Violet Ghosts

by Leah Thomas

“I came to apologize,” I told her, before fear could stop me. “For leaving you here with him. No matter what you said, I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I took care of him,” she said simply. “I usually do when he shows up.”

  “But he keeps showing up?”

  “Oh, he always will. Can’t change some people, and can’t change what’s been done,” she said. “But I can cope with it.”

  “Wanna go for a walk, Addy?” I asked her.

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  Her shoulders trembled as she stood. Her legs seemed wobbly, and instinctively I reached out to help her, but she shook her head. “If you don’t mind.”

  She led the way out of the apartment and onto the sidewalk. Her feet were bare, and under the streetlamps I could see the bruises on her naked skin.

  Addy Williams paused to stare at the snow. “It was summer when he picked me up.”

  She’d re-formed her sheet into a toga, knotted at her shoulder. She looked like a regal ancient queen.

  “You know, I have left before. I don’t want you to think I haven’t, hon. But sometimes . . . ​well, I end up right back here again. I always end up back here. On occasion, I go looking for trouble, because at least I know trouble.”

  “I don’t know how you deal with it all,” I told her. “I can’t seem to deal with anything at all.”

  She looked at me, face set. “I come back here, but it’s become less and less often. Less and less and less. Lord willing, one day I’ll stay gone.”

  “Are you religious, Addy?”

  Her tights were wound into a decorative braid, which she wore as a necklace. “Where I’m from, you don’t even ask that question.”

  I wanted to ask her about heaven, about what she thought of her current predicament. But that seemed too big and abstract for the reality where Sarah might have left the world for good.

  “It’s cold out,” she observed. “Cold and dark. Not really a nice night at all.”

  “Not, not really.” I tried to hide my tears.

  Addy smiled, like she was caught in a sunbeam. “But not every night’s gonna be the same.”

  PATRICIA

  I waited until the next night to visit the lobby. I stood outside the door for minutes or hours, scared to open it. But a little voice called out to me.

  “Please come in, sir.” The little boy in breeches gestured me inside.

  When Patricia appeared behind him and hugged herself at the sight of me, I sniffled all the way to the couch. Little Alphonse sat beside me with his hand on my arm, light as tissue. “It’s all right, sir. Tomorrow is a new day!”

  I sobbed until I was spent. Patricia waited, quiet and gentle.

  “So aren’t you going to ask?” Patricia tilted her head toward me.

  “I—” I swallowed. “Sarah’s . . . Sarah’s gone, isn’t she?”

  I wanted to see Sarah—I always wanted to see her—but I didn’t want to chase violent ghosts anymore. Would my last vision of her be that screaming sadness?

  There were still things I had to say to her, and things she had to say to me.

  Patricia shook her head. “Most of the O’Connor ghosts escaped the fire, apart from the woman in black.”

  “God rest her,” Alphonse said quietly, doffing his cap.

  “Sarah, too. I think she got away.”

  I nearly slid off the couch. “So where is she? Why hasn’t she come home?”

  Patricia stood up. “There’s something you should see.”

  I followed her down the stairs.

  “I have been trying to find Sarah. I think she may have returned to her place of death, like I nearly did. Those places have a certain pull for us.”

  I thought of Addy. “Less and less. Okay. Her old house?”

  “Yes.” Patricia pulled up Sarah’s map. She had been updating it regularly, blacking out the red spots where we’d exorcised or “saved” ghosts. “For a girl who never experienced the wonders of Mavis Beacon, she was so good on a keyboard. Did you know that the spots on her map hyperlink to all her compiled research on each location? If this were a research project from one of my students, I’d give her an A.”

  Patricia clicked on the grocery store and we were redirected to a folder titled Malcolm, Tina. Inside were pictures of a murdered cashier, from her childhood to her Employee of the Month photo. There was a copy of her résumé and evidence she’d once been on the honor roll, the kind of ghostly information that will trail us all to the grave.

  “It’s so detailed,” I whispered, sitting on the floor beside her.

  “Yes, it is. She’s been incredibly organized. But more than that, she’s been incredibly empathetic, Dani. Did you know that she included lists of each person’s favorite things, including food they might miss and ask to have on hand when they arrived? She built family trees to see who’d miss them. In my own folder, I found notes on how she could help me reach my family, if I asked.”

  I pulled my knees in tight. “I had no idea.”

  “There’s something else, Dani. Sarah kept folders on the killers, too, but she kept them separate and password protected, as if she wanted to protect each woman as best she could. I think it is easy to see Sarah as vengeful, but she is so much more than that. We wouldn’t have loved her so much if that was all there was to her.”

  Patricia gave me a moment to my thoughts, then returned to the map. “There’s only one location that doesn’t link to an external file.” I knew the house she’d point at even before the cursor moved.

  “That’s where I met Sarah. Her old house—our old house.”

  “At 134 Abbott Row?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought as much. This is the only address she hasn’t looked up, according to her search history.”

  “Well, she already knows what happened there.”

  “Did Sarah ever tell you what happened there, Dani?”

  “I promised never to ask. She said she’d leave if I did.”

  “Usually I would say that was her business. But when Sarah got into my business, I got a new home. Being nosy isn’t always a criminal offense. Dani, has Sarah told you anything at all about her killer?”

  “No. She wouldn’t. Just that one hint, the night we talked about the shelter.”

  Patricia nodded. “She said she couldn’t exorcise her killer, because he’s still alive. Did Sarah ever tell you her last name?”

  “Never.”

  “When I checked the real estate records of the house on Abbott, I discovered that two families lived there in the 1970s. The first was a couple with no children, but the second was a family of six—the Zielinskis. The Zielinskis had two daughters and two sons and lived in that house from 1974 to 1979.”

  “Sarah . . . ​Zielinski.” Knowing her full name made her seem like someone else. “Was there a Sarah Zielinski?”

  “There was, according to the 1976 Rochdale High yearbook. Sarah Jean Zielinski, class of 1979. Here’s a picture of her as a freshman.”

  The photo left me breathless. I’d never seen Sarah wear anything but her white nightgown. There she was, long dark hair parted down the center, big goofy smile on her freckled face, wearing a brown tasseled vest and a rainbow-striped shirt.

  The living Sarah, the girl I’d never known—she had been there all along, but I hadn’t looked for her. Maybe I’d been respecting her wishes, but maybe I’d wanted my Sarah to be the only Sarah that existed. It was either selfish or selfless, but I couldn’t pretend Sarah had ever been mine.

  “Did you . . . what did her obituary say?”

  Patricia whistled, long and soft. “That’s the trouble. There wasn’t an obituary. In fact, according to the records, Sarah’s family reported her missing in 1976”

  Patricia showed me the yearbook photo again, but this time it was smaller, a grainy black-and-white image slapped on a missing poster.

  “The police thought she was a runaway, and the family agreed that was likely. Sar
ah had a history of running away from home. Eventually the Zielinskis accepted that she wasn’t coming back, and moved away without her.”

  “But she hadn’t run away,” I whispered. “Oh god, she was right there with them, right there in that house. She had to hear them giving up on her, packing up and moving on without her. I mean—how could they not have known?” I thought of Sarah under the beds of her brothers or sisters, unseen and alone. “Why wouldn’t they have felt her there?”

  “Not everyone’s like you, Dani. But only Sarah could say if they knew she was there.”

  I inhaled, covering my dead eye. “Someone in her family might have put her there.”

  I knew the statistics. I knew what was likely. Long ago, when I first met Sarah, I asked her, didn’t I? Did you know that the majority of murder victims are killed by acquaintances or family members?

  I’d never forget Sarah’s answer.

  Yeah, I definitely know that.

  Maybe I’d guessed it, like she’d guessed the truth about my father’s wandering hands. But neither of us chose to breach that delicate silence. “But . . . her body?”

  “Sarah Zielinski’s body has never been discovered, and that’s one reason she’s still listed as missing, not deceased. Whoever killed her may be out there growing old, watching football, attending the weddings of their children. Similar evils occur every day. Her body might still be in that house, Dani.”

  I stood. “I hope the rest of her is, too, so we can bring her home.”

  SEIJI

  Seiji was leaning over the silver table in the storage room, carefully plugging reeds into a rectangular plant pot. The entire counter was lined with minimalist arrangements, single lilies with leaves folded into curves, purple blossoms, and bark.

  “Hey, I heard you’re in a gang. I’ve got a few scars now—can I join?”

  Seiji stood up and nearly knocked the pot from the table. There wasn’t much to catch—just some ribbon grass, but Seiji set each stalk carefully back where it had been. It took more than a minute. Once he was finished, he strode forward and wrapped his big arms around me.

  It was the softest bear hug. I hugged him right back.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  He shrugged and blinked damp eyes.

  “Yeah, I second that.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of ikebana.”

  “I like your arrangements. They seem simple but they’re really, really not.”

  “Oh.” Seiji blushed a brilliant red.

  “Seiji, do you want me to try talking to your dad?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t punch him anymore.”

  “Um . . . what does that mean?”

  “I need time to think of what to say to him. I don’t want to mess it up.”

  Over his shoulder, I saw his father’s ghost watching the pair of us.

  “Sounds like a plan. Seiji, can you help me with something important?”

  “I can try.”

  That was about the best anyone could do.

  As we left the back room, he hesitated and glanced at the cluttered shelves.

  “Is he here now?” he asked, his voice breaking.

  “Yeah, Seiji. He is.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Seiji commanded of the air. “Don’t you dare, Dad.”

  SARAH ZIELINSKI

  The house on Abbot had been on the market since we’d left it behind. It was a dump when we moved in, and a dump when we moved out, and even now the house was decorated as though The Brady Bunch were still on the air and shag carpets ruled.

  I doubted it had ever been stylish, but for me it wasn’t so hard to imagine how two bedrooms, a family room, and a basement had housed a family of six. I’d lived in a trailer park for years. Proximity like that was unpleasant, but possible.

  Seiji knocked the door in with a single kick. I bit down another yakuza joke as we stepped inside. There was still some neglected furniture in the family room, a table we hadn’t bothered moving and a three-legged chair coated in dust. The air smelled of mildew and cold, and rats had made their home in the corners.

  “SARAH?” Seiji hollered. “WE’VE COME TO BRING YOU HOME!”

  So much for tact or caution. But of course if Sarah were here—and I felt certain she was—all the caution in the world wouldn’t make a difference. She would already know we were here.

  Maybe bringing Seiji was a mistake, but I didn’t want to do this without him. Seiji wasn’t here to rescue me if I got into trouble, but as company, as a guarantee of my not having to walk home alone later.

  “Where should we start?” Seiji had brought a bag of picks and shovels from the shop.

  “The bedroom’s where I met her.”

  “That’s where she died, but maybe not where her body was buried,” Seiji pointed out. “What if her killer buried her in the woods? In a lake? Or anywhere?”

  “I don’t have any other ideas.”

  Seiji nodded. “It won’t hurt to make sure.”

  Oh, it could hurt, but what else could we do.

  We began dismantling my old bedroom, prying up the floorboards with a crowbar. Beneath the sordid carpet and wooden planks we found only impenetrable concrete. I mentioned the closet, so Seiji beat through the back of it with the shovel until we could see my mother’s old room on the opposite side. When all the floors and closets in the house failed us, we hacked holes in the bathroom walls and pried off the kitchen cupboards. We went outside and searched the side of the house. Seiji kicked in the tiny grate over the crawl space and I crept inside, gasping on cobwebs, discovering dead things that were not Sarah: spiders and rats, mostly.

  I emerged empty-handed and coughing, on the brink of tears. “What if she really isn’t here?”

  Seiji patted me on the back. “A lot of times on TV, it’s the backyard.”

  “The yard is tiny.” It was past midnight, the air brittle with cold.

  “That will make it easier to search.”

  Seiji kicked at the frozen dirt and found several places where the turf seemed wrong; he said he’d spent enough time around growing things to know when something was amiss. Maybe he was bullshitting me, trying to make our mission seem less futile. We raided the shed and combed the garage, and I imagined I saw her everywhere.

  As dawn approached, I collapsed at the foot of the only tree in the backyard (there were no bones beneath it, not that we could find). The roots dug into my tailbone.

  “We haven’t checked all the walls yet. I can tear up the kitchen tiles.”

  “You don’t have to, Seiji.”

  “I’m going to,” he said, and he lumbered back into the house, a shovel in one hand and a hammer in the other.

  Would I ever be strong like him? Would I ever be strong in any way at all?

  “Aren’t you tired, Dani?”

  Very slowly, I turned my gaze upward, tracing the tree trunk at my back. I could only see her feet hanging down from a branch yards above my head. I’d know those ten toes anywhere.

  “I am tired, Sarah. Aren’t you?”

  “My body’s not here, you know,” she said. “Don’t you think I’d have told you if it was?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah,” I replied. “There’s a lot you didn’t tell me.”

  “Rightbackatcha. Maybe you were right about our secrets. You should have told me about your becoming a boy, for instance.”

  “Damn it, Sarah, I didn’t become anything.”

  I heard the leaves rustle. Her voice carried its old sarcasm, but had it always sounded so forced?

  “See? I see why you couldn’t love me. I’m not a good person.”

  “You’re not a bad one, either. And I really did love you.”

  “I’ve hurt you for years.” She laughed without humor. “But you couldn’t even do me the favor of exorcising me.”

  “Maybe I’m a bad person, too. I’ve been too selfish to let you go.”

  The leaves stilled. “You realize we’re in a toxic relationship, right?”
/>
  I nodded. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean you should die for it. Again.”

  “If I were a better person,” she said, so quietly she might have been the wind, “if I were better, I’d tell you that I think I’m only here because I’m sapping your life. I’d tell you that you should wash yourself clean of all of us, Dani, and life might go better for you. You might start winning all your races.”

  “I can’t wash away the people I love.” It was so hard, trying not to climb up that tree after her, splinters be damned.

  “You’re fifteen, for Christ’s sake. Go make some stupid, petty decisions!”

  “Maybe you were angry, Sarah. But even if your intentions were messed up, we have helped a few people.” I thought of Seiji’s words. “Maybe it equals out.”

  “I thought that one day I’d feel better. When I met you, I really thought I would.” The wind rippled through her shaking feet. “But I bled for a long time, Dani. And I’m stuck in perpetual teen angst. Can you even imagine?”

  I laughed. “No, that’s gotta be hell for sure.”

  “I was barely older than you. I’m still immature and anxious and that can’t change. I died before I knew what to live for. Isn’t that the fucking worst?”

  “The worst. Sarah?”

  “Go ahead,” she huffed. “Get it over with.”

  “Who killed you?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Your father.” I breathed in memories of alcohol breath and the feel of creeping hands.

  “My brother, my uncle, my father. What difference does it make? My whole family covered it up. They all helped bury me, while my mother hid inside.” Sarah spoke matter-of-factly, but I heard the branches shudder. “He’d been doing things to me for years. I thought it meant he loved me, but when I got older—I realized . . . I tried to leave.”

  She ran away more than once.

  “I wish you’d left them for good.”

  “I should have,” she said. “So I think I’ll leave now.”

  I could see the bottom of her chin, but not her eyes. “Sarah?”

  “I don’t want to be like them,” she confided. “God, I don’t want to love you the wrong way, Dani.”

  “You wouldn’t.”