by David Wright
“No,” I say as I take a seat, “thank you.”
She sits down across from me, pulling her blue robe closed over a pink shirt. “You wanted to talk about Sam?”
I wonder what she thinks I want to discuss. Maybe she thinks I want to talk to her for a story I’m doing, even though it would be incredibly rude to be here at this hour for something like an interview. Whatever she thinks, nothing will prepare her for the truth. And even as I’m about to deliver it, I can feel Sam’s eyes on me and his mother, watching, waiting.
As I look into Kathy’s eyes — the eyes of a pragmatic, sad woman — I wonder how the hell am I supposed to convince her of something I couldn’t even convince my wife?
I hope Sam does a better job of his little “ask me something only I would know” game than Kayla did the first time around.
I decide to come right out with it.
“Sam wanted me to give you a message.”
“What?” she says, pulling her hands closer to her body, mouth hanging open, waiting for my response.
“He came to me at the first grief meeting I went to, again at the one I went to with my wife, and now again tonight, asking me to give you a message. I don’t know how I can see him and you can’t, and I don’t expect you to believe me, but … ”
She puts her hand over her trembling lips. Her eyes watered. “He came to you?”
Already I can tell that she’s not like Meg. She seems to be looking for a reason to believe. Perhaps she’s a little too eager, the kind of person that so-called psychics would bleed for every penny.
“Yes, he wanted me to tell you that he didn’t mean to kill himself.”
She stared at me. “He what?”
I look at Sam, who is also crying now, and ask, “What was the rest, Sam?”
He tells me, and I convey the message.
“He says that he just wanted to get sick enough to stay home from school for a while, but he didn’t think he’d die. At most, he thought he might get in trouble, and you’d have to keep him home because you were afraid he might do something like this again.”
“He’s here?” she asks, looking where I’m looking.
“Yes,” I say. “He says that he’s so sorry that you blamed yourself after he died. And he said, please don’t do what you said you’d do.”
“What do you mean?”
I ask Sam, who is now crying more than his mother. He can barely get the words out, and as he does they hit me right in the heart.
I can hardly look at her as I say this, but I have to see if what he said is true. Her eyes will tell me and confirm, again, that he’s truly here telling me these things. And if he is here, then that means Kayla is also waiting for me at home.
“Sam says that after you tried to revive him and realized that you were too late, you begged God to take you, too. And that on many nights you say to yourself that you’ll join him soon.”
Kathy stares at me, and then at Sam’s ghost.
Her eyes widen. “Sam?”
“You see him?”
Sam asks her, too.
“Yes, baby, I see you,” A smile spreads across Kathy’s trembling lips as she reaches out to touch him. Her hands rest on his shoulders, as if he’s there, solid and real.
My heartbeat is racing as I wonder if I’ll have this sort of reunion with Kayla.
They embrace.
Sam says, “Please, Mama, don’t kill yourself. It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. The man in black says I won’t go to hell for an accident. And I don’t want you to kill yourself and wind up in hell without me.”
She doesn’t ask who the man in black is. All she does is hold him, crying over and over, “I won’t, honey, I won’t.”
Kathy’s hands suddenly slip through Sam as he begins to fade.
No! He can’t leave now. He has to tell me what Kayla said to him.
“I have to go now, Mama.”
“Wait,” I say, “I need you to tell me what Kayla said!”
He looks at me. “She can tell you. You just need to see her.”
He’s fading more, almost gone, his voice trailing away.
“How can I see her?” I shout.
“Take more—” and then he is gone, without finishing his sentence.
Take more what?
“No!” I yell, leaping from the table as if I can grab him and keep him here.
Kathy stumbles back and almost falls. I reach out and manage to keep her steady.
She looks up at me. “Where did he go?”
“He moved on. He said that once he delivered his message to you he could go where he was supposed to.”
“To heaven?”
“Yes,” I say, not that he’d ever told me. But if it comforts her, then it seems right to say.
I stand there, staring at the spot where Sam had just been, unable to believe that he vanished before delivering his promise.
Kathy asks, “What are you talking about with Kayla? Did you see your daughter, too?”
“No, Sam did. He said if I helped him move on, he’d help her talk to me, so she can move on, too.”
Kathy asks, “What does ‘take more’ mean?”
It dawns on me. The only thing it can mean.
“I think it means take more pills.”
I look at her and realize that I need to get home. Now.
“I’m sorry,” I say, walking past her without waiting for her to lead me out, “I need to get home.”
“Thank you, Tom!” Kathy calls out.
“You’re welcome,” I say, rushing out her front door and racing to my car.
* * * *
CHAPTER 14
I arrive home at 3:15 a.m., and run into the house, screaming her name.
“Kayla?”
I don’t see or hear her.
I go to my office and grab my pills, then to the fridge for a bottle of water, talking to her all the while, hoping she is here and can hear me.
“I helped Sam move on. I told him what his mother wanted to know, and then … you won’t believe this … but she saw him and talked with him, for just a moment. Then he was gone.”
I carry the bottles upstairs, heading toward Kayla’s bedroom.
I push the door open, flick on the pink light, and sit on her bed.
“If you’re trying to talk to me right now, I can’t hear or see you. And Sam disappeared before he could tell me what you wanted him to tell me. But he said I can see you. I just need to ‘take more.’ The only thing that makes sense to me is that he wants me to take more of the pain pills. They precipitated a lot of this, I think. I’m not sure why, but these pills helped me see him. And I think they allowed me to hear you, too, but only when I was sleeping. I figure if I take more — not too many, don’t worry — but if I take more, maybe I’ll be able to see you.”
I unscrew the pill bottle and pour three into my hand. A good start, I figure, as I wash the pills down with water.
I kick off my shoes and lean back on her bed, feeling the softness of her cool pillow melt beneath my head. I smell her shampoo again, and I wonder if the scent is in the pillow, as I’d thought before, or if perhaps she’s in the room right now.
Ghosts don’t have scents, though, do they?
I don’t remember Sam smelling one way or another. I only remember the cold.
I start talking, hoping she’s in the room.
“Do you remember when you were eight months old?” I ask, looking at the doll I bought her, still on the nightstand, untouched.
There’s no answer, so I close my eyes and continue.
“You woke up in the middle of the night with a high fever. I don’t remember what it was, but Meg said it was dangerously bad. And you were coughing this horrible croupy cough. I was so scared. Your mom bundled you up and carried you to the car, and then I drove us about 80 miles an hour to the emergency room. The doctor was running all these tests on you, and then she needed to do chest X-Rays. She took you from me, and you were screaming so loud, lo
oking up at me with wounded eyes, like, ‘Why did you give me to this lady? Why aren’t you helping me, Daddy?’, and I had to just sit there as she was doing the X-Rays. You kept screaming, and even though I knew in the logical part of my mind that she wasn’t hurting you, in my heart it was killing me. I wanted to snatch you back from her, and tell her to keep her hands off of you. At one point, I thought I might hit her.”
I open my eyes to see if I have company, but I don’t.
Nor do I feel anything from the pills yet.
I sit up and open the bottle and take two more, along with another swallow of water.
I lie back down and continue my story.
“I remember realizing right then and there how truly helpless I was. No matter what precautions I took or how well I raised you, someday something could happen. Maybe you’d get beaten up by some bully at school. Some boy might treat you poorly. Or maybe we’d get into a car accident, and … ” I can’t finish the sentence.
I wipe the tears from my eyes.
I can feel the emotions swelling in my head. The pills are starting to work, though I’m not feeling joy. Only a profound sorrow.
“Remember how you used to stand outside my door when I was writing? You’d sit there trying to lure me away from my desk, making funny faces, or sometimes playing on my sympathy with a sad face, and telling me how you just wanted me to sit with you?”
I wipe more tears away, feeling the sting of memories cutting like razors.
“And I always said, ‘Hold on,’ or ‘In a few minutes,’ or whatever I had to say to get a few more uninterrupted minutes writing. And then you’d slink away feeling dejected, wounded. I don’t know if you know I noticed when you went away, or maybe thought I was so into my work that I didn’t even notice, or care. But I did, Kayla. I knew each and every time you walked away from my door, because it hurt like hell to not get up and chase you, to go spend time with you. But I knew if I did, I’d be making it that much harder to return to the story. I’d be setting you up to expect me to just drop what I’m doing, and I couldn’t.”
I laugh at myself, making excuses and defending my actions even after Kayla is dead.
“I’m sorry, Kayla. I’d trade every page of every book I ever wrote to have you back. To go back in time and get up from my desk to sit with you.”
Suddenly, a flash of memory:
I’m driving in my car, on a hot summer morning.
It’s the day of the accident, though I’m not sure how I know.
I look in the back seat to see Kayla, smiling at me. She has her lunchbox, all ready for school. In the mirror, I see the light again, like a glare, a reflection of something in the back seat beside her.
What is it?
The flash is gone, quick like Sam’s vanishing.
His words echo in my head.
Just take more.
I sit up and look around. Still no sign of Kayla in her room. I fish two more pills from the bottle and swallow them.
I lie back down.
I want to apologize more for not being there, but every word is hollow from my lips. Words mean nothing when they come too late. It’s what you do when your child is alive that matters. Not now.
I turn over in her bed, crying into her pillow.
I just want this pain to end. I feel it coursing over me like a flood that will surely take me with it, choke me, drown me, drag me to the depths of nothingness. I wonder how many more pills it would take to end the pain for good?
“Daddy?” I hear her voice as a hand softly touches my head.
A cold chill runs through me at the touch.
I turn, quickly, and see her sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me with her head tilted sideways.
“Kayla?” I ask, reaching out to touch her face.
My fingers meet her cheek’s smooth surface.
My mouth opens, tears pouring from my eyes, as I stare at the impossible.
“Daddy?” she says, still looking up at me. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
I want to wrap my arms around her and hug her hard. Never let her go. Damn the man in black, those ghost things, or Jesus Christ himself. Nobody will ever separate us again. They’ll have to take me with her. But as I try to hug her, my arms refuse to cooperate. I can’t move them.
I’m confused. And the pain I was feeling before is now like a knife in my head, like a migraine on steroids.
She looks at me in that same odd way. “Daddy, are you awake?”
Awake?
“I’m right here,” I say. “I’m right here. Can’t you see me? Or hear me?”
She turns away from me, like she’s talking to someone else behind her, someone I can’t see.
“I think he’s awake!” she says. “Come here!”
Who is she talking to?
Is Sam with her? Another ghost?
The door behind her is closed, and suddenly I’m afraid who might walk through.
“Who are you talking to, Kayla?”
And then she’s gone.
I reach out, desperate to feel something. But she’s not there.
“Kayla?” I cry, the pain now feeling as if it’s moving like an actual blade through my brain, like a parasite searching for the rawest part of me to bore into.
I reach for the pills, pop two more into my mouth, hoping they’ll make the pain subside and bring Kayla back into sight.
I wait, sitting on her bed, hoping against hope that she’ll appear again.
“Please, Kayla,” I cry.
The room is getting warmer, almost unbearably hot, reminding me of the summer flashback I’d had moments ago.
I hear something, the sound of clicking in the distance. I remember the horrible things that had come through the school hallway.
Had they been clicking?
I can’t remember.
Have they found me?
Have they come for Kayla?
Did they sense her getting upset?
Or, perhaps, me?
“Keep calm, Kayla,” I say, assuming she’s still here, “If you’re calm they can’t see you.”
I jump up from Kayla’s bed, stuff the pill bottle into my pocket, then head into the hallway. Lights flicker overhead. They go out for good, plunging the hall into black.
I stop in my tracks, the blade in my head digging impossibly deeper.
I cry out in pain and fall to the floor, vomiting in the darkness.
Hot puke splashes my arms, and I hope I didn’t lose the pills. I need them in my system. I need to see her again.
I feel along the wooden floor, hands slipping through my stomach’s squishy contents, searching for the hard shape of pills in my mess. I'll take more, but only if I puked up the others. Too many will mean an overdose for sure.
I try and remember how many I’ve taken, to see if I can swallow more without risk of death.
Fuck, I can’t remember.
I continue feeling in the darkness, searching through the mess, then my finger runs into something hard. Something that feels like … a shoe. A man’s shoe.
I look up but see nothing.
I run my hands up, feeling pants and legs.
“Who’s there?” I ask, stumbling back on all fours, slipping in my puke.
“You know who I am,” the man says, his whisper like velvet in the darkness. It feels like it’s right next to my ear, even though he’s standing a good two feet in front of me now.
“The man in black?” I ask, as it’s the only thing that comes to mind.
“Yes,” he says.
The lights flicker, and I look up to see the man from the photographs. I only see him for a second, but immediately I notice his eyes, glowing blue. And … an almost pleasant smile.
“Who are you?”
“Who is not as important as why I’m here.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“Because you’re not supposed to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“
You were supposed to die, but you didn’t. And now … well, now you’re here. You can’t stay here, Tom. This place isn’t for you.”
“What do you mean? Not for me? Where’s my daughter?”
The lights go black again, and I reach out, but he’s no longer there.
What does he mean I was supposed to have died? Is that why he’s here? To take my soul? To bring me to heaven, hell, or wherever it is we go when we die?
Terror floods my body.
I don’t want to go.
I’m not ready to go.
I’m shivering, cold.
The lights in the hall are flickering again, just enough for me to see that the man in black is gone. I look down between the strobes of darkness and light, probing the floor for any sign of pills. I see none in my vomit, which means they’re probably all still inside me.
I probably shouldn’t take more.
I suppose no more are needed, though, if I’m getting a visit from the man in black. I try to tell myself that this is all in my head, that I should just wake up, and everything will be fine.
But nothing about that statement feels real.
The hallway is plunged into darkness again. Outside, thunder is booming, and rain starts hitting the windows in the rooms on either side of me hard.
I open the door to my right, Kayla’s room, and see just enough moonlight coming through her windows to make out the bottle of water I left on her bed. I call out for her again.
“Kayla?”
Suddenly, the clicking sound again. It’s mostly muted, as if it’s happening just under the floor, or maybe in the walls.
“Daddy,” I hear.
“Kayla?” I call out.
I can’t see her.
“Daddy,” she says again, this time a bit louder, and I realize she’s not in her room. She sounds like she’s coming from the guest room at the end of the hall. Beneath that door, light flickers on and off. Or perhaps it’s lightning, as thunder crashes through the hallway, reminding my brain of the blade twisting through it.
I reach into my pocket, grab the bottle, take two more pills, swallow them.
I think about going back to Kayla’s room for the bottle of water, but she calls for me again.
“Daddyyyy!” this time a shrill scream, like someone is hurting her.