When the van eased to a stop at the airport’s curb, I didn’t bother trying to stand on my wrecked legs. Instead, I collapsed in a heap onto the blacktop. A moment later, I heard the door slide open on the other side of the vehicle. Shannon’s ghostly feet plopped onto the ground. She ran around the side and dragged me onto the sidewalk. My face had healed enough to form words, though something in my jaw clicked painfully with each syllable.
“You go,” I told her. “I can’t make it.”
“Fuck off,” she said, now pulling me toward the entrance doors.
“Did you tell Tara goodbye?”
“There’s no other way to end a Ouija session, Molly.”
We had to wait for a disheveled mom and her elementary-aged daughter to activate the sliding doors. The mom pulled a massive rolling suitcase loaded with a duffel bag behind her. The daughter wore a sparkly backpack. Tara hoisted me up, one of my arms slung around her shoulders. We slipped through the doors right before they closed.
Aside from a few clumps of impatient travelers at some of the check-ins, the airport crowd was pretty sparse this early in the morning. Maybe a dozen people stood in the security line. One lone barista manned the Boston Stoker coffee bar in front of security.
“There’s no ghosts,” Shannon said. “Maybe they’re all already hiding because the sun’s coming up.”
“No. It’s because no one really lives at the airport. You come. You go. It’s a place of transition. It’s an annoying pause. Haunting an airport would be like setting up a tent in the middle of the road.”
She looked at me. “You and your metaphors.”
“It was a simile actually.”
“Dumbass. All similes are metaphors. Similes are just a type of metaphor.”
“Huh,” I said. “I didn’t know that. Now let’s find a fucking plane.”
She dragged me in front of the Departures board. The next flight out was the seven o’clock to Minneapolis at Gate A13. It was leaving in nine minutes. There weren’t any other flights until 7:15, and I had to imagine dawn would have cracked open the sky by then.
“Come on,” I said. “No rest for the dead.”
Shannon tightened her grip on me and we staggered around security. My legs cracked and crinkled. Bits of my insides still dangled from my torn belly and dragged along the carpet—oddly patterned grey squares that must’ve looked outdated the moment they were installed. My kitten heel trailed behind me, wobbling and whimpering.
A long hallway stretched from the security checkpoint. Shannon made it a few steps before my weight caused her to collapse.
“Please,” I said. “Just go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“No? Well, I was ready to leave you. If that Ouija field hadn’t grabbed you, I would’ve kissed Mr. Shady and said goodbye to all the hurt. I was ready to give up. Still want to stick around?”
She cocked her head at me. Her eyes narrowed. “You get that one. I did kill you after all.”
“You can’t drag me all the way to the gate.”
A grin stretched across her face. “I don’t have to.”
The daughter and mom, no longer pulling the big suitcase, walked briskly toward us. The little girl’s sparkling backpack had three dangling straps. Shannon grabbed a strap as they passed, and soon the little girl was dragging us down the hall. My kitten heel hurried after us.
“What do you think comes next?” Shannon said.
“An escalator, if memory serves.”
“No, doofus. Assuming we make it into the Light, do you think we’ll be in Heaven?”
“I don’t think it matters.” I shook my mangled head. “Anything is better than this hell on Earth.”
We had to let go of our diminutive ride at the end of the hall. The mom and daughter hurried to the right toward Concourse B, but we needed Concourse A.
A woman’s voice on the PA system announced, “Last call for Flight 4552 to Minneapolis.”
A young man, probably college aged, strode toward us wearing a hoodie and jeans with a black backpack. I said a silent prayer that he was heading to Concourse A. Sure enough, he angled left, and Shannon gripped his ankle as he passed. I clutched her waist, wishing I could smell her. I bet she’d had a lovely scent before she died.
The boy unknowingly dragged us to the escalator. Shannon let go of him and we rode up the metal stairs.
“I’ve never sat on an escalator,” I told her.
“They scared me when I was little—at the mall—but only the down escalators. I thought they looked like metal shark teeth, row after row, wanting to pull me down into the department store’s stomach. I didn’t mind going up though.”
I could only smile in response. The escalator deposited us onto the concourse and she pulled me to my feet.
We staggered toward the gate, now free of passengers. A brunette in a white button up and black vest stood at the door to the jet bridge talking into a radio mounted on the wall. I kicked off my heel. We broke into a lurching sprint, more falling than running. My leg bones crackled and crunched, sending jolts of agony up through my hips.
Only a few paces away.
The brunette placed the radio back on the wall. Maybe six paces. She reached for the door. Four paces. My kitten heel squirmed onto my foot. Two paces. She pulled the door. One pace. I stumbled on my heel, lost my balance, and slammed onto the floor. The carpet smacked my ass. I winced and cursed.
We’d gotten so close. So damn close. For a long moment, all we could do was sit there in stunned silence. Then I saw the brunette pull a metallic pink vape pen out of her pocket.
“What could you possible be smiling about?” Shannon says.
“The wonders of addiction. Come on.”
We followed the brunette down a flight of steps that emptied onto the runway. A breeze passed over me. We dove out the door right as she shut it behind her. Across the way, the sky glowed a sexy pink. Dawn couldn’t have been but a few minutes away. The scene disoriented me. Dirty concrete. Engines roaring. The brunette took a pull from her vape, frowned at her smartphone, and blew the electric vapor right through my face. I sneezed, probably just on instinct.
Shannon dragged me to the airplane. Two large metal carts sat next to the craft. The cabin door was shut, but a large door on its rear belly hung open. A motorized ramp perched beneath. Men in orange vests tossed the remaining bags into the baggage hold.
“Come on,” Shannon said.
My legs wobbled beneath me. I could feel the mending bones inside my torn thighs bending like winter saplings under the weight of snow. Wincing, I bit back a scream and collapsed on the baggage ramp. The conveyor belt had already been shut off, so Shannon dragged me up the ramp. We’d crawled more than halfway up when one of the workers closed the hatch.
The ramp lowered.
And my heart with it.
We rolled off the machine and onto the sun-bleached concrete. The airplane’s engines rumbled to life. Above us, more souls drifted pointlessly toward the clogged Light. To the east, the sky blushed with the coming dawn. Shadows crept through my skull, and I knew in mere moments I would either lose my soul to the darkness or my astral form to the sun.
“We could try climbing onto the wing, like in that one Twilight Zone episode,” Shannon said.
I shook my head. “Even if there was something to latch onto, we’d never be able to hold on.”
Shannon grabbed my hand. “We had a good run. I think we did more than most. That counts for something, right?”
I nodded. “So, what do you figure? Should we go hide in the shadows and lose our minds, or go out onto the runway and fry?”
“I think I want to go out in a blaze of glory,” Shannon said.
“Okay, but you’ll have to carry me most of the way.”
We climbed to our feet and staggered away from the plane. The dawn crept closer. I hoped my mom wasn’t too hungover. I hoped Mr. Noble had some more great orgasms today. I hoped that old man at the funeral home stopped tickling his wife. I hoped if Ben Heck had kids, that he was a better parent than his dad. I thought nothing but good thoughts for them all.
“How did things go with Tara?” I said. “Back in the van?”
“I thanked her and told her she was very special to me. Thought about telling her about her dad, but that’s not really my secret to tell, is it?”
“No, no it isn’t.”
“Hopefully one day he’ll spill his guts to her.”
“What’d you say?”
“Hopefully he’ll tell her that he likes cock.”
“No, before that. Spill his guts, you said.”
She wrinkled her brow. “It’s an expression, Molly.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Not especially.”
“That’s probably wise.” I pulled her back toward the plane. “Come on. We have a plane to catch.”