by Megan Hart
“Oh gawd,” she said.
“Dad didn’t respond, even when I licked my fingertip and wiggled it in his ear. I got up and ran away, expecting at any moment for him to follow.
“He didn’t. I hid behind a bench, watching and waiting for him to leap up as a snarling werewolf or stand up as a cruel vampire.
“He didn’t. The drizzle blossomed into rain, hammering down on us both and plastering my dress to my body. I walked over to him. His shirt was soaked. His eyes stared upward. I expected him to blink.
“He didn’t.”
She clearly didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know why I’d shared it. Only a few people knew that story. I guess when you died together—when you shared your last breaths—then you could share almost anything.
In many ways, I’d been pretending to be a zombie for the past few years. I hadn’t had any real meaningful connections with anyone. I’d been walking through life, seemingly animated but dead inside.
I held out my hand. “Please help me up.”
She grabbed my arm, and a little tingle ran up my phantom spine. Gold specks flashed in our auras. The pain in my shin simmered to a dull throb. Once on my feet, I did a few leg swings and settled into a walking lunge, stretching out the injured limb. This was my pre-run routine.
“I used to run cross country back in middle school,” I told her. “It’s the only sport I ever loved. It felt so good just to run, run, run. I was pretty damn fast, too. But I ditched it by the time I got to high school.”
“I do the 100-meter and 200-meter dash. And the high jump.”
“Cool.”
“What got you started running again?” she said.
“How’d you know I started back?”
“It’s a small town. I’ve seen you running around in the early morning and at night.”
This gave me pause, the idea that she’d seen me. Noticed me. Ever since I’d returned to Davis after the divorce, I’d felt like nothing but a ghost in this town. “Yup. That’s when I like to run. I’ve got a course around town. Depending on the time of day, I go clockwise or counter-clockwise so that I can time it so that I’m running away from the sunset or the sunrise.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I like to chase my shadow when it’s all stretched out like that. Also, I’m fair skinned. I burn easy.”
“You never answered my question. Why’d you start running again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to run away from my wrecked marriage and the fact that I was living with my mom. Maybe I was just trying to find myself. Maybe I just needed to get out of my skull for a while. Running’s cheaper than booze. And less complicated than sex.”
“Let’s do it together,” she said.
I stopped short, almost tripping over my feet. Was she propositioning me for sex? Anticipation swelled in my chest. What would I say? Yes or no? Before I could decide, she bent over and stretched her legs, too. Ah. She only wanted to run—not fuck. I bit my lip, surprised by my own disappointment.
Turned out, Shannon and I kept pretty steady pace with each other. Up until now, I’d only sprinted as a ghost. I’d never had to sustain a run. Gone were the familiar rhythms of inhaling and exhaling, and the steady hammering of bodyweight on my kneecaps. It took a long time to settle into a new groove without these cues. Ghost-running was more like flowing as a river. Except where water relied on gravity for momentum, I had to supply that force through sheer will. The asphalt blurred below my bare feet. I wished I had sneakers, but it didn’t really matter so long as I clutched my lone shoe in my hand to keep it from slipping onto my foot.
I sideways-glanced at the girl a few times. Amidst the whirring of her limbs, her face had frozen as hard as ice. Her eyes narrowed. Her jaw clenched. She wasn’t running toward Hilltop. No, this girl was running away from something.
At the entrance of Hilltop Acres, two rectangular brick walls flanked either side of the wide street. Unlike the cracked and broken roads in the middle of Davis, the asphalt here was as smooth as buttered toast. The neighborhood looked like a damn banshee block party, with spirits of all shapes and sizes mingling on streets, porches, and driveways.
Shannon and I exchanged looks and panted. I tried not to stare at her eyes, which were blacker than they were only an hour ago.
She must’ve been seeing the same thing. “Your pupils are ginormous,” she said. “I can barely see any white left.”
“Great.”
We worked our way through the crowd of grinning idiots and down the street. Hilltop was one of those neighborhoods where all the houses looked vaguely the same and all the lawns were neatly manicured. The avenues formed a labyrinth of turns and dead-ends, and they all had nature names like Bluebird Drive or Oak Nest Road in honor of the tiny ecosystem that was destroyed to make room for all of this. I didn’t bother paying attention to how many turns we made.
As we crossed an intersection, the church bell down in town chimed.
Clong.
I paused to look at her. “Were you coming from track practice when you . . . when we died?”
“No.”
Clong.
“Then why were you wearing your track uniform?”
“I wasn’t. But for some reason I’m wearing it now. Maybe sometimes ghosts wear what they die in or get buried in, and other times they wear what was most important to them.”
“I guess.”
Clong.
At the sound of the last chime, all the ghosts stopped talking. For a moment, they stood or sat in place as still as statues. Shannon and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. As if on cue, all the spirits dropped to the ground and convulsed like fish out of water. The closest ghost was an older man that used to bag groceries at the local IGA. His arms and legs went rigid while his torso bucked back and forth. He arched his back and his mouth opened impossibly wide, as if to puke. Except what came out was darkness—the same wiggling black that had consumed all their eyes, but now it poured out of him and over his face and down his chin. It erupted out of his navel, eclipsed his hips, and dripped down to his toes.
This happened to the entire neighborhood of ghosts. The darkness consumed them entirely, even their clothes until they rose on wobbly legs like newborn fawns. A crowd of impossibly black figures now stood all around us. Every single one of them turned to face our direction. They swayed ever so slightly like trees in a breeze.
For a moment, time froze.
Terror gripped me. I couldn’t move.
Shannon grabbed my hand, which jarred me out of my paralysis. Yet we had nowhere to go. We were completely surrounded.
10
THE DARKNESS
The hour struck three o’clock and the Darkness could barely contain its excitement. Pressure built, eager for release. Three bells.
One.
The Darkness pressed forth from inside its disciples’ phantom bodies. It spilled from their mouths and ruptured from their eyes. It poured like rivers from their fingernails, leaking out of all their many crevices and holes until it encased them completely. Wholly. Holy.
Two.
For so long, the Darkness had endured in its lesser role as mere shadows crouching low beneath the Light’s razor sharp rays. The Darkness had suffered as an afterthought. Now it was poised to reclaim its rightful mantle. Dark was not merely the result of light. No, no. Far from it. Darkness was the root of eternity. It was the rich soil from which all things bloomed forth. It was the place of dreaming, the source of all opportunity, and the wellspring of endless possibilities.
Three.
Like a bruised cloud finally allowed to release its burden, the Darkness stormed upon the stranded and infected souls of the world—as it had every night at the stroke of three since the Light broke.
Now, the Darkness rained. Soon, it would reign.
11
The Shadys inched forward. That was what I called them in my head without even thinking about it. Shadys. They wavered back and forth almost l
ike they were standing on top of a swaying rowboat. Light didn’t glisten on their wet blackness. Rather, their dark shapes consumed whatever illumination dared to cross their thresholds.
The walking shadows closed in around us. With them came a dreadful chill. The coldness gripped my chest and clawed inside my skull, nearly paralyzing me until Shannon squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt.
“Shadys,” I whispered.
Her grip tightened. “It’s the Devil’s Hour.”
A man’s scream pierced the night. It came from behind one of the nearby houses. In unison, all of the Shadys turned toward the noise.
That was our chance. We sprinted off the street—hands still clasped. Our legs moved with impossible speed, and golden light infused our auras. I’d never run so fast before. The world blurred past me. Shannon let me go, and our pace immediately slowed. I chanced a look back at the Shadys pursuing us.
“No,” I said. “I think we’re faster when we touch.”
I grabbed her hand again and we jolted forward. Our rapid feet skimmed the hard concrete as we dashed up a sloping driveway. There was nowhere to go but around the side of the house. We abandoned the driveway and cut through the yard.
She gasped as the grass pierced her feet. Thankfully, the lawn was neatly trimmed. Still, each step sent dozens of tiny blades piercing our tender soles.
We hurdled a chain link fence and landed in a spacious backyard that featured a picnic table, birdfeeder, and trampoline. A round plastic compost bin sat at the rear of the yard, and we used it to hoist ourselves over the rear privacy fence. We crashed into a mess of cut branches on the other side, and the sticks skewered my body in more than a dozen places. I bit back a scream. Whimpering, Shannon crawled toward the fence and stared through a crack in the wood.
“What’s . . . happening?” I said, barely able to form the words.
“They’re coming.”
She moved to dislodge me from the pile. Rough wood snagged my innards.
“Make it fast,” I said. “No time.”
We locked eyes. She gripped my hands and braced herself. When she yanked me free of the sticks, ectoplasmic blood sprayed through the air. Bits of intestines and tendons dangled from my fresh wounds. I fell in a quivering heap. Already, I could sense the Shadys on the other side of the fence. A horrid wet coldness festered inside me.
Shannon pulled me to my feet. A moment later, the dark shapes swarmed over the fence, one after the next. The first few tumbled into the sticks, impaled and writhing, but more plummeted on top of them, bouncing safely to their feet. They hissed and ran toward us.
“Shit,” Shannon said.
We sprinted across the yard toward a darkened house. Shannon helped shove me up the front portion of the privacy fence. From atop the wood structure, the street ahead looked clear. She scurried like a rat up the fence and we toppled into the front yard. Grass stabbed into my feet. We cut through the hurtful lawn and down the barren road, but the Shadys followed close on our heels.
I grabbed Shannon’s hand. A tingle jolted through me. Sure enough, our speed increased. The frozen pebbles in the asphalt below blurred into a dull shimmer. The Shadys fell behind, except more came around the next intersection—cutting us off. We veered through yet another yard, scampering over fences, through another yard, and onto yet another darkened street. My ghostly legs quivered. My head ached. Exhaustion gnawed at my chest. I felt like I’d been studying trigonometry for a solid day. Or watching a Baywatch marathon.
“I can’t go much further,” Shannon said.
Before I could agree, a ghostly hand snaked out of the storm drain and grabbed my ankle. I started to scream, but the grip knocked me over onto the road. One quick tug yanked me into the sewer.
Into the darkness.
12
I landed on my ass upon a puddle of dank water and moldy debris. A second later, Shannon toppled next me. I’m guessing it was her elbow that smacked me in the face. The water offered no give. We landed without a splash, the both of us sliding and swinging and kicking blindly at our attacker who grunted and fell backward.
“Fuck, Molly,” said my ex-husband’s voice. “Stop it.”
“Jeremy?” I said. “Is that you?”
“Hush.”
I was about to tell him to fuck off when I sensed the Shadys hustling overhead. I couldn’t hear or see them, but I could feel the cold unrelenting darkness rippling from their shadow-drenched bodies—like ice water mixed with heartache. Tears welled in my eyes, which quickly adjusted to the dark.
Jeremy. What the hell? I could only shake my head at my ex-husband’s ghost while the herd of Shadys passed overhead. Thankfully, his aura glowed white like ours. Not grey. He looked back at me with weary eyes. His pupils, too, were slowly gobbling his irises, though he wasn’t as far along as Shannon and me. I straightened my skirt. His gaze lingered on my thighs. Between my thighs.
His beard had grown out to Santa-level proportions, though his head was shaved. That was new. He had put on some muscle yet somehow looked frailer. He wore jeans and an untucked wrinkled button-up. His wedding ring hung from a chain around his neck. He gazed at me as if he thought I might bite.
“So, you’re dead too,” I said after the Shadys passed.
He nodded. “Yeah. Drank too much. After I heard about your accident, I got drunk and . . . I had an accident of my own, I guess.”
“Jeremy.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“It took a long time to walk here from Cincinnati,” he said.
“Does that always happen at three a.m.?” I asked, gesturing up at the street.
He looked back and forth between Shannon and me. “You haven’t seen it before?”
I shook my head. “I was waiting up there in the Light line until some goths with a Ouija board summoned me down here.”
“I was locked in my bedroom,” Shannon said.
He didn’t acknowledge Shannon. “You were up there,” he said slowly. His words lingered like dust in the air.
Shit. He’d spent days coming here to find my ghost, and here I’d left Earth without a second look back. See ya, bitches. I’m out.
“It always happens at three,” he says. “All the black-eyed relentlessly stupid ghosts turn rabid for an hour. It stops at four. I don’t know why. After that, they return to their cheerfully mindless selves. During the day, they go all comatose. Then the sun goes down, and it all starts over again.”
I looked at Shannon. “Earlier you said it was the Devil’s Hour. What does that mean?”
“I used to be into some weird stuff with Tara. We did rituals, tried to cast spells. It was all silly. Lots of chanting and candles and nakedness. Nothing ever happened, nothing magical anyway. The Devil’s Hour is when all the demons come out to do their dark work. I think it’s supposed to symbolize a big fuck you to the Holy Trinity. Also, it’s the opposite of the time of day when the big guy nailed to the cross supposedly kicked the almighty bucket.”
“So does this mean God is real?” I said.
She shrugged. “Not necessarily. It just means evil is real.”
I looked at Jeremy. “Why are you here?”
“When I died, I saw how things were—the sky all clogged with ghosts—and then those Darkies came after me.”
“We’re calling them Shadys,” I said. “It sounds a tad less racist.”
“Okay, those Shadys came after me, and I knew that they’d be coming after you, too. I had to come help you.”
I flailed my hands. “So once again, it’s all about protecting me. Whether I want protecting or not.”
“Um, I just saved your life,” he said.
“No you didn’t. I lost my life three days ago. I was on my way to a job interview actually—one that hopefully would’ve led to a better job so that I could actually afford to move out of Mom’s fucking house, y’know, the place I had to move to after you wrecked our marriage?”
“You were the one who left,” he pointed out.
“As if I had a choice.”
He finally acknowledged Shannon. “So who’s this?”
“That’s Shannon. I think I was trying to put on makeup when I hit her car and killed her.”
I pointed at Shannon but Jeremy squinted at my face.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” he said.
“What?”
“Your makeup. It’s great the way it is. I mean, it’s kind of cool. Kinda punk.”
I looked at Shannon. “What’s he talking about?”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” she said.
“What?”
She winced a little. “You’ve only got lipstick on the right side of your face, and then a long smear down your left cheek. It must’ve happened during the wreck.”
For some reason, this upset me more than falling out of the sky, being skewered on grass, boiling in the sun, getting shot by fucking rain, fleeing shadow figures, confronting my dead husband, or dealing with a stubborn heel. I closed my eyes and clenched my fists, well on the verge of screaming.
I opened my eyes, literally seeing red. My aura shone the color of brake lights. “You’re telling me that I’m doomed to spend eternity with shitty clown makeup on my face?”
Shannon—the little turd with nary a single blemish on her ghostly cheeks—nodded solemnly. “On the upside, by dawn you won’t care anymore.”
“What happens at dawn?” Jeremy said.
“Our eyes go black,” she said, then pointed upward. “We become like them.”
I dropped to my knees upon the sewer’s dank water. My hands smacked at the dirty puddles, trying to get enough moisture to wipe my face clean. But I couldn’t move or manipulate the water—just like everything else. I punched my knuckles bloody on the shallow pools then collapsed against a filthy wall.
We sat in silence for a while. My belly became a cauldron full of spicy chili well on the way to boiling over. All this talk of makeup got me thinking about other my body adornments. I checked my left shoulder. Nothing. Cursing, I pulled up my top and looked at my right side. Thankfully, I still had my yin yang tattoo. Well, technically I guessed it was just my yang tattoo, as it was only the black—or feminine—part of the traditional yin yang symbol. A black swirl with an empty hole in the middle, curved upon my ribcage around a black dot.