Chapter Seventeen

Ethan shook his head. The sound of steel drums mixed with gunfire filled his mind as if it were an empty cave. His eyes shot open. He wasn’t asleep, but his body felt rigid as if he was dreaming. Not pain, not anything felt—but a sense memory startled him. All he could think of was a bruise. His mind had become a bruise.

Jacob and Tessa looked him over expectantly.

“Barry?” Tessa said, stepping forward. “Barry, if you’re here, Ethan wants to know if you don’t mind Jacob, his partner, coming with him on the drive. Does that matter?”

The music dimmed in Ethan’s mind. His body became soft, pliable, and normal. Nothing else happened for quite some time. Ethan was about to open his mouth to say he’d suck it up and go alone, but nothing came out. His face twisted as he thought of his father again, tears spilling over his eyes.

“Oh, shit,” Jacob said. “You okay, Ethan?”

Ethan folded his body into a ball. He rocked back and forth, back and forth. Gunfire. Music. Then tears, tears, and tears.

“Sorry,” a voice inside Ethan’s head stated. Deep voice, thick accent. The vowels trilled in a different way Ethan was not used to, but it sounded beautiful. Tears rolled back into his eyes, like a film going backward. “Sorry, my man. I get a little emotional anytime I see the world like this again. It’s all different colours where I am. A whole other frequency. How you doin’? Sorry to make you tear up.”

“I’m fine,” Ethan said. His voice was hoarse, but back. “Better than fine now.”

Tessa and Jacob stepped away, giving Ethan space as he stood up. It took Ethan a moment to realize they couldn’t hear Barry. It was just him, his mind a soundstage of strange noises.

“I’m fine. We’re fine,” Ethan repeated. Barry nodded along, echoing.

“Thank you again, man. I needed to get out of this place. I don’t like the States as much as I remember.”

“Me either.” Ethan laughed. “I will drive you, not a problem. But do you mind if my friend comes? Jacob?”

Jacob raised his hand and glanced up, as if Barry were hovering above them. Ethan took his hand and made Jacob stare into his eyes.

“Him. This is Jacob. Can he come with us?”

“Sure, man. The more the merrier. As long as I get where I’m going, I like having many people along the way. Maybe I can tell you some stories. Maybe I can share some other stuff too. Yeah? My memory is not what it used to be, so I’d like to relive as much as I can.”

“Sure, Barry. Sounds good.” Ethan nodded to Tessa and Jacob. “We’re good to go. And Jacob, change of plans. You’re driving. I think I want to pay attention as much as I can.”

*

Ethan lay on the back seat of the car. The distance from the Victorian house at the Crown compound to the Mazda 3 had been a small journey. It felt as if Ethan was carrying Barry on his back, rather than carrying the vibrations called Barry inside himself merged with his own emotions and desires. The back seat seemed like the best place to get his bearings again, while also talking to Barry. Ethan ate small bites of the cinnamon ground bread Tessa had wrapped up for him as well, hoping it would keep him focused.

“Good thing I’m here. I got you covered.” Jacob boasted as if he had saved the day, but Ethan could tell—even in his diminished and distracted state—that Jacob was thrilled to be this close to the action. He adjusted the driver’s seat to allow his long legs room to navigate and rolled the windows of the car down so he could wave like a debutante out the window as they left the Crown.

Jacob flinched each time Ethan shifted in the back seat, as if he forgot he was there and what he was doing. Ethan had to tell Jacob to turn the radio down several times as they pulled onto the highway; it drowned out Barry’s words and made the buzzing in his head seem a lot more overwhelming. Jacob apologized and turned down the GPS along with the music, but he kept up a steady stream of commentary. He talked and talked, sometimes making jokes but mostly narrating useless things. His patience wore as thin as a bus ticket at the bottom of a jacket. Barry’s story was so much more interesting than it had been on paper—and he wanted to listen to it. He was about to snipe at Jacob for the fourth time when Barry intercepted his thoughts.

“Jacob’s sad,” Barry said. “He wants to be included. He likes hanging around with you, but you’re acting like you’re not interested. Which means he thinks he has to try harder. Endless circle. Are you two…?”

“Yeah, kind of,” Ethan said. His voice was quiet, so quiet he often wondered if he was speaking or if his thoughts were so strong they became lucid voices. Barry heard him—while Jacob didn’t seem to—so Ethan figured the latter was most likely the case.

“That’s good,” Barry said. “Love is good.”

“Sure. But it’s not interesting though. Tell me more about you.”

“Let me see,” Barry said. “This whole adventure reminds me of something, and I want to tell you. But I’m translating between two languages, so it may be a little difficult. Just give me some time.”

“What language?”

“Yoruba. Most of my grandmothers spoke it. But okay, I think I got most of this story. It is a happy one—a funny one—but mostly if you get the joke.”

“Try me. I have no place to be.”

So Barry talked, and talked, spilling out details of old folktales his grandmother had told him of a tortoise and a cursed drum, a girl who married a skull, and even more parables as familiar as they were brand new. He moved to stories from his first semester abroad and getting into trouble stealing street signs and dressing up as the Nigerian Prince Scam for Halloween. Each tale—be it student antics or his grandmother’s bedtime story—had a definite shape and clear rhythm, as if they had been practiced many times over and honed to perfection. Ethan had to hold his mouth closed from laughing too hard at the right moments. His lungs shuddered. He wondered if Barry could escape if he breathed too hard, as if he’d been shot out of a cannon; the image he created in his mind was so funny but surely not real. Could the intensely felt emotions go both ways? Could Barry become the desired object for Ethan, rather than the other way around? Ethan clasped his hand tighter over his chest mark, hoping to keep it all inside. He liked Barry. He was fun and incredibly brave when more details of his life spilled out.

“Not brave,” Barry corrected. “Mostly stupid. Or human.”

“Right, I’m sorry. I should be more aware you can hear what I think. Which means you asking questions about stuff seems silly.”

“I know. It’s a weird invasion, but this is one of the reasons why I like to travel like this. I get to know people, so I tell them about me. Fair trade. Keeps the stories alive.”

Since there were still more miles on their journey, Barry told him more stories. The only time he quieted was when they went over the border. Ethan sat up straighter, his seat belt on and window down, as they talked to the border guard. Ethan’s voice came out accented a little, as if he had swallowed Barry’s voice down whole, but the guard never questioned it. He seemed tired, ready to be done his shift, and let them go through right away.

“Welcome home,” Jacob said. “More or less. I don’t even know who I’m talking to anymore.”

“All of us.” Ethan remembered the story of the Janus Aurora mentioned to him one of the first times in her apartment. Ethan was the two-faced creature, having a conversation with himself, looking forward and looking back. It made him dizzy, but it also gave him another glimpse of the feeling he’d had in the living room at Leslie’s. He belonged somewhere. He had a future, even if the past was a messy tangle. The closer they drove to Winsor, the more Ethan realized there was no space between himself and Barry, and to drive away from the final resting place would mean breaking himself in two. He would no longer be the Janus. He’d tear off his own face.

“Don’t be so morbid,” Barry chastised him. “You don’t tear off a face. You leave behind a trace.”

“Okay, I get that. I like the idea of traces. Tessa said you stay with people.”

“I’ve been with lot of people, yes, and been in a lot of places. Sounds scandalous, but it’s not. It’s a new kind of intimacy. I like that.”

“And when you’re in Winsor, who will you be meeting? Family?”

“Nah, none of that for me.”

“Really?” Ethan thought of the abandoned building: hollow and haunted by a ghost.

“Well, I died young. No family of my own. And most of them were already dead when I was dead, or they didn’t want me around.”

“Why not?”

For the first time during their entire trip, Ethan felt resistance. Barry was silent. Ethan’s mind became the abandoned building, empty and without foundation. When Barry talked again, the world righted itself.

“It was a different time. But let’s not dwell on that because that’s not the point. There was this phrase I heard once, on the first plane I took to Canada, years ago now: if you meet enough people, you can hold the world in your hands. You meet a guy from Africa, from Asia, Australia, and anywhere else in the world, and you could count all the continents on your fingers. I suppose that is what I want to do. So when you drop me off, I will carry on with what I’m doing. Until I can’t anymore. That is what I want to focus on.”

Ethan touched the brim of the red hat he still wore. The icon on the front was a shoddily stitched version of the American flag in the wind, garish and cheap. It reminded Ethan of the Superbowl T-shirts sent overseas from the losing team. Barry confirmed it was a hat he’d purchased in Nigeria when his dreams were still beginning. Now it was worn and torn on the brim; it was the last stage for Barry, but Ethan had only just met him. Their timelines brushed against one another, jagged and sharp. Ethan wanted to hold the hat, and Barry, awhile longer—but Winsor was only a few kilometres away.

“Oh, I forgot to ask,” Ethan said. “Since you can see inside me, I was wondering if you can perform an MRI. Any cancer? Bad energy I should be aware of?”

Barry laughed. A spasm rolled through Ethan, making him shiver. Barry clucked his tongue as he looked around. Ethan swore his organs shifted inside, as if Barry was performing his duty in a rather serious way. “I don’t think so. All I see is a parasite.”

“Wait. For real?”

“No, don’t worry. I was teasing before. You’re fine for the future. You both are.”

“Thanks.” Ethan glanced at Jacob, who had been attempting to listen to the mumblings, but failing—and feeling left out as Barry suggested. As soon as Ethan caught Jacob’s eye in the rear-view mirror, he turned away.

“Don’t worry,” Ethan said to Jacob. He placed a hand on his shoulder to be sure he was being addressed. “Everything is fine. I’m just…you know, still getting used to all this. How far away are we from the location?”

“Only a couple more minutes. Maybe ten, if traffic continues to be bad.”

“Take your time,” Barry said. “I can wait a little longer.”

Ethan slumped down in the back seat. The building soon emerged at the top of a hilly area, enclosed by trees brimming with greenery. The spring had been wet and unseasonably warm so far, allowing so many more plants to grow and flourish. Jacob drove the car slowly on a dirt road covered by canopy of trees and seemingly endless shade.

Barry explained he’d learned about the woods and the abandoned building from another ghost traveling in one of his former vessels. The area lined a reservation, preserved by a local tribe, and had tremendous energy surrounding the abandoned building. From what Barry described, Ethan wondered if the energy was good or bad; it sounded like a field where a residential school had once been, and where indigenous people had been taken from their home. He couldn’t understand why Barry would want to stay there—until he realized the strong emotions from the land would be the same strong emotions inside him. He’d be able to tolerate the sadness because he was made of sadness. The same rocks and trees that had witnessed horror were comforting; pain itself was the desired object. Ethan understood this intuitively.

“And if it’s not what you thought it would be?” Ethan asked. “What do you do then?”

“There is a sixty feet radius on the object,” Barry explained. “The ghost belt. I can explore that radius if I don’t like the building. Even if someone finds my hat and picks it up, runs away with it, and eventually scatters me, I know I’ll reincorporate eventually. Sometimes, I go where the hat goes; other times, it goes where I go. As long as there is no water, it won’t be so bad.”

“Can you implant on something else?”

“Yes. But it takes a lot of effort. A lot of strength. I…I just don’t have that in me anymore. I think after this trip, I will have to wait a while.”

Ethan sensed the finality in those words. Barry’s ghost was coming to an end. How could death beget another death and eventually die again? Ethan wondered but figured maybe it was supposed to be like that. There was an in-between place that existed for those who were lost. For those who wanted to travel. That was death for the people who weren’t done. Violent deaths, regretful deaths, and those whose emotions spilled to the surface in harsh vibrations and unsatisfied desires. But no one could ever be “the passenger” forever. And that was when death, the ceasing of even the smallest movement, would occur.

As Jacob pulled up to the gravel area surrounding the building and shut off the car engine, Ethan became aware of how quiet everything was. The wind rustled through the trees and the sun was barely visible. Even in the shade, the heat was overwhelming.

Jacob opened the car door and helped Ethan out. He swayed on his feet. Jacob gripped his shoulder to balance him. “You all right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just…sad, I think.”

“Don’t be sad. I’m not,” Barry said. A spasm of pain rolled through Ethan, near his abdomen. He wasn’t sure if that was Barry or himself. There was no division anymore. Not even all the magic bread in the world could ground him when he felt Barry—and the lingering ghosts of this location—so strongly.

“Where did you put the hat?” Jacob asked. “I thought you were wearing it, but now I don’t see it.”

Ethan produced it from inside his jacket. “We leave it on the bed in the house,” Ethan repeated the instructions verbatim as Barry gave them to him. Jacob gave him a look but didn’t question the shifting tone in his voice. They approached the door and found it locked.

“Check under the rock.” Ethan did as Barry asked, found a key, and slid inside. Jacob flicked on some lights as he went, but they soon petered out.

“I guess I’ll wait outside for a bit? Give you two some space before I do the last ritual?”

“No,” Ethan said. “Come inside with us now and say the words. Then give us privacy.”

Jacob raised a sceptical brow but didn’t disagree. He followed behind Ethan like a shadow as they walked through the doorway and into a large area filled with broken chairs. Ethan blinked and saw desks and a chalkboard; a woman stood in a red uniform at the board. Ethan tugged on Jacob’s hand, about to tell him to check this place to see if anyone else was around, but the vision was gone. The large room was empty, only filled with dead leaves and a faint hint of tobacco. They moved through each room and Ethan had more visions, each one confirming what he’d thought before: this was a former residential school. When they found a room at the back, complete with a bed, Ethan blinked several times before it was real. The bed was made in blue and red sheets, the same hues of the worn American flag on the hat. Ethan sat on the edge and took a deep inhalation. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“Don’t be sad. This is hardly goodbye,” Barry said.

“I know.”

Jacob flinched. He stopped in the doorway of the room. Ethan met his gaze and fought another tear. Jacob began to read from the Latin words without prompt, holding the smaller conjuring stick as he did. As soon as he was done, he slipped outside.

Ethan sighed. He could still feel Barry, but he was weak. Ethan took the time to anoint himself with the mixture Tessa had given him. He waited.

Nothing happened.

Another tear fell down his cheek.

“Not sad,” Barry said. “I won’t leave when you’re sad.”

“I don’t know what else to be right now.” Ethan wasn’t speaking about Barry’s life story, or about the haunted location and its mar on Canadian history, but of his father and the pipe pressed so hard against his chest. Barry sensed this.

“It is hard,” he said. “Death is always hard.”

“I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Laugh. Laugh until you feel better. It’s what I did, what I had to do. Laugh and I’ll leave.”

Ethan forced a chuckle. It was harsh, bitter. It fooled no one. Barry lectured him that he wanted more.

“Think of all the stories I told you! Don’t let them go to waste.”

“Sorry,” Ethan murmured. He replayed the first story Barry had told him. Laughter spilled out. It felt forced, too, but from a different aspect of himself. Like Barry was going in and out of reception. Like his father’s death was fading, like Canadian history faded, as Barry worked his way around.

“More,” he mumbled. His voice was weak. “One last laugh for me.”

Ethan did it. This time it felt real. The hat shook with Ethan’s laughter.

Then he was quiet. His lungs stopped working. Another two tears slid down his face. His hands tingled. He breathed again.

Barry was gone.

Ethan wiped the tears away. There was no echo, no sound in his mind. But he repeated the story Barry had told him once again, and he laughed. He laughed and laughed until more tears came.

It was another fifteen minutes of this quiet oscillation between despair and elation before Ethan left. Jacob sat against the car, a cigarette in his hand. He didn’t seem to be smoking it so much as staring off into the distance, his brows furrowed. As soon as he noticed Ethan, he blotted it out.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know you can’t smoke. I don’t mean to be a tease.”

Ethan felt hot as the ash hit the forest floor. Was Barry here? All around him in this way? Or was it a different presence searching him out because he was a vessel, and he was a honeytrap of possibility? The landscape was the bruise now, not his brain. He took it as an indication Ethan had his body back but that the airwaves were still filled with decay.

“It’s okay,” Ethan said eventually. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?” Jacob said.

“Yes. Barry did a basic MRI, too. I don’t even have cancer after all my smoking.”

“You lucky dog.”

They locked eyes with one another, staring for a prolonged moment. When Ethan closed the distance between their bodies, it was to pull Jacob into a hug. He went easily, gripping Ethan tightly and tugging him under his chin.

“Am I allowed to talk now?” Jacob asked. “Or will it confuse you?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know anymore. Everything was strange today. I don’t think I’d do it again like that.”

Jacob tilted Ethan face up to look into his eyes. He traced the pattern where tears had been. “You okay? I haven’t given you too much to do?”

“No. I like it. It makes me feel like I’m part of something again.”

Jacob tugged Ethan closer. He ran his fingers over the pipe in Ethan’s pocket but didn’t question it. Instead he ran his palm up and down Ethan’s back. They stayed like this for a long time, until the sun set behind the trees and cast them in darkness and Ethan had committed every last story Barry had told him to memory.

“The money will be in your account,” Jacob said. “I’ll call Tessa when we’re heading back to home. No problems. Barry’s happy, and you’ll even out shortly.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “I think so. Just need some sleep.”

“And some food?” Jacob suggested. “We can maybe get dinner if you want.”

“I think that’s good, yeah.” Ethan surveyed the building one last time before getting inside the car, this time in the passenger seat. Jacob, of course, was talking again—and Ethan did his best to listen. He understood now why people shelled out thousands for others like Barry to travel the globe. It had nothing to do with his stories, and everything to do with hope. Being dead didn’t have to mean the end anymore. Even if you disappeared, it didn’t mean you were never found again.

Ethan took out his father’s pipe. Jacob assessed it as he drove but didn’t ask. Ethan realized he’d had to do the talking. Talking was the only way to keep his father alive without making him decay from this inside out.

“This is my dad’s,” Ethan said. “I remember, when I was a kid, he’d smoke it on the back porch. And when I was seven…”

Jacob nodded, smiled, and listened to every word.