by J. R. Rain
I glanced down at my cell phone. An odd thing to do, certainly, when there’s a spirit manifesting in front of you, but I had my kids to pick up, after all. And spirit or no spirit, I wasn’t going to be late.
Again.
The entity continued taking on more definition. It did this by gathering the light particles around it. Light particles that were less noticeable to me during the day, but still there. I thought of these particles less as light and more as energy. The energy that, perhaps, connected us all. Energy that, miraculously, lights up the night for me.
Whatever it was, and however it worked, it was gathering before me, perhaps for my eyes only. After all, few people could see what I saw.
A few seconds later, as the bright filaments swirled and continue to take shape, I wasn’t very surprised to see a young boy standing before me, wavering in and out of focus, watching me, one finger hooked in his mouth.
A very, very dead boy.
* * *
He stood there and stared at me, and judging by his lack of detail, I suspected he had been dead for a long time.
I knew that the newly departed, those who had recently passed away, often seemed to retain more of themselves. Or to remember more of themselves. This boy, whoever he was, seemed to have only retained a fraction of a memory of who he was.
As he watched me, shimmering, one finger hooked in his mouth, I saw that he had a badly broken leg and arm. And...
Sweet Jesus.
There was a wound in his chest.
His chest.
Sweet Jesus, I thought again, and reached out to him without realizing what I was doing.
The wound in his chest, I was certain, was a knife wound. Spirits, I knew, could project themselves as they were at the time of their death. Some did so consciously, while others did so unconsciously. Although there was no color to him and he consisted of nothing more than shimmering light particles, the gash was obvious, and so was the broken arm and leg.
I covered my mouth with one hand, even as I reached out with the other.
The shimmering boy looked down at my outstretched arm and seemed surprised. He unhooked his finger, and now, I sensed his confusion. No, I knew his confusion. Spirits were an open book to me. Immortals, not so much. But spirits were nothing but projected energy, projected thoughts. Easy for me to read.
The boy was struggling with the fact that I could see him. He’d spent most of his death in oblivion...alone and lost. I saw it now. Saw him wandering the streets beyond, slipping into homes, watching silently from corners of rooms, from closets, from doorways, watching as families interacted, mothers loved and siblings fought. He watched all of it, silently, forgotten and lost.
My God...
Now, his shimmering head, which had been looking down at my proffered hand, looked up at me slowly...and, amazingly, he came into even sharper focus.
I reminded him of his mother, I sensed. A mother he had not seen in a long, long time. A mother he barely remembered.
And his name, I suddenly knew, was Conner.
And that’s when he did something that really shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
He reached out for my hand.
* * *
His touch was nearly non-existent. Nearly.
Still, I felt a small tingling, a tiny flash of warmth. I curled my hand around his own tiny one, knowing he couldn’t have been more than five years old at death.
Five.
I suddenly knew that I was going to be late picking up my kids. Again. I would call the school, and the school would be pissed. Again. My kids would be irritated. Again.
Except, at this moment, as I held the little boy’s hand, I didn’t care. I cared only to give this little one a hug. Hell, I needed to give him a hug.
I dropped to my knees and held out my arms, and the boy with the broken arm and broken leg and the wound in his chest regarded me silently, wavering, shimmering, and then he came forward hesitantly, drifting more than walking...and slipped into my open arms.
My body felt briefly electrified...and so warm. So very warm.
I knew I looked ridiculous squatting there at my front door, with my arms curled around nothing. Anyone coming up to my house would have thought I’d lost my mind.
Hell, maybe I had.
But the little boy in my arms, the little boy who was even now returning my hug and burying his face in my shoulder, was more real to me than anything. And he was alone. And he had been hurt. Badly hurt.
No, I thought as I drew him in closer. He wasn’t just hurt.
He was murdered.
* * *
We were in my living room.
I had called the school. Told them I was going to be twenty minutes. The school charged to babysit students, which they did in one of their bigger rooms. The administrator who answered the phone sounded rude.
Screw her.
I turned my attention on the little boy—Conner—who had drifted into the furthest corner of my room, where he now watched me with his finger once again hooked in the corner of his mouth. He was used to watching families from corners of rooms. He was comfortable there.
I eased up from the couch and went over to the middle of the living room floor and sat down cross-legged. The boy continued to watch me. He had lost some of his shape again. No distinctive features. I could barely make out that he even had his finger in his mouth.
“Someone hurt you, Conner,” I said.
At the mention of his name, he immediately took on more detail. His surprised face broke my heart all over again.
“No one’s called you that in a long time,” I said.
His eyes, which had taken on an intensity that I’d rarely seen in spirits, narrowed a little.
“It’s a nice name,” I added. I got another psychic hit. “You’re named after your father.”
And now that shocked face was nodding slightly.
Then he stopped nodding and looked down—and a deep loss nearly overcame me. I gasped at the feeling—the unbearably overwhelming feeling.
“You,” I said, sucking in air, struggling for my own breath as the boy’s emotions threatened to overpower me. I tried again, “You miss your mommy and daddy.”
I had another psychic hit. That of a pretty little girl. His sister. Yes, he missed his sister, too, although they fought a lot. I had an image of Anthony and Tammy fighting, and now Conner, from across the room, was nodding. Yes, he’d seen Tammy and Anthony fighting. He’d been in this house a few times, too. Slipping in without my knowledge, watching them, missing his sister, and then disappearing into the night. To another home, to another family.
A lost spirit.
Not a spirit, I thought. A boy.
“Come here, sweetie,” I said, patting the carpet in front of me. “Sit here. It’s okay, honey. I don’t bite.”
He removed his finger and smiled. He liked that little joke. Some of his teeth, I saw, were missing. Missing naturally or unnaturally? I didn’t know yet.
I called him over again, and now he drifted through my couch—yes, through—and I saw his little legs moving in a sort of memory of walking. Really, he was doing nothing more than walking on air, his feet just missing the carpet.
His bare feet.
That crushed me for some reason. A little boy shouldn’t be barefoot for all eternity.
He settled before me, sitting cross-legged.
Criss-cross applesauce, came a tiny thought.
His tiny thought.
Yes, I thought back. We’re sitting criss-cross applesauce.
He smiled and wavered in and out of focus, his features at time amorphous, at others resplendently sharp.
He’s remembering, I thought.
I had images of school, his family, his friends. Memories that I suspected he’d long ago forgotten.
Next, he glanced down at my iPhone resting on the ground next to me. My damn iPhone. Forever attached to me, I knew. A curse and a blessing.
“It’s a phone,” I said softly.
&
nbsp; He reached for it, then pulled back. He knew he could not pick it up. He had not yet figured out how to densify his body; that is, to solidify enough to manipulate objects, as I’d seen other spirits do.
He must have picked up the image in my mind. He looked at me, cocked his head slightly, then reached again for the object. This time, more light energy gathered around his hand, swirling faster and faster. His hand took on more shape. Small fingers. Slightly chubby fingers. And he reached again for my phone.
He had trouble at first, but the phone was moving, shifting. He looked up at me as if for permission.
“Go ahead, sweetie,” I said. “You can do it.”
He looked back at the phone, and now I saw the concentration on his face. His little tongue was poking out between his lips. His eyes blazing with intensity. He reached again, and this time, the filaments of light were so dense that his hand appeared solid. So solid that I suspected he had made a full manifestation.
A true ghost.
His small fingers curled around the phone as he lifted it carefully. The phone sort of dipped and swung as he held it awkwardly. Perhaps the first time he’d held anything in a long time.
He brought the phone up to him, his face now just inches from the phone, and that’s when a horn honked from outside. He jumped and dropped the phone and the millions of filaments of light that composed his energy body dispersed like frightened butterflies—and he briefly disappeared.
He reappeared again, a moment later. Not as dense, but he seemed pleased with himself.
“You did it, Conner,” I said.
He smiled bigger, showing more of his missing teeth, and I suddenly realized that I might have just unleashed a poltergeist on our street. First the iPhone, next doors slamming and covers being pulled off.
Oops.
I held out my hands and he looked down at them briefly, then looked up at me, and I smiled at him. He looked down again at my hands, then reached for them slowly with both of his. Since his broken arm couldn’t reach as far, I held one of my hands out further. Soon, we were holding hands...and that tingly feeling returned, especially now that his hands had solidified even more.
Had I not known better, I would have thought I was holding an actual boy’s hand.
And now, he was squeezing my hands repeatedly, seemingly reveling in human touch. I let him grip my fingers and thumbs and wrists. I suspected he hadn’t touched anyone in many years. Dozens of years.
Decades.
He finished exploring my hands, all while I suppressed a shiver. His touch was electric, gentle and curious. And with each movement, each innocent caress, my heart broke a little more.
Where was his mom? I thought. What happened to him?
And so, as we sat together on the living room floor, holding hands, I asked him to tell me what happened to him. He couldn’t remember the specifics, but he opened up his memory to me, and what I saw was so horrible, so terrible, so utterly evil, that it was all I could not to break our connection and weep into my hands.
And when we were done, when I had learned all I could learn, and when the little ghost boy named Conner finally released my hands, smiled shyly at me and disappeared, I did weep into my hands.
I wept hard and long.
And when I was done weeping, when I remembered that I had my kids to pick up, I sat straight, clenched my hands, and saw again the face of the man who’d done this to little Conner.
The face of a man I knew well.
* * *
It was Halloween, and we were making our rounds in the neighborhood.
It had also been two days since Conner had appeared at my front door, where the little booger had actually rung the doorbell.
A broken doorbell, no less.
I knew spirits could manipulate electronics in ways that I doubted I would ever understand, and somehow, someway, his supercharged little finger had galvanized the broken doorbell.
I hadn’t seen him since, although I knew he was never very far away. Perhaps just a few homes down. I sensed that he haunted the entire street, flitting from one house to the next. And now that I had taught him to manipulate objects, his once-innocent hauntings might start turning out to be very interesting indeed.
The night was warm and I knew little Anthony was burning up in his werewolf costume. Yes, werewolf. Now, where did he get an idea like that? Tammy was dressed as a witch...and not a cute one either. One of those big-nosed witches, massive wart and all.
I’d spent the past few days doing research on a missing boy named Conner. It had taken me a while to scan missing-person reports and news articles and thousands of articles. I even had to go to the local library to scan microfiche.
But I had found him.
Conner Murray, age five. Missing since 1967. Last known location: Santa Monica. Witnesses had seen the boy literally snatched off the streets and into a waiting van. The van had been found in an alley miles away, wiped clean. The boy had been transferred to another vehicle, obviously.
And never heard from again.
Until now.
Sweet Jesus.
The neighborhood was unusually festive this Halloween. More homes than ever were sporting pumpkin-shaped lights, creepy posters, Styrofoam tombstones, and bloodied zombies poking up from lawns. I didn’t decorate for Halloween, mostly because my house was always a haunted house.
Or a house of horror.
Or maybe not. Now that both my children knew my deep-dark secrets, the home had become much more relaxed. It was easier for me to exist within. And easier for me to help my children deal with their own growing supernatural abilities.
But who knew that a monster lived nearby?
A monster of the worst kind.
And his home was just a few houses down.
* * *
“I don’t like this house, Mommy,” said Tammy again.
I stood outside the smallish home. Most of the homes in my neighborhood were small. Although one or two sported two stories, my neighborhood mostly consisted of small, boxy homes constructed with little imagination after World War II.
The home we stood in front of now was exactly nine homes from my own.
Too close, I thought again with horror. Far too close.
The house had been recently painted and sported a chain-link fence that, even now, was covered in paper skeletons and strung with little pumpkin-shaped lights. Two jack-o’-lanterns with happy-enough faces blazed on the front porch. Creepy music issued out from speakers suspended in the tree.
He’s trying too hard.
The son-of-a-bitch.
I’d seen the old man who lived alone here often enough, although not so much these past few years.
But he’s still here. Right behind those doors. Giving candy out to kids. Unsuspecting kids and unsuspecting parents.
Had I been an unsuspecting parent in the past? I couldn’t recall trick-or-treating at this particular home. Perhaps my inner warning system had kept me unconsciously away. And kept my kids safe, as well.
I stared at the home even while I sensed my kids’ growing discomfort. For the most part, the other kids in the neighborhood stayed away as well. There was something about the house that I sensed now, something that I had never sensed before. A darkness around it. And sadness. Extreme sadness.
Not just sadness, I thought. Anger. Rage. Resentment. Horror.
Try as the owner might, the home was mostly skirted by others in the neighborhood. Mostly. A young mom talking on her cell phone swept past us with her little mermaid, a girl no older than four. They went through the open chain-link gate, up the cement walkway, and rang the front door. The mother stepped back, still on her phone.
I waited, watching, unconsciously holding my breath.
Tammy tugged on my sleeve. I ignored her. Anthony had stepped forward and was now leaning his elbows on the fence, watching as I watched. He was sensing something, too. But Anthony, I knew, was quickly growing unafraid of anything. This worried me. Some fear was good, right?<
br />
What he sensed, I didn’t know, but together he and I watched as the front door opened and a stooped, old man shuffled out, grinning broadly. He praised the mermaid outfit, ruffled the girl’s hair, and dropped some regular-sized candy bars into her plastic pumpkin.
Regular-sized candy bars.
Yeah, he’s trying way too hard.
The mother had the little girl thank him and together they turned away, and as they did so, I saw two things. Two things that made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. Something that hadn’t happened in a long time.
The first was that the smile instantly left his face as he watched the two leave his porch. The smile was replaced by something unspeakably sinister. The second was that I saw a darkness swirling around him. A nearly pure-black aura. Darker than anything I’d ever seen before.
I knew I was looking at pure evil.
The old man then stepped back into his house and shut the door.
“Did you see that, Mommy?” asked Anthony next to me.
“Yes, baby.”
“Is he the devil, Mommy?”
I glanced at him—and thought about that. And thought about it the entire time we trick-or-treated.
* * *
“What evidence do you have, Samantha?” asked Detective Sherbet of the Fullerton Police Department.
“A ghost told me.”
Sherbet had been about to lift an old-fashioned donut to his mouth when he paused in mid-lift. I opened my mind and memory to him and invited him in. He squinted irritably, then scanned my thoughts like an old pro.
“Jesus, my life is weird,” he said.
Sherbet, of course, had been psychically linked to me for a few months now, whether he wanted to be or not. Mostly not. But in this situation, our telepathic link worked miracles. He saw the ghost boy as I had seen him.
“Is that a real ghost?” he asked.
“Welcome to my world,” I said.
“Jesus,” he said again, and finished his bite. A helluva bite. Most of the donut was gone...or in his mustache. He cleaned himself with a napkin, picking up on my thoughts. As he masticated the greasy donut, he frowned briefly, then looked at me. “What’s wrong with his arm and leg?”