By morning, it had fallen nearly silent in the Haunt. The pulse still whispered from a distance, but much more faintly, like a resting heartbeat. Piano notes lilted somewhere nearby, but they didn’t pull at me like the pulse did. Through the wall beside me burst laughter I could nearly feel, like the rhythm of the dancers, making my stomach flutter.
My left slipper had come back, appearing on my foot as it had every day of my afterlife so far, no matter how many times I kicked it off. Going back to the time of death. I kept forgetting to pay attention to whether or not it faded into the ether, or sat around like an echo in the immaterial plane. I’d lost the other one right before dying, so I hadn’t taken it with me like the rest of my clothes.
I lobbed the slipper under a chair. Then, just to see if I could do it, I shut my eyes and imagined the cool ceramic of a mug handle gripped in my palm, the aroma of steaming hot coffee. In my other hand I positioned my fingers as if I were holding a cigarette, recalling the taste of smoke, the rush of nicotine.
Nothing happened. No phantom from my memory manifested. Maybe it would’ve been different if I’d had a particular mug I’d loved, or an old-fashioned tobacco pipe whose feel I could recall better than any single disposable cigarette.
My drumsticks had felt like a part of me, once. Digging into my very skin, marking me with callouses, like an extension of my soul. I might as well have died holding them.
I gave up on my old morning ritual and headed out. Someone around here had to have some answers.
In the hallway, I jumped when a door slammed. Through the walls, voices mingled as shadows moved behind the slits of not-quite-closed doors. Under one came a dappled blue glow like a TV, along with the swell of a soundtrack. As the hallway widened into a landing, I stared up to find the skeleton of a skylight, nothing but a web of metal now, letting in a column of sunlight that illuminated the spiraling dust motes. As I floated down the grand staircase, I couldn’t help but time my steps to the plink of the piano, drawn to it as if I’d heard a brook somewhere in a forest.
I never would’ve imagined that a haunted mansion could be so welcoming. Though I couldn’t feel it, I could tell from the shivering leaves and free-falling light that the air wasn’t stuffy and musty and full of cobwebs, flowing easily in and out through the broken windows and gaps in the walls. Though none of that sun could warm my skin, it still glowed golden through my hair, the same as all the dancing dust.
Not far from the foyer below, down one of the hallways near the ballroom, I followed some laughing voices. Aside from the vines, there were grasses growing here and there in patches of dirt accumulated on the floor, moss replacing the old carpets. Somebody had been keeping potted plants alive near every broken window.
I peeked into a parlor room, still furnished with faded velvet and embellished wood, covered in dust. Pretending to sit on those old chairs, surrounding a much newer cheap plastic table, a gathering of ghosts laughed. They were playing a card game. By the look of it, nobody had died with a deck on their person. Those were physical cards they were manipulating on the other side.
So, we could still touch things, after all.
One of them took notice of me, a lady in a bustle dress with a parasol lying across her lap. “Hello there,” she called out. “Care to join us?”
They were all staring at me as I trod closer. Something in their glances gave me a chill. They looked more like proper ghosts than I did. Or it might’ve been something about their eyes.
A silver-haired, mustachioed man tipped his bowler hat to me. “You look fresh.”
“A graveflower?” asked a girl with flowing hair and a long white dress. I’d thought she must’ve been about as old as the other two, or someone who’d died in a nightgown, but under the table, her swinging feet were clad in go-go boots. Just a hippie, then.
“Uh, I had some questions.” I pointed to their playing cards. “How are you still touching anything?”
“You have to forget you’re dead,” said the bustled lady.
Well, that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. I couldn’t just pretend to still have a body, that I hadn’t been separated from the whole world—and from Cris.
I had to ask, just in case. “How do I do that?”
“Give it time,” said the hippie girl.
The three of them had certainly lingered on Earth for a while. I shivered at the thought of sticking around that long.
“Sit down,” said the man in the bowler hat. He gestured at the air beside him as if pointing to a chair. “Let us take your mind off it.”
If it took having to settle in and unwind just to learn how to touch anything, I could be here for a long time.
“Maybe later,” I said. “I’m in the middle of something.”
Back to my original query. For some reason, even though I knew what I wanted to accomplish, I couldn’t remember how to phrase it. I hadn’t paid attention to the horror movies and bad TV dramas. Or Hamlet, though I had a feeling that this term hadn’t been coined by Shakespeare.
“What’s it called, when we have something left to do on the other side? From before we died, and we can’t rest until it’s done.”
They barely looked at each other for answers, like they didn’t expect to produce one for me. Perhaps they were too old to even attempt understanding.
“You’d do well to ask Alastair,” the bustled lady said.
Bowler hat agreed. “If anyone would know, it’s him.”
“And he could show you around,” said the hippie girl. “If he hasn’t already.”
Bustled lady gave a smile that I wouldn’t have expected of someone from a supposedly genteel age. “He’ll give you a very warm welcome.”
“Or you could stay,” said bowler hat. “And we’ll welcome you.”
They all laughed wickedly. What… the fuck.
“No thanks.” I started walking backward, a little nervous to turn away. “Have fun with whatever weird shit you get up to around here. I’ll pass.”
I gathered up my skirt and gave them a wobbly farewell curtsey. At least I didn’t have to go all the way to the door. Instead, I slipped straight through the wall.
Funny how much I’d changed. Back in the day, I would’ve at least given the weird shit a shot.
* * *
In the next room, I found what I think would have been called a conservatory, judging from the large empty frames that used to be windows and a dinosaur of a telescope, overgrown with vines. In the corner of the room played the pianist.
Her fingers were dark against the old, yellowed keys. Beneath a rosy pink headscarf, her coily hair rolled over her shoulders like dark clouds as she lost herself in the bittersweet melody. Under the stool, her sock-covered toes pointed as if in dance.
That was why the music didn’t pluck my veins, like the otherworldly beat from the ballroom. She was playing an actual piano. Her lament couldn’t reach my soul the way the pulse did, but it still moved me the old-fashioned way.
Then, her hands slipped on the keys. I cringed at the jarring cacophony of notes as she gaped up at me with a squeak of surprise.
She looked barely twenty, with a round face and big, sleepy-lidded eyes, her full curves smothered under her shapeless gown. It must’ve been a hospital gown, white with tiny blue flowers. Someone had covered up the open slit at the back with a long black tailcoat, too big for her.
I laughed as I stared back into her wide doe eyes. “My bad,” I said, with a grin. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”
Her little smile was shy. “I shouldn’t be so easy to spook.”
She might’ve been a bit young for me, but my dead heart still stammered anyway. I liked the faint freckles dotting her brown skin.
“Are you newly dead?” she asked.
I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at that expression. It sounded so glib. She noticed, shaking her head in apology.
“Sorry, I mean—um, how do they usually word it in the obits—recently passed?”
“Come on,” I said, trying to hitch my lips up again. “It’s not like you’re breaking the news.”
She gave a sheepish half-shrug. “I try to be sensitive, just in case. It’s like nobody else here remembers how it felt.”
I didn’t want to admit that it hadn’t broken me up all that much. Not at first. Then I remembered my sister, her stony face and shaking hands.
This girl looked more contemporary than any of the other ghosts so far. She’d probably watched all the same movies and shows as me. “What’s it called?” I asked. “When you die, but… you’re not done yet? There’s something you have left to do?”
Her eyes widened in horror before I even got through the question. “You mean unfinished business?”
“There’s no such thing,” said Alastair.
She lit up as he approached. I groaned.
“Mal,” he said. “Back already?”
I didn’t dignify him with an answer, crossing my arms.
“Coming in,” he said. She looked bashfully down while he gave her a quick kiss on top of her curls. His voice turned chiding. “Evie. There’s no call for coddling.”
She looked up at me with a rueful smile. “How am I supposed to break it to her?”
“If it’s about crossing over, I don’t care about that part,” I said. “In fact, I think I’d rather not.”
“Then why bother?” Alastair asked. “There’s so much more we could offer you here.”
I huffed an indignant laugh. “I don’t know how long you’ve been dead, and all your loved ones—if you had any—but mine are still kicking.”
Evie pressed her lips together in sympathy, but didn’t say anything. Alastair, on the other hand, began ranting as he paced, feet moving like they were still compelled by the pulse.
“So what’s your plan, then? At your grandmother’s funeral, did she come back to give you a proper goodbye? Did she finally make up with your auntie-in-law about that thing that happened at the wedding? If everyone could do it, they would. We’d all put off our issues to resolve until we could have the last word as ghosts.”
Once he finished, I unclenched my jaw, my cheek sore from catching in my teeth. “But since there are ghosts, and that’s us, why don’t we ever do that?”
“You know already. Don’t ignore the dread creeping in your gut. It’s there for a reason. You’re a lot more attuned to the universe than you used to be, without a body between you and all the rest. Even if you don’t know the reason, you know you shouldn’t trespass any boundaries. There’s a natural cycle of life and death you’re not meant to disturb.”
I cursed my guts for betraying me. They did gnaw.
“What about a medium?” Evie suggested.
“What’s that?” Alastair demanded. Not like he hadn’t heard—just giving her a chance to take it back.
Evie winced, but she still spoke up. “What about a medium to help her out? I mean, we haven’t had any deliveries in a long while, anyway. I’d like to read something new, if it’s not too much to ask.”
Alastair tried to split a glare between the both of us. As he sighed, I gave him a big grin.
“So I can’t talk to my family, because that’s too risky, but you’ve contracted a psychic to bring you the latest paperbacks?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not for nothing we haven’t brought in any breathers lately. They’re always more trouble than they’re worth.”
For a moment, they both went quiet, staring pensively as if into the same unfortunate memory. I might’ve thought they were giving an intentional moment of silence in honor of someone’s passing, except that they didn’t seem to have the same reverence for death on this side.
Alastair recovered with a shrug. “I’d tell you not to even think about it, but honestly, it’s not as though you’d ever find a medium on your own.”
“Watch me,” I said.
“Why not stay here?” He canted his head playfully. “If you’d rather not dance, you’d be in good company.”
Evie took his offered hand. He pulled her up, like in spite of what he’d just said, he intended to twirl her around. But he didn’t.
“Do me a favor and show her around, would you?” he asked her. “I think you might have a bit in common.”
With that, he disappeared like mist in the sun.
As soon as he’d gone, she reached for my sleeve, like she could see me tensing in concentration, trying to leave.
“I wouldn’t follow him,” she said. “It’s best to keep a kind of bubble, anytime you spirit to somebody. It’s like a courtesy here, you know, for privacy.”
On second thought, he’d already proven to be impossible, anyway. But even if she was loyal to him, a sweet kid like her would be way easier to work over. And she already seemed to like me, for some reason. Bad judge of character.
“What happened to your last medium?” I asked.
She couldn’t hide a guilty fidget, adjusting the sleeves of her strange coat. “I’d rather not say. I mean, nothing good. That’s not to say it’ll always end badly, though.”
I tried not to think about it. “So, could I walk into a metaphysical shop and ask for business as usual?”
“I don’t think everybody who claims to see us actually does,” she said, a little cheeky. “But—”
She dropped whatever she’d been about to say, going quiet.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head.
I’d always had trouble turning on the waterworks, so I tried the next best thing.
“Look.” I didn’t have to fake the lump in my throat, my voice going rough. I never spilled my guts if I could help it. “It’s for my sister. I just need her to know, I didn’t—”
My mouth went dry. The vines on the walls rustled. I thought there must be a breeze, but only the leaves beside us quivered. Something fell from the ceiling. We both jumped as a sliver of plaster fell between us, crumbling as it hit the floor in a cloud of powder.
“My bad?” I asked.
Those brown doe eyes of hers went heavy with sympathy. “There’s someone I used to know…” She sighed. “I can’t promise anything, but maybe…”
“Could you point me their way?”
She stood and held out her hand. “You’ll wanna brace yourself. Since we don’t have the physical barrier of bodies, we’re kind of, well, just raw emotion and thought and memory walking around.” Her nose wrinkled, like she’d grossed herself out with that phrasing. “Know what I mean?”
That must’ve been why the dancing last night had been so heady, like a collective drunkenness—we didn’t have skin to hold back everything we felt from each other.
“So, um, don’t peek in my head, and I’ll do the same,” she said.
I did as she instructed, trying to put up mental walls as I took her hand. She kept her thoughts to herself, but I did catch unfolding in my stomach a shy bloom of excitement, too tender to be my own.