Haunted Melody: A Ghost Story

by Alyson Santos

  “I’m okay,” she says.

  Like hell. “What happened? Did you trip?”

  She bites her lip and brushes at the debris on her dress. “Yes. Just clumsy. It was nothing.”

  “Rachel.”

  “I said it was nothing. What are you drawing?” She starts limping toward my room, and this time I catch her when she stumbles.

  “Shit, Rachel!” I lift her in my arms and carry her to the blankets. She’s barely looking at me now, her eyes glazed from some affliction I can’t see. “Rachel!” I tap her cheek, then squeeze, shaking her. “Rachel, look at me!”

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I shake her harder, desperate now. I’m not ready. Fuck, I’m not ready!

  “Rachel, please, look at me.” Please please please.

  Her eyes stare blankly, her lips parted in an eerie silent scream. I try to close her lids like they do in the movies, but either that’s a myth or it doesn’t work the same on spirit eyes. Tears burn behind my lids as I stare down at her lifeless form. Living, but dead. Physically still here, but everything that matters is somewhere else.

  “Rachel, no. No!” I pull her limp body to my chest, bending over her in protest. None of this makes sense. We had a plan. The song—our song—isn’t finished. What about that, Universe? She just found her voice and now you take it away?

  “Fucking take me!” I scream out to no one. Who’s even listening? I did everything right and got what? A lifeless angel who deserves paradise and gets a cold death on a dirty basement floor. I blink down at her. I don’t even realize I’m still pleading until salty tears trickle along my praying lips. Think, Milo! There has to be a clue.

  “Rachel, I want you here. I need you here. Come back. Rachel, come back. Come back, come back, come back.” I’m shaking, barely holding onto her anymore, and finally have no choice but to lay her on the blankets. I swat at my eyes and reach for another blanket to tuck around her. If only her eyes were closed. Then I could pretend. One last moment of believing she’s just a princess sleeping beside me. But there’s nothing about her that brings peace. It hurts too much to look, with the tears searing my retinas and the dry red glare of hers, so I pick up the guitar instead. Maybe it’s not enough, but it’s something, and right now I’ll take anything.

  The darkness settling around me feels different without my light. It comes with purpose, a threat intent on dragging me back to the shadows I was starting to resist.

  “Rachel, please come back,” I whisper against the absent chords coloring the silence. “You’re the song in my head. The heavenly bells that even the dead hear ringing.”

  Sing for me now.

  I play through the rest of the song but my voice cracks on the lyrics. They don’t work without her. They require a dancing smile and bright eyes filled with wonder. They were made for a connection, not this empty void. But I keep playing because somewhere else, wherever she is, it’s what she wants.

  I don’t know how long I play. It hurts like days, feels like hours, but might just be minutes. Who the hell cares about time anymore? Eventually, my eyes grow heavy, as much from grief as exhaustion. She brought back the music, then left me alone to bear it. Her song. What a joke.

  I hold up my hand to block the glare of sunlight. Something stirs beside me, and I twist over to meet a sly smile.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” she says, brushing her fingers over my cheek.

  My lips curl in response, my body melting in relief. “Thank god.”

  She giggles as I pull her into my arms and bury my face in her hair.

  “Bad dream?”

  “I think so,” I mumble. A nightmare. Worse than that. What do you call your heart getting ripped out without warning?

  “You’re so impatient, Milo.”

  No argument here.

  “I thought I lost you.”

  “You can’t lose me.”

  Lies. “You should have seen yourself.”

  “What, that ghost there?”

  I follow her stare to the shaggy blue rug several feet away. My heart thuds, mouth dry. There she is, as stiff and cold as the lifeless angel in my basement.

  “How…”

  “That’s your problem. You think you have it all figured out. You with your ‘ghost halfway house theory.’ What do you really know? What do any of us know?”

  “I know I love you. I need you.”

  Her features soften as she stares into my eyes. “Then how can we be separated?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you need to start thinking forward, not back.”

  Her gaze trickles toward the body on the floor again. A shudder runs through me as I study the motionless form. “Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is this real? Am I dreaming?”

  “Yes.”

  I give her a look, drawing another giggle.

  “Does it matter either way?” she asks finally. “We’re together.”

  I don’t know.

  I would have said yes before I knew the silence of conversation without her.

  I wake up with a start. My hand smashes into the guitar when I frantically reach beside me. I barely feel the impact as reality crashes in. The lifeless body still resting there isn’t grinning up with mischievous riddles, though. No warm smiles or liquefying giggles either. She stares at nothing. Says nothing. Her vibrant beam has faded into fucking nothing. I dry more frustrated tears and pull the guitar into my lap. It worked before, and I finally have my answer. Does it matter how I speak to her? No. I just need her voice.

  You’re the song in my head

  The heavenly bells that even the dead hear ringing

  Ring, Rachel. Come on!

  You’re the song in my head

  The heavenly bells that even the dead hear ringing

  Again and again I repeat that line, pleading and praying with every combination of chords and rhythms I can muster. Maybe if I invent one. Find that perfect melody that can raise the dead or… postpone it.

  A faraway door creaks open, and I dampen the strings with my hand. I listen to the footsteps clapping down the stairs, hating the way my heart pounds as if it could be her. Because it can only be one person, and I can’t think of a worse time to deal with him. I swipe my sleeve over my face to remove any remaining evidence of my pain. I also throw an extra blanket over Rachel. Silly, maybe, since it only accentuates the obvious lump, but depending on his state, might be enough.

  Roy seems smaller when he appears in the doorway. Not physically, but the hostile lean is gone. He’s a supplicant standing there, searching for an opening into whatever brought him to my lair. I have my own problems though and focus on tuning the guitar to distract myself. “What is it, Roy?” I ask. I have no energy for a fight either.

  I hear his sigh from the door. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “Yeah?”

  “About how I’m dead. You weren’t shitting me were you.”

  “No.”

  The E and A strings are good. I move on to the D.

  “I was a pretty hard man in life.”

  “No kidding.”

  I don’t check for his reaction, but I feel the tension build. Do I want a fight? Maybe I do after all. Being angry has to be better than this heaping load of nothing I’ve got now.

  “My point is if it’s true… if you’re right and we’re dead, then what’s next? What do we do now?”

  I shrug.

  “You don’t know or you won’t tell me.”

  “Both?”

  He’s quiet, and I continue tuning. G is finished. On to the B.

  “Come on, Milo. I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m trying here.”

  “Yeah? Trying for what exactly?” I finally look up, staring him down as he towers over me in the doorway.

  “To make amends.”

  I smirk and return to my strings.

  “Why is that
funny?”

  “It’s not,” I say. I feel phantom Rachel’s disapproval. It has to be in my head, but there she is, yelling at me for provoking an enemy when I could be courting a friend. Roy needs me and came for peace. How important that seemed not so long ago. Now? Who wants friends? And who the hell wants to be needed?

  “So that’s it then? You’re just going to drop that on me then leave me to figure it out?”

  “Same as the rest of us, I guess.”

  “I thought you were a better man than that.”

  It’s everything I can do not to laugh. Maybe I will. “Really? Interesting.”

  Stop it, Milo. You are a better man that.

  I freeze. Glancing at the blankets, I notice the lump is gone. Wait, is she…? I shake off the voice in my head. Has to be my imagination, right? I don’t see her there either. Roy follows my gaze to the boiler.

  “Why do you keep looking over there?”

  “No reason.”

  “She’s here, isn’t she?” His lips press thin into that line between fear and the immense effort to hide it.

  “Who?”

  “Grave Lady.”

  My stomach constricts as I imagine it. I’d give the little that’s left of my soul to see her long dark hair blowing in the invisible wind. That smile… I look again, can’t help it.

  “She is here! She has to be.” His gaze narrows in a way I don’t like. “Who is she to you?”

  I sigh and set the guitar beside me. “Look, I get that you’re having a hard time, but I don’t know more than I told you.”

  “You have to!”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  I try to ignore the familiar sight of his fingers clenching at his side.

  “You can hit me all you want. It won’t change anything. It won’t—”

  I lurch forward, doubled over with a violent pain in my head.

  “What the…”

  Roy’s confusion blurs before me as the pain spirals in. Transforming, transporting, and then…

  “We can’t, Violet.”

  “What choice do we have? You heard what the doctor said.”

  I blink around the unfamiliar room. If this is a vision, it can’t be mine. I don’t recognize either figure huddled by a stark hospital bed. Their arms twist around each other as if their limbs have sprouted and molded into grief. How long have they stood like that? How many hours, days, weeks, years, rooted to that cold tile floor, looking on helplessly from an impossible distance? I know who I’ll find in the bed. I know the center of their universe whose light has dimmed for them. It’s why she burns so brightly for me, and the selfish weight of my greed crashes down around me. I must want this for her, right? Because this is the cost of my sun, my own salvation.

  “We almost lost her,” the man says, his cheeks wet with recent distress.

  “We did lose her, Charles. Don’t you see? It’s just going to happen again. And again. And—”

  “She’s our daughter!”

  “Is she?”

  I should hate the woman for saying that, but the agony in her voice won’t allow it. She’s a woman who would rather rip out her own tongue than utter those words, but sorrow wears down even the toughest warriors. How long has she fought for her daughter? I want to scream to them. Explain that the light they love so dearly still shines brilliantly somewhere else. That I crave it. I need it, and they can’t take her. Their suffering is less important than mine.

  What about hers?

  I finally force my gaze to the image I’d been dreading. The simple bed void of intricately woven arches. The sheets free of lace and gossamer wonder fit for royalty. The roses… there are no roses in here. This is a new room. A new bed. A new wall with no window.

  Intensive Care Unit.

  But none of that prepares me for what rests above the crease of the stiff sheets. There’s no face smiling back, no forest angel, just a blossom of tubes and equipment exploding in all directions. Familiar dark hair sprouts above it as the only evidence confirming my fears. A sob erupts from my chest, and I step back, struck by the devastating reality of the girl who’s uprooted my world. I wasn’t prepared for any of this, least of all the final blow that has me paralyzed in a new, terrible reality.

  Who was sent to whom? What if she needs me as much as I need her? Who’s the living and who’s the dead when soul and body fight against each other?

  “Rachel…” I whisper her name from the foot of her bed, studying the small bulges under gauzy eyelids. “Rachel.” My voice is louder this time, but the grieving couple to the left doesn’t seem to notice. I step closer.

  “Rachel!”

  Two red eyes snap open and shove me back.

  I gasp awake, clutching my stomach. The familiar smell of the basement and sound of Roy’s taunting begin to cinch around me. I don’t know which is worse. Finding Rachel’s truth or leaving her there.

  “Where’d you go, golden boy?” He says with a smirk. Is it forced? Maybe some of his typical humor is gone, after all.

  I push up from the floor and rush past him to the sink. Once, twice, and again I purge into that rusty basin, running the water to protect my senses from its foulness.

  Roy barks insults, cackling behind me, and I grip the sink’s ledge, my teeth clenching. Finally, I suck in enough air to shout, “Leave!”

  I drop to my forearms, my head hanging over the sink. I don’t check for his reaction before shouting again for him to go. When I still don’t hear footsteps on the stairs, I force my head around to look. It’s just in time to see a knee lunging toward my stomach. The square hit sends me to the floor. Another to the face shakes the foundation of the house. The last thing I remember is Roy’s face, purple with a rage that has nothing to do with me.

  I’m not alone when I wake up. I sense it before I see it. My eyes don’t cooperate when I demand they open. But the song, I hear. The voice. The haunting melody that transcends the present into something infinite we’re still trying to decipher.

  Rachel.

  The singing stops, and I regret interrupting her. “Don’t stop,” I croak out.

  “You’re awake.”

  Soft arms wrap around me gently, careful to avoid my latest punishment. I forget everything except the light that rushes back after getting sucked away. I pull her against me.

  My eyes burn as I hold her. Words. Neither of us brave that landmine. I don’t know where she was when she wasn’t here, but that’s for another time. Right now I need to breathe in my angel again.

  “Play for me?” she whispers against my chest. I hear the tears in her voice as well, the fear, the terror that’s still keeping me mute and attached to her being. “Please, Milo. I need to hear the music right now.”

  I clench my eyes shut, squeezing the last of my tears onto her hair. To play for her means to let go. Can I let go? I think about the living corpse buried in those sterile sheets. Somewhere far away and so very real. “I love you, Rachel,” I whisper. While I can. While we live in a moment we understand.

  “I love you too, Milo. So much.” Her arms tighten around me.

  I’m going to lose you.

  Not yet.

  I close my eyes again, fighting against the image seared into my brain.

  “Please. I need the music.”

  I nod and suck in a deep breath. It takes all my strength to pull away, but soon the guitar in my hand helps relieve the pain. Her expression, twisted a moment ago, starts to relax into the serenity I’ve come to crave as the music swells around us. Her lips part, first in a smile, then in the radiant melody that’s become her essence. There’s no other way to describe what happens to her body, to the air around us when she sings, when her entire being converts into music.

  “It’s haunting,” she whispers when the music stops.

  Her eyes, her face, her delicate hands that lift with the notes as they drift up to heaven. It is haunting, in the best possible way. I never want it to end once it starts, and she always wants it to start.


  “You mean ‘haunted,’” I tease, waving a hand over my ghostly self.

  Her expression lifts in a thoughtful smile. “Right. A haunted melody. That’s what we’ve created.”

  “A haunted melody… I like that.”

  She nods and slips her arm behind the guitar to settle against me. I feel her head graze my chest in a nod. “That’s it, Milo. The title. It was never supposed to be ‘The Angel Song.’”

  Haunted Melody.

  It’s eternal. Like us.

  Chapter Twenty-Two:

  Angel of Death

  Things go back to normal over the next few days. Rachel returns to dancing, me to sketching, and the two of us to sharing our song at every break in between. We start creating new music as well. Some is silly and reflects my attempts to tease her as she jumps around the basement. The rest is more subdued, ballads that slip out while we recline on the blankets, lost in thought and each other. Still, no matter the tangents, we always go back to that one. The angels and sinners of “Haunted Melody” and the bond that’s beginning to inextricably thread us together.

  Rachel is back to her bright, vibrant self as well. I bask in the warmth she brings, sucking up rays like a newly formed black hole. She’s smiles and sunshine, happy to give—until I mention that awful day she left. The vision sticks with me. Those red eyes, bloodshot and dead but somehow aware and accusing. She won’t talk about it, shriveling into herself like I do every time she wants to hear more of my existence before this basement. Maybe we owe each other the darkness within us too, but right now the light is too addictive. So we draw and sing and dance and become raptured captives of the music.

  Roy leaves us alone as well. She never mentions him, and I never ask if her rescue had required another encounter with his hatred. At least that much we’ve come to understand, however. In the moment before my blackout, it all made sense, the rage fueling his cold existence. He doesn’t hate me or this place or any specific element in his broken world. He just hates. He is hate the same way Lena was compassion, Rachel is light, and I’m… I don’t know yet. Could he change? Maybe. I have to believe yes, because isn’t that the point? But not until he accepts what he is and wants more like I had to. Until then, his world will be this disgusting house and futile bullying of the living and dead. I also start to understand Rachel’s pity for him.