by Chloe Garner
“What was that?” she asked. He howled laughter and nearly fell.
“I don’t know. I didn’t know I could do that. I just… thought it.”
“Let me in on the joke?” Jason asked. She looked at him darkly.
“Sam just tried to make me kiss you.”
Jason jerked his head back in surprise and looked at his brother.
“Would have been funny,” Sam offered. Samantha dropped her elbows off of Jason’s shoulders and walked over to punch Sam in the stomach. He doubled, but not hard, laughing again.
“We are going to have a very long conversation about what I will do if you ever, ever do that again,” she said. He cackled and she turned. “But in the meantime, I am going to go set that poor woman and her husband free. You’re welcome to join me, if you feel like doing your jobs.”
She turned and ran down the hallway. Jason looked at Sam for a long moment.
“What’s up?” he asked. Sam rubbed his face and shrugged.
“Would have been funny,” he said.
“Uh huh,” Jason said. Sam looked at him and sighed.
“So. I really like her,” he said. Jason nodded.
“Apparently.”
“I don’t want her to leave,” he said. Jason shrugged.
“So?”
They started walking after Samantha. Her footsteps echoed up the stairwell.
“Some day at the end of all of this, we’re going to want to have normal lives, and we’re going to have to let each other go. And she’s going to hate me, and I’m going to hate her, apparently.”
Sam had tried to explain it a couple of times, now. Jason took it on faith and nodded.
“Okay.”
“So, I was thinking. Maybe if the two of you were together, we’d be forced to spend enough time around each other that we’d learn to be friends again. Maybe if she stayed for you…”
Jason grunted and looked at him.
“You want me to date your girlfriend so that she doesn’t leave you? That’s messed up, even for us.”
“You have a better idea?”
Jason sighed. Everyone liked Samantha. Even he did. Some major rift driving her away didn’t appeal to him, but…
“She’d never go for it. She can’t stand me.”
“If I could talk her into it, would you be willing to give it a shot?” Sam asked. “That’s all I’m looking for. An open mind and a couple of attempts.”
“Sam. I’ve never had a girlfriend in my life. And the idea that I could, would stay with one girl for any serious period of time, not to mention…” Jason looked at Sam and spread his arms. “Even if she were willing…” He paused, considering his next words hard. “I’m not sure I am.”
“Just a shot,” Sam said, his face earnest. “I can’t think of anything else.”
Jason twisted his mouth, then sighed.
“Fine. If you can talk her into it, I’ll take her to dinner and we’ll talk about it.”
“Thank you,” Sam said. They had made it to the bottom of the stairs and Jason opened the door. He could smell smoke, and red light was playing back and forth off of the walls. They followed the light to where Samantha was standing in a doorway watching a pile of refuse burn.
“Skulls, mostly,” she said. “Few mandibles. Couple of hands. He’s been building this altar for decades,” she said. I think the widow and her husband were his first. She’s been tied to him ever since.”
Blue light swirled in the center of the room and all three of them stepped back as soul after soul escaped out of the burning altar. Samantha shifted her backpack and glanced up at Jason.
“How did you know where to find it?” he asked.
“She showed me. It was kind of a trick adding back in all the walls and doors, but she’s been wandering here for thirty years. She knew the place better than he did, because she could get to the holes in the walls.”
“That’s kind of cool,” he said. She nodded.
“She was pretty amazing. Being stuck like that, being able to hear her husband crying out for her. She watched him die. He thought she was going to live if he let the demon kill him, but the demon just tortured her to death after. And she kept it together, waiting for someone to come and kill him. Amazing strength.”
“Grieving widows generally have similar stories,” Jason said. “But they turn mean. They blame the living for what happened to them.”
She nodded.
“Not her. I didn’t ever find out her name. I wonder who she was.”
Sam rested his hand on her shoulder.
“She’s moved on, now.”
Samantha looked off into space to her left.
“Is it over?” she asked. She waited. “You honor me.”
Jason looked, but couldn’t see even the suggestion of a spirit.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
“Complicated,” she said, then smiled at him.
“They’re gone. Let’s get out of here and call the fire department. Maybe if we’re lucky, they’ll be too slow to save it.”
They headed back up the stairwell, and Jason hung back, motioning to Samantha.
“He wants us to… date,” he said, indicating Sam.
“I know. We talked about it last night.”
“And?”
“It’s about the stupidest thing I can think of,” Samantha said. He sighed, relieved, then caught the warning on her face.
“You’re going along with it?”
“Could you say no to him?” she asked. He grimaced.
“No.”
“If he wanted it enough, it would be physically impossible for me to tell him no. It’s even harder when he isn’t making me.” She looked up ahead where Sam was carefully not looking back at them.
“I don’t have any better answers, either.”
Jason stared at her so hard he nearly missed the next step.
“So you’re going along with this. Seriously.”
She shrugged.
“What do you want me to tell you?”
He stopped and waited for the door to the stairway to close behind Sam.
“How you actually feel about the idea of being on a date with me. Of having to tell people that I’m you’re boyfriend.” He waited. Surely that would have the desired effect. She watched him plainly for a minute, then smirked.
“You’re more terrified of it than I am. This place is a death trap right now, you remember? Get over it, indulge him for one night, and then we’ll decide it’s a no-go.”
He backed into the door, astonished, then stood aside for her to walk through.
“You really do love him,” he said. She tilted her head and turned as she passed him, walking backwards for a few steps.
“I do.”
“And you’d rather indulge him and date me than risk it with him?”
She rolled her eyes.
“What?”
“Not you, him. He’s already outside, and we’re giving him false hopes. Come on. I don’t want to talk about it right now. We’ll get it all over with at once.”
“But we agree this is a bad idea?” Jason asked.
“It’s a massive mistake, every way I can think of,” Samantha said.
“Okay. As long as we agree on that.”
<><><>
They left in the morning, driving west at random, and Samantha produced out of nowhere a headphone-jack-to-cassette-tape adapter that hadn’t been used since people had last tried to take portable CD players running.
“Where did you get that?” Jason asked.
“Yard sale,” Samantha told him.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Who still has something like this?” he asked, flipping the cassette end over and over in his hands.
“People who still drive cars with cassette players,” she said. “Like you.”
He gave up and put the adapter into the cassette player and she settled into the back seat. He glanced over his shoulder as she plugged in th
e power adapter and then the headphone port, and when he started the car, the speakers blared something that wailed and thumped at the same time.
“Sorry,” she said, turning it down from her laptop.
For the rest of the day, when she wasn’t asleep, she sang; Jason was quickly convinced that she knew every word to every song on her computer. Some of the music was awful, but some of it wasn’t that bad. It saved him and Sam having to carry a conversation, and there was something familiar and comfortable about Samantha singing in the back seat. The day passed quickly and Sam indicated that they should stop in Nashville.
“It’s still early. We can get at least another hundred miles in,” Jason said.
“To go where? Besides. You’re going on a regular date. I’m not letting you go to some roadside diner at midnight because everything else is closed.”
“What if I told you that I just don’t find her attractive?” Jason asked.
“Is that true?” Sam asked him.
“No.”
“Okay.”
“What if I told you that there’s no way it would ever work?”
“Prove it.”
“Look at my track record, man,” Jason said.
“No. Try it and prove it.”
“Isn’t it going to drive you crazy, knowing that a girl like her is out with a guy like me?” Jason asked.
“She knows how to use a knife,” Sam said. “But. Yeah.”
“This is nuts, man. Let’s just keep driving.”
“Tell me what better idea you have, and I’ll listen. But you only have until this exit ramp to come up with it, otherwise we’re finding a place to stay tonight and I’m ordering pizza and you two are going out without me.”
The exit ramp came too quickly for Jason to come up with any better arguments, so he got off the highway and they picked a motel.
“You two really do forget that I’m back here, don’t you?” Samantha asked.
“Not any more,” Sam said, staring out the window. Jason heard Samantha smile.
“I’m sorry, Beloved,” she said.
“Don’t,” Sam said and turned. “Don’t say that.”
Jason looked at him, concerned, but Sam shook his head. Too complicated. Like having a different kind of twin, indeed.
They checked in and pulled the right bags out of the back of the Cruiser, then Jason and Samantha were staring at each other.
“This is a huge mistake,” Samantha said. Sam was on the phone with a Chinese delivery place, and he put the phone against his chest.
“Go,” he said. “Now.”
“I’d tell you not to wait up, man, but we’re coming back here, either way,” Jason said.
“Not going to work. Go.”
Jason shrugged at Samantha and opened the door for her.
“What sounds good?” he asked.
“Dunno. How about you?”
“Steakhouse?” he asked.
“Sure.”
They drove toward downtown until they found something that looked decent. Jason didn’t like having to look around her every time he turned right. It felt like they should have been talking, but there wasn’t anything to say. She fidgeted with the radio.
“It’s obvious now, how you get all the girls,” she said.
“You aren’t really my type,” he said.
“Fully clothed?”
He made a face at her.
“My brother’s girlfriend,” he suggested.
“You’ve never stolen one of Sam’s girlfriends?”
He considered the list for a few minutes as he parked the car.
“What’s your point?” he asked.
“Just trying to figure out what’s so extra special about me that you’re going to freak out, when you have so little trouble with anyone else,” she said innocently. He leaned against the steering wheel.
“Truth? I have no idea where this is going,” he said.
“You’ve lost your mojo because you’re not trying to close me,” she said condescendingly, then closed her eyes and leaned back against her seat.
“So we both know what Sam is hoping for, or at least what he’s doing his best not to root against right now. What do we want?”
“For it to be over?” Jason suggested.
“Do you want to be friends, Jason?” she asked. It took him aback.
“Oh, gee, friends with a girl? I’d never thought of that,” Samantha mocked.
“Kara and I are friends,” Jason said defensively.
“Do you know anything besides her measurements and how she tastes?” Samantha asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Fine. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t get you. You don’t get me. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends,” she said.
“Would that mean that I have to stop teasing you?” Jason asked.
“Why would it?” Samantha asked.
“As long as we’re clear on that,” he said, then opened his door.
“You do have to get doors for me,” Samantha said as he got out. “Date rule.”
He obediently walked around the Cruiser and opened her door, bowing deep as she got out.
“That will do, Jason,” she said, patting his hand. He grinned and offered her his arm.
“Well, well. There are manners hiding down deep, there, somewhere,” she said.
“Aunt Connie did her best,” he said.
He opened the door for her to go into the restaurant and an enthusiastic hostess showed them back to a table.
“Would you like me to get your napkin for you?” he asked. He had seen it in a movie once.
“That’s a server’s job, not the host’s,” she said. “But good try.”
He grinned.
“So, I’m on a date with a girl that I’m apparently not going to sleep with. What do we talk about?”
“How about something you’d never talk about on a date? No small talk, no broad, rose-colored life overviews. Tell me a story. Something important.”
“I don’t talk about myself on dates,” he said.
“See, perfect. Besides, you’re always with girls who have no idea what you do, right? I know. Tell me a story.”
He thought. The waiter came and asked them for drink orders, then brought beers and took their meal orders before he had come up with anything that he didn’t reject out of hand.
“So, Sam and I were thirteen. Mom and Dad had just died, and Aunt Connie and Uncle Matt had taken Arthur and Doris to court to get custody of us. So we were in this new school, and all of these rumors were going around about us being freaks, and Sam just couldn’t shake them. I joined the soccer team and the basketball team and, god, I hated the coaches, but practices a few nights a week and having a bunch of guys that I could go push people around with in games. I could forget what was happening in our lives, and I was actually pretty happy. Sam was miserable. From the beginning, I’d get into shouting matches with Uncle Matt when he tried to control me, and Sam would sit up at night with Aunt Connie and talk about… Sam stuff. You know.”
“Be nice,” Samantha cautioned.
“He’s my brother. I’m allowed. Anyway, it had been maybe four or five months. I had friends, I had a couple of girlfriends. I was good at sports, it turned out. Sam was like, a peon on the math team, or something. I feel bad, looking back, but we were thirteen, you know?”
“Middle school sucks,” Samantha agreed.
“So. After Christmas break, one of Sam’s friends starts acting weird. Like, doesn’t really remember Sam, doesn’t know why people avoid him, that kind of thing. He mentioned it to me, and I blew him off because I had practice or something. Over the next week, though, I remember the kid. He started picking fights. Got his nose broken one afternoon. One of my buddies. And, I’m not standing up for the kind of friends I had back then, but it wasn’t actually my friend’s fault. Sam’s friend took a swing at him at lunch, with everyone watching. He started hitting on girls, like, the way I hit on them now, way before it was normal
for a kid to talk to a chick like that, and everyone started avoiding him. He even hit Sam once, when Sam pushed him too hard trying to figure out what was going on. And I mean, Sam had more than a foot on him. This was one of the kids who was last to hit his growth spurt. Serious pipsqueak.
“Anyway, Sam told me something had to be wrong. Like, our kind of wrong. I told him what Dad always told me: to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Not everything is our kind of problem. But Sam was convinced the kid was possessed. So we hatched this plan that Sam was going to bring an iron nail to school - they aren’t that easy to find, for a thirteen year old, actually - and he was going to scratch him with it. We did know that demons hate iron, even back then, by the way. Just didn’t know that lead wasn’t lethal.”
“It’s molten in Hell,” Samantha said. “They don’t know that it should hurt them.”
What a strange thing to know.
“I guess that makes sense. Anyway, if the kid got pissy and took a swing at him again, that would be the end of it. If he screamed and went murder-eyes, I was going to be around to help him handle it.”
“A pair of thirteen year olds in the middle of a public school?” Samantha asked.
“Okay, so we didn’t actually think that part through very well, sure. We cobbled together the weapons we could find around the house - there weren’t many of them, outside of a few religious symbols - and Sam went and found his friend before school started and tried to scratch his hand accidentally-on-purpose. And the nail just went through.”
“What?” Samantha asked.
“He was a ghost. A Fetch, to be specific.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s another word for a Doppelganger, but people think that a Doppelganger just looks like you. They don’t. They stick around after they die and they stalk you and they get angrier and angrier, until they look identical to you, and then they kidnap you and ruin your life while they torture you. If you get away, your life is ruined. Sam’s friend wasn’t so lucky. The Fetch blinked out after Sam realized what it was. We skipped school that day, looking for his friend, but they found him the next morning with his wrists slit. It turns out he had gone canoeing the previous summer, before our parents died, and the canoe had tipped over and the friend he was out with drowned. And blamed him for it. He was covered in all of these bruises, weeks’ worth of them, and for a while the police looked at his parents for child abuse, but they finally figured he was abusing himself because of his friend’s death, and ultimately killed himself. Sam had really never dealt with the idea that people died when we didn’t do our jobs well enough, and he swore he was out. That he was just going to be normal. That was when I decided that there was no way Uncle Matt was going to make me give it up, though. I can’t save them all, but dammit if I won’t try.”
