Wraith

by Phaedra Weldon

  That smell lingered with me for a while, too.

  And it was that smell that surrounded my first conscious thoughts as my body convulsed when I slammed back into it.

  My second thought was closer to mygodthisfuckinghurts.

  Or something along those lines. I thought I’d said it out loud, then realized I hadn’t heard myself yet.

  Knives carved away chunks of flesh as I moved, and it felt as if my bones had somehow broken and snapped and ripped my skin to shreds.

  My knees, elbows, and ankles banged painfully into something hard. The sound of pounding metal rang in my ears.

  And there was that smell.

  Cold. Freezing cold. Naked cold. There was a cold that reached from the top of my head to my toes. I shook so violently I was close to vibrating. Not even the fire searing my joints could warm me up.

  I opened my eyes to darkness. Had the temperature dropped outside my car? I reached out to feel the sides. Smooth. Polished. Metallic. Don’t remember my trunk feeling like that.

  I continued moving my arms up, then to the sides. Fire ignited my joints, my muscles burned as if I’d fiercely exercised the day before. No—this wasn’t my trunk.

  I was in a box.

  I screamed.

  Nothing came out. I opened my mouth again and called out for someone, hoping like all hell I wasn’t in a coffin.

  No. No. Coffins were all satin and cushion, weren’t they? Still nothing came out of my mouth. What the hell?

  I banged and banged on the sides—and that’s when I realized I was naked.

  Butt-naked.

  Bare on a metal slab. With only a stiff sheet to cover me. In a metal box.

  And the smell of formaldehyde…

  Oh Jesus…

  I was in the freak’n morgue!

  Oh that did it. Hysteria, thy name is goddess. And I was feel’n the need to lay down some serious power to get the hell out of this box.

  First order of business—was there already an autopsy? ‘Cause if there was, and I was back in my body—

  The name ghoul came to mind.

  I felt myself up—well—I ran my hands along my chest, over my breasts. No stitches. No cuts. No autopsy yet.

  I had to get out of this box.

  Drawer. You’re in a drawer, girl, not a box. Well what makes a drawer better than a bloody box?

  And why wasn’t my voice working? Maybe I just couldn’t hear it in the box.

  Drawer.

  Whatever.

  I felt around above my head. Bodies were usually put in feet first, right? Or at least that’s what I remember from watching CSI. That way you could look at their faces when you pulled them out.

  So that meant the opener was above my head. Somewhere. Surely they’d have like—a catch or something? An emergency release in case someone gets trapped in one of these things?

  Then again, alive people aren’t supposed to be in one of these things.

  I’m not sure if it was my quick finger searching, my constant pounding, or that maybe the medical examiner’s assistant didn’t close the door all the way, but the drawer abruptly opened.

  The formaldehyde smell flooded the interior of my cell, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t realized how stale the air had been inside the box.

  Drawer.

  Box-drawer.

  Shaking, I reached out through the crack and grabbed at the upper edge, pressing down to push the drawer forward, sliding naked me out into the open.

  Only a few fluorescent lights pulsed slightly above me, but they were bright enough to make me blink repeatedly. I assumed it was still night—and everyone was home and tucked in their beds. But oh no—not me. I’m in a drawer!

  Box.

  I’d never been in a morgue before. It was perhaps the length of three of the larger SUVs on the market, at least from my half-prone perspective. I felt exposed as I pushed myself up into a sitting position and gripped the single, flimsy, starched sheet. I was on a slab extended from the wall, in the middle of three columns with three rows that made up one wall of the room.

  Not all of the wall. If I leaned out a little. I saw a sink with a high-arched faucet. Two bare examination tables—the kinds with hoses on one end and big octopus lights overhead—sat in the center. I saw several gurneys over to the right against a wall of shelves. The gurneys were occupied with sheet-shrouded bodies.

  This was nuts.

  I called out for someone as I looked down to see my bare feet dangle over the drawer’s edge.

  Nothing came out of my mouth again. I put a hand to my throat and winced. It was still sore and raw. Had Mitsuri done more damage than we thought and somehow damaged my voice? Or had being stuffed in the cold in my car’s trunk made me catch a major case of laryngitis?

  I opened my mouth and just yelled. Nothing. I heard air passing through, but no sound. Well—I didn’t have time for this. I was cold, hungry, damp (had they had me on one of those tables and hosed me off just before I woke up?), scared, hungry, thirsty—

  I heard voices and looked in front of me, finally seeing the double doors leading in and out of the morgue. Smoked glass revealed shapes as they passed back and forth.

  Yelling out again (what’s with my voice?). I carefully, if not a bit unsteadily, eased myself off the table. My legs refused to support me, and I immediately collapsed onto the floor. Kerplunk.

  Well, more like a plop. Me and the sheet. Bare flesh on shiny, cold tile floor. Ow.

  Okay—major problems here. Voice was on the fritz as well as my legs. What the hell did the doctors do to me? I checked again to make sure I wasn’t cut open in some way. I didn’t see the big Y-shaped accessory down my chest. So what the hell was going on?

  “Whoa, easy there. You’ve been out of body too long.”

  Okay—that wasn’t me.

  I covered my nakedness with my hand—about as well as a fig leaf—and looked around for the voice. It’d been a male voice.

  The medical examiner?

  I tried to say “hello?” but that didn’t come out either.

  He seemed to appear from behind me and moved to my right to the rows of cabinets. He was dark-haired and wore a red flannel shirt and jeans. He pulled a dark blue fleece blanket out of the first door he opened, then came directly at me.

  I stared up at him as he wrapped the blanket around me. Beautiful, in a sort of outdoorsy way. Long face, short black hair that sort of had that spiked look in front and at the crown.

  “There,” he said in his nice voice. He smelled of soap and antiseptic. “Getting warm?”

  I said yes, but again nothing came out of my mouth, so I nodded. I still shivered, and I still ached. Mr. Mystery-Hero put his arms around me, around the blanket, and helped me to my feet. With a quick glance at the door, he practically carried me to a desk and sat me upright in the chair.

  After rearranging the blanket around me, he grabbed a stethoscope from the desk, shoved it into his ears, and placed the ice-cold end on my chest. “Hold still and breathe.”

  I did as he asked, though I hadn’t been able to stop shivering. My teeth chattered.

  He listened a few seconds, then pulled a penlight from his back pocket. He shined it in my left eye, then my right. “Okay, pupils are dilated and fixed, which is normal, at least for you as of now.” He looked directly at me as he pushed a strand of hair out of my face. “I’m sorry about you waking up in the drawer. I’d intended on having you out of it when I restarted your heart, but I had unexpected company and had to hide.” He smiled, and it only improved his looks. “It’s a good thing you didn’t return when the ME was in the room. I’m afraid having a corpse pound on the drawer might have sent the old geezer into cardiac arrest.”

  I tried to ask him who he was. I tried asking him where I was. I demanded to know why I couldn’t talk. In the end, I only managed to sob. And even that was quiet.

  What the hell was happening?

  “Hey, hey, shhhh.” He folded me in his arms again, and though he was
warm and alive, I was still cold, and damned scared. “That’s one hell of a wacky tattoo you’ve got on your arm there, girl.”

  As he pulled me away, he touched my neck with soft hands, gently moving my head to the right so he could shine his penlight. “But that bruise necklace you’ve got there isn’t a tattoo, is it? But that’s not why you’re in here.”

  I sniffed and shook my head. I tried speaking again. I could feel the air moving through my vocal cords, but there was no sound. Not even a squeak.

  After I tried to sign to him that I needed a pen and paper, his eyebrows arched up. “Wow, are you deaf?” He licked his lips, then said in slow loud words. “You. Are. Deaf?”

  Why is it when people think you’re deaf they believe shouting will break through the physical challenge? Duh.

  I shook my head and tried again to ask him who and what he was. Nothing. Not even a squeak. AHHHHH!

  And what was with this headache?

  “Can. You. Write?!”

  I nodded, and if I could have bitch-slapped his pretty face, I would have. He leaned to my right and picked up a pharmaceutical pad and pen from the desk. With the worst, shakiest penmanship I’d ever seen at my own hand, I wrote, I AM NOT DEAF. STOP FUCKING SHOUTING!!

  He smiled at me without even a trace of resentment or anger. “Feisty. That’s good. You’re gonna need it. You’re Zoë Martinique? I found your driver’s license in your purse.”

  I nodded. AND YOU? WHAT ARE YOU?

  Another smile. “Call me Joe. I don’t actually work here at the hospital. I sort of work—tangentially—with the morgue. During my off-hours.” He looked away and sort of muttered to himself. “I was expecting one of the newcomers to wake and give me at least some clue on who popped him.”

  What? Huh?

  HOW DID U KNOW I WASN’T DEAD?

  He shrugged. “Let’s just say I know these things. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I mainly try and help kids, junkies, who end up taking a walk on the astral due to drugs or something.” Joe narrowed his eyes at me. “But you didn’t do this with drugs. You’re the real thing, aren’t you?”

  I frowned as the ache in the back of my head shot into the back of my eyes. THE REAL WHAT?

  “My grandma used to talk about people like you. But the way she described your kind, you’re much prettier in the flesh. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see you out of that flesh.” He grinned. “Though you do have nice flesh, if not a bit goose-pimply.”

  I had no idea what this man was talking about. I set the pad and paper in my lap and put my hands to my head.

  “Headache. Unfortunate side effect, I’m afraid. Not exactly from the cocktail I shot you with, but from being out of your body. I’m guessing from the muscle lethargy—meaning your inability to stand up or walk at the moment—you’ve been out a long time—long enough for them to wheel you down here with a toe tag. I’ve seen it before, Zoë. You’re lucky I was in the ER when you were brought in. Otherwise, you’d have one hell of a Y incision right now.”

  Yay. You want a freak’n medal? Tiny gnomes with pickaxes mined the interior of my skull. I reached for the pad and pen again. COCKTAIL? WHAT HAPPENED? WHY CAN’T I TALK?

  He shifted onto his knees as he stayed at eye level with me, though I’m sure it had to be killing his calves. “The cocktail is my own special recipe. Helps kick the junkies back into their bodies. Usually they hop off the gurneys in the hallway before they’re identified and processed. As for what happened.” He stood and went to the still-open drawer where I’d woken. Joe pulled a clipboard from the outside and scanned it.

  “Well, seems your car was found near 285 at Roswell Road. It’d been vandalized. Police received an anonymous call about a dead body in the trunk.” He smiled as he set the clipboard back and returned to me. He knelt. “Apparently the thugs that messed up your car had a conscience and called it in.”

  My car. Oh shit. Vandalized. I guessed it was those kids I’d seen before getting in the trunk. Had they hot-wired it and taken it to Sandy Springs? I could only imagine it was missing everything from the CD player to the tires and hubcaps. Greeeeat.

  “As for your voice”—he frowned—“that I’m not sure of. I don’t think it’s from whoever choked you. The fatigue you’re going to feel, if it hasn’t already hit you, is because of the physical stress you put on your body by being away from it.”

  He wasn’t kidding about the fatigue. It’d been building, accumulating like weight placed on my shoulders by small increments as I sat there, in the morgue, somewhere in Atlanta.

  That’s when I noticed them. Gauzy shadows at first, lingering here and there. Until a few of them took on more solid shapes. They stood by the double doors, the morgue drawers, and one of them looked over Joe’s shoulder at the clipboard.

  Men, women, some old, some very young. Monochromatic shadows whose features melted and re-formed as if made of smoke, blown by an unseen wind.

  Joe moved beside me, disturbing one of the shadows. A tiny girl, perhaps no more than six, with large eyes, pigtails. She clutched a bear in her left arm. They looked like Joseph Maddox had. Simply shadows.

  My rescuer reached up to my face with both hands and forced me to look at him. “You see them, don’t you?” He pulled his hands away.

  I nodded, aware of the increasing number of them. They started filling the room.

  “Zoë, they’re nothing more than Shades, do you understand me? They’re being drawn to you—they’re how I knew you were different earlier. They can’t hurt you.”

  I scribbled. ARE THEY SOULS?

  He nodded. “Only Shades of souls, of people who died here either violently, or unprepared.”

  THEY’RE LOOKING AT ME.

  “I know. I don’t know why. You’re—different—somehow.”

  Joe put a hand to my cheek. Warm. Calloused. He was a laborer. Protector. “God you’re pretty, even with those dark circles under your eyes. When did you leave your body?”

  I scribbled it down. ABOUT 7:40 P.M.

  His eyes widened. “Seven forty Friday night? Holy shit—you’ve been gone nearly twenty-four hours, did you know that?”

  I blinked. Say what?

  “It’s after eight on Saturday night, Miss Martinique. That’s more than twenty-four hours. That’s just not possible—most astral walkers stay away from their bodies only three to five hours, max.”

  Twenty-four hours? That wasn’t possible, was it? Hell, no wonder I couldn’t stand, and every movement took my full concentration. The pain waking in my muscles and joints made the little needle pain from before seem like a minor paper cut.

  The Shades continued to increase in number. They pressed closer, merged around Joe. He said they couldn’t hurt me, but did they know that?

  I only vaguely wondered why or how this guy knew I’d astral traveled (I like how he called me an astral walker). My thoughts concentrated on why I’d been OOB for so long—what had I been doing? I remembered the trunk of my car, and the teenagers, then the trunk of a limo and—

  That insane memory of mine brought it all back. All of it. He’d been there. In the little girl’s room.

  Hirokumi’s daughter! They were going to move her. Probably already had. And Trench-Coat had stopped me from seeing where they’d move her to. I remembered his face, his hand on my neck, and the twisting, almost sensual snakes that moved from his hands.

  I remembered his lips on mine, and his tongue sliding between my lips and into my soul…

  The Shades reached out to me. Hundreds of gray shadows wanting to touch me.

  “Zoë!” Joe hissed.

  I was shaking even worse now as I pushed myself back into the chair, my gaze tracking the Shades as my mind refused to believe what I remembered. The pad and pencil clattered to the tiled floor. The memories…they were too much. This thing, this Symbiont, had obviously taken me—and I’d enjoyed it. I had flashes of being caressed, of rough hands touching my breasts, squeezing my nipples.

  And I smelled death
. Decay.

  They were touching me. They were touching me!

  I started to scream, but Joe put a hand over my mouth. He had his arms around me, his mouth close to my ear. “Miss Martinique, you’re going to have to calm down. Listen to me. The doctor’s on his way here with family, probably yours. They won’t find my compound in your body, but they are going to examine you, because you were clinically dead. I’m going to be around to keep an eye on you. Do you understand me?”

  I did, and I didn’t. My mind kept mixing his face with Trench-Coat’s. And then with Daniel. And all of these people packed into one room. My God…how many of the dead lingered in this morgue?

  We both heard a voice near the door and turned to look, but I couldn’t see past the crowds of Shades. I heard a man’s voice, and a woman’s.

  Mom?

  Joe released me and sat back into the closest of the Shades. “It’s showtime, Zoë. You’re going to be okay, but it’s going to hurt like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. But it’ll go away. The longer you sleep, the more you eat, the faster your soul and body will mend. Do you understand?”

  What was he? How had I survived for that long? Where had I been?

  I think I knew the answer to that last question, but I didn’t want to think about it. Oh God, I couldn’t think about that…even as the sensations of fingertips over my skin returned as a dark, pleasant memory. Of my hands roaming over smooth, hard muscles—ice-cold flesh.

  I’d been with him!

  Two elderly men with white hair and white coats preceded my mom into the morgue, moving through the Shades. The crowds of shadows swirled like mist and moved away. The two men stopped in their tracks as they saw me, looked at the open drawer, then looked back at me.

  Dead girl sitting up.

  Mom rushed in and knelt on the floor beside me before I could take a breath. The pounding behind my eyes pounded harder, and I was squinting. And shaking. I never stopped shaking.

  The crowd of Shades moved in again. Closer. Hands out. Begging—begging for what?