by Sean Platt
She’ll bleed out if we don’t get her help.
I look back at Jack and see a knife on the floor.
“You stabbed her?”
He looks at me, nodding. “Yes, I was trying to get her to admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“That Chelsea was only seventeen when she … abused her.”
Oh, God.
I wonder if this is somehow my doing. I wonder if I somehow planted a seed of thought in Jack’s head while in his body and the cops wanted me to get Carla to confess to seducing Chelsea before she was of age. I had tried to trick a confession out of her, but she didn’t bite. Namely, because Chelsea wasn’t seventeen at the time. I understood that, but apparently, Jack is still a victim of this other theory. Maybe it’s because he isn’t getting the full picture of my interpretations of data — his brain is left to create a sensible narrative. Unfortunately, the one that makes the most sense to him is that Carla is a monster who must pay for her sins. But first, he needs her to admit her wrongdoing so he can feel good about what he’s done, or plans to do.
“We need to get her to a hospital,” I say, eyes locked on Carla’s, trying to get a sense of how coherent she is. Not that I’d know the signs of someone about to die from blood loss.
“I agree,” Waylon says, coming over to my side and helps to untie her.
“Stop!” Jack says.
We’re not listening.
Waylon is pulling at the knots as I kneel down to Carla’s side and take her hand. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
“I said STOP!” Jack shouts.
His tone is so abrupt, we both turn.
He has a gun in his hands, aimed at us.
“She’s not leaving.”
“Whoa, what the hell are you doing, Jack?” Waylon raises his hands in that way you do to calm an unreasonable person.
“I’m not going to let her destroy this family. If she leaves, she’ll go right to the cops and have me arrested.”
My first thought is to say yeah, of course she is, you whacko. But I can’t say that. I wouldn’t have previously pegged Jack as the violent type, but that was before I knew he was a drunk. Alcohol can soak out everything you know about someone, make them capable of some truly heinous shit.
“You don’t want to do this,” I say, approaching him, my hands also raised.
He doesn’t put the gun on me. It’s still aimed past me, at Carla. As I step between them, blocking his aim, he moves to counter mine, determined not to surrender his shot.
My heart is racing. I’m picturing this going to hell. Maybe he’ll aim at Carla and hit me, or Waylon. Tragedy in every direction.
“She’s not going to the police,” Waylon chimes in. “Are you, Ms. Valencia?”
She gives us all a groggy No.
Jack shakes his head, runs one of his hands through his sweat-mopped hair. “No, she’s going to tell. She’ll ruin us!”
“No,” Waylon says. “We’ll pay her off. Pay her to keep quiet on this. She’s out of a job once the school finds out, right? She’s got nothing, Jack. We can pay her to keep quiet. Pay her, and this all goes away. You with me, Ms. Valencia?”
She nods, crying. “Yes, I swear, I won’t tell anyone. I just want this over. Please.”
Jack swallows, glaring at Carla, gun trembling in his hand, lips a slit across his clenched jaw.
He shakes his head again. “No, someone’s gonna find out. We can’t just bring her to the hospital like this. Someone’s gonna ask questions, and then what? The police will come looking for me. And I won’t hold up to their questions. We’ve gotta end this now. You have people who can fix things, right, Waylon? People who can hide a body.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
Jack marches forward, eyes zeroed in on Carla, intent to finish her off.
I throw myself in front of Carla and grab the gun.
We struggle as I push his hands upward with the gun.
Jack’s eyes widen, surprised I’m trying to stop him, or maybe of my strength.
“Let go,” he hisses.
“No,” I say, eyes locked on his. “I won’t let you do this. Chelsea wouldn’t want it.”
His strength falters at the sound of her name.
His legs buckle.
He falls to his knees and releases the gun.
I slide the weapon to Waylon. He grabs it and shoves the gun into his waistband as if he’s done so a hundred times. Then he grabs Carla and throws an arm around her, helping her to stand.
“I’m gonna take her. It’s best you all don’t come with me.”
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll drive us back in Jack’s car. Thank you, Waylon.”
He nods.
“And I’m sorry, Carla.” I meet her eyes. “We will make this up to you. I promise.”
She stares at me, her eyes blank and expression numb.
They leave.
Jack is on the ground, sobbing in a heap.
I stare at him, my heart breaking for his pain, and for my part in this.
“I just want her back,” he says. “I just want Chelsea back.”
I kneel down beside him, put a hand on his shaking back, and hug him.
“We both do.”
Together, we cry.
The sun has set, and we’re both lying on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.
I’m thinking about Chelsea, wondering why I’m here. Was it to save Carla? Was it to stop Jack from murder? Or is there a chance I can save Chelsea? Or, at the very least, find the person who set this nightmare in motion.
I turn to see Jack still staring up at the ceiling. He hasn’t breathed a word since saying he just wanted Chelsea back.
He turns to me and says, “Do you still believe in God?”
I can’t answer for myself. I don’t know what I believe. But I know the answer he needs to hear. I know what Susan would say.
“Yes. More than ever.”
“How? How can He let this happen to our little girl? Yes, she sinned, but no sinner deserves this hell.”
“She needs us to be strong now more than ever. I need you to be strong.”
He looks at me, reaches over, and wipes a tear from my cheek.
Jack is lost, in pain, and ashamed.
I need to help him find his shore so he can start swimming home.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” I ask.
“To where?”
“Wherever the road leads us.”
He takes my hand, and together we stand.
Chapter Five
I wake up standing in a park.
I’m confused.
Something’s not right, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
I never wake standing. I always find myself in someone as their body is waking up. Am I to believe that this body was asleep while standing?
Maybe they had an epileptic fit, and at the moment they were out, I slipped right in?
I look around. The park is empty, except for a pair of mothers jogging on a path, both pushing strollers with babies or toddlers, far from where I’m standing.
I’m between a soccer field and an empty playground. Well, not quite empty. There’s a girl in a black hoodie sitting on the swing. I can’t see her details from here. With her eyes on the ground, she appears to be a high school student, maybe killing time before school starts, or meeting a friend.
How did I get here?
Who am I?
I’m not getting anything.
This isn’t right. I always get something. Even if I’m waking up as the world’s biggest junkie, I get an indecipherable blur of memories at the very least.
But I don’t feel drugged or otherwise incapacitated.
I look down at my hands and body. I’m a young woman, long dark hair, young-looking hands, pale skin. Maybe in my twenties?
There’s a wooden pavilion with restrooms near the playground, along with some picnic tables and a water fountain. There’s also a manager’s office,
though a metal gate over the window indicates that the manager isn’t in.
I head toward the building. Maybe my host’s reflection in the bathroom mirror will trigger something.
A cool breeze whips my hair as I break into a jog.
I push through the door and make my way to the row of five sinks and the long mirror hanging over them.
As I look up, a jolt of déjà vu.
I don’t know who I am, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve seen this woman’s face before — bright green-blue eyes, full lips, and bright pink cheeks. She looks so familiar, but I can’t rem—
The bathroom door opens.
The girl from the swings walks in, pulls her hoodie back, and reveals another familiar face: Chelsea!
“What are you—” I start to ask, but she cuts me off.
“So, this is what you look like?”
“What?” I ask, confused. Does she know my host?
“Funny, I would’ve pictured you as a blonde.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You, the woman who’s been pretending to be all these people — me, my brother, my father, my mother.”
“Wait, how do you — ”
I have so many questions — I can’t even get the words out. How does she know I’m a Jumper? How is she even here? And why is she saying this is what I look like?
“Know who you are?” she finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say, staring at her as she stands just two feet away, staring right back at me.
This can’t be real. A part of me wants to reach out and touch her, but I’m afraid to shatter the dream — if that’s what this is — before it casts light on some great mystery.
“Ever since I went into a coma, I’ve been … outside of myself. I wake, and I’m in my house. I wake again, and I’m somewhere else. No real control. But I kept waking up near my family, and I kept sensing you inside them. It’s like I could see this shifting shape within them, like a cross between a ghost and a light. At first, you were in me — I remember sensing you as I woke up from my overdose. I could see my family around my bed, and I tried to tell them how sorry I was, but you were there. You were in control. And then you were in Billy, then my dad, and then Carla, and then my mom. And now you’re here, a ghost like me, without someone else’s body to hide inside.”
“Of course I’ve got a body, I’m—”
And then I realize — this is my body, or maybe some a projection.
This is Ella.
I look back in the mirror, on the verge of tears.
“Oh, my God. I’m in my body.”
“What are you, and what are you doing here, interfering in my life?” Chelsea asks me, her voice on the cusp of accusation.
“I’m not interfering. I’m trying to help you.”
“Help?” she laughs. “You call driving my father to almost kill Carla help? Do you know how helpless I felt watching him do that to her? Watching him torture her?”
Now she’s the one crying.
“I’m sorry. And to answer your question, I don’t know what I am, or why I’m here.”
Chelsea looks at me, eyebrow arched. “Bullshit.”
“I swear. I’ve been waking up in a different body almost every day for the past year. And before then, I can’t remember anything. I don’t choose who I wake up in, nor do I know why any of this is happening to me.”
I don’t tell her about the assassins, or the weird messages I hear. That would only confuse or frighten her.
She stares at me, head tilted as if reading me.
“All I know is that the people I wake up in usually need some help, or I’m given a chance to save someone. I saved a girl from a serial killer a month or so ago. Maybe I’m here to save you.”
“I didn’t ask to be saved,” Chelsea says, turning away, giving me the teenage angst that annoys me so much.
“Maybe it’s not up to you.”
“So, what, God sent you?”
I laugh. “I don’t think it’s God.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that you don’t really want to die. Why else would you still be hanging out here, popping up around your family? Why follow me into the bathroom? You’re hanging on for a reason.”
She doesn’t look at me. Still, I know I’m right.
“You feel bad, especially now that all this has happened, to your parents, to your brother, to Carla.”
She turns around. “She doesn’t deserve this! Carla didn’t abuse me. She didn’t make me gay.”
“I know. I was inside her. I know that she loves you.”
“You can tell how people feel when you’re in them?”
“Yes, especially strong emotions, like love.”
“What was she thinking about me?”
“That she loves you and misses you. That she never meant to fall in love, but now that she is, she’s not sure how she can go on without you.”
Chelsea wipes tears from her eyes. “What do I do? I don’t know how to go back, how to wake back up in my body.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t even know how we’re here together right now. In the past year I’ve been jumping, I’ve never even seen my own body, let alone someone in a coma. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience before?”
Chelsea stares past me, to the mirror. “I thought it was a dream at the time. I was six, maybe seven, and I was really sick. I don’t know what I had, but my family was super-worried. My fever was through the roof. They brought me to the hospital. I was in the back seat on the way there. My mom was holding my head in her hands, and then suddenly I was gone. I was at my grandma’s, my mom’s mom, sitting in her tiny apartment, watching as she rocked in her chair, watching Wheel of Fortune. I tried talking to her, to ask her how I got there, but she didn’t hear me. Then she stopped rocking, and I woke back up in the hospital. They said I’d been unconscious for fourteen hours until the fever broke. I didn’t tell anyone about the dream where I went to Grandma’s, but later that morning my mom got a call from her brother that she was dead.”
“Oh, my. And you never told anyone?”
“Oh, no. My family would’ve thought it was witchcraft or the devil or something. They used to be a lot more hardcore in their Christianity if you can believe that. They didn’t even let me read Harry Potter when I was a kid, because, whoo, witches. I didn’t read the series until Carla lent me her copies.”
“Do you think it’s possible that you overheard your parents say something while you were unconscious, that maybe your brain made up the whole thing with your grandma to make sense of what you were hearing?”
“No, she didn’t get the call until after I’d woken. I remember because she left the room, then came back in crying, and pulled Dad into the hall. They didn’t want to tell me what was going on until I made them.”
I stare at Chelsea, trying to make sense of what I can't understand.
“Okay, so you obviously have some ability to astral travel, or something. But why am I here, in the park with you? I’ve never been in this situation. I’m always in someone else’s body. So, why am I here now?”
“I dunno,” Chelsea shrugs. “I was hoping you’d have answers. Maybe you’re here to help me get back to my body.”
“If only I knew.”
“Do you think Carla will be okay?”
I’m about to answer when I notice a sound, barely noticeable.
Chelsea repeats her question, but I hold up a finger. “Shh, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
I cup my hands to my ears. It doesn’t make sense, as I’m not physically here, and therefore my hands shouldn’t be able to amplify the sound to my ears, but using that logic, I wouldn’t be able to hear anything. And I can hear something, like … static.
And then the sound of a woman’s voice: “The women’s restroom.”
Oh, no.
My mind flashes to when The Collectors showed up
the last time I saw the assassin. They’d come to eat my soul, she told me before shooting my host in the head to send it elsewhere and out of their reach. She’d saved me, why I don’t know, but what if they haven’t stopped looking for me?
“I’ve gotta go,” I say.
“What? Where?”
“I don’t know. There are these things after me, Collectors. They eat souls.”
I spot a long row of windows above the toilets.
I step into a stall, climb onto the toilet seat, and hoist myself up enough to peek out the window.
There, in the center of the soccer field, I see the two mothers who were jogging with their carriers. They’re just standing there, staring at us. The carriers are on the jogging path, children abandoned, oblivious that something has taken over their mothers’ bodies.
The Collectors look up and see me, and as they do so, their faces blur and refocus.
Oh, shit!
They start walking toward us.
“Oh, God!” I scramble down from the toilet and run up to Chelsea, putting both of my hands on her shoulders.
“What?” Chelsea asks, her eyes panicked.
“They’re here!”
“The Collectors?”
Something else occurs to me. What if they’re not here for me? What if they’re here for Chelsea? Come to collect her stray soul?
“Yes. Can you get us out of here?”
“I don’t know how I got here! I just show up places. I don’t have any control!” Chelsea cries, her voice rising in pitch.
“Maybe you do. Maybe you brought me here. I need you to try. Think yourself somewhere else. Maybe think both of us somewhere else.”
“How? I don’t know what to do!”
“Close your eyes, imagine us somewhere else. Anywhere else!”
I run back to the toilet and peek through the window. The Collectors are closing in, maybe thirty yards away. They’re not running, and it’s almost scarier that they’re not. They’re walking straight toward us, no doubt that they’ll catch us.
I wonder if we should try to run, but something stops me from suggesting it. I don’t know if it’s instinct or fear, but I have a feeling that we’ll never get away if we run. Somehow, these things will catch us.