Wraith

by Phaedra Weldon

  As I passed the park my thoughts turned dark for the second time that day. Everyone has bad events in their lives. An embarrassing situation in school, maybe a humiliating public assault on their character. They might have even been mugged or fired from a job.

  A rape…that’s something that never heals. Oh, the scars aren’t so visible, sometimes. And the physical ones mend. But nothing mends the mind, or the memories. I’d managed for years to simply put those memories away, file them in a secret locked place.

  But every now and then they bounced to the surface, like a buoy held beneath the ocean too long. For months after I dealt with those moments alone. I knew groups were the in thing. The way to combat all manner of horrors was to share those experiences with others who would understand.

  But you see, not many people see their own rape. They feel it, remember the hurt, the pain and humiliation. But me…I saw everything.

  I was twenty-two and had just left a dinner play at the Shakespeare Tavern on Peachtree. The Tempest—my all-time favorite of Bill’s masterpieces. And there’d been a new guy with our clique.

  His name was Barry Stephens.

  Cute. Smart. A friend of one of the girls in my business class at Georgia State. We’d flirted just a bit during the play, and he was charming. Polite. He offered to take me home.

  A small voice inside my head warned me this wasn’t a good idea. I barely knew him. But I never listened to that voice. Still don’t.

  How many times in my life had I known regret in never paying attention to my instincts? It wasn’t that I sensed imminent danger in Barry himself—but there was something wrong—somewhere.

  On the way to my mom’s house he wanted to go by Piedmont Park. There was something he wanted to show me there. Something special. I said no at first—it was late, and I couldn’t shake that ominous feeling that something dark waited around the corner.

  The air had just turned cold and windy, like now. It was November six years ago. He’d given me his coat, and I remember the smell of Drakaar cologne and minty Speed Stick deodorant. It’d been months since I’d been kissed, much less touched, even casually.

  I’d suspected he’d been having the same impure thoughts as I, and maybe there was some place in the park he liked to take advantage of. I’d never been in the park at night, which made the whole exercise a bit thrilling.

  As we neared the pool, he pointed up at the sky. The lights from the city stole most of the night. No stars twinkled, though I knew it’d been cloudless all day. But if I looked closely to the north, I could see the moon. It was full, a mere shade of its true beauty, but there.

  I felt his arms slip beneath mine, behind me, my back to his front. Barry pulled me to him and I melted backward. He rested his chin on my right shoulder and I could hear his breathing, almost taste the breath mint he’d slipped in when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  “This is the only place in the city where I’ve found you can see the full moon,” his voice was a whisper. Deep. Soothing. “What’s even more special is how it reflects in the pool.” He chuckled. “That is, when it’s full of water.”

  I smiled and turned in his arms. I kissed him. Miss Bold, that’s me. He tasted minty-fresh, and his lips were warm against mine. I wanted to be held, to be touched tenderly.

  Barry made a noise then, gurgling deep in his throat. Something warm and coppery tasting filled my mouth. It came from Barry’s lips.

  I pulled away, only a few steps. He stood there, the lights from the city illuminating only one side of him, the other was cast in shadow. His eyes were wide. His mouth was open, and something pooled out like dark, chocolate syrup.

  The front of his shirt was also dark.

  I saw the clean slice along his neck as he fell to my right, all the while making moist, wet, gurgling sounds as he tried to bring air into his severed throat.

  I managed a good-sized scream before something struck me from behind. I remember seeing stars and falling to the cold, hard ground. Hard because I cracked my skull on it when I landed. Something heavy pressed on my chest, pinning me down, my arms at my sides. It smelled of vomit and dog piss, the way my great-aunt’s house did when they found her six days after she’d died, locked in the house with her two poodles.

  The same hard blows happened several times against my face, over and over when I tried to cry out. I’d never been hit so hard before—to the point of being aware of what was happening but unable to do anything about it. My body refused to move.

  How many times had I seen this happen in the movies, on television, and I became so disgusted because the women didn’t just kick the rapist in the balls?

  But fear is a funny thing. It can motivate you to do strange things, like lift a car from a child, or it can make you do terrible things, like murder, or it can rob you of all movement and make you meek as a kitten.

  I was a kitten, unable to move or defend myself, afraid he would slit my throat as he had Barry’s. I was only coherent enough to whimper as my jeans were unfastened and pulled down to my knees. I closed my eyes, and I could hear Barry’s rasping breaths to my right as he gasped for life.

  I could hear my attacker’s excited breaths hovering over me even as I tried to open my swelling eyes and see him. And I did see him illuminated in the same light that had shown me Barry’s wounds. Matted blond hair, wild blue eyes. His lips were chapped. Round, red sores dotted one corner.

  As he bent down to me, I tried to cry out again. Something was shoved into my mouth and my lips stung as they were smashed against my teeth. I felt his breath on my face, telling me to shut up or he’d kill me.

  And when it started—when he shoved his penis roughly inside of me—I cried into the gag, unable to comprehend what was happening. He held my wrists out to my sides, jamming them into the ground over and over as he thrust himself deeper and deeper inside.

  I wanted to die.

  I wanted a hero to rescue me.

  I heard Barry’s final, strangled, dying breath.

  I wanted to be…away.

  Even as I listened to my rapist’s rhythmic grunting, I heard something else.

  It was the sound of tearing cloth. I recalled that noise from a childhood memory. Listening to it when my mom would tear the hem from one of my shirts to restitch it.

  And with it came a searing pain that spread into every muscle, toe, finger, nook and cranny of my body. The sensation overwhelmed the horror of what was being done physically to me. I screamed into the cloth as I felt myself lifted up, wrenched from the ground.

  He paused and hit me again, only harder this time.

  The final blow.

  The pain ceased. All pain. Gone. I was nearly taken with the abrupt end to the agony of his thrusts, of the fire that had spread throughout every inch of my body.

  The only sound was that of his breathing. His grunting thrusts.

  I stood in the moonlight, looking down at my hands. At my feet.

  Barry stood beside me and smiled. He’d reached out for my hand, but I couldn’t touch him. He was insubstantial. He wasn’t bleeding either. And he looked sad as I watched him fade away to little more than a group of twinkling lights that spiraled upward into the city sky.

  The sounds of the night returned. Traffic. Someone yelled out across the park. And there was panting. It echoed inside of my head. Slow. Deliberate. Sated.

  I turned and looked down.

  I saw his white ass in the light, thrusting over and over and over again. I was frozen where I stood as he continued to have his way with me, oblivious to the fact I no longer struggled.

  And then I saw my own face.

  I saw my eyes open. Staring.

  I saw the cloth forcing my jaws wide apart.

  Was I dead?

  How—how could I be standing, watching, and lying on the ground? WTF?

  And when he’d finished with one orifice, I staggered back as he removed the rag and shoved himself into my mouth.

  I ran. I ran as far as I could away from m
y body. It was broken. Defiled.

  Dead.

  I tried to get the attention of two cops sitting in a black-and-white near the park’s entrance on Piedmont. They heard me, which made me happy.

  But they couldn’t see me. I told them I was being raped. A boy was dead! I yelled at them to go to the pool and shoot the motherfucker! I shouted at them over and over.

  They stood outside their car and looked into the darkness, guns drawn, looking for the source of the disembodied voice.

  Was this death? Was this Hell? I’d seen Barry disappear. Why wasn’t I disappearing? Was I not going to Heaven? My old Catholic upbringing surged forward, and I started reciting my “Hail Marys” over and over again.

  What had I done…

  WHAT HAD I DONE?

  I was the one being raped! I’d never harmed a single soul! Why was I still here? Why? Why? Why?

  No one I passed could see me.

  But they could all hear me!

  I wandered around like a lost soul for a while, freaking out passersby as I asked them to help me. And when they heard a disembodied ghost, many of them ran the other way.

  And the whole time I wondered why I wasn’t going to Heaven.

  I’d never done anything wrong!

  Finally, I found my home, where I lived with my mother on Chandler Street near Little Five Points. I wasn’t cold. But I was shivering. I was breathing, but I didn’t see any breath in the light outside the house.

  Mom was asleep, and I tried to wake her. I wanted her to call the police and tell them I was being raped. That my body was in the park.

  My hands passed through her.

  I couldn’t wake her. As many times as I was forced to remember that moment, I don’t know why I never called out her name. I think I was afraid she wouldn’t hear me.

  And I was damned.

  I went to my room and into my closet. There I kept my old stuffed animals. My old white panda sat in the corner on top of a pile of shoes and old clothes. I wanted to grab him up and hold him tight, to bury my face and my tears into his soft, worn fur. I wanted to smell his mustiness, so comforting. So familiar.

  But my hands passed completely through him.

  I wailed. I cried. I sat in that closet, too terrified to move or step out again. I had no idea what was happening to me. If this was Heaven or Hell.

  Before the phone rang.

  They’d found Nona’s daughter in the park, beside the body of a young man. His throat had been slit, and she’d been raped and stabbed.

  Stabbed. The bastard had stabbed me.

  I followed Mom into the car and went to Grady Hospital. It was the best place in Atlanta for trauma. I kept quiet, unsure of what to say as I listened to the doctor talk to my mom.

  She was crying. She wanted to see her baby.

  I was in a coma. Head trauma, they said. The knife just missed my heart, but had pierced my lung. I was in ICU.

  I wasn’t dead?

  But I wasn’t expected to live.

  I’d moved past them all to the room where my body was.

  I’ll never forget that moment, seeing myself hooked up to machines and tubes. My face was bruised, my lips black-and-blue. A tube rested between my teeth, taped there. My eyes were closed now.

  Wires from my chest trailed from beneath the hospital gown. My arms were bandaged and taped with more tubes.

  I looked like a thing, something from a horrible science-fiction movie. Me the victim keeping the world alive.

  My mom came in and burst into tears. I’d never seen her cry like that before.

  Mom had always said I’d taken more after my father and his personality. Sarcastic. Easy to bounce back after any situation. Not this one.

  I’d been at a loss for words.

  They gave her a chair, got her some coffee.

  And she sat by my side.

  I stood beside her, watching her watching me.

  I knew then she really loved me. My mom. So strong. So impervious to the world’s hurts.

  And then I noticed the cord. It ran from my navel to the navel of my body. And it was fading. Disappearing. And when it disappeared completely, I knew instinctively I would be officially dead.

  I don’t know how I knew it, I just did. The clock on the wall said six thirty in the morning. I’d been like this for nine hours.

  I wasn’t dead—I was dying.

  And when the doctors left, my mom spoke out loud. “Well? Are you getting back in? (sniff) Or am I going to have to spend my savings on a funeral?”

  It had taken a second before I realized my mother was looking at me as I stood beside my body.

  “You can see me?” My voice echoed in the room.

  She sniffed. Blew her nose. “I can see things. Always have. When I noticed you in the backseat, I thought you were already dead. But since you’re in a coma”—she pointed to the bed—“there’s a chance you can survive. If you stay out like this, then you will die. Your body will. You going to let this asshole get away with this? Or are you going to get back in and fight? Put him away?”

  I blinked at her. “Aren’t you just a little freaked out by this?” I’d pointed to myself and glared at her. “This isn’t normal.”

  “Neither was your father. You need to make a choice soon, or your body’s going to make it for you. The living body can’t exist without the soul for very long before it starts to break down.”

  What? “My father? Did my father do this shit?”

  “Get back in, and I’ll tell you, Zoë.”

  I hadn’t thought about it like that. If I died, they really wouldn’t know who did this. Oh, I’d shouted to Adam-12 by the park, but I doubted they’d actually listened.

  “Mom, I don’t know how I got out. I’m not sure how to get back in.”

  “You see the cord?”

  I looked at my stomach. “Yeah.”

  “Follow it back in.”

  I looked at her. “And that’s it?”

  “Well”—she dabbed at her eyes—“it’s not going to be easy. I’m sure you’re going to hurt like hell. The bastard did a number on you.”

  She looked away from me then. “Don’t leave me, Zoë.” She looked back at me. “Don’t leave me alone.”

  I melted then. I could never leave this strong, fierce woman alone. Though I’d never seen her like this before.

  I took a step to my body. Would it work? Would I be able to get back in?

  I did, and the world disappeared.

  But I knew nothing for three days. I didn’t know if it was from the damage from the blows to my head, the stabbing, or if it was from the drugs they’d given me. The world just went blank as I slept.

  And healed.

  And when I did wake up, I screamed from the pain. It reached from my toes to my hair. I couldn’t move—couldn’t talk. Well, who can with a tube down their throat?

  In private my mom assured me I would be fine. My soul and my body were getting reacquainted. That was the burning sensation.

  Riiiight. And exactly how did she know all this?

  Eventually I could form words again. Slurred, but coherent. I gave them a description of my attacker, Barry’s murderer. But it was really too late. It’d been three weeks since that night.

  Three weeks of my life. Stolen.

  And as the detective mentioned, they never caught my attacker, Barry’s murderer. But when I do find him, I plan on finishing the job myself.

  12

  I was shaking by the time I reached Fado’s. I didn’t like thinking about that night, or the weeks afterward. I didn’t like being reminded that sometimes, when I was alone at night, I searched the shadows for him.

  And I sniffed the air for his foul scent.

  I parked the Mustang in the lot. Business was slow for a Thursday evening. I grabbed up my phone, shoved the hook onto the edge of my jeans, got the folder, and locked up the car, and hurried inside. The air was crisp and smelled of rain. The wind had grown stronger. A few crusty, brown leaves blew pa
st me as I stepped inside.

  It was dark as usual, which I liked, then didn’t. I went to the bar immediately. Daniel was there, seated on the same stool as yesterday. The aroma of fried fish and beer was heavy, and my stomach lurched.

  Ignoring Daniel, who stood when I approached, his stool scraping noisily against the wood floor, I turned to the bartender. It wasn’t Dags, and I felt a slight bit of disappointment. This guy was shorter, with a shaved head and dark soul patch beneath his lower lip. “Whiskey. No ice.”

  He nodded, and I remained fixed on what he was doing. Daniel stayed quiet, and I felt him watching me, scrutinizing my actions, and at that moment, it didn’t matter.

  The bartender set the shot glass of whiskey on the table. I scooped it up, took a deep breath, and downed the firewater in a single gulp.

  And fire it was—igniting my entire esophagus on its way to an explosion in my stomach.

  Oi! I knew the stuff killed brain cells, but at that moment, I wanted it to deaden emotions.

  I nodded to the bartender and croaked out, “Irish coffee” before taking up the barstool I’d had the day before.

  “Can I ask…” Daniel nodded to the empty shot glass.

  I kept my gaze locked on the bar. Most of my concentration was kept busy by my will not to throw up. “No. And yes. I don’t like to be…reminded of bad things.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “The file, right? Please, forgive me. Can I start the evening over?”

  I swallowed bile. “Sure,” I managed to croak and turned on the stool. “Hi.” I waved, then immediately felt twelve.

  “What, no bunny slippers?” Lieutenant Frasier looked even nicer now than he had yesterday. He still wore a nice suit, though he’d shed the suit jacket. His shirt was white and wrinkled, and his tie was pulled loose from his neck.

  He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his eyes were a brilliant blue. “I thought maybe you were a figment of my imagination. The way you disappeared like that yesterday.”

  “Sorry about that.” I blushed. GAH! I blushed! “I got a little sick and needed to leave.” Though not as sick as I was gonna get if I didn’t get rid of this whiskey. What the hell was I thinking? I realized then I was holding the folder in my arms in a Klingon Death Grip.