Violet Ghosts

by Leah Thomas

  Where the man’s features should have been there was only a void. And it was growing, this cone that projected from his head to ensconce mine. As the dead black substance extended over my face, trying to hold me in its nothingness, the tendrils felt a lot like unwanted fingers in my hair.

  The familiarity of that made me so fucking angry.

  I reached for my stupid fanny pack, fumbled for the first object I could find, and whipped my arm upward. I’d hoped for the salt, but instead I threw the Bible at him. The book passed through his body and out the other side, proving as useless to him as it had always been to me. The book thunked against the floor behind him.

  The cone recoiled for a moment, and then a wailing, piggish squeal emerged from its throat. It sounded like sneering, if sneering had a sound. It sounded like jubilant condescension.

  My throat was a wad of paper in his fist. I wasn’t in a trance, but choking to death. I thought of Sarah and Patricia and Addy, who’d faced similar fates, and the unrighteous bullshit of the reality that people could end each other simply by squeezing their fists.

  There came an almighty crash as someone—Sarah? No, not Sarah, Addy—burst through the bedroom door, dragging the invisible bed with her, arms pulled taut as she fought the invisible weight.

  “What?” she demanded of the monster, eyes flaming. “I’m not enough for you? Leave the kid.”

  The dead man whipped his eyeless face toward her.

  I found the cylinder of salt and smashed it against the ceiling. Glass and salt filled my fist and fell down like bloody snow over the dead man’s body. Where the salt struck his flesh, it sizzled and hissed, and he recoiled. His grip loosened and I fell from the ceiling to the floor with an unhealthy crunch.

  The thing, furious as the television caught fire and the smell of cigarettes filled the room, leaned down as I gasped for air, wrapping the rope around my neck, whistling some song from a musical.

  I curled my salted, stinging, bloody hand into a fist and swung it into the black pit of his face.

  This time he fell silent, as if a scream couldn’t contain his pain, and suddenly, without warning, he vanished.

  I didn’t buy it for a second, but I didn’t have to. Addy stood wild-eyed in the firelight.

  “Go on,” she said calmly. “Now. While you can.”

  I gasped, eyes watering, coughing on the smoky air. “You too,” I rasped.

  “No, no. He’ll be back for me,” she said again, shaking her head. Addy was already retreating through the door, already letting her arms go slack.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “That’s how it is,” she said; the horror, the finality seeped from her voice. “There’s nowhere he won’t follow me.”

  “Go on, and take that kitten with you,” she said. “And don’t come back here.”

  Addy was pulled into the darkness, and the bedroom door slammed behind her, as if the strongest arm had closed it.

  MIRACLE-GRO

  I don’t know how I found it in the smoke, but seven scratches later, I made my way to the door, the squeaking kitten zipped up in my hoodie. As much as it had fought when I dragged it out from under the filthy coffee table, the little creature settled once it felt the warmth of my body. Its little heart beat against my bruised ribs. Together we stumbled through the scorching living room and kitchen—those newspapers had been kindling for the flames.

  In the room behind me, I thought I heard Addy cry out.

  How many times did Dad hit Mom before we finally left? How many times did he hurt us before it was enough? How close were we to death, to resignation?

  Why was I able to leave her there?

  I burst out into the frosted air and was met with the glare of amber headlights. I threw my hand up, squinting in the light.

  “Sarah?”

  But it wasn’t her. I knew this silhouette and gait.

  Seiji Grayson. His expression wasn’t unreadable anymore, but horrified as the motel caught fire behind me.

  “Seiji?”

  “Hi. I called 911.”

  “Seiji?”

  He pointed. “Your motel is on fire.”

  I fell to my knees in the snow.

  Seiji helped me to my feet, but I cried out when I put weight on the foot that had taken the brunt of my fall, so he hefted me up over his shoulder. I was too relieved to feel resentful or anything else as he led me to his truck and lifted me onto the open truck bed. The flames rose higher. Moments later, he joined me on the truck bed. My legs dangled, but his hardly did—he was so damn tall.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Your backpack.” His face was calm again, but his eyes reflected the firelight. “You left it in my truck.”

  I thought we might be dreaming.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks.”

  “This all looks bad. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your apartment is on fire,” he reiterated, as if reading a report.

  “That’s not my unit, not specifically.”

  He sat up. “Is there someone in there still?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head, Addy’s expression seared behind my eyelids.

  “Your neck is bruised to hell.”

  “Oh yeah. See, no one living’s in there. I was fighting with the ghost of a douchebag murderous fuck.”

  Maybe the oxygen deprivation was making me talk, or maybe I didn’t care to keep secrets anymore. As the flames licked the roof of the motel, I felt some kind of dark pressure rising in the air. I felt it, and wondered what it meant.

  Somewhere in the burning building, had the murderous ghost evaporated? Or was it just wishful thinking that anything we’d done in there had made the slightest difference? That we’d done anything but enrage a monster?

  What kind of person was I to leave Addy there?

  You’d have left Patricia, too.

  “Oh god,” I said numbly. “How can I ever face Sarah?”

  “Who’s Sarah?”

  “My best friend. The ghost who lives in your old Game Boy sometimes. She died in the seventies and now she’s stuck with me.”

  “Oh.”

  The motel roof caught fire in earnest. People from the other apartments ran out into the parking lot, and neither of us said another word until the fire truck and ambulance appeared. Soon after Mr. Mueller leaped from his truck shouting, “Plumbing issue, my ass! My ass!”

  Seiji and I watched him rant and rail, as if he were in a film we weren’t part of.

  We existed in this bleary reality, me and silent Seiji and the kitten in his lap. I thought I might never speak again once the swelling rose in my neck. The kitten, on the other hand, seemed like it would never stop protesting the horrors it had seen.

  “Calm down, little guy,” I said, as it screeched in Seiji’s reassuring hands.

  “Little girl,” Seiji amended. “Calicos are almost always girls. It’s a genetic mutation.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Seiji shrugged. “I really love cats.”

  “Really?” I paused. “You love cats and gardening.”

  “I love cats and gardening,” he agreed, “and you fight ghosts.”

  “Well, I don’t usually fight them. Usually I try to help them.”

  “But not today.”

  I thought of Addy’s resignation, the door slamming behind her. I trembled. “Not today.”

  Seiji said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  There was something about the snow and my bruises, something about the surreal events of the evening. “Why not. Here’s something: I’m a boy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I’m definitely a boy, but no one sees it and that’s super fucking annoying.”

  “Oh.” Had anyone ever said oh so many times, and had it ever been such a ridiculous and perfect response? “So you’re transgender. That’s tough.”

  I looked at him. I never thought anyone would know the word or say it so matter-of-factly, as if it
were legitimate. We lived in an ass-crack northern Michigan town, where people still played “Smear the Queer” at recess and thought “shim” was a clever thing to call girls who dressed like boys.

  Seiji Grayson watched the flames grow. Orange reflected off his black eyes.

  “Yeah, it is tough.” I had never imagined I could say so.

  “No wonder you’re so angry. Trans, seeing ghosts, and besties with a dead girl.”

  When he put it like that, I longed to laugh, despite all the ways it would hurt. I settled for a dozy grin. “Well, what’s your excuse?”

  “My mother died, my father left, I’m gay and Asian and in Podunk.”

  “That . . . that’s tough, too.”

  “Hey,” he added suddenly, “I’m pretty sure a ghost’s haunting our flower shop. Think you could help her?”

  “Um. Is that why you said you talk to dead people, too?”

  “No. It’s more general. Like, asking her for advice. She never answers. I can’t actually see her. But can you help her?”

  “I could try?”

  We didn’t speak again. Smoke rose to the sky. I couldn’t stop seeing Addy’s face, etched in orange and charcoal, and the scribble of the tarry bastard, too.

  I ended up in the ambulance because of my bruises and wheezing and sprained ankle, and because of the glass in my hand. Seiji watched with one hand in his pocket, the other wrapped around the calico kitten.

  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the intoxicating power of honesty. Or maybe we had always been aiming for fucked-up friendship, Seiji Grayson and me.

  I waved at him before the ambulance doors shut.

  OXYCODONE

  Mom showed up to the hospital in her work outfit: black pants and a black apron and a low-cut shirt revealing a hint of what she called her “tip makers.” Her makeup was a mess and she’d clearly been crying. The smell of cigarettes accompanied her as she burst into my hospital room.

  “Is she all right?” she demanded.

  “It’s a badly sprained ankle, so she’ll be on crutches for a while,” the nurse said, “although we need to have a word with you about her other injuries.”

  Mom blinked, then nodded. How many times had nurses asked my mother to step out to the hallway to explain away her bruises and black eyes to doctors and social workers? And how many times had Mom lied, called Dad a saint and a victim, before she couldn’t lie anymore?

  I dozed for a while—whatever drugs they were giving me made me very chill—and when Mom returned, she seemed less frantic. Her expression expunged the calm I felt, leaving something cold and sad and angry in its wake.

  “What the hell’s been going on, Dani? I know we haven’t been talking much lately, but I’m still your mother. I love you, you know?”

  I couldn’t nod, because that hurt a hell of a lot.

  “The doctors tell me you won’t say where those bruises on your neck came from. They say you told them you fell on the ice when you ran outside to see the fire. Daniela Rae, I’m not buying it.”

  My throat had swollen in the minutes since I’d arrived, and though I knew I wasn’t in any specific danger, I was grateful for an excuse not to speak.

  “Was it that boy at school?” I knew Mom meant Charley, and the idea, how near and far from the truth that was, made me nauseated. “I told you, you have to be careful—”

  “No, Mom, it wasn’t a boy at school,” I rasped. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “So you’re dating someone not at school?” She leaned forward. “I warned you—”

  “No—no! And you didn’t have to warn me. I remember life with Dad.”

  Mom fell silent. We rarely spoke of Dad or what had happened, that final straw that broke us all, but with the bruises fresh on my neck and the memories sharper than they had been in years, pretending felt downright stupid.

  “Dani . . .”

  “You never warned me about Dad, did you? You just let him do what he wanted.” My ears rang like sirens. “You let him do it.”

  Her posture stiffened. “I didn’t know he was doing that.”

  “You knew, or you suspected. You knew, and you ignored it. You ignored me.”

  “If you’re telling me I’m a terrible mother,” she said, shaking all over, “I know that. Believe me, I do. You think other people haven’t told me as much? You think I haven’t told myself as much every damn day? You hate me? Well, I hate me, too.”

  “Then why do you take his calls?”

  She shook her head. “Christ, I don’t know. At the shelter I learned about patterns of abuse. I know he won’t change—I do, Daniela. And I’d kill him, I really would, if he touched you again.”

  I stared at the hospital blanket, my pale knuckles.

  “But there’s still part of me that thinks he loves us. That thinks maybe, just maybe things would work out, if I tried harder.” She lifted her head. Her eyes were glassy with tears. “But he’s not coming back. I can promise you that, Dani.”

  I didn’t want to hear this. I wanted to hear her say that she was wrong. I wanted her to admit, finally, that she’d known what was happening to me in that trailer. But I didn’t think she could. I didn’t think she ever would.

  God, I wanted to hate her. I wanted to.

  “Right.” She stood, adjusted her hair. “I better head back home. Our place is intact, but there’s gonna be a lot to deal with in the morning. The fire tore through that whole building. No one’s hurt, but George is having a fit.” George was the owner of the building. If he didn’t have fire insurance, that was his own stupid fault. “We’ll be fine, but obviously the tenant in 7 has to move out to some motel for a while, and 9 and 5 will, too. Don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you were doing in there?”

  I shook my head, and she sighed.

  “Well, so long as you didn’t set the damn fire. You didn’t, right?”

  I couldn’t even blame her for wondering. It wasn’t like we knew each other.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  She squeezed my hand before she left. Her grip felt cold, or maybe mine did.

  BOUNCE

  My eyes shot open in the half dark of the hospital room.

  Sarah, caught in the green glow of the monitors, lay beside me, looking closely at my face. “You never told me that your father hurt you like that.”

  “Sarah!” I could have cried at the sight of her. She looked like herself, no blood on her chin. “How’d you get here?”

  “I hitched a ride inside your mom’s phone. Why, did I scare you?”

  My eyes welled. “I’m so glad to see you. In the motel when you disappeared, I thought—”

  “I know, I don’t know what happened. It was like the me was sucked out of me. I’m so sorry I left you alone with him. But tell me, because I have to know—is Addy okay?”

  Sarah lay alongside me like she had a thousand times, face close to mine. Sometimes looking at Sarah felt like looking at my reflection, or the reflection I might have had if things had gone another way, a thousand other ways. But I couldn’t face my reflection or the truth of what I was.

  “Dani? Did she get out?”

  “Yeah, yeah she did,” I lied. “She got out.”

  Sarah’s posture changed. Joy shone in her eyes. “Oh wow, really. Really? That’s amazing. That’s so—but Trish said she didn’t come to the shelter. So where did she go?”

  I fumbled for words. “Um. Away, I think.”

  “What, to heaven?” Sarah snorted. “No way.”

  “No, I think . . . ​she walked off into the woods.” God, I couldn’t believe myself. I shut my eyes and prayed Sarah couldn’t see me for the worm I was. “She didn’t want to live with us, I guess. Had her own plans.”

  “Oh.” Sarah sounded hurt, but as though she was trying not to be. “I mean, that’s her choice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Her choice, locking herself in with her killer. But my choice, letting her do it.

  “And? What about you? Yo
u okay, Dani?”

  “I’m okay,” I told her.

  “’Course you aren’t.” Her marble eyes caught the emerald light of the monitors. More than ever, she looked like I might be able to touch her. “But I’m jealous. You were out there kickin’ some murderer ass, playing the hero, and I . . . ​I couldn’t keep it together.”

  “Where did you go, Sarah?”

  “I don’t know. I just felt so sick, and then I . . . ​wasn’t, for a while.” She spoke calmly, but I could sense her frustration. The exorcism had been her dream, not mine, and I could not tell her what a nightmare it had been. “I tried to go back to apartment 7, after the fire, but I felt too sick again. I felt myself dissolving all over again. I don’t understand it. If he’s gone, and Addy’s gone, why can’t I go in there?”

  I closed my eyes. “Maybe because it was haunted for so long.”

  “Maybe. Even after the fire was put out, even after I went back . . . ​that buzzing’s carrying on, like a swarm of insects. Patricia won’t go in there, either, obviously. But I feel like such a waste of space.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Trish said that, too. But I feel . . . ​Dani, I was actually helpless.” Sarah shook her head. “I couldn’t help you, or her, or myself.”

  Tears started pouring down Sarah’s cheeks.

  “So why? Why wouldn’t she come live with us? Did we do something wrong?”

  “She had other places to be.” I longed to wipe away Sarah’s tears.

  “Or maybe she didn’t like us.”

  “No, Sarah.” That part I could tell her. That part was not rotten. “Addy—she saved me, you know.”

  Despite my sore throat, I told her about the events of the evening. I explained the murderer’s melting face and multiple hands and the normalcy of the rest of him, how he might have been anyone’s uncle before he vanished. I deleted Seiji and his help, and I deleted the awful truth:

  Addy and her killer were still in the wreckage of that apartment, and I’d left them there.

  “So salt and fire did it, then? I can’t believe it. Seems so simple. But next time we’ll be more prepared. Double the salt, and a bunch of matches, too.”