It’s not hard to avoid his swings when you’re ready for them. Hell, he wasn’t even close enough to hit me, and I’m happy to shove him the rest of the way to the floor as he stumbles from the miss. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” I remind him as he glares up at me. “We could be happy pretending the other doesn’t exist. Unless…” I tap my chin. “Unless you really do have a crush on me.”
With a roar, he charges again, and this time it’s just as easy to jump out of the room altogether. He crashes through the doorway and lands on the dirt floor outside.
“Seriously, man, why?” My tone is sincere because his hatred has never made sense to me. I’m here to atone. The others too, I think, so what’s his deal?
He’s back on his feet before I can consider much more than that, body arched for violence.
Milo.
My attention shifts to her on instinct. How can I not look when she’s so close? Even distressed she’s too beautiful for this place. I need her back in her palace room, surrounded by roses and—
Milo!
Air rushes from my lungs at the force of the blow. Another blast racks my body when I hit the floor. Dazed, I try to twist away from the follow-up strike, but only succeed in giving his boot a new target. Pain flares through me, rushing from one impact point to the next. Damn, this isn’t going as planned. Distracted, I guess, but maybe I’m just not good at it anymore. There was a time when no one stood a chance against me. What I lacked in training I made up for in my craving for destruction. And now? I guess this is the cost of redemption. It’s what happens when you crave only light instead.
Another blow lands, and another, yet still I can’t summon the rage to fight back. Where’s the bloodlust that powered me through situations ten times worse than this? It’s a stranger on the floor holding up his arms to protect his face, not cowering, just… waiting. Because that’s it, isn’t it? I’m not afraid or weak. I’m just finished.
“Get up, you asshole! Fight back!” Roy thunders, but he doesn’t scrape under my skin like before. When I was alone—when I was less.
I don’t respond, except to study him through swollen eyes. I was there once. Standing over my prey with all the violence leaking out in furious pants. Is this what I looked like when the darkness owned my soul? When my veins ran black with hate and bitterness? How lonely he will be for the eternity he’ll spend boiling in his own rage. Suddenly my heart swells with pity for everyone who doesn’t have their rose of light. I look over at her now, my cracked lips lifting in a smile when I see her.
It’s okay. I won’t fight back.
A foot obstructs my line of sight and crashes into my face. Stars explode into darkness, and I fight to blink back to the present. It’s a twisted path we walk on this plane between the temporal and physical. I think I’m fading into unconsciousness until a shriek draws me back. Terror colors it as it echoes around me. The pressure on my body lifts, releasing me to take a full breath again. Footsteps pound in the opposite direction, toward the stairs. They clobber up. A door slams. Debris drifts down and tickles my skin.
I fight my eyes open and pull in a draught of relief at the sight of the angel waiting for me. “Rachel.”
“Shh. Don’t try to speak.”
Are there tears in her eyes? Why is she crying? I didn’t fight back. Just like she wanted, I fought the darkness by holding onto the light.
“You did, my love.” She wipes a hand across her eyes before leaning down for a soft kiss. “But it still breaks my heart.”
My own sinks as I consider what happened. “It was you, wasn’t it? The screams were because of you. You revealed yourself to him.”
She bites her lip and casts a wary look at the stairs. “What choice did I have? He wasn’t going to stop.”
“Shit, Rachel.” I force myself to my elbows, suppressing a groan as she helps me into a sitting position. “Did he see you? Like, really see you?”
At least she looks appropriately concerned. I take some solace in the fact that she didn’t make the decision lightly. “I don’t know what he saw. I can’t control that. I don’t know why you saw Grave Lady before the real me.”
“Because I wasn’t looking for the real you. I didn’t see you until I wanted to. Before that, I think what I saw were pieces of myself.”
“Well if that’s what he saw, no wonder he ran screaming.”
A chuckle ruptures in my chest and comes out as a cough. I manage a smile, which she returns bleakly.
“Can you make it to the sink?”
“I think so.”
With Rachel’s help, I’m able to limp the few steps necessary. At least he kicked the shit out of me in the right direction.
“Not funny,” she mutters.
“A little?” I quiet obediently beneath her stare, and any hardness in her falls away.
“I wish…” She breathes out whatever words were supposed to follow as she grips my chin and studies my face.
“You wish what?”
“Nothing, maybe,” she says finally.
“What do you mean?”
She turns my head in the other direction, examining that side as well. “I think it happened exactly how it was supposed to.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because you’re here with me… not on the floor having a vision.”
Chapter Sixteen:
Lyrics and Lies
No visions. In fact, as I consider the last few days, I haven’t had a single one since the scene that revealed my death to Rachel. She’s flipping through my notebook now, making me grin with each ooh, ahh, and giggle at my creations. Maybe I haven’t been drawing for myself after all.
“These are incredible,” she says, studying a sketch of angels’ wings surrounded by a galaxy of stars. Her finger hovers just above the page, air-tracing the prominent features of the design. “It’s so interesting seeing your music like this.”
I straighten on my elbow. “My what?”
“Your music. Seeing it just makes me want to hear it more.”
She’s lost me but her expression is so damn intent. I strain for a look at the page, trying to figure out what she means.
“Wait, you don’t see it?” she asks. “Look.” She spins the pad around to face me. I still only see giant wings and a bunch of stars.
“Here comes the song of angels’ wings, beckoning the silence to bend… Stars sing, galaxies ring their echo off the walls.”
My pulse speeds up as she recites my lyrics. How the hell did she even remember them?
“And look. Right here.” She flips the page back and points. “It’s the halls of his head, where ghosts pretend. Pale light illuminating a dark hallway from one open doorway?” She squints up at me. “You really don’t see it?”
Well, shit. Not until now.
I pull the book closer and start paging through it myself. The odd cathedral with the beams and stained glass stares back at me. Could that be… no. But could it?
“Rest my soul in the Church of the Damned because I’m a man beyond reach. Alone I bridge angry seas to free, free, free the beast inside to feast on flesh still warm from the slaughter.” I blink at the drawing, focusing on the images in the windows for the first time. A bridge. A violent sea. And is that… a lone figuring navigating it?
“You really believed those lyrics when you wrote them, didn’t you?” Rachel whispers, returning me to the present.
“I did.”
“And now?”
“How could I?”
Her smile warms my damned soul into another dimension. It’s hard to believe I ever felt that way.
“This one,” she says, pointing at the image of a snake twisted around an apple. “This one I love.”
A chuckle erupts from my chest. “Really? That one, huh?” There’s probably not a worse image in that book to associate with her. “You want to hear the lyrics that go with it?”
She stares back down at the drawing, considering. “Actually, no. I’ll wait until you play it f
or me.”
“Play it?”
She nods, sure of herself. “You’ll be playing music again, Milo. You have to.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it, just continues paging through my art as if she didn’t just rock everything off-kilter again.
“You’ll see. Pretty sure I’m right.” With a shrug, she practically ignores me in favor of a single decaying tree overlooking a barren field. I like that one. Didn’t realize it represented “Against the Flow” until now. Her mood shifts at the next page, however. I watch the surprised smile turn into something heavier as she studies the imagined room I created for her.
“Is this… my bedroom?”
Her expression. It’s not good, that’s for sure, but beyond that, I can’t interpret the objection in her eyes. She waves off her question with a sad smile.
“Never mind. It’s gorgeous, Milo.”
“Really?”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip while she studies her royal chamber. “I can’t believe you see me like this. I look like a princess.”
“A goddess,” I correct, and she meets my gaze shyly.
“You shouldn’t think that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not.”
“Well, I worship—”
“Milo, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t even joke about that.” She closes the notebook and pushes it back to me.
Something doesn’t sit well with the way she seemed to want it out of her hands.
“Don’t you want to see the last one?” I ask. “It’s my favorite. I was working on it before my fight with Roy.”
The smile still lifts her lips but it’s gone from her eyes. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe one day.”
My chest stings at her response.
“I’m sorry. It’s not you or your drawings. I love them,” she says.
“You just don’t want to look at them.”
She shakes her head, eyes glistening, and maybe I’m starting to get frustrated. So it’s not the drawings? What is it then? Is it me? Being in my head still isn’t enough to solve the riddle? What else can I do?
“Can we please not talk anymore?” she whispers.
I study her pain-streaked face, wanting to erase her sadness forever. “What can I do, Rachel? Just tell me what I can do.”
She sniffs and swats at her eyes. “Dance with me again?”
I swallow the lump in my throat and reach for her hand.
Roses fill my senses as we sway to the song I hum. The lyrics don’t fit the moment, though, so I let the melody stand on its own. Rachel hasn’t said a word since I pulled her into my arms. She just settled against my chest, clinging to me as if I’ll disappear if she lets go. I close my eyes and breathe in her scent. Why doesn’t she believe in her own song? I may have been sick, but my soul is wired for music. I know what I heard in that dark moment: beauty beyond anything I could ever dream up.
“Milo, why do you think you’re here?”
I stop humming. “Here as in with you?”
“No. I mean—here. This house, with the others. Are they dead too?” She releases a hand to wave it around us. It’s quickly locked around my back again, and she shivers as if that brief separation was too much for her. I tighten my hold and answer to her ear instead of her eyes.
“Yes. As far as I can tell we’re all here for the same reason. We’re waiting, I guess.”
“For what?”
I squint into the darkness behind her. “Whatever’s next, I suppose.”
“But you don’t know what that is?”
There’s emotion in her voice. I want to see it, but I can’t let her go right now. “No, I don’t. I think it’s beautiful though. From what I saw with Lena, it’s… resplendent.”
She huffs a small laugh against my chest, drawing a smile from me as well. “Resplendent? Spoken like a poet.”
My chuckle sounds almost shy. “Yeah well, it’s the only situation appropriate for that word. I’ve never used it before and probably won’t again.”
“Resplendent…” She breathes it into the silence, and again, I swear there’s a melody to her timbre. “So this house is basically a waiting room for ghosts?”
“Yes, kind of. I always thought of it as a halfway house.”
“A place where you transition from one stage to the next.”
“Exactly. A halfway house for souls.”
It’s strange to hear it out loud. Of course I’ve spent countless hours reflecting on my situation, but we never talk about it. No, we live our private journeys in seclusion, intersecting at brief junctions when our paths cross. For Lena, it was to seek out opportunities for her nurturing spirit to care. Roy’s journey seems bent on destruction. He seeks conflict, and I can’t help but wonder about his human life. I thought no one’s journey could’ve been worse than mine, and maybe I was the same when I first found myself in this basement. Since I was trapped alone, I had no one to destroy but myself. Which brings me to my own path—the maze I’m still trying to solve.
“So it’s a place where you atone for your past,” Rachel says. “Does everyone have visions like yours?”
“Like mine? No. I haven’t figured out that algorithm yet, but no one seems to experience the visions like I do. Then again, maybe you solved it by pointing out how I punished myself.”
“You don’t get them anymore?”
“Not when I’m with you.”
As if it were possible, she nuzzles even closer. “Then I guess you need to keep me here,” she whispers.
“That’s all I want.”
She grips my shirt in her hands. “Do you think I’ll end up in a place like your basement when I die?”
“This shithole?” I scoff. “No way. A saint like you will do your time on some floating yacht in the Mediterranean or something. Whatever the equivalent of a five-star ghost home is. If you even transition at all. You’ll probably have a chest waiting the moment you take your last breath.”
Her silence unnerves me. I’d meant to put her at ease, but clearly my theory had the opposite effect. Man, I suck at this. “But you’re young. You have a long time until you need to worry about that,” I add quickly. Again my words have the opposite effect. I swear I feel the wetness of a tear.
“Will you sing to me again?” Her voice shakes.
“Will you sing with me?”
“I can’t.”
“You keep saying that but—”
“I can’t! I don’t know what you heard, but it wasn’t me. It’s not possible. Please, just sing. Your voice is… resplendent.”
I laugh softly, knowing she’s evading my request. Still, it’s hers to evade, so I sing what feels like a lie now without her voice.
I wish you could hear what I heard that day.
It’s not possible, Milo.
I know what I heard.
Please just sing for both of us. Your voice is magic.
And yours is mystic.
She tucks her head further into my chest, and I give up. Capturing her to me, I let go, changing the lyrics in real time to fit our new song.
Mystic girl of mine, in time you’ll see your beauty
You’re the song in my head
The heavenly bells that even the dead hear ringing
Oh singing angel don’t let the doubts invade
The space between us, so void of night when your light shines in
Mystic girl of mine, in time you’ll see your shine
Chosen, frozen in time by the love of one who’s eternal
Refine those angel wings for they’ll bring you flight
To celestial heights
To radiant light
To the arms of a sinner like me
Chapter Seventeen:
Secrets
My favorite time of day is when the morning rays glide over Rachel’s skin and announce she’s still here like a neon sign. She’s with me, comfortable enough in my presence to rest in slumber while I soak
in her beauty. Does she find it creepy waking up to a ghost staring down at her? She must, but she better get used to it.
“Milo?”
My peace fades at the tone of her voice. “I’m here.”
Her weak smile doesn’t help, or the way she lifts a hand to my cheek as if she’s using every ounce of strength to touch me. “Can you just lie with me for a while?”
I definitely don’t like that. A rock lodges in my chest as I lower myself back to the blankets behind her and tuck her against me. Her soft sigh filters through my lungs, burning the lump resting there.
“When you’re here with me, where’s your body?” I ask. “You’re not on the floor, are you? On your rug?”
“No. Still in bed.”
I wait for more but get only a shimmy closer.
“It feels so good being in your arms,” she says. “It feels like forever.”
She pulls my arm even tighter around her until I’m afraid I’m crushing her.
Never. You could never be close enough.
I bury my face in her hair, inhaling the scent of roses.
What aren’t you telling me, Rachel?
No response.
Rachel!
Her uncomfortable shifts are enough to confirm my fears.
“Where did you go the other day?” I ask out loud.
“What day?”
“The day I drew the pictures of you and got in a fight with Roy.”
And don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. I didn’t want you to leave and you left anyway.
“I didn’t want to leave either.” Her voice is frail. Funny how that strengthens my resolve.
“So what happened?”
Still nothing, and I wish I could be in her head too.
Rachel!
“I got up.”
At least I think that’s what she said. A cold sweat starts to spread over my body. “You got up? What does that mean?”
Is she crying?
“Please, angel. Tell me what’s going on?” I force her around so she’s facing me. We lie on the blankets, our faces inches apart as I search hers for a clue. She’s so beautiful, so fragile in a way I’ve never seen her before. Tears reflect crystal blue in a haunting prism as I study her eyes.
Haunted Melody: A Ghost Story Page 11