Haunt Me

by Liz Kessler

  If I were telling a story about what happened next, I’d probably say it was as if it happened in slow motion. I’d say that deep inside me, a part of me knew something was going to happen. I’d say I saw colors, flashes — maybe my life whizzed before my eyes. But none of those things would be true.

  It happens in a split second, with no fanfare and no warning.

  I reach out for the pendant, and the second I touch it, a bolt of electricity runs through my arm so ferociously that it throws me backward against the wall. I hit my head — and everything goes dark.

  She’s disappeared inside the closet again. What’s she doing in there? More boxes? I wait in my bedroom, glancing at the random display of objects scattered across her bed.

  I can hear her rustling about. She’s gone forever. So long I start to wonder if she’s OK.

  I approach the entrance. She’s sitting inside the closet, shining her flashlight against the wall. What’s she doing that for?

  Oh no! No! No!

  It comes back to me in a rush. If I weren’t a permanent shade of deathly white, I would probably turn bright red right about now. My poems. Songs.

  I remember — I used to write them in there, on the walls.

  For a moment, I feel a dart of anger run through my body. She shouldn’t be looking at that. It’s private. I’ve tried not to intrude on her writing. Shouldn’t she show me the same respect?

  A second later, I almost laugh. How can she show respect to someone she doesn’t even know exists? Someone who actually doesn’t exist. Not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway.

  I need to think quickly. Maybe I can do something to distract her before she sees too much of my embarrassing, self-indulgent blather.

  I bend down and creep into the closet. What can I do? Throw things around? I can barely touch anything, let alone pick it up and throw it. Stand between her and the wall? She can see through me.

  I’m out of options. All I can do is watch her read my pathetic words and quietly die of embarrassment. Except I’m already dead, so I can’t even do that.

  So I turn to leave, and that’s when I notice her flashing her light into the back corner of the closet, like she’s looking for something.

  What’s she looking for?

  I turn back and creep alongside her. I follow the light from her phone — and then I see it.

  The surfboard. I remember it.

  Must have been four or five years ago. Olly won the local under-fourteen surf contest. Dad bought it for him to say well done. A silver surfboard pendant on a leather strap. Olly didn’t take it off. Not once. The leather had worn quite a lot and the surfboard had faded, but he wore it day in, day out, for years, like a badge of honor. Then one day, he wasn’t wearing it anymore.

  What the hell is it doing in here?

  The sensation of a huge wave builds inside me again. It feels like the swell of the entire ocean is moving through me, threatening to crash over my head and drown me.

  I move toward the pendant.

  As I do, I can feel the boundaries between my current so-called existence and my old life melt away. I’m in some kind of no-man’s-land, linked to it by a leather strap and a silver surfboard. I’m reaching out for it. I want to feel it. I need to touch it.

  And then —

  My hand outstretched.

  The silver pendant glinting against the light from the phone.

  I touch it and —

  “Arrrrgggghhhhhhhh!”

  I’m flung backward. It feels as though I’ve been electrocuted.

  I have a sudden memory of being about seven. I’d got my bread stuck in the toaster and reached inside with my knife to get it. The buzz I got through my arm was so intense, it threw me across the kitchen. I saw bright white zigzags across my eyes for an hour afterward. I never did it again. Never felt anything like it again, either.

  Till now.

  What on earth was that?

  I pick myself up and rub my hand where I touched the surfboard. My fingers are still buzzing, as if there’s a thin thread of electricity running through them. But it’s fine — doesn’t hurt.

  I look around, still dazed, and that’s when I see Erin, lying in the corner, her hands curled around the leather strap of the necklace. She’s lying in a weird position, her head half propped up against the wall. Why would she . . . ?

  Then I realize. She’s unconscious. Did the pendant shock her, too?

  My mind is full of questions — but more than that, it’s full of panic. I need to help her. I need to get someone.

  But how? I can’t get out of my bedroom. Can’t call out — no one will hear me. What can I do?

  The panic is turning into a boulder inside my chest. What if she’s . . . what if . . . ? No, I’m not going to do that. Not going to think about what-ifs and maybes. I just need to be here for her.

  I bend down, crouch beside her, whisper her name.

  “Erin.”

  Nothing. She doesn’t hear me. Of course she doesn’t. Even if she hadn’t just cracked her head against a wall and knocked herself unconscious, she still wouldn’t hear me. Anger mixes with the panic. Impotent, useless, pointless anger turning to fury inside me. Building to a peak. A mountain of rage.

  A strand of hair has fallen across her face. I want to put it behind her ear. I reach out, knowing I won’t be able to.

  But as I reach toward her, my fingers make contact. I feel her hair.

  Holding my breath, I place the strand gently behind her ear. My fingers still in her hair, I’m staring at her face, gasping and unbelieving, and begging for the moment to last. I don’t know if it’s really happening. Maybe I bashed my head when I fell. Maybe I’m having some weird kind of ghost dream. I don’t care what it is. It’s the most alive I’ve felt since I died, and I’m happy to indulge myself in a fantasy that it’s real.

  And then she opens her eyes.

  I hold his eyes with mine.

  His face is pale, almost gray. His eyes — I think they’re green or maybe hazel. In the dim light, they look dark, almost black. His hair, short, messy. A bit of it flopping over his forehead, almost into his eyes. The rest pulled back, as though he’s run his hands through it many times, and possibly not washed it for a while.

  Like maybe he’s got more important things to think about than obsessing over his appearance.

  Stubble covering his face. Bags under his eyes. He’s looking at me in a way I don’t think I’ve ever been looked at before. As if he’s not just seeing my face, my eyes — anything on the outside. It’s as if his eyes are seeing through all of that, dispensing with it as irrelevant and, instead, looking all the way inside me. Actually seeing me, not just the parts I project to the world to hide behind.

  It’s making me want to run. It’s making me want to stay forever.

  It’s making me remember that I just hit my head and knocked myself out, and now I’m probably asleep and dreaming. Thing is, I don’t remember ever having had a dream that felt so real before.

  Is it a dream?

  Our eyes are like a tightrope between us. I want to cross it.

  I reach out a hand toward his face, letting the necklace fall from my fingers as I do. I urge my hand to feel the touch of him. I silently beg for this to be real.

  Please, please don’t be a dream.

  As I reach out, he tilts his face toward mine. My palm makes contact with his skin. Yes, he’s a bit cold; yes, his face is as rough to the touch as it looks — but it’s real. He’s real.

  He lifts his hand, closing his fingers around mine.

  And then he smiles, and the rest of the world — everything that exists outside of this room, this closet, this moment — melts away.

  Her eyes are blurry and unfocused. She glances around, confused. And then they find mine. She’s looking right at me. Does she see me? Does she?

  Half of me wants to turn away. It’s too much. Her eyes feel like a laser, burning into my soul. But I force myself to keep looking at her, to ke
ep my hand in her hair, to stop this contact from breaking. I’m not giving up this moment for anything.

  Her eyes locked with mine, she reaches a hand out toward my face. The necklace falls from her hand as she does. She doesn’t seem to care, nor do I.

  I tilt my head toward her hand. If I had a breath in me, the feel of her fingers on my face would take it away. I reach out and close my own hand around hers.

  I’m dreaming. I know I am. I must be.

  I don’t care. I don’t want the dream to end.

  I try to speak. My mouth is full of sawdust. Clearing my throat, I smile at her.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Then I want to kick myself. Really? That’s the best I can do? Hi?

  She smiles back, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen her smile.

  Her face is transformed. It’s like — how can I describe it? It’s like one of those time-lapse videos of a beautiful rose opening up. You knew it was there inside all along, but it was covered with leaves. Then it blooms, opens, fills the screen with color. That’s what her smile is like.

  “Hi,” she says back, so softly that the word is little more than a whisper on a breeze.

  I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. Where have my words gone? What else can I say? Have I forgotten all the words except hi?

  “I’m Erin,” she says while I’m still trying to figure out my next line.

  “I know,” I say before I can stop myself. No! She’ll think I’m some kind of stalker now.

  Seriously? I’m worried about what she’ll think of me? I’m crouched inside a walk-in closet, dead, holding hands with a girl who has literally just seen a ghost, and I think I need to add something else to worry about into the mix? I think there’s enough in there already.

  Still. Her face clouds. She pulls her hand away, backs off a little.

  “I’m not a stalker,” I add quickly. Jesus. Am I really determined to make myself look like more and more of a total loser with every word I utter? “I mean. I . . .” I look down and try to compose myself.

  I don’t know how to do this. I have a sudden recollection that I wasn’t much good at it when I was alive. I’ve got even less going for me now.

  I want to walk away. The fact that I have nowhere to go makes me feel claustrophobic. When is this situation going to end? Why am I trapped here? What do I have to do to release myself from it?

  “What’s your name?”

  Her voice is like oxygen, breathing life into me, banishing my self-indulgent spiral of thoughts.

  “Joe,” I say. “I . . . I don’t know how this is happening.”

  “What is happening? What are you doing here? How did you get in? Are you real?”

  I open my mouth. Then shake my head. “I . . . I don’t know,” I confess.

  She laughs. “You don’t know what’s happening, or you don’t know if you’re real?” She sits up, then clutches her head and closes her eyes.

  “Are you OK?” I ask.

  There’s a beat before she answers. “You mean apart from having a lump the size of a golf ball on the side of my head and possible concussion, plus the fact that I’m sitting in a walk-in closet, talking to a guy who isn’t sure if he actually exists or not?” she asks with another soft smile.

  Her voice is so beautiful. “Yeah, apart from that,” I say.

  The smile fades for a second. “Are you . . . ?”

  “What?”

  She shakes her head. “I feel stupid even asking it.”

  “Ask,” I insist.

  She laughs, as if she’s making a joke, although her eyes don’t look like she’s joking. “Are you a ghost?” she asks eventually.

  Should I be honest with her? Is there anything else I could be? I mean, is there a better explanation for why I’m sitting in a closet in her bedroom?

  I shrug. “I think so,” I reply.

  She exhales heavily. “Wow,” she says after a moment.

  I’m in the process of wondering if this stuttering exchange is going to go down in history as one of the great romantic conversations of our time when she says, “I’m better at doing words on paper.”

  “Me too!”

  She nods. She’s thinking about the lines on the wall. I still don’t know exactly what she saw. If I’m honest, I can’t remember what I wrote in here. My life still feels like a jigsaw puzzle, with random pieces popping up in front of me only when something jogs my memory enough to put them there.

  Either way, I know I’m embarrassed that she’s seen something I wrote. Even if I can’t remember exactly what it was, the fact that I scribbled it on a wall in a dark closet where no one except me ever went seems to indicate that the words weren’t intended for sharing.

  “Are you a poet — or a songwriter?” she asks, just like that.

  There’s a split second when it occurs to me that I could tell her anything. I could make up a whole persona. I could be a famous pop star, killed in an accident while driving my Porsche. I could be a celebrated poet, deeply mourned by academics around the country. I could be anything. I could tell her anything.

  Except, when I look in her pale-blue eyes, I know that I can only tell her the truth.

  “Bit of both, I guess. And a total failure on both counts.”

  She laughs. “I know what you mean,” she says. “I’d hold my hand up for a high five, but maybe that’d be, y’know, weird.”

  “Like this isn’t?” I ask.

  She holds my eyes for — what — a split second? Eternity? One or the other, anyway, and my insides feel like they’ve been zapped with the same bolt of electricity that burned my hand earlier.

  Then in a really soft voice that’s almost a whisper, she says, “Yeah, that’s the weirdest thing. It’s not weird at all.”

  And I know exactly what she means.

  He’s looking back at me with a loopy grin on his face, and it’s as if he sees right inside me. The defenses I’ve spent years building, honing, strengthening — he leaps across them as though they’re flimsy sticks on the ground.

  If I stopped to think about it, I might find it creepy or scary. In fact, if I really stopped to think about it, the only sensible thing to do would be to completely freak out and run screaming in the opposite direction. Or maybe phone up my therapist from back home and demand an emergency session.

  But I don’t want to stop and think about it. And I don’t want to run away. And I don’t want to phone anyone. I just want to stay here, sitting in a walk-in closet, talking to a pale, scruffy but kind of hot guy who is almost definitely a ghost.

  What the hell does that say about me?

  “You look lost in thought,” he says softly.

  I smile at him. “I’m just contemplating how to break the news to my parents that I’ve finally cracked. They’ll cart me off to the funny farm once and for all.”

  He laughs. I like that. I like the way he throws his head back. I like the way it makes his hair flop to the side. I like the way he runs his fingers through it to put it back in place. I even like the fact that he doesn’t do it with enough commitment that the hair actually goes back into place.

  I guess what I’m saying is I like him.

  “Erin! Phoebe! Dinner!”

  My mum’s voice breaks into the moment, and it is so out of place for a moment that I can’t even remember where I am, what I’m doing.

  I tear my eyes away from him for two seconds. “Down in a minute!” I call to Mum.

  Then I turn back to him. The boy in my closet. He’s still there. I’d half expected him to have disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  Joe.

  I like his name.

  He meets my eyes. Holds them for a moment. His gaze is like an anchor. Keeping me here with him. Making me feel safe. I don’t think I could leave right now even if I tried.

  “So, now what?” I ask, more to break the silence than anything else. It was starting to feel too intense to bear.

  “Now what, what?” he asks.

 
; “I mean, do we, how do we . . . ?” My voice trails away, and I can feel my face burning with embarrassment. Is this really where I’ve come to in my life? My family moves halfway across the country so I can sit in a closet, stuttering and blushing as I barely stop short of asking a ghost out on a date?

  “I’d like to see you again, if that’s what you mean,” he says. “If I can. If it’s possible. If you want to.”

  “I . . .”

  It occurs to me for a millisecond that maybe I should play hard to get. I mean, isn’t that what girls are meant to do? Isn’t that what the cool girls at my old school — Kaylie and Heather and Darcy — would do? They would never show their real feelings about anything, other than expressing laughter and pleasure at making someone else’s life a misery.

  But then, I spent five years trying to be like them, trying to get them to like me. And how did that work out for me?

  Maybe it’s time to believe what Mum and Dad have been telling me. That this really is a new beginning. I can start again. I don’t need to be the same person I was. Don’t need to be afraid to be myself.

  Maybe the starting again starts here.

  I take a breath, then kind of nod, making an agreement with myself. “Yeah,” I say. “I’d like to see you again. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  As a reward, Joe smiles so broadly that it fills his whole face, fills everything. It’s as if he’s switched on a light in the closet. It’s like the sun coming up. His smile is like warmth, like color. It’s like a doorway, drawing me into an unfamiliar place that I want to explore, even though it makes me nervous as anything.

  “Erin!” Mum’s voice again.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  He picks something up from the floor and holds it out to me. “Here, take this,” he says.

  I look at the leather strap in his hand — the pendant I’d been reaching for before I’d been knocked unconscious. I can see a little silver surfboard dangling from the cord.

  “It brought us together,” he says by way of an explanation. “It might help us to do it again.”

  I reach out for it. “Thank you,” I whisper.