Silent Echo

by Rain, J. R.

  “A little late,” I say.

  Numi doesn’t acknowledge that the fun is over, I can see. There are tears in his eyes. “Yeah, I’m going to miss your white ass.”

  “Who’s racist now?”

  But Numi covers his face with his big palm as a short, sharp burst of air escapes from behind his hand. I have never seen—or heard—Numi cry. Shed some quiet tears, yes. This is a first for me.

  “I don’t want you to go, Jimmy,” he says, and hearing my name from Numi sounds almost foreign to me.

  “I know you don’t,” I say.

  He keeps his face behind his hand. “I tried so hard.…”

  But he can’t finish his words and I do something I’ve never done before. I sit up and reach my arms around him, and he wraps his around me and holds me tighter than any man has ever held me before, and I don’t care. I don’t care that Numi is a man, or a gay man.

  He is, I realize, the closest thing I have to pure love on this earth.

  And as Numi holds me tight, I realize that I am having trouble breathing again. Also, I realize that my burst of strength is fading.

  I release my hold on him and sit back, and the tears are streaming from his face freely. I feel them on mine, too. I do not let on that I am having trouble breathing again. And I definitely don’t let on that slow, swirling lights have appeared in the room.

  Numi’s hand is back on my chest and as the lights swirl faster and faster, I realize that I am having a very, very hard time breathing. I reach for Numi’s hand, hold it.

  “Numi,” I say, the word coming out in a short burst of air.

  My friend has seen me like this before. He knows the drill. “Relax, kemosabe. It’s going to be okay. Relax, breathe.”

  “Numi,” I say again. My lungs aren’t working. In fact, they are nowhere close to working. “I can’t…”

  He’s patting my hand with his other hand, leaning over me. I feel something wet splash on my face and I know they are his tears. Complete and total panic grips me. I sit up, trying to get my lungs to work. The light in the room continues to swirl, and it seems to focus in the corner of the room, where the light is forming a shape. A small shape.

  “Numi…”

  “Breathe, brother. Relax. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  Numi is holding me against him, holding me in this world. I feel his own heart racing, pounding through him and into me.

  A small breath works its way into my lungs, and I suck it down, expanding my lungs. More air comes to me, and I can take a handful of small breaths.

  “Good, brother. Good. You’re going to be all right.”

  When I have calmed down enough, I press my lips into Numi’s ear, and whisper, “I’m sorry I was a jerk.”

  “It’s okay, cowboy.”

  I take in another lungful of air. “I love you, brother.”

  Numi pauses before answering. “I know you do, Jimmy. I know you do.”

  And the swirling lights stop swirling, and I hear a strange, strangling sound coming from my lungs, and the small figure made of light steps out of the corner of my bedroom, holding out his little hands, and smiling that familiar smile.…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A big thank-you to my writing team: Sylvia Vasquez, Eve Paludan, Sandy Johnston, P.J. Day, and Elaine Babich.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J.R. Rain is the author of thirty-three mystery, supernatural, and romance novels and five short-story collections. He’s sold over one million books online. Moon Dance, his supernatural mystery, has been translated into four languages, with audio and film productions pending. The literary heir to Robert Parker, his novels feature challenging characters, complicated relationships, and page-turning modernist prose. The gritty realism in his mystery novels comes courtesy of years working as a private eye. A So-Cal native, Rain relocated to an enigmatic and shadowy island outside Seattle.

  If you enjoyed SILENT ECHO by J.R. Rain, we hope you’ll like the following excerpt of THE BODY DEPARTED by J.R. Rain.

  I stepped through the wall and into my daughter’s bedroom.

  She was sleeping contentedly on her side. It was before dawn, and the building was quiet. The curtains were open, and the sky beyond was black. If there were any stars, they were lost to the L.A. smog. The curtains were covered with ponies, as was most of the room. A plastic pony light switch, a pony bed lamp, pony wallpaper and bedspread. Someday she would outgrow her obsession with ponies, although I secretly hoped not.

  A girl and her pony—it’s a beautiful thing.

  I stepped closer to my sleeping daughter, and as I did so, she shifted slightly toward me. She mewed like a newborn kitten. Crimson light from her alarm clock splashed over her delicate features, highlighting a slightly upturned nose and impossibly big eyes. Sometimes, when she slept, her closed eyelids fluttered and danced. But not tonight. Tonight she was sleeping deeply, no doubt dreaming of sugar and spice and everything nice.

  Or of Barbies and boys and everything in between.

  I wondered if she ever dreamed of me. I’m sure she did at times. Were those dreams good or bad? Did she ever wake up sad and missing her father?

  Do you want her to wake up sad?

  No, I thought. I want her to wake up rested, restored, and full of peace.

  I stepped away from the far wall and glided over to the small chair in the corner of her room. We had made the chair together one weekend, a father-daughter project for the Girl Scouts. To her credit, she did most of the work.

  I sat in it now, lowering my weightless body into it, mimicking the act of sitting. Unsurprisingly, the chair didn’t creak.

  As I sat, my daughter rolled over in her sleep, facing me. Her aura, usually blue and streaked with red flames, often reacted to my presence, as it did now. The red flames crackled and gravitated toward me like a pulsating static ball, sensing me like I sensed it.

  As I continued to sit, the lapping red flames grew in intensity, snapping and licking the air like solar flares on the surface of the sun. My daughter’s aura always reacted this way to me. But only in sleep. Somehow her subconscious recognized me, or perhaps it was her soul. Or both. Either way, from this subconscious state, she would sometimes speak to me, as she did now.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, baby,” I said.

  “Mommy said you got hurt real bad.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you got killed.”

  “Mommy’s right, but I don’t want you thinking about that right now, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said sleepily. “Am I dreaming, Daddy?”

  “Yes, baby.”

  We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was trying to remember. Lately, such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to recall.

  “It’s raining, Daddy,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you live in the rain?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live, Daddy?”

  “I live here, with you.”

  “But you’re dead.”

  I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of this, even by my daughter.

  “Why don’t you go to heaven, Daddy?”

  I thought about that. I think about that a lot, actually. I said, “Daddy still has work to do.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Good work.”

  “I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much. I think about you every day. I’m always crying. People at school say I’m a crybaby.”

  “You’re not a crybaby,” I said. “You’re just sad.” My heart broke all over again. “It’s time to go back to sleep, angel.”

&nb
sp; “Okay, Daddy.”

  “I love you, sweetie.”

  “I love you, too, Daddy.”

  I drifted up from the small wooden chair and moved across the room the way I do—silently and easily—and at the far wall, I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some of it still flared here and there. For her to relax—truly relax—I needed to leave her room entirely.

  And so I did. Through the wall.

  To hell with doors.

  I was standing behind him, reading the newspaper from over his shoulder, as I did every morning.

  His name was Jerrold, and he was close to sixty and close to retirement. He lived alone and seemed mostly happy. He was addicted to Internet poker, but as far as I could tell, that was his only vice.

  Thank God.

  He turned the paper casually, snapping it taut, then reached for his steaming mug of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, and took a long sip. I could smell the coffee—or at least a hint of it, just like I could smell a hint of his aftershave and hair gel. My senses were weak at best.

  As he set down the mug, some of the coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the back of his hand. He yelped and shook his hand. I could see that it had immediately reddened.

  Pain.

  I hadn’t known pain in quite a long time. My last memory of it was when I had been working at a friend’s house, cutting carpet, and nearly severed my arm off.

  I looked down at my translucent arm now. Although nearly imperceptible, the scar was still there—or at least the ghostly hint of it.

  Still cursing under his breath, Jerrold turned back to his paper. So did I. He scanned the major headlines, and I scanned them along with him. After all, he was my hands in this situation.

  He read through some local Los Angeles news, mostly political stuff that would have bored me to tears had I tears to be bored with. I glanced over at his coffee while he read, trying to remember what it tasted like. I think I remembered.

  I think.

  Hot, roasted, bitter, and sweet. I knew the words, but I was having a hard time recalling the actual flavor. That scared me.

  Jerrold turned the page. As he did so, something immediately caught my eye; luckily, it caught his eye, too.

  A piano teacher had been murdered at St. Luke’s, a converted monastery that was now being used as a Catholic church and school. Lucy Randolph was eighty-six years old and just three days shy of celebrating her sixtieth anniversary with her husband.

  I had known Mrs. Randolph. In fact, she had been my own music teacher back when I was a student at St. Luke’s. She had been kind to a fault, a source of inspiration and joy to her students, and especially to me.

  And now, according to the report, someone had strangled her, leaving her for dead on the very piano she had taught on. Perhaps the very same piano I had been taught on.

  Damn.

  Jerrold clucked his tongue and shook his head and moved on to the next page, but I had seen enough. I stepped away.

  “You’re still young, Jerrold,” I said to him. “Lose fifteen pounds and find someone special—and ditch the gambling.”

  As I spoke, the small hairs on the back of his neck stood up and his aura shifted toward me. He shivered unconsciously and turned the page.

  We were in Pauline’s apartment.

  She was drinking an apple martini and I wasn’t, which was a damn shame. At the moment, I was sitting in an old wingback chair, and she was on the couch, one bare foot up on a hand-painted coffee table that could have doubled as a modern piece of abstract art.

  “If you ever need any extra money,” I said, “you could always sell your coffee table on eBay.”

  “It’s not for sale,” she said. “Ever.”

  “What if you were homeless and living on the streets and needed money?”

  “Then I would be homeless and living on the streets with the world’s most bitchin’ hand-painted coffee table.”

  Her name was Pauline, and she was my best—and only—friend. She was also a world-famous medium. She could hear me, see me, and sometimes even touch me. Hell, she could even read my thoughts, which was a bit disconcerting for me. She was a full-figured woman, with perhaps the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She often wore her long brown hair haphazardly, a look that would surely have your average California girl running back to the bathroom mirror. Pauline was not your average California girl. She wasn’t your average girl by any definition, spending as much of her time in the world of the dead as in the world of the living. Luckily, she just so happened to live in the very building I was presently haunting.

  “Yeah, lucky me,” said Pauline, picking up on my thoughts.

  She did her readings out of a small office near downtown Los Angeles, usually working with just one or two clients a day. Some of her sessions lasted longer than others, and tonight she was home later than usual, hitting the booze hard, as she often did. I wouldn’t call her a drunk, but she was damn close to being one.

  “I’m not a drunk,” Pauline said absently, reading my thoughts again. “I can stop anytime I want. The booze just helps me… release.”

  “Release?” I asked.

  “Yeah, to forget. To unwind. To un-everything.”

  “You should probably not drink so much,” I said.

  She regarded me over her martini glass. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her face gleamed with a fine film of sweat. She wasn’t as attractive when she was drunk.

  “Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “And do you even remember what it’s like being drunk?”

  I thought about that. “A little. And that was below the belt.”

  “Do you even have a belt?”

  I looked down at my slightly glowing, ethereal body. Hell, even my clothing glowed. It was the same clothing I had been wearing on the night I was murdered two years ago: a white T-shirt and long red basketball shorts, my usual sleeping garb. I was barefoot, and I suspected my hair was a mess, since I had been shot to death in my sleep. Dotting my body were the various bloody holes where the bullets had long ago entered my living flesh.

  “No belt,” I said. “Then again, no shoes, either.”

  She laughed, which caused some of her martini to slosh over the rim. She cursed and licked her fingers like a true alcoholic.

  “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  “Waste not, want not,” I said.

  She glared at me some more as she took a long pull on her drink. When she set it down, she missed the center of the cork coaster by about three inches. Now part of the glass sat askew on the edge of the coaster, and the whole thing looked like it might tip over. She didn’t notice or care.

  Pauline worked with spirits all day. Early on, she had tried her best to ignore my presence. But I knew she could see me, so I pursued her relentlessly until she finally acknowledged my existence.

  “And now I can’t get rid of you,” she said.

  “You love me,” I said. “Admit it.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I do. Call me an idiot, but I do.”

  “Idiot,” I said. “Besides, I’m different than those other ghosts.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “I’m a ghost on a mission.”

  “Could that sound more corny?” she said.

  “Maybe after a few more drinks,” I said.

  “So how’s the mission coming along?” she asked. We had been over this before, perhaps dozens of times.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m getting a lot of feedback from anyone—or anything.”

  “And when will you be done with your mission?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “And what, exactly, is your mission?” As she spoke, she peered into the empty glass with one eye.

  “To save my soul.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. And you’re sure it’s not too late to save your soul? I mean, you are dead, after all.”

  “It’s never too late,” I said.

  “And you know that, how?” she
asked.

  “Because I’m not in hell yet.”

  “You’re haunting an old apartment building in Los Angeles,” she said. “Sounds a bit like hell to me.”

  “But I can see my wife and daughter whenever I want,” I countered. “Can’t be that bad.”

  “Your wife has already remarried,” said Pauline. “And weren’t you two separated at the time of your death?”

  We had been, but the details of our separation were lost to me. We had financial problems, I seemed to recall, which had led to many arguments. What we had argued about was anyone’s guess. But the arguments had been heated and impassioned, and in the end, I had moved out—but not very far. To stay close to my daughter, I had rented an apartment in the same building.

  “Yes, we had been separated,” I said. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”

  “Just keeping it real,” said Pauline indifferently. “Besides, there is no hell.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I talk to the dead, remember? And not just ghosts,” she added, “but those who have passed on.”

  “Passed on to heaven?” I asked.

  “Passed on to something,” she said. “Neither heaven nor hell. A spirit world—and it’s waiting for you.”

  I didn’t believe that. I believed in heaven and hell, and I was certain, as of this moment, that I was going to hell. “Well, it can keep on waiting. I’m not ready to pass on.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I need to work some things out,” I said.

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “And then I will accept my fate.”

  She nodded. “But for now, you hope to change your fate.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Sitting on the couch, she had tucked her bare feet under her. Now her painted-red toes peeked out like frightened little mice.

  “Nice imagery,” she said, wiggling her toes. “So you still can’t remember why you are going to hell?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But it was something bad.”

  “Very bad,” I said.