The Guardian's Playlist

by J Powell Ogden

  I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head violently. I had either lost my mind, or he was some kind of ghost. Both options sent my pulse spiraling upward. I took an explorative breath. Mostly clear. I might not be able to run, but I could still walk out of here. I pushed myself up off of the cold ground.

  “Wait…please…” he pleaded.

  My jaw twitched, but I bent down and picked up my headphones from the path, brushed them off and scrolled to a new song, all the while keeping my back to the place where he had been sitting.

  When I started to walk away, he shouted, “Would you stay if I told you I was Superman?”

  I stopped, stood up straight and looked up at the darkening pine ceiling. His voice had translocated to a spot somewhere in front of me.

  “Are you Superman?” My voice trembled.

  There was a beat of silence and then from just a few feet in front of me, “No.”

  I looked up into his wavering face and saw a glint in his eyes and a grin spreading across his full lips, which almost immediately began to fade. He looked away. My breath caught in my throat. I remembered that look.

  “Michael?” I whispered.

  He nodded, but remained silent, a pensive look flooding his eyes. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was almost as if he was more afraid of what I might do next than I was of him. I reached out with tentative fingers toward the front of his black sleeveless shirt, and he stopped moving and held very still, but I lost my nerve and pulled my hand back just shy of the cloth. I looked at his tattoo again.

  “Are you…are you from God?” I asked. As soon as the question left my lips, I wanted to pull it back. It sounded so childish. He screwed his brows together, confused, and then he, too, glanced down at his tattoo, but his eyes were as hard as flint. He tilted his head to the side, his expression dark.

  “No,” he said bitterly.

  I backed up, chilled by his tone then realized night was falling fast, and soon I wouldn’t be able to see my hand in front of my face.

  “Catherine—”

  “I have to go.”

  Why was I telling him that? Why didn’t I just leave? Well, for one thing, he was standing in the middle of the path, blocking the only way out. Whether he was a hallucination or some kind of ghost, I should be able to walk through him, right? Or I could just walk around him. Yeah, that was a better idea. I took a few steps to my right, and he moved to block my path. I took a few steps to the left, and he stepped in front of me again. I swung my arms, determined to plow through him, but skidded to a stop at the last second.

  “Wait! Just…I need to know if I’m dead, really dead,” he said, backing up and giving me some space. I paused to consider his question, incredulous. How could he not know whether or not he was dead? How could he not know after his horrific fall? Not to mention the fact that his body, if that’s what you’d call it, was not like anything I’d ever seen before and seemed to shift and flicker according to the whim of some invisible wind.

  “Catherine…please…” His outline was becoming less distinct as the descending night robbed my eyes of their ability to see the contrast between him and his surroundings. What could I say? I opened my mouth to speak, but my emotions welled up, and my eyes began to swim. I had to clench my jaw for a moment and fight for control before I could answer.

  “I watched you fall, Michael. I watched as your blood….it was…” My voice cracked, and I pointed back down the path and cried, “I was on the ledge back there! I saw it all!”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” he said quietly. How the hell did he know what I’d seen? Had he really seen me on the ledge as I’d suspected on the day he died? I took another step backward and focused my eyes safely on the ground again while I shook my head back and forth in disbelief. It wasn’t possible.

  “So, I really am, like…dead?” he asked again. “I saw this movie once where they thought this guy was dead, only he wasn’t, and then his spirit goes off and…and…then there was this other movie about a demon that took over someone’s body and forced their spirit out.” He spoke rapidly as he tried to explain why he thought there might still be hope for him. He took a few anxious steps toward me, and I took a few more steps back.

  I hadn’t seen those movies. This was insane. But if he really thought he might still be alive, maybe that’s why he was still here? Because he didn’t believe he was dead? That pretty much summed up the basic plot of a lot of ghost stories I knew. He just needed to come to terms with the truth, and then he could go to heaven and be at peace.

  I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “You’re dead, Michael,” I said flatly. “I went to your wake. I touched your hand…” My voice broke again, remembering, and I lost my resolve.

  He turned abruptly away from me, strode several paces up the path and then stopped, his fists clenched at his sides. “I’m such a fucking dumbass! After all these years…after I had finally found…I had to go and fuck it all up by getting myself…” He turned and glared at me. “And for what? For this?” He gestured wildly around at the forest. “What am I supposed to do now? Is this it? Here’s your prize for finally believing, a nice forest home and an occasional conversation with a girl who thinks she’s stoned? Congratulations!”

  His violent outburst scared me. Maybe I just needed to give him a little emotional shove in the right direction, and he would go away.

  “Didn’t you see some kind of light? Aren’t you supposed to follow a light?” I suggested in a very small voice.

  He laughed derisively. “Oh yeah! A light! How could I be so stupid? Sure! I saw a light while I was lying at the bottom of the cliff, feeling as if a Mack truck had landed on my chest and steel spikes had been crushed through my ass.” He paced back and forth like a caged tiger. “It was up on the ridge top opposite me. It was as bright as the sun! I thought, well shit, that must be the Angel of God calling me home!” He turned back to me with his eyes blazing. “But I told him to go screw himself! I had just found my home! I had done what He wanted! I wasn’t finished yet!” He paused and stared off into the fading pines, breathing hard, and then cried out in anguished frustration.

  The look he saw in my eyes when he finally turned back around must have betrayed the overwhelming fear that had settled into my taut body, because the fire in his eyes faded.

  “I must have passed out,” he went on softly, almost to himself. “I don’t know for how long, but one minute I was lying on my back, feeling my body growing colder and colder while my vision faded, the next minute I was alone on the bank of the river, and my body was gone.” His jaw quivered, and he clenched his teeth together. “I couldn’t even see myself. I was just…there. You can’t imagine what that felt like. I was totally…lost. I’m not stupid. I figured I was dead.”

  His face grew hard again, but he kept his voice steady and pointed an accusing finger down the path toward the ledge. “I’ve heard the stories about the light. I’ve seen the fucking movies. So, I willed myself to the top of the ridge where I had seen the blinding light while I died, and do you know what I found?”

  I shook my head, but I knew what he was going to say.

  “I found you. I found the light reflecting off your telescope before you shoved it into your bag and left. That’s it. When you left, I was alone. No one could see me. No one could hear…” his voice cracked. He pressed his lips together in a hard line and shook his head disgustedly.

  My heart broke for him. He’d needed an Angel and instead he’d found only me. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer.

  At that moment, I realized the sun had set, and it was my turn to be lost. My eyes widened as I tried to make out the path in front of me, but all I could see was a barely discernable wall of tree trunks receding into blackness on all sides. Michael had faded into the darkness.

  “I have to go,” I said, stepping uncertainly forward only to stop and hold my hands out in front of me. Darkness pressed in on my eyeballs, and I shivered. With the sett
ing of the sun, the temperature was dropping like a rock, and my fall jacket couldn’t keep up with the cold that was creeping through it.

  “Come on,” Michael said. “Let’s get you out of here before you freeze your ass off.” From the sound of his voice, he was now only a few inches in front of me, and an overwhelming wave of citrus and pine curled around my face and mingled with my hair. I stepped back, afraid, stumbling over a branch in the path.

  “Wh…what is that cologne you’re wearing?”

  “Cologne?”

  “Every time you come near me I smell pine trees and oranges and…” I sniffed the air. “It smells clean.”

  He was silent for a moment, thinking.

  “Huh,” he finally said. Then he sounded amused. “I guess that just confirms I’m still wearing everything I had on when I died—the clothes, the shoes—one shoe anyway. I guess it’s better than smelling moldy or rotten or—”

  “But what is—”

  “It’s Higher,” he said, and the fragrance washed over me again as he moved closer. “Shawn, that little freak, shoplifted it from the Christian Dior counter at the mall and doused me in it the morning I…” He let his voice trail off, then from farther up the path, he said, “Come on.”

  “I can’t see you anymore.” The dense cover of the pines was almost as effective as a window shade at blocking out the light. I began to panic.

  “Follow my voice, and I’ll show you the way,” he said impatiently. I had to be dreaming because that was what the voice said when I was lost in the woods in the nightmare I’d had the night he died. Only that voice had been softer, more soothing. “Walk forward,” he instructed from right in front of me.

  “How can you see? It’s black as a freaking cave out here.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment, and then he murmured, “I can’t really see in the dark, I don’t think. It’s more like I’m part of my surroundings now. Like, I can feel where the trees and the edges of the path are. At night, it’s kind of hard for me to know where I end and the things around me begin.”

  I nodded, but had no idea what he meant. Then I realized he couldn’t see the nod and started to say I understood, but he interrupted me.

  “I can feel your face,” he whispered. His faint fragrance brushed past me, and I felt heat rush to my cheeks as I blushed. “I felt that, too.” I heard a muffled laugh.

  “I’m glad you think this is so funny!” I blurted out. “Just start talking so I can follow your dead ass out of here.” Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. He didn’t say anything right away, and I worried that he’d left, and I was alone in the dark.

  “Are you still there?” I whispered, feeling foolish.

  “What should I say?” He sounded like he was still grinning.

  “Just sing or something.” That would eliminate the need to keep up my end of this ludicrous conversation. Silence. When he wasn’t talking, I felt vulnerable. My ears picked up the noises of small animals moving about in the woods, and the wind pushing the branches along in the breeze above. I remembered the yellow eyes in the park bathroom, my childhood nightmares…

  “Michael?”

  “I’m thinking.” I tried to wait patiently. “Remember how important song choice is,” he said, teasing me with the mantra from an old TV singing show.

  “Oh, please,” I grumbled.

  “Okay, got it.”

  I raised my eyebrows, waiting.

  “Patience,” he said from a little farther up the path. When he began to sing, his voice was quiet and hesitant, but pure.

  “Over in Kilarney, Many years ago,

  My mother sang a song to me in tones sweet and low.”

  A smile broke out on my lips at the little child’s lullaby he’d chosen. He stopped singing and said, “Felt that, too.”

  “Shut up and sing!” I snapped.

  “Is that supposed to make sense?” he asked, moving farther away.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Just a sweet little ditty, In her good old Irish way,

  And I’d give the world if she could sing that song to me this day.”

  His voice moved farther and farther away, and I obediently followed it. I walked through the cold scents of the pine trees, damp leaves and his cologne. I think I could have followed that even if he had remained silent.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Hush now don’t you cry.”

  He paused and warned, “Feel ahead with your toe to avoid that branch.” I did, carefully stepping over it. “Okay…um…where was I?”

  “Don’t you cry…” I filled in for him.

  “Right.”

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, Too-ra-loo-ra-li,

  Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, That’s an Irish lullaby.”

  Progress was slow, and I shivered almost nonstop. I felt a little embarrassed having a lullaby sung to me at my age, but at least while listening to his voice, I forgot my fear of the dark. The cloudbank had cleared by the time I left the woods, and I could see now by the light of the gibbous moon. He stopped at the edge of the forest, moonlight reflecting off his wavering form, and sat down on a fallen tree trunk. Out here in the open, the wind was stronger, and I hugged my arms around me for warmth.

  “Um, thanks,” I murmured, and backed up into the field toward the car. He clasped his hands together and kicked at a water-stained newspaper that was tangled in the tall grass in front of him. His foot had no effect on the paper or the grass, and he cursed under his breath.

  “I can’t go any farther,” he said, sounding defeated, and then his eyebrows knitted together. “Will you come back?”

  “Michael…” I didn’t know how I’d feel tomorrow. My grip on the real world was slipping and that scared the hell out of me. He looked down at his folded hands.

  “Whatever…” he said, his voice tight. “Do what you want.”

  Then he faded away into the cold, windy night.

  PART TWO

  Michael

  NINE

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT

  LIKE A GHOST image that lingers after you look at something bright and then look away, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the fact that Michael was gone. I blinked a few times then the leftover adrenaline ripped through my veins. I shook from head to toe.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  Without thinking, I stood up and stumbled through the tall grass over to the fallen tree trunk where I’d seen him last and looked behind it and then all around it. There was no one there, but I could still smell the woodsy clean scent of Higher.

  “Oh…my…God…”

  I dropped down onto the damp log and leaned forward on my elbows, my mind totally blown, then reached out with my toe and nudged the soggy newspaper that Michael had tried to kick free. My lips turned up slightly at the thought of him, still here in this world, and then a panic-edged breath hitched in my chest in response to the same thought.

  I pulled the cold night air in through my nose, reveling in his lingering scent, but my stomach flipped as it occurred to me that it was the same fragrance I’d smelled outside the park bathroom last Saturday. Had J.C. been right about someone looking out for me? Was it Michael? Had he been trying to warn me?

  My thoughts were interrupted by the muffled buzzing of my cell phone, and I dug with cold clumsy fingers through my bag. I knew who it was, and I knew I was in for it.

  “Hold on…” I called into the bag. Damn it! I knew if I didn’t answer before it stopped ringing, I might as well kiss my car privileges goodbye. My hand connected with the phone, and I bobbled it to my ear, mumbling breathlessly, “Umm…sorry…lost track of time…on my way home…”

  And I was. I was already jogging across the wet spongy field toward the Demon.

  The demon and the Guardian watched the girl go, an icy, invisible wall between them, a forced suspension of hostilities. The demon took a step away from him, redirecting his focus from the girl to the Ghost Boy who’d reappeared on the gr
avel path at the edge of the soggy field. With a pitifully weak power signature, the boy reached his fingertips out over the grass and then snatched them back as if he’d been burned. He took angry aim with his foot at the gravel, but thought better of it and shoved his hands deep into his frayed pants pockets instead. Then he lifted his eyes and watched her go, too.

  The demon turned away from the Ghost Boy and back toward the girl’s Guardian, his black eyes alight with amusement. “How long do you think it will take?” he asked.

  But the Guardian wasn’t paying attention to him. A rarity. His focus had also shifted from the girl to the Ghost Boy. It remained there…lost and far away. The demon cleared his throat, and the Guardian blinked, his eyes instantly going sharp and steely. He caught sight of the tip of a thorny, black tongue slipping back into the demon’s beautiful mouth.

  The demon nodded toward the girl, who was already halfway across the cold field. “How long do you think it will take me to break her?”

  My mom wrapped her arms around my waist in a frantic hug when I got home, and then she stepped back, alarmed.

  “You’re soaking wet, and—” Her eyes, sharp as lasers, scanned me from head to toe. “What happened to your hands? Did you fall?” She paused and then added suspiciously, “What were you doing?” The eyebrows were up. I was toast.

  Claire stepped around the corner and leaned against the wall. I’m sure she enjoyed watching me squirm after years of being the one in the hot seat, but she knew if she wanted to keep seeing Jones, she’d better keep her comments to herself. Cici was on the blue stairs stroking Lucky like a worry bead. His flame-colored fur stuck up haphazardly after each rub with static electricity.

  Stupid…I should have at least tried to clean myself up before coming in the house. I looked down and surveyed the damage. My jeans from the knees down were covered in mud, my elbows and hands were a mess, and I could only imagine what my butt looked like. No, it wouldn’t have mattered.