“Is that a fact?” I raised my eyebrows in defiance. “Well, we’ll see about that.” I took off running as fast as I could toward the edge of campus. The wind and speed invigorating me with each step I took. Brent was next to me, jogging backward, easily keeping pace.
“You know, I really don’t suggest trying this.”
“I have to find out for myself. I just can’t accept this on your word alone. You have to at least know that much about me.”
“I do,” he said ducking under a thick branch. “But it’s extremely painful.”
“Maybe for you, but it might not be for me. You can’t be sure.” I continued my sprint and tried to push aside the worry his warning had caused me.
“Maybe not,” he said warily, “But I still advise against it. Don’t be stupid.”
“I have to know for myself,” I explained, halting at the driveway that marked the edge of school.
He groaned. “Why?”
I bit my lip. “Here goes.”
“Wait, Yara,” he said, tugging on my arm. “Please, just listen to me.”
I hesitated for a moment then cackled. “What, am I going to die again?”
“No . . .” he started, but before he could finish I flung myself with all the energy I had toward the other side of the driveway.
With a pain so severe it blinded me, I was hurled backward. I landed on the ground and skidded a few feet. It felt like every bone in my body had snapped, and that my internal organs were twisted and mutilated. If I had been alive, I was sure I would have died, leaving only a pile of gore on the driveway. I opened my eyes and the world around me undulated in harsh, blinding and over-sharp movements, making me dizzy. Sprawled on the ground, I was afraid to even try to move. Tears rained down my face, vanishing before they could wet the ground. Even their slow movement across my skin hurt. Fearing the rise and fall of my chest would be too much, I held my breath. When I finally took a breath, it felt like a jagged knife in my ribs. I sobbed in self-pity, longing for death before remembering it had already come.
My eyes darted toward Brent just as he winced. “Sympathy pains,” he explained with a shrug.
Shame pulsed through me when I realized he was suffering right along with me. Despite the sting I knew I would feel, I opened my mouth to speak. “Can you block it out?”
“No, it won’t let me.” He grimaced. “You don’t have to speak with your words, Yara.”
I’m sorry, I thought.
“I know,” he spoke into my mind. Brent stayed by my side whistling lullabies and talking about nothing at all, trying to distract me. The sun rose and was high in the sky by the time the pain eased enough for me to stand.
My knees buckled as I tried to get to my feet.
“Take it easy,” Brent suggested, helping me up and slinging my arm around his shoulder.
“I have to get away from here. I don’t think I can stand to dwell on my own stupidity any longer,” I said, as he turned us and began walking us slowly up the driveway. “So, you were right.”
“I was pretty sure I would be,” he said without sounding arrogant. With each step toward the Headmaster’s garden I felt my strength returning. The place was starting to feel like home.
“You’ve done that before.”
“More than once,” he said in a knowing voice.
“I would think once is enough,” I shuddered at the thought of ever having to experience that again.
“The Phil thing really freaked me out.”
“It must have been awful to be willing to endure that twice.” I shivered. “So it looks like we’re stuck here. Why?”
“I don’t know, but it could be worse.” He readjusted his grip on me.
“How? Maybe a bad case of food poisoning?”
“We could be alone.”
My stomach tumbled like an Olympic gymnast. “Yeah, that would be a lot worse,” I agreed, stealing a peek of him from the corner of my eye.
Somewhere between two steps my spirit recovered. I pushed from Brent’s arms and twirled in a circle, giddy because there was no more pain, feeling free.
“I can see you’re feeling better,” Brent commented, leaning against a tree trunk with his arms folded.
“I do. I have all this pent-up energy; let’s do something.” I flashed him a smile to help convince him.
“We could play volleyball,” he offered. “There shouldn’t be students there now.”
“The dead play volleyball?”
“Well I can, but I think I’ll have to teach you how.”
“I know how to play,” I said icily.
“I wasn’t trying to be demeaning,” he said taking a step back in case I felt the need to elbow him. “It’s just you haven’t learned to move things yet.” I thought back to my attempt to move the leaves on the tree and nodded in understanding.
“Can you teach me?” I asked.
For a moment he studied me hard looking for something, but I wasn’t sure what. “Yes, I think I can. Besides,” he said, taking me by the hand and leading me toward the P.E. building, “it might be vital for you to learn. You’re going to have to defend yourself when the mist comes for us.”
“What do you think he wants with me?” I asked, my palms suddenly sweaty.
“I’m not sure”
We walked in a heavy silence until we arrived at the volleyball sand pits. Several balls were still out, and without bending over, Brent stuck his hand out, palm down. A ball flew up to it.
“How did you do that? Are you actually holding it?”
He waggled his eyebrows as he smiled. “Well, I can feel it, but I can’t quite make contact with it.” He then made the ball bounce up and down in his hand. “Yet I can command it to do what I want it to, like a puppet with invisible strings. Catch!”
I ducked as the ball zoomed toward me. He laughed,
“Oh, come on. I know you aren’t a practitioner of organized sports, but even if you catch like a girl, the ball wasn’t going to hurt you. You’re a ghost, remember?”
“Old habits die hard.” The ball had rolled into a tangled, thorny bush, its white only barely visible.
“Now, you try it,” Brent said as he moved the ball so it lay in front of my feet.
I stuck my hand out like Brent had, staring at the ball, concentrating and biting my bottom lip. Nothing. It didn’t so much as vibrate. I tried it again and again and again. Still nothing.
“You have to visualize it doing what you want it to.”
Focusing on the ball, I pictured it rising up to my open palm. The ball twitched slightly. I put even more mental energy into visualizing it. It flopped on the ground like a floundering trout.
“Yara, it’s a little like faith. You can have no doubt that the object will obey you.”
Biting harder on my lip, I pictured the ball again and tried to believe it would obey me. For an instant it lifted. A squeal of delight escaped my mouth and I did a dance of joy that may have included some really outdated moves. A proud smile spread across Brent’s face as he commented, “You’re picking it up pretty quickly.”
He might have been stroking my ego, but I didn’t care. In repeat attempts, I wasn’t able to get the ball to move any higher, but I was able to recreate its small rise into the air.
“Let’s try this,” Brent said, throwing the ball at me. “Hit it back.”
Instead of ducking, I moved my arm through the air, picturing the ball soaring back to Brent. While the ball didn’t go that far, it did change course. After several tries, I was able to actually hit it all the way back to him and then he volleyed it back to me. I wasn’t able to create the motion, but I could redirect something already moving. I hoped that would change with more practice.
Eventually, Brent sat down with a huge smile and ran his fingers through the sand. Following his example, I was surprised by the tickling sensation of its rough texture. The sun had begun to set and I leaned back on the sand to watch. I had been so absorbed in our game, I hadn’t noticed that w
e had been here all day. The blazing palate of colors was breathtaking: red, pink, purple, and yellow. We sat in a silence disturbed only by a distant woodpecker as the most brilliant canopy of stars I had ever seen replaced the sunset.
The night was dark, but around us everything grew an even deeper black. Out of the corner of my right eye, I thought I saw something glide past. A familiar feeling of dread encompassed me as the temperature plummeted. The mist was creeping toward us, outlines of individual beings swirling inside it, their faces set in horrible grimaces. Scuttling like an awkward crab I tried to back away. A heaviness settled over me, making it hard to move, impossible to speak.
From the mist, a spear-like tendril slithered toward us, aiming for me. I feigned to the right as it shot toward me but it wasn’t fooled, and managed to stab me in the shoulder. Its point pierced me and an icy cold laced my shoulder, and warmed quickly to a burn that seeped deep into me. My hands wound around the inky tentacle and yanked it out. I screamed as blue liquid flowed from the ugly black wound.
The offshoot recoiled to strike again when something grabbed me from behind, like a strong firm hand had reached around my waist and was pulling me away, distancing me from my enemy. The wind was sucked from my lungs and my body folded in half, as if being pulled like taffy, and I was carried across campus. The air changed from fresh and flavorful to old and stale. Buildings, trees, and people zoomed by, and as they did I felt like I was being torn limb from limb. I cried out in agony.
My vision blurred as the pain grew. When it finally receded I looked around and found myself back in the glass pool house. I glanced at the clock; it read ten-thirty, just as it had the last time I was in here with Thomas, who had been masquerading as Brent. Had it really been only twenty-four hours since I had died?
The banner announcing a pre-season meet with our rival school still hung across the room, though the meet should have already happened. Even the moonlight shadows and the placement of the chairs replicated the night I died. The empty cups of tainted grape juice sat on the table beside me, and the concrete floor had a fresh stain from where I had spilled my drink. Every detail was the same, like someone had painstakingly recreated the night I died.
It was morbid.
I thought back to the ghost stories my grandma had told me about murdered spirits stuck in a homicidal loop, reliving their deaths every night. I gulped, hoping that wasn’t about to happen to me. I didn’t have time to worry over this because a loud crack thundered through the air and everything went black.
****
Empty. I was nothing. No name, no sense of self, beyond and before this moment I was nothing. A heavy rhythm thudded around me as I was rocked, my limbs hanging uselessly from me.
In a rush my body and spirit were reunited. I was underwater in my heavy gown and impractical shoes. I was trapped and running out of air, drowning. I had heard when you’re dying, images of your life flitter past your eyes, but for me pictures of my evening trudged through my mind: Cherie’s dinner party at the old pool; sharing juice with Brent; being thrown from my body; trying to reconnect; Brent vanishing after the orange explosion underwater. My heart wilted with panic as I struggled to free myself from what held me captive, dragging me to the bottom of the pool. I peered into liquid darkness that seemed insistent on claiming me as it own, despite my frantic clawing and tugging at my dress. There was a clanging in my ears, a burning in my chest. I wasted my last few seconds of breath screaming futilely for help that I knew wouldn’t come. Terror morphed into acceptance. My eyes started to close in defeat, my limbs stilled, and I knew it was the end.
Some time later my eyes opened slowly. The warped, disorienting feeling of déjà vu still clung to me. I was lying on cement, on my back, looking through the glass roof of the pool house, staring at the stars. My shoulder burned, throbbing from the mist’s handiwork. I was back in the present, my memory intact, the instant replay of my death over.
I had been ripped from the present to experience again the final moments of my life. Reliving my death had been just as traumatic and painful as it had been when I had really died. In the reenactment, I had been powerless to remember anything beyond my final moments or do anything to change the outcome.
I turned to tell Brent but to my surprise he wasn’t there. The last place I had seen him had been at the volleyball courts when the mist . . .
Did it get him? I started to get to my feet, but had to sit down as the room began to careen. I thought of the mist attack.
My mind searched for him with an intensity that surprised me. He was near and just knowing that eased the pressure building behind my eyes. But beyond knowing he was close, I couldn’t locate him, my Brent GPS on the fritz. The scraping of the door and the flickering on of the lights drew my attention to Cherie walking into the pool house, blocking the view of the person behind her. She wore the same formal black and white dress that she had worn at her party the night before.
“I swear I saw them come in here,” Cherie mumbled. “He left, but she didn’t.”
Her words were familiar; I had heard them from her before, the night before. Her companion stepped out from behind her and my forehead crinkled in confusion to see it wasn’t Steve with her, but Brent.
“Nice to know you’re able to pay such good attention to details and kiss me at the same time,” Brent teased with a grin. He glanced around the room, looking right past me, even though I was looking right at him. “Maybe they left,” he suggested.
The words, his actions, even his expressions were identical to the ones Steve had used right before they found me dead. Brent was acting like Steve had, and was even wearing Steve’s navy blue pin-striped suit.
“I guess,” Cherie said, sounding unsure. “Wait, what’s that?”
Cherie asked, pointing to the water’s edge where my purse lay haphazardly.
Cherie bent down and picked it up. “It isn’t like Yara to leave things. You don’t think . . .” She trailed off as she looked toward the water. She and Brent spread out, each peering into the pool.
“Brent!” I called, trying to get his attention. He gave no sign that he had heard me. “Brent!” I yelled again, stepping in his path so he would have no choice but to stop or run me over. To my surprise he did neither; he walked right through me, his eyes fixed on my dead body at the bottom of the pool, stopping only when he reached the edge, where he crouched low, gasping in horror and diving in. Cherie started screaming hysterically. Brent resurfaced, pulling my body along in his strong arms, and Cherie ran to help him.
Brent began giving me CPR. I kneeled across from him and called his name again, but he still didn’t hear me.
I had heard of things like this, that other spirits could be drawn into the death loop. Like an actor given a role, Brent had apparently been assigned the part of Steve. In this moment, he, too, was given a script he couldn’t vary from. His part as Steve had to play out to the end before he was himself again.
I didn’t want to watch, so I walked toward the glass walls and stared out into the clear night, the searing pain in my shoulder helping to distract me from the scene re-unfolding behind me.
I was grateful when the CPR stopped, and the time twist ended. Cherie’s distraught image disappeared like a wisp of smoke on the wind and Brent’s consciousness reemerged as his own. The past faded into the present, leaving Brent standing there, looking dazed, rubbing the back of his neck.
“That was intense.” He walked toward me shaking his head. “It’s very awkward playing Steve and making out with Cherie. I’m not sure if I should feel guilty or grateful.”
I shot him a nasty look but he didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed. “What?” He continued. “It’s not my fault that I now know way more about how our best friends kiss than I ever wanted to.”
“Oh, shut up!” I said. I pushed down the feeling of jealousy I felt at the image of him kissing Cherie. “Thanks for the visual,” I added, wondering for a second how far they had gone and then deciding I didn’
t want to know. “So you were Steve’s stand-in?”
“No, I was Steve. I thought everything he was thinking, did everything he did. It was like I was him.”
“Weird.”
“I know. Why wasn’t I me?”
“Maybe since you didn’t have a body when it happened, you had to play someone who did.” Dying again had drained me and I cradled my aching arm as I settled down wearily at the water’s edge. “What was that anyway?”
“How you died,” Brent said dryly.
“I guess I phrased that wrong,” I conceded with a wry smile. “Why did I have to go through that again?”
“A hiccup in time, maybe?” Brent scuffed his feet on the cement. “Haven’t you heard of murdered ghosts haunting the places where they died?”
“That was a rhetorical question meant purely for complaint.” I bit my lip hard. “Is my murder going to echo here for all eternity? Am I going to have to relive my drowning every night?”
Brent’s eyes wrinkled in concern. “I don’t know.”
Sadly, having listened to my grandma, I was afraid I did know. “Do you relive your death, too?”
“No, but we each died under totally different circumstances. I got invaded by the body snatchers and you went swimming with the fishes.”
“Nice analogy. The real difference, though, is that you’re not dead,” I said softly. “Your heart’s still beating.”
“Well, I’m not exactly alive either, am I?” There was an electric frustration bubbling under Brent’s surface. “You have to get past this belief that I’m still alive.”
“I know, Brent. I’m sorry. Dying again was just really hard. It rattled me.”
“Makes sense.” I was surprised at his reply; I had been expecting another sarcastic remark. “So, how did dying go tonight?” He joked softly.
I snickered. “Oh, you know,” I played along, “the usual. I drowned.” Something that had perplexed me made its way out of my subconscious. “Something was different tonight, though. I mean, I wasn’t in the groves with you before I drowned. I also skipped the whole not being able to reach my body part. Why is that?”
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