by Lissa Kasey
The smell of spicy sausage and frankincense woke me up with my stomach growling. I opened my eyes to Lukas’ bedroom, but with Micah sitting on the bed beside me, crocheting something. I think it was crochet as it was one hook thing instead of a couple of needles. My mom had done a little of both when we were kids. One of the guys on my second tour with me had been a knitter, whipping those two needles around in a frenzy that instead of having the team tease him, they joked about how he was some sort of ninja with them. He’d been very adamant about the fact that he was a knitter, not a crocheter. Though to this day I still wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at Micah.
“I programmed my number into your phone,” he said. “And there’s food out in the kitchen. Lukas had to go into work. He wanted you to eat, ordered you something before he left.”
While I was shocked by the lack of nightmares from falling asleep again, I wondered at his presence.
“Are you feeling better? Lukas says the stress from last night really threw you off, and that I shouldn’t take your quitting as fact.” He glanced my way. “You left your key in the bag. It’s out on the counter.”
I studied his face, wondering a thousand things and where to begin. “Why would you still want to work with me?” I wanted to know.
He hesitated for a minute, his hands moving faster, creating some sort of magic that seemed to spit out rows of something, a shawl perhaps. “If we go on the walking tour, and I say I feel something, people take pictures in that direction. They don’t really see anything until the pictures show them something. None of them feel the same things I do. They need the camera to see something.”
I let those words process for a minute. “So you’re saying you may not see ghosts or whatever, but you can feel them there?”
Micah frowned, staring intently at his work. “Yes? No? I’m not sure. I’ve never really talked about it before because everyone looks at me like I’m crazy. Even Sky and Lukas who have been on tour with me a half dozen times.”
“But Sky has heard stuff while staying in your house at night? Lukas told me.”
“I think that’s different. That one, whatever it is, seeks me out.” He shivered. “I don’t go looking for it. The stuff on the tour… well I usually walk the route beforehand, find places that feel… different, and take the tour that way.”
Well that would make for a pretty awesome ghost tour if Micah could sense where they were, though he said he didn’t believe in ghosts. “What do you think you feel? Ghosts?”
“I’m not a believer in ghosts. I think whatever is after all of this,” he paused to wave his hand over us, “is something more? Perhaps a higher plane of existence? What I feel doesn’t make me think of people. Not in the same way. More like something else?” He sighed. “A lot of voodoo practitioners talk about veils and the weakness between dimensions, so maybe it’s something from across the veil, if that is a thing. Sometimes it feels very faint. Other times it’s so intense I can almost hear them talking to me, but they never feel like people.”
“How do you feel them?”
“It’s hard to explain. Like it starts in my stomach and then turns to jitters sometimes, or even a tingling on my skin. Like ants.” He frowned. “Or bugs crawling.” He glanced my way. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No,” I didn’t. Who was I to judge? “Were you always able to feel them?”
He shook his head. “Not until after the park.”
“When you disappeared? Do you really not remember anything?”
“I remember hearing something. I remember seeing some sort of wavy break in the path, like when the day is really hot and the roadway has those heat waves you can see? Only it was in one spot. That’s all I really remember. The police and therapists, and everyone say it was a dream.”
“You were gone three months. Do you remember anything from that time?”
“Sometimes I dream of stuff. I don’t know if any of that is real or stuff my head thought up,” Micah admitted.
That was a lot like what was in my head. Had what I’d seen really been what I now dream? Or had my brain expanded it somehow? “Was what you heard similar to what you hear at night?”
He put the crochet down and stared into the distance for a minute. “Sometimes, yes. I’m not sure if the thing that comes at night is mimicking what I heard to scare me, or it really is the same thing. I don’t want to know.”
No wonder it scared him so much. If he went out into the darkness would it take him again? Had he escaped it somehow and now it followed him waiting for the right time? If it had taken him in broad daylight the first time, why not now? Maybe it was toying with him, enjoying making him afraid. That idea made me shiver.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, and he started his crocheting again. Stress relief, he’d called it. I could see that.
“Lukas said you’ve experienced stuff that can’t exactly be explained. So I thought that maybe you would understand and not look at me like I’m pretending or eccentric,” he said after a few minutes.
“I’m not sure what I saw.” Not in the desert and not last night. “It was scary. That’s all I’m sure of.”
He nodded. “Sometimes when I prepare for a tour, I feel something that isn’t right. Not in the way of ‘there is something there that others might feel,’ but something that makes me… afraid? Worried? Anxious? I’m not quite sure. Usually I change my route to avoid those spots.”
“You didn’t walk the cemetery before we went.”
He shrugged. “I never feel anything in the cemetery. I think it’s because I’ve always thought that who would want to hang around a place like that? If it is the dead or some higher consciousness, I’d think they’d want to listen to the musicians in the Quarter, or hang around the fun pop-up shops, or take a carriage ride. Anything would be better than hanging around a bunch of stone buildings which very few people are allowed to visit.”
And that made sense. If I were dead, I probably wouldn’t want to hang around a cemetery. “You never see anything. You feel it?”
“Yes. I mean sometimes I feel it so strongly that I worry any second something will pop up for me to see. Like last night in the cemetery when we got close to that new burial. I could feel something.” He put the crocheting down again. “You said you saw a shadow.”
“I guess? It came through the tomb, reached for you. It wasn’t a reflection from your light. Didn’t move that way. But I couldn’t make out much before it hit me.” It felt odd to tell anyone what I’d seen. Probably because I’d spent too long trying to bury those feelings, memories, and thoughts.
“It made you afraid?”
I sucked in a breath. “Yes. Afraid of what would happen if it touched you. It made me remember that day in the desert when my team died.”
“But you don’t know if it would have done anything.”
“No. It just didn’t feel right.”
He nodded and started his work again. “Do you still want to quit?”
“Do you want me to?”
He smiled. “Answer a question with a question…”
“You’re hard to read,” I admitted.
He sighed. “It’s habit. To withdraw. To keep people away.”
“So how about you be plain with me? Lukas wants us to be a couple, not only to work together. I’m not sure if he told you that, but I really don’t believe in pretending. I’m attracted to you, but nothing has to come of that. I’m not sure I’m whole enough to offer anyone anything in a relationship.”
“Your brother is not subtle. I know his thoughts on us, and I’m not sure about all that. He has been talking you up for a while, even before you left the military. And I do find you attractive as well. But I’m not going to force the issue. I can get sex easily enough, but I want more than that. I want someone who is a friend and a partner. And I want someone who doesn’t think I’m crazy or is annoyed by all my quirks, but maybe enjoys hot sex in regular intervals
.”
That comment made my dick stand up and wave. “Fuck,” I grumbled. “Stupid body.”
He looked at me, a brow quirked.
“I’m getting the ‘hey, hello’ from my traitorous dick again, don’t mind me. I don’t wake up with morning wood anymore, but apparently you say the right thing and it’s like ‘Let’s go!’”
He laughed. It was a soft thing that I could really enjoy, smooth and rich, like a fine wine, with a bite of bitterness at the end as if he were a bit self-deprecating. “I like the idea of having someone in my life, even if we only work together, who maybe sees things a little differently.”
“Someone else as crazy as you are?” I teased. “’Cause I’ve been called crazy for the stuff I saw in the desert.”
“Not crazy. More aware, I think. People in general, often seem to sense something. Not everyone, as some people are completely self-absorbed. But I think even guys like Lukas, who are by the book and very fact oriented, often sense things. They call it gut instinct or whatever, but it’s something. I think of myself as more sensitive to those instincts. Perhaps you even more so than me.”
I thought about that for a while. It was a bit like what the guy Jared had said in the shop yesterday. Maybe my brain was simply wired different.
“You saw Mark’s body?” I wanted to know, thinking in that moment he didn’t really need that memory either.
“Just a foot.”
I thought about that in a dozen ways at first. Just a foot. Nothing attached? “It was bad?” I’d seen enough blown up body parts in my lifetime to be okay with never seeing another.
“Didn’t make sense at first. My brain was trying to put together what I was seeing, but it wasn’t falling into place. Then you grabbed me. You wrapped your arms around me like a vice, holding me against you. If you hadn’t, I probably would have seen more.”
“But no Sarah?” Not Sarah’s foot. I tried to recall if I’d even noticed what she’d been wearing on her feet. He probably would have noticed if the foot was more feminine? Smaller? Still in a shoe? Those were questions I didn’t want to voice.
“I didn’t see anyone else. Not until the police came. They took the guard away in an ambulance and another group of cops started screaming at you. I didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t doing anything wrong, and you were hurt. I tried to talk to them, but they were unreasonable. I’m grateful that Lukas arrived as quickly as he did or they might have shot both of us.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“It’s part of my training to know how to react to mental health issues. Saw videos on the full audio and video flashbacks. They always say not to touch you, but I didn’t want the cops to do something stupid, then you grabbed me and held on, telling me you’d keep me safe. Did you save the guy you remembered?”
“Yeah, I think so. They never let me talk to him afterward. He’d been a tent mate. One of half a dozen who all bunked in the same tent on rotation. I don’t really remember much about him other than his name.”
“But he’s alive because you held on to him.”
I had kept the storm from eating him. Funny thought that was. He’d been trying to get to it the whole time, following the pull of whatever, like Odysseus to the sirens. I had felt it too, heard the call, telling me to come, the offer of a million impossible fulfilled promises. Yet I’d stayed planted in the tent, watching helpless as the others climbed over us, exploding into blood and bone seconds later. The last man out I’d grabbed the leg of his pants, held on until I thought my fingers would rip off. All while he’d tried to crawl away. If he’d been of sound mind, he’d have kicked me away, or even turned and punched me in the nose to get me to let go. Same with the man I’d held to the ground with my weight. Both had survived. Though the second man had lost an arm. Funny how the memories came back so vividly when I wasn’t trying to focus on them.
“Maybe you can teach me to crochet,” I said watching him craft something so easily. “If it works so well for stress relief.”
“It’s a lot of counting,” Micah said.
“I like numbers. It helps my meditation. When I’m having trouble relaxing, I count backward. Is this another shawl?”
“Yes.”
“You sell the shawls you make in the shop?”
He smiled at me. It made something in my gut thaw, like maybe we’d be okay. “Prayer shawls. It keeps the church ladies from picketing my store. They come in and say ‘look at that nice boy who makes prayer shawls to remind everyone what a temptation the darkness is, he’s a good boy.’ They have no idea.”
I laughed, thinking of old church ladies browsing prayer shawls which were displayed less than two feet from the entrance to the little sex toy dungeon Micah had built. “You’re devious.”
He shrugged, looking pleased with himself. “The whole Christian thing never worked for me. Too much control and restraint against people being people. I’m gay. I like sex. I’ve been known to smoke pot and dance naked in the moonlight. Does that make me a bad person? I don’t think so.”
I thought of him dancing naked in the moonlight and would have liked to see that.
“You’re thinking of me naked, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Guilty,” I admitted. “I’ll watch you dance naked any time, but not in my brother’s bed.” I pointed at the bed.
“You can dance naked with me the next time. We’ll do it at my place.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” I thought briefly about whatever it was outside his house. Was it safe to be outside at night? That was a silly question as we’d gotten to his place pretty late. “Can you be outside your place at night? Is it a time thing? A place thing?”
“There’s a structure,” Micah admitted. “Usually after midnight, mostly after three a.m. though I have yet to find any reasonable explanation as to why that is. I’ve also found that putting stuff in the garden keeps them or it distracted.”
“That’s why you have zombie gnomes and stuff,” I said remembering.
“Sky has picked a bunch of stuff. There are things in the trees to attract birds and fairies.” He shook his head. “Not sure if she really believes in fairies or is more along the ‘what the hell, it can’t hurt’ mentality, but whatever. The zombie gnomes are actually from your brother. I think they amuse him and since he doesn’t have a lawn, he uses mine. A lot of the gardening is actually what he does on his days off.”
For all Lukas’s talk about not really being close to Micah, it sure seemed the opposite. “You and him are really not into each other? He has a thing for pretty. You’re more than pretty enough for him.”
Micah smiled. “I came on to him once. I think it weirded him out as I am firmly in the ‘must protect’ category. Like a kid brother or something. Not that it’s impossible to break out of the role Lukas puts us in, as Sky started off that way too. She’s more aggressive than I am. Lukas is also a bit more… formal, I guess? Traditional? It’s hard to put into words because to me he feels like some of my father’s old work partners. Respectful to the point you wonder if they are thinking bad things about you. Though usually that’s just my paranoia. I think it’s more that he can never shut the cop off.”
“I don’t think Lukas thinks bad things about you at all.”
Micah shrugged and went back to crocheting. “He doesn’t think bad things about you either,” he pointed out. “He worries. A lot. Wants you to find solid ground beneath your feet.”
“I don’t think he can do that for me.”
“No. But it helps if you have support from more than one person. Less pressure on Lukas too.”
I thought about that for a few minutes. It made sense that growing my circle would give me more support and diffuse some of the tension on the rest. “Is that something you really want? To be part of my circle? Even if it means my troubles sometimes settle on you?”
“That’s life, right? We all have troubles. I could use more friends. I know I have a hard time sharing. Maybe if we both do a little bit it
will be easier for both of us?”
“Like when you’re madly knitting in the bed next to me and I sit here wondering how I can help ease your stress?”
“Crochet,” Micah corrected. “I suck at knitting.”
“I know it’s crochet,” I told him, putting a hand on his knee. “I’m teasing a little. So why are you stressed? Last night? The graveyard rescheduling? Would talking about it help?”
He stared into the room for a few seconds like trying to decide how to answer. “I don’t know. I feel uneasy. Like there’s something coming. I can try to be prepared, which for me means locking down my life. An entire process itself that is broken. But I’m not sure how else to react. What if nothing happens and I’m preparing for nothing? What if something huge happens and my world falls apart again?”
“What if you lean on your friends and let us help you carry some of the worry?” I wondered.
Micah looked at me, his gaze meeting mine. “Do you feel anything weird?”
“I pretty much always feel weird. It’s the fact of my existence now.”
“But not like doom weird?”
That night I’d felt doom. When I’d watched that strange man-thing walk toward the base through the darkness. That had been growing doom in my gut. Right now, not so much. Worry was a part of my life. But doom, not so much. “Did it start last night? Or sooner?”
“I’ve had a few incidences in the past few weeks that aren’t the norm.”
“You’ve had the feeling before?”
“Yes,” he admitted, but looked away.
“When? Did something terrible happen?” I asked before I realized where it was all coming from. “Maybe right before you disappeared?”
“I didn’t know what the feeling was then.”
“But you had it then? On the trip?”
“It started before we left. I also had it last year when Sky… well she went through something big. I sort of just knew. Went to Lukas for help. Wouldn’t have found her in time if I hadn’t. I think that day changed all three of us.”