She took the small rock of meth out of the bag and set it on top of a cd case that was sitting on the dresser. She opened the case which housed a razor blade, intended for just such an occasion. Ideally, she would chop up the white powder until it was fine and powdery, but she didn’t have the patience to wait; she needed her fix. After breaking the rock down into smaller granules, small enough to inhale, she reached into her shoe and pulled out a ten dollar bill. She’d become smart in that in the past, when she’d use heavily, she’d wake up with all of her cash gone. She suspected Travis, but she had no way of knowing for sure. She rolled the bill until it was a tight tube that would fit into her nostril and then leaned down to the line of powder.
As the meth entered her sinuses, the initial burn made her eyes tear up, and then she could taste the drug begin to drip down the back of her throat as she swallowed. “Hurry up,” she thought to herself.
She sat on the bed and waited. Meth treated her differently than it did most others. Instead of making her jittery or jumpy, it placed her in a mellow state, one that allowed her to sit and listen to a Mazzy Star album over and over again without the need for anything but a glass of water.
As the first sign of the drug began to make itself known, her scalp tingling, she smiled as the sensation overtook her. The sun streamed through a crack in the curtains and, as she lay down on the bed, she pressed the play button on her cd alarm clock and waited for the peace to over-take her.
The waiting was always the worst part. She tried to never let her high wear off, simply because of that fact. In between the misery of sobriety and the bliss that was the high, she found her mind falling back to the memories that haunted her.
She sat back up in the bed and stared into the mirror atop the dresser. As she stared at her reflection, she pulled her bangs back to reveal the scar on her forehead. The scar was an ever present reminder of graduation day in Lincoln, the day that, she felt, she should have died. As time had passed, she found herself growing bitter in a way, bitter that Test “saved” her and brought her back to life. In her mind, it would have been easier if he wouldn’t have found her.
Those thoughts always led to the regret she felt that she’d ever met him in the first place. She fantasized at how different her life could be if she’d not asked him over that late spring evening. If only she’d waited a couple of weeks, everything could be different. Still, whenever thinking of him, she was overcome with a sadness that they weren’t together. She did worry about what had become of him, if he was okay or even still alive.
Just as her mind began to delve deeper into the sadness, the effects of the meth appeared in full. A wave of comfort that began at her feet seemed to rush in waves up the length of her body. She closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders, smiling into the mirror that she couldn’t see.
***
Thad Johnston curled up with his evening paper and a cup of coffee, trying his best to let the stress of the day fade away. The broken down couch that he bought second hand allowed his body to conform to the cushions and he let himself melt into the worn fibers.
Being a teacher in Kansas City wasn’t easy, especially teaching high school aged kids. His parents had warned him, but after attending school for five years at Kansas State University, the memories he held of his high school career were good ones, and he couldn’t imagine that it could be as bad as they say. His parents weren’t exactly right, but they weren’t exactly wrong either. A good number of the kids were challenging, to say the least, but there were also a good number of students who were genuinely interested in learning. The main problem, he’d found, were the parents. Even a large number of the good kids came from dysfunctional homes. It made his job more difficult, and he’d thought about trying to find another gig in a different—better—part of town, but each time the ideological side of him kicked in with thoughts of helping these less fortunate kids get a good start on life.
Just as he unfolded the paper, he let out a harsh sigh at the remembrance of the insurance paperwork that he needed to fill out for work. He hesitated for a moment, briefly thinking to himself that he could just do it in the morning, but he knew all too well that he’d forget, just like he had the last three nights. Realizing that he couldn’t afford to procrastinate any longer, he threw his paper on the coffee table and forced the couch to release him.
“Why the hell do we have to change insurance all the time anyway?” he grumbled to himself.
In his small, but quaint, one bedroom apartment, it was a short walk from the couch to the countertop that separated the living room from the kitchen. As he reached for the papers, the familiar feeling of pressure in his head came upon him. He let the vision come.
As if his eyes were closed, he watched the scene play out as if he were there. He’d seen this vision a dozen or so times in the last month, so his anxiety was lessened than it had been initially. He watched as a short black haired girl with pale white skin walked down a dirty back street. It was light outside, but the sky was hazy and seemed to be filled with dust or smoke. He watched as she stepped up to a man that was standing just inside of a doorway of what he thought might be an old abandoned storefront. Thad could see that it was the same Native American man that he’d seen in each of the same visions before, only this time, there was one difference.
As the man reached out to the young girl, she took a step backward, and though he couldn’t see her face, he could tell by her body language that it was something that she didn’t want him to do. The man rested a hand on her shoulder and smiled in a not-quite-right way at the girl. A burst of red and blue light erupted from the doorway, obscuring Thad’s vision and forcing him to lose sight of both of them. The light lasted a fraction of a second and in that amount of time, both the girl and the man had vanished.
The vision ended abruptly and Thad, out of breath, pulled out a stool and took a seat. He’d had visions all his life, but never anything like this. Never had what was, in essence, the same vision come to him over and over with such frequency. He didn’t think that he’d ever seen the girl before, and he knew he’d never seen the Native American male. Confused and a little concerned, he decided to call his father.
As the phone was ringing, he jotted down a couple of notes, something he tried to do after the more moving and intense visions. He was only able to get two words down before someone picked up on the other end.
“Hello?” said a female voice.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Thadeus! How good to hear from you, especially since you only live twenty minutes away,” his mother replied in a sarcastic tone.
Thad rolled his eyes. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she replied with a forced laugh.
Before she could scold him anymore, he began to speak. “Is Dad home?”
“Yes, but I wanted to talk to you for a little bit.”
Struggling not to be short with his mother, Thad replied. “I know, Mom. I want to talk to you, too. But I need to talk to Dad real quick, okay?”
He could hear his mom pull away from the phone and take a breath.
“Elijah!” she shouted. “Your son’s on the phone!”
Thad’s pulse quickened as his mother’s voice carried. The subject of his visions was something that his father had never really enjoyed or understood. Just the same, he needed his dad’s fatherly advice.
“Hello, boy.”
“Hey,” Thad stopped to cough. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”
“Okay. You’re Mom’s got me busy doing stuff around the house.”
He heard a towel snap followed by his dad chuckling into the phone.
Elijah let out a deep breath before he spoke again. “You gettin’ sick?” he asked.
“No, Dad,” replied Thad, his voice wavering. “I needed to talk to you about something.”
There was a brief silence on the other line.
“What’s wrong?”
“I know you don’t like to talk about
it, but—“
“You know how I feel about that, son,” interrupted Elijah, immediately knowing what was causing the stress in his son’s voice.
The air rushed from Thad’s lungs. “I know, but this is different.”
Once again there was a short silence.
“Talk to me then.”
His father’s shortness irritating him, he briefly contemplated hanging up, but the need for advice overrode that desire.
“I’ve been having this vision, the same one over and over again. There’s this girl and an Indian in it every time.”
“So, what are they doing?” asked Elijah.
“I’m not sure. I want to say it’s a drug deal, but I don’t know for sure.”
“Do you know where the visions happening?”
“No, I can’t tell,” replied Thad.
Elijah took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, son, I’m not sure what it is that you want me to say?”
Suddenly feeling like a five year old child again, he felt ashamed of the gift that he had inherited. “I just thought that maybe you knew something…you know, maybe something like this happened to Grandpa Cliff?”
“Now, Thad, you know I never knew that man. Outside of what I read in the papers a year ago from what he did in Nebraska, I don’t know a thing about him. I do know that, thanks to him, you have to carry this curse, and for that I’m sorry. Bottom line is that I’m the wrong one to be talkin’ to about this stuff. I don’t have any answers for you.”
Completely shutting down from his father’s lack of caring and understanding, Thad replied. “Great, thanks for your help, Dad. You know, if you hate him so much, why’d you give me his middle name?”
Slamming the phone down on the counter, he broke down in tears. All his life, his gift had been a wedge between him and his father. With each year that passed, he prayed that things would change. The older he became, the more he realized that that day would never come.
Chapter 3
Determined to find his son, Cliff wandered through Kansas City in the spirit world. Having left Test in a relatively safe place, his focus had turned to satisfying the need for peace of mind in knowing that his son, Elijah, was safe and living the life that Cliff hoped he would be.
He didn’t know where or how to begin. His ex-wife, Elizabeth, had taken the last name of Henry when she remarried, but Cliff didn’t know if she was still alive, if they’d moved to a completely different state, or if she was in the building next door. Worse is the fact that he didn’t know if Elijah was using the name Henry or if he was still going by his born name of Johnston.
Time was a different thing entirely once his body had passed. Existence on the other side was a blur, and at times he had difficulty knowing who he even was any more. The world passed him by in blurred hues that seemed to be pieced together with fine pencil scratches joining the shapes. He had grown used to this manner of sight, but couldn’t help longing for the strength and energy that Test provided so that he could shift and exist on the side of the living.
He journeyed down a sidewalk, scanning each face intently and hoping for some sort of recognition. Though he’d never seen Elijah as an adult, deep down he felt that he would know his son the instant he saw him. Several figures walked by, each of them passing by or through his ethereal form without notice. Suddenly, a rush of emotion gripped the old man as he watched a thin girl pass. “It couldn’t be,” he thought to himself. He turned and followed the girl for nearly a block, her long black hair swaying back and forth, intermittently revealing her pale white, bony shoulders as they jutted from the straps of a black tank top. He watched as she turned into the entrance of what obviously used to be a hotel that was now converted into apartments. The building was covered with dirty red brick, and Cliff cringed at the feeling of despair that the sight of the building left him with.
In a blink, he was inside the building and watched as the young woman began to climb a set of stairs. He could nearly see her face, but with each step, her hair hung low covering it. He followed her up the two flights of stairs and, forgetting that he was not of the living, kept his distance for fear of being noticed. As she opened the door to the apartment, he moved slowly and reached the door just as she closed it. Reaching his hand out, as if to touch the multitude of scratches and gouges on the face of the door, he pushed his way through and onto the other side.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. The room was dark, heavy black drapes covering the two windows opposite of where he stood. He moved slowly through the room, conscious of the litter and trash that covered the floor. Suddenly, he heard the sound of crying coming from the open door to his right. He turned and entered.
On the foot of the bed sat the girl, her shoulders slumped and her hair draped over them with her bangs continuing to hide her face. Cliff moved further into the room, stopping only a couple of feet away from her. Immediately she brought her arms across her chest, rubbing them vigorously as if she were cold. With a deep sniff, the girl lifted her head and pulled her hair away from her face. Cliff gasped.
“Dear Lord, girl. What’s happened to you?”
Nicole’s eyes rolled in their sockets as she rested her hands on her thighs and Cliff watched with horror as the syringe fell to the floor. A small trickle of blood ran from the crook in her arm and down the underside of her forearm, pooling slightly at her wrist as she began to sway gently from side to side.
Cliff took a seat on the bed next to her, this time his presence having no effect on the young girl. He stared at her pitifully, trying to understand how she’d gone from the beautiful girl that he knew in Lincoln, to this broken frail thing that sat next to him. She was painfully thin. Her ghostly white skin was covered with red blotches and scabbed from what he could only surmise as infected injection points. Her hair was jet black as he remembered seeing the last time he saw her, but it now looked oily and frayed on the ends, as though it hadn’t been washed in weeks.
With great difficulty, she pushed herself back on the bed, letting her feet hang just off the end. Her chest began to move in short bursts, and Cliff immediately became concerned. With a thought, he was standing on the other side of the bed and, with Nicole’s face now visible to him, he could see that tears were trickling from her closed eyes. He reached out to her, and with every ounce of energy he could squeeze from the environment, placed his hand on the top of her head.
“Oh, Nicole; you weren’t meant for this,” began Cliff. “You got pulled into something that no one should have had to live through, and we all failed you. We were all so concerned with failing Test that we forgot you. You weren’t meant to be forgotten, sweet heart. I am truly sorry.”
Feeling Cliff’s touch, Nicole unconsciously turned her head and nuzzled against his palm. In a pained whisper, she spoke.
“Help me.”
***
Alyssa stood in front of her aunt and uncle’s house, hesitant to go inside. She knew that her Uncle Enrique and Aunt Julie were going to be taking her death harshly, and in truth, she hadn’t really dealt with the fact herself until she stood next to the drive of the house.
Until now, it seemed as though it were perfect, that it was meant to be. She knew deep in her heart that Test was who she was born to be with, and he with her, but she hadn’t yet been forced to deal with the reality that, to her family, she was gone.
As fate would have it, she wouldn’t have to enter the house to see her family. A tan blur appeared to her right, and she turned to see her aunt and uncle pulling into the drive. Initially, a rush of excitement came over her; the overwhelming urge to run to them and wrap her arms around them was instant. As her uncle climbed from the car, she could see the heavy bags under his eyes. She remembered him walking tall and proud, his broad shoulders wide enough to carry the world, but not now. He walked with his head held low. His shoulders drooped and his arms hung limply.
Her Aunt Julie was much the same. Her hair curled and flipped in a number of different directions and she w
asn’t wearing any makeup. As she walked towards the door, Julie paused for a moment and looked in her niece’s direction. Alyssa’s heart skipped, thinking that possibly she could be seen. A quick glance behind her revealed that a stray dog was jogging merrily down the street. Disappointed, she turned back just in time to see Julie and Enrique close the door behind them. Just as she made up her mind to go inside, she heard a voice from her left.
“They need to let you go.”
Alyssa turned sharply, and standing next to her was Test’s mother, Maggie Davis. She looked at her in silence with a painful grimace on her face.
“It can’t be how you want it to be, Alyssa,” said Maggie.
Alyssa looked back to the house. “How do I want it to be, Maggie?”
The elder spirit placed her arm around Alyssa and spoke lovingly. “You’re thinking that you can walk in there, make your presence known, and all will be fine. Am I right?”
Alyssa’s gaze remained locked on the house as she shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s okay to let them know that you’re okay, but you can’t pretend that things can be anything like they were before.”
“Why?” asked Alyssa. “I lived in their world and had to live with spirits coming to me every day.”
Patting Alyssa’s back, Maggie replied. “And how did that make you feel most of the time?”
Alyssa’s lip began to quiver. “It’s not fair.”
Maggie stepped in front of the girl and placed her hands on her shoulders. “There’s nothing fair in life or death, Alyssa. It’s something that comes to each of us, and something that each of us have to come to terms with. The choices we make in death, just as they do in life, affect more than just ourselves. Choosing to subject your family to something that very few in their world could possibly understand seems a little selfish. Choosing to let your family grieve and then move on with the rest of their lives—well, you have to decide, honey.”
The Reverence of One: Book Three of the Shadow Series Page 2