Homing

by Stephanie Domet

  “It’s exciting about that producer,” Charlotte said.

  “Could be,” Johnny said. “Could be very positive. As long as he keeps a steady hand on it now. So long as he doesn’t freak-out.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Seems like it,” she said.

  *

  Where the hell was Leah? Nathan groused to himself. He’d been waiting half the night, and it looked like he was going to have to wait the other half as well. As long as it didn’t rain, he’d be okay. But still, he would rather be anywhere else. His patience with the library had finally worn thin. He grooved himself deeper into the dirt between the bushes and the wall and closed his eyes again.

  *

  Leah slept fitfully. In her dream it was that night, that terrible night outside the library. She was drunk, stinking drunk, and she could feel Nathan’s eyes on her, but every time she turned around, he’d look away. He was driving her crazy. She was old enough; she didn’t need a babysitter. And anyway what was he good for? He’d gone and left her. Oh, she was mad. She’d leaned on the wall at the library and tried to stop the spinning in her head, but every time she looked up, Nathan. It had been the same all goddamn day, and she was sick of it. There he was, with those big eyes, those big haunted eyes, and he would never look right at her. But he would be there, just standing there. Suff ering, because of her. Finally, it was enough.

  “Fuck off,” she roared, her hands thrown up in front of her face. “Just get the fuck away from me! I can’t stand it anymore. I don’t want you here, so leave me alone.”

  And just like that, she felt him leave.

  She had thought, when he still lived, that when he died, she would know it. Would feel him go, maybe even see him once before he left. But when that time came, she was oblivious. She’d been asleep, deeply so, and had been torn from unconsciousness by the bright light of her bedside lamp, and her mother’s hand on her back. It’s time. Time for what, she wondered, groggy and disoriented. And then she remembered. Ah. Time.

  But in this dream, and on that night in front of the library, she had indeed felt him leave. A cold wind, a tearing sound, and then she was without him. Drunk, and thinking she was happy, she stumbled home. It wasn’t till she got to her front door that the goosebumps started, the prickling horror.

  And it was only the next morning that she really saw what she had done. She’d chalked up to her hangover her nervousness, her unease at the thought of being outside. Grimly, she’d shoved her feet into her boots and struggled the three blocks to the organic market for carrot juice and whole grain raisin bread. Some people craved fried potatoes and endless cups of black coffee after a night on the town, but Leah always hungered for virtue in the aftermath.

  She was grubby and unbathed, intending only to grab her juice and bread and shuffle home again. But as soon as she pushed open the door, heard its little bells chime, she was met with Psychic Sue. Leah took a deep breath. Psychic Sue was exactly the wrong kind of intense for Leah’s state of being. She insisted on having only deep conversations, and on making deep eye contact. Leah was feeling more surface. She wanted a shallow connection, the kind where you waved then looked away quickly.

  Granted, Psychic Sue had been somewhat more tolerable since the reading she’d given Leah, but there were still parts of that whole thing that were beyond puzzling. Her brother had had no kids, wasn’t even married. Perhaps he’d intended to propose to Rebecca, but he got sick before he had the chance, and was too responsible to ask her to tie herself down to a cancer patient once he was diagnosed. So Sue’s predictions about her nephews seemed impossible to say the least. And then there was her own supposed Cheshire Cat grinning future husband. That in itself was an unbelievable crock.

  Leah shook her head. It didn’t have the desired eff ect of clearing her thoughts. If anything, the sudden movement clouded them. Psychic Sue was right there, and about to say hello, when the look on her face changed from happy to deeply disturbed.

  “Hey Sue,” Leah had said. “How’s it going?” She steeled herself for the inevitable conversation about whatever healing techniques Sue was learning and experimenting with.

  “Hey.”

  Leah raised her eyebrows and waited for more. It was impossible that she could get off so easily.

  Sue’s eyes kept darting to Leah’s left shoulder. She looked increasingly distraught.

  “What’s up?” Leah persisted. It was nothing short of bizarre that Sue wouldn’t engage her. Perhaps Leah still reeked of alcohol. That was very likely, she considered.

  Sue took a step away from her, still glancing repeatedly at Leah’s shoulder. “I have to go,” Sue blurted at last.

  “Okay,” Leah said. She couldn’t smell the vodka herself, but obviously, Sue could.

  “I have to go to a consciousness raising class,” Sue said. She abandoned her cart, pulling her knapsack out of it and pushing past Leah in a hurry.

  Leah shrugged. She got her juice and bread and headed for home.

  As she made her way, she thought about Psychic Sue’s odd behaviour.

  She used her cell phone to call Charlotte. “Weirdest thing,” she said. “She was so twitchy and strange. She said she had to get to her consciousness raising class.”

  “A psychic needs to have her consciousness raised?”

  “I know,” Leah said, “it’s like, wouldn’t you be hoping to have it kind of, I don’t know, blunted, if you were a psychic? It just seems like it would be a lot of work all the time.”

  Charlotte hooted.

  “And she kept staring at my shoulder. Or, like, over my shoulder, like we were at a cocktail party and she was looking to see if there was anyone else she’d rather talk to.” Leah heard her words as they came out of her mouth and hung in the air between her lips and the cell phone. “Oh god.”

  “What?” said Charlotte.

  “Oh my god.” She flipped the phone closed and started to run. She ran as hard as she could until she got home, and then she slammed the door shut.

  Leah hadn’t been outside since.

  *

  Henry couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t a bad thing, but it was unusual. Henry could always sleep. But lately, his songs had been waking him up early, nagging him out of bed in the grey light of dawn, hassling him till he had the guitar on his knee, the strings beneath his fingers. I am here, the guitar seemed to call, where are you? The presence of the pigeon in his life, that brief interlude, was like a dream to him now. A strange and magical tide that had risen and then receded, leaving behind a film of happiness and good fortune over everything Henry touched. The songs he was writing were like magic, Dave O’Dell’s card on James’s bureau was a lucky charm, a magical talisman. He was well and truly free of Tina and ready, so ready, for whatever was coming next. He kept that scrap of paper with its pencil-scratched spell on it taped to the side of his guitar, crowning the list of songs that was growing every few days. It was all going Henry’s way. And it was about time.

  He ran his fingers over the strings, loved the sweet sound they made with so little eff ort on his part. An old favourite to get started, he decided. The song had been in his head for weeks now. He couldn’t explain it and he didn’t care. He leaned back in the little rocking chair, opened his mouth and sang.

  *

  She awoke in horror. Heart pounding, mouth sere. Nathan, Nathan. It took a moment to realise what morning it was. That the horror was not fresh, though it felt so. That he’d been missing for three weeks. That she was the one who could help him, except that once again, she’d chosen to stay home.

  The phone rang and Leah shifted in the bed. She didn’t feel like speaking with anyone. There were only a few people it could be, anyhow. Charlotte maybe, or maybe Laurie at Bite This with an assignment or a question. The phone rang four times, then stopped. Leah stretched glumly, then checked the voicemail.

  “This is an automated message from the Halifax Regional Public Library system,” a robotic voice said. “You have one overdue book. The book is cal
led” — and here another voice broke in — “‘How To Deal With Ghosts’ by Peter Pietropaulo.” The robotic voice returned. “Please return this book to any branch of the Halifax Regional Public Library system at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

  Leah clicked off the phone and wished she could as easily click off the dreams that still lurked at the back of her mind. Stupid Pietropaulo and his stupid book. What good had it been to her? Here she was, worse off than she’d been the day she borrowed the damn thing. No closer to freeing Nathan, haunted by bad dreams and now she’d have to pay a stupid overdue fine, too. She didn’t even know where the book was. Last she’d seen it, Charlotte was reading it by flashlight. Maybe Charlotte had it. She dialed her friend.

  “Nah,” said Charlotte. “I left it at your place, on the floor. It probably got kicked under the chair. Fascinating stuff, though. Especially the part about why ghosts hang around.”

  “Oh yeah?” Leah said.

  “Yeah dude. The four main reasons — I don’t know where the guy gets that stuff, but it’s sure a good read.”

  “Four main reasons?” Leah asked, her heart dropping.

  “Yeah, didn’t you read that part?”

  “Not exactly,” Leah said. Her mouth went dry for the second time that morning. “I kind of skipped right to the part about how to get rid of your ghost. I just figured Nathan was here because, I don’t know. Because he didn’t know where he was supposed to be.”

  “Huh,” Charlotte said. “Well, the guy says that’s the case for some ghosts, but it’s not like Nathan’s death was a surprise to him. Could he have had some unfinished business?”

  “I doubt it,” Leah said. She felt sick. “He was pretty methodical. Had everything sewn up and taken care of.”

  “Could he be feeling guilty?” Charlotte asked.

  Leah pulled both lips in over her teeth, her mouth a thin line.

  “Guilty about leaving everyone?” Charlotte prodded.

  “Maybe,” Leah said, her voice small. “It wouldn’t be totally out of character.” But something told her it wasn’t Nathan’s guilt that was keeping him here.

  “I think you’d better find that book,” Charlotte said. “And read the rest of it.”

  “Yeah,” Leah said.

  Leah leapt out of the bed as if it was filling with water, and pulled on dirty jeans and a turtleneck from the floor. She flew down the stairs, almost tripping over Neil in her haste.

  In the living room, she scrabbled under the chair Charlotte had sat in during the power-out. In the dim under-chair light, through the haze of cat-hair tufts, she saw the book. She pulled it out, its green cover dulled by dust and neglect. She rubbed it on her jeans and flipped through it hastily, till she found the section she was looking for.

  Why do ghosts stay on earth? she read. Sometimes, ghosts don’t know they are ghosts. Perhaps their death was sudden or unexpected. The afterlife can be tremendously confusing, and if the quietus came in the form of a speeding bus, a violent murder, an avalanche or hurricane, for instance, the spirit may have no idea that he or she is dead. They may have no idea what to do, how to behave, where to go. And so they continue to hang around. They often stay very near the place where their death occurred.

  Ghosts will also stay earthbound if they feel they have unfinished business. This may include family matters or financial issues they did not have a chance to clear up before their death. They will stay on earth as long as they need to in order to square things away to their satisfaction. They will occasionally, if the task is complicated, attempt to enlist human help. This sometimes makes the task take longer to complete, as the ghost is only able to communicate in metaphors. For reasons that are not yet clear to spectral realm researchers, spirits eschew direct contact.

  The third reason spirits may decide not to go on is human guilt. The spirit may itself feel guilty, may feel it has left loved ones in the lurch. In this case, spirits will stay on earth and attempt to look after the family left behind. By the same token, if it is a loved one who cannot let go of the deceased, the spirit will wait, sometimes for years, until their loved ones are ready to let go.

  Leah’s head snapped up. Recognition coursed through her like an electrical current. It was her. It was because of her. She paged clumsily through the book to the section she had read not quite enough of in the first place.

  How can I get rid of my ghost? She devoured the words. She’d read it before — she thought she’d read the pertinent parts. She’d been following its advice all this time. But clearly, she’d missed something.

  There are many ways to help a spirit find its way to the light, Pietropaulo had written. In the case of a spirit who does not know he or she has passed, you will have to actually tell the spirit his or her story — in eff ect, you will have to break to them the news of their passing. This will be no easy task — remember, spirits do not respond to direct contact! You will have to find an indirect way to communicate. You may perhaps choose to tell the ghost’s story to someone nearby — that may be enough to help your spirit move along.

  If you do not know the spirit and do not wish to have further contact withit, simply hold up your hands in front of your face and say, firmly but kindly, NO. This will not likely help the spirit move on to the light, but it will help it move on, perhaps to find someone who can escort it to the next world.

  Leah had stopped reading there. It was stuff she already knew, she’d felt. That information about how to get a ghost to stop visiting you, the holding up the hands. Everyone knew that. So she hadn’t pushed on any further in the book. She shook her head, impatient with her own impatience. Tears were starting to burn at the back of her eyes, but she willed them away. No time for that now. She had to figure out what she’d been doing wrong, and set it right. If Nathan was still here because of her, she had to make amends.

  If you are the reason a ghost is hanging around, the chapter continued, if you suspect your ghost may be feeling guilty about leaving you, or if you are having trouble letting go of your loved one, you must find a way to prove to the ghost that you are alright, and then he or she will be able to move toward the light.

  Leah slammed the book shut, slinked into her jacket and banged out the door before she could think before she could let her guilt keep her inside one minute longer. She felt flayed, as she ran down the street, book in hand, to be out in the daylight, in the mild busyness of a Sunday morning in the north end of town. Still, she had to get there, had to get to the library in case it wasn’t too late. She ran.

  *

  Nathan paced. He sniff ed the air. It was possible something was about to change, but it was also possible that that something was simply the weather. He prayed there’d be no rain. Well, that was diff erent. He never used to pray. But things aren’t what they were, he told himself. That much was abundantly clear. He went to stand near Winston Churchill. Folded his arms behind his back and strolled the path. It felt alright. He preferred his arms down, but Winston had a point. He did feel calmer, more leader-ish with his arms tucked away neatly like that. He practised, and he waited.

  *

  Leah ran. She never ran, but she ran now. She panted, her hair flew around her face, she began to sweat all over and her ankles threatened to crumple at every turn, but still she ran. She thought about running up Citadel Hill, but that would just slow her down, so she ran around it instead, and then, feeling panic pushing her faster than she’d known she could go, she ran down the dip it made in her city, a dip that took her right to the library. She didn’t know what too late would be, she only hoped she wouldn’t have to find out. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to see Nathan or feel him. Didn’t matter. She knew what she had to do now, and she would just do it, and not worry about the outcome. If it worked, it worked. If not — “If not, I’ll feel guilty forever, which I was going to do anyhow. So no big deal,” she panted.

  She cruised down the hill to the library, slowing her pace so she wouldn’t be too out of breath when she got th
ere. The library was quiet this morning, thank god, she thought. What she was going to do was weird enough she didn’t need an audience. She looked around. It wasn’t quite true. She did need an audience, an audience of one, but she didn’t see him there. “Shit, goddamn,” she said, catching her breath. Well, whatever. She’d already decided she was going to do it whether she saw him or not, and here she was, so she’ d better get started. She sat on the steps, put her hands on her knees. In the absence of strangers to be seeming to tell the story to, she just launched in and told it to herself, out loud, in the hopes that Nathan would overhear and realise.

  “Okay, with Nathan, it’s like this,” she said. “When he first was sick, I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. He was a vegetarian! He never smoked — except for that one pack of Colts, those wine-tips, when he was in first year. But other than that, no, he hated that shit. So it didn’t seem reasonable that he could be sick like that. I didn’t even believe it when I saw him, like a skeleton in overalls. And he was smiling. It was unreal. Then he got better, and he and Rebecca seemed so happy and I just kind of put it out of my mind. And I only saw him a few times a year, but he always looked good to me, and he said he was fine, and I wanted to believe him and I believed him.

  “Then a year went by and he got sick again. And I went home to see him, and he was so thin, with an IV port in his arm, but he pretended it was normal, and I didn’t want to spook him, so I pretended too. And he seemed stressed out, but I, oh, it’s not that I didn’t notice, but I guess I didn’t know what to do with it. And Mom and Dad were freaking out and Rebecca was totally freaking out, and everyone was just so upset, that I got back on a plane and flew home to Halifax just as fast as I could. And then he went under the knife again and it was no good. It was no good, and everyone was crying on the phone, but Dad said he wasn’t going to die and I should stay put, so I did.” She swallowed. It was not easy. But it was necessary. And she’d been taking the easy way out for some time now. It wasn’t making her happy and it wasn’t helping Nathan. She swallowed again. It felt absurd to be talking to no one, but absurdity was becoming commonplace to Leah.