G is for Ghosts

by Rhonda Parrish

  “Mum?” I asked. “Sorry, I’m putting you to sleep. I should probably head out now.”

  She frowned. “Huh?”

  “You all right?”

  This was part of the process. Her dementia came and went in waves.

  “Huh?” she repeated.

  The shift in the way she looked at me was like the nurse had come back in and rammed the food trolley into my gut. Mum didn’t recognize me.

  “It’s me, Mum. Damian, your son.”

  She frowned deeper, then tipped back and clenched the sheets.

  Goddamn it. She was scared of me.

  I stood. That’s when I saw her lacunita beside the bed, looking at me with Mum’s bright, sharp eyes, waving playfully in a way only Mum could, the way she had when I was a twelve-year-old playing with friends and she wanted to announce her presence in the most embarrassing way possible.

  The memory should have brought joy, and were she standing there in the flesh doing that, it would have. But this was her lacunita doing these things, and it only meant this part of Mum had died.

  Mum’s lacunita dove right through the floor and out of sight.

  I’m putting a marionette with a missing eye on the counter when bells chime from the front of the thrift shop.

  It’s my sister Kate, breathless, black hair tied back in a bun. She maneuvers toward me like she’s struggling through the McDonald’s play tunnels to get Roland. We’re the same height and I realize how ridiculous I must look in here, too.

  “Where’s Roland?” I ask.

  “With the babysitter, who’s charging double for the short notice,” she snaps. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting a present for the little guy.” I point at the marionette.

  “Like hell. You’re hunting Mum’s lacunita, aren’t you?”

  I shrug. “Two birds with one stone.”

  “Damian, this is serious. You can’t skip Lacuniter. You know that.”

  “Who says I skipped it?”

  She stabs a finger at Brendan’s lacunito.

  Dammit. The one time I’d hoped Kate and I’d drifted far enough apart.

  When you’re close to someone, you can see their lacunitos, too. All those except lacunitos of yourself, that is; Kate would never see the lacunita of her floating in the thrift shop.

  I’m caught, and my cheeks heat up like I’m seven years old and she’s pinching them and chiding me.

  “So what? I care about Mum, and I’m not sending more of her through the gate.”

  “It’s not natural, Damian.” She’s tired, her eyes heavy compared to the lightness of her lacunita. Her lacunita orbits slowly around her, passing through the junk piles.

  “What’s unnatural is spending a lifetime building a world with your family and watching it evaporate like nothing,” I snap.

  Her voice softens. “It isn’t nothing.”

  “Right. How many times have you visited Mum this month? Do you know how bad things have gotten?”

  She opens her mouth, then stops and shakes her head. Rubs her temples. When she lowers her hands, there’s an echo of her shape, another lacunita separating from her features.

  Dammit all.

  “Roland takes all my time,” she says. “You know that.”

  “We can help.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she says, fists curled. “And Mum’s in no shape to help.”

  Her two lacunitas pass through the store like we’re surrounded by fog machines. It’s bad enough facing your sister and seeing how much of a stranger she’s become. Having orbiting reminders is even worse.

  “So noisy,” the witch says beside me. “You’re cluttering up the store with lacunitos. Get out.”

  “With pleasure, ma’am,” Kate says. “Come on, Damian. Put the creepy doll down and let’s go.”

  “Hold on. I’m buying this doll.” I hand the witch forty bucks. “You said you’d tell me where she went.”

  The witch takes the money and smells it.

  “Please don’t tell him,” Kate says, scrambling over a stool and a tricycle. “I’ll pay you not to.”

  The witch tilts her head. “We had a deal before you arrived. She’s headed for Sanctuary Glade.”

  “The river valley? Did she say that?”

  The witch bores milky-white eyes into me. I want to shrink and disappear. “She didn’t have to.”

  “Thank you.”

  Outside, Kate’s face seems paler than usual, but it’s hard to tell with all the lacunitos milling about.

  “Come do the ritual,” Kate says. “With Roland and me. It’s not too late.”

  “No, Kate. You might have given up on our family, but I haven’t.”

  I walk North, crossing an intersection where traffic still hasn’t picked up after the Lacuniter hour. Although I could walk all the way to Sanctuary Glade, dipping down into the river valley and crossing the bridge, it’d be much faster to take the gondola, and that’s where I’m headed.

  Kate hustles after me. “This is the same old story, Damian. You’re pissed at me, pissed at the whole world, just because you can’t make anything new.”

  “What are you talking about?” I snap, moving onto a boardwalk edging a park. “Five years ago I was making pizza, and now my tiling business is booming. I call the shots, and I’m making bank. All from nothing.”

  “I meant you can’t make any new friends,” Kate says, the word a slicing blade.

  I’m too mad to stop. She’s probably right, and I hate her for it. “Didn’t know you paid so much attention to my social life. I’m touched.”

  I’m speed-walking now, approaching the concrete gondola terminal jutting out over the valley’s edge, cables snaking down and across the river. Across the bridge, the downtown core is lighting up in quadrants as the din of vehicles rises like a swarm of locusts.

  There’s a lineup for the gondola, and I want to yell at everyone to go away.

  I hate when Kate feels sorry for me. Of all the things our relationship had, why can’t that aspect go and die, too?

  “Damian,” Kate says, breathless, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with you. I love you. Roland loves you. Mum loves you.”

  “Mum forgot me today, Kate. She can’t love someone she’s forgotten. I have to find her lacunita. You don’t have to follow me if you’re not going to help.”

  “I want to help, Damian. But I can’t do it all for you. How can I convince you that what you are is enough?”

  “You know, every time you say that, it has the opposite effect, right?”

  Kate groans. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Go home, Kate.”

  “Damian, haven’t you noticed? You’re scared. I know you’re scared. All this loss around us, all the time, it’s terrifying. You don’t think you have anything worth bringing real people back to you, so you hedge, terrified that whatever you lose can never be replaced.”

  “So you’re saying Mum’s replaceable?”

  “No, Damian. Stop it. I’m saying you try to play it safe, be neutral and pleasant in conversations with others, but it just comes across as… not genuine. If you trusted that being yourself was enough, you could form new relationships and not cling so much to this stuff we can’t change.”

  Damn her. My chest feels like it’s going to cave in.

  We join the lineup behind families clutching candles, headed home after the Lacuniter rituals.

  It’s not like I didn’t try. I think I’m a reasonably smart guy, but I’ve never figured people out. Their geometry was nothing like the neatly-ordered grids of my tiling work. People were patched mosaics that changed colour and pattern. Or maybe they were leaves of the trembling aspen in the river valley, showing a completely different side—bright silver or dark green—depending on the wind’s breath.

  Maybe something in me had died, and I wasn’t capable of forming relationships anymore. How could Kate fault me for try
ing to hold what I still had? And how could she fault me for trying to let Mum hold onto herself?

  “Talk to me, Damian.”

  “What can I say? You’ve got it all figured out, Kate.”

  Her shoulders sag. Another echo of her spirit—hers and my relationship—separates into a lacunita and joins our troupe.

  This seems to be all I’m good at—killing what I care about.

  “I hate seeing Mum like this, too,” Kate says. “It’s horrible. And yeah, sometimes I use Roland as an excuse not to visit. It’s a bad excuse, but… it’s hard for me too, you know.”

  At least she’s got Roland. I’m too scared to lose even more of Kate, so I say nothing.

  She’s right. I am scared. I don’t know how people aren’t absolutely terrified every day with all we lose.

  “How can I stop you, Damian? What’s it going to take?”

  “Mum coming back.”

  Too many of Kate’s questions are the same ones I ask myself. If I had answers, I would have stopped asking them.

  “Do you think it’s actually better that a part of her is… I don’t know, free?”

  “While her body is left stranded? That doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “What are you going to do once you find her, Damian? Like the witch said, you can’t force her lacunita to go anywhere except through the gates with the rituals.”

  “I’ve got some of Mum’s stuff to use as a lure.”

  Kate eyes my backpack. “What if I don’t let you?”

  “Kate, I’m serious. Don’t stop me, or I’m never speaking to you again. This is Mum, and I’m not messing around.”

  Kate glares at me, and another of her lacunitas appears. The more we disagree, the more we dig at each other, the more our old selves die.

  I guess they’re right about what familiarity breeds.

  Near the front of the lineup, a boy and a girl run after each other. Their giggles grind against my mood like metal on glass.

  The children speak excitedly, each one adding details to an adventure. It reminds me a little of how Kate and I used to be, and my heart does a little shock-thaw.

  Kate’s smiling at them. A smile creeps inevitably to my lips, too, even though it aches to watch.

  The children migrate to block the gondola exit, where a door opens and a gaggle of people emerge.

  Their mother calls out and darts out of the line to collect her kids.

  “Hey,” Kate whispers, touching my arm. “Isn’t that Selja, one of your old classmates?”

  It is. Her brown hair is flecked with a few strands of grey, and she’s a bit more shapely than she was in high school, but it’s her. She’s aged probably a lot better than I have.

  “You should talk to her,” Kate says. She keeps tapping my arm. “Damian, this is the perfect opportunity. Just be yourself, show her the good, genuine guy we both know you are.”

  “Oh, is it that easy, Kate? Why didn’t you say so before?”

  She sighs. “You’re too much sometimes. All right, I gave you a chance.”

  Before I realize what’s happening, Kate’s beside Selja, introducing herself then hugging Selja when they recognize one another. That’s one thing about Kate; everyone loves her.

  Selja’s gaze drifts toward me. I force a smile and wave, then make a gesture to the lineup to indicate I don’t want to lose my place.

  She and Kate wave me over. I’m pretty sure everyone in the line is going to hate me, but, well, it’ll get me to Mum’s lacunita faster.

  I stride forward and join them at the front. Selja’s holding her younger daughter while her son clutches her jeans with one hand and a Mektron toy in the other.

  “Damian! Hi!” she says. She reaches out an arm for a hug, and I lean in awkwardly, trying to be friendly but not sure how to hug when there’s a bundle of kid in the way.

  “Long time no see!”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I say. “It’s been a while.”

  We get onto the gondola, and it sways as it floats on the cable across the river valley.

  From behind Selja, Kate makes wide eyes at me, mouthing be yourself.

  Dammit Kate, you’re not helping.

  “So what have you been up to?” Selja asks.

  I go through the motions. It’s surface-level crap that doesn’t ever go anywhere, but there’s not much more I know how to do with near-strangers. If there’s a muscle for this sort of thing, I either don’t have it or it’s atrophied into nothing.

  Her kids’ names are Volker and Odelia. I don’t know why people say buttons are cute, but the kids are much cuter than buttons.

  I can tell it’s getting uncomfortable by the way Selja keeps looking at the door, as though willing the gondola to go faster.

  “Your kids are adorable,” I blurt. Kate gives me a secretive thumbs up and rolls her hands as a signal to keep going.

  She’s embarrassing as hell, but all right… I can go a bit more.

  “Hey Odelia, did you know your mom played the star in a big school play?”

  Odelia’s eyes widen.

  Selja smiles and furrows her brow. “I… don’t remember that.”

  “Lady MacBeth,” I say.

  Selja laughs. “I’d hardly call that a star.”

  I shrug, and whisper to Odelia. “Your mom’s just trying not to brag, but she was really good.”

  Odelia looks at her mother in astonishment.

  Selja laughs again.

  “Volker, I see you’ve got the new Mektron toy—have you seen the new show? What’d you think of Poxel’s new form?”

  Selja rolls her eyes. “My god, that show is too much.”

  Volker, however, lights up. “Yes, and I’ve got two of his old forms but Mum won’t let me get the new one. She says it’s Odelia’s turn to get a toy, but my friends say the old Poxel’s stupid and they aren’t going to play with me. And I still have to get Meplon and Zowig, but I’m waiting to see which one of them gets turned back first.”

  Kids are so much easier than adults. “Don’t worry, man, Poxel’s still the same on the inside, no matter what form. Your Poxels are still super cool.”

  I nerd out with Volker a bit more, then turn to Odelia. “What toy are you going to pick out, Odelia?”

  “I want a science lab kit,” she says.

  I’ve done my homework on this for Roland. “Have you seen the one with the bottled stars and elephant toothpaste?”

  She beams. “That’s the one I want!”

  “Good choice, rockstar.” We fist-bump.

  Selja laughs.

  The gondola arrives, and we shuffle our way off.

  Selja addresses her kids. “You two have made a pretty neat new friend, haven’t you?”

  The kids nod. Selja radiates warmth. She’s blurred by the haze of lacunitos milling about, but I manage to keep it together.

  “It was great running into you, Damian. Maybe you could come over sometime and play with these two when it’s not past their bedtime.”

  “Yeah! Come over, come over!” Volker exclaims.

  “Not tonight,” Selja says firmly. “All right, we should get going. Get in touch, okay, Damian?”

  “I will,” I say, smiling. “Great seeing you, Selja.”

  For a minute, I’ve forgotten why I’m here, and I’m scanning to see what kind of lacunita separates from Selja—will it be sharp, or faint? I watch her and her children closely.

  My sister’s lacunitas—the ones that had orbited me throughout the night—veer off and cluster around Odelia, all but seeping into her. What the hell? Have I brought a curse upon her children, or something even worse?

  I’m about to run after Selja when the lacunitas come back to encircle me as though tugged by an invisible string.

  Thank God, or whatever’s responsible for this mess of spirit fragments.

  “Kate, Lacunitos are re-injected into the karmic flow after being cleansed through their passage
through the hells, right? Well, what if there’s a way for them to skip going through the gate, and go right back into the karmic cycle?”

  Kate frowns. “Did some of your lacunitos leave?”

  “No.”

  “Then they’re still stuck with us. And I’d worry about them not undergoing cleansing.”

  She was right. If the lacunitos were karma vessels, then I was a clog in the artery, or a damaged kidney letting unfiltered blood circulate.

  I don’t give a damn about my own karma—if I mess that up, fine. But if I mess up the karma of little Odelia and Volker, or Roland, I don’t think I could live with myself.

  Kate and I grow quiet as we wind our way down the concrete path toward the Sanctuary Glade. The lacunitos float around like carrion crows waiting for meat.

  “Why would she come here?” Kate asks.

  “No idea.”

  Finally we’re at the glade, where an oval-shaped clearing has been cut into the Boreal forest.

  There’s no sign of Mum’s lacunita, and I circle the edges, kicking deadwood in frustration.

  I’m about to give up when at the edge I see small white flowers growing in clusters.

  “Hey Kate,” I call, “didn’t Mum used to have those in her tea? The leaves or something?”

  Kate comes over and inspects. “Yeah, she did. Yarrow, I think it’s called.”

  Yarrow. Of course. Mum came here for yarrow—she’d been complaining about the hospital’s tea.

  “She’s following the yarrow!” I exclaim, bursting into a run.

  “Damian, wait!”

  We follow the trickles of yarrow up a hill and behind a residential area.

  Through a chain-link fence, I finally see her. Mum’s lacunita bends to smell the yarrow in someone’s garden.

  “Mum!”

  She doesn’t hear me. She turns and passes through the wall.

  I jump the fence. Kate hisses at me.

  “She’s in there,” I whisper. “I’ve got to get her, Kate.”

  I pad around the garden and to the side of the house, where I hear shouting.

  “Daddy says you broke the family!” says a boy.

  “Freddy! That’s not true—”

  “I don’t want to live here! Daddy lets me stay up as late as I want. He knows I’m a big kid now. This place is stupid, and all I ever do here is chores. I’m not your slave anymore, Mom!”