The bare walls of a dark, nearly empty studio apartment sprang up around us. At first, I figured the resident had barely moved in, but there weren’t any boxes. Just a blanket tacked over the window, blocking out the light, and a mattress in the corner. Whoever lived here couldn’t really have nothing. Perhaps there’d been a fire, or they’d left all their things behind in a hurry, running from something. Or they’d been robbed, because the handles of all the cabinets and the closet and even the fridge were bound with locks and chains.
We looked around, wondering where our medium could be, until we turned to the door as it clicked with the jingle of keys. It felt like we were waiting to surprise him with a much-needed housewarming party.
“Here we go,” said Evie.
But when the door opened, the tall young Japanese man didn’t even look at us, slipping his bony frame inside as quickly as he could and slamming the door shut with his back, as if he’d been followed. His height seemed whittled down by his hunch, shoulders caved to clutch too many groceries to his chest. He’d hidden most of his face under a gray hood and long dark tangles.
“Ren,” said Evie.
At last, he flipped on the light beside him and looked up. My dead heart went hammering again. It didn’t know any better, that we were on opposite planes of existence. It latched onto those cheekbones—pallor notwithstanding—and those full lips, even though they were chapped; and it definitely vibed with his dark, bleak eyes, with deep half-moons of exhaustion beneath them, matching mine.
He looked as dead as me. And I might’ve been dead, but I wasn’t dead.
Then he switched the light back off, waiting a moment before turning it back on. When he saw we were still there, not just a trick of the eye, figments of the dark, he sighed.
His eyes flickered down to our feet. That’s when I finally noticed—we didn’t cast shadows anymore.
“Remember me?” asked Evie.
His jaw twitched as he glared, though he didn’t meet her eyes so much as stare through her. “Fuck off, Brian.”
Evie winced. “Nice to see you, too.”
My chest cinched with a pang of recognition. “It’s just a nickname for ‘brain.’ ”
He edged around us and went to dump his groceries on what little counter his kitchen had to offer, unlocking the fridge and cabinets with keys on a chain around his neck.
“How’d you know?” asked Evie.
I didn’t want to go into it, explain the coping mechanism for fighting intrusive thoughts. I’d learned from a shrink I’d seen briefly, though I’d never used the trick myself. And it wouldn’t work on us. We weren’t only voices in his head.
“He thinks we’re not real.”
“Oh,” said Evie. “That explains… so much.”
Ren let out a hiss of a laugh under his breath as he locked the cabinets back up. “They’re talking to each other now. It’s like I’m not even here.”
Evie made sure I could see her approaching hand, giving me a chance to raise my walls before she touched my arm. Both trying to comfort me, and pressing me to go. “We should leave him alone.”
I didn’t protest. It wouldn’t be a bad call to take a time-out before trying again. After all, I knew now where to find him. So I let her spirit us away.
After the dark of the apartment, we blinked in the sunlight streaming through the broken windows, swimming with dust. I’d forgotten the actual time, still morning. The pulse beckoned once more through the walls of the Haunt, low but steady. It wouldn’t thunder until sundown.
“I’m sorry,” said Evie. She looked so earnest with those doe eyes of hers. “I kind of forgot he’s like that. I mean, not that I blame him, now I get it.”
“How do you know him?”
“We went to high school together.”
“Really?” I asked. “He looks older than you.”
“I skipped a grade,” she said. “So he’s only a year older, but he kept growing, and I…”
She trailed off, like it still hurt, sometimes, being reminded of her state. I wondered how long she’d been on this side.
“He used to be known as the crazy kid,” she said. “I don’t think he ever said anything about seeing things, but we all put two and two together from the way he acted, the stuff he’d say while having an episode, or—you know—so we thought. No wonder he kept to himself.”
I’d been a loner at that age, as well, by circumstance long before choice. “You mean he got bullied to hell and back?”
“Even by some of the teachers. They thought of him as a troublemaker, acting out for attention. I’m surprised he managed to graduate at all. I’m glad he did.” She gave a bittersweet smile. “We were lab partners in chemistry. I used to take notes for him when he missed class, which was… a lot. He never showed up for labs. But he always brought me ramune from the Asian supermarket to apologize. Once you get past the broodiness, he’s a real sweetheart.”
As cute as her reminiscence sounded, I’d probably have a better chance of getting through to him alone, with none of these memories to distract him.
“Thanks for introducing me,” I said.
Her voice wavered in concern. “You’re still going to try?”
“Where else could I possibly find a medium?” Besides, I knew a little something about feeling crazy. “How do I do it? Spirit to him?”
“Just picture his place like you’re there,” she said. “Or think of him, but be careful—”
Whatever she’d meant to caution, I didn’t catch it, the walls around me smoothing from cracked and worn to white and bare.
* * *
Ren’s dark tangles peeked out from a nest of blankets. I rankled with envy, watching him sleep. He must’ve worked a night shift. Hence the makeshift blackout curtain over the window, and the big fuck-off headphones over his ears.
“You’ll never have a future.”
A voice out of nowhere made me shiver. I recognized its motherly chill.
An older white woman shuffled through the wall, wearing a black dress with shoulder pads. She almost seemed to be looking at me. But not quite. It gave me a sickly drop in my stomach.
“You want to burn in hell?” she asked.
I sighed, crossing my arms. “Mind your own death, will you?”
Ren didn’t stir from his sleep. It seemed he didn’t wear those headphones due to noisy neighbors.
“You have no life of your own anymore,” said the woman.
I tried to back away as she bore down. When she reached out, I couldn’t dodge in time. We didn’t have skin to divide us, to protect my mind from hers. When she got a grip on my wrist, she took hold of way more than that, and didn’t hold her flood of memories back.
Her daughter stood out clear in her recollections, even if the house where they’d lived looked indistinct, furniture moving around, the layout changing, like they’d moved often from place to place. Sometimes her daughter’s age changed as well, getting younger and older, hair longer and shorter. I could barely keep up. Most of the time, she had blue braces and neat blonde hair, fresh and sweet.
I saw through the woman’s eyes, storming into her daughter’s room. My hand stung with the force of the slap, fingers wet with tears. Her words sounded more like thoughts than speech, as if she couldn’t quite remember the exact conversation anymore.
You’ll never have a future.
Her daughter’s voice came through more clearly, her distinctive sob. I could get rid of it.
You want to burn in hell?
I could hardly understand the words through her crying. What am I supposed to do?
You have no life of your own anymore.
My throat strangled with the mother’s scream, as her daughter went from crying on her bed to hanging in the closet.
Then it happened all over again. They were having breakfast in one of their old houses, her daughter’s blue skin warming from death as she beamed about college applications. My hand stung again with that slap.
I wondered if my grandmother had slapped my mother like that, while I slept in her womb. Beginning our family tradition of disownment.
And then my mother’s voice stung my ears, crackling through an old phone in my sweaty palm. I found myself not in the woman’s house, but a familiar college dorm, my side of the room empty but for a packed suitcase. Seeing through my own eyes again.
You stay the hell put, said my mother. She might’ve yelled more often than speaking to me, but she never swore. It made my head swim, like I’d glanced down from a great height. Or you can never come back.
Back in my own head, I shook myself out of my memories and blinked in the present. I wrenched out of the woman’s grip.
“You can never come back,” she echoed. “You’ll never have a future.”
I ran, unsteady on feet that couldn’t pound the ground beneath them. My phantom lungs burned, like I still needed breath, as I rushed through the walls and down the stairs.
At last, I couldn’t go on. Looking up and seeing nothing peering over the railing, I nearly doubled over, shaking with cramps. I’d died so out of shape.
That must’ve been a poltergeist. She’d gotten trapped, somehow, in her memories, and tried to take me with her.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to go see if any of that had woken Ren. I’d have to come back later—crossing my fingers that the geist wouldn’t still be there.
* * *
Cris sat parked in front of a funeral home, lingering without getting out. When she folded her arms and cradled her head on top of the steering wheel, I got into the passenger’s seat beside her.
I had to pipe up, because it felt too strange to see her and keep quiet. “This would’ve been a lot easier give or take, like, at least forty years, right? I could’ve made my own arrangements. You’d get to take it easy and enjoy a beach-themed sendoff in a tropical-print muumuu while drinking out of a coconut. Better yet, how about a destination funeral? I would’ve made up for dying first by sending you to scatter my ashes in Cancún.”
I winced as a high-pitched noise escaped her mouth. As if she’d heard me, and I’d succeeded in making her giggle. She clasped her hand over her lips, eyes squeezing shut. It hadn’t been a laugh.
My stomach went leaden. I braced myself. But, after clearing her throat, no further sound made it out. It would’ve been better for her not to bottle it up, but at least my limbs could loosen again.
I couldn’t believe I used to make her cry all the time. Even at three years old, when they first brought her home from the hospital, I’d sensed which of us was actually welcome. When she got bigger, our mother brushed her hair without pulling, bought toys without her having to beg, kissed her bumps and scrapes instead of chewing her out for running in the house. So, naturally, I yanked her hair and stole her stuff and pushed her over. Then I resented her even more for waddling off to tattle, tears streaming down her red face.
Once I got old enough to babysit, though—while our parents went to church retreats to work on their marriage—for the first time, she and I could talk freely. Even being the golden child, she still had questions she couldn’t ask anyone else, about sex and politics and the problem of evil. And as the black sheep, I had answers, awing her with my in-depth knowledge of fingerbanging, the queer community, and theological debate.
So we came to a truce. She’d play dumb whenever our mother asked about my latest mischief, and when she stole into my room after bedtime, I’d braid her hair and give her a secondhand dose of teenage rebellion.
But she didn’t cry anymore. I used to think she just didn’t have much going on, her churchy friends too stable and boring, and no dating allowed for a few more years. Up till I came home for summer after my first year of college, and she crawled into my bed and soaked my pajama shirt, blubbering about the divorce. I just lay there in shock, wondering why we’d never really hugged before that.
Now, if I had to watch her cry without being able to awkwardly put my arms around her, or at least brush her hair with my fingers, I didn’t know what the fuck I’d do. I sighed in relief when she pulled it together and got out of the car.
Inside, she looked perfectly composed surrounded by caskets on display like new cars. But beneath her mask, her eyes were glazed as a man in a suit raved about the pros and cons of each model.
No wonder I couldn’t help but slip back into old habits. Real old. I’d tried showing her my good side these last two and change years, but maybe she secretly missed the real me, who would never allow her to suffer any boredom. Even—or especially—at the cost of disturbing her peace.
“How about a test drive?” I asked, lying back in midair and rolling through the nearest coffin, pretending to lie in the cushioned interior with my hands behind my head and legs casually crossed.
She stared down into the casket. My heart stuttered for a moment, almost expecting her to notice me and freak out. Like I’d ever let her catch any blame for my antics.
I always suspected she needed that release, some vicarious mischief, so she’d never slip up herself.
“Live a little,” I said.
She snapped out of it, turning to the staff member and interrupting his commentary.
“I like this one,” she said, pointing at a minimalist white number.
“Really?” I climbed back out of the coffin. “Ugh, gross.”
I would’ve preferred to be cremated, anyway. This whole business would probably be to her taste, not mine.
Then it occurred to me. “Where’s Gloria?”
If our mother were involved in my death rites at all, she’d be here, making all the demands and decisions.
But she never appeared, not coming back from the bathroom or showing up late from important business. She must’ve extended my disownment post-mortem.
If she didn’t care that I’d passed, that didn’t surprise me. After all, my existence had never been planned, anyway. But did she really hate me enough to leave her preferred daughter to do all this on her own?
My hands curled into fists. “That bitch.”
I bit my tongue, like I used to do to keep from talking back to Gloria. It worked about half the time; the rest, she had me filling up notebook after notebook with scripture relevant to my latest sins.
Cris picked out a temporary grave marker, thankfully not one of the crosses. Afterwards, she went into a small conference room with another staff member to work out the schedule for all my rites. My wake would be held on the eleventh. I didn’t know today's date, but looking over their shoulders, and listening for context clues, it appeared to be the sixth.
So I had under a week. Judging from all the calls she made on the way back to her place, and all the messages I tried to read over her shoulder as she worked at her laptop, there’d be plenty of unfamiliar faces there accosting her on my behalf.
Ren would blend right in. I just had to convince him that I existed.