The Ghosts We Hide

by Micah Thomas

  “When my kind were so banished from our homelands, Cassandra, how can I explain? I was anchored to this man. I am this man. My greater self and this localized self are one. Think of yourself and your former guests, but more so intertwined. There were many of us not anchored in this way. I saw them scatter far and wide, dust in the wind, but I caught one—a special one—and kept it safe.” He wore a wistful expression. His face was relaxed and his gaze outward, as if lost in a memory.

  “You have a lover?” Cassie’s eyes widened with surprise. They are like us after all.

  “Nothing so analogous to your way of being, but we had personality back home. Essential predictions; as we rose and fell together, some aligned and some dissented. We aligned from the beginning. I knew the cold nothing out there would be unkind to my friend. Yes, friend. If there were an anchor here, compatibles would be leveraged.”

  “So you kept your girlfriend in a moth jar waiting for someone like me?”

  Hakim offered his hand to Cassie. “As you say. I’m sorry your solitude is to be so short-lived, but are you ready now? Every day, every moment, I am supporting my friend with tremendous energy expenditure. I have split my focus between her, the city, and the others. While I am so divided, things fall apart in my city. Billions of lives depend on me. We must hurry.”

  “I’m not going to back out. You did your part, but I want to know, will I still be me? Your room—these things are from the real Hakim. Is he still there?”

  “I am here, and you will be, too, but some of this, you will work out between you two. I can not say how this will be.”

  “I’m pregnant,” she blurted out. As she said the words, she had to close her eyes to hold back more tears. What have I done? She held her stomach and let a nervous tremble move through her body.

  Hakim smile gently and offered her his hand. “I know. Everything will be fine.”

  “Promise.” Cassie accepted it. His skin was warm and his grip, firm but comforting.

  “I promise everything will be as it must be.”

  ***

  Thelon was in bed with the lights out, unable to sleep despite being exhausted. The last trip had shown him something important, but he couldn’t remember now. He’d decided if they tried to put him in the goddamn bathtub tomorrow, they’d have to carry him in. Enough was enough. He’d fight them if he had the strength. Thelon heard footfalls and path lights dimly lit up the hall. He half-opened his eyes to see Jim.

  “Hey young man, you sleepin’?”

  “No. I ain’t sleeping. If you’re here to take me back for another float, you can fuck off.”

  Jim leaned over Thelon and rested the back of his hand against Thelon’s forehead as if to check for a fever. “They wearing you out, yeah? Feeling different? Anything different happen?”

  “No, man. Get off me. You come in all nice and concerned. Let me ask you something: who did you kill to get here? Did they deserve it?”

  “Fair question. I thought they deserved it. I was taking a bad man off the streets. I killed myself.”

  “Suicide is considered murder?”

  “Yup. I guess they don’t really advertise that as a capital crime.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I had my reasons. I wasn’t a good guy before Eden, either. Whatever happened before Eden—or before ending up here—doesn’t matter. We’re doing something here.”

  “Do you see it, too? The Boogie Man?”

  “Yeah, I see it. The thing out there, it’s not our punishment.”

  “What is it? Why doesn’t the king shit Hakim do something?”

  “I think he will, but I don’t know he can do that much. I don’t know where you were when the shit went down back home, but it wasn’t a fight. He whisked us up without going to war. The kind of violence that landed us here, it’s not his thing. Can’t stomach it, I’m guessing, but he’ll do something.”

  “What are we expected to do?”

  “Our time. Learn how to be better people. Pray.”

  Thelon struggled with the idea. “Why me? Why am I forced to see this?”

  “I don’t know. Adeline…” Jim sighed as he thought. “We’ve got special instructions for you, and I’m sorry. I’m not religious, but have you thought it’s god’s plan for you?”

  Thelon hadn’t. He rejected the idea fully. This was Hakim’s plan and he was sick of it, but he didn’t tell Jim. He was tired and knew better than to argue with the religious.

  “All right. On that note, sweet dreams, little prince. Things will get better.”

  “Yeah, yeah. How do you know?”

  Jim left Thelon’s cell. The motion sensor hallway lights clicked on and then off again as Thelon tossed in bed. We’re fucked, he thought. If I was back in Eden, I’d probably marry Furie. Maybe make a baby. Do that thing where we leave the city for the country. If and when the end came, they’d just be wiped out. Thelon wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t shit.

  He was still tossing in bed when a profound anxiety came over him. Something was wrong with his body. Thelon was going to puke so he tried to sit up but found he couldn’t move. Spots appeared in his vision, yellow explosions of light whether his eyes were open or closed. He was losing his shit. He thought it was an acid flashback or whatever it was they’d been pumping him within the float tanks. They’d done it: broken his mind for real. A seriously weird sense came over him that he was a cup and someone was pouring water into him.

  Thelon’s voice unlocked, but his shout came out as a whisper. “Adeline! Jim!” He’d gotten the words out when he saw—as if he was in the float pod—the cell in an entirely new light, yet overhead they were still turned off. This was a new illumination. Particles of matter, molecular bonds, and dynamic energies surged around and through all things, linking them in lines of force. Through the walls, Thelon could sense see the others, luminous orbs of energy bouncing around, making food, fucking, laying about—all buzzing in white gold splendor. What was that thing in Harry Potter? They were all snitches.

  Thelon laughed, because a snitch in prison meant something else, and all at once, the sight left him back in the dark. His anxiety calmed and he felt good, but he was not alone. Sitting on the edge of his bunk was a man not much older than him. He was a glowing ghost of a white guy who needed a haircut.

  Hey, Thelon. I’m Henry. We’re gonna be cellmates in the prison of your mind. Oh, shit. And, we’re in actual prison, too. What do you think about that?

  “Jim!” Thelon shouted.

  Dude, calm down. You saw some shit when I came in, didn’t you? I know you did. You saw more than Cassie ever could. He was right: we are a perfect match.

  Thelon felt Henry digging around in his memory. The sensation creeped him out; it was like suddenly being conscious of where your tongue was in your mouth and not knowing where it usually sat.

  Yeah, I’m up there, in your mind. This body you see is just a projection. I’m not even actually sitting on this pretty decent bed you got. There’s a lot to explain, and I’ll do my best, but I’ve never been accused of being a genius. The big thing to know though—and it’s a fucked-up thing—is I didn’t come alone.”

  Thelon stood up then sat back down, passing his hand through Henry’s image. “You’re in my imagination?”

  I guess. I’m projecting this image in your mind. A weird old fucking wizard type taught me how to do it. I hated him, but I guess he’s gone now.

  “Where did you come from?”

  Earth. Seattle. I’d bounced around awhile, got into some trouble. Shit went sideways and I’ve been living—if you can call it that—inside my girl’s head. I’ll give you the movie version later, once you are used to this…to our arrangement.

  “You and your girl have a fight? Just gonna crash on my brain couch for a while?” This was crazy. He was talking to a ghost; he was fruit loops. They’d melted his brain.

  No. Henry’s ghost sighed. The boss down there, Hakim. We go back; got history. We made a deal and he Sent me out h
ere to help you shitheads with whatever is out there.

  “Why are you doing this? You said you’re a hustler, but you haven’t said what you’ve got yet.”

  I’ve got you, my man. But no, being inside my girl—me and our friend—we were hurting her, possibly killing her slowly; a cancer. She gets to live now. And so do I, I guess.

  Thelon caught a wave of longing and love when Henry mentioned his girl. Deep, deep, deep shit. Of course he answered these feelings with sarcasm. “So you’re a good guy? A white knight?”

  Easy. Me and my friend are not like anything you can imagine.

  “You keep talking about your friend. Do you have multiple personalities or something?”

  Naw, man. Naw. Let’s do an introduction.

  Thelon felt his awareness gently sucked backwards until he was sure he was falling down into the bed—through the bed and into the body of the moon. He was in strong, gentle hands; Henry’s hands. Snatches of Henry’s thoughts bubbled up around Thelon in his descent. None of it made sense, but Thelon could feel this guy had some pain; sweetness, hurt, and almighty rage. His floating stopped at a little green island in the dark, illuminated seemingly by its own light. The thing was a little mound of sweet grass with an old tree plunked down the center of the hill. Henry materialized next to him—not all blue and ghostly from before, but as real as anything. Thelon could see he was only a few years older than himself. He looked tired and road-worn in busted sneakers and a torn up leather jacket.

  “I was kinda like you. Bad attitude,” Henry said. “I see why we were a good fit.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Yeah, but I see your mind. Only you were a little spoiled kid and I grew up on the street. You learned the hustle in your own way, but I knew the hustle—or thought I did. Then I got played by some serious fucks in an experiment straight from the movies and landed on a little island like this. Except the one I went to was not even in this universe. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I think we woke up some cranky old god and it kicked everybody out of the pool. Anyways, on this island, I met my friend.”

  With a crack and a pop, the tree sprouted fiery leaves, and in the center of its trunk was a small star, as bright as staring into the sun. Thelon felt the thing’s awareness calling to him without words.

  “What is it?”

  “I have no fucking idea.”

  Henry reached out to the fireball, which leapt into his chest. Thelon saw the tendrils of light spread through Henry’s body, illuminating him like his veins were LEDs. “What we are is not nearly as important as what we can do. Let’s go back upstairs.”

  Thelon was again in his cell.

  This was not a dream, Henry said directly in his mind. Stand up, kiddo. I want to show you something.

  When Thelon dawdled, Henry said, I could move you like a mother fucking puppet. On your feet.

  “All right, boss,” Thelon whispered. “Whatever you say.”

  Naw. It’s not like that; I really want you to see.

  As easy as putting on a pair of holo glasses, another layer was added to the world. With Henry’s help, the gaze didn’t wildly fly around the prison, but stayed within the room.

  I know I said you have a real nice bed. I meant that, and I’m sure they can fabricate you a new one.

  Thelon felt his awareness rapidly zoom in on the mattress and understood without knowing how. He perceived tightly bound atoms, a circling electron in a little family of matter held together by some fluke. And it wanted to change states.

  Feel that? Trippy, right?

  Thelon felt something come out of him—a new appendage; a long extra finger or a weird tail—and it flicked the mattress right into combustion. From his vantage point, it was the most beautiful thing Thelon had ever seen.

  Adeline piped in through an unseen speaker as the sprinklers extinguished the fire, “Please, sirs, no more unplanned fires.”

  “You know about this?” Thelon asked.

  “The timing of Henry’s arrival was asynchronous to our internal messaging capabilities. I trust you two are getting along splendidly now.”

  Thelon shot a middle finger to the walls and then the ceilings—wherever that machine might have eyes on him. “Adeline, can you setup a bathtub for me and my man, Henry? There’s something I want to show him.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HENRY WAS AN avenging angel. They were anchored by Thelon, whose mind held the connection to their body and acted as an observing tenant of this impossible landscape. Henry and the fire were there, propelled through real space and entirely freed from all considerations except to burn. Silently screaming through space at tremendous speeds, Henry felt a fabric of rippling, curling in his wake. He didn’t care if he was igniting galaxies. He reached the penumbra of the thing Thelon called the dread star. As he approached, he encountered an envelope of hate and malice that reeked to his senses. Skimming along its outer surface, Henry saw life. They were physical creatures—bugs, termites, or bacteria beneath a microscope—and they were diseased, consumed and possessed by the entities in their mind. He perceived their possession clearly, and it relieved him of guilt. His genocidal acts would be a mercy. Their war was already lost for these hosts. Whoever these physical aliens had been, their minds were gone. If Henry couldn’t destroy them, everyone on Earth would share their fate. Thelon was right. Henry’s confirmation of knowledge was instantaneous and he shared it with him.

  Fuck ‘em up, Thelon sent back.

  They saw him. They wanted him. They sent psychic feelers towards him, offering peace, and it was a lie he saw through.

  Here we go, Henry informed Thelon, and then tore into the others, imploding their most fundamental molecular structures. Henry found common base elements—the ingredients for electron excitement: methane. Henry might have sucked at chemistry, but his special friend’s anatomy knew what would burn. Across the surface, a geometry emerged in the plasma scar and Henry saw for the first time, magnified at scale, his own shape was branded upon them.

  Good. Let them know me. He spread his atomic fire across the starfield. Fuck, it felt good.

  Still they came forward. Henry felt their true scope with the envelope burnt away. The vastness had confused his perception. This was bigger than any planet. This was bigger than a star. Gravity, mass, and terrible energies were breaking physical structures of the fabric of spacetime. This shit was warping space. His own riptide was utterly irrelevant. The thing within Henry sparked angrily; it wanted to burn, to ignite a sun within the mass. Henry acknowledged this wasn’t a terrible idea, though he was not at all certain they could manage it.

  Not good. Not good at all. Henry retreated to Thelon’s anchor, now nowhere near far enough from the awfulness coming towards them.

  “I saw,” Thelon said, but his voice was muffled by static as if he was communicating over a bad phone line. “You went Super Saiyan and it didn’t do shit.”

  I went what?

  “Super Saiyan.”

  I can’t understand you. We need to go back. Tell Hakim what we’ve seen.

  More static, then, “While you were all kamehameha out there, I saw something. Come to me. Look with me.”

  Thelon—the goddamn Zen master not even aware of where this cool, calm, collected feeling had come from—connected to Henry and directed attention, sliding the field of view across the sky. All his time in the float sessions had given him skills and here, now, Thelon remembered how to use them.

  What am I looking at?

  “Henry, shift up. Be less literal. Can’t you see it?”

  I see stars. I see gravity. Space. Whatever. You’re going to have to help me out.

  “What do you feel? Quiet down a bit. What do you feel?”

  There’s a horrible disease out there, hungry to destroy us.

  “Can you move to my assemblage point? I can barely hear you,” Thelon said.

  How?

&n
bsp; “Relax.”

  For a moment, Henry thought his connection to Thelon had dissipated, leaving him lost and floating in space. He was an awareness comprised of a human energy, bonded at his core with an entity that excited matter. His audit of parts found no Thelon. Where are you?

  “Here,” Thelon said and encompassed Henry. The effect blotted out the stars, covered the bad thing festering with its annihilation put on hold.

  Thelon wrapped a new dimensional view around Henry—an abstract, maneuvering of the set pieces. They were in an empty dance club. Thelon was over by an array of DJ equipment.

  “Would you believe I figured it out?” Thelon said almost distractedly.

  “No. Maybe. What did you figure out? Where are we?”

  “This is the universe, baby.”

  “Literally?”

  “There is no literal universe. I saw it. While you were doing your thing, I had an epiphany. Those baddies—the boogie man—aren’t out there while we’re over here. That’s an illusion based on perspective. Dig it?”

  “Not at all.”

  An angry wind howled against whatever was the outside to the dancehall. The windows were too high and dark for Henry to see out of, but there was something out there.

  “It’s one system. All the layers, the other worlds—and I suspect they are too many to count—are one system. As above, so below.”

  Henry did not understand.

  Thelon flipped a combination of switches and, on the stage, neon gasses took the shape of a waveform similar to musical notes in a spectralizer. “This is the world. This is you. This is you on drugs.” Thelon laughed.

  “You’re going to tell me the universe is alive, right? I’ve heard this before.”

  “Yeah, but we’re just parts. The others are just parts. We’re a mole on a magnificently huge body. We can’t see the whole thing, and we could live our whole time thinking we were the body, but we’re just a spot.”

  “I knew someone who liked to get deep like this. A hippie.”

  “Then you know, or at least suspect, some of this.”