She nods stiffly. “Yeah. Probably. My friend… I know she wasn’t going to die, but she did anyway. And I don’t think Andy is going to die either, if that makes you feel any better.”
It doesn’t. “Yeah, thanks.”
Mellie looks more somber than I’ve ever seen her. Jared’s body stares up at us, blank eyes open and glassy, and I’m torn between wanting to give Mellie a hug and some reassurance and
wanting to leave as quickly as possible. Death is always messy, I realize; even when, like in Jared and Esther’s cases, there is no blood or gore. Death splatters on everyone around it and stains them.
Mellie’s seen so much death, it’s changed her. Is it going to change me, too?
Chapter Eleven
My mother died of a heart attack five and a half years ago; I was the one who found her body, sprawled out on the living room floor. She was thirty-four, a beautiful, vibrant woman who was friends with everyone she met. We were very close; after she died, I feel like a part of me did, too. That was the first time I tried to kill myself. I remember taking a handful of pain relievers and waiting on the couch for what felt like hours. I got an upset stomach, ran to the bathroom just in time to vomit over the rim of the toilet, and regret burned with the bile in my throat. I felt dirty and ashamed, and vowed never to do something that stupid again.
So, naturally, I tried the same thing two years later, with the same result. I never really got over my mother’s death, even now. Maybe that’s why I can’t move on with my life – or my afterlife. Where my suicide was supposed to make things better, all it’s done is make everything that much worse. My family is unhappy, I might never even get to see my mother again, and I’m no better off than I was when I first swallowed those pills.
My mother is all I can’t think of as I watch the bullet arch through the air, crashing through flesh and bone and splattering blood all over the wall. Her death wasn’t as messy, but it still felt the same. Reliving the memory is jarring.
Reece is a man with dark skin and tightly curled black hair. A bullet hole is pulsing blood out of his chest fast, while his mother frantically calls for an ambulance on her cell phone. A murder-suicide. Reece’s father had been on one end of the gun, Reece on the other, and his mother in another room phoning the police. I watched from the ceiling, eyes glued to the bullets and the wounds they created – one in a man’s chest, the other in his father’s skull.
An accident is one thing, but this is my first time witnessing a murder. I would have tried to stop it if I could, but when I arrived the gunshots were already echoing through the neighborhood. I could have stopped the father from killing himself, if I’d really wanted to, but a sick part of me wanted to see him punished for what he did. That might make me a murderer by association, but I don’t care; he deserved what he got.
I’m one of the lucky few who was blessed with an amazing set of parents. Sure, my father worked late hours and didn’t talk much, and my mother was sometimes too busy with her social life to play with her growing children, but looking at Reece’s body shuddering on the floor, I really can’t complain.
He doesn’t look that much younger than Jared – maybe eighteen or nineteen. Probably just about to go to college. His white shirt is soaked through with bright red blood and so is the carpet underneath him. I don’t even have to pull his soul out; he dies too
quickly for me to reach him.
Mellie is at my side, eyes locked on the father’s body. She’s barely left me alone since our last proper conversation; I think she’s
feeling a little guilty about giving me the cold shoulder without explaining herself for so long. But now that I’ve gotten her to open up about one thing, maybe she’ll finally start telling me the truth. Or at least, not hide so many things from me.
Reece is as panicked as I expect him to be, flailing his arms and shooting shocked glances between my hovering form and his lifeless body on the floor. His father’s spirit flickers out of his body slowly, and Mellie immediately lunges forward to catch it. I start explaining things to Reece as best I can, but Mellie interrupts me, one hand firmly locked around the other spirit’s wrist.
The room temperature drops at least ten degrees and I shiver, feeling the ice running through my skin like blood. Every time Reece’s father struggles to get away, the room jolts and spins and my core feels like it’s freezing.
“He can’t come with me,” Mellie says. “Not where this one’s going. You two are going to have to wait here for a bit.”
I know from the tone of her voice that she’s talking about Hell. The mysterious place I only found out existed a couple months ago. I wonder if it’s all fire and brimstone like the stories say; are people there tortured for all eternity? It has to be worse than this Limbo place I’m in, which is pretty awful already. I shudder, nodding towards Mellie, and watch her drag the struggling ghost down through the floorboards.
“That’s Mellie,” I tell Reece, who seems to have calmed down a little after the initial shock wore off. “She’s the boss around here, pretty much. I’m Terra, and I’m… dead. Yeah, that’s about it. I
died and got stuck here and now I watch other people die. But not in a creepy way, I swear. More in a ‘I have no other choice’ sort of way.”
Reece’s mouth is wide open in shock, his hands frozen in the air. He looks down at his feet, which are at least an inch above the ground, and promptly falls over backwards, landing in a puddle of his own blood. The scream he produces would have made me laugh under any other circumstances; I clamp my mouth shut tightly.
After he freaks out a little more and eventually settles into a semi-calm state of shock, Reece tells me his name and explains what he can remember about what just happened. He tells me that his father had caught his mother in the middle of an affair and decided, two days later, that the best revenge would be making her watch her own son die. Reece doesn’t know if it’s the guilt or the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail that made his father shoot himself, but he tells me with trembling shoulders that he’s glad it happened. His father was never the nicest person, but Reece never would have pegged him as a killer – especially of his own child.
Mellie returns a few minutes later, looking out of breath despite the fact that ghosts don’t even breathe. She touches down on the floor, sidestepping the flow of blood on the carpet, and joins Reece and I by the door. Reece’s mother is crying, shaking her son’s shoulders and shouting unintelligible words at his body. Her face is a mess of tears and snot, and after a moment I have to look away.
Mellie stares at Reece, her eyes narrowed. I expect her to grab him and take him away to Heaven – I assume that’s where he’s going – but she doesn’t.
“He’s stuck,” is all she says, shooting a meaningful glance at me. Reece looks confused, but I, unfortunately, know exactly what she’s talking about.
“How do you know?” I ask, my mind reeling. “Actually, how do you know any of this? Where to take people, and how to do it? Is there, like, a seminar on how to be a makeshift Grim Reaper that I missed?”
Mellie shakes her head. “I’ve been here the longest; I just know. Before I got here there was somebody else in my place who did this job, but they moved on a long time ago and left it to me. If I ever get to move on, I assume you’ll be taking over for me, but I doubt that’ll ever happen.”
I don’t know what surprises me more – the fact that Mellie’s actually offering me answers right now, or the knowledge that there’s a good chance I might be stuck here reaping souls for the rest of my existence. Both thoughts make me uncomfortable, but not for the same reason.
“What if we both move on? And Reece too, obviously.” I glance back at Reece, who’s still staring at the floor.
“I don’t know,” Mellie answers honestly. Her voice wavers a bit. “That obviously hasn’t happened since I died, but I assume more people would get stuck. I’ve been trying for so many years to help people find the closure they need to pass away peacefully
; without that, I think there would be a lot more spirits wandering Earth in
search of it.”
I nod, frowning. I never really thought about it, but Mellie’s
job is extremely important. I don’t think I could ever take on a load like that and stay sane like she has; the pressure must be tremendous.
“All I got out of that is I’m stuck, and you two are crazy,” Reece speaks up, finally tearing his gaze away from his mother.
“That’s pretty much all you need to know,” I say, trying my best to give him a sincere smile; it probably looks more like a grimace. “You don’t remember much about your life, do you?”
“No. Just the last couple of days. How did you know that?”
“It’s the same for all of us. At least, it was for me.” Mellie lets me do the talking without stepping in. I kind of wish she would. “Your memories will come back eventually, but it’s kind of a slow process. The reason you’re stuck here and can’t go to Heaven or whatever is because you have unfinished business here on Earth. You need to figure out what it is and fix it before you can move on. I think.”
“That’s right,” Mellie finally says. “It usually doesn’t take very long. Most of the time people who get stuck just need to make sure their loved ones are okay before they leave. I’m guessing you were pretty attached to your mom; she might be why you’re still here.”
Reece nods silently, looking down at the sobbing woman again. Ambulance sirens blare out from far away, getting closer. I wonder if my mom is the reason I can’t move on. I don’t remember what happened to her – if she died or just left. My memory of her is blurry and sloppily pieced together in my mind, like I haven’t seen
her in a long time. Only the past three or four years of my memory have returned completely; the rest is choppy and hard to understand.
“We should get out of here,” Mellie says, laying a gentle hand on Reece’s arm. “You probably don’t want to see this.”
The door opens loudly and three men run inside, two carrying a folded stretcher and the other outfitted with a few different emergency first-aid items. The men take in the scene solemnly and the two holding the stretcher set it down and run back to the ambulance, returning a minute later with another man and a second stretcher. Mellie guides Reece out the door silently, but I stay behind and watch. For some reason, I can’t look away.
There’s so much blood on the floor; it’s spreading like water and soaking into every inch of carpet surrounding the two bodies. There was a lot of blood when I died, too, but I don’t think it was this much. I remember waking up a few feet above my body, disoriented and panicking, and then I saw all the blood, and the deep gashes in my wrists, and my sister dropping her backpack and skidding to the floor beside me. I’m remembering a lot more things lately, but that memory is the strongest. I don’t know if that’s because it’s the most recent, or if it just had the greatest effect on me.
Both men are pronounced dead at the scene. The paramedics call the time and zip the bodies into large white bags stained dark red on the outside. Reece’s mother stays on the floor, the knees of her jeans soaked in blood, until the men help her up and guide her into the back of the ambulance. I stop watching after that.
I leave through the closed window and my body automatically flies itself north, towards a small neighborhood a
block away from the high school I went to. The pull is still there, and I know exactly where to go. I can’t explain it, but after watching Reece and his father die so horribly like that, I need to see Andy. I need to make sure he’s okay.
As long as I don’t touch him, or anybody else, it’ll be alright. I won’t interfere. Mellie can’t exactly forbid me from flying around town, and if I just happen to pass by Andy’s house and look through his bedroom window, that’s not really my fault.
It’s getting late, and the lights are all out in Andy’s house except for one. I breathe out a superficial sigh of relief when I see Andy standing in the middle of his room, a bundle of clothes in his arms and his bedsheets rumpled. He’s getting ready for bed. I should leave. But I’m not being pulled anywhere right now – a sense of weightlessness pours over me, like a pressure in my chest has just been relieved. It keeps me rooted to the spot, hovering with my eyes level with the bottom of the window pane.
Honestly, I have no desire to watch Andy strip – honestly. He’s too young for me, and even if he wasn’t, he’s not my type. If I even have a type. He’s kind of like the kid brother I never had, except that doesn’t sound quite right in my head. I’m a ghost, and he’s a human, and I’m an idiot. It just wouldn’t work out.
I watch – in a totally not stalker-ish way – as Andy takes his shirt off and – oh. Oh. So, that’s why he changes for gym in the bathroom stall.
I’ve never seen a binder in person before, but I know better than to think Andy’s the kind of guy who likes wearing tight, cropped tank tops just for fun. It’s black and smooth and looks as
uncomfortable as I imagine it probably is. I’ve never known a transgender person, but I suppose that’s kind of the point. I’m sure I’ve seen a few people like that who have blended in so well I haven’t even noticed.
In retrospect, Andy does have really feminine features; his face is all shiny and pretty and even though he wears baggy clothes I can tell that he’s tiny. He’s shorter than I am and, with his shirt off, twice as thin. A pang of jealousy replaces my initial shock, and I wonder how I didn’t see this earlier.
He pulls his pajama top on and quickly changes pants, switching the light off before crawling into bed. The darkness illuminates a bright orange night-light in the corner across from his bed, and the dirty clothes he left in a pile on the floor.
I was going to just check on him quickly and leave, but now that Mellie’s off to God-knows-where with Reece, I’ve got a little more freedom. And Andy has a lot of explaining to do.
I float into his room, sit down in a cushy armchair by the door, and wait. He snores when he sleeps, and that really shouldn’t be cute, but it kind of is.
Chapter Twelve
“What the Hell, Terra!”
I chuckle, crossing my legs in mid-air. Andy’s body is in an ungraceful heap on the floor, his sheets tangled around his legs. I’m glad his parents are already at work, because the high-pitched scream he just let out could have woken the dead. Or surprised them, at least.
“Good morning to you, too,” I mumble, grinning down at him. His legs are still half-on the bed and the blood rushing to his face is making his cheeks beet red. “Happy to see me?”
“If by happy you mean frustrated and still very angry, then yes. I’m thrilled.”
“You’re still not over the gym class thing?”
“Nope.”
Andy’s doing his best to glare at me, but the effect is lost somewhere during his fight to untangle himself from his bedsheets.
“Fine,” I say. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interfered. If it makes you feel any better, my boss is crazy upset with me too. So
I’m pretty sure I’ve already been punished enough, if you wanna just go easy on me this time.”
Andy’s feet slide off the bed and hit the floor with a loud thump. He curses and rolls onto his side, his pajama shirt twisted and riding up just enough for me to get another glimpse at the black fabric underneath; as soon as he sees me looking, he pulls his shirt down quickly and avoids my eyes.
“It doesn’t make me feel better, but it’s a start. Some groveling would be nice, though.”
I roll my eyes. “Not gonna happen. Nice try.”
He pulls himself back up onto his bed and kicks the rest of his sheets to the floor. He still won’t look at me, so I let my eyes wander around his room; I’ve seen it from the outside before, but never in such detail. It’s huge, at least twice as big as my bedroom, but the space is almost empty.
There’s a desk in one corner, homework and textbooks piled on top of it, with a rolling chair pulled out of the front. The walls
are a dark, solid blue color that matches his bedspread and half of his wardrobe. A dark, wooden dresser is propped against the wall opposite the bed, one drawer open and spilling unfolded clothes over the edge. So he’s just as much of a neat-freak as I am – that’s good to know.
The one thing that stands out to me the most about Andy’s room is that there are no personal touches in here. No posters on the walls, no knickknacks on the shelves, not even a colorful pillow or a stuffed animal on the bed. Just looking at it, I can’t tell a single thing
about Andy’s personality, except for the orange night-light in the corner and the purple backpack by the door. Everything else is so plain, and if it wasn’t for the mess, it wouldn’t even look like anyone lives here.
“I really am sorry,” I tell him, trying to emulate the calm that Mellie’s voice almost always has. “I just wanted to help. I shouldn’t have assumed you needed it.”
He shakes his head but doesn’t respond. His bare toes twitch as he shifts into a more comfortable position on the bed, legs crossed and hands in his lap.
“I’m not supposed to be here, you know. I’m kind of going against the rules for you.” Stop talking, Terra, I reprimand myself. You sound like a moron.
“Why?”
Shut up, shut up, shut up. Don’t say anything, idiot.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, staring at him like I’m just seeing him for the first time. Technically, I am – at least, this version of him. I’m enamored by all of the subtle clues I didn’t even pick up on until last night. I’m not going to judge him because he’s different – what kind of hypocrite would I be then? – but I can’t say this knowledge doesn’t change anything. To be honest, it makes me want to protect him even more, but I don’t really know why. “To make sure you’re okay? I really don’t know.”
“So you are here for my soul. You wanted to make sure I didn’t die before you could grab it.” His tone is light, but it still takes me a minute to realize he’s joking. My stomach feels like it’s plunged its way up into my throat.
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