I looked back to Laura. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. Then to Elliot as he crouched next to me. His face was shuttered, but solemnity leaked in etched lines. He silently nodded, confirming what Laura has said.
Reality swamped me. I was blinded by tears. Tears for myself, tears for this situation and tears for my sister who was faced with it. I grasped her arms, “You’ve got to help me, Laura.” My voice was thick with desolation. Thinking it was one thing. Admitting it was something else altogether. Knowing Elliot wasn’t just flimsy imagination. He was all too real. As was Henry, and the boy, all the other’s I’d seen in the hospital and that...thing...I’d seen at the front of the bus.
“It’s happening to me. Just like Mum. Laura...I...I really am seeing ghosts.”
*
I’d slept like a log that only pure exhaustion can bring. Mentally and physically, I was wrung out. I rubbed my eyes, working the sleep away. I could almost believe that the past day hadn’t happened. That I’d only dreamed I’d seen Henry’s ghost. That I had never really met a detective called Elliot Stone. I hung my fingertips to that precipice of sleep, in the moment between waking and dreams where there were no nightmares or things to be afraid of, but when my vision focussed, my gaze fell directly on Elliot.
He sat in the chair opposite me. As soon as he saw that I was awake, he leaned towards me, his face reflecting concern, eyes unwavering. The way he regarded me was more than a little…intimate. As though I was the only person in his world. A little flutter skittered through my belly. I wasn’t sure if I liked him looking at me like that, but then again, I didn’t dislike it either. “Do you feel better?”
I huffed a laugh. This question coming from the dead man. “Shit, you’re not a dream. I was hoping...”
Elliot’s frown grew deeper than it usually was and something like hurt registered in his eyes. I guess I’d insulted him by calling him a figment again. I mumbled an apology as I rose from the sofa and stretched the kinks out of my muscles. As I stood, so did he.
He seemed so—real. So intensely physical that I almost didn’t believe that he could be a ghost at all. His skin glowed with health, there was a day’s growth of stubble on his jaw, his face experienced, somewhere in his early 30’s — lined, yet still young, now ageless. The mouth that softened as he saw me.
I was scared, my insides worked with sparking nerve ends alive with the flight-fight reflex, but I made my shaky legs somehow move towards him. Studying him now, he was much more than a ghost. Ghosts were half-things made of mist. He was a spirit. A person, just without the physical body.
He remained motionless, his eyes were filled with intelligence, knowledge, as though he’d seen way too much, yet filled with questions, unanswered feelings. There was strength in those eyes which in turn inexplicably soothed me. We were both in the same equation, just on different sides. If he was brave enough to face me, then I could face him.
He was a taller than me and I tipped my head back a little to study his face. He removed his fedora, holding it to his chest. Such as old-fashioned gesture. That’s when it clicked. It wouldn’t be old-fashioned to him. It would be as much a part of him as me making up in this day and age, starting my computer and checking my emails.
It was obvious that he wasn’t from this time. Or even this century. Visions of black and white movies ran through my mind, vintage cars, glamorous women, and dirty mobsters. He epitomised that era. The era of my great-great grandparents, a world so far away from mine, he might as well come from the moon.
“Oh, you’re awake. I thought I heard you. It’s Mum. For you.” Laura handed me the phone.
She looked as though she’d been awake while I’d slept. Deep purple circles were beneath puffy, red-rimmed eyes. She was pale and her mouth turned down at the edges.
“You look like hell.” I’d meant it in a more lighthearted way, but given the strain, it sounded as though we’d both fallen into the depths of it.
I glanced at the phone; the timer read 127 minutes. While I’d slept, she’d been talking with Mum. I took the handset. Round two. Mum could go on forever. She didn’t get much conversation in the middle of the outback.
“You hungry?”
I nodded and Laura went into the kitchen. I spoke into the phone, “Hi, Mum.”
“Oh my God, Cassie! Laura told me the whole thing. You’ve been under too much pressure. I know all you doctors work around the clock, twenty-four, forty-eight-hour shifts. No human can do it. This is what happens when you don’t give your body time to rest. It’s not good for a girl of your age to be working as hard as that.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that at twenty-nine I could hardly be classified as a girl, but she went on without waiting for an answer anyway.
“What possessed you to become as surgeon, I don’t know. I always thought you’d be a great pediatrician. Lots of single dads out there, you know.”
I leaned against the door-frame to the kitchen, watching Laura place a container in the microwave, “Got any aspirin?”
She lit an incense stick and the heady scent of something exotic wafted through the kitchen. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Clears the air of negative energy.” If only I could clear my head like that. Light a stick and it all goes away. Poof. Instead, the heady scent made me sneeze. It did nothing for Elliot, who watched Laura with an incredulous look on his face.
She handed me two Panadol with a drink of water and I threw them down my throat. She also had two. Mum tended to have that effect on the both of us. I put the phone back to my ear and Mum was still chatting. “Mum, do you want to hear what happened or not?” There was a pause. I never cut Mum off. In fact, I find it therapeutic to let her waffle on. Bit like white noise. But right now, I didn’t have the energy for it. Besides, it would be good to hear what she had to say about my state of mind, not just her opinion about what I should be doing with my life. Not to mention my lack of love life which she always managed to put into any conversation.
“Go on,” she said. I’ve never known her to be a woman of few words and it took me by surprise. I crumpled into a kitchen chair and explained the whole story.
“And this man—Henry. He wants you to do things for him?”
“Yes. He’s worried about his will.” I rested my forehead on my free hand. Laura placed a hot cup of tea next to me on the table and I gripped the mug, letting the warmth flow into my fingers.
“Drink your tea, love. It’ll do you good.” My head snapped up. Henry sat in the chair opposite, just as though we were having a friendly catch up. A familiar portly older man with thinning hair and white bushy eyebrows.
The phone clattered to the table top and I fumbled with it before I managed to get it back to my ear. I pointed at Henry, my hand shaking, “You...you’re not here! Again!”
Laura turned from the bench, facing me. She glanced at all the chairs and I could tell she couldn’t see Henry. He just sat there, sitting and smiling at me like he was here for Sunday Afternoon Tea.
“Tell him to leave,” Mum said. “If you don’t tell them to leave, hundreds will knock at your door. Believe me. It starts with one, that’s all it takes. Once they see you help one, you’ll open the floodgates. It happened to your grandmother. It happened to me and it will also happen to you. Our family has generations of destroyed lives because of this curse.”
“Well, it skipped me, didn’t it?” Laura said.
“Laura, I’ve told you before. You don’t want this to happen to you, too. Just be thankful it never appeared when you were a child,” Mum said.
“But it didn’t appear when I was a child either, did it Mum?” I asked, the words coming from my lips that were numb.
There was a long pause which I didn’t like. A dawning sense of dread thickened the blood in my veins. It never took Mum any time at all to talk. “I saved you, Cassie.”
“What do you mean, you saved me?” I asked.
The pause went on for a much longer time than before, “
You were just one when I first noticed it. You gazing into the faces of people that only I could see.”
My mouth worked but nothing came out. She’d stopped me seeing ghosts. As far as I knew, that was impossible. “I can’t remember.”
“You were too young. They were chatting with you. Interacting with you. I wouldn’t let strangers just come up and start talking to you. What made them think they could just do that now they were dead! The nerve,” Mum said.
“But, how did you do that?’ I asked. In the long list of family members who had the gift, there’d been no records of anyone who’d beaten it before. I knew various aunts and distant relatives throughout our family history had been recorded as having the gift. None coped with it.
Mum sniffed. “The power of suggestion. At one, the mind of a child is malleable. Yours was no different. I simply told you that you couldn’t see them. After a couple of years, the spirits gradually faded from away from your attention. At three, you gave no indication that you noticed them no matter how loud or hard they yelled at you.”
I gaped at Laura, although she didn’t know what Mum had just said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” My voice came out all strangled and chocked out.
“Some things are best left alone. I wanted you to have a life, Cassie. A normal life. Something I didn’t get to have.” Mum’s words were clipped. That meant the argument was done and dusted. “How many are with you now?” To confirm, Mum changed the subject.
“How many what?” I asked, half of my brain still trying to contend with the fact I’d been able to see spirits.
“How many spirits?”
I looked around, but the kitchen was bare. “Well, I can only see Henry here.”
Mum offered a disgruntled sound. “For now. Believe me, they will come. You won’t be able to turn around without bumping into one of them.”
“Who are you talking to?” Henry politely asked.
I sighed, put the phone on loudspeaker so we could all talk without me parroting. “Henry, this is Laura, my sister.” I indicated where Henry sat. “Laura, this is Henry.” I indicated the phone. “Henry, this is my mother-and this is ridiculous!”
“Have you thought any more about getting my will? I did ask you in the morgue, but you fainted before I could finish. I can tell you where I live. And where it is in my house. If you can just hand it to my lawyers - Elder and Slate - I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
“Why didn’t you make sure you gave it to your lawyers before you went into hospital? What happened to you, Henry? You were doing well the last time I saw you. And why did you sneak up on me like that in the morgue? Didn’t you know it would give me one hell of a fright!” It all came out in a rush of words that didn’t seem to faze him.
“You’ll have to excuse my behaviour, but I didn’t know I was dead.”
My brain started to throb. I put my hands over my eyes, “This is crazy! I really am talking to dead people.”
Mum spoke, “I prefer to call them spirits, rather than dead people. Sometimes they think that’s rude.”
“I agree. It does sound a bit rude to me,” Henry said.
There was an iron clamp around my lungs which prevented me from breathing. I went to speak, but nothing came out.
“Relax. And breath,” Laura said.
“It’s nice to watch someone breathing,” Henry shrugged. “I took the whole breathing thing for granted. It’s a nice feeling, breathing in the fresh air, the smell of flowers, the grass after a rainfall. I’ll never smell that again.”
I glared at him. “You’re not helping.”
“I was told you could help me.” Henry’s bushy brows lowered. “I thought I was going home, and the next thing I know, I’m dead. Not that I blame you for any of this. Not at all. You were a good doctor to me. Very nice. I like you and I told my friends if they have any heart conditions you’re the woman to see.”
“Great. Recommendations from a ghost. Sorry. Spirit,” I muttered.
“They will say whatever it takes to get you to help them. Do it once and the others will come, Cassie. You’ll never have any rest again,” Mum said.
Henry leaned close to me, “Could you turn whatever you have off after you help me? After all, you are my doctor and it won’t take you long. They said you would help.”
My brow knotted. I didn’t recall seeing, or having, any help what-so-ever. In fact, I’d never felt so alone as now. “Who is they and what is this help, Henry?” It was all very vague and my brain was now pulsing with a life of its own.
“There were no faces. It was just—voices. Like a choir. They said you would cope with my request. They said they would be sending someone to help you now that you had opened up.”
It clicked. Henry asked for help and then Elliot suddenly appeared at the same time. “They sent Elliot.”
Elliot stood in the kitchen door-frame. I assumed from the expression on his face that he’d heard the whole conversation. For some reason, seeing him there was more comforting than anything.
“Did you come when they called?” I asked.
He shook his head, “I don’t remember voices. I don’t know why I’m here. And I don’t know…how.” He looked so confused I wondered how he thought he could help me.
“You’re the one they sent to help her,” Henry said.
Elliot turned his attention to Henry. A distracted thought, but it was good to know spirits saw each other. Then again, at this stage my brain was pretty fractured. “I can’t help Cassie. I don’t even remember who I am. I don’t have a single memory before I was in the morgue. I was simply just there. I don’t know anything.”
“You’re dead. You should know,” Henry grumbled.
Elliot’s shoulders crumbled as though he was sinking in on himself, raw emotion sucking him inwards. Moments stretched. A myriad of emotion poured across his face and although it was silent, I felt them all screaming at me. I so wanted to do something, but didn’t know how the hell I could. “I’m dead? Yes. I have to be…it’s the only sensible reason. My memory loss. Laura walking through me at your office. The fact I recognise almost nothing about me…but if I’m dead, I should know how to help someone like you, Cassie. Surely someone would have sent someone a little more…”
“Used to being dead?” Henry suggested.
“Henry! Stop!” I growled, “Just…let me think!”
Moments passed, then more moments passed, then more unanswered questions filled my mind. Elliot was right. If he suffered from a ghostly form of amnesia, why did they send him as help for me? Why not someone more qualified? Hell, I couldn’t believe I was even thinking these thoughts. “What could the purpose be?” I whispered, watching Elliot.
Elliot’s deep gaze snagged mine and I saw the same questions in it, full of frustrated agony. That was the pertinent question. Why was this happening to me? To us? Why, with just the crack of my head, had this kick-started me seeing anything at all? There had to be some reason I was missing.
I sighed, the exhaustion of the day and a fitful sleep catching up with me. Before me stood two men, scratch that—two dead men—who desperately needed my help. If I didn’t help them, where would they go, who else could they turn to? Certainly not Mum, who had a lifetime of turning ghosts away. Were there many people like me? I just didn’t know. I couldn’t send these souls away without the answers they desperately sought.
I would have to help. I couldn’t turn my back, but after that I would set about stopping this damned curse that followed my family and destroyed our lives.
“If I help you, Henry…will you leave me in peace?” At Henry’s nod, I continued, “I’ll do it, but tell anyone else you meet—out there—I’m not available for business for anyone else. I’m doing this for you because you’re my patient…then you leave me alone.”
“Cassie, if you do this once, they’ll all come. Please believe me,” Mum pleaded.
I held Henry’s gaze, “Do you promise, Henry?”
“I’ll tell them.�
�
Fool I might be, but I believed him, “Then I’ll help you.”
As soon as I agreed he vanished. I looked over my shoulder at Elliot’s ashen face. He was so utterly defeated. I knew somehow, someway, I had to help him too. I couldn’t let him drift back into whatever abyss he’d been dragged from. “I’ll help you, too, Elliot. Just as soon as we know what it is I need to do.”
“You’ll be sorry, Cassie. Very sorry,” Mum said quietly.
I couldn’t help but agree.
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