Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

by Micah Dean Hicks

  They joined the ring of mourners, listening to the pigs say a few words about Henry, the creator most of them had barely known. Her father stared at Jane’s mother from across the circle, wondering if it was really her, but she didn’t look back.

  Your brother’s ghost is close. He’s keeping himself hidden, but he’s in the trees, listening. This is the first time he’s truly felt dead. He hurts.

  Jane felt the ghost’s sympathy for him, an unusual feeling for the spirit. It must be remembering its own funeral, the first time it knew what it was. She let herself have a moment of love for it, feeling it wrapped by her body. She didn’t know if it was a person—or something more or something less—but she knew that she would miss it when it was gone.

  It was hard to focus on what the pigs had to say about Henry. Jane’s mind kept wandering to Trigger, his angry ghost finding in the bleeding man a whipping boy for everything he hated about himself. Was that better than his spirit wandering aimlessly, adrift from everyone he had ever loved? She wanted to believe that, given enough time, Trigger could forgive himself and feel some measure of peace. But he hadn’t been able to let his mistakes go when he was alive. She was afraid, now that he was dead, he’d cling to them forever, devouring himself until the end of time.

  After the ceremony was over, after the pigs sang together one last time and then went back to their campfires and tents, Jane brought her father to meet her mother. He was afraid to see her. He felt that he had left her behind and run out on their family. Jane’s mother felt the same. It was wrong, Jane knew. That wasn’t what had happened at all. Neither of them had done anything but what they had to do. But there would be no convincing them of that.

  Hogboss looked back and forth from Jane’s burned father to her hard-eyed mother. Understanding, he let go of her hand and stepped away from her. He looked down at the earth, his ears flopping over his face in a way that made Jane think of Dennis. Hogboss wasn’t angry. He was prepared to let this woman go if that was best for her. He held his disappointment in, well acquainted with how it felt to be alone.

  “Is he himself again?” her mother asked.

  “I am,” her father answered. He stood, waiting for her to forgive him.

  Jane’s mother crossed her arms. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m sorry about everything that happened.”

  He took a step closer, reaching for her, but Jane’s mother backed away.

  “I never wanted to hurt anyone,” she said. “But I don’t love you anymore. I hope you understand.”

  The words were like a hammer hitting Jane in the chest. She had done so much to bring the pieces of her family back together. She had been prepared to forgive everything, to let them start over as best they could. This was their chance to be a family again. She watched her mother move closer to Hogboss and twine her fingers in his. Jane, knowing it was unfair of her, couldn’t help but hate her mother a little, couldn’t help but resent the spark of joy that flared up in the pig man.

  Is your happiness more important than everyone else’s? What did you think was going to happen, Jane? You don’t want to live in the past, but the future is hard. It won’t be anything you expect.

  She mentally pushed the ghost away, not needing it to tell her what she already knew.

  “That’s okay,” her father said. “You look good. Happy. I’m glad.” He turned to Jane, wiping his eyes. “It’s very loud out here. Can we go somewhere quiet?”

  “We’re leaving Swine Hill now,” Jane told her mother. “You could come with us if you want.” She swallowed, finally looking at Hogboss. “You could both come.”

  Her mother dug through her pockets, finding a slender wallet with a little bit of money in it. She pulled out what bills she had and pressed them into Jane’s hand, throwing her arms around her neck. “I’m going to stay here and help the pigs. And Henry’s ghost might need me. I want to be close for him. You be safe. I’m proud of you.”

  Jane put the money in her pocket and led her father through the orchard, the light and sound of the pigs fading behind them. Somewhere in the windblown dark, she felt her brother’s ghost watching. It was full of regret, wishing it could go with her. Jane wondered what Bethany would do with Henry when she found him.

  She and her father went under a tree on the edge of the grove and pulled down new peaches. She ate and ate, like the fruit was pieces of the sun, like she could fill herself with light.

  * * *

  They walked across town back to her house. Jane was exhausted, had barely slept in days, but she didn’t want to spend another moment in Swine Hill. It would be morning soon. People stirred in the houses around her, as determined to stay as Jane was to go.

  On the roof of her house, the robot worked on the laser array. Henry was already back, sunken into the robot’s metal hands, using it to make a few final adjustments. Bethany was close by, but she waited, letting Jane say goodbye before she did whatever she needed to do.

  Jane thought her car would still be dead with ghosts, had been planning to walk out of town if she had to, but she found it running in the driveway. There was something hideous under the hood, her ghost told her. Dead hands moved the pistons, their breath igniting the stale air in its fuel lines, making the car rattle and thrum and roar on nothing but the insistence of the spirits that moved it. Jane wondered if the car would slip loose from her control and carry her somewhere she didn’t want to go. But as long as it got her far away from Swine Hill, she wasn’t sure it mattered where it took her.

  Her father went and waited in the car, sheltering from the immensity of the open sky with its light and sound and wind. She packed her clothes into trash bags and filled the trunk of the car. Her father’s belongings were already boxed up in the garage, covered in years of dust. She raided the pantry for bottles of water and packaged food, taking the canned goods and even the can opener.

  Where are you even going, Jane?

  She didn’t answer, but her ghost found her doubts anyway, uncovered her fears that she was heading from one bad place to another.

  You could stay. There could be a new life for you here.

  Everything in the town reminded her of the dead. Her house was full of memories of her family, how things had been before her mother had been haunted. The school made her think of her brother. Every curve in the road held some memory of Trigger riding in her car, how tense and urgent and hard loving him had been. Even the trees surrounding the town spoke to her of frost and the coming cold, of ghosts waiting in the wings for her to let her guard down.

  No, she couldn’t stay. The spirits needed Swine Hill because it made them animate with memory. But Jane needed to forget. She needed to get out from under the town’s weight of history and trauma.

  The robot came down from the roof, and Henry stood beside it. There was a low whine coming from the laser array, but no light. “I’ve done it,” Henry said. “Everything’s fixed now.”

  Jane laughed at how sure of himself he sounded. “Everything looks the same to me.”

  “Wait until tonight.”

  “I won’t be around to see it.” Jane reached for his shoulder, but her hand passed through him. Now that he’d done what he had set out to do, Henry was just a shadow in the air. “I’ve said goodbye to you so many times already. Why is it so hard to do it again?”

  The robot got into the passenger side of her car, its metal head pressing against the ceiling. Her father was already curled up in the back seat, shivering through some nightmare.

  “Since I can’t leave,” Henry said, “I asked the robot to go with you. This way you’ll still have a family. You and Dad won’t be alone.”

  “That’s a weird family,” Jane said. “I wish I could have my old one back.”

  The sun came over the edge of the house across the street, and rays of light cut through Henry. He started to say something, but his voice was gone. The light turned him glassy and drained him of color, until he was just a glint in the air.

  Henry threw his arm
s around her and dissolved, gone like spider silk catching fire. Jane grabbed at the wisps of him, trying to cup him like smoke in her hands.

  “Henry? Can you hear me? Thank you so much. For everything.”

  He’s still here, but there’s not much of him left. He’ll be here for another night or so, but not much longer than that.

  She was glad he would get to see his machine do whatever it was going to do.

  “I love you, Henry. You took good care of Mom. You were a lot better to her than I was. Whatever’s coming next, don’t be afraid. You won’t be alone.”

  * * *

  Jane got into the car just as the sun rose. The air was cool, the last hot breath of summer guttering out, and the touch of fall already yellowing the treetops. Her father slept easier. The robot sat beatific beside her, its window down and long arm hanging out of the car. It stared directly into the coming sun, reaching out like it could grasp that coin of light in its metal hand.

  Jane put the car in gear and let off the brake, the engine flying forward like an uncaged animal. She shot out of her neighborhood and raced out of town, passing the road that would have taken her to Trigger’s house.

  If Henry’s machine worked and the ghosts were swept from the town, would Mason wake from his fever of ghosts and find himself alone? Would he walk through the quiet house and look at their photos, this temple to the family he had destroyed?

  She let herself remember Trigger in her bed, watching her and wanting her, how incandescent Jane had looked through his eyes. Had the terrible shape of his ghost been inside him then . . . ? But no—she stopped herself and instead let him go, both halves of him, love and horror pulled out of her like an unwinding string with every mile.

  The car dragged them down the road, hugging the corners tightly, and they broke onto the highway. A disc fell into place in the CD changer, and warm, frantic music came pounding out of her speakers. As the music filled her, Jane felt her ghost start to tear loose like a scab.

  Her ghost’s fingers, sunk so deeply into her, were loosening one by one. Jane didn’t know how to feel. The ghost was cruel and selfish. It made her sad, forced her to dwell on the most awful things. It fought with her and made her feel small and weak. But it protected her too. And it had been there for so many years, living in her mind, her first and oldest friend.

  Its voice was already quiet as they passed Daleville, heading west with the whole country laid out before them. Who even are you without me? the ghost asked her.

  Jane’s eyes burned hot, the road blurring in front of her. “Let’s find out,” she said.

  The ghost rose from her body, half in her and half out so she could see its small face. Its grief rose in a pure, high tone like the striking and fading of a bell. Hadn’t it been like a sister to her? How was it any less than anyone else she had loved? The ghost’s face, eyes wide and lips parted, was streaked with an undeniably human hurt.

  And then, the ghost was blown out of her.

  Jane felt stillness. A loud silence inside, even with the music and the roar of the wind in her ears.

  With a sad smile, she looked back at her father. She didn’t know what strange dreams moved through the man’s head. Neither could she feel the pain and violence of the haunted engine churning under the hood, and the invisible spirits burning alongside the road couldn’t touch her with their grief anymore. She was alone in a way that she couldn’t remember.

  The music cut into her, the singer’s voice husky and whip-fast, full of heat. The bass hit her in the chest. It sounded like a celebration or a feud. There was no ghost to tell her what anything meant, to unlock the secrets in the words. The singer rained down emotion and mystery. Jane surrendered to it, letting the song move her without knowing why.

  Beside her, the robot shifted its weight and tilted its face to the bright sky, as if it could see beyond the universe and into wherever it was that Bethany would carry Henry. Its metal throat stretched and warped, and a moaning, lovesick call came echoing out of it like the reverberations of a gong.

  Henry moved invisibly among the pigs. He was wind through tree branches, a gout of smoke from a fire, a chill at someone’s back, a black feather twisting through the night sky.

  The pigs circled and sang. Hogboss was there, Henry’s mother at the pig man’s side. And Jane came to meet them, their father with her. Henry felt a weight fall from him. Some small thing he had broken was repaired.

  The pigs stood in a circle around the fire. They sang and wiped their eyes. Henry thought the ceremony might be for Dennis, but the pig boy had already had his funeral. The pigs spoke and said what they were thankful for.

  “Without Henry, I never would have tasted spaghetti,” one of them said.

  “Without Henry, I wouldn’t have a sweater,” said another.

  They went around their circle, giving thanks for what Henry had given them. They spoke of music videos, courtroom TV, and nature documentaries. Of hot coffee, salted nuts, the bright orbs of wax-coated fruit. They named more abstract things—celebrity crushes, pet peeves, nicknames—and thanked him for these, too. One pig raised an arm to the sky and named the constellations, thanking Henry for each one, as though he had hung them himself.

  “Without my son,” his mother said, “I would have forgotten what it meant to be loved.”

  The ceremony ended. Below Henry, his parents reunited. For a moment, he wondered if they would go back into the old house, try to be the people they had been before. But his family, healed and whole, wasn’t the same. His mother stayed with Hogboss in the forest; Jane and their father walked back toward home.

  Henry floated over the city, racing ahead of his sister. He found the robot squatting on the roof and helped it finish the laser array. Jane arrived shortly before morning, coming into the house to pack for a future she couldn’t imagine. She loaded the ghost-driven car.

  In the pale half-light of early morning, Henry wanted to make his sister understand that he loved her. That he was sorry for what he had done to upset their lives. That what was in front of her was fathomless and unpredictable but as much hers as anyone else’s. That she was powerful enough to face it.

  But before he could say much of anything, the sun came up, shattering Henry and the words in his mouth. His sister called to him for a while. Finally she drove off to where Henry couldn’t follow.

  The world was thin and glassy, and behind it Henry could see an ocean of nothing waiting for him. Bethany’s light no longer burned there. She had made it out or she had been dragged under. Henry stared into it, searching for the countless other Swine Hills that Bethany had seen. But there was only an inky dark.

  It pulled at him like wind.

  * * *

  Night fell over Swine Hill, and Henry climbed out of the earth with the rest of the town’s ghosts, living out his singular obsession. The toxic spill of spirits from the destroyed plant would make the town unlivable for years to come. Ghosts had long memories. They would circle the ruins until nature raised its green hands and pulled this broken place deep under the earth. Henry needed to help them let go of the world.

  Using the robot, Henry had been able to adjust the laser array and write new code. His computer would run the program on a timer, and then his work would be done. Photos of the town from before its decline were scattered around his room, one of them still sandwiched into his scanner. Henry had to concentrate to keep himself solid. With so much of his work finished, he was fading. There was little left to tie him to the world now. He sat on his roof, waiting for the laser array to do its work.

  Bethany came jogging down his street, just like she had so many weeks ago, before she had caught the alien and it had changed her. Her face and arms were raw, her fingertips scabbed and broken. She looked like a climber who’d fallen again and again, striking a shelf of rock, but always dragging herself back up. Ghosts circled her like the rings of a planet, shrieking and victorious. She has beaten even this, they seemed to say. She will keep fighting, and she will nev
er fall.

  Henry sighed out his relief and felt himself become even less. He didn’t need to free her from the space between worlds, had probably never been able to. There was nothing left now but to see what would happen.

  Bethany went inside and walked up to his room, coming to sit beside him on the roof. She was sharp and bright, lit from within by the alien’s nuclear glow. Henry’s limbs were little more than smoke. He thought of the dancing girl. She must have wanted her date with the ghost behind the mirror intensely to have remained solid and whole for so many years.

  “What are we waiting for?” Bethany asked.

  “To clear away the last of my mistakes,” he said. “To help everyone start again.”

  On the roof above them, the laser array hummed to life. The same machine that had scrawled its strange message into the cosmos now probed the sky with fingers of golden light. Finding the broad, flat belly of a cloud, it pulsed hundreds of times, painting an image in the sky. Using Ms. Miller’s old photos as its model, the machine recreated the lights of the old town. The neat grid of neighborhoods and streetlights. The golden explosion of downtown with its banks, bars, pool halls, and tailors. The sparsely lit farms and mills ringing the town proper. And almost in the middle of town, alone in a circle of darkness, the blazing white of Pig City bloomed. The old city waited in the sky, gleaming like a map against the cloud bottoms.

  From the lightless ruins of Swine Hill, there was a rush of warm air and a collective moan as hundreds of lost ghosts saw the city they had been looking for. They spread their shaggy arms and lifted from the earth like snow birds, a winding chain that seemed to move and breathe as one.

  When the ghosts hit the city of light and cloud, looking for the world they had lost, the laser array shifted. It aimed its light at a clear patch of sky, and the rising river of ghosts turned with it. The city moved away from them fast, and the ghosts followed. They chased burning photons through the atmosphere and into the cold of space. The city of light lifted into the cosmos, and the ghosts followed the crackling motes. The light would race away from them for hundreds of years, the ghosts chasing this vision of their pasts until finally dispersing among frozen rock and bands of gas looping alien suns.