“What you heard? Jesus, Raven are you so sexually repressed that you think anything I do is automatically…I don't know…gross? Somehow wrong? That only the most depraved “slut,” as you called her, would want anything to do with me? You probably think Vikki was some kind of saint before I met her, don’t you? And that I somehow ruined her as a woman for the rest of mankind. ‘Cause that’s what I do, right? That’s all I’m good for. Can’t hold a damn job for more than a week, and then I go around serial corrupting women on Tinder…”
“Stop it,” she screamed, tears running down her cheek. “You can’t…you don’t understand. I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry. When I wrote that note, I was so mad…I didn’t…I didn't even know it was Vikki, okay? I thought you’d just brought some random home you met on Tinder again, and…and my arm was really hurting, and I couldn’t think straight.”
“Oh you’re sorry, huh? You always use that god damned arm of yours as an excuse for everything. I don’t feel like cleaning up. My arm’s hurting. Sorry I called your date a slut but my arm hurts. And don’t give me that crap that you didn’t know it was Vikki, because even if it wasn’t…Raven, even if it wasn’t, it’s a terrible thing to say about anyone.”
“I know, okay. I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. So just…just stop yelling at me, okay?”
“I can’t! God damn it, Raven, I’m still pissed off because for the last four damn days I’ve been all wound up wondering why you get to have the nerve to be ashamed of me, because I did something that didn’t even involve you, and after you wrote me that shitty-ass, passive aggressive, horrible fucking note.”
Raven’s face contorted into full-on crying mode, and she ran off into Doc’s house, leaving me and Doc standing out there in the street, leaving my rant hanging in the air like a bad smell.
“For god’s sake, boychik. Don’t you know anything about women?”
“Clearly not, Doc. I don't understand Vikki. I don't understand Raven. Heck, Doc. I'm not even entirely convinced I understand men. But go ahead, Doc. Enlighten me. What is it that I obviously don’t know that's so obvious about women?”
Doc scowled. “Raven hasn’t been avoiding you because she’s ashamed of you, you nudnik. Or because you schtupped Vikki in every single room of your family’s house. Yes, she told me all about it. And for the record, I'm not judging. But you should know this, boychik. She’s been avoiding you because she’s ashamed of herself for leaving you that note…god damn it…you…putz! Can’t you see she feels bad enough already? Now I’m probably going to have to calm her down while she kvetches all night again.”
I took a deep breath. I wanted a cigarette, but I moreover, I wanted to put all this drama to bed. I shut my eyes, took another deep breath, and told myself to calm the fuck down.
I sighed. “I guess I’d better go talk to her, huh?”
“You guess?” Doc repeated, then looked upwards and seemed to speak to the sky. “Meshuganah! He guesses!”
I resisted to urge to ask who Doc was talking to. I went inside. I waded past the clutter, the boxes and old photographs, and headed down into the basement.
I found Raven sitting, balled up in the corner on the floor. Her right arm hugged her knees while her left stump rested atop them.
Raven glared at her own stump. She looked like she wanted to scream at it to just shut the fuck up.
“Raven?” I essayed, in my softest tone.
She sheepishly looked up, and then away.
“Raven,” I continued. “I’m sorry. I am. I want you to know that. I’m not mad any…well, okay, I'm still a bit mad, but…look, I'm sorry. I owe you an apology too. I just want us to be cool again. We used to be so good once, you know? I just…I just really, really hate that word. 'Slut.' I hate the way it sounds and the way people use it. I hate the way men use it to degrade women. Like…like it gives them the right to do cruel things to them. And I hate the way women use it the exact same way to degrade each other. And I really hate it when it comes out of your mouth, because Raven…Raven, you know, you’re the only female role model in my family I have left.”
I sat down with my little sister and put my arm around her.
“I know,” she sniffled, and put her one and half arms around me. “I’m sorry too. I actually really like Vikki, you know?”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out with you two.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Are you okay?”
She shook her head, and tears welled in her eyes again.
“My arm really hurts right now. So, so god damn much.”
I nodded. It made me feel so helpless. Now, even five years later, sometimes it seemed the pain in Raven's arm was just as bad as the day after the accident. And by now, it was pretty clear that pain was never going to end. Not until the day she dies. And there's scarcely any relief in that.
“I know, sis. I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s ever going to stop. God, it…it feels like it’s trying to squeeze the life out of itself.”
“Raven?” came Doc’s soft voice from across the lab. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this physical pain before?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess because it doesn’t seem to matter how much I fucking talk about it. If anything, focusing on it just makes it worse.”
“You’re right and you’re wrong, you know,” said Doc.
“About what?” said Raven.
“About phantom limb pain. What, you think I’m not that kind of doctor? I’m a man of many talents I’ll have you know.”
“I don’t think anyone doubts the number of skills you have, Doc,” I said.
“Look,” said Doc. “Let me show you a little trick I learned. I’ve read this can work for some people experiencing your kind of pain. I never thought I’d necessarily need to use it myself, but well, such is the nature of knowledge. You never know when you'll need it. Just wait right here. Let me get a mirror.”
I certainly wasn’t going anywhere.
Raven took heavy breaths. She looked like she was making an effort not to cry, fixating her eyes on the ceiling.
Doc came back with two-by-two foot mirror and sat down in front of Raven.
“Okay, Raven. Now, I want you to focus on the side of the mirror. The shiny reflective side, I mean, in case that wasn’t obvious.”
Raven did as he instructed.
“Gavin, hold the mirror here. Thank you. Okay. Now, Raven, watch what I’m doing with my hands.”
Doc held up both hands, palms up.
“Hold your palms out like this.”
“I’ve only got one palm, Doc. Not sure if you noticed.”
“Forget about that. That doesn’t matter. Follow what I’m doing, as if both hands were still there. Good. Now…close your hands into fists like this. Ball them tight. Ball them like you’re trying to make a diamond in each hand. Or like you’re choking one of those meshuganah pishers outside the Heaven-Eleven. Good. Now. Look at your left hand in the mirror.”
Raven followed Doc's instructions.
From where I sat, holding the mirror like this, and peering at the reflection, it really did look like Raven had a perfectly normal, fully-formed left arm. For the first time, it was like looking at what my sister might have looked like at this age whole, if only for this brief moment. I wondered where he was going with all this. I mean…he wasn’t going to suggest she just stare into the mirror all day and pretend she’s strangling teen hooligan ghosts, was he?
“Now,” he said, “slowly. Let go. Just…like…this.”
Doc gradually opened his hands, totally relaxed. My sister mirrored him, so to speak. She simply spread her one hand back to the open position, while looking at its reflection in the mirror.
“That’s it?” I said, unimpressed.
Raven started to laugh.
I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that in, well, ever. Not since her bat mitzvah, anyway.
“It doesn’t hurt at all anymore,” she said.
“Seriously?” I said.
“That’s amazing,” she said, and then started to cry again. But this time, she seemed to be crying with smile on her face. “That’s really, really amazing.”
“Well good. See? No problem I can’t solve.”
We laughed, Raven and I, and then hugged.
I was happy we’d reconciled and all, but this thing with the mirror? That was some inspired trick. And yet it seemed so simple. Almost as though Raven’s arm problem was really all about perception, although Doc hadn’t quite phrased it that way.
“No problem you can’t solve, huh?” I said.
I handed Doc back his mirror.
That’s when things got really strange.
Once I took the mirror away from in front of Raven, there was…
There was something there. Raven’s left arm still wasn’t there. But now, its ghost was. It glowed, translucent and white.
Raven turned her luminescent left forearm up and down, her eyes fixated on it.
“Gavin,” Raven whispered. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“You mean…” I said, not wanting to say too much.
“The ghost arm, you schmeckle-head,” she said.
“Yeah. I see it.”
“Amazing,” Doc said. “I thought it would take more training to get you there.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “You knew this would happen?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I knew, per se. But yes, getting Raven more in touch with her spirit body will help tap into her ability to spiritually interface.”
“I'm sorry…to what?” I said.
“Wait a minute, Doc,” said Raven. “You mean that robot arm I’ve been helping you build—the P.K.E. interface—that was for me?”
“Of course. What, you thought we were making that left forearm for my other one-armed assistant?”
“So that’s why you wanted to take on Raven,” I said. “You don’t need a lab assistant. You just wanted to build her a new arm.”
Raven sprang up and wrapped her one and a half arms around Doc.
Doc let out a grunt. “Oy! Okay…we’re hugging now?”
I couldn’t help but join in too.
“You too, boychik?”
“Thank you, Doc,” said Raven.
“Thank you? What did I do? I’ve done nothing yet.”
“Oh, you have too,” she said.
After a lengthy hug that obviously exceeded Doc's comfort zone, Doc insisted we both stop embarrassing him.
Raven and Doc got back to work on the mechanical arm.
I figured I’d leave things on a high note, and head back home. Maybe I'd do some more research, or maybe try to build up the courage to call up Vikki and say…I still didn't know what…but something.
Chapter 40
I headed upstairs and took another look around Doc's cluttered house. Again, I thought I could hear the faint sound of a baby crying. I didn’t see any obvious way of getting through to it though.
I should go, I thought to myself.
Curiosity got the better of me. I began to shift boxes aside to get to the rooms behind them. The boxes seemed to go on for days, like he'd had several lifetimes of crap to leave behind, or like it was perhaps some kind of nest.
In my family, back when we were a complete family, my father had also been a major hoarder. Raven and I were both guilty of this too, admittedly, but my father was the worst. It used to drive my mother bonkers. She'd go on these crazy tidying tizzies, demanding to know what was essential and what could be thrown out.
Looking at Doc Braunstein's place, and wrestling with some of the boxes, I was beginning to understand that inclination. How did this not drive him completely bonkers? Or, at least, his wife? Him not caring, I could understand. He's the sort of man who gets lost in his work. After the night I just had, I get that. But…I couldn't fathom how his wife and kid could ever get outside with all this stuff in the way.
When I finally reached what appeared to be the kitchen, I found a few things to be…off. I mean literally off. The lights were off, the fridge was off, all the appliances looked like they hadn't been used in a long time, and it looked like some of them had been gutted for spare parts.
I thought I'd been going the wrong way. Maybe no one lived back here after all, and it was just a part of the house they didn't use anymore. But then, like a ghost from a fog, his wife stepped into the room, holding their baby. She was giving me the most frightful look. Like a mama bird with an intruder in her nest.
“Oh…” I said. “I'm sorry. Missus Braunstein, right? I didn't mean to startle you, I'm just…I'm friends with the Doc. With Larry, I mean. Raven's my sister? You know, the…the girl downstairs with the…”
I pantomimed a stump arm by folding in my arm and pointing at my elbow.
“I'm Gavin,” I continued, extending a hand awkwardly to shake.
She looked down at it, then back at me, her expression apprehensive.
I noticed an almost, but not quite, entirely imperceptible blue glow around her and her baby.
Oh, I thought to myself. Of course. I'm an idiot. Why hadn't I realized this?
“You're…um…” I stammered.
Goose bumps grew all over my back. I realized I was in the presence of another specter, this time in a haunted house.
“I should go,” I said, and turned to quickly leave.
I turned to go, and was startled to see the Doc's tall frame barring my path.
“Gah!” I shouted.
Doc crossed his arms.
“Larry?” said the ghost woman. “Why is this meshuganah pisher back here?”
“I'm sorry, Rachel. I'm afraid this boychik has more chutzpah than brains.”
“I didn't mean to…I'm sorry…” I said.
Doc sighed. “It's all right, boychik. I should have…just said something sooner.”
I turned back to the ghostly mother and infant child.
“You're dead, aren't you? Both of you.”
The ghostly mother and child didn't answer. From their lack of a what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about stock response, it was apparent that they were indeed spirits.
I looked back at Doc.
“What happened?” I asked.
Doc fidgeted uncomfortably. He looked like he wanted to say something but the words weren't coming.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “That was probably another faux-pas. It's really none of my business. It just…I just wondered…”
But even as I stammered, things were beginning to make sense to me.
“That's why you have anti-ghost columns around your house,” I said. “It's not to keep ghosts out. It's to keep them in, isn't it? That's why you're working on that arm thing down below too, isn't it? This isn't just something you cooked up for Raven. You've been working on this for years. It's for them too, isn't it? Your wife and your son.”
Doc nodded slowly.
“You're right, boychik. Yes, that's what I've been doing.”
“How long have you been living like this?”
“Oh, I don't know…thirty years is it?”
“Thirty years?” I said.
I was astounded by the number. It's not so much that it's all that weird. I bet, for a sixty-six-year-old man, that's a veritable lifetime. But for someone my age, that's longer than my literal lifetime. It's, like, forever…
“Look, boychik. I don't know what you think you know about me, but—”
“No, Doc, this isn't a criticism. I'm the last person who should have anything to say about any of this. I mean…Raven, my dad, Vikki, you, and me, each in our own way, we've been holding onto our loved ones for a long time…And really, I get it, you know? I'd probably give just about anything to just talk to my mom again. I mean…I understand it. Who wouldn't?”
“Just the same, boychik, I'd appreciate if you kept this between us.”
“Oh, of course,” I said. �
��Yeah…but…wait, why?”
“Rachel and Joshua…under the town charter…fall under the jurisdiction of the Oversoul.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. But…that's not really a problem as long as they stay in here, though…Right?”
Doc seemed hesitant to answer again. His wife also seemed to stay frozen where she was, like some kind of torpid spectation.
I wondered why it was that the whole town seemed to be terrified of something they couldn't see. Or at least, something I couldn't see. I felt like I was missing something obvious. Which is another irritating thing people have told me all through my childhood. And my young adult life. That I just don't get it. Whatever the hell 'it' is. But I was coming to a strange realization: I like the people here in Bordertown. All of them. The werewolves, the students, the teachers, the cigarette monster, the other ghosts…the press. The cops. Vikki. Especially Vikki. Heck, I was even starting to like the little big-balled flee-ridden tanuki who kept stealing my cigarettes, now that I realized he was probably just trying to help me. Help I didn't even deserve. There was a gentle goodness to this whole town. And I hated that there was an evil force out there threatening to ruin it all.
“What is it?” Doc asked, seeming to note my change in expression.
I shook my head. “I don't know, Doc. It's just…every time I talk to you, I get this sense like you're part of this really amazing…I mean…this whole town. Everyone in it is so…nice. To everyone. Even me. And I'm a huge jerk.”
“Boychik, no one thinks—”
“No, it's all right. I'm not fishing for praise. I'm just still trying to make sense of what's going on. Because even with all this…fostering of community. I just can't figure out why…”
I thought about the tanuki crying by himself. I thought about the boys by the Heaven-Eleven, who seem to insulate themselves from everyone else. I thought about the way Vikki—who always smiles, seems to love everyone, but apparently lives completely alone—kept pulling away from me. Because of what? Because of what others might say? Or what others might think? But who? Realistically, who out of all the people we know, would ever try to make Vikki feel small? Everyone loves her. And now here's the Doc, probably the most respected, the most useful, and—if you ask me—the smartest guy in the community. And he's keeping his family a secret, away from the eyes of the public.
Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1) Page 21