Unfinished

by Carol Oates

  “I haven’t got around to unpacking yet.”

  “Who lives here with you?” I asked walking through the hallway toward the back of the house. We passed a modern, clean kitchen. The unpacking process seemed a little further along there. A tray of red apples sat on the countertop beside an empty bowl and glass perfectly aligned to the edge.

  “I live alone. I’m an emancipated teen,” he snorted. “Now do you understand why I can’t help you?”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what to say because I felt terrible for him. He’d lost everything. At the same time, I still needed him to help me. There was nobody else. We entered his bedroom. It had been unpacked too, apart from several open boxes of books under the window. There were no posters on the walls, or trophies. The bed sheets were white and non-descript, as were the walls. A single framed photo of a family standing outside an ordinary suburban house sat on the dresser.

  “My father was a doctor. My mom ran a rare book shop.” His tone was unemotional as he flopped back onto his bed leaving me to examine the photograph.

  He couldn’t have been more than fifteen in it, grinning at the camera. He wore his hair shorter back then and his muscles had since filled out.

  Jonas looked like his dad. They had the same tall build, dark hair and deep blue eyes. His mum and younger sister were slightly fairer and were both petite in comparison.

  “What happened?” I ran my finger over the frame thinking of a similar photograph at home from when Lottie and I were young, before our dad left and our mom became emotionally absent.

  Jonas shrugged and threw his arms over his head. His T-shirt pulled up and I noticed a straight raised scar across the right side his lower stomach. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

  I sat down at his feet and waited.

  “Wow, were you this much of a pain in the ass when you were alive?”

  I smirked. It was easier than commenting on something I wasn’t sure about anymore. I mostly preferred the company of people with suspect morals.

  “Some in my family can see the energy of those who haven’t passed over. Not all the time, I mean it’s not like I’m surrounded by dead people all day. No offense.” He lifted up a little to look at me.

  “None taken,” I assured him.

  He lay back and continued. “To cut a long, boring story short, my mom didn’t always want to be different. Back in England we lived a normal, unexciting life until I was twelve. Then this woman starts hanging around. It took me a while to figure out what she was. She showed up everywhere we went and hung around outside our house. She needed someone to deliver a message to her husband and kid. My mom felt obligated to do it, she said she couldn’t let the ghost of the woman linger here forever.

  That was the start. I thought it was all so cool, and I was so special because I could see them too. My dad assisted my mom. It made them feel good… like a calling. A couple of years ago they got involved with a case concerning some shady people and those people came looking for us. Mom was American, so we came here to get away. They found us last year. I walked away, the rest of my family didn’t.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “So why don’t you like people to touch you?”

  “I can’t tell who is who at first. So I don’t touch anyone.”

  “That makes sense,” I agreed, thinking about the effect I had on that neighbor. “But if you’re emancipated and you don’t like to be around people, why go to school?”

  “Why do you?” he asked back.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I know I’m not really the same as everyone else but I still want to be a part of something. I guess I want to keep doing something that makes me feel I’m part of the world around me. Sometimes… sometimes I feel if I didn’t, I might just disappear.”

  His piercing eyes locked on mine and he gave me a knowing smile. “And now you know.”

  “Is that why you spoke to me under the bleachers?”

  He sighed thoughtfully. “I wanted to be me. For once I wanted to stop pretending with someone.”

  “You wanted to be seen,” I said softly.

  “I guess,” Jonas shrugged.

  I frowned. This boy proved more complex than I had given him credit for. Every time I peeled back a layer there was another underneath.

  He rolled sideways and propped himself up on his elbow. “So, what about you?” He sounded interested and his tone had lightened significantly.

  “Are we sharing now?” I smiled.

  “Looks like it,” Jonas agreed with a small grin.

  I shifted slightly to face him better and inhaled deeply, filling my non-existent lungs. “I got in with the wrong crowd—Delia Montgomery and her minions.”

  “That girl I saw clinging onto your sister all day?” he questioned.

  I nodded. “I was responsible for the class notes and tests that Delia sells to other students. I didn’t know papers aren’t the only things she sells. I was naïve. There is a journal that Delia carries with her all the time but it’s not the original, I stole the original. Delia’s been supplying the students with every type of happy pill and powder for a few years now and she keeps records. The journal contains details of every buy and sell, every party. Who took what, when and how. It’s pretty damning. I may have been a high school brat but I was never a dealer and I wanted to turn her in. I stole the original journal.

  “I told my plan to my friend, Will. Delia’s father is a powerful man and I didn’t know who I could trust. Will suggested we meet to talk. I was on my way to meet him when my brakes failed and I skidded into the rocks on the shore of Shepard River. Somehow, Delia found out and the journal burned up in my car. I saw a report down at the station before Delia’s dad made it disappear.” I shrugged.

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “She warned me if I ever crossed her, she would cut my brakes.”

  “I guess you should have listened.”

  I sucked in my lower lip and paused for a moment before I continued. “The thing is. She’s leading my sister down the same road and I don’t want that to happen.”

  “Please don’t ask me to get in the middle of this. I can’t.”

  “If you could just give her a message—“

  “Are you deliberately not hearing no?” He sat up rapidly and his shoulders sagged forward. “You will have to figure out some other way to resolve your business.”

  I stood and walked around the foot of the bed to kneel in front of him. “It’s just a message,” I pressed. “I only want you to tell her to be careful. I don’t want her to follow me anymore.”

  His head fell into his hands and his fingers treaded up through his hair with annoyance. I wanted to tug his hands away and make him listen to me, but I knew I couldn’t. My hands itched to move toward him. I somehow doubted he would be grateful to me for making him ill. Instead, I clenched my fists tightly and just for good measure crossed my arms.

  “It isn’t that easy. It would mean exposing what I can do. What if she didn’t believe, or if she told someone? I’ve lost too much already,” Jonas grunted, pulling at his own hair.

  “She will believe you. I know Lottie…and she has such a good heart. She could help you too. Do you want to be alone forever? Don’t you ever want to have a friend?”

  “You don’t know the risk you are asking me to take.”

  I pressed down on my thighs and pushed myself off the ground. “You mean you are afraid. It isn’t that you can’t help. You won’t.”

  His head lifted to reveal his bloodshot and watery eyes. All the blood drained from his face as I watched and disheveled hair stuck out at odd angles from his scalp.

  “You have to go now. I won’t help you.”

  ~o0o~

  By the time I got back home the sky had almost completely darkened to an opaque sapphire sheet dappled with dots of white light. I spent the journey thinking of other ways to get through to Lottie without Jonas’s help. When I
reached my room I didn’t expect what I found.

  Lottie was sitting on my bed, still covered with my pale, flowery comforter. Except it wasn’t Lottie, it was me. Her short, styled hair looked just like mine. She had applied bronzer, and makeup still lay open and scattered across my dresser. The jeans and tank top she wore were from the clothes hanging in my closet. I moved around her, disturbed by her appearance and yet more by the item settled on her lap—Delia’s journal, the one both Delia and I thought burned up in my car. Before I had time to fully assimilate the scene before me, her phone rang.

  “Yes?” She paused and I attempted to get near enough to hear the other side of the conversation.

  All I could pick out was a mumbled female voice giving instructions. The world spun out of control around me and my own pulse drummed in my head like a hammer.

  “I’ll be there,” Lottie said flatly. “I just want to talk.” The phone clicked off and Lottie moved off the bed holding the journal against her chest.

  Déjà vu. Apprehension prickled across my scalp and slithered down my spine like ice-cold water. I could see the last moments of my life flash before my eyes. Except, the girl in front of me wasn’t some fragment of a memory playing out in my mind.

  I didn’t stop to think or to check Lottie’s car for signs of tampering, it didn’t take a genius to work out she was facing the same fate I had. If not with the car, Delia would find some other way to silence Lottie. That is, if my sister’s appearance as my doppelganger out for revenge didn’t give her a heart attack first.

  I rushed down the driveway and toward the only place where I knew there was someone who could help me.

  ~o0o~

  I never reached Jonas’s house, he had already started out in the direction of mine. For an instant I breathed a sigh of relief thinking it must be because he had relented and planned to help me. Then I noticed his hard expression and his eyes actively avoiding me.

  “You have to help me,” I cried as I approached him.

  He didn’t answer or acknowledge me. It was as if I wasn’t there again. I continued to hope my pleading wouldn’t fall on deaf ears.

  “My sister has the journal and Delia knows. You have to warn her.”

  “I’m going to the library,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know how many ways I can tell you that I can’t help.”

  “Just listen to me please,” I begged. I was ready to get down on my knees if I had to but I wished it wouldn’t come to that. We didn’t have time. This close to home I had already caught the fragrant magnolia scent floating in the warm breeze.

  “No,” Jonas said coldly. His lips barely moved and his eyes stayed fixed on the pavement. He flatly refused to look at me. “I’ve told you already. Leave me alone.”

  He kept walking, leaving me no choice but to move out of his way. I moved beside him instead, scurrying to keep pace walking backward. I didn’t want to miss any of his movements. Jonas could ignore me if he wanted but his body language told another story. I could see his hands curl into fists even through the fabric of his tattered jeans, his shoulders bent forward so his long bangs kept his eyes under cover. He could hear me just fine.

  “So what now, are you just going to pretend I don’t exist?”

  He flicked his hair to the side and I caught a flash of blue before it disappeared again behind his downcast eyelids. “Pretty much.” His jaw muscle flexed with the words under a light splattering of stubble that had grown during the day.

  For a few moments there was nothing but silence between us and the sound of his sneakers scuffing with each step. Before today I had no idea how irritating that sound was.

  “If you could save your sister you would,” I barked at him. “I can save mine, but I can’t do it without your help.” I swallowed thickly and my eyes stung with imagined tears.

  Jonas continued to ignore me and lumbered down the pavement, moving out of the way when an old man passed with a small dog out for his nightly walk.

  I fell on my knees, just as I knew I would and called out to him. “Please Jonas. I don’t want my sister to die.”

  His shoulders flinched; the small reaction told me he heard. Nevertheless, he kept walking. I was on my own. I stayed there until Jonas disappeared from view, swallowed up by the night and wishing in every second he would turn and come back. He never did.

  ~o0o~

  I rushed back to the house where Lottie was fiddling with a set of keys by her red sedan. Her hands were shaking so hard she couldn’t seem to get a grip on the one she needed while still holding the journal. I couldn’t allow Lottie to get in that car or go through with this crazy game. I only had one option. With a deep breath, I stepped toward her.

  The moment my fingers touched Lottie’s waist, the icy chill needled over my skin and sank through my flesh to settle in my bones. All my instincts cried danger and told me to pull away. I couldn’t. There was more danger in pulling away. I shoved my fingers deeper and Lottie sagged against the door of the car. The keys dropped from her hand but she held fast to the journal, refusing to give up. Every single nerve vibrated painfully and my body felt as though I’d been immersed in a barrel of freezing water.

  Lottie’s stomach lurched, I felt it against my fingers and I dug deeper. It wasn’t only my fingers, but my hands and wrists. It was as though I was slipping under the water and struggling for air. My lungs burned and energy poured from me like milk from a jug. Lottie bent over and gagged repeatedly. The force knocked me backward through the air. I landed, sprawled out on the ground, exhausted.

  That was it. I had played my only joker. When Lottie finished emptying her stomach and groggily righted herself, I remained on the ground. She picked up her keys and this time had no trouble in locating the correct one. I watched in horror as my sister, now looking the spitting image of me, got into the driver’s seat. It didn’t make sense for her to face Delia alone, or at all. Of course, I knew she was simply following my example.

  I pushed myself off the ground and staggered forward before crashing back down. The engine started. I closed my eyes as my head hit the cool grass.

  I didn’t notice the sound of rubber peeling on the pavement until it was right beside us. For a split second I was convinced it was an illusion. I forced my eyes to open and there he was.

  Jonas stood with both hands settled on the hood of the red sedan. The beams from the headlights cast his huge shadow over the driveway. Relief welled up inside me. The bright lights were blinding and I blinked over and over trying to clear my vision. Instead of clearing, the light grew brighter still, until it was all around me and wrapped me up in a cocoon of white and warmth. I felt weightless, floating and overcome with peace. The last thing I heard was Jonas’s voice telling Lottie that I didn’t want her to follow in my footsteps.

  ~o0o~

  My death was quick and painless, not that I would wish it on anyone. My neck snapped and I died instantly. My afterlife was harder.

  Lottie took quite a bit of convincing but Jonas refused to give up. Eventually, he persuaded her to hand Delia’s journal over to the state police instead of confronting Delia as she’d planned. He gave Lottie a shoulder to lean on and she gave him friendship. At last Jonas could understand his parents a little better and their need to help others. There was no way for me to thank him for what he did, but I was grateful to know he was no longer alone with his secret.

  The night I died Lottie had crept into my room and taken the journal from my bag. It didn’t burn like I’d thought. It had never been in the car. She knew before I did what Delia was doing. Lottie had intended to confront me with the journal. She’d planned to encourage me to turn it in, unaware that had been my intention all along.

  Lottie suspected Delia had a hand in my death and spent the last weeks collecting more evidence against her and that’s why Lottie spent so much time with her. I was too consumed with my own petty jealously of Lottie to see it. Narcissistic to the core, Delia had recorded the details of that night and how she
knew about my plans to meet Will. However, Delia didn’t cut the brakes in my car. Her new journal revealed it was Will. The only person I thought wasn’t taken in by Delia was the one she had corrupted the most of all. I wasn’t angry with him, she had used us both like marionettes, dancing for her twisted amusement.

  As for Lottie, I understood in the end. She didn’t set out to replace me, she never wanted to be like me. When she realized I was about to expose Delia, she set out to finish what I had started. Once she did, we were both able to find peace.

  Acknowledgements

  This original story was written for a Fandom compilation. It has been revised, extended and re-edited. Thank you to Lisa Sanchez, Killian McRae, KiTT at TongueTwied, Emily McNew, Beckie Louise Treble and Debra Anastasia for your extensive input and constant support. You ladies rock! Thank you to Alan, now and always. You rock too.

  About the Author

  Carol made her debut into the world in the early hours of Christmas morning. She was introduced to the world of supernatural books when, as a child, her family moved to a costal suburb of north Dublin known as Clontarf; famous as the birthplace of Bram Stoker, the prolific author responsible for breathing life into the legendary story of “Dracula.” This stirred in Carol an early passion for reading about all things supernatural. When that passion was combined with a vivid imagination, Carol’s love of writing about anything not entirely “human" emerged.

  CarolOates.com