by Micah Thomas
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
THE GHOSTS WE HIDE
Micah Thomas
Copyright © 2018 Micah Thomas
Cover Illustration Copyright © 2018 Micah Thomas
All rights reserved.
To dreamers who often lie
CHAPTER ONE
A LITTLE MORE than a towering prototype, the effort had lost steam shortly after the new President took office. President Dick lacked the charisma of his predecessor, who had been a controversial man, a populist, and a television presence. He had joined the select ranks of Presidents to die in office. Lost with 50,000 other souls alongside some citizens and tourists in the destruction of the grand city of Las Vegas.
Newly promoted President Dick reacted to the invasion as all other nations had: with massively ineffectual military movements. There was no one to fight. No opposing forces. Instead, there was a mass migration of people to city enclaves where otherworldly walls barred entry to soldiers and spies. The best they could do was corral the pilgrims, but people outnumbered troops by a vast margin. Troops defected as well, choosing to lay down their arms in favor of taking up the invaders’ promise of utopia.
With the drama of the Raid—that was what people called the alien invasion—the border wall between the United States and Mexico became a moot point. 1,989 miles of metal and high tech composite baffle was intended to upend the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Despite initial paranoia-fueled-security-everything, President Dick abandoned the southern wall with only one outpost built.
Ken took the job knowing it would be a lonely shift, but it paid in good credits. Secure a border no one crossed? Sure. He’d play music on the shitty sound system and managed to get a couple video games working on the terminals. He knew this was a misappropriation of government property, but who was around to slap his wrist for it?
The lone guard on the wall, Ken wasn’t a philosopher. People he’d known had left in the Raid. He figured good for them, more for him, but that hadn’t panned out. More work maybe, but the new internet was shit. Movies had come out in the last two years, but they were pure propaganda—boring, too. It was as if everyone remotely interesting, even the obnoxiously political actors he hated, had left.
Fuck it, and fuck them, too, he thought, and turned up the music. Disturbed had fucking rocked. Too bad they were gone. Probably left with every other band with any talent in LA.
He gazed out the Plexiglas window overlooking the quiet night along the border. As usual, not a soul trekked out there. Ken checked a box with his pencil and tossed the thick pad of day in and day out activity monitoring in a pile with the rest. A few times, he thought about filling out the whole year at once. Sure, it’d free up time, but what else was he going to do?
Something caught his attention: a red dot in the sky. He’d gotten pretty good at recognizing the constellations and knew the scant flight pattern of approved flights. This was not normal. The dot grew larger. Could be 30 thousand feet? 20? The thing danced with swerving arcs, leaving a trail of red-orange fire, but no exhaust tail.
A mass of fire—not even a ball, not even a shape. Ken cringed and tried to flip off the music, but only turned it up. The thing was coming towards the wall with incredible speed. At a mile away, the sound caught up with it. A vibration louder than the music, Ken’s eardrums rattled in his head.
A sustained explosion. It cruised over the wall with its roar shaking pencils off the desk, making clocks minute hands shake out of time. As its tail shot over Ken’s observation room, a wave of heat blasted through the room, melting and distorting the Plexiglas and warping the desert landscape. Ken pissed himself, praying prayed to a god he hoped hadn’t forgotten him after years of absence. The thing turned back south and rose higher in the sky as it continued on its path, taking its heat and sound with it.
It took Ken a few minutes to realize the phone was ringing. He hadn’t heard it over the ringing in his ears.
“Yes sir!” he shouted into the receiver. “I saw it. Unknown craft. Southbound.”
Had Ken recorded it? Fuck if he knew. Fuck everything. Someone would be here to debrief him. Okay. Great. What could he tell them? He saw something yet was powerless to do anything. What would anyone else have done? Against something like that, what could anyone do?
CHAPTER TWO
EVA WAS HAPPY this morning as she got ready for school. Some days she woke feeling optimistic. It was fall. Sweater season. She picked a mustard yellow one from her closet and maroon leggings. This was her favorite time of year. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, as her favorite poet Keats had said. Running her hands through her tangled blonde curls, Eva felt her skull. Sometimes she held her head and thought, my brain is in here. All my thoughts, right between my hands. Weird.
She was to graduate from Bainbridge Island High School this year. Everything was going well—mostly. Grades were less than fine, but she wasn’t worried. What did she have to prove to teachers when she had no future? No one—absolutely no one—at school was kidding themselves about growing up to be astronauts or presidents anymore.
In more positive news, Eva’s condition had been milder than it used to be. She still blacked out sometimes, which sucked. As a teen, she had developed Cataplexy. She was still a teenager, but at 18, 15 seemed like a long, long time ago. She’d basically been on an ever-dwindling ration of meds since—for the last two years. She boxed her time. Two years go and before. Two years ago and now.
So much had changed and not much was different. She hadn’t been to the city since the…since everything changed, and she missed all the fun stuff. Ferries had previously run several times a day, and for Eva, there had been trips to the docs at Black Star. They’d let her get a coffee and comic books before settling in for month-long visits to her own private apartment. It had felt so very grownup.
They’d been treating her condition, but since the Raid, there were no more treatments. No more trips to Seattle. Sometimes, it felt like everything was over. That she’d died and all this was a dream. Neither Seattle nor Bainbridge had been taken by the Raid, but functionally, Bainbridge was a place as walled in as any raided. She should feel lucky.
The island was neat enough, but it got boring sometimes. Eva had chalked the trapped-in-a-cage feeling up to being a teen, in high school, on an island, cut off from the rest of the world. Between the ambiguous existence of her parents—what did they do all day?—and the inevitable rivalries at school, there was plenty to do.
Bounded in a nutshell, she felt she could be, not king of infinite space, but at least ok, except that she had bad dreams. Bad dreams were an understatement. She had unholy terrors and torments. Details faded on waking, but what little she remembered of them, she couldn’t say aloud to anyone.
Dylan. She had Dylan and he was good. She was going to his place after school today. His band would be there. Eva loved to hear him sing. If the world hadn’t gone to shit outside her island, she thought he’d have been famous eventually. Not in a boy-band way. Not in a singing competition way. No. He was her own Jeff Buckley with a dash of Prince and he wanted her. They’d known each other most of their lives. Even with her interruptions of days a
nd weeks in treatment, they’d stayed in touch via email the whole time.
She road her bike to school as usual. The morning was chilly and quiet. Mondays before, there’d have been commuters. Now Eva’s neighborhood was full of late starters and idle hands; they didn’t come out before the sun. She passed town, glancing at the coffee shop before cutting across a parking lot and shooting down the gentle hills and bumpy road towards school. She would be early—before the first bell even. Eva liked the quiet. She enjoyed imagining she was a ghost at the end of the world, haunting its ruins. Being early also gave her time to read and think about Dylan. Things were getting serious there. She could feel it.
This week, Eva was reading Wuthering Heights. She liked it a lot, even though the adults acted like teenagers. Maybe all adults secretly had teenagers living inside them. Hormone driven, bad decision-makers they kept asleep or silenced. What did they do all day that was so serious? All the corporate, rat race, work garbage was over, and adults on the island took smaller jobs or none at all. It didn’t seem to matter. Adults still acted like there was a divide between their lives and those of the kids. Eva knew her dad had gotten depressed since he wasn’t a lawyer anymore. She was pretty sure he helped manage the island. It was still important work making sure people got along; making sure everyone had what they needed.
She crested a hill overlooking the sound and saw the foggy cityscape in the distance. So close but unreachable. Grey skies. A chill in the air. Eva felt a wistful urge to ride out into the bay to see how far she could swim. She’d die, but wouldn’t it be a fine way to go? The ideation made her thinking fuzzy, but her mind was forcibly rerouted back to getting to school.
These reroutes happened often enough. It was almost natural; a Jiminy Cricket inside her, correcting when she had bad thoughts. She trusted this voice as if it was own instincts. Sometimes it felt more like there was an alien in her head making her do things, but she wasn’t allowed to dwell on that.
As she pulled up to school, Mr. Dickenson was arriving from the other direction, also on bike.
“How is Ms. Eva doing this morning?” he asked. He dressed like an urban mountain climber. A fit for his 40’s, red beard, slight paunch stretching his REI or North Face vest. A superfluous number of carabiners clanked as he moved.
“All is well that ends well, Mr. Dickenson,” she replied.
“Always with the literary response. We missed you at the student council meeting last night.”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” she said, unsure of where she had been.
The whole school knew about her fits. She wasn’t teased about it, but they knew. Eva didn’t like being known for her condition. It could be worse, she thought. School slut? That’d be worse. She wasn’t afraid of sex. She felt desires. She knew how things worked. After all, she’d been on the internet when there was still internet. She and Dylan were waiting. Saving it for something special. Reputation might be the immortal part of oneself, but she hated hers. Yet not enough to do anything about it.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “If you are feeling up to it, you can find the notes from the meeting. Amy came up with some good suggestions for handing off lessons learned to the incoming seniors.” Mr. Dickenson locked up his bike and headed into the building.
That Amy, Eva thought. Always thinking. She didn’t hate her guts completely. How could she hate someone so smart and darling? But Dylan and Amy had briefly dated in their junior year, and this fact wouldn’t go away. She had to pretend to be happy for him while dying inside. Falling in love with your friends was always a bad idea.
Eva stowed her bike and after a stop at her locker, headed to the library. The library would be unlocked, empty, and smell like books. She loved the scent. Maybe after graduation, she could work in the library, helping organize things and vigilantly keeping track of precious loans. There wouldn’t be anything to replace these copies once they were gone. Not such a bad future, right?
She set down her books and sat in the library nook. This was going to be a good day, Eva decided. When she opened Wuthering Heights, she was overcome by dizziness. No good. This was no good. She had to close her eyes as the world spun. She saw spots, little streaks of light with her eyes shut. Eva felt disconnected to herself. An alarm sounded off in her mind. This isn’t real, none of this was real, it screamed. The voice was immediately silenced and replaced by a warmth wrapped in cotton, fresh baked cookies, and hot coffee. Those warm thoughts dropped her into an infinite, inky blackness.
“Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead.”
Eva sat up, and through blurry vision, processed the face in pieces. Black hair. Green eyes. Small, pointy nose. Freckles concealed with makeup. Ahh. Recognition. Victoria, her only real friend at school. I must have dozed off, she thought. Dried drool on the corners of her mouth. A crease in her cheek where the book marked her. There were other students in the library and the morning bell was ringing, summoning them to class.
Victoria offered Eva a latte, which she sipped immediately. Pumpkin spice. Perfect for the fall weather. She did a quick, customary internal audit. Was she hurt? Had she smacked her head? Shit her pants? No? Great.
“You really shouldn’t sleep in here. Some creeper could’ve come up behind you and touched your goodies,” Victoria joked.
“Yeah, right. I’d just do this,” Eva fake karate chopped at her friend, “and this, and that. Who’s laughing now, Mr. Pervert?”
“Enough! I beg your mercy!” Victoria laughed.
“Hey, did you finish your report?”
“Naw. I begged for an extension. I don’t know why I chose such a dense book. I hate reading!”
“Dude, its good for ya brain.”
“Like I’ll ever need to know what happened to tennis playing teenagers. It’s not even funny. Like, the title itself is so misleading.”
Victoria was reading Infinite Jest, mostly because Eva had suggested it. She’d read it when she was still getting treatment. She’d spent a lot of time in her quarters, a little mock up of an apartment, between therapy sessions. Eva didn’t remember a lot of it. Forgetfulness was a side effect of her condition. She’d been alone a lot before the cop—good ole Officer Sanders—rescued her. Before the rest of the world did its crazy thing. Then and now, she’d always had plenty of time to read.
“See you after class,” Eva said, waving off her friend.
“Not if I see you first.”
“Ha ha.”
Eva hugged Victoria and mentally braced herself for Trig. She hated math. Students filled then emptied the halls, following the timing of the bells. Their hallway antics were practically scripted for teenage behavior. Was she in a sitcom? A teen romance series? Her sense of fairness to everything glittered and skittered on the edge of her mind. In therapy, they’d called it “dissociation”. She couldn’t trust her feelings on anything—not when those feelings could tip her over and pour her out. She swung between feeling everything was a lie—an illusion—to bursts of emotion. This triggered something: a fainting spell or a seizure. This was fine. Everything was fine.
Math class was boring as fuck, so she daydreamed another life while classes started and ended. The hours of the day could be a slog, but what if she left the island after graduation? What if she built a boat and went out in search of adventure? Dylan would go with her. They could busk and sing in the cities and towns across America. It would be dangerous. America outside of the island was said to be having hard times since the Raid. She understood her parents wanted to keep her safe, and the island—for whatever reason—seemed to be doing just fine in the tough economy. But it wasn’t as if the world had ended.
Aliens had invaded and taken some cities. Big whoop. Dylan could bring happiness to some town in need of a musician and his charming girlfriend would pass the hat. Her dream was interrupted by more what ifs. What if she needed medical help and Dylan got scared? What if Dylan met some black-eyed girl and left her in some strange place all alone? No. She’d graduate and stay. Th
ere was nothing out there for her.
***
Grey overcast days ran together. If Eva’s mom hadn’t maintained the calendar for the family, she’d have no knowledge of what day it was. Wake. Talk to the parents. Check in about how she was feeling. Ride to school. Go to classes. Back home. Repeat the next day. Wake in math class. Wake and lose track of some student council things she was were leading. Wake and still feel like she was dreaming.
Often, she dreamed about the woman. Though she never saw her directly, the persona in her dreams felt feminine; sometimes full of anger, other times full of longing. Eva felt bad for her, but she was scared. In these dreams, Eva would ride her bike right up to the edge of the Puget Sound, strip off her clothes, and dive in. She moved fast with the woman pushing her forward. The woman would be there, in her mind, behind her somehow, promising her the power to destroy everyone who ever crossed her. The thought horrified Eva and tempted her.
Why do I think these things? I’ve got the devil living in my heart. She thought the revenge trope was a tad melodramatic. Though Eva had a temper she was ambivalent most of the time. She didn’t want to fight. Let Amy have the student council.
Life was full of buts—some bigger than others. But she had wanted to lead the council. Even if it wasn’t going to be a part of some college application—a list of accomplishments which used to mean something—it was Eva’s thing. Ambivalence. Counterpoint. Eva wanted school to be over, but the thought that there was nothing waiting on the other side bothered her.
She sat at her desk and pushed these confusing thoughts away. None of the big picture stuff mattered if she failed Trigonometry.
“Now, what we haven’t covered in much detail yet is spherical trig,” Mrs. Jackson said.
Eva shuddered. Something about Mrs. Jackson reminded her of the woman from her dreams. It was her stature, tall for a woman at nearly 6’.