On the Fringe

by Courtney King Walker

  “Power…” I repeated his words, still trying to get it.

  “Come on, are you really that stupid?”

  I whipped around. “Who’s the stupid one? You’ve been holding onto a grudge for twelve years. Get. Over. It. You are DEAD.” I rushed through him and felt the strange sensation of overlapping space coursing between us. I emerged on the other side beside Felix, who had fallen over, apparently passed out.

  “So, you think just because you love her, that justifies your involvement with her?” Aden asked, keeping his distance. “Get over yourself. We all need something to keep us going, don’t we?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Love, hate, fear, guilt—take your pick. It’s all just fuel to get what we want.”

  “So, that’s what you want? To haunt a girl…or a druggie?” I asked, looking over at Felix. “That’s the big kick you’re getting?”

  “That, and seeing you suffer, which was my intent in the first place. Now it’s a two for one—a rush and revenge. What’s your excuse?”

  “Excuse?”

  “To interfere with Claire’s life. At least revenge is a legitimate motive.”

  “I’m not interfering with her.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Why is that any of your business?”

  “You made it my business.”

  “How’s that?” I asked, drifting away from Felix, and toward the window where the last of the sunlight was trying to force its way through the dirt into this hellhole.

  Aden laughed out loud, of course. So dramatic.

  “You still don’t get it. How did you not flunk out of school? Education, these days…” He floated right up to my face. “I’ll make it simple. One—you killed me. Two—you saved Claire. Three—Claire can see me now thanks to you and I get to scare her, which gives me more power...la-di-da-di-da… Shall I go on?”

  I suddenly felt the weight of what he was saying, like I had slipped to the bottom of the sea. Claire’s aunt was right.My connection with Claire had opened up a window, a Pandora’s box, or whatever you wanted to call it. And now I didn’t know how to close it back up.

  Claire

  Dad pounced on the intruder from behind, pulling him into a headlock. Mom and I jumped and screamed, tipping over bowls and spilling soup across the table. I was afraid to look. All I could hear was Dad’s grunting, along with the muffled sound of the intruder’s protests. Strangely, the voice started sounding a little familiar—which was when Mom and I both ran around the table.

  “Dad!” I yelled, pulling at his arm.

  “Matthew!” Mom said, pulling at my brother’s torso.

  Dad let go, and we all stood there facing each other in surprise, confusion, and a little bit of deflated terror.

  “What the…?” Matthew stepped back, eyeing us in alarm.

  “Matthew,” Dad breathed, finally recognizing him.

  “Yeah! Were you expecting someone else? What’s wrong with you guys?” he croaked while rubbing his throat.

  “Matthew,” Mom said soothingly, like it was the only name in the world. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t know you were coming. Why didn’t you call?”

  “Now I have to call to come home?” he shot out defensively, fixing his shirt. His face seemed to soften a bit when he looked over at me. I gave him a weak smile and shrugged my shoulders.

  He looked so much older—the months and a tragic past aging him too quickly. His hair, still as blond as ever, was longer than I remembered. He also seemed more hefty, like he’d been working out. The one thing that did look the same was the tired, jaded look on his face that took over the night Daniel was killed.

  Mom pulled Matthew into a hug lasting longer than normal. “Of course you don’t need to call. You can come home any time you want.” She finally released him just when I thought he was going to bolt.

  “Sorry, Son, it’s just…well, a lot has happened over the last couple of days,” Dad said apologetically. Matthew waited for him to continue, but Dad seemed almost embarrassed to reveal the details. He was never one for drama. “We thought you were an intruder,” he finally admitted, not quite looking Matthew in the eyes.

  “I figured that much,” Matthew answered, still irritated.

  “Are you hungry? Come have some soup,” Mom said, as if a bowl of soup could solve the world’s problems.

  “No thanks. I already ate.” Matthew walked to the fridge, eyeing me strangely.

  I followed him, uncertain what to say or do. It had been so long since we last talked, that I felt uneasy, like we were cousins or something. It made me sad, because we used to be so close.

  “So, what’s been going on here?” he asked, grabbing a Coke and popping it open. “Obviously there’re some things you haven’t told me.”

  “It’s a fairly new development, Matthew,” Dad said, a little defensively.

  “Well, are you going to fill me in? Or were you going to wait until Christmas?”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other briefly, then at me. I kept quiet. “There’s no reason to get upset, Matthew,” Mom said. “We were planning on talking to you about this, once things settled down a bit.”

  Matthew brought his drink to the table and sat down, kicking his feet up on another chair. Mom and Dad sat across from him, most likely trying to figure out where to start. I quietly gathered the soup bowls and started cleaning up the mess.

  Matthew waited for them to speak. “I’m all ears,” he prodded, taking another swig. “Give me what you got.”

  The dishes kept me busy, though I could easily hear the whole conversation behind me. Occasionally, I turned to peek at Matthew’s face, trying to gauge his reaction as Dad explained the events of the last day and a half—a.k.a. my Peeping Tom-turned-stalker, and his threatening note. Matthew acted a little surprised, but his reaction seemed subdued, like he was hiding something. What, I couldn’t tell just yet, so I kept my suspicions to myself and my eyes and ears alert from afar.

  “Are the police even doing anything about it?” Matthew asked.

  “They’ve been here twice.” Dad answered.

  “And they took the note in as evidence,” Mom added. “We’re still waiting on that.”

  Matthew tipped his chair on its heels. “So they’re essentially doing nothing.”

  “What do you want them to do?” Dad challenged.

  Matthew fidgeted, his mask of confidence briefly transparent, at least long enough for me to notice. “I don’t know,” he admitted, standing up and finishing off his Coke. “But, they’re useless, if you ask me.”

  Without another word or glance in my direction, he walked past me toward his room, leaving the rest of us awkwardly staring at each other. No one knew what to say, although we all understood what Matthew was referring to—the police never caught the person who shot Daniel. Though we all pushed it back into the corner of our minds, Matthew could never forget.

  Later, Matthew brought his things in from the car, including four giant garbage sacks filled with dirty clothes, while I hung out in my room in front of my computer. I wondered what the information in that newspaper article meant to me now. My ghost had an identity. Had it changed anything? Even after finding some of the answers I was looking for, I didn’t know what to do with those answers, other than wait for Daniel to show up.

  It was already dark, though still early evening. Most people hated the way fall hijacked the daylight, but I always liked it—especially now. The sooner the sun went down the better, as far as I was concerned. Except, I hadn’t seen Daniel since last night. What if he truly wasn’t coming back like he had said, or if he’d somehow figured out a way to get around my haunting ghost?

  There was a knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I called, still lost in thought.

  “Claire?” Matthew said, his voice surprisingly meek.

  “Hey.” I turned around in surprise, almost blushing. “What’s up?”

  He slowly walked to my bed, proba
bly one of the few times I’d ever seen him so unnerved. I waited to hear what was on his mind as he sat stiffly at the foot of the bed, staring at me for a second. His hands were clasped together like he was trying to figure out what to say. I turned my chair around to face him.

  “First of all, I’m sorry about that creep. I wish I’d been here. I would have caught him,” he said, not really looking me in the eye.

  “I know,” I agreed. Really, Matthew probably would have caught him.

  “So, how come you guys didn’t call me?” He seemed hurt.

  “Everything just happened so fast, and, and… Wait…” I just caught the emphasis he’d put on ‘you.’ “You mean someone did call you?

  He nodded.

  “But not Mom or Dad?”

  He nodded again.

  “You already knew everything!” I accused, remembering how calm he had been while Mom and Dad explained everything.

  He didn’t deny it.

  “Who told you?”

  “Addie.”

  “Addie called you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did she say? When did she call?”

  “I don’t know, sometime this afternoon,” he said, looking down at his watch. “Just after you guys got home from the park, I think.”

  I could only stare at him in disbelief. I was pretty sure they hadn’t spoken a single word since Daniel died. How did she even get his number?

  “Wow, that must have been weird,” I said more to myself than to him.

  “Yeah, but at least she thought to call.”

  I felt a little guilty when he put it that way, but I also felt somewhat defensive. “Matthew…you do realize we haven’t talked…really talked…in months?” His brilliant eyes watched me briefly, and then peered off to the side. He still didn’t say anything.“What happened–”

  “What happened?” he asked, cutting me off. “What happened? Come on, Claire, I watched my best friend die. I saw a bullet go through his head!”

  It was the first time he had ever spoken of Daniel’s murder. I didn’t move. The air was uncomfortably tense.

  “Sorry,” he spoke more softly, looking in my eyes. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “It’s okay,” I replied, regretting the way the conversation had turned, realizing our relationship might always be strained.

  He coughed, and then lay on his back, staring upward. “I couldn’t go through it all again. Not with you, too.”

  “Go through what?”

  “When I heard you almost drowned, it really got to me, but I pushed it away. Forgot about it like it never happened, just like with…well, Daniel,” he explained reflectively. “But when Addie called today and told me what was going on here, I felt like everything in my life was slipping away, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just can’t let it happen again. Not to you, too.” He finally took a breath, and then covered his face with his hands like a shield.

  I stared at him in shock. Sure, I expected him to struggle, knowing he was hurting all this time, but was entirely unprepared for this naked soul to emerge—the Matthew I used to know and love.

  “I’m glad you came back,” I smiled, not knowing what else to say. He sat up and looked at me, then shifted his eyes down. An uncomfortable silence followed.

  “What are you doing, anyway, getting into all sorts of trouble now that I’m away?” he teased, pulling us out of the uneasiness with his infectious smile.

  “You know me,” I laughed, “always causing trouble.”

  “Hardly. Addie, on the other hand…”

  I dove on the bed next to him, where we spent the next hour or so catching up. College sounded like it had been the best thing for Matthew, even if we still missed him. He already met a couple of girls, though no official girlfriend yet.

  My life, on the other hand, especially over the last few months, was a little more difficult to retell. My mind jumped from one place to another, like I was back in that stream where Daniel had found my ring, carefully hopping over the slippery rocks, trying not to fall in. Part of me wanted to tell Matthew everything, to let him in on my ballooning secret, but the wiser part of me noted that he was the one who had gotten all of Dad’s left-brained genes.

  Finally, our stories caught up to the present, and I yawned and looked over at the clock. 9:13. No sign of Daniel yet.

  “So how long will you be here?” I asked, briefly touching Matthew on the back as he stood up.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”

  “What about school?”

  “Missing a few classes isn’t going to sink me, Claire. I’m a little brighter than that.” He smiled, knocking his finger on his temple a couple of times for effect. He made it to the door, then paused and turned back. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Huh?”

  “Are you scared?”

  “What?”

  “Scared. You seem remarkably calm, considering the last 24 hours.”

  If it wasn’t for Daniel, I would be terrified.

  “Yes,” I sighed. “But I’m also okay, if that makes any sense.”

  “I just keep thinking about the note,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “What did it mean?”

  “How would I know? It was just an idiotic threat,” I answered, afraid to make the connection.

  “But how did this freak know you almost drowned? That was a month ago. Do you really think he’s been stalking you this whole time?”

  “I haven’t had time to absorb everything yet, much less attempt to delve into a lunatic’s mind.”

  Matthew just stared at me, waiting for more, like he knew I was hiding something. But I didn’t say anything else. I’d already given the police the spiel—that I had no clue what the note meant or what it was referring to, except for the fact that I did almost drown on my birthday—but that was about it.

  “Matthew, I…” I wanted to tell him even a little bit about Daniel, but didn’t know where to start. It felt like old times, like we were lying out under the stars, laughing about the crazy people in the world (everyone but us). We were untouchable then.

  His hand rested on the wall, waiting for me to continue.

  “Do you believe in…?” I started, looking up at the ceiling for a second, hoping to gain a little courage before chickening out. “Do you believe in life after death?”

  “What?”

  Oops. Maybe a mistake, but I forged ahead, anyway. “Where do you think Daniel is right now?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered abruptly, looking past me, like I was starting to annoy him.

  “Well, have you ever thought about it?”

  “No. Why?”

  I sighed. Was this really going to go anywhere, other than making me look nutty?

  “I just…I…” Ughhh. “I’m glad you’re back,” I said, giving up.

  “Just stay safe, okay?” Matthew said as he walked out of the room without waiting for a response.

  I collapsed into the pillows.

  Daniel

  We slowly circled the room, facing each other like we were in a duel.

  “I should thank you for saving Claire’s life,” Aden said, feigning politeness. “If it wasn’t for your heroic love, I’d be stuck haunting scum like Felix, here, instead of enjoying the thrill of someone who can actually see me.”

  “Listen–”

  “No, you listen. I’m done with you! We’ve had our little talk. You can quit trying to find me, quit trying to convince me to leave your girlfriend alone. I’m through with you and your little Boy Scout act. I have better things to do with my time.”

  I shot toward him, ending our rotation, shouting the only thing I could think of. I was out of ammunition. “I’ve stopped connecting with her. So now where are you going to get your little thrill?”

  Aden looked surprised, but just for a second. “Nice countermove from someone who can’t even tie his shoes.” He laughed. “B
ut you’re the one who’ll suffer, not me. I have Felix to help me now. Either way, I get Claire. And when I’m done with her, there will always be plenty more to haunt. In the meantime, it’s nice knowing I’ve taken from you the only thing you ever wanted, just like you took everything from me. Touché, don’t you think?”

  He darted away from me down the dark hallway, but I stuck right on his tail. He shot through the wall into the alleyway where long shadows, cast by the setting sun, buried the street in darkness.

  “Now this is more fun!” Aden shouted, rushing into a busy intersection where cars plowed through us. “Come on…where’s your spirit?” he taunted. “Don’t you want to hear what I think of your girlfriend? Should I tell you how I watch her when you’re away…how she tosses and turns when she’s asleep…where Felix fits into all of this? Is that what you want to hear? Is it?”

  He tried fading away, and I lunged at him. Just like before, he somehow pulled me to him, and I was stuck. Again. He shifted with me to another place—a strange city filled with honking cars, glass skyscrapers reaching to the sky, and hordes of people all speaking another language. I looked around anxiously, wondering where we were.

  “You like following me?” he asked, seamlessly shifting us away from the foreign city to a dark pier as the waves crashed beneath us. A young couple holding hands strolled right through us just as Aden let go of me. “I’ll give you this much, just to watch you squirm.”

  I lunged at him, trying to grab him the same way he’d somehow grabbed me, but found I was powerless. Next thing I knew, he was shoving his head through mine and holding it there until everything in front of me went muddy gray. I tried pulling away, but it felt like a clamp was forcing my head in place. I yelled out, but couldn’t hear myself because something like a movie started to creep into my hearing and vision.

  At first I was confused, not sure where or what I was seeing, until I looked across the room and saw part of Matthew’s bloody face buried beneath a bunch of moving bodies. Fists were swinging, people were screaming, beer was spilling all over the place as music thumped on top of it all. I must have been back inside my own memory of the night I died, though I wasn’t sure how. I didn’t remember the fight from this perspective—from across the room like this.