Touched by Death

by T. L. Martin

  Scientifically impossible? The man has no idea. “Trust me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You say that now . . .” He rubs his wrinkled hands together, lets out a grunt. “So, I was in my twenties when it happened. Just another ordinary day working cases. And I, uh, well . . .” He stops, shakes his head. “I started seeing things. Hearing things. Things that sure as shit were not normal.”

  “Like what sort of things?”

  “Eh, you ever read ghost stories?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, think ghosts. Spirits. Otherworldly and all that crap.”

  “So, you’re saying you saw a ghost?”

  He scoffs, looking at me like I’m the crazy one. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t see a damn ghost.”

  “I’m confused—”

  “I heard one.” He inhales, long and slow, his eyes glazing over like he’s losing himself to the memory. “It started out at night, in my dreams. Sound familiar?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond before he continues. “I’d feel this strange pull. Like, well, like something was calling to me. Tried ignoring it, taking sleeping pills, then it got worse. Eventually, I’d hear his voice when I went out. Didn’t matter where I was, I’d hear him so much it nearly drove me mad. Not nearly, it did drive me mad.”

  “His voice?” My palms are beginning to sweat. “Whose voice?”

  “Enzo’s, dammit. Enzo Hawkins.” My stomach does an odd flip, my mind trying to comprehend his words. A strange expression crosses over Mr. Blackwood’s face, like a mixture of sadness and frustration, his hands clenching and unclenching.

  “Enzo?” I repeat. “The older brother, the seventeen-year-old?”

  “No, no, no.” Mr. Blackwood gets up so quickly he nearly falls over. He grabs onto the bed to steady himself, then plucks up his cane. He just paces, wobbling and all. “He’s not seventeen anymore. Well, he wasn’t seventeen when he died, anyway.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Just listen, child,” he barks, instantly shutting me up. “Yes, Enzo was seventeen the day of the fire. But he didn’t die that night. He—he needed to get away. He needed a life free of his past, where he could be his own person, move on. So, with the forced help of Chief Wayne Mulligan—” He pauses, stopping his frantic pacing to look me in the eye.

  He doesn’t need to worry though; he has my undivided attention.

  “When Mulligan tried investigating the case further, he was able to get enough soft evidence to prove Thomas’s death, but not Enzo’s. And so he became determined to find the boy. Mulligan may have been a shit husband, a shit human being, but he was a decent cop with a reputation to uphold. Didn’t hurt that he and the boys’ father were long-time friends, either, but really it was his reputation on the line. Mulligan wanted Enzo found, so he was gonna find him. He quickly learned Enzo was the one who started the fire and was willing to set the boy up with a decent lawyer to prove it was self-defense. He didn’t care so long as he was able to close the case.”

  Mr. Blackwood reaches a hand into his coat pocket, retrieving the flask I’m surprised he hasn’t already chugged by now, and takes a long gulp. A sigh escapes him, and he squeezes the bottle like it’s his lifeline. I begin to wonder how long it’s been since he’s spoken to anyone about this. Or if he’s ever spoken about it at all.

  “Anyway,” he continues, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, “he wouldn’t let it go. And Tallulah . . . well, Tallulah had left Mulligan that same year. He had a way of beating her into submission, threatening everyone she cared about if she ever talked, but after seeing what happened to those boys that night, that was it. She took her kid and got the hell out of there.

  “She refused to have any contact with her husband at all, in fact, except when it came to this case. Eventually, she contacted him privately, blackmailed him to close the case. Said she’d stayed quiet about his abuse far too long. Now that she had gotten her daughter far enough away from him, she would do whatever it took to see that the boy, too, was free from that life. Let the report show Enzo Hawkins as being dead with the others, and allow him to live the new life he deserved. Otherwise he’d be spending who knows how long defending himself, and more than that, he’d always have his past tying him down in some way.”

  That’s the second time he’s mentioned Grams in relation to these boys. My mind feels like a cogwheel, turning and turning until it hurts, trying to keep working even as more info is dumped onto the cogs. “What did Grams have to do with the Hawkins family?”

  Another scoff, another grunt. He shakes his head, taking a step closer to me. “Tallulah was those brothers’ savior, child. They never could get to a hospital for their wounds, and with your grams being a nurse, she did the best she could for them. Stitching them up, about saving their lives every other week since their mom started taking off. Tallulah was practically their mother, for all terms and purposes. Even tried to report the abuse on several occasions but, well, you can imagine how that turned out with her husband as the chief.”

  It’s then that a vivid image flashes in my mind. A piece of a dream. A piece of their memories.

  We sneak around the back of the garden, as always, and I pray the shed’s unlocked when I reach for its handle. Thankfully it opens on the first try. I wince as I carefully lower Tommy onto the dusty cot, then turn to him with a questioning look. He nods, and I don’t waste any time before darting back outside, picking a small handful of rosemary from the garden and setting it on the neighbor’s window ledge as practiced.

  We all know the drill. Now all he and I have to do is wait.

  I race back to the shed, weakly collapsing beside my little brother. “See now?” I hear myself whisper, my eyes heavy as I rest my head against the hard wall. “We’ll be good and fixed up in no time. Nothing at all to worry about.”

  “Grams,” I mutter, almost to myself. “She was their neighbor, wasn’t she?”

  Mr. Blackwood only nods. My body feels heavy, the full weight of me sinking into the mattress as another piece of a dream dawns on me.

  “There, there,” a gentle voice coos. The tension in my body eases as I remember where I am. The shed. Our neighbor’s land.

  “Tommy,” I murmur, my voice wrangled as I try to lift my head.

  “Shh.” The hand guides me back down. I manage to turn, just enough to see the boy lying beside me. Tommy’s bare waist is wrapped in white cloth, his eyes closed, chest rising and falling in his deep sleep.

  He’s okay.

  We’re okay.

  For now.

  “As I was saying,” Mr. Blackwood’s voice yanks me back again, and I have to shake my head to snap out of it completely, “Enzo Hawkins was not seventeen when he died. He had moved out of state, started a life of his own, and he was a good and grown twenty-seven years old the day of his actual death.”

  Twenty-seven. I swallow, my throat suddenly painfully dry as I begin connecting more pieces together. “What . . . what happened to him? How did he die?”

  The bed shifts as Mr. Blackwood lowers himself beside me. He’s quiet for a long moment, and I’m almost about to repeat the question when I hear his voice, soft and distant. “It was a car accident. Would have been, oh, forty-five, fifty years ago now.”

  I turn my head at that, looking carefully at this man who sits beside me. This man with his cane, who lost his leg years ago in a car accident. “He was with you, wasn’t he?”

  He doesn’t say anything right away, but he doesn’t need to. I know the answer. Eventually, once the room is filled with the heaviness of his silence, he speaks. “He wasn’t only with me, child. I was the one responsible for his death.” He looks at me solemnly, nothing but guilt and sadness in his eyes, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much torment written on a person’s face before. It practically eats him alive right in front of me, making my own chest want to cry. “I’d been drinking—go figure—and he didn’t know. Got behind the wheel thinking everything was just dandy, ‘cause shit if
I don’t know how to handle my liquor, right?” He lets out a dark, sardonic chuckle. “But it gets worse.”

  My stomach twists, the anticipation hurting enough in itself. My throat’s so dry that my voice is barely a croak when I ask, “What happened?”

  “After the vehicle flipped, we were both in bad shape, but he—” He stops, swallows. “He was the worst. A piece of metal had lodged itself right in his chest and . . .” He closes his eyes, squeezes them hard like it could force the memory from getting too close. I’ve never seen the town’s angry Mr. Blackwood so pained, so vulnerable. “We weren’t as lucky with paramedics back then as your generation is now, but a passerby saw us and came to help. They tried to pull Enzo out first, but he wouldn’t let them. Straight up refused, insisting they get me first. All I had was a goddamn torn leg, but the bastard insisted the guy pull me out first anyway. So he did.”

  He coughs as he takes another sip of whiskey, but he chugs right on through it. I don’t know how much he manages to drink before he finally puts the flask down. “The guy barely got me settled onto the sidewalk when the whole thing blew to shreds.” He pauses, shakes his head, his next words weak, broken. “It should’ve been me.”

  I can hardly breathe as I try to process all of this. Last night comes crawling back into view, images of him, his bare chest and torso, all of those scars. My dreams, it can’t be a coincidence they’d begun just after he saved me in that lake. Just after the night my bond to him had been formed.

  And in every dream, I’d felt everything the boy had felt. It’s Enzo’s mind I’d been inside. Enzo’s memories.

  If my heart wasn’t quite literally broken right now, I’m certain it’d be in a frenzy, slamming against my chest and trying to beat its way out.

  Chapter 41

  “Tell me about the notes,” I demand. My lungs are losing oxygen as desperation for more answers consumes me.

  “The notes, right.” Mr. Blackwood rubs his face with his palms, exhaustion taking over his expression as he seems to gather his thoughts. “Like I said, I tried to ignore Enzo’s calls to me. Even started seeing a therapist, convinced I was losing my mind. But one night, as I sat at my desk writing up a report on my latest case, the pen in my hand suddenly . . . well, it took on a life of its own.” He shakes his head, mindlessly tracing over the folder with a finger. “That’s the only way to explain it, really. My hands still held the pen, sure. But suddenly, I wasn’t the one writing, controlling the motions. One after another, the notes wrote themselves. I about had a heart attack. There was no way for me to deny it at that point—not when I saw the damn words, clear as day, right in front of me.”

  His voice fades, silence creeping back into the room. I think he’s done talking, that maybe I’ve burned him out, but then he speaks again. “Almost as soon as they started, though, the messages stopped. Everything stopped, in fact. As though it never even happened.” His finger taps on the folder, tap, tap, tap. “Except I have these. No one else may believe me, but I know the truth, because I have the evidence right here.”

  My fingers are trembling again as I lift the folder. I reread each word, slowly, warily. Taking my time as though I might miss some hidden detail if I rush.

  After a few more coughs, Mr. Blackwood continues. “And so begins the story of my downward spiral. As the locals would call it, anyway.” I break my stare from the handwritten letters to glance up at the tired looking man. “I started researching. I was used to investigating already, so I knew how to do the initial footwork. Interviewed everyone from cosmologists to physicists to everything in between—anyone who would talk to me. Put together my own theories on it, some of which you read downstairs. None of them conclusive. All a bunch of hogwash and utter waste of time.”

  “So that’s why you first moved here all those years ago? To try and get some answers?”

  “Figured it was my best bet. Maybe he’d find his way home before anywhere else. And later, came this.” He reaches behind him and picks up the other book, then hands it to me. It’s the one I haven’t yet seen: Other Unsolved Mysteries.

  I set the book in my lap, flipping through it gingerly with one hand and pressing my fingers to my heart with the other, where a strange knot is forming. I try to soothe it with a circular motion. It doesn’t take long to figure out what this book is about. 1908, boy claims to see deceased mother . . . 1922, family of six spends evenings speaking to the dead . . . 1949, woman wakes from coma claiming to have witnessed the other side . . . Page after page, story after story.

  Closing the book, I meet Mr. Blackwood’s gaze once more. My voice is gentle when I speak, partially for his sake, and partially because the pressure in my chest only builds, the uncomfortable sensation taking over. “So much of your life, you’ve dedicated to trying to figure this out. Haven’t you? Trying to work out what happened to him. What he was trying to tell you.”

  He grunts, hazel eyes turning bitter. “Lots of good it did me. Or him.”

  “Is that why that lady was here a while ago? I remember a woman coming by, talking about failing to make contact.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ve lost count of the money I’ve wasted on so-called clairvoyants or mediums, whatever you wanna call them.”

  A thought crosses my mind, but I need to take a second to steady my breathing before I speak. My fingers continue the circular motion over my heart, and I close my eyes for a moment, trying to block the discomfort out. “What if—what if he wasn’t quite . . . on the other side, exactly?”

  Mr. Blackwood’s brows press together, a frown forming. “What are you talking about?”

  I’m talking about the notes, I want to scream.

  I’M LOSING MYSELF.

  THE DARKNESS CONSUMES ME.

  PLEASE. I DON’T WANT TO FORGET.

  I’ve tasted what it’s like to feel yourself slip away. To be consumed by the darkness, and to lose any sense of yourself. Who you were, who you are, who you’re meant to be. And I was only there, in that place, for a matter of minutes. To be stuck for days, weeks, months . . . years. A shudder runs through me. I can’t even imagine the type of strength it would take to try to hold onto yourself after all that time.

  “I just mean, what if he never fully crossed over? If he’s . . . I don’t know. If he’s somehow stuck somewhere? Couldn’t that explain why none of the specialists you’ve hired have been able to reach him?”

  “So could the fact they don’t know what in the hell they’re doing.”

  I shake my head, the pressure within me only increasing and my vision starting to blur. Something’s not right. Slowly, I pull myself up. I don’t know if it’s the overload of information, or if it’s something worse—far, far worse—but something is definitely wrong. When I shift my feet, a wave of nausea hits me, and my entire body tenses. No. I know this feeling a little too well. Could it happen right here? Right now? I need to leave, to go home.

  “I—I’m sorry, Mr. Blackwood. I’m not feeling so great. Can I come back another day?”

  He pushes himself up, balancing with his cane, and eyes me carefully. “Yeah. You, uh, you need to stay here and rest awhile?”

  I almost smile. I want to make a joke, tease him for sounding remarkably similar to how a friend might. But I can’t seem to muster the energy. I need to get to where Death can find me. So I just shake my head.

  I’m out the door and on the street in an instant, my thoughts as hazy as my vision. Not again, not again. Please don’t be happening again. If I cross over now, I don’t know that I’ll ever find my way back.

  I walk and I walk, one foot in front of the other, hardly feeling my legs as I do. The sky is a grey, dull blanket above me, the breeze a sharp whip to my desensitized skin. The streets are quiet other than the sparse vehicle here and there, nothing but the sound of the wind’s push and pull whirling through my ears. Another step, and another, and soon I can’t feel myself at all. Any sensations in my bones, my flesh, are fading away, becoming numb, until my body is nothing more than
an empty shell of my soul; a part of me I’m not connected with and yet can’t seem to separate from.

  My surroundings swirl as I collapse on the sidewalk, but I don’t feel the impact. I must be on my back because the sky looms over my face, spinning even as I lay still, trying hard not to blink.

  Do.

  Not.

  Blink.

  If I do, the darkness might take me. If I do, I may never see the sky again.

  “You’re okay,” a low, gentle voice soothes, then his face is looming over me. Dark lashes shadow those piercing green eyes, and windblown hair falls around his forehead. The firm line of his lips and hard clench of his jaw are such a contrast to the softness in his gaze. I see his arms wrap around me, but I can’t feel them. I can’t feel them at all, and it breaks my heart. I’m scared, so scared, and I need to feel his warmth, his touch, his comfort. “Shhh, you’re okay.” He’s stroking my hair, and I must be crying because he keeps saying, Shhh, shhh, you’re okay.

  Colors blur around us as he walks, taking me away from the streets. As the sidewalk disappears, everything becomes green and deserted. We abandon civilization and press on, far into the meadow, until we’re shadowed by long, barren branches as he leans back against a tree. He slides down to the ground, cradling me like a child.

  I’m still shaky even as I realize I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m still here. “Y-you’re here—”

  “Shh, don’t try to talk right now. Just rest.”

  “B-but I know . . . I know who you are . . .” My throat, it burns like matches scraping against a matchbox, too dry to catch a flame. I close my eyes, taking in the sensation. The burn. The pain. Because it means I can feel something again. It means the numbness is fading away.

  “Rest,” he murmurs, his fingers sliding through my hair, brushing over my neck. He pulls me in tighter, and I cuddle up against him, pleased to find that I can. That my body is listening to me again.