Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones

by Micah Dean Hicks

Erica sulked back against the wall, waiting for her to go away.

  Henry closed his eyes and remembered Erica’s strange touch. He wanted to take her away into the quiet and dark of the empty school. He wanted her to kiss him like that again.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Henry said. His stomach hurt from holding it in. “I’ll be right back. Will you still be here?”

  She nodded.

  Henry left the band hall, into the quiet and dark hallway. A few students milled around out here, faces lit by their phone screens. The restroom was at the end of the hall and stank like piss. His shoes stuck to the floor.

  Henry stepped into a stall. The door was broken off its hinges. He unzipped his pants and closed his eyes, still imagining Erica’s impossibly soft hands on his face.

  Someone came into the stall behind him.

  “Occupied,” he said.

  The person wrapped their arms around Henry and grabbed his face roughly in their hands. They were holding something hard and metal, pressing it against his cheek. Henry’s hands were still holding himself while he urinated, the walls of the bathroom stall penning him in on three sides.

  “What the fuck?” He could barely speak around their hands on his face. “Get away from me!”

  The boy grabbed the tip of Henry’s nose and tilted his head up. “Fucking pig lover. Now you’ll look like one.”

  The metal object pressed against his skin, right under his nose. By the time Henry realized what it was, it was too late.

  There was a flash of pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before, a red current that sheared through his whole body. He raised his hands to his face and screamed.

  He heard something fall with a soft splash into the toilet. A bloody piece of flesh—his fucking nose—spun in the toilet bowl. Henry reached for it, but the boy kicked out and hit the toilet handle with his shoe, flushing it.

  Henry found himself bent over the toilet, blood pouring into the empty bowl, holding nothing. The door to the bathroom opened and closed, and the boy was gone. The world blurred, his face burning with pain and eyes brimming over. There was a long, low whine coming from somewhere. It took him a minute to realize that it was coming from him.

  He pulled his shirt up and pressed it against his face, but it barely held the bleeding in check. He thought for a moment about going to find a teacher, to ask his sister for help, but he remembered what Erica had said about being afraid of the pigs. Now you’ll look like one, the boy had said. He couldn’t go anywhere near her now. He sank to the floor and struggled to keep pressure on his face. The world spun around him.

  Students piled around Jane’s table, leaning into the river of sound and letting their drink cups vibrate on the speaker tops, hoarsely shouting for her to play their favorite songs. Trigger watched from the plastic chair beside her, a sad smile on his face. She had a hard time focusing on his thoughts with so many people around.

  Her ghost rolled in the psychic noise, ferreting out teenage crushes and vendettas. It floated on their lust and longing, the innocent electric thrill of their hands and eyes moving over each other’s skin. Jane tried to keep her eye on Dennis and her brother, the two of them looming clear then suddenly lost again in the swirl of faces flashing through the dark of the room.

  The dance started winding down early like it always did, kids slipping away in twos and threes to old barns or abandoned farmhouses where they would get drunk and have sex on the outskirts of town. Dennis, his face shining with sweat, walked out with a group of others after hours of dancing with the mirror. Jane couldn’t tell if they were his friends, her ghost distracted by a couple arguing against the wall.

  She hoped Dennis had a ride home, that his father or some friend was picking him up. Maybe she was overreacting to worry about him. He didn’t seem so unlike the other students, just as careful and shy in his rented clothes. Just as full of want and heartache as anyone else. Hardly different at all.

  You’re not so different, either. Did they ever let you forget it?

  “Aren’t you supposed to be helping me watch Henry?” Jane asked.

  But her ghost was already distracted again, finding a secret sitting loaded and ready to fall from someone’s lips, a bomb that would incinerate a decade-long friendship. The spirit gathered the two of them close, an invisible witness to the hurt they were about to inflict on each other.

  Jane ignored it and looked for her brother. Henry had spent most of the night standing against the wall, talking to some slight, nervous girl Jane didn’t know. One moment, the girl leaned against her brother’s chest, whispering in his ear. The next, they were gone.

  She texted Henry, but he didn’t answer. Had he actually gone home with the girl? Was her skinny, awkward little brother out there losing his virginity tonight? Her ghost flashed back into her mind, disgusted and thrilled.

  Someone had been thinking of a song all evening, a stuttering and half-remembered melody. Finally, Jane realized it was Trigger. He stared off into space, thinking of the song. It looped, the sound slowly sawing at him no matter how hard he tried to ignore it.

  Jane leaned over and squeezed his hand. “Is that from something I played tonight? Do you want to hear it again?”

  Trigger looked surprised and shrugged her question away, standing up.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

  The room was almost empty now. The chaperones picked up plastic cups and turned on the lights. The last few students sat on the floor and talked arm in arm. Even the ghostly prom in the mirror was slowing down. Around the edges of the room, spirits still held tight to one another and danced. The hems of their translucent dresses and jackets silently spun. They would hang on until morning.

  Jane switched off the music, the bubble of sound and emotion collapsing back into stillness. As the building emptied, her ghost ranged farther down the halls, already feeling bored. It found Trigger, and by the time Jane felt his shock, she could already hear him shouting her name.

  There was an image in his mind. Dingy white tile brushed with dark red. A pile of wet clothes curled in on themselves. Two hands—her brother’s slender hands—covering his face. Henry lay in front of a toilet, his shirt mashed against his mouth, haloed in blood.

  Jane ran into the hallway, but Trigger was already coming out of the bathroom carrying Henry in his arms. Her brother seemed smaller, as limp as a doll and sticky with blood. He breathed weakly and stared without focusing on anything, his hands trembling to keep pressure on his face.

  “Just take me home,” Henry said, his mouth hardly able to form the words. His mind teetered on the edge of consciousness.

  Everything that had happened to him was right on the surface of his mind. The hand grabbing his nose and jerking his head up. Fucking pig lover. The boy’s palms so rough after the light touch from the paper girl. The hot, wet lick of the knife, and then the heavy plop of his flesh in the toilet bowl. Now you’ll look like one.

  “Get him in my car,” Jane said. “We’re taking him to the hospital.”

  One of the teachers fluttered nearby, grossly fascinated. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No,” Jane said, thinking of the bleeding officer who would surely come if they called for help. “We’ll take him.” The ambulance wasn’t close, and the hospital was even farther away. People had died in Swine Hill waiting for someone to come save them.

  The parking lot was mostly empty. Bright embers of weak spirits, barely holding on to the world of the living, streaked back and forth through the dark. A clump of students boldly shared a pack of cigarettes under a utility light, watching them carry Henry out.

  Jane wanted to hold the teenagers down and scream at them, to let her ghost drill deep into their minds and pull out everything they knew, to ask who had hurt her brother and why. But there wasn’t time for that now.

  She made space in her back seat, throwing out some of Henry’s junky old machine parts and a busted subwoofer. Trigger bent and laid Henry across the seat like s
omething that could shatter.

  “Should I drive?” Trigger asked. The tune still cut back and forth through his head.

  “No,” Jane said. “Just get in.”

  The town was empty but for the ghosts hauling their shaggy bodies down the roads or whirling like lanterns through the sky. There was no moon out, and the sky with its needling stars felt heavy as a cast iron lid. Jane stomped down on the gas, and her clanking car fishtailed over the cracked pavement.

  They hit the highway and crossed out of Swine Hill. Many of the ghosts clinging to her car started to fall away, the road holding no memories they could see themselves in. It glided more smoothly, shedding ghost-weight, metal and rubber parts moving more easily. A stubborn ghost that had lodged itself into her CD player broke loose, and the disc fell into place, shocking them with an eruption of music.

  Jane turned it down and talked to Henry, telling him that they would be there soon, that everything would be okay, her words braiding together like a long rope lowered into a dark place. Henry let it wash over him, dizzy and only half understanding. Lines of pain burned hot on his face, and he traced that sigil in his mind, drawing a triangle.

  Their headlights ripped across the trees lining the sides of the road. Here and there, a homemade cross was stuck in the grass along the shoulder, a ghost standing over it to pace the spot where it had died. If her brother died in her car, would he return to her? Would his spirit fold itself across her back seat, cradling its pain and waiting forever for her to save him?

  Jane’s ghost strained to listen for waiting cops or people turning onto the highway, letting Jane know when to slow down and when she could push the engine to its limits.

  There’s no one for miles. Go, go, go.

  * * *

  Trigger carried Henry into the emergency room. Her brother kept pressure on his nose, not wanting anyone to see it. Dizzy from loss of blood, his mind spun hallucinations. He imagined that the pass of the knife had carved him into a pig. He thought of Hogboss’s skin rippling with stitches and scars. If only he held himself together, he could be a person still, safe from slaughter.

  The drywall was stained and cracked, the bands of fluorescent lights flickering. There were floor tiles missing, exposing the almost black grout beneath, and the waiting room seats were heavily duct-taped. There were spirits here, though not so many as in Swine Hill. In the corner of the waiting room, a dark-eyed ghost woman stared ahead, waiting for someone long dead to return to her.

  Two Pig City workers sat together with bandaged hands. They’d each severed their right index finger, and carried both digits in the same plastic bag. One of the men held the bag up to the light, trying to tell which of the fingers was his own, worried he wouldn’t know when the time came.

  There were others: a girl who couldn’t turn her neck after a car accident; a man with tightness blooming through his chest; a grandmother with a child who’d swallowed floor cleaner. They didn’t think about their pain, instead fixating on the cost. They resented doctors the same way they did mechanics, experts who discovered a problem and then made them pay for it.

  Trigger helped Henry stand, Jane steadying him. His head hung limp, clothes matted dark and wet. The nurse took him back right away, handing Jane a stack of insurance paperwork. They didn’t have insurance. Whatever Henry needed, she knew they couldn’t pay for it. She studied the forms and wrote down her name, waiting until the staff wasn’t paying attention to set them aside.

  Trigger leaned back into the seat beside her, squeezing her hand. “I wish I could read your mind,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “I thought I could keep him safe,” Jane said. “But I was right there. I didn’t even know.”

  “We’ll figure out who did this.” Violent thoughts roosted in his mind. He felt out of control, guilty for abandoning his ghost and worried that he was making Jane unhappy. He wanted things to be simple, to find Henry’s attacker and to hurt him.

  “It doesn’t matter who did it. Everyone might as well have. I’m leaving Swine Hill and taking Henry with me. We should have left years ago.”

  He had been expecting this the entire drive to the hospital, his shoulders tense the whole time at the thought of losing her. “Where will you go?” he asked.

  Jane didn’t have an answer. She barely had any money. Even if she asked Hogboss for her pay early, it still wouldn’t be enough. She didn’t know if she could get her father into a car and make him come with her. She couldn’t wait any longer, though. She would have to make it work. Looking around the aging waiting room, almost an hour away from Swine Hill and just as poor and rundown, she wondered how far she would have to go to find something better.

  You won’t find anything better, her ghost said. Every other place is just like this, but without the people who love you.

  Jane shrugged the ghost’s words away. It needed her to believe that, was selfishly trying to keep Jane where she was so that it wouldn’t lose its hold on her. She had to get her brother out before something worse happened. Her mother and father would come or they wouldn’t. A sad, sinking part of her already knew that Trigger wouldn’t leave with her.

  “I finally recognized the tune stuck in your head.” Jane hummed it quietly, watching his face fall. “You’ve been thinking of the song from your mom’s music box all night. Why?”

  His mental defenses collapsed, letting her see into his mind as clearly as if his head was made of glass. Jane saw his father sitting at the table, staring off into space and whistling the tune. Mason had a bad cough from smoking, and it seemed like he hadn’t whistled in a long time. But he licked his lips, tapped along with his three-fingered hand, and practiced for hours. It was badly off, too slow, halting. But he was getting closer. He was about halfway there.

  Trigger wondered what to say, not sure how much she already knew. “My dad keeps asking me what happened to my brother’s ghost. I think he might have found the music box.”

  Trigger told his father what you buried.

  Anger flooded her, Jane’s ghost riding it like a wave. “Henry lost everything he cared about because I helped you. That thing isn’t your brother anymore. It’s poison.”

  “You’ve never lost anyone,” Trigger said. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  She could tell that he regretted saying it, that he was already shrinking from her, but she was too angry to care. “Have you met my father?” she asked. “No? Ever think there might be a reason for that?”

  He sighed, not looking her in the face. “Even with my brother’s ghost gone, my dad won’t ever leave that house. He’s staying in Swine Hill, and I can’t leave him behind. I’m the only family he has left. If you leave, I’m not coming. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want you to. We’re done.” Her words, sharp and hot, cut through him just as she’d intended. He’d all but resurrected the ghost that had ruined his life. How could he be so stupid? Why did he feel the need to be such a martyr?

  He smiled sadly, looking down at his shoes and drawing his hand back from her armrest. “Thanks for the dance, Jane. Things were nice. I’ll miss it.”

  You still have me. You always will.

  Jane recoiled from the spirit. What she wanted was to be alone, to crawl into bed with the lights off and know that no one was there. But the ghost was always with her, always awake and listening, even to her dreams.

  Henry stumbled out, a nurse leading him by the arm, his face wrapped in bandages. The woman said that there wasn’t any more the doctor would do until they had insurance on file. Jane handed her the blank clipboard of forms, put her arm around Henry, and took him to the elevator. By the time the nurses realized she was leaving, not just stepping out to make a call or go to the bathroom, they would already be gone. Trigger followed, exhausted and heavy, his heart a millstone of regret.

  Henry’s thoughts were an inventory of violence. A burning house with the door chained shut. The cold weight of a gun and a pocket full of brass-jacketed bullets. A car hurtling
toward someone standing in the road. He couldn’t keep it up, though. He wasn’t the kind of person to hurt people, to see them bleed and bruise under his hands. He didn’t understand thoughtless, pointless cruelty like that. He wanted to save himself from it, to be wrapped in a big robot or suit of armor. To fold glass and steel around himself and burn off across the horizon, pulling away from Earth’s orbit. But his ghost had floated away, leaving him in the ruins of its brilliance.

  He’s afraid people will see his piggy snout.

  “Stop being such a bitch,” Jane said.

  She could feel the spirit smile in her mind, pleased to have gotten a rise out of her. He’s right, though. People already associate him with the pigs. Things will only get worse.

  For hours, Jane lay awake, seeing her brother’s bandaged face. She remembered how Trigger had found him, blood seeping through his fingers on the floor of the bathroom. And then she thought of Trigger telling his father about the music box, throwing away everything she’d done for him. With no one else to be angry with, she tossed in her bed, arguing with her ghost.

  I didn’t know. The bathroom was on the other side of the building, and there were a lot of people between us. I couldn’t listen to everyone at once.

  “You’ve kept things from me before.”

  Her ghost was wounded, its voice strained and heavy. Not things like this.

  Jane had an early shift at the plant. A few minutes before her alarm would have sounded, she turned it off and got dressed. Henry’s door was closed. She could feel him sleeping, his mind flickering with panic, fists balled in his sheets.

  When she had brought Henry home, her mom made Jane explain how Henry had gotten hurt over and over again, as if telling the story a different way might change what had happened. When Jane walked past her mother’s bedroom, she could feel a rush of heat blowing out from under the door. Soon, her mom would get up and find someone to unleash her need on. Jane hoped that it wouldn’t be Hogboss.