The Ghosts We Hide

by Micah Thomas

  Cassie didn’t make any revelations, despite Xavi’s excitement.

  Xavi called up the subsequent data visualizations. “Here we began to make stronger correlations. It was not the drugs alone, you see. The subject mattered. Their experiences and their latencies were key variables.” Xavi leaned back from the keyboard. “I cannot speak for the others, but for me, my life was a disordered thing. We came to the States as political refugees. I witnessed things unfit for a child’s eyes. I had trauma. This, it seemed, was important.”

  Don said, “So, the stuff only worked on people that were…no offense, a little messed up inside?”

  “Just so.”

  “I believe it,” Cassie said, perhaps hearing a slight disgruntled noise from Henry.

  Xavi expounded in a professorial tone, “But where were we going? Inside? Outside? Where exactly was this place? My knowledge of that came too late, and then after so long, there was no one to tell.”

  “Are you saying you were there, with them? The islands and the ocean?”

  “Wait now,” Don said. “What islands? Cassie, what is this about?”

  “Yes. Exactly,” Xavi answered, ignoring Don. “I was there. My mind jettisoned across starry skies to that alien place. I lost my way back, but I am a scientist after all. I studied them.”

  “You didn’t merge with anything?” Cassie probed. “Nothing called you?”

  Don was lost, but he held his tongue.

  “Of course they did. I was summoned. I was courted. I was Jesus tempted by Satan, yet I recognized the temptation. In the beginning it took everything in me to maintain myself. I was truly lost, unable to make sense of anything. I thought I’d gone mad. The garden had such delights. I knew it would consume me.”

  “My god,” Cassie said.

  “Indeed. Back to the data though. There may be something here.”

  Xavi returned to the keyboard and brought up some old, grainy footage.

  “I didn’t know these ancient things could do video,” Don said, impressed.

  “We were cutting edge. Cynthia saw to that,” Xavi said.

  Cassie felt Henry tighten up inside at the mention of Cynthia. She shared his thoughts: the one person he wished he’d burned up. The architect of his suffering. And not even his alone.

  Xavi played the video. He was stretched out on a cot with his eyes closed. A young woman held his hand and he was administered the drug. Legs and part of a lab coat were visible at the edge of the screen. Cynthia, Cassie thought. There was no audio, but after a moment, the Xavi in the video, young and beautiful, stopped talking. There was alarm. The woman was joined by others who administered another syringe.

  “You see, they tried to restore my mind. They were not successful,” Xavi said as the footage ended.

  “Are you okay?” Cassie asked.

  “Yes. It is disturbing, no? As if seeing one’s own death on camera.”

  Cassie knew the feeling. She’d been recorded once. The day she met Henry.

  “What I suggest—and this may very well be controversial,” Xavi said as the video ended.

  “Yeah?” Don asked. “Do tell. What did we just see?”

  “The answers you seek are not to be found in these relics. This was all the opening of doors. I do not believe they ever expanded their knowledge of the underlying forces at work.”

  Cassie was certain Don didn’t understand everything, so she said, “That’s basically what Wiseman told Henry.”

  “And you raise a good point,” said Xavi. “The Wiseman is no longer with us, though I’d love to speak with that particular entity about my experiences in its homeland.”

  “So basically this was a wasted trip?” Don asked.

  “No. You found me. I believe, should you be up for the effort, I can be of use to you. Allow your travelers to temporarily inhabit my body and mind. From the outside, I see many things. I see the connection binding them to you, and they to each other. While in that other place, I learned to focus my will to alter these energetic connections. While I have no cure for your man’s condition, perhaps I could liberate you from this demon?”

  “Cassie, what the hell is he talking about?” Don broke his silence as he slouched in the chair.

  Cassie sighed. Time for the truth. “Don, back in Vegas, something happened to me. I survived because of Henry, and because of the thing inside of him that made him able to do what he did. We became one. I can’t explain it.”

  “He’s here now?” Don asked and looked around wide-eyed.

  “Yes.”

  “I knew you were different. Figured it was all the changes in the world. I suspected something, but not this. Wow. Okay.” Don rubbed his stubbled chin and Cassie could see he was realizing how far over his head he was. “This is why you wanted to come out here? This or something like it? To find a cure?”

  Cassie had to stop underestimating Don. “Nailed it.”

  “This is dangerous,” Don said. “Are you sure you don’t just want to try plan B? I told you I have a plan.”

  Before Cassie could answer, Xavi picked back up as if there had been no interruption. “Yes. As I said, we could try as soon as tomorrow. I am as ready as an old man can be, prepared for all things which may or may not happen.”

  Cassie thought about the last time she and Henry played with possession. She closed her eyes and consulted with him privately. You tracking all this?

  I am, he answered. He’s not the same as the one in Mexico. The man was simple. We thought, in his diminished capacity, that—

  I don’t want to rehash it, but yes. I agree it was different, but it was a mistake. I want to know—no bullshit—do you even want to be free from the fire?

  There’s too many what if’s in this. What if I am lost and not the fire? How will we protect ourselves if we give it up?

  Henry, it’s eating you. I can feel it fucking consuming you and I’m powerless.

  I’ll say this:, Xavi is different. From what I see, he may well be able to do as he says. To me, he resembles Wiseman. Powerful in strange ways. Not entirely human anymore. I vote we try.

  Cassie opened her eyes to Don with questions plainly written across his face and Xavi sitting and awaiting the decision.

  “Let’s do it.”

  ***

  They spent the day learning about the pre-Black Star days. To Cassie, the good times sounded truly good. Two lovers on an adventure of discovery; it rang a familiar bell. They couldn’t be more different. A rich girl with every academic advantage, and Xavi, in his youth, must have made an extremely romantic guy. Still, what a time they had, falling in love. And the tragic end.

  Xavi sank into the comfort of a velvet recliner while Cassie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Don fidgeted with the computer. Cassie knew he could figure out what each knob on the old monitor did, but she figured he needed something to do. The machine produced a steady beep and spike of brainwaves as they were measured, each connected to Xavi, to Cassie, and back again to the computers.

  From above, Henry watched the old man transform in his perception. The guy was doing something big for sure. Henry had never seen anything like it. In Henry’s perception, people were vibrating, glowing eggs drawn in oval bands of light. A person’s mood and intent could be read from their color, like an aura, and the direction of their intent, an umbilicus extending from the egg’s center. An average man looked fragile to Henry. Their intent, almost randomly flitting around as they took in the world. Xavi, in comparison was a focused and closed energetic loop. His ‘egg’ was elongated and pulsed with a green light; vibrant, alive and seeing. He did not look like a human to Henry. Henry knew the Xavi-man-thing saw him then. It was gentle, welcoming, like the man it was.

  Neither with words nor telegraphed thoughts, Xavi called to Henry. He let himself be led in the always eerie, floating outside of the warm confines of Cassie’s heart and into the space between objects and people. Incorporeal. Suspended in air, but not touching it. Sensing the density of matte
r, yet easily passing through. Henry moved closer to Xavi and felt a tugging back to Cassie. His other was unwilling to come with him.

  That’s fine. He coddled to the fire thing. Sit. Stay. Roll over. He would always think of it as a playful puppy. Part of him remained stretched and attached to Cassie and the fire, while the bulk of his awareness moved ever closer to Xavi, who was still softly calling to him.

  Henry felt the tactility of flesh again as he settled into Xavi’s body. He rubbed the armrests with his finger tips. How nice it felt, a child wearing his grandfather’s suit. Old masculinity, the smell of man, but also the fragility of this casing. Aches and pains Henry had never felt in life came forward as alerts in his mind. Weak muscles, strains, something wrong down in his belly; he was hungry! All of Xavi’s flesh became Henry’s possession. With Xavi’s ears, Henry heard the beeping of the machine, his own heartbeat, Don’s nervous motions causing the chair to squeak, and then all of the noises became irrelevant as he looked at Cassie.

  He saw her beauty. It was the face he’d fallen in love with at first sight, now with lines of worry across her sun kissed skin, a nervous smile poised on her lips.

  He reached out to her touching her cheek with hands that belong to the old man.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Don broke the spell. “Guys! The computer is beeping some warnings here. I don’t know what to do.”

  Cassie ignored him. “Baby, I love you, too.”

  Don was the first to feel the temperature change. His shirt broke out in sweat stains as dark as blood, seeping from his pits, neck, and chest.

  “Cassie! It’s getting hot in here,” he said, alternately standing and then sitting.

  Henry’s voice came from Xavi’s throat. “Baby love, are you handling it okay? I know I’m not the easiest to live with. Never been a good roommate.”

  “Yes. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Henry was fully in the fleshly world, but he could feel Xavi’s manipulations. A sawing back and forth; tugging. Henry thought of images from high school health class of C-section operations. Pain hit him as a sharp spike, followed by a wrenching sensation of having his arm cut off and yet more tugging.

  “He’s trying something,” Henry said. He sounded scared and winced in pain.

  “Are you okay?” Cassie asked. Oh, God, don’t let this be another mistake.

  “I should have figured it’d hurt a bit.” The sensation stopped, but Henry didn’t think it was over. A pause, and then Xavi pulled and pulled. When Henry realized what he was doing, it was too late.

  Henry slipped inside the energetic spectrum, pulled away from the flesh, and heard Xavi in the throes of a rant worthy of a manic, fundamentalist preacher.

  “Come into me and we shall burn! I will unleash your essence on all things, and all things will be flame!”

  “No!” Henry cried. Xavi was mad. Xavi wanted revenge. How could he have missed this? Oh, to be fucking psychic energy itself and not see!

  The fire was spilling out of Cassie and into Xavi, flaming gasoline through a sieve. She slumped to the floor, hit by the force of the assault. Henry couldn’t put it back. The world burned hot and red.

  Henry lost his grip on the physicality of possession and fell inward, into Xavi’s mind. The man was a shell. A puppet. A liar. He was bonded. There was a black hand within, manipulating the flesh. Henry lashed at it in his struggle to free himself. On contact, he had a glimpse—a vision. The thread holding Xavi stretched farther than the moon, a foul, plutonic force spanning an inconceivable distance into space. Something horrible. Somethings horrible. Many. Legion. Monsters. Hungry. The core rage that made Henry who he was surged forth to condemn this vision, and his own golden thread back to the fire became a livewire. They were reunited and Xavi could not contain them. Together, Henry and his friend started their burning climb back out of the Xavi shell.

  Chaos up top. Henry was angry before, but he felt pure rage as he exited Xavi. He could not decode the scene. Xavi, old but suddenly not a frail man. No, he was wiry strength, on top of Cassie, hands wrapped around her throat. Don, pointing a gun at them; his mouth moved, but Henry couldn’t hear his words. Burn.

  The blast was focused, but uncontrolled. The gun went off. Xavi charred faster than he could melt. Henry blasted the molecules of air away from Cassie, pushing for his friend to wrap her in their protective bubble away from the conflagration. Fast, but not fast enough. The bullet wound blossomed red on her abdomen. Henry jumped into her, compartmentalizing the pain.

  Move! he commanded her flesh. Henry got them to their feet. The house would burn down from this. Everything was on fire. Don. Oh, fuck, Don.

  Henry reached him as he thrashed on the ground, but the burns were severe. He felt the blood pumping from their stomach as he heaved Don’s heavy frame into a fireman’s carry. Cassie was so strong, but if they survived, this would hurt later.

  He fucked up. He fucked up bad. He had to get to the truck. Find a doctor. Find help. He fucked up. He fucked up bad.

  ***

  Cassie woke to pain and someone crying. It was her own voice. She was crying. Her throat hurt nearly as bad as her stomach. She couldn’t move her body. I’ve been shot. Don shot me, she remembered. Henry, where are you?

  She couldn’t feel him. What had even happened? Fuck. She sent her mind inside, desperate for a Henry memory. Something strong, but oh, god, the pain. Such a cluster fuck. A charlie foxtrot. Damn straight, soldier. Her inner steel, a resident force of character, told her to cut the shit, control her breathing, and assess.

  Henry, come back to me, she sent once more to the inner silence. They had known better than to try this. God almighty, what a mess. Baby, baby, baby. Talk to me, please, she called and heard nothing. Siento pura angustia.

  She was laid out in the wet grass, a shirt pressed against her side, tied around her waist. She saw the red truck, but not the mansion, not the road. Had Don driven her out here to die? She craned her neck and winced with the pain it brought. Nope. There was Don. Unconscious. His own clothes melted to his skin with third and fourth degree burns. His breathing was shallow, but he breathed nonetheless. Cassie was glad he was in shock. She couldn’t help his burns—she couldn’t help herself. It was an unkind miracle he’d survived as long as he had, but he would die.

  She touched her own body, feeling for injury. Dark blood soaked up her shirt, down her jeans. She wondered if the bullet had passed through anything important. Was it still in her?

  Her mind flipped back and forth between trying to objectively evaluate her situation versus the true panic of realizing, Fuck! This is me. Then she reasoned, This isn’t as bad as it could be. I can still breathe. If the bullet is still inside me, it could be applying pressure on the internal vessels, controlling the bleeding. She hoped they’d have a doctor. A surgeon even. Hell, a veterinarian would be fine.

  A cold fact hit her: I might die. Would I become a ghost? Am I so changed by Henry that my essence is immortal? She didn’t think so. She might be harboring ghosts, but she was the one who felt hungry, the one who had to shit, and who was bleeding out. Fuck. The pain was so real.

  Wild eyed, Cassie stared up at the dying light through the trees. The world spun. The sun was up there somewhere. She wanted to see the sun. She saw Don instead. She saw flashes of her own bright red blood. The truck. Who had driven the truck? Where was Xavi? Somewhere else. And then, in the midst of the chaotic sights, Cassie saw a girl in a yellow raincoat standing five feet away.

  “Are you real?” Cassie asked, grimacing at the same time.

  The girl didn’t look scared. “We live in tent city.”

  Cassie’s voice cracked as she croaked out her question. “Is it near by?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “We need help. You understand me?”

  The girl nodded.

  “My name’s Cassie. My friend is hurt. I’m hurt, too. Can you go get help?” Cassie watched as the girl tromped back into the woods, not towards the road
. If the girl had been a hallucination, some little Cassie living in her mind, fuck, what was the point? Cassie felt herself losing consciousness, unsure if it was her imagination as she heard voices, footfalls in the forest. She didn’t care. They could eat her bones.

  “There she is, Daddy. Like I said.”

  “John, Ilze, help me get her on the truck,” said another voice. “Maddy, see if it will start.”

  Strong hands lifted. Hot dreams and muddled vision.

  “Henry,” she whispered. “What about Henry?”

  “Oh, god. There’s another one.”

  “Jeff, he’s gone.”

  Cassie felt the world dissolve. For a moment she saw herself from above. Whether this was imagination or astral projection, she didn’t know, but it wasn’t a good sight. She wanted to tell them what to do, but couldn’t remember what it was, or how to talk, only that she was drifting up and outwards.

  She saw the sky, a lapis so deep, and continued rising until the horizon curved and she perceived bright blue spots across the familiar outline of the map, zips of light connected the blue on a string of pearls. Pretty.

  ***

  Cassie woke up. To her surprise, she was alive. Where am I? she thought again and again. She’d awakened in the grass. Yes. Her last memory was lying in the woods watching Don die. No. She recalled being found by someone. They must have tended to her. This time, she woke and was on a cot in a tent. She tried to sit up, but the sharp pinch in her side flared. Raising only her head, Cassie saw she was naked beneath her sheet, save for a clean bandage around her midsection. Whoever had cleaned her up had done a competent job. They must be doctors, she thought. She’d been saved.

  Sunlight peeked through the tent flap with a breeze. This was a dream. I’m medicated, she decided. Morphine, Oxycodone—something strong. She wanted to muster the mental direction to reach for Henry, but her thoughts were cotton balls. Fluffy. Soft and tumbling.