Haunting Zoe

by Sherry D. Ficklin

  I take a long gulp of my energy drink. My room is dark except for the blue glow provided by my computer screen. Sitting back in my desk chair, I stretch and roll my head to the sides and crack my neck.

  “Anything?” Logan asks behind me.

  I spin in my chair. “If I’d found something I would have said Hey. I found something.”

  “You know, you’re really cranky for being the only person in the room who has a body.”

  I turn back to the screen and flip him off over my shoulder, “Keep flapping your lips and you’ll spend the rest of your afterlife haunting hipsters at Starbucks.”

  “Oh, sure. Threaten the dead guy.”

  I sigh and lower my head onto the keyboard. It’s after 4 a.m. and even after sleeping all day, I’m exhausted.

  “Isn’t there someone else you can haunt for a few hours.”

  He stands beside me, leaning over the desk. “Everyone is sleeping. Besides, it’s just depressing.”

  I roll my face to the side to look at him. “Being dead?”

  He frowns, not looking at me. “Watching everyone else be alive.”

  I sit up, slapping my hands down on either side of the keyboard.

  “Okay, I have a plan.”

  I spin in my chair and accidently graze him. Well, graze is the wrong word. I move through him. A chill runs up my skin and goosebumps erupt across my arms like tiny volcanoes.

  I pull back, rubbing my arms. “Well, that was disturbing.”

  He shakes his head. “The plan?”

  “Oh. Right. I think we should try going to the cemetery.”

  He leans back, looking worried. “Why? You want me to try to climb back into my body?”

  I think about that for a second. “No. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I mean, the goal isn’t to make you a zombie, right? Just to find your light or whatever.”

  “My light?”

  “Yeah, you know.” He stares at me like I’m an idiot. “When people die they see a light. Go into the light and all that.”

  “I don’t remember a light.”

  I fold my hands on my lap. “What do you remember?”

  “About dying? Nothing. I remember opening my eyes and the police were dragging my body out of the water. I remember screaming and no one hearing me. Then I thought about my mom and suddenly I was in my house, standing beside her. She was on the floor, crying.”

  That’s interesting. “How did you get into my room?”

  He rubs his forehead. “I was thinking of you, how you saw me at the funeral. Then, I was just here.”

  Convenient.

  “Okay. I think we should go to the cemetery because, well, maybe there are other ghosts there who can help you. You can’t be the only person who ever took a wrong turn heading for the afterlife.”

  He looks up, considering it. “And you think you could see them?”

  “No, but maybe you can.”

  He nods, “That makes sense.”

  I stand up and head for my closet. “It’s a place to start, at least.”

  Grabbing a pair of pants and a t-shirt off the hangars I turn to see him staring at me.

  “Let’s do it.” He says, clapping his hands together.

  I pucker my lips. “Yeah, well, I have to get dressed first so you should, you know, turn around. Or go outside. Or something.”

  He slaps his hand over his eyes. I put a balled up fist on my hip. “Nice try Casper.”

  With a frustrated sigh he vanishes and I hear him calling from my kitchen. “Prude.”

  “Perv,” I call back, slipping into my jeans.

  Once I’m fully dressed, I grab my car keys and head out. It’s a good thing Mom is working a double shift. She’d kill me if she knew I was heading out to the cemetery in the middle of the night. And if I tried to explain why, she’d have me committed.

  “What are you thinking about?” Logan asks as we drive slowly up to the front gate of Stone Hill Cemetery.

  I lean over the dash, looking at the towering wrought iron gate and the thick chains binding it closed. “You really want to talk about my feelings, Logan?”

  He slides through the door without opening it and stands in front of my head lights. “Pathetic as it is, talking to you has kind of been the highlight of my week. So, yeah.”

  I kill the lights and slam the door of my old yellow VW Beetle closed. “Aw, that’s kinda sweet. You know, in a not really sort of way.”

  He rolls his eyes. In three long strides he steps toward the black iron bars and runs right into them. Stepping back, he looks stunned. In my mind something clicks into place.

  “Ghosts can’t pass through iron,” I say, feeling smug. He turns and stares at me. I shrug. “I saw it on TV.”

  He reaches for the bar and wraps his hand around it. As soon as he does his hand begins to smoke like its burning. He yelps, pulls his hand back and rubs it.

  “I guess I can feel some things.”

  I nod and walk up beside him. “Yeah, iron is like ghost kryptonite. Hey, we should dig up your body, then pour salt on it and light it on fire.”

  He stares at me, his nose crinkled up. “Why?”

  “To release your spirit.”

  “I’m pretty released, thanks.”

  “Still.”

  “We are not desecrating my corpse based on something you saw on TV.”

  I frown. “You have no sense of whimsy, you know that?”

  He rolls his eyes and points to a stone wall. “There, we can get in over there. You’ll have to climb it.”

  Of course I will. I run back to the car and grab a flashlight off the floorboard, tucking it into my back pocket. As I watch, he steps through the wall.

  “All clear,” he whispers.

  “You don’t have to whisper, no one can hear you.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  I shake my head. This has got to be the absolute top of the list of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. As a matter of fact, this might actually be the list. Clinging carefully to each stone, I climb up. Luckily it’s not very high, but my arms still feel like lead weights when I jump over the other side and land gingerly on my feet.

  “Like a ninja,” I whisper as Logan smiles. It’s a warm, sincere smile, something I haven’t seen him wear in a long time—which is a shame because it looks really good on him.

  “Where to now?” I ask, dusting off my hands on my jeans.

  He shrugs and starts walking. Not sure what else to do, I follow him. We wander past the old, battered headstones toward the newer part of the cemetery which is in the very back. The paths are all old cobblestone, giant obelisks and weeping angels looking down on us as we walk. We pass by a small crypt and I shine the flashlight on the entrance. Over the gate, carved in stone is the phrase, Verum non est in morte.

  “What does it say?” Logan asks from behind me.

  I know the translation, not because I can read Latin, but because I’d asked my mother the same question as we were leaving my father’s funeral.

  “It says, In death there is truth.”

  Lowering my light, I shine it around, over the headstones. “Do you see anything?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Nothing.”

  I sigh, defeated. We walk on until we see a big yellow back hoe parked next to a fresh grave. Logan freezes but I walk closer, shining the light on the name etched into the stone.

  Logan Wayne Cooper.

  I turn, shining the light on Logan. “Wayne, really?”

  He looks away, “My dad likes old westerns.”

  “Huh.” I step around the grave, careful not to disturb the freshly mounded dirt or the stacks of fresh flowers. “I hear they take these flowers and give them to the old people at the nursing home,” I say, desperate to break the silence. He doesn’t answer. When I glance up his back is to me. The moonlight is hitting him at an odd angle, making him almost glow. It’s so beautiful that for a moment I’m transfixed by it. He looks over his shoulder at me and all I c
an think is how beautiful he is. Like an angel.

  Then he opens his mouth.

  “What are you staring at?”

  I roll my eyes. “Just wondering if you’re going to do something or just stand there sparkling like an idiot.”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asks, throwing his hands in the air.

  I inhale slowly. “You said you thought of me, and then you were just there, in my room, right?”

  “Yeah.” He turns, walking toward me.

  I shift from one foot to the other. “Well, maybe you should think of…I dunno…heaven. Or whatever.”

  “Heaven?” He snorts.

  “Don’t get an attitude with me, there buddy. I’m standing in a cemetery at five in the morning next to a fresh grave talking to a dead guy. My tolerance has its limits.”

  “Fine.” He grumbles. He closes his eyes takes a deep breath and…

  Nothing.

  He opens one eye. Then his face falls. “This was a stupid idea.”

  “Your face is stupid.”

  He stomps away, tugging on his hair. Then he spins back, pointing at me. “You know, you are such a joy to be around. I can’t imagine why you don’t have any friends.”

  That hurts. “I have friends,” I whisper.

  “Oh, I forgot. Gay Carlos tolerates you. That doesn’t make you his friend. It makes you his hag.”

  The pain from his words is so quick and so sharp it feels like he slapped me in the face. I recover quickly, the pain feeding my already growing anger.

  “Listen up you pompous ass waffle. Number one, don’t you ever talk about Carlos that way again. He’s worth ten of you. And two, you can take your afterlife drama and shove it. Don’t come to my house, don’t ever bother me again. I mean it. You are on your own.” Turning my back on him I march out of the cemetery, scale the wall, and drive home, fighting back tears of rage the whole way.

  By the time I’m settling into bed the sun is rising, casting a red-orange glow into my room. I grab the curtains and pull them closed, falling into bed still in my clothes. A knock at my door wakes me.

  “Hey Zoe Bowie. You up yet?”

  I glance at the alarm. 8:46 Am. Son of a—

  “Come on in Carlos.”

  He pokes his head around the door, his eyes covered by his hand. “You decent?”

  I shrug, “As decent as I ever am.”

  He laughs and walks in. He’s holding a drink carrier with two tall Starbucks cups and has a bag of croissants tucked under his arm.

  “I brought fuel.” He hands me the cup. I can tell from the smell its Earl Grey tea with honey and cream.

  “Bless you, kind sir.” I murmur and take a sip. It’s hot enough to burn the tip of my tongue a little—just how I like it.

  “Oh honey, what did you get up to last night?”

  I arch an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”

  He waves his hand over me, “Well, you look like you’ve been held in a basement for three days and you have bags under your eyes the size of cantaloupes.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t sleep much.” I play with the lid on my drink, unsure what to say. No way in hell am I going to admit that I’ve been seeing Logan. As much as I love Carlos, it just feels too crazy to admit out loud. Still, I kind of need to talk to someone about it.

  “I’ve been thinking about Logan.”

  He looks surprised. Pulling off his grey canvas jacket he scoots down beside me.

  “I thought you didn’t care about all that.”

  I shrug.

  “I don’t. It’s just… I dunno. Maybe it’s bringing up old feelings…of when dad died.”

  Carlos lays a hand on my knee sympathetically. He came into my life just a few months after Dad’s funeral. He moved in down the block and my mom made me take over a welcome to the neighborhood pie. I remember how scared he was, how freaked out about being in a new town, at a new school. But Carlos is braver than me. He stepped in on day one and made himself known. He never hid who he was or what he wanted. I wish I had that kind of courage.

  I take another drink. My head is writhing with questions, questions I know Carlos can’t answer.

  His face lights up, “I know what you need.”

  Yeah, a nice long vacation somewhere with padded rooms and happy pills.

  “That makes one of us,” I mumble.

  “How about we take a drive up Skyline, have a picnic, then go down to the Tea Room?”

  I feel the sides of my mouth turn up slowly. “That actually sounds really nice.”

  He grins, looking quite pleased with himself. “I know.” Then he lowers his gaze at me, pointing up and down. “But first you shower and change. I’m not taking you anywhere looking like that.”

  I agree and he goes off to the kitchen to scavenge some food for our picnic. Knowing what’s in my cabinets, we might be dining on mustard and old soda crackers.

  Forty five minutes later I’m clean and dressed in my soft tan cargo pants and a black tank top and Carlos has plaited my hair into a long French braid.

  The drive up Skyline is a soothing one, even with Carlos’s indie rock blasting through the speakers of his dad’s Four Runner. The sky is clear and blue—the shade of blue you can’t find anywhere else on earth—and the sun is bright and warm on my arm as it dangles out the window. We drive until we hit the very top of the mountain, a place called the Garden of the Gods. It’s a large field filled with trees as big around as a truck. I spread out a plaid blanket while he retrieves the picnic basket and a bottle of sparkling wine from his trunk.

  “Fancy,” I say realizing that this day’s events weren’t as spur of the moment as he’d led me to believe.

  “It’s a celebration. To the first day of the rest of our lives.”

  He twists off the top and bubbles ooze out, sliding down the side of the bottle, which he hands me. “Sorry, I forgot to pack glasses.”

  I shrug and take a small sip. It’s smooth and tastes vaguely like apples. “Not bad.”

  He winks and takes the bottle from me.

  “You sure you should be drinking?” I ask, knowing that the drive down will be a windy one.

  “I’ll just have a touch. Besides, I’m used to it.” He takes a small sip and hands it back to me before opening the basket. His family is one of those European types who have wine with every meal, even the kids, so his tolerance is pretty high.

  As it turns out, he was able to make quite a little feast with leftovers and creativity. By the time the food was gone we’d drank about a third of the bottle and were lying back, relaxing in the sun.

  “Do you think people can haunt you?” I ask quietly.

  Carlos rolls onto his side, propping his head on his elbow so he’s practically pressed against me. With anyone else the closeness would feel intimate, but with Carlos it just feels comforting.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. I think sometimes we hold onto people so tightly, we can feel them around us all the time.”

  I sigh. That’s not quite what I meant.

  “What about, like ghosts?”

  “Ghosts?” his tone is concerned.

  Ah, crap.

  “Yeah, I mean, do you think that sometimes when people die, they can just, sort of…I dunno. Still be here?”

  He rolls onto his back, clasping his hands behind his head.

  “If the Sci-fi channel has taught us anything, it’s that ghosts are everywhere.” He chuckles. “All those poor souls and their unfinished business.”

  I look over at him. “Unfinished business?”

  “Yeah, that’s what keeps them here, at least according those guys on the ghost hunting show. They have stuff they still need to do or something.”

  “I didn’t know you watched that crap,” I joke lightly, letting his words roll around in my head.

  “Don’t judge me.” He chuckles. “Why do you ask anyway? You feeling haunted?”

  I decide to be as honest as I
can. “I feel like, sometimes, I can still hear him. Logan I mean. Or I see him out the corner of my eye.”

  “I was that way when my little brother died. For the first little while, it was like I could feel him in the house. Every once in a while, I was sure I’d seen him, but it was always just my mind playing tricks.”

  I remember the feeling. That had happened when my dad died too. Rolling over I nuzzle my head into his chest and let him rub my back until I fall asleep.

  I’m dreaming of the cemetery, of Logan’s face as I screamed at him. Behind him, one of the stone angels was walking forward, sword in hand. She stopped behind him and lifted the sword over his head like she was going to cut him in half.

  The crash of thunder wakes me an instant before the now dark sky opens up and begins to pour. I grab the basket as Carlos grabs the blanket and we race for the car, laughing. As soon as I’m in and buckled I look out the window and see Logan standing on the side of the road, staring at me. The smile falls off my face.