by Martin Kee
She giggled—the champagne. “I think more members of government should let their hair down, try their hand at the arts. You all seem so stodgy from the public’s perspective.”
“You say it like I’m the mayor himself, not just someone who handles his appointments.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, at least the food was acceptable.”
“Except for the salmon.” She made a face.
They rounded a corner, entering one of the nicer apartment districts, a section of brick townhouses with square, manicured hedges. The evening had been lovely, and quite the surprise gift from her fiancé, Dona thought. She hadn’t even planned on going out tonight, but there was Tom, at her door, wearing a tuxedo and holding a rose in his mouth. Ballet had never been one of her interests—dance was a mystery to her for the most part. But Tom had a way of making anything feel comfortable, and that’s why she loved him.
“Stodgy is how the mayor wishes to be seen,” said Tom. “And Perlandine is the last person I’d want to see in a tutu dancing.”
She laughed as he broke free, twirling ahead of her. Tom placed a finger over his lip to signify the mayor’s walrus mustache. He spun and bowed, extending a leg towards her. The giggles were uncontrollable, and Dona broke into applause.
“And that’s how stars are born,” she said.
Tom looked up at her, his white smile radiant in the lamplight. It faded, and then she heard it too. Shattering glass.
His eyes met hers for only an instant as she turned trying to find the source of the noise. Someone from the party no doubt had dropped a bottle or a platter of glasses… but they were nowhere near the reception hall now. How could she be hearing—
Tom lunged at her as tiny glass shards rained from above. It fell all around her, smashing on the concrete like ice. He grunted, shielding her with his body as the sky collapsed all around her. Something heavy landed nearby with a wet crunch.
“Oh, God…” said Tom, his overcoat a collapsed tent above her body, blocking her view. “Oh, dear God…”
“Tom what’s happening?” Dona yelled, her voice muffled through wool. “Tom I can’t see!”
Then voices surrounded them, frightened and tense. People gathered all around, their feet shuffling along the street. They left red footprints. A woman screamed, shrill and piercing.
“Are you hurt?” a voice asked. “My God! Did the window… Are you okay Miss?”
“She jumped,” said another voice, female and wavering. “I saw her. From across the street… She walked right up to the window and broke it. She… she jumped. I saw.”
“Is she dead… Oh, my God… not another one.”
“My neighbor killed himself last week,” mumbled an older man. His voice was sad and businesslike. “Hung himself. At least he didn’t threaten the safety of others… See if those two need help. Find something to cover her.”
Tom got to his feet, his coat rising like a theater curtain to reveal a changed world. Gone was the serenity of a tipsy, romantic date, now stained red, the sidewalk a nightmare of glass caltrops and blood. Tom grunted from behind her as a bystander gripped his arm.
“You’re bleeding,” said one man. “Get this man a Cleric.”
“Don’t you know who that is?” said another man.
Dona stared at the cobble as hands helped her to her feet.
“No, should I?” said another voice.
“That’s Tom Munson.”
“Am I supposed to know him? Oh! That Tom Munson?”
Whispers surrounded her as she turned to see the crowd gathering around the jumper. She made out bits and pieces of the woman between gawker legs, and she saw the blood. Hard to miss that much blood. It pooled, dripping into the gutter.
“Are you all right?” asked a woman. “You’re Miss Barkley of the Millstone Wedge Barkleys yes?”
“Y-yes.” Dona nodded and turned to Tom. He grinned at her sheepishly then winced as a man removed a three-inch shard of glass from his shoulder. Though it hadn’t entered too deep, the glass was stained red. A hand went to her mouth as he winked at her.
“Imagine if I didn’t have my coat,” he smiled and winced again. “Ow, God that hurts.”
“Oh, God, Tom.” She blurted the words out through shaking hands.
“I’m fine,” he said. “But I think they want to get me to a hospital.”
She went with him as hands ushered them into the vehicle. They said little on the way to the hospital, said less as they rushed him through the metal cross of the cleric’s door. She waited outside the emergency room until he emerged. He gave her a weak smile.
“Sorry to ruin the evening,” he said.
“Save it, you mean.”
He looked around at the Clerics with their spectacles, the priests in their robes. He turned once again to her.
“Offer you a walk back?” he asked. “I think I need to turn in, I’m afraid.”
“You go home,” she said, gesturing to the trolley waiting out front through the window. “I… I need to walk a bit.”
“Be careful?”
She nodded as he leaned in for a kiss. It was a rehearsed, platonic kiss—familial and brotherly.
“Okay,” he said. “But I promise I’ll still make the party.”
“I know,” she said, patting his chest. “Go rest.”
She watched him enter the trolley, wave, and vanish. The street home took her past the scene of the suicide again; there was no avoiding it. Reporters’ cameras flashed at the body, bathing it in brilliant daylight, illuminating darkening cobble.
I’ve never seen anyone die before, she thought as she crossed the road. I’ve known people who have died, but never seen it happen.
Faces rushing up to meet her, ghosts long forgotten, brought to the surface by an intimate courting with death. This evening was filled with ghosts. She saw her grandmother, boys who had left to be soldiers, all of then dead now. She saw Melissa Montegut, who had died far too young…
Had they ever caught the killer? Dona didn’t think so. Some still suspected that witch girl, Skyla and her mother. Dona had never discounted those rumors either. The twerp was trouble.
It had been three years since she had spoken about Melissa, back when she and Victoria had used the girl as a lure. But things had gone wrong, and Melissa was nowhere to be found.
“I told you Melissa’s not there,” Victoria had said, wringing her hands in worry as they stood alone on the school steps years ago.
“Maybe she went home to her mother,” Dona had said.
“She was supposed to meet us after the payback; you know as well as I do.”
Dona could barely even remember what the payback was for. Was it for blabbing? Yes, she thought. Skyla was always running her mouth, revealing secrets that weren’t hers to tell. And for punching Victoria… but mostly it was payback just for being different.
(And for telling the truth.)
Even now Dona’s cheeks burned from the memories, ancient history as they was. She doubted Vicky had forgotten either. Vicky never forgot anything. But then Melissa was gone, her body to wash up later. The twerp had vanished as well, her house burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ash and questions unanswered.
“It’s just as well,” Vicky said one day. “Not like we could have counted on Missy for anything anyway.”
A risen cobble brick caught her heel and she stumbled, cursing her ridiculous, ill-fitting girl shoes. She removed them and stood a moment, sighing, flexing her toes. She looked up at the gray sky, the factory smoke glowing in the warmth of gas lamps.
She had never been born for such amenities like dress shoes and dance gowns. For Dona it had been all rugby pitch and grass-stained school uniforms. She was comfortable as a bruiser, playing forward for the school team. It wasn’t so much that she was talented, just that when she ran at full speed, she had the same effect as a locomotive barreling down the field. Inertia did most of her work for her. Most opponents simply got out of the way. Even the boys. Those who didn’t l
ost teeth.
And teeth were what got us into that whole mess, she thought, her mind coming full-circle back to that night. All for a pair of teeth that the twerp punched out of Vicky’s dim skull.
Her stockings were damp now, but Dona didn’t care. It was nice, the coolness on her toes. It reminded her of sports, of grass—reminded her of freedom before she had been forced to start playing these ridiculous social games.
It wasn’t until she looked through the gate beside her that Dona realized where she stood. A cold hand ran up her back, making her shiver.
The Montegut estate was a dark brooding eyesore these days. A rusting steamcar sat in the drive, choked by kudzu vines, the brick walls vandalized, mortar in the chimney crumbling. Gaping holes in windowpanes revealed boards where discouraged agents had tried to keep the house secure. A pale wooden sign hung out front. FOR SALE BY BANK. It didn’t take long for rumors to circulate of hauntings, curses, ghosts… the bank was unable to give the house away. Probably just a matter of time before it was torn down…
As she gazed at the empty home, Dona fought the sense that something was there, staring back at her, something in plain sight, the way a deer might freeze when it hears you. You could be staring right at it and never know.
Dona had been looking right at the girl. She stared back from the second floor window, a pair of goggles on her head.
It was the twerp.
Chapter 6
Bollingbrook
SKYLA SWORE AND ducked, panting with her back to the wall, counting to twenty, and hoping Dona would simply walk on. She wiped nervous, sweaty palms on her pants. When she looked again, Dona was still there.
She ducked again. “Dammit.”
“What is it?” Melissa asked from a dark corner.
“It’s Dona.”
Laughter echoed through the abandoned room as Melissa peered out from the shadows. “I wish I could see her face right now.”
“I think she’s handling it better than I am.” Skyla held up a trembling hand. “You’d think I was the one who saw a ghost.”
“You’re sort of talking to one.” Melissa giggled, the sound lost in the crickets and leaves outside.
Skyla ignored her and looked up at the wall. The orange glow was still there, shimmering along the deepest cracks and spaces in the plaster. It pulsed.
“I hope you aren’t regretting coming here,” Melissa said. “I wouldn’t have shown you if it wasn’t important.”
“I know… just… what awful timing.”
Skyla peeked again out the window and sighed. Dona was now standing with one hand raised, shielding her eyes from the lamplight. Skyla sunk nervously back down with her back against the wall. With the goggles on, she could see through Melissa, past the shadows of the house and all the way to her home in Rhinewall. It was painful getting here. It would be more painful getting back.
They stared at one another for a while, the look of sad familiarity on their faces: Skyla hiding from bullies again, Melissa staring at her from the darkness. It wasn’t exactly awkward, but the air was heavy with unsaid questions.
“You never told me what happened to you… that night,” Skyla said, hoping for a distraction. Maybe Dona would be gone after this.
Melissa shimmered. “I haven’t told anyone really.”
“No one?”
“No one at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because it hurts,” said Melissa.
“I bet it did.”
“No,” she continued. “It really hurts to talk about it. It’s a physical hurt. You relive all of it, every cut, ever hit, every burn. You relive the fear and the hopelessness.”
As she spoke, Melissa changed. Her trembling lip fell away with waterlogged rot. The skin on her arms became sallow and waxy. One eye receded into an empty socket as clumps of hair fell away.
Skyla turned her head. When she looked back, Melissa had regained control of her appearance.
“What year is it?” Melissa asked.
“You don’t know?” Skyla couldn’t help her surprise.
Melissa shook her head. When Skyla told her it had been several years, the ghost girl became withdrawn, pensive.
“What?” asked Skyla. “I guess they don’t have calendars where you are?”
“It’s just that Rhia told me time was funny there, you know? It can move faster or slower… backwards. It all depends on your focus. There are people living in their past all the time. The only thing we can’t see is what hasn’t happened yet.”
“How long did you think it had been?”
“Twenty years or so. It depends on what I’m thinking about. If I really concentrate I can almost freeze everything around me, make the world come to a halt. It’s an infinite amount of time. I mean, if I’m studying or practicing, it feels like I could just learn forever. But any boredom is torturous… all that time stretched out in front of you. It’s no wonder some of us go mad.”
Before she had discovered the goggles, Skyla had seen glimpses of them in the shadows. A couple of times in her life these craven souls seeped into the physical world. They were hungry and desperate, like feral cats trying to get out a door, rushing past only to die as soon as they hit the light. It was a risk whenever she traveled.
Skyla shuddered. “I’m sorry they used you… used you to get to me.”
The ghost sighed. “The Churches use everyone. It’s their nature. They will probably continue to use everyone because that’s what they think people are there for.”
“Don’t you want revenge?”
“That’s just the thing,” said Melissa. “By wanting revenge you have to hold on to all that weight… It slows you down, makes you crazy. You know what I mean. You’ve seen it.”
Skyla had. She felt that weight the last time she saw the Reverend Summers. She had carried him through the shadows and nearly dropped him. He was simply too heavy with burden. She nodded.
“It’s like that, but worse,” said Melissa. “You want revenge so you think about all the reasons you want revenge. Each of those reasons comes with the living memory of what happened. You experience that every time. Now imagine having an eternity to obsess over that same memory, that same fear and pain. Imagine what that does to a person… assuming there is anything left.”
Skyla cringed, imagining all those monsters crawling through the afterlife. “How do you not get eaten?” she asked. “I mean, you make it sound like a wilderness.”
“It is,” said her friend. Melissa was now sitting just inside the shadows, holding her knees. It felt like the sleepovers of yesteryear. “It’s something that everyone is aware of. Those of us who are better at controlling it than others use it to create a better place for everyone else. Your aunt is very good at it.”
“And my mother?”
There was silence. “She’s… she keeps to herself mostly.”
After a moment, Skyla stood and looked out the bedroom window again. Seeing that Dona was gone, she exhaled. Pulling the goggles back down over her eyes, feeling them click, Skyla looked again at the scars painted on the wall.
“It’s like fire,” she said, reaching out a finger.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I’m not.”
She let her fingers hover before those slash marks in the plaster. Though the light suggested flame, it was cold, colder than anything she had ever felt. It was almost as if she was feeling part of herself seep into those cracks. Jerking her hand away, she rubbed it absently on her clothes.
“What I don’t understand is why it’s here,” said Skyla. “Did I do this?”
“Have you traveled through that wall?”
“No,” Skyla said, relieved.
Melissa shrugged. “Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Like I said, time is weird here, but it is also bound to our own experiences. It can go forwards or backwards. Maybe this is just some future event. A reverse echo.”
“The
n what is causing it?” Skyla asked.
“I don’t know. But it’s not the only one,” said the dead girl. “Come on.”
Checking the window one last time, Skyla followed Melissa through the back wall of the closet, and through the winding labyrinth that was the afterlife. Corridors shifted and slid by, some truncated or ending abruptly where a light switched on, or a steam car passed by. These were the shallowest levels of the in-between, the place where shadows kissed the physical world—the surface tension of reality. Unpredictable corridors of light and shadow could drop away at any minute. Skyla had lost part of a finger discovering this.
“It’s not healthy for you,” said Melissa. “Traveling like this.”
Skyla was too busy navigating the shifting rooms and grasping claws to look at Melissa. “You’re talking to me like I’m a child.”
“You are though,” said Melissa. “I’ve been here studying, playing, growing for what feels like twenty years. You couldn’t imagine how that shifts your perspective.” She looked up at the scars. “And this worries me. This is new.”
Melissa led her through the walls and shadows of the Bollingbrook underground, passing between buildings and alleys, sewers and churches, behind old rusted cars and even through the train yard where Skyla used to play.
From the shadows, Melissa pointed out from a dark corner in an abandoned apartment. It looked like it hadn’t been lived in for weeks. A man hung from a rope, undiscovered by neighbors or landlord. Behind him along the wall, Skyla could see the glowing scars.
The next house was even messier. A soldier sat slumped in a wooden chair, the rifle still propped between his knees, the top of his head missing. The floor behind him was a dark painting in blood and hair. His head tilted back at an angle, the mouth open in a mockery of a smile.
“Can you see it?” Melissa asked.
“Oh yes,” said Skyla. It was hard to miss, those scars. They shredded the plaster of the wall, glowing bright and strained. “And this is in every house?”
“Not every one,” said Melissa. “But many of them.”