S.P.I.R.I.T

by Dawn Gray

  Are you all right, sweetheart? His voice tickled my mind and I found myself smiling through the tears that flowed down my face. I ran my hand through my hair and sniffled.

  I am now, I replied, and stood, turning back towards the house.

  With a smile on my face, I made my way through the woods. He was standing against the siding when I stepped through the trees, one foot up against the wall, his hands tucked deep into his pockets and his head was down as if he were watching for ants to move. He acted as if he didn’t hear me and I stopped to stand next to a tree directly across from him.

  “I wanted to give you time to think.” He spoke softly and brought his foot down from the wall, kicking the dirt in front of him before crossing his ankles. He lifted his head and looked me over before staring into my eyes. “But I have to be honest that having you so far away has done nothing but mess up my concentration.”

  “I can’t be with you all the time, Zander.” I smiled and tucked my hands in to the pockets of my coat.

  “Why not?” he asked, with complete seriousness. The smile faded from my face as he stepped away from the wall, moving closer to me. “My mind was in complete chaos, all I could think about was you. It took all I had to leave you be, but the temptation to whisper in your mind was so overwhelming. Everett sent me out here; he said I wasn’t any use to him anymore.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” I asked, softly.

  “What if he’s right and I found where I belonged, and its not here any more?” Zander sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know, Sam. I used to be able to control my emotions, push them to the back and forget about them, detach myself from a situation, but I can’t with you. I can’t let you go, and I can’t get you out of my head.”

  “Seems we have a mutual problem then, doesn’t it?” I grinned, knowing that he wasn’t telling me this to frighten me away. It was the truth, as his heart felt it, and it took a lot to admit it. I reached out and placed my hands on his shoulders, when he stood less than a foot from me. “I don’t know what I’m going to do after this. There is no way I can go back to my life the way it was before you.”

  “So don’t.” He sighed, touching my cheek with the back of his hand. “Stay here with me. My tour is almost done.”

  “We barely know each other.” I smiled.

  “We know each other well enough to know that we can’t do it without the other.” He brushed my lips with the tip of his thumb and smiled. “After, when this whole thing is done, than we’ll talk about this.”

  I nodded and grinned, pulling him to me as he wrapped his arms around me. I felt safe and content in his embrace. The pulse that I had gotten used to surged through me, and I closed my eyes tightly, noticing that it beat with the rhythm of his heart. The heat in my chest kicked up, warming the two of us as we stood in the chilly night air.

  I sat up on the soft bed, awoken by the harsh cry in the night, my eyes adjusting to the darkness in the room. I realized that I was alone except for the quiet man that sat on the chair in the corner. I took a deep breath, and then let my body drop back on the bed. I had forgotten how it felt to be home, how chaotic and disruptive the sounds of the dead were in the middle of the night. As I stared up at the ceiling, I could feel Zander as he sat forward on the chair.

  “Did I wake you?” I questioned, quietly.

  “I felt you wake up.” He sighed. “I’ve just been sitting here. Sleep and I don’t get along too well.”

  “Yeah, sleep and I are good friends, when I’m not so close to a portal,” I replied, placing my lower arm against my forehead. “Do they wake you much, the spirits that you see?”

  “No,” he replied, and moved closer to me. I felt him lay down beside me on the bed and his fingers caress my stomach. “I’ve just never been able to sleep at night.”

  “Come on, I’ll help you.” I smiled and felt him curl up against me, tugging me onto my side. He wrapped his arms around me and sighed in my ear. I could feel him ease into a light sleep, his breathing changed with the pulse in his body, relaxing for a moment, but I felt the little twitches in his hand and caressed it with my own.

  I stared at the wall for as long as my eyes would hold out, until my lids grew heavy and I couldn’t hold back sleep any longer. The inevitable was coming. Tomorrow we were venturing out to Miller’s Point, to the house that resembled my own. Tomorrow, we might have the answers to every question that plagued my mind. So why, if this was what I needed, was I so unsure about going through with it?

  Slowly, I faded into a dream, one not like any I had ever had before. It started with the darkness that washed over the night, as storm clouds rolled in from the west, and the stars disappeared behind the blackness.

  10

  I was seeing through eyes that weren’t my own, staring at the large metal entrance to the basement of a house as two teenage boys pounded on the padlock with rocks, quieting the blows by placing their jacket between the chain and the hatchway. The eyes I looked through swept left, and then right, making sure there wasn’t anyone coming, and then I could hear him sigh in frustration.

  “Look, guys, should we really be doing this?” he asked, his pre-teen voice echoing in my ears, and I realized that it was Zander. I was looking through his eyes once again, watching him cause mischief. “I mean, what if we get caught?”

  “Oh, shove it, Smith!” The bigger built of the two boys said, rolling his eyes. His metal braces reflected in the soft light and the bright red head of hair made me think of only one person, Kevin Donahue. “Just freaking stand guard and be quiet, will you?”

  Zander sighed again, something I had grown accustomed to hearing in his adult life as well, it was a sign of his irritation and inability to act on what he felt was right. The other young man, a blonde of almost the same stature as Donahue, shook his head and glanced between them. This would be Zander’s cousin, Derek Nadeu.

  I could feel Zander bouncing in place and wanted to smile to myself, for even as a young man the inability to ‘control his bodily functions’ was quite apparent. He heard the two boys grunt and turned to look at them as they pulled the chain from the doors as quietly as possible, and then watched as they pulled it open.

  Darkness loomed ahead and Zander fought the fright in his stomach as he leaned over and peered into it. I could feel the uncertainty and watched as he took a step back. Derek stepped up beside him and slapped him on the shoulder. When Zander looked over, his cousin stood there with a cheesy grin on his face.

  “Let’s go, pal, this will be something you don’t want to miss.” He promised and patted Zander in the chest with the flashlight.

  “Yeah, great.” He sighed and followed the two boys down into the basement.

  The flashlight beams bounced in different directions, illuminating only small parts of the dark dungeon, reflecting off beakers and glass covered cabinets. What caught Zander’s eye was the three-square-foot glass rectangle that stood over six feet tall sitting in the furthest corner. I could feel his stomach clench just as mine did as I lay in bed. There was something about that box that I didn’t like, and neither did Zander as the flashlight started to shake.

  It was then that I saw it, the white mist that formed in the glass container, taking the shape of a human, or what used to resemble one. I felt him swallow hard, his breathing growing heavy as the apparition continued to manifest. That was when I first felt the pulse in his body. It hadn’t occurred to me that there had been no reaction to my presence, that the pulse hadn’t been there. As I watched, with uncovered eyes, I saw the horror that he experienced almost every night.

  The ghoul was grotesque, gray and bony, its skin pulled tightly over the muscles that remained on its skeleton. A wave of familiarity washed over me as I suddenly felt the raking of its claws down my back. Zander followed my lead and looked down at its hands, ones that shrieked against the glass like chalk on a board, and he jumped.

  “Guys, I don’t think we should be down here,” he said, trying to keep the pa
nic out of his tone.

  “Cool! What does this do?” Donahue spoke, ignoring Zander’s warning, and flicked on a radio in the corner. Nothing came out but static, the sound of an off-air station. “Awe, what a jip!”

  “Can we get out of here?” Zander questioned once again.

  The two boys ignored him, except to toss a scowl in his direction as he backed into a lab table. The flashlight dropped from his hand, clanking down on the floor, and the bulb snapped off. Zander looked down, keeping an eye on the light as it rolled, and suddenly realized that he could see in the blinding dark. He looked up at the box once again, and the creature was staring straight at him. Snarling with anger and hatred, the creature’s eyes turned as red as blood fire and it opened its mouth, as if shouting at him.

  Zander spun, listening to the screech that emanated from the radio and suddenly he covered his ears. The sound pounded at his head, breaking up as if it were losing signal, or there was a blown speaker on the radio. But as he raised his hands to his head, he could see that the monster was moving his jaw in the same rhythm as the sound. It was making the noise.

  The crushing noise became louder, tying his gut into knots as he pressed against the pain in his head. He quickly ran to the radio and shut it off, but the noise didn’t stop, and he rushed to get to the dark stairway they had descended from. Kevin tripped him, toppling him into one of the tables, and he felt the creature become more irritated at the noise.

  “Stop!” he hollered, closing his eyes, but the noise continued to grow.

  I could feel it building in him, the storm of emotions that he held in from all the terrifying experiences with such things that should not exist, and he opened his eyes to look at the creature once again. He stood, bravery taking over as he moved through the dark room, and stood in front of what was once a man.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!” Zander hollered, receiving giggles from the other two for they thought he was talking to nothing but air.

  He could feel the flash in his body and watched as the small cell the creature was locked in exploded in a ball of light. Bolts of electricity flashed in every direction. Not only inside the glass, but also around the room, traveling on wires, exploding light bulbs above the lab tables. Zander’s heart rate rose with each blast of the storm but he knew when it was out of his control. He backed away once again, the creature raising his voice in anger as it echoed out of the radio.

  The white noise, Zander! I hollered at him in my sleep. Get away from the white noise; its how he’s hurting you!

  Zander turned, my eyes catching the rest of the brightened lab and I knew, right then, that the house he had broken into was mine. He escaped up the stairs and out into the night, able to see every tree limb in his path. The storm inside his body faded, and the light slowly went out, causing his surroundings to grow dark once again, and with it came the blackness as his body gave out and slumped to the forest floor. His last vision was the two boys he had come with, stepping over to look at his pale face.

  I sat up quickly, once again trying to catch my breath and looked around the room. Zander was lying, not so still, beside me. His eyes wide open, staring at me in shock as bolts of lightening flickered in the darkness.

  “The white noise?” he questioned, catching his breath as his heartbeat slowed. “What the hell? What white noise?”

  “The radio, my father’s radio!” I scolded, but then shook my head. “It was set to a frequency that he could use to hear spirits. That thing was using the white noise from the channel to hurt you. It saw that you had a reaction to what you could hear and it used it to its advantage.”

  “The electricity? I thought that was just some faulty wiring in the old house, but it was me. That time I could feel it, now that I know exactly what it feels like. I didn’t interject that into my memories, it really did happen.” Zander sighed, and then shook his head. “Why the hell did your father have that thing in his basement?”

  “He was working on sealing the portal, or at least that was what he said,” I replied, and looked down at my fingers. “He could hear them too, but I think he could also see them, which was why the container was built.”

  “So he trapped one? For what, to see what happened to it when he fried it or something?” Zander’s voice became irritated and he got up off the bed. “They’re scary looking mother fuckers, Sam, and to put the audio and visual together makes them more terrifying than anything I have ever seen. What, with you in the house, would give a man the great idea of locking one of the bastards in the basement?”

  “My father was a genius,” I said with a little crazy laugh in my voice. I looked up at him as I pulled my knees to my chest. I smiled but it faded quickly and I glanced down at my toes. “He said he did it for me, to try and find out why the voices wouldn’t let me be, but I think he got much more than he bargained for. They made him mad, drove him to the brink of insanity and then disappeared.

  “The portal is still there, in that house. I know because I can feel it every time I step over the threshold, but my father can’t hear them any more, he can’t even see them.” I looked up and him, fire sparking behind my eyes and in my chest as the tears streamed down my face. “It got away that night, you know, and my father thought that the best way to rid me of my fears and shake the voices from my head was to expose me to one of them. He told me that there was some plant, an herb, that he needed, and he sent me on my way. I had a small woven bag and a flashlight, and went up to the garden that he had planted in the middle of the woods.

  “I will never forget that night, the pain of hiding the marks from my parents. Trying to put the salve on myself was interesting enough, but I burned the shirt and never told anyone what happened. It was the day the fire came to me, but I put it in the past and I closed and locked the door.” With a deep breath, I smiled and shook my head. “I moved on, the best I could, finishing school early so I could move on early. I even got a third shift job in the summer so I wouldn’t be in the house, and I moved out as soon as I graduated; out of the house, out of the state. For all intents and purposes, the voices stopped that night, just like my dad had wanted, but the nightmare continued.”

  I watched as he stood by the window, the clouds outside swirled over the house, and his hands clenched in anger. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to soothe him, or let the storm work its way through. It was something he needed, after all that he had experienced, to let go of the anger and the confusion of the past, not to mention the present. But slowly he opened his fingers, letting the stress flow from them, and his eyes went calm once again, like the weather outside.

  “You’re not going to let it out?” I questioned and watched him shake his head.

  “I don’t want to scare you,” he replied. I smiled at him, watching him walk towards the bed.

  “It would take more than an electrical storm to scare me, Lieutenant.” I giggled and felt him grip my ankles. With one small tug, he had me lying on my back on the bed. My smile widened as he moved up the covers, pulling the end of my shirt with him, as he came to rest beside me. “What are you doing?”

  “Touching you,” he whispered.

  “And, you think that’s a good idea why?” I laughed, feeling his fingers twirl over my exposed belly button.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, the tip of his tongue flicking at my ear. “It seemed a more useful way to let out my aggression.”

  I laughed at him this time, as his touch turned into a tickle as he sent little currents of electricity through my skin. I slapped at his hand, looking deep into his eyes as I did, and he smiled broadly at me.

  “You’re quite insatiable,” I whispered.

  “I just want to touch you, Sam,” he replied softly in my ear, and then started gently kissing my neck.

  I closed my eyes, letting the feel of his hand as it spread open against my stomach seep into my pores. “Touch away.”

  The tips of his fingers worked magic on my skin, bringing goose bumps to the surface as he ran them up and down my bare
arm. Exposing my breasts, he touched and teased, but stayed away from the sensitive nipples. I found that as well as sexual, touching them could be quite relaxing. Slowly I turned on my side, loving the feel of his warm skin curled up against my back, and he slipped one arm under my neck and the other he kept over my waist.

  “Can I keep you?” he whispered breathlessly before nodding off.

  “Only if its forever,” I replied back, certain that he wouldn’t remember the conversation in the early morning hours.

  Forever and ever, he mumbled in his mind. I felt him press his forehead against the back of my head, the twirling motion of his finger on my stomach slowed and his breathing relaxed, letting me know that he had finally given in. Once that happened, I began to feel at ease.

  There were no more bad dreams, no more tainted memories as we faded off to sleep once again. The gentle caresses of his fingertips against my sensitive skin brought nothing but thoughts of thunderstorms and campfires to mind when I finally let the darkness take over.

  The covers were bunched up on top of me, keeping the glaring light of the morning sun from my eyes and I could hear the door creek open just a crack.

  “Lieutenant?” Walters’s voice whispered.

  “Tell me you didn’t just do that without knocking?” Zander scolded from where he had fallen asleep, his forehead to mine.