City of Ghosts

by Victoria Schwab

  Not until, at last, it becomes fire.

  There’s so much kindling on the stage: a forest made out of wooden planks and gossamer and paint. It catches so fast, and finally the spell of the play is broken. The fairy students scatter and the audience panics, and I know it’s just a memory, an echo of something already said and done, but I can feel the heat as it spreads.

  Jacob grabs my hand, pulling me away from the raging flames.

  Even through the panic, my fingers turn the camera crank, snapping photos, eager to catch something as the world around me turns to smoke and fire and panic.

  My head is beginning to feel foggy, like I’ve been holding my breath. I know I’ve been here long enough, that it’s time to go, but my feet won’t move.

  And then I see the dark-haired boy, trying to stay low, the way you’re taught in class, but the fire is spreading so fast, swallowing the set on every side, climbing the curtains. There’s nowhere to run, the whole stage is up in flames, so he goes down, shuffles on his hands and knees until he reaches the trapdoor.

  “Don’t!” I call, but of course, it’s useless. He doesn’t listen, doesn’t turn. He pulls the door up and climbs down into the dark just before a piece of burning set collapses on top of the stage, pinning the trapdoor shut.

  “Cassidy,” says Jacob, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the fire, even as my lungs fill with smoke.

  Jacob grabs me by the shoulders.

  “We have to go,” he orders, and when I don’t move, he gives me a push and I stumble, falling backward over a wooden bench. By the time I hit the stage floor, it’s cold. The fire is gone, as is the light coming from my chest. Jacob crouches over me, ghostly again, and I slump back, breathless.

  Sometimes, you see, I get stuck.

  It’s like Neverland in Peter Pan—the longer the Lost Boys stayed, the more they forgot. The longer I’m on the wrong side of the Veil, the harder it is to get out.

  Jacob crosses his arms. “Are you happy now?”

  Happy isn’t the right word. The tapping is still there—it never goes away—but at least I know now, what’s on the other side. It makes it easier to ignore.

  “Sorry.” I get to my feet, brushing the invisible ashes from my jeans. I can still taste the smoke.

  “Rule number twenty-one of friendship,” says Jacob. “Don’t leave your friend in the Veil.”

  The school bell rings as he says it.

  Lunch is officially over.

  Before we go any further, I have to back up.

  You see, there are three things you need to know.

  Thing #1: For as long as I can remember, I’ve taken pictures.

  Dad says that the world is always changing, every second of every day, and so is everything in it, which means that the you you are right now is different from the you you were when you started reading this sentence. Crazy, right? And our memories change, too. (For instance, I swear the teddy bear I had growing up was green, but according to my parents it was orange.) But when you take a photograph, things stay still. The way that they were, is the way that they are, is the way that they will always be.

  Which is why I love pictures.

  Thing #2: My birthday is in late March, right at that place when the seasons run together. When the sun is warm but the wind is cold, and trees are starting to blossom but the ground hasn’t quite thawed. Mom likes to say I was born with one foot in winter and the other in spring. That’s why I can’t sit still, and why (according to her) I’m always searching for trouble—because I don’t belong to one place.

  Thing #3: We live in a suburban town surrounded by fields and hills (and a fair number of ghosts) and trees that change color and rivers that freeze for the winter and a hundred picture-perfect landscapes.

  These three things don’t seem connected, the photos and the time and the place, but they’re all important, I promise. Threads in the fabric.

  For my eleventh birthday, Mom and Dad gave me my camera, the vintage one you already know about, with a purple strap and an old-school flash and an aperture that you rotate by hand. All the kids at school use their phones as cameras—but I wanted something solid, something real. It was love at first sight, and right away I knew where I wanted to go, what I wanted to shoot.

  There’s this place a few miles from our house, a cleft in the hills, and when the sun sets, it sets right there, nested between the two slopes like a ball cupped in someone’s hands. I’d been there a dozen times, and it never looked the same. I had this idea of going every day for a year, capturing each and every sunset.

  And I wanted to start right then.

  Remember what I said about being born in March? Well, for the first time that year, it was actually warm enough to ride my bike, even if the air still had a bite to it, as Mom likes to say. So I looped the camera’s purple strap around my neck and took off toward the hills on my bike, racing against the sun, tires hissing over half-frozen ground, through the streets and past the soccer fields and onto the bridge.

  The bridge. A short stretch of metal and wood suspended over the water, the kind of bridge you had to take turns on because it wasn’t wide enough for two cars. I was halfway across when the truck whipped around the curve and hurtled toward me.

  I swerved out of the way, and so did the truck, tires screeching as my bike slammed into the railing hard enough to make sparks fly. Hard enough to send me over the handlebars.

  And over the railing.

  I fell. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Like a stumble, a trip, a skinned knee. But it was twenty feet down into water that had only days before been frozen solid. And when I broke the surface, the force and the cold knocked all the air from my lungs.

  My vision went white, and then black, and by the time it came back, I was still sinking, the camera like a lead weight around my neck, pulling me down, down, down. The river darkened, the surface above a shrinking ripple of light. Somewhere, beyond the water, I thought I saw someone, the smudge of a person, all shadow. But then the shadow was gone, and I was still sinking.

  I didn’t think about dying.

  Didn’t think about anything except the icy water in my lungs, the pressing weight of the river, and even those things started to fade, and all I thought was, I’m falling away from the light. They tell you to go toward it, and I tried, but I couldn’t. My limbs were too heavy. There was no air left.

  I don’t remember what happened next. Not exactly.

  The world did a kind of stutter, like when a movie freezes, gets jammed, skips forward, and then I was sitting on the riverbank, gasping for air as a boy crouched beside me, in jeans and a superhero shirt, his blond hair sticking up as if he’d just run his fingers through it.

  “That was close,” he said.

  At the time, I had no idea.

  “What happened?” I asked through chattering teeth.

  “You fell in,” he said. “I pulled you out.”

  Which didn’t make sense, because I was soaked through, but he wasn’t even wet. Maybe if I hadn’t been shivering so hard, maybe if my eyes weren’t aching from the river, maybe if my head wasn’t full of ice, I would have noticed his strange gray pallor. The way I could almost, almost, almost see through him. But I was too tired, too cold.

  “I’m Jacob,” he said.

  “Cassidy,” I said, slumping back onto the bank.

  “Hey,” he said, leaning over me, “… stay awake …”

  I heard other voices, then the slam of car doors, the skidding of boots down the half-frozen bank, the distant warmth of someone’s coat, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, and Mom and Dad were there, their hands so warm on mine.

  Jacob was there, too, sitting cross-legged in a spare hospital chair (it didn’t take me long to realize that no one else could see him). My camera was on the bedside table, the purple strap frayed and the viewfinder cracked. It was damaged but not ruined, changed but not destroyed. Kind of like me.

  A little special.


  A little strange.

  Not quite alive but definitely not …

  I mean, can someone really die if they don’t end up dead? Are they really alive if they come back?

  The word for that seems like it should be undead, but I’m not a zombie. My heart has that steady thump-thump, and I eat and sleep and do all the things that go with “living.”

  Near death. That’s what they call it. But I know it wasn’t just near.

  I was standing right on top of it. Under it. Long enough for my eyes to adjust, the way they would in a dark room. Long enough for me to make out the edges of the space before being dragged back into the bright, cold light.

  In the end, I guess Mom was right.

  I have one foot in winter and one in spring.

  One foot with the living, and one with the dead.

  A week later, I found the Veil.

  Jacob and I were taking a walk, trying to wrap our heads around our strange connection—I mean, I’d never been haunted before, and he’d never haunted anyone—when it happened.

  We were cutting through an empty lot, and all of a sudden I felt it: the tap-tap-tap of someone staring, the shivery sensation of a spiderweb on bare skin. I saw the edge of gray cloth at the corner of my sight. I should have looked away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Instead, I felt myself turn toward it. I caught the curtain in my hand, and for an instant, I was falling again, crashing through the surface of the river. But I didn’t let go.

  And when I blinked, Jacob was still next to me, only he looked solid, real, and just as confused as I was. And the empty lot wasn’t empty anymore. We were standing inside a warehouse, the crank and clank of metal echoing off the walls, and someone somewhere was sobbing. The Veil itself didn’t scare me, but that sound, the sense of walking into someone else’s life—or death—scared me, and I pulled free of that place as fast as I could, wiping off the Veil as if it were just a spiderweb stuck to my clothes.

  I swore I’d never go back.

  I thought I was telling the truth.

  But a couple of weeks later, I felt it again, the tap-tap-tap, the brush of that gray cloth, and before I knew it, I was reaching out, taking hold, pulling the curtain aside, while Jacob groaned and sulked, and grudgingly followed me through.

  And here we are, one year later.

  For most people, life and death are pretty black-and-white. But something happened that day when Jacob pulled me out of the water. I guess I pulled him out of somewhere, too, and we got tangled up, and now I’m not all alive and he’s not all dead.

  If we were in a comic book, this would be our origin story.

  Some people get a spider bite, or a vat of acid.

  We got a river.

  I mean, obviously Batgirl,” Jacob is saying, “the reissue, not the original …”

  “Sure.” I scuff my sneakers against the street as we walk home. There are two of us, but only one shadow on the pavement. We’re discussing which comics I should pack for Jacob for the beach vacation.

  “And we can’t forget the new Skull and Bone …” Jacob adds.

  Skull and Bone is Jacob’s favorite comic. In it, this dead cowboy named Skull Shooter gets resurrected to hunt down rogue spirits along with his wolfhound (Bone). Jacob continues listing off options, trying to decide between Thor #31 and Skull #5, but I’m not really listening. Something is nagging at me.

  Back in the auditorium, when I was thinking that I could help the ghost boy by seeing what happened to him, Jacob said, That’s not how it works. But Jacob never talks like that, never says anything about the Veil. I’ve always assumed he doesn’t know why I’m so drawn to it. Or how I can cross over. Or what I’m supposed to do there. But what if he does know, and he’s just not telling me?

  He can hear me now, wondering, doubting.

  “Rule number seven,” he says. “Don’t be nosy.”

  Yeah, sure, I think. But the very first rule of friendship is don’t keep secrets.

  He sighs. “I can’t tell you everything, Cass. There are rules to being a …” He makes a sweeping gesture at himself.

  “What kind of rules?” I press.

  “Rules like rules!” he snaps, face flushing. I hate seeing Jacob upset, so I let it go. Which is to say I totally don’t stop thinking about it—very loudly, in his direction—but Jacob pretends he can’t hear, and I don’t ask again out loud.

  “You can pick six comics,” I say instead.

  He pouts, but it’s so over-the-top I can tell he’s joking. That’s what I love about Jacob. Even when he gets mad, it doesn’t last. Nothing seems to stick.

  “Fine, seven,” I say as we reach my street, “but I get final approval. And no Batman.”

  He looks aghast. “You heathen.”

  I tap my fingers against the camera, wondering if any of the photos I took in the Veil today will come out. I notice there’s only one picture left on the roll.

  “Smile,” I tell him, and Jacob throws up a peace sign. But he doesn’t look at the camera when I take the picture. He never does.

  “Haven’t you heard?” he likes to tease. “Pictures steal souls. Besides, it’s not like I’ll show up.”

  Click.

  We walk on, and a few minutes later, our house comes into sight, one of those old Victorians that look like they should be haunted.

  (It’s not haunted.)

  (Except for Jacob.)

  (And he doesn’t count.)

  “Rude,” he mumbles, following me inside.

  I kick off my shoes by the front door, next to a tower of books. More books spill out of the study and into the hall. Some are research—history, religion, myth, and lore—and some are novels. And other books have my parents’ names printed on the covers, the titles emblazoned in silver or gold:

  THE INSPECTERS.

  It’s a play on words, you see, because an inspector is a person who searches for and examines something, and a specter with an e is another word for ghost. So an inspecter is a person who searches for and examines ghosts.

  My parents have written a whole series—they’re up to volume six now. They’re like history books, but with ghost stories mixed in, truth and myth all rolled together. They’re pretty popular. I stop and pick up the latest edition, looking at the photo on the back cover: a slim man in a tweed coat, dark hair flecked gray at the temples (that’s Dad). He has a notebook under one arm and glasses perched on the edge of his nose. At his side stands a woman in pale slacks and a colorful blouse, her wild dark curls in a messy bun stuck through with pens, and an open book in her hands, the pages ruffling as if caught in a breeze (that would be Mom).

  And curled at their feet is a mound of black fur and green eyes. Our cat, Grim.

  The overall effect is one part history and one part magic, with a dash of good old-fashioned superstition.

  The funny thing is, Dad doesn’t even believe in ghosts (the books’ editor actually likes that Dad’s a skeptic, because it keeps the stories “grounded” and more “relatable” to readers). My parents make a good team: Dad’s the scholar, and Mom’s the dreamer. He focuses on explaining the past, while she spins ghost stories out of maybes and what-ifs.

  And me? I stay out of it.

  Because my parents don’t know the whole truth about me. I never told them what really happened in the river, never told them about the Veil, or the things I see on the other side. It feels like a secret I should keep.

  So my parents talk about—or write about—ghosts, but can’t actually see them.

  I can actually see ghosts, but don’t want to talk—or write—about them.

  I’m pretty sure that’s called irony.

  “Hello?” I call out. “Anyone here?”

  Mom’s voice bounces down the hall; she’s on the phone in her study. I can tell by the way she talks that she’s doing an interview.

  “Do I think there’s more to the world than we understand?” Mom rattles on. “Of course. It would be sheer arrogance to think otherwise …”
>
  She sticks her head through the doorway (her bun its usual porcupine of pens) and smiles at me but keeps on talking. “Ghosts, residues, spirits, specters, call them what you like …” She collars me into a hug without breaking her interview stride. “Sure, science can explain some things, but when different people experience the same supernatural occurrence, see the same ghost, relate the same story, we should ask why.”

  She turns her face from the phone. “Dad’s on his way home,” she whispers into my hair. “Don’t go far. We need to talk.”

  We need to talk.

  Four words you never want to hear, and I want to ask for a clue, but Mom’s already pulling away. “Well, yes,” she says to the interviewer, “I have indeed felt the presence of ghosts.”

  Probably true.

  “I’ve seen them.”

  Jacob waves a hand in front of her face.

  Less true.

  Weirdly enough, Mom kind of knows about Jacob. There are only so many times you can get away with talking to your invisible best friend before you have to explain who’s on the other side of the conversation.

  But I don’t know if Mom really believes in ghosts, or if she just wants to believe because it makes the world more interesting. She says she’s had her fair share of paranormal experiences, and that “sensitivity” to the supernatural runs in our family. She says that when it comes to the strange and unexplained, it’s important to keep an open mind.

  What I do know is that she doesn’t patronize me about Jacob the way Dad does. She doesn’t refer to him as my imaginary friend, and doesn’t teasingly ask me how he’s feeling that day, or what he wants for dinner.

  If there’s something Jacob wants me to say to her, she listens.

  My stomach growls from missing lunch, so I duck past Mom’s study into the kitchen and make a PB + B + CC, aka peanut butter, banana, and chocolate chips, aka the best sandwich in world, no matter what Jacob says. (I think he’s just jealous he can’t eat it.) I shove half in my mouth, put the rest in the fridge for later, and head upstairs.

  Our cat, Grim, is asleep on my bed.