We tried and tried to lift the phone, but nothing worked. Shannon thought maybe the smear we’d left on the window had to do with us being angry, so we yelled awful things at each other while trying to move the phone. “Come on, you stupid bitch,” Shannon yelled. “Pick up the phone. You’re weak. You suck. No one likes you!”
“That’s not helping,” I said, as my fingers slid uselessly over the phone’s smooth edges. I tugged and shoved, but it was like trying to unsheathe Excalibur from its stony home.
I slammed my head against the window in frustration. The men kept on grunting and moaning.
“God, I wish they’d at least put on some fucking music,” Shannon said.
Her words reminded me of something the ghost had said earlier at the funeral parlor. After he’d asked me if I could play guitar. It’s okay. I can teach you. We can play together, you and I.
Yesterday when I’d tried to get past Shannon in the van, the horn had honked. She’d shoved me into it. We’d done it together.
We can play together, you and I.
“That’s it!” I said.
“What?”
“It’s about our connection—our souls touching. You know how we run faster while holding hands?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“I think when we’re working together, we can move things. Like earlier, when we honked the horn in the van. Remember? Come here.”
I guided her in front of me. Our bodies pressed together outside the truck, with me spooned behind her. At first, the contact nearly overwhelmed me—a full-body tingle that throbbed inside my core and rippled through the edges of my being. I kept thinking of the radio sermon. Friction is how we move forward. Her aura intertwined with mine. We reached inside the truck, my hand over hers. Friction is necessary. I pressed my fingers over hers, not unlike her hands earlier on the girls’ planchette. Golden flecks sparkled in our auras. We pressed together upon the phone’s home button.
Nothing happened.
I held her tight with my free hand, pressed my face against her neck. She moaned. We pressed harder. The button finally relented. Pale light from the lock screen bathed the dash. My dead heart skipped a nonexistent beat. I glanced at the men, who thankfully seemed oblivious.
“Fuck,” I said. “We need to move the phone.”
“Are you serious? We can barely turn it on.”
“The light’s too bright. If we do this here, they’ll see us. We have to carry the phone away.”
Shannon gripped the phone, and I clasped her hand. We moved as one, lifting the little device off the dash. It was as heavy as a damn brick. As a sack of bricks. It rose maybe a few centimeters and fell. The both of us nearly fell. My legs trembled with the effort. We tried again.
Mr. Noble’s thrusts built in intensity. Hard to imagine him lasting much longer. Once he came, he’d likely sit down. Our window of opportunity was about to shut.
“Focus. They’re almost done.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because he stopped moaning and started gasping.”
The scene on the other side of the glass built in intensity. The truck rocked harder. I couldn’t say which came first, the horrid shrieking in the distance or the chill that oozed through my phantom spine. Mr. Shady was closing in. Shannon stiffened against me. The raspy screams seemed to come from all around the wooded lot. I tried to peer between the trees to find the demon that was stalking us, but the shadows stood too thick. Mr. Shady could’ve been anywhere. At that moment, Mr. Noble tensed and moaned with exhausted finality. He collapsed over the seat back, his head buried in his companion’s neck. His arm worked back and forth, giving a frantic reach-around. I couldn’t make out their whispers, not over the shrieking all around us. Chills crept inside my bones, making it nearly impossible to focus on what we were doing. The cacophony of anguished souls intensified.
And here we were, standing out in the open. Exposed. Stuck between a post-orgasmic gay man and my possessed ex-husband. Fucking great.
It wasn’t hard to imagine Mr. Shady spotting us through the trees. Our ghostly auras must’ve stood out like beacons in the thicketed darkness. My ghostly flesh tingled. The wee phantom hairs on the back of neck stood straight up. I bore my eyes into the phone and gritted my teeth. We tried again.
The phone rose but only barely. Shannon whimpered. Her body trembled, either from the effort or sheer terror.
“We got this,” I told her, though I didn’t know it to be true.
We tried again, lifting it maybe an inch before it fell back down with a muffled thump. Thankfully the lovers didn’t hear but we couldn’t risk that again.
What happened next came from pure desperation. Or maybe it was the sight and sound of the two men toiling with each other in the dark. I ground my pelvis against Shannon’s ass, rubbing in a concentrated circle. Her tremors ceased. She pressed her butt back against me. I cupped her hip with my free hand. She grabbed my palm. Waves of tension poured over us. Our merged auras throbbed with silver light. Silver, not gold. She slid my hand across her flat belly, over the bulge of her twisted guts. Now lower.
Before, when I’d touched or been touched by other ghosts, there had been tingles. Now, those tingles blossomed into something all-consuming. Strengthened by our desire, power swelled inside us. Through us. Around us. That silver light pulsed.
All the while, we lifted the phone.
My fingers drifted lower. The phone rose higher.
Lower and higher. Lower and higher.
Until the phone hovered at eye level with the cracked window.
Until my fingertips slid under her waistband through trimmed hair.
We pulled the phone out just as I nudged my middle finger over her clit. I’d never touched another woman like this before. Her labia felt different from my own, fuller and more complicated somehow. I wanted to do more—to slide my fingers inside her and taste her phantom nectar—but we hadn’t the time. She moaned and grunted with frustration. I ground against her, my own pussy throbbing. We almost dropped the phone. It wobbled from our grasp but we caught it before it hit the gravel.
“Quick,” I said.
Crouching low, we hustled the phone away. With every step, our dominion over the rectangle of plastic diminished. The device fell lower and lower so that in the final steps it skimmed over the gravel. At the end, it slid upon the dirt at the lot’s edge. Panting pointlessly, we hit the home button. Lock screen.
We tried their home address. No.
We tried Tara’s birthday. No.
“Try her birth year,” I said.
The cacophony of screaming grew still louder. My hand rested on top of Shannon’s, index finger pressing into her fingernail. Our merged auras still glowed with that silver light, but it was fading. We had to hurry. I followed her lead, our fingers dancing a slow waltz across the screen. The year worked. The home screen blinked on.
“Yes!” Shannon said. She navigated to Mr. Noble’s contacts, but Tara wasn’t listed.
“Screw it,” I said. “Just enter her number.”
“I don’t know her fucking number. Who the hell memorizes phone numbers?”
“I hate your generation.”
“Wait. He calls her Hooter.”
“He calls her Hooter?”
“He says her big eyes make her look like an owl.”
“Ah.”
Sure enough, she found Hooter in the list of contacts and started a new text message. I imagined it must’ve been agonizing for her, texting in slow motion like this. She was probably one of those annoying kids I saw at the coffee shop, thumbs blurring over their phones while smirking.
She typed:
Tara its me shannon i have posses zest your dads phone. Help me. Summon a
She paused.
“Posses zest?” I said.
“Fucking autocorrect. How do you spell Ouija?”
The coldness inside me intensified. Our hands trembled. I told her how to spell Ouija and she continued typing:
Ouija then drive to airport. Hurry. Ple
That was as far as she got, because a tangled pile of shadows emerged on the other side of the lot. The mangled mess of glistening dark spirits writhed and screeched. Broken bones protruded from dangling limbs that hung disjointedly from the gruesome bundle of darkness. The tortured spirits were stacked as high as ten deep at their peak. Atop this horrid pyramid, Mr. Shady stared down at us and smiled.