldn’t see them, and I could, that meant that they couldn’t really be here. A wishful thought maybe, that Leon was here with me to wrap his strong arms around me as my tears were falling. But the other boy—
Maybe they both weren’t here—not really. Not the way I was, or my mother, or the nurses out in the hallways. Maybe they were dead just like after the accident—
A cold so icy that I started shivering ran through my body.
If Leon was dead … something terrible had to have happened between when he had dropped me off after our trip to Towson last night and this morning when he was supposed to sit beside me in English class.
My gaze lifted to study the other boy, who seemed to have overcome his shock completely and was now giving me a lazy grin before he caught Leon’s eye over my shoulder.
“You owe me,” he said to Leon before he pushed away from the wall and sauntered out of the room, tilting his head and winking at me as he passed by the bed.
I didn’t know what to think, what to believe as I watched the boy, who was there and yet seemed to be visible exclusively to me, disappear through the closed door as if the principles of physics didn’t apply to him at all.
I gave Leon a questioning look as Mom’s quiet sobs faded to a background noise that reminded me there was a reason I was here, and it wasn’t to witness something I wasn’t supposed to be able to see.
“Are you dead?” I whispered, hardly believing I was speaking the words.
Mom didn’t look up, her hand wrapped around Gran’s, murmuring to her as if she could still hear us.
Leon shook his head again and opened his mouth, about to speak, but stopped before even a word came out, his eyes darting to Gran.
My head whipped around, my gaze following his, curious and frightened at the same time to see what had caught his attention.
There, where Gram’s body was lying, lifeless and quiet, on the bed, her shape had started moving away from her … not her shape. A second version of her, translucent and glimmering, slightly silver as she peeled herself from her body.
I sucked in a breath at the sight, my hand automatically searching for Leon’s, but he had disappeared from behind me, now standing on the other side of the bed, eyes intent on the flickering form hovering over Gran’s dead body right between us.
Mom hadn’t moved, probably hadn’t realized there was something more going on here. Not too absorbed in mourning her mother but oblivious to what was happening.
Leon pinned me with his gaze. “I am sorry for your loss, Laney,” he whispered and leaned in toward Gran’s soul, blowing a gust of air onto the translucent form.
The cold in my body eased for a moment, but only because I was so violently shaking that I had started sweating from the strain. This was worse than the accident. There were my best friend and my grandmother, invisible to my mother, and I couldn’t find it in me to simply turn away and pretend this wasn’t happening, the way we had done with the accident. All I could do was stare at Gran’s soul as she opened her eyes and looked at me fiercely before saying, “Be careful who you give your heart to, Laney.” Her words were still lingering like a thread of silver as her form began to collapse into a shimmering star, which hovered between Leon and me.
Leon gave me a wary look as he leaned closer to the star. “Look away, Laney,” he said and waited for a se
cond. But I couldn’t look away. I had to see what was happening. I had to see—every little detail.
He opened his mouth and inhaled deeply, and Gran’s soul slipped in between his lips, disappearing, until Leon’s gaze was no longer the deep brown of Italian coffee but flickered with the silver light that was no longer filling the room.
“I will explain,” he promised, scrutinizing my frozen features for another moment before he dissolved into thin air before me, leaving me to the suddenly deafening sobs of my mother and the empty shell that used to be my grandmother.
Chapter Eight
The door banged as I barged from the room, tears streaming from frustration as much as from grief.
“Laney!” Mom’s voice was a weak tether struggling to hold me back as she called my name over and over again.
I kept walking. And walking. And walking. Until I was out of the building that now no longer seemed friendly with its flowerbeds in the gardens and its sunshine-yellow doors, with its smiling staff and the cozy room where Gran had kept pictures of Mom and me on the tiny bedside table. Until I was walking from the parking lot out into the street, following it with surprising energy.
There was only one image in my mind: Gran’s flickering, silver soul looking me in the eye.
Be careful who you give your heart to, Laney.
Were those the last words from her? Her final message for me when she realized I could see her. Not, I love you. Or, Take care of your mother. Or, I wish we had more time.
No. Be careful who you give your heart to, Laney.
And I had been too petrified to say anything. To tell her ‘thank you’ for those final years, thank you for countless conversations. To tell her how much I loved her. To ask her why she had warned me about Leon…
Well, it seemed that was a secret that, as of today, was no longer a secret. What had he done to her?
The image of him inhaling her soul before he disappeared wouldn’t leave my head.
A car honked loudly as it rushed past, making me jump into the grass and pause for a moment.
The nursing home already lay a good half-smile behind and I wasn’t certain if the shapes in the parking lot were even truly visible—to the rest of the world. I could no longer tell if anyone I saw was alive or was a ghost, a soul, whatever.
I scrubbed my fingers over my face, trying to wipe away what had happened, what I had seen—and Mom obviously hadn’t.
Dirt covered my sneakers as I trudged forward on the grass, no longer daring to step onto the road itself, my fingers clammy from clutching my bag against my chest, and the chill air caressing my tear-wet cheeks like the fingers of a ghost. I shuddered.
It took minutes, maybe longer, before a car stopped beside me, and Mom’s voice sounded through the open window, “Hop in, Laney, and let’s talk about it.”
What should I talk about? She had no clue what had happened to Gran.
I gingerly stepped around the car and climbed into the passenger seat anyway, my eyes on my bag, finding the gray and purple pattern suddenly more fascinating than anything else.
“You scared me there for a minute,” Mom said, her voice calmer than before at the nursing home, “when you ran out.”
I didn’t look up—not yet—unable to face her grief. The same grief I should be experiencing when all that I could muster was frustration and fear of what I had seen. Disbelief.
“Sorry, Mom.” It was all I could bring myself to say.
“I’m sorry, too.” She reached over with one hand and stroked my cheek the way she used to when I was a little girl. “She loved you so much, you know.” She smiled a smile punctured by the pain of loss.
I nodded.
“What now?” I wondered. It was the one question that applied to both Gran’s death and what I had witnessed in her room.
Mom pulled in at Santoni’s on the way back to town, parking right by the white pillars at the entrance, and turned to face me, one hand still on the wheel. “Now, we take a deep breath and have breakfast before we do anything else.”
I saw the tears returning to her eyes now that she no longer needed to focus on driving, but she wiped them away with the back of her hand and reached into her bag to dig out her phone.
As she dialed the number of the school, I sat, immobile, and watched her brave the situation the way she braved her war rooms at work. I listened to her calm voice explaining to the dean that I wasn’t going to come in today and promising him that she would make sure I got my homework assignments from Jo or Leon.
Jo, I wanted to scream, anxious to avoid Leon now that I no longer knew who or what he was. I remained silent.
When Mom was done, she motioned for me to get out of the car, and I followed her into the store, right into the bakery section where she ordered two raspberry Danish and two coffees—something we sometimes ordered when we were too lazy to cook breakfast at home on weekends. My attention drifted as we were waiting for the order, eyes grazing over the rows of shelves just to have something to do while the emptiness in my chest started spreading.
Right between the popcorn and the display of delicious spreads, a shadow appeared almost as if I were looking through smoky glass. My pulse quickened, fingers digging into my forearms as I clutched them before my stomach, half-expecting to be punched in the guts.
In the background, I acknowledged Mom telling the staff about Gran’s passing. Some of them knew her from before she moved into the nursing home. I heard their condolences and their comforting tones, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the spot where the shadows thickened and began winding as if testing the air.
“Laney?” I hardly heard Mom as she held out my coffee but turned as she touched my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
With slow fingers, I took the takeaway cup from her and nodded my thanks. I lifted the cup to my lips, ready for the hot latte, something to ground me, when behind her shoulder, a familiar face peeked through the shelves.
It took me a second to realize it was the same young man with shadow-gray eyes who was observing me from the shadows of the aisles.
I cringed as hot liquid trickled onto my hand instead of into my mouth, at the sight of the second boy who had stood by Gran’s bed.
You owe me, he had told Leon. Owe him what?
I tried to look away, but the dark intensity of his gaze pinned me, his lips curling slightly as if he found something particularly amusing.
For a moment.
When he realized I was staring right back, his smirk faded, replaced by something more, something cold, hostile.
I was lifting a foot to take a step in the boy’s direction, not knowing exactly what I was going to do or say once I made it to the aisle. But Mom’s hand offering a raspberry Danish on a small paper plate made me hesitate before I set the foot down. It was one moment too long. One moment during which the shadows dissolved and the boy was gone.
It took me half the day to shake the sense of paranoia. In every dark corner, I saw him. His pale features—not in detail, for I hadn’t seen him from up close, just a stark contrast of black and chalk white. And his amusement, which I could have picked up from a mile away.
But he wasn’t the only one I was scared of seeing. Leon had texted me about a hundred times since I had left the nursing home, not to mention as many missed calls. At some point, I had tossed the phone into the plain, black dresser that stood against the teal wall across from my bed.
After our Danish-breakfast, Mom and I had spent the day sitting on the couch, talking about Gran, about the stories she used to tell when Mom was little, the ones that Mom had told me, too. About Gran’s love for black-and-white movies, our afternoons together…
Tears had flowed until we both were devoid of any of them and were just grieving in silence and bitter-sweet smiles.
Now that the sun was setting, I could no longer ignore that this was all true, that Gran was dead. Truly dead. That someone—Leon if he truly had been Leon—had sucked her soul into their lungs with a sim
ple breath and vanished, taking her God-knew-where.
I shuddered as I curled up in bed, pressing my pillow against my chest, and the images of a year ago washed through me.
Cars running toward each other, too fast to avoid a crash. The deafening sound of the impact. The sudden silence as they came to a halt after spinning into the field beside the road. Leon’s hand grabbing mine as he froze beside me. The people, too many. As many as there were seats available in two cars. Not really the people, for their bodies had been crushed, mangled, twisted, torn, but something else. Some half-translucent version of human shapes flickering in the light of the afternoon sun as they hovered above the street, waiting … turning toward us … waiting … waiting … waiting as if they were expecting us to help them. The relief when police had shown up and interviewed people who had witnessed the accident from closer by. The moment we had decided to leave … the emptiness in my chest, my fingers clutching the front of my shirt as if I could soothe the hollow feeling, smooth it out somehow. Our footfalls, loud on the concrete as we walked away … Leon’s face as he realized I had seen what he had seen … and the conversation that followed.
I shook the memories away.
If I was honest with myself, seeing Gran’s soul leave her body shouldn’t have shocked me the way it did. It should uplift me to know that there was something after death other than a black hole of oblivion.
It didn’t. It gave me a headache. It made me want to scream. To thrust my fists into my mattress the way I had a year ago after Leon and I had shared what we had seen and decided no one in their right mind was going to believe us. When we had decided silence was the only way to deal with it. To make it un-happen again.
Now. There was no way I could deny any longer either of the things that had happened. Gran’s death and the emptiness it left in me; no more afternoons together, no more discussions about her favorite movies, about the best way to pot plants in spring. And the knowledge that there were things—invisible things—that had been there at the nursing home. Gran’s soul. But something more. Leon, who had been invisible to Mom but not to me, and the other boy who seemed to have had some kind of conflict with my best friend.
Torn: A young adult paranormal romance (Breath of Fate Book 1) Page 4