I nodded soberly. So it was like that, was it? That would explain why Brandon could be such a dick, why he always liked to exert some measure of power over any boy who was younger and weaker than he was. A tiny sliver of unexpected sympathy for him reared its head. I guess even the bullies get bullied sometimes.
“I am sorry for whatever pain he may have caused you. If it is any comfort at all, I think that he feels every bit as frightened as you do.” Gilda sounded sad, as though she were passing judgment on the state of the world.
“He sure has a strange way of showing it,” I replied a bit too sharply, unable to keep the bitter edge out of my voice.
The old lady didn’t quite know how to respond to that, and I felt like a bit of a jerk myself for having said it. She seemed sweet and kind, and obviously meant well. We stood in awkward silence for a moment. Finally, she turned away wordlessly, and her semi-transparent body slowly faded away into the late-afternoon air.
“So long, and thanks for all the help,” I muttered.
To be honest, I knew that I was being ungrateful. Without the kindly old spirit’s help, I could well be sporting a few bruises by now that I hadn’t started out with this morning. But it was too late to thank her; she was probably already back home in the Summerland by now, the plane of existence that borders our own. A lot of the spirits of the newly-dead lived there, before graduating up to one of the higher spheres. Sometimes they came back to visit – usually to look in on people they had once cared about in our material world – and I was often able to see them, assuming that they actually wanted to be seen.
Just then, from the corner of my eye, I spotted movement across the street. Turning to look, I realized that I was being watched from what had been an empty sidewalk until just now.
Oh, crap, I found myself thinking as my gut clenched in terror. Why did it have to be her?
CHAPTER TWO
There was no mistaking the slender, almost willowy girl that was standing on the other side of the street with a hand pressed to her open mouth.
The hoodie, jeans, and sneakers were no different than those worn by any of a hundred other girls her age, but there was no mistaking that shock of brilliant red hair. After all, I’d spent way too many hours daydreaming about her like a lovesick puppy.
Rebecca Page. I’d have picked her out of any crowd, and not just because I had that epic crush on her; there was also the silver pentacle necklace that she always wore, and usually kept hidden underneath her t-shirt during the school day. She’d kept it on the down-low ever since Mrs. Murray had mistaken it for a symbol of the Devil and freaked out massively in Math class, instead of recognizing it for what it really was — Becky was a Wiccan, and so were her folks. The kids liked to gossip about that too, which was pretty much inevitable at a school like ours, where practically all of the kids went to church every Sunday whether they wanted to or not.
Becky was one of the few kids that didn’t treat me like dirt at school. I mean, yeah, being a nerd is considered pretty cool these days – a complete change from just ten years ago, or so I’m told. But I’m a nerd’s nerd, a kind of uber-super-nerd if you like, the sort of nerd that makes even your ordinary, everyday garden-variety nerd feel a little uncomfortable. I don’t mean to be, but I’m just wired that way. I really can’t help it.
So what’s the difference? Well, a nerd loves Marvel movies and maybe the comic books too – and maybe not – and has seen most of the superhero movies that come out. They can name a few Avengers; they probably quite like Black Widow (whether they’re a boy or a girl doesn’t matter — everybody crushes on the Widow); and without any effort, they can tell an Firefly-class ship from a Battlestar.
Me, on the other hand…I can tell you which issue of which comic book that Black Widow first appeared in, and when it was published (issue 52, Marvel’s Tales of Suspense, April 1964 – go ahead, Google it if you don’t believe me. I’ll wait). I don’t have the exact day of publication, because even my pedantry has its limits, you know?
And as if my super-geek status wasn’t enough of a reason to make me an outsider, there’s also the whole “talking to the dead” thing.
Look, most people who claim to be able to do this…the so-called psychics, self-styled mediums, whatever they want to call themselves – I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s pretty much all BS. They’re either delusional (at best), wanting to be special little snowflakes in a big ugly world, or out-and-out frauds trying to make a quick buck out of the gullible and the bereaved. That last type are the worst, the absolute scum of the earth. I can’t even begin to tell you how angry they make me feel, and I’m not alone on that – most genuine Seers think they’re slime too.
Seers. Short for Deadseers. That’s what we call ourselves, and each other, those of us who have one foot in this life and one in the life to come. Which sounds like it ought to be awesome, right? But trust me, it can be a bigger headache than you could possibly imagine sometimes.
Like right now, for example. Rebecca – Becky to her friends, or so I’d heard – was cool enough not to give me a hard time at school. She didn’t even seem to laugh at me behind my back, based on what I’d been hearing; and believe me, I wanted her to like me. I wanted to impress her. If that makes me sound shallow, then whatever, call me shallow. I really don’t care.
But ever since I’d made the mistake of letting one kid – just one other kid I thought I could trust – in on my little secret, I’d become a laughing stock. That juicy piece of gossip had spread like wildfire, and the name-calling came right on its heels.
“Hey, Chill – watch out! I SEE DEAD PEOPLE!” You know, top quality humor like that. Can you hear my eyes rolling already? The Sixth Sense is so 1999, guys.
That was two years ago, and since then I’d tried hard to adjust. I’d sort of gotten used to it by now, to tell you the truth. The worst of it had pretty much died down by now, so I just put my head down, gritted my teeth, and basically got on with things, taking one day at a time. Staying off the radar seemed like a great idea.
But now, judging from the look on her frankly gorgeous face, Becky Page had just watched me have a conversation with thin air, immediately after scaring off a bunch of bullies without laying so much as a hand on them. And, oh God, if she wasn’t coming this way now, crossing the street towards me. She still had that hand up to her open mouth, covering it in...surprise? Shock? Disgust? I couldn’t really read her expression at all.
There was no way this was going to be good.
Standing there, mortified, I desperately willed the ground beneath my feet to open up and swallow me whole. In the ten seconds it took for her to reach my stretch of the sidewalk, I had become spontaneously religious and offered up prayers to every deity I could think of, starting out with The Force and it’s sole prophet George Lucas, before working my way down through Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones, and was just about to move on to Thor, Odin, hell, even Loki was worth a shot at this point, when she said: “Oh. My. GOD. That was amazing!”
“Huh?”
Huh? HUH? You have got to do better than that, idiot! Come on!
“So the stories are true, right, Danny?” she said excitedly, placing a hand on my arm. “Because either you’re totally schizophrenic, which I really don’t think you are, or you were just talking to a ghost or a spirit or something right now. So which one is it?”
I thought about trying a cover story, I really did. If this were a movie, or a book, or a TV show, this would be the part where I tried to pull the wool over her eyes with a rational explanation, like maybe I had been studying Venusian Judo like the third Doctor Who had, and the bad guys were so afraid of my secret moves that they didn’t dare get into it with me.
This is reality, Danny. And she’s a smart girl. Just tell her the truth.
I screwed up every last bit of courage I had left into a tiny little ball of energy, and used it to power my next sentence.
“His dead grandmother just told me to tell him that he peed his
pants in church when he was four to prove to him that she was really talking to me so she could make him understand how upset she was that he turned into a bully.”
It all came rushing out in a gabble. No pauses, no punctuation, no stopping for breath. And there it was, right out there in the daylight. Well, now she’s going to run screaming too, a voice in the back of my brain piped up, unbidden. Shut up, I answered back. Nobody’s asking you. Then I started to wonder if maybe I was schizophrenic.
But instead, Becky squeed. She actually squeed. With delight, not fear!
“His dead grandmother!” she echoed, clapping her hands to her cheeks like that kid in Home Alone. “His honest to goodness, actual dead grandmother? Her freaking ghost? What did she look like?”
“If you’re expecting clanking chains and moans and groans, I’m really sorry, but you’re out of luck.” I was going for wry and self-deprecating, but at the same time was desperately hoping that I wasn’t coming across as a tool.
Apparently I wasn’t. Either that, or Becky was a really good actress. If anything, she was getting even more excited. “But you could see through her, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, sometimes they look perfectly solid, exactly like you and me. But usually, it takes a spirit a lot of energy to visit our world, even for a little while. The longer they stay, the weaker they get. Then they start to get fainter, look a little more…I guess “see-through” is a pretty good way to put it.”
Becky beamed, which made me blush a little. My face must be turning the same color as her hair. Oh crap, don’t think about her hair. I hoped she wouldn’t notice, but it felt like somebody had just set fire to my head. Get a grip, boy. Get a grip!
“I’m totally into all this ghost stuff,” she gushed. “I watch all those TV shows and read everything I can get my hands on about it. Most of my friends think it’s pretty dumb, but who cares what they think?”
My heart sank a little. TV shows? Did she mean the one where the guy in the tight t-shirt runs around in abandoned old buildings, yelling and chasing after shadows, or something even more lame? But then my hormones kicked in. Come on, dude – this is Becky Page! She’s beautiful, and more to the point, she’s actually talking to you. Maybe she even likes you a little. If your luck gets any better than this, you’d better go out and buy a lottery ticket!
I shifted position slightly, kind of shuffling with my feet but without taking an actual step back; I figured that would look too much like a retreat. I shrugged, and the backpack shifted position on my shoulder as I adjusted its weight. I was very aware of Becky’s close proximity to me. She was about as far away as Brandon Monroe had been a few minutes earlier, but this time my heart was racing for an entirely different reason.
Her eyes met mine. I looked away first. Chicken. She was still smiling, thankfully. The silence was starting to stretch into awkward territory. I was searching for something meaningful (or at least something non-lame) to say in order to fill it, but she got there first.
“So, can I ask you something?” She sounded a little hesitant, almost embarrassed.
“Sure.”
She reached out and handed me a crumpled piece of lined notepaper. I unfolded it and stared dumbly at the seven numbers that had been scrawled there.
“Can I maybe give you a call sometime, Danny? I’d really love to hang out.”
I stammered something affirmative, tearing a page from the notebook I carried in my backpack and giving her my own number in exchange.
I can’t remember a single thing that happened after that.
“Looks like somebody had a good day.”
I guess I must have floated home on some kind of cloud. Mom’s comment as I came through the door meant that it was probably showing on my face too. Get a grip, I told myself sternly – to which my rebellious side answered sweetly: why?
Home was a double-wide trailer, not exactly a palace, but Mom and I liked it just fine. Most importantly, I had my own room, and Mom respected my space as being sacred. She’s pretty cool like that. I guess not every parent is.
“It was OK,” I answered nonchalantly. My head was in the fridge, already hunting down the ingredients for a snack. Pickles, tomatoes, mayo, some sliced ham…slapping it all between two slices of rye and squirting in a dollop of mustard made a halfway-decent sandwich. I could feel the beginnings of my blood sugar starting to dip, which always made me super-irritable, and Mom usually didn’t finish cooking dinner until seven most nights. There was a stuffy-brained feeling starting up that I was all too familiar with, and I wanted to head that off at the pass.
Mom was leaning back in her favorite recliner, flipping through the pages of some folksy magazine. She shot me a curious look, and perhaps sensing that something potentially gossip-worthy had taken place today, was now transitioning into full-on inquisitor mode.
“So…want to tell me about it?”
Not bad for an opening gambit.
Tell mom that maybe Becky Page liked me a little? On that day, the Devil would need ice skates.
I countered with “Just a good time in class,” in a blatant attempt to divert her from the truth.
“Uh huh.” She clearly didn’t believe me, but didn’t want to push it too far too fast. But then: “Which class was that?”
Which classes was I even in today? My brain floundered, starting to come down a little from cloud nine. I mean, I didn’t want to out and out lie to her, that wouldn’t be cool at all. But having a conversation with my mom about a girl, let alone one that I really liked…there was a very real chance that I could drop dead from the sheer embarrassment of it.
“Um, History?” I was skirting around her recliner, headed for my room.
“Are you asking me or telling me?” I’m pretty sure there was an amused twinkle in her eye, but I couldn’t tell because my bedroom door closed behind me before she was done talking.
Don’t be too hard on her, Danny. She hasn’t been the same since Dad died. All she wants is for you to be happy.
Just thinking about that made me start to tear up. Dad was an infantry sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserve. When the Corps had deployed him to Iraq, Mom and I knew there were going to be some risks, even knew that there was a chance that he might not ever come home again, at least not in one piece…but you never think it’s going to happen to your family. It’s always some other poor kid that doesn’t have a Dad any more, right?
Until it actually is you.
And just like that, my good mood was punctured. My vision blurred. Damn it, I was not going to cry. I had gotten all my crying out of me two years ago, when we had buried Dad in Mountain View Cemetery. The Marines had turned up in full force. Mom had gotten a flag, folded neatly into a triangle with razor-sharp creases.
A lot of that day is still a blur to me. But I remember looking around, peeking behind gravestones and markers, looking everywhere in the expectation that I would suddenly see him standing there, wearing his best dress blues and boots so polished that you could use them as mirrors.
But the only Marines I saw that day were as alive as I was, coming to offer condolences to Mom and to me.
It still hurt that he hadn’t come back to see me afterward, even if it was just to say goodbye one last time. I had been so lonely in the days and then weeks after he died, and Mom pretty much locked herself in her room and cried herself to sleep every night for months. Oh, I don’t want you to think that she stopped being a good parent. Mom is an amazing parent. But back then, it was like she was some kind of robot, or working on autopilot; she went through the motions every day, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the laundry, but it was as though the lights were on and nobody was at home behind them for a while.
I don’t know how she did it. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the earth up over my head, shut the world out and be alone with my pain. I had only had him for twelve years. Mom had been married to him for half of her life.
We coped. Somehow. It wasn’t easy, but when you wer
e married to a Marine, and when you were raised by a Marine, you tended to develop a “can do” mindset really fast. For as long as I could remember, Dad wouldn’t let me get away with whining or sulking whenever something difficult got in my way. “Work the problem, Danny,” he used to say. I can still hear his voice saying it now. “Work the problem. Figure out a way. A solution always exists, you just have to find it.”
I miss you so much, Dad. Please drop in and say hi if you can.
I wondered whether my thoughts, prayers, call them whatever you want to, were reaching him over there in the Summerland. They hadn’t worked so far, so why would I expect them to now?
Blowing out a huge sigh, I flopped down onto my bed. The springs groaned in protest, a reminder of just how old this thing was getting. We couldn’t really afford a new mattress anytime soon though. Mom and I pretty much lived paycheck to paycheck on the money she made working at the call center.
It felt good to be back in my happy place, what I like to call my Den of Nerd.
. My bedroom might have been small (I mean, show me a trailer that isn’t) but I had made every square inch of wall and ceiling space count. Posters from the great loves of my life — the Star Wars saga, Star Trek, DC, Marvel, Vertigo, video games, Dungeons and Dragons – all fought for attention, overlapping crazily and sometimes pinned up at weird angles. A life-size Darth Vader cutout stood in the corner at the foot of my bed, wielding a red lightsaber and holding out a gloved hand palm-upwards towards me. Sometimes I would wake up panicking in the middle of the night, emerging confused from a dream and not knowing where I was, and the Sith Lord would be a strangely reassuring sign that I was back in my comfort zone.
Mom like to say that the den looked as though somebody had detonated a bomb in the middle of a clothing store; at least, that’s what she had said when Dad was still here. Now we didn’t joke about bombs any more. You couldn’t really make out the floor, concealed as it was beneath a layer of T-shirts, shorts, jeans, and cargo pants. As a concession to basic hygiene, I usually kicked my underwear beneath all that other stuff until laundry day. Out of sight, out of mind.
Agonal Breath (The Deadseer Chronicles Book 1) Page 2