Giving Up the Ghost

by Jane Davitt

  This was different. It was a terrible, ugly reality, from the blackened earth to the thick, rank stink of fuel and fire. He shuddered, swallowing down sickness as his mind gave him an image of how it must have been for them, falling out of the sky, the inside of the cabin filled with screams, the impact, the terror of surviving that only to feel the heat rise…

  No one had survived. None. In a way, that seemed kinder. It would’ve been a hell of a lot to live with.

  Forcing himself to look away from the broken, twisted remnants of the plane, John scanned the area. The makeshift parking lot held about twenty cars; some, he assumed, belonging to the investigators who were climbing over the plane, supervising its removal. There were no camera crews, but over to the left he saw a tall man, his blond hair bright in the sunlight, talking into a small recorder, an ID badge hanging from his jacket.

  And, clutching flowers, huddled and weeping, or silently staring, were the relatives of those who had died, small clumps of them, scattered around one of the prettiest spots John had ever seen, if he kept his head turned away from the crash site and pretended that part didn’t exist.

  It was a beautiful day. He’d never seen such an intense blue sky, such green grass. Never seen so many birds, gaudy-winged and noisy, never thought to see a snake curling sinuously around a log, a seemingly endless length of green and brown as wide as his wrist.

  His hand found Nick’s and squeezed it. His was shaking; Nick’s was cool and still.

  But Nick’s eyes were wide, unblinking.

  He tightened his hand on Nick’s again, hoping for some kind of reaction, and Nick shook his head a bit, blinked, looked at him. “There’s nothing yet,” Nick said, and when John’s face registered his surprise, explained, “They’re probably still in shock, the ones that are here. They might not even know what happened; I guess it depends on how quick it was.”

  Nick didn’t flinch as his eyes traveled to the wreckage of the plane. He didn’t pay any attention to the grieving families; he wouldn’t, John thought. He didn’t consider himself one of them, as he hadn’t known his father, and he wasn’t there for them, not really. He was there for those who had died, the spirits of people whose lives had been cut short by this tragedy, who might have things they needed set right before they could move on to where they belonged.

  Swallowing, Nick entwined his fingers with John’s, keeping hold of him. “Whatever you do, don’t go anywhere, okay? No matter what happens?” He sounded almost frightened underneath the facade of calm he was trying to maintain.

  “I won’t.” John’s thumb rubbed in slow circles on the back of Nick’s hand. “Whatever you need, I’ll be there, love.” He followed Nick’s gaze. “Do you want to get closer?”

  “Not really.” Nick gave him a strained smile; it was hard to tell what he was thinking, and not for the first time John wished he could read Nick’s mind, know what was going on behind those eyes. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

  There were police nearby, quite a few of them actually, but they seemed more interested in soothing the grieving families than they did with what Nick and John were doing. The two of them made their way closer slowly, skirting the area with caution. It was fortunate that the plane had gone down where it had, considering how the surrounding area was more crowded with neighborhoods, homes and businesses than John had ever seen in most of Scotland. The devastation could have been so much worse.

  The tall man with the ID badge on his jacket gave them a curious glance, and Nick dropped John’s hand almost instantly. It seemed an odd thing to do, as Nick had never been particularly concerned with people knowing about their relationship, but when John turned his head to look at Nick’s face he realized that Nick had stopped walking at the same time, rubbing his arms with his hands as if he were cold. “There’s someone here,” Nick said. “Well, of course there is, but…someone who knows. He’s looking for me.”

  This was…well, not familiar, exactly, but John had done it before. He began talking, keeping Nick anchored in reality as much as possible, without distracting him. “Someone from the crash? Or an older ghost?”

  “I don’t know.” Nick reached blindly for John’s arm and caught at the sleeve; he often wanted the physical contact. “I don’t know.”

  They stood very still, but after a moment Nick shook his head.

  “I don’t know. It’s gone. It might be too low on energy to talk.” Nick had mentioned something about that before, that sometimes the ghosts needed to gather their energy before they could interact with him.

  “Do you want to wait?” John could feel sweat prickle his forehead; the damp heat was new to him and he felt suffocated by it. “Or maybe go and, well ‑‑” He couldn’t think of a good way to say it, but he remembered what had happened after his father had drowned. “You’ll have to claim the body. See when you can arrange the burial and all that.”

  He hoped there wasn’t a lot of paperwork, but he was fairly sure there would be. God, that was the last thing Nick would need; endless forms to fill out, asking for information he probably didn’t know, except the basic details like ‑‑

  “Nick? What’s your dad’s name?”

  “Brian,” Nick said absently. “Brian Hennessey.” He glanced at John. “I’d know if he were here, wouldn’t I? I mean, I know I only met him the once after I was a baby, but still…it seems like I’d know. Like I’d be able to feel something different.”

  “He’s family,” John agreed a little sourly. Brian. Well, Brian didn’t deserve a son like Nick and knowing his name wasn’t making John feel any more kindly toward him. “No matter what. You don’t get to pick and choose with family, and he’s close in some ways, if not others. Aye, I’d think you should be able to tell, so maybe he’s not here? Not yet?”

  “Maybe he won’t be here at all. Maybe…maybe he went on. Maybe there wasn’t anything he felt he’d left unfinished.” Nick sounded more upset than John would have imagined given the way he’d talked about his father in the past.

  “Maybe,” John agreed cautiously, not sure if that was what Nick wanted to hear. “Most people do, don’t they?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tall man start to walk toward them. Slipping his arm around Nick’s shoulders, he turned him so that his back was to the advancing man. “Let’s go, Nick. We can come back later.”

  Nick nodded, leaning against John as if for warmth although they were both overdressed for the weather as it was. “Is it cold?” he asked, but before John could respond, the man behind them called out.

  “Excuse me ‑‑ did you have a family member on this flight?”

  To John’s surprise, Nick stopped and answered, looking over his shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” the man repeated, sounding intrigued. “You don’t know?” His eyebrows were fair, too, John noticed, a shade or two darker than his hair. He walked quickly, closing the distance between them. “Or are you just thrill-seekers? Always plenty of them. Nothing we like better than a disaster, is there?”

  “Speak for yourself,” John said roughly. The man barely glanced at him. All his attention was on Nick, his forehead wrinkling as if he was trying to remember something.

  “They called me.” Nick’s voice was rough, too, and for an instant John thought he was talking about the ghosts, until he added, “The airline. They said my father was on the plane. But his ‑‑ “ He swallowed, looking away. “He hasn’t been identified, so I can’t know for sure. Not yet.”

  “There isn’t always a lot left to identify,” the man said. His words might have been cruel or at the very least thoughtless, but his tone made it clear that he was doing his best to be helpful. “Not with stuff like this. Believe me, I’ve seen.”

  “You come to take a look at crashes a lot, do you?” John wasn’t usually rude to strangers, but his protective instincts were screaming at him that the man represented a threat. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  “All in a day’s work,” the man said lig
htly, tapping his ID badge and then noticing that it had twisted so that it was blank. Smiling, he flipped it, exposing a single word, ‘PRESS’ and his photograph. “Greg Duncan. I’m a freelance reporter.” He held out his hand for Nick to shake. “And I’m sure I’ve seen your face before.”

  Nick kept his hand outstretched for a moment after Duncan had let go of it, the look on his face uncertain. “Nick Kelley. This is John McIntyre.” John shook hands with the man as well. “I can’t imagine where. I’ve been living in Scotland for the past couple of years, and I’ve never even been in Florida until last night.”

  Tilting his head to the side, Duncan frowned. “You’re sure? You look so familiar. I didn’t see you on TV? Some kind of interview?”

  “No.” Nick’s face was closed off again.

  “What do you do?” Duncan pressed on.

  “He’s a writer,” John said softly, finally drawing the man’s attention away from Nick. “And we’ll be leaving now, if you’ll excuse us, Mr. Duncan.”

  “A writer?” Duncan shook his head slowly. “No, that wasn’t it.”

  John turned between Duncan and Nick, blocking the reporter’s view and slipping his arm around Nick. It felt odd and right at the same time. “Goodbye, Mr. Duncan.”

  Nick allowed himself to be drawn away, his expression still withdrawn.

  “Nick?” John murmured as they walked toward their car. “Still just us, is it? You’re awful pale.”

  “Am I?” Nick sounded a tiny bit more like himself. “I don’t feel…I don’t know.” He was quiet then until they reached the car; he leaned against it heavily, apparently needing the support, and John couldn’t help but think that he could have leaned on him that way if he’d needed to.

  Maybe this was all going to be more difficult than he’d thought.

  Still, the look Nick gave him was a grateful one. “Thanks for not telling him, about ‑‑” Nick gestured at himself. “He might figure it out anyway ‑‑ hell, people are going to know one way or the other. But I wasn’t ready.” He did look pale.

  “None of his damned business.” John didn’t glance back. He knew Duncan was watching them, speculation darkening his gray eyes. “Are you okay to drive?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Nick grabbed onto the front of John’s T-shirt and pulled him closer, pressing his face to John’s collarbone. He muttered something that John couldn’t understand.

  “What?” John rubbed the back of Nick’s neck. “Couldn’t hear you, love.”

  Nick lifted his face. “I don’t want to see him. Even if he’s…not recognizable. He wouldn’t be, would he? Like that guy said.”

  It took a moment for John to realize he was talking about his father’s body and not his ghost. “You ‑‑” John was lost for words. He wanted to be reassuring, but it wasn’t like Nick had a choice…“Nick, maybe we can explain to them that you haven’t seen him since you were a child; that you wouldn’t know if it was him. And if you do see his ghost, well, he might not…maybe he wouldn’t be…damaged…” He faltered. He’d seen his own father’s ghost and it’d been an experience he’d never forget, but the love he’d felt for his father had made it less of an ordeal than a comfort. Nick wouldn’t have that.

  “I’ll be there with you,” he said. There wasn’t anything else he could offer by way of help. “And we don’t have to stay. Not this time. You won’t see any of them if we’re back at home. We can just get on the plane and go.”

  A shudder went through Nick and John tightened his arms around him automatically. “No,” Nick said. “We can’t. I can’t. I have to…this is what I have to do. I have to know for sure.”

  “Aye,” John said with a sigh. “I know you do.” He kissed the side of Nick’s face and then moved away reluctantly, already steeling himself for what they were going to see. The spirits might not show themselves to him, but dead bodies were all too visible and John wasn’t looking forward to that, at all.

  Chapter Six

  Nick was grateful that driving had become possible again ‑‑ he’d barely been able to handle getting behind the wheel for a good six months after the accident that had broken his wrist and killed Matthew. It was strange how things like that worked; he hadn’t been worried about being on the plane the day before at all, despite the crash he’d seen all too vividly in his dreams night after night.

  “Turn left just there.” John pointed and Nick followed his directions, pulling the car into the parking lot beside the large public building that housed the morgue. God, walking into a morgue ‑‑ the implications of that hadn’t even occurred to Nick until now. Of course, most of the ghosts he’d encountered tended to linger either at the site of their deaths or, less often, the place they’d had strongest ties to when they’d been alive, so maybe the morgue wouldn’t be full of ghosts.

  He hoped.

  “I really, really don’t want to do this,” Nick told John as they got out of the car. “You know, just for the record.”

  “I really, really don’t want to do it either,” John replied. “So you can add that to the record, too.” He looked at the double doors and visibly braced himself. “I don’t like the way these places smell. There’s no air.”

  Since John practically lived outside, in good weather or bad, Nick could see why that would bother him, but there wasn’t much he could do or say. Exchanging one last, commiserating glance, they walked through the doors, and began the transfer from reception desk to elevator to morgue.

  It didn’t take long once Nick had told the receptionist he was a relative of a crash victim. They obviously wanted the bodies identified and removed as soon as possible; the extra workload must have been making for all sorts of administrative nightmares. Nick wasn’t sure if the lack of waiting time was something to be grateful for or not.

  Beside him as they walked down long corridors, always close enough to touch, John was silent, swallowing often, his eyes a little glazed. Nick felt a twinge of guilt that he was making John go through this, but he knew that John wouldn’t have waited outside, wouldn’t have let them be separated.

  The next receptionist looked tired, and the waiting room was busy. Nick told her who he was, and he and John sat down, managing to find two chairs together. The people around them were locked in their own grief, their gazes fixed blankly on the bare walls, their hands clasped tightly in their laps or clutching at the person next to them. The room held no hope, no possibility of a miracle.

  Unless the person you were looking for wasn’t one of the bodies. A mistake, an error, a change in plans that meant someone who was listed as being a passenger on Flight 57 to Miami had never gotten on board.

  From the expressions on the faces around them, Nick didn’t figure many people were thinking that.

  After a long wait, in which people were called through to look at the bodies and, since they never came back, presumably sent out through a different door, it was Nick’s name that was called.

  The man waiting for them behind the door was wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard. He was also frowning at the clipboard. “Brian Hennessey?” he asked.

  Nick’s stomach twisted a little bit. “No,” he said. “Nick Kelley. Um, but yeah.”

  “But you’re here for Mr. Hennessey.” The man was still frowning as he flipped to another page. “Why are you here?”

  “Because the airline called me,” Nick said, looking at John uncertainly. “Is something wrong?”

  “Mr. Hennessey’s remains have already been identified.”

  “By who?” John asked, looking as puzzled as Nick felt. He turned to Nick. “Your dad didn’t get married again, did he?”

  “Not that ‑‑ I don’t know.” Nick tried to work out why the idea bothered him. “It’s possible, I guess.”

  “It wasn’t his wife,” the man said. “And we’ve got you down as next of kin, but with you being out of the country we weren’t sure how long it would take for you to get here. She had photographs, documents…we’re trying to get the bodies p
rocessed as quickly as possible, you see.” Belatedly, he seemed to realize that he was talking to someone who’d just been told that their father was dead. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks,” Nick said, not really knowing what else to say. He guessed it shouldn’t have surprised him that his father had a girlfriend, even if his impression of the man had been that he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. Plenty of women seemed to be attracted to men like that. “Could…can I see him anyway? Just for a minute?”

  The man hesitated for only the briefest of instants. “Yeah. Sure. Of course.” He stepped away from them. “It’s right this way.” They followed him into a room with a door at each end. In the center of the room was a wheeled gurney with a sheet draped over it; the shape underneath the sheet looked too small to be a human being. That probably wasn’t a good sign. “He’s already been identified, so I don’t have to stay if you’d like a minute alone.”

  Nick nodded. “Thank you.”

  When he and John were alone, Nick reached a trembling hand out, but as soon as his fingers brushed against the cotton sheet he yanked his hand back.

  “I don’t need to.” He wasn’t sure if he wanted John to talk him into it or out of it. “See him, I mean. It’s not what happened to his physical body that matters.”

  John cleared his throat, his voice lowering. For most people, that would be a sign of respect, or atavistic, if unacknowledged, fear that speaking too loudly might wake the dead. Nick suspected John just didn’t want anyone to overhear him.

  “I could look first. Tell you if it’s bad. It’ll bother me, maybe, but not as much. I didn’t know him, after all.”

  “I don’t know,” Nick said. He didn’t. But he told himself firmly that this might be his only chance to see his father again, ever. If his dad’s ghost didn’t turn up, then this was it. “No. I think I have to.”