When They Fade

by Jeyn Roberts

  “You think too much,” Parker says.

  “It’s weird,” I say. “Unnatural.”

  “And you’re surprised?”

  “No, I guess not,” I say.

  Parker stops and sits down on an oversized rock. He looks up at the sky, and I follow his gaze. Nothing but blue peeking down at us. For the first time, I realize I’ve never seen a sun here. How strange. You’d think I might have looked. Where does the light come from?

  “No sun,” Parker says, reading my mind. “I’ve been as high as one can climb here. I’ve even swum out into the middle of the lake. No sun. I suppose that’s why we don’t get nighttime, either. I miss the stars. Sometimes when I Fade, I go over to a window and try to look up at them. But you can’t see the stars in London anymore, even on a clear night. Too many buildings. They block out the night. What do they call it? Light pollution. Even the moon almost disappears. All that mystery and emptiness. Galaxies and universes that never end. Endless space. And this is where we end up. It’s like being in a box. No matter how much I bang or claw, freedom stays just beyond my grasp.”

  Shocked is a good word to describe me. Parker sounds angry. In fact, he looks super pissed. His eyes narrow and his fingers tighten around a plant, tearing a leaf from its stem. He holds it up, turns it around so I can see its green veins, rips it in half, and then drops it to the ground. It disappears before touching the dirt. When I look back at the plant, I see it’s returned to its full glory.

  “This place is deceiving,” Parker says. “When I first started exploring, the trees used to move around on me. I’d walk in a straight line for the entire day and never find myself on the other side of the beach. I’d climb over a mountain and come out on the exact same side. It only made me more determined to figure out its secrets. It had to be hiding something.”

  “And you found it?” I ask.

  “Not exactly,” Parker says. “But I did learn things. It changes because it’s limited. There’s only so far to go. Think of it like a snow globe, but without the glass walls. When I’ve reached the end, I simply start over again at the beginning.”

  “Endless time,” I say. “Like a loop.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “Whoever or whatever brought us here, they didn’t plan on us leaving anytime soon.”

  “But you found a way out,” I say.

  “Have you ever talked to that Korean gent?” Parker asks. “The new one. Showed up not too long ago? Haunts a fraternity house at some university?”

  I nod. Louis Chen. Our most recent crossover. Electrocuted by his roommate in the bathtub. Apparently they’d been designing a video game, and his friend got greedy over the royalties. Poor Louis. After one or two haunts, he discovered that his death had been ruled accidental. The game worth killing over became a bestseller, and the murdering roomie now lives in luxury.

  “He spent a day explaining computers to me,” Parker says. “You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  I nod. Computers are foreign to people like us. Some existed in my day, but they weren’t the kind that anyone would consider personal. A few Fades ago, I managed to get a look at my first. Some guy had left it out on his dashboard. Funny enough, my message to him was that his online girlfriend was actually a man. Stupid, I know, but he’d been planning on sending him/her thousands of dollars to come visit.

  I think of the computers that helped launch the first astronauts into space. They were big and boxy, full of bright lights and fancy buttons. Back in the sixties, we were blown away by that technology. These days a computer like that would be obsolete and primordial. If Julian is still alive, I bet he uses one. Or maybe he has a fancy cell phone.

  “Chen told me that computers often have back doors. Ways to get inside locked programs. Sometimes they’re built by the inventor of the product; sometimes criminals—they call them hackers—get in there and change things.”

  “You think we’re in a locked program?”

  “No,” Parker says. “But I think…maybe something else got inside and installed a back door. A way out. A chance to cause chaos.”

  “Why chaos?”

  “Why not? If the afterlife is about being good and evil, then it makes sense that evil would want chaos.”

  “How do you know it’s not evil that put us here?”

  “I don’t,” Parker says. “But for argument’s sake, let’s assume it’s not. None of us are truly bad. We’re not models of perfect goodness, either, but I don’t think it’s that black-and-white.”

  I nod.

  “You remember being alive. Did you believe in God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though you never saw him. Or were given proof?”

  “We know the afterlife exists,” I say with a smirk. “Bit too late for that one.”

  “We don’t know God is responsible, though.”

  “I guess,” I say. “But arguing over a name is pointless. We still don’t know, so unless you’ve got some firsthand experience…”

  “It’s irrelevant. What’s important is that we didn’t know back on earth. The afterlife is a constant guessing game for everyone. And with this back door, we’d have a chance to tell everyone willing to listen. Do you see my point? Whoever put us here didn’t want us getting out.”

  “But we Fade.”

  Parker nods. “Trust me, I’ve spent decades thinking about that. I can’t help but wonder if haunting was an accident. Maybe it wasn’t something that was supposed to happen. A rift in the afterlife for those of us who don’t cross over peacefully. We’re the error in the computer program. We’re not even a good mistake. No one really believes in ghosts, do they? The people who do see us, they make excuses. They talk themselves out of it. Think something’s wrong with their eyes or that we’re solar flares.”

  “Solar flares?”

  “I don’t know. Scientific excuses. Answers for questions they don’t want to fully think about.”

  “So why not just shut this whole thing down?” I say. “Send us wherever we’re supposed to go.”

  “I don’t know,” Parker says. “I’m just as ignorant as you. These are my thoughts and observations.” He stands up and stretches. “Maybe that’s the whole point. It’s up to us to figure out the puzzle.”

  “That’ll never happen,” I say, thinking about all those people sitting on the beach, waiting patiently for all eternity. The thought makes me sad. Maybe there is some truth to that whole “finding closure” thing. Perhaps the answers to our questions aren’t waiting back on earth. Maybe they’re right here under our noses, but we’ve become too passive to find out.

  “We should move on,” Parker says. He gets up and stretches his nonaching muscles. “There’s still a ways to go.”

  I can’t help but think he’s right about that, on more levels than one.

  TATUM

  Scott’s wrong about Sunday night being quiet. From the moment she walks in the door, it’s a steady stream of customers. Most of them look like students, with books spread out across tables and laptops open to Word documents full of notes or reference sites. Several look like they’ve laid claim to their spots and are refusing to move until midterms are over. Their study areas are covered with empty dessert dishes and half-drunk espressos.

  Scott takes her order and promises to come over as soon as he has time. It doesn’t happen. Caffeine-needy folks keep coming through the doors, and poor Scott, stuck on his own, can barely handle them all. It takes at least two hours before the crowd begins to thin out.

  Tatum waits patiently in the corner, surfing the Internet, avoiding Facebook, and doing lots of “research.” There are thousands of websites dedicated to ghost stories. Like Scott said, it’s not just ghosts that fit the haunting bill. Poltergeists, banshees, and paranormal readings are in hot demand too. Want to talk to your loved one and find out answers from the great beyond? Talk to a spiritual medium for an outlandish amount of money. To Tatum, a lot of the real-life stories read more like crazed conspiracy theories
. She finds a forum section for a haunting website and gets hopeful, but that changes quickly when she discovers it’s mostly a bunch of people fighting over the best ways to record nighttime sounds or the best way to trap a ghost so you can take pictures. After several threads on how to tell if your house is being haunted, she begins to think most people are idiots. She finishes reading the comments from a woman who believes the ghost of a hamster possesses her dog, then closes her laptop and shakes her head. Of all the stories she read tonight, not a single one is similar to her own experience. Although plenty of people claim to have seen a ghost or, in a few cases, felt an icy-cold presence, no one has ever talked to one. Mostly they just seem to want to outdo each other on the Internet by bragging about who has seen or believed more.

  “Hey.”

  She looks up and Scott is right in front of her. “Hey.”

  “We’re closing. Do you want to stick around for a bit? I’ve got something for you. Sorry I couldn’t stop by earlier. It’s crazy.” He points to a disheveled guy packing up his laptop and lowers his voice. “I thought I’d have to call the police on that guy. He nearly had a fit when I told him we’re closing. I think he’s downed enough coffee and Red Bull tonight to kill a large animal.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “And yeah, I can stick around.”

  “Cool.”

  She waits as he ushers people out the door. The disheveled guy loudly demands the names and addresses of other coffee shops in the area. He then gives Tatum a death look as he heads to his car. She opens her computer and notices it’s already nine thirty. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad going home, but she’s going to be late. For a moment she contemplates texting Mom to let her know, but then Scott reappears with a photo album in his hands. It’s thick and stuffed with all sorts of papers.

  “So I asked my grandma about your ghost,” he says. “The girl named Molly. And yeah, she knew exactly what I was talking about. It was a murder thing back in the seventies. Big-time serial killer caught in Hannah. Apparently Granny was fascinated by it when she was younger. She even saved all the newspaper clippings.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.” Scott drops the album in front of her. “I guess her friend’s father owned the land where they found the girl’s body. Granny said she got to see it. The area where she was dumped, I mean—not the actual body. Granny collects all sorts of clippings. She’s got an entire guest room filled with stuff. It took us nearly all afternoon to find it. But I managed to convince her to loan it to you for a few days.”

  “Wow, thank you.”

  “So you think this might be your ghost?”

  Tatum holds on tightly to the photo album, almost too nervous to open it. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  “Even if it isn’t, you should still be able to come up with enough for a story. I read some of the articles. The girl. Her name was Molly Bellamy. Horrible death. Ample ghost-story material there.”

  “This is incredible,” Tatum says. She opens the album and begins flipping through it. The first few clippings are of no interest, just local stuff, but by the tenth page she finds the headline. A front-page article dated May 1970. There are two large black-and-white pictures included. The first one is a farmer’s field just off Frog Road. A group of small, blurred people move through the mucky acre, obviously police on the scene of the grisly murder. The second picture is one you’d find in a high school yearbook. A girl with long brown hair, smiling at the camera, wearing a peasant blouse and a beaded necklace.

  Molly.

  There’s no mistaking it. This is the girl Tatum talked to. The reality hits her like a brick wall. She’s real. Molly’s real. Even though Tatum has seen her twice now, there’s been a small part of her determined to believe she’s losing her mind. But seeing this article confirms it. Tatum isn’t crazy. She’s really been communicating with a ghost.

  How insanely amazing is that?

  Tatum’s hands begin to shake slightly from the excitement. If Scott notices, hopefully he’ll think it’s because of the three cups of coffee she consumed in the past two hours. Just in case there’s potential for her and Scott to be friends, she doesn’t need him thinking she’s some sort of crazed Goth girl obsessed with death.

  “I’m going to close up the shop,” Scott says. “Feel free to stick around and read them. Shouldn’t take me long. Half an hour, tops.”

  “Sure,” she says. “Thanks again.”

  He wanders off, and she can hear the clinking of metal as he cleans up around the espresso machine.

  Trying hard to suppress a grin, Tatum reads the first article. It’s from the Washington Post on May 7, 1970.

  The body found Monday in a shallow grave in Hannah, Washington, was positively identified yesterday as that of one sixteen-year-old Molly Bellamy from Dixby, North Carolina. Molly had been reported missing by the people she was traveling with when she failed to return home from a shopping excursion.

  The police have no suspects, but are currently going through leads. Anyone with information should contact the local police department.

  There’s a bunch more to the article. The farmer who found the body is named. The cause of death isn’t determined, but Tatum thinks it might have been too gruesome to talk about in the paper. Things were a lot tamer back in those days, or so her nana reminds her whenever she comes over and they see something violent on TV. Of course, Nana also has issues about girls who wear skirts shorter than knee-length and put on makeup. Thankfully Tatum doesn’t see Nana often.

  She goes on to the next Washington Post article. This one talks about how the police have been searching the farmer’s field looking for more evidence. They’ve been putting in endless hours trying to find a lead. The body has been released and sent back to North Carolina, where Molly is to be buried in a plot beside her grandparents. There’s another picture of Molly. She’s sitting beside a young guy with blond hair the exact same length as hers. He has his arm draped casually across her shoulder. She holds up her hand to block the sunlight while she grins at the camera. The glint of a small diamond ring is on her finger. Tatum instantly recognizes the ring. Molly still wears it.

  The caption beneath states it’s the last known picture taken of Molly. She died a week later.

  Tatum frowns. This can’t be right. It goes against everything she’s been led to believe all this time. If Molly’s body was reclaimed and given a proper burial, why is she haunting? Why hasn’t she crossed over or whatever it is ghosts are supposed to do? There’s got to be something Tatum’s missing. A reason right under her nose.

  Tatum reads on. The next article is from October 16, 1971.

  Walter Morris, dubbed the Commune Killer, was found guilty yesterday of first-degree murder in the 1970 torture death of Molly Bellamy, a sixteen-year-old from Dixby, North Carolina. Morris was the self-appointed leader of a traveling commune that had no fixed address and had moved across the USA several times over the past five years. Bellamy had joined the group back in 1969 after meeting them at the Woodstock music festival in Bethel, New York. She became engaged to Julian Lapointe, another commune member, a few months later.

  Since his arrest one year ago, Morris has been linked to the deaths of six other young girls from across the country, and he is believed to be connected with at least fifteen more. Trial dates have been set for three more cases in Ohio, Tennessee, and Florida. If found guilty, he could face the death penalty under Florida state law.

  There’s a picture here. Tatum pulls it closer, trying to pick out the expressions in the grainy, faded paper. Walter Morris seated in the middle of a courtroom. His long white hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and he’s wearing a prison uniform. He looks exactly the way she might have pictured an older hippie in the 1970s. Not that Tatum’s an expert, but she went through a Beatles phase a few years ago and ended up downloading a ton of music from that era. She didn’t listen to much of it—she found it old and boring—and she was mortified when her dad started singing alo
ng to Bob Dylan.

  But she remembers looking at some of the album covers and news articles from back then. There was a lot of long hair. And beards. Walter Morris looks exactly like he belonged. And his face isn’t that of a monster. His eyes are bright and friendly. His face suggests a friend’s father, the kind of person you could talk to politely and never worry about.

  He doesn’t look like a killer at all.

  Tatum looks at the picture again, this time noticing the people in the courtroom behind Walter. In the front row is a group of people who might have been part of the commune Molly traveled with. The expressions on their faces are full of grief. But one person really stands out. A young man, maybe a year or two older than Molly, wears a secondhand suit that’s too large for him. Is this Julian? She narrows her eyes, squinting at the creased paper. She goes back to the earlier article, the one with the photo of Molly and the young man. Yes, it’s the same guy. Molly’s fiancé.

  He’s very handsome. Long blond hair falls across his shoulders. A slim build. The kind of guy Tatum would probably check out twice. He appears to be looking away from the camera, his eyes sad and longing. He’s holding the hand of an older woman beside him. She glares straight into the back of Walter’s head, looking as if she wants nothing more but to kill him herself.

  “Is that your killer?”

  Tatum jumps up in surprise. She didn’t hear Scott come back to the table. He’s removed his apron and is wearing a jacket. Tatum looks at her computer clock. Half an hour’s already passed. It’s time to go home.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “So does this mean you have enough to write your story?”

  “I guess so,” she says. “It’s weird, though. I’ve done a ton of research on ghosts, and this story doesn’t add up.”

  “Really?” Scott sits down on the chair across from her and picks up the first article. “What’s wrong with it?”