by Sarah Wynde
“Autumn.” Sophia sounded wistful. “I was in school. I hated school. I wish…” She let the words trail off.
“You were still alive in autumn?” Dillon asked. “This past autumn?”
“Yes.” Sophia pulled her knees up, huddling into a ball. “I didn’t know…”
Dillon had suspected that Sophia hadn’t been dead for long. He hadn’t wanted to ask — death felt like a sensitive subject and he didn’t much want to talk about the stupid way he’d died — but from things she’d said before, he thought she might have killed herself. Still, traipsing around with Noah was a lot more interesting than being stuck in one place for years.
He patted her shoulder, feeling awkward. “It could be a lot worse.”
She looked at him, with her too big eyes and her hair that looked like she’d chopped it off herself, and said, “It could be a lot better, too.”
“Were you expecting heaven?” He’d never thought much about his own death, but becoming a ghost had been a pretty unpleasant surprise.
She snorted. “I was expecting nothing.” Her eyes started to well up. “I thought it would be all over. Like being asleep, only not having to ever wake up again.”
“You wanted that?”
“Yes,” she said vehemently, tears disappearing. “Yes, I wanted that.”
On the other side of the restaurant, Rose popped through the door. She glanced around, spotted the other ghosts, and headed in their direction.
“Hey, look,” Dillon said, relieved by the interruption. “Rose is here.”
“That’s what supposed to happen,” Sophia said, ignoring the interruption. “That’s what my mom said when my grandpa died. She said he’d be at peace, no more suffering, and we should be glad for him. I wasn’t glad.”
“Here you are,” Rose said cheerfully as she joined them, squeezing in next to Dillon.
“I’m glad you found us,” Dillon replied. “Noah’s talking about dragging us back to DC. Or somewhere else. Turns out he’s got a brother in New York City. We could wind up there.”
“New York City?” Rose’s eyes widened. “I wonder if there’d be snow. I’ve never seen it in real life.”
“This is not life,” Sophia said bitterly. “You wouldn’t be able to touch it. You wouldn’t be able to feel it. It would just be white stuff on the ground.”
“We saw snow in Baghdad once,” Misam said. “It was very exciting.”
“What did it feel like?” Rose asked.
“We were already dead.” Misam scrunched up his nose. “I did not feel it. But it was very beautiful.”
“It hurts,” Sophia said. She was staring into space again. “Snow hurts. It burns like fire against your skin.”
“That doesn’t sound very pleasant,” Rose said doubtfully. “It looks so pretty in the pictures.”
“It snowed the day I died. For a little while, anyway. And then it turned into rain. It was the day after Thanksgiving. My mom wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas. I told her I wanted to die. She got so angry at me.” Sophia laughed, a harsh, scraping sound. “She grounded me. Grounded! Can you believe it?”
Dillon blinked. Something was going wrong with his vision. It was turning fuzzy. Blurry, almost. He blinked again, looking around the restaurant. The walls and surfaces looked oddly reflective, as if the light was changing, as if his sight was shifting.
“I snuck out,” Sophia continued. “It wasn’t like they’d notice. I walked to the park. It was such a long walk. I don’t think I ever walked that far before. My feet hurt but I didn’t care because I’d stolen all my grandpa’s leftover pills. It didn’t matter to him. They didn’t do him any good. He died anyway. That’s when it started to rain.”
“Rose,” Dillon said, his voice hushed. “Do you see that? Is that what it looked like to you when I… before, I mean? When Chesney was here?” He’d been so angry. Furious, frustrated, devastated by the collapse of all his plans, and it had all happened so quickly.
“Oh, dear.” Rose put her fingers over her mouth.
Nadira was staring at the light fixture above their table. “What is it?” she asked, curling a hand around Misam’s leg.
“What’s happening?” Misam reached out and touched the wall next to him, stroking it as if he expected to feel texture under his fingertips. “Why does everything look so soft?”
“Rain!” Sophia burst out. Her voice began rising and she scrambled to her feet, standing up on the bench next to Rose. She kicked out, her foot flying through the table’s surface. “It was rain, like the universe was crying with me. But the universe doesn’t care. It’s all just a horrible joke.”
One of the floating balls of light drifted toward their table. A transparent wisp followed. And then another.
“Akira’s trying to find a way to measure spirit energy,” Rose said. It sounded like a non sequitur but her eyes met Dillon’s.
He knew she was thinking the same thing as him. “I don’t think we need a ruler to decide that maybe this is too much.”
Too much spirit energy created a vortex, a portal to another dimension that dragged in passing spirits. He’d been to that other dimension once. He never wanted to go back.
But he knew how to get out.
The others would be trapped.
“What do you mean?” Joe asked. He was staring around the room, too. “Why does everything look so weird?”
“I’ve seen this before,” Nadira said. “At that place where we found Mona. Before all the lights went out. Remember?”
Joe chuckled uneasily. “I was watching the dancers. I didn’t notice.”
“I came and sat in your lap,” Misam said. His actions followed his words as he slid off his perch on the back of the bench and onto his mother’s lap. Her eyes were wide, but her arms closed around him. “After the lights went out. What is it, Mama?”
“Oh, dear,” Rose muttered. “Dillon?”
“Sophia. You need to stop what you’re doing.” Dillon kept his voice calm, but his stomach churned with fear.
“Doing? I’m not doing anything.” She threw out her arms. She’d stopped crying. She looked too angry to cry. “I can’t do anything, because I’m dead. Dead and gone and nothing. I’m nothing.”
“When you get upset, you pull in energy from the air,” Dillon said. “It’s why it gets cold around us. But too much energy is dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How can anything be dangerous? We’re dead! Dead, dead, dead! And it’s horrible. It’s worse than being alive.” Sophia swung out with her arm. It passed harmlessly through the hanging lamp and into the wall. “Nothing can hurt us. We don’t exist!”
The light bulb crackled and popped, broken glass scattering across the table.
The living people noticed. Behind the counter, the waitress, Emma, put a hand on her hip. “Oh, no. Not this again.”
Dillon swallowed, looking at Rose. Was his fear making their danger greater? The last time he’d crossed to the energy plane, his anger and frustration had combined with the fury of the recently dead — and, technically, murdered — Raymond Chesney. If they all stayed very calm, could they stop Sophia from breaking the boundary between the dimensions?
“You should run, Dillon.” Rose gestured to Nadira and Misam, hand sweeping through the air as if to brush them along. “You, too. Go. Get as far away as you can.”
“What is happening?” Nadira asked. “Dangerous how?”
“We can’t get far enough away. We’re tied to Noah,” Dillon said to Rose. He could feel the energy in the air now, tingling against his skin. The room was turning foggy. In moments, he knew, it would disappear entirely, leaving them in an endless sea of darkness and churning power.
The other spirits would be there with him, but they didn’t know how to project energy. Only Misam had managed to change the channels. With no way out, they’d be lost, trapped until the sizzling currents of power ripped them apart and they dissolved into nothingness.
“Run,” Rose repeated. “I’l
l try to absorb some of her energy.”
“Can you do that?”
“Akira does.”
“And it killed her!”
Rose gave a breathless chuckle. “Well, it’s decades too late to kill me. You go. Let me hold Sophia here while you get Noah to leave. Quickly now.”
“He can’t hear us.” Nadira was wide-eyed and uncertain, but her voice reflected the tension in the air and her arms had closed around Misam.
“I’ll text Grace and ask her to tell Noah to run.” Dillon scrambled out of the booth.
Sophia’s fists were clenched, her face screwed up in a grimace, fury locking her tears away. The wisps and floating balls of light were congregating around her, but she ignored them, her eyes distant, unseeing. “Nothing matters. Nothing. We’re not real. We don’t exist.”
“Come on.” Joe reached toward Nadira, not touching her but gesturing as if he wanted to put his arm around her shoulders and hurry her away.
“Hurry.” Dillon moved toward Noah. He could feel the pull getting stronger, tugging him back toward Sophia, but he resisted it, fighting his way toward the door.
Maybe vortexes were just nature at work. Like lightning in a thunderstorm. A build-up of energy and then zap, a crackling bolt of electricity, discharging power safely into the ground. Of course, safe was relative. Lightning could be deadly to those who got in its way.
Misam, Nadira and Joe were following Dillon, but some of the others were floating toward Sophia.
“Mona, Chaupi,” Dillon called urgently. “Come this way.” He tried to grab the angry man, but the other ghost wasn’t solid enough. Dillon’s hand passed right through him.
“It’s not right,” the man muttered, but his eyes were wide, his face touched with panic as he slid inexorably toward Sophia and Rose. The singing lady was almost to the booth, drifting through the chairs between her and it.
A wisp faded with a crackle and sizzle like water hitting a hot grill.
“Keep moving. Faster!” Dillon concentrated, trying to text Grace.
Rose stepped up onto the bench next to Sophia and put her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. “You’re real, Sophia. Real as anything.”
“I can’t feel anything. Nothing hurts.”
With a gasp and one last uncertain note, the singing lady disappeared.
“That’s not true,” Rose said calmly. “Everything hurts. I know. It gets better.” She put her arms around Sophia and pulled her into a tight hug. Rose’s face contorted into a grimace and she shivered.
“I don’t understand.” Nadira clutched Misam to her, but he was peering over her shoulder, trying to see what was happening. “Explain, please. What is this?”
“Sophia’s turning into a vortex ghost and opening a portal to another plane of existence.” Dillon wanted to shove his way past Noah and out the door, but the pull was too strong. He leaned into it, like fighting against a fierce wind, but he could feel his feet slipping against the floor, drawing him back.
“She’s doing what?” Joe gave a disbelieving chuckle.
“She’s going to Hell and taking us with her. So run!”
15
Noah
Noah’s mind replayed the words he’d just heard. She’s going to Hell and taking us with her.
Great. His hallucinations had found religion. That was just what he needed. He was going to turn into a religious crazy, one of the ones who believed they were Jesus, he just knew it.
Ignoring his voices, he tried to focus on Grace. She was frowning, craning her neck to see across the room behind him. There’d been a pop and a tinkle of breaking glass from that direction.
One of the twins stood up, perching on the foot rail of his stool and peering around the cash register to look toward the back of the room. “Wow, cool! Didja see that?”
“Stay in your seat, please,” his mother said with a worried frown.
“What happened?” Noah asked Grace.
“Just a light bulb breaking.” Grace tried to dismiss it, turning her attention back to him, but she was biting her lower lip and her brow was creased.
“Noah, my man, it is time to get the hell out of here,” Joe said right next to his ear.
Noah straightened automatically, eyes doing a fast, surreptitious scan of the room. What had his subconscious noticed? What was he missing?
“Quickly, quickly,” the Arabic woman’s voice said urgently.
“I don’t want to go to hell.” That was the little boy’s voice, just two notches above a whimper.
“Are you okay?” Grace asked.
Noah tried to smile, but his face felt stiff. It probably looked more like a grimace. “Fine.”
Her phone chimed. She put a hand over it, but didn’t pull it toward her, her eyes still intent on his.
“Check your phone, Grace. Check your phone!”
Noah nodded toward her phone. “You can get that,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I don’t mind.”
“It might be the office. They might have found your stuff.”
“That’d be great.” Noah scanned the room again. Nothing. The older couple were smiling, laughing, not paying attention to anything but their own conversation. The waitress was heading toward the back table where the light bulb had blown, a dustpan and brush in hand.
“Now would be a good time to hear me, Noah. A real good time.” Joe laughed. It was a reckless, breathless, desperate laugh. The laugh of a man on the edge.
The laugh he’d given the first time they drove into a firefight instead of away from one.
Noah stood, pushing away from the table in an abrupt movement just as Grace looked at her phone.
“I’ve got to go. Sorry.” Noah glanced over at the counter. The kids were eating, the boys still chattering about the light bulb. One of them, Noah didn’t know which, was up on his knees on his stool, following the letter of his mom’s injunction to stay in his seat, if not the spirit.
Noah paused. Were the kids in danger? Despite the waitress sweeping broken glass off the table, he still couldn’t see anything that would tell him why his subconscious was freaking out.
Feeling like an idiot, he muttered the question under his breath. “Are the kids in danger?”
“No, just us,” Joe responded, as if he and Noah had been having these conversations for the past decade.
A decade during which Joe was dead, Noah reminded himself. For a moment, he felt torn. He knew he shouldn’t do what his hallucinations told him to do.
“You need to leave.” Grace stood, too. The crease on her brow had turned into a scowl. Her phone in one hand, she put the other on his arm, as if she would force him out the door. “Now.”
Noah froze. Why was she saying that? If she’d heard him talking to himself, she should be asking what he meant by danger. If she hadn’t, what did she know?
If all the things that had happened to him since he’d met Sylvie Blair in a DC hallway were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, surely he had enough information to see the bigger picture.
The conversations, as if he was overhearing real people instead of snippets of sound. The strange encounters with people who acted like they knew him. The remote control, changing channels on its own. The innkeeper, speaking a language he’d been hallucinating for months.
Brain scans and job offers, blueberry waffles and burgers like Big Macs.
That kiss in the forest.
None of it added up to anything that made sense.
His voices were all babbling at once and behind them, he could hear the agonizing sound of the crying girl, sobbing as if her heart were breaking.
“Go on.” Grace tugged at his arm. “Get out of here. Quickly.”
With a confused shake of his head, Noah started toward the door as a woman came out of the kitchen. He kept moving but his eyes widened in instinctive appreciation.
That was the cook?
Wow.
And she could cook.
She stood in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips.
A wide, colorfully-printed headband held back long dark waves of hair, and a clean apron covered casual clothes. Her eyes snapped as she pointed toward the broken light, directing her words to the woman at the counter. “Is that your father’s fault?”
“He’s not even here,” the doctor objected with a laugh.
“The last time we lost a lightbulb, it was because he was inviting ghosts to live here. I am not interested in running a haunted restaurant.”
Noah paused, his hand on the door. Last time… ghosts… What?
“Ghosts?” The boy kneeling on the stool clapped his hands, his balance perfect. “We have a ghost who watches tv with us. She’s nice but she doesn’t like football. Jamie got mad at her ‘cause she kept changing the channel, but then him and Dad went and watched tv downstairs, ‘stead of in the movie room.”
Noah stopped moving, the door to the restaurant half open.
“Rose,” the cook agreed with a nod. “She’s all right.” Raising her voice, Maggie added in the direction of the back table, “At least she doesn’t make a mess.”
The doctor was watching him, Noah realized, with a small smile playing over her lips. She didn’t look worried, not like she thought he was going to freak out again. She wasn’t rushing over to talk him down from some kind of psychotic break. She just looked calmly interested, like she was waiting for his response with amusement and a sort of warm affection that he had done nothing to deserve.
“Don’t try to take the base out while the power’s on, Em,” the cook said. “We can put a new bulb in when we close.” Shaking her head, the cook returned to the kitchen.
Grace had followed Noah to the door. “You need to go,” she said, her voice urgent. “Leave. I’ll take care of this and catch up with you.”
“Yeah, all right.” He nodded. But he didn’t move. His brain felt like it was spinning in circles. Dead was dead. Ghosts did not exist.
Or did they?
16
Dillon
“Go, go, go,” Dillon chanted. He’d herded the other ghosts — at least the ones he could touch — outside the door ahead of him, but Noah had stopped in the doorway. Why was he just standing there? They needed to leave!
