The pulse greeted me with too much familiarity, wrapping around me like a lover trying to coax me back into bed. I closed my eyes and, with a sigh, let it in. It couldn’t really tempt me, not in the late afternoon sun. My feet were rooted, hands static, hips dull. Perhaps that would change once the band went from warming up to full heat.
“Welcome back,” said Evie. She sat at her piano, as usual, across the hall from the ballroom. “That didn’t take long.”
“I’m not here,” I said. “Just stopping by.”
She smiled up at me. It weighed down my chest, seeing her in the same spot yet again.
“Is this all you do every day?” I asked.
“That’s how I play so well.” I couldn’t tell if she were showing off, talking and looking at me without missing a beat, until she dipped her head down as if to withdraw her words. “I mean, I’m no virtuoso or anything, I’ve only had lots of time to practice.” She widened her eyes at me for emphasis. “Lots of time.”
I watched her fingers dancing across the keys, sick with nostalgia.
“You play?” she asked.
“I don’t,” I said, on instinct. Then I remembered what she’d seen in my memory, so I shook my head and took it back. Besides, I had a different stage in mind than usual. “I mean, I haven’t played in years.”
It had been my first instrument. I’d taken private lessons from our church’s organ player from seven years old until well into my teens. My mother once thought she could channel my passions toward God. As much as I’d hated playing nothing but hymns, I’d loved my first taste of an audience during recitals, even if my heavenly father never did show up.
I’d switched to guitar—and finally drums—as soon as I’d left home and started college. But it had been long enough now that I might not feel like I’d just stepped back into church.
“Wanna give it a try?” asked Evie.
She scooted over on her little bench, making room for me. My chest nearly buckled, but at least I had a good excuse to turn her down, and a segue to the reason I’d come.
“I don’t know how to touch on this side.”
“I’ll show you.”
I did need to learn. It might even make it easier to try it out on something so familiar. She must’ve read into the stillness of my mask.
“You don’t have to,” she said.
She sounded guilty. But I’d already thrown my weight into it, hard, just to get myself to budge, and now I couldn’t stop the momentum. I drifted closer, standing and letting my fingers float over the keys. It felt like lifting a sheet in an attic, coughing up dust.
I pressed my forefinger down. It took a moment for me to hear the silence as it went straight through the key. That delayed my huff of frustration.
“You’ve got to try to forget you’re dead,” said Evie.
I still didn’t know what that meant. Telling me to forget only reminded me of my condition. Looking at my hand, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it see-through, as intangible as I felt. Pretending to still be flesh and blood seemed so stupid when I knew the truth.
I let my hand drop, backing away. “As if.”
Around us, the shadows were dragging long, the light turning golden as the sun began to set. Voices laughed in the hallway, ghosts holding hands and spinning and shimmying past the doorway, already warming up to dance, as the pulse pitched louder and louder. On instinct, my toes started to tap.
“Um,” said Evie. She stood awkwardly. “I have to go, but… I’ll catch you another time?”
She had to be more tempted than she let on. I wondered where she went to distract herself during the nights.
“Sure thing,” I said.
She spirited off. After a moment, I did the same.
Alastair probably wouldn’t be dancing yet, busy pregaming at Clementine’s. As much as I didn’t want him to know I hadn’t crossed, if I wanted to last on this side, I really needed the use of my hands.
* * *
The Haunt looked different in the daytime, broken windows catching the late afternoon sun as if glowing from the inside. When I’d first seen it in darkness, I hadn’t noticed the chain-link fence with barbed wire on top, let alone the lonely urban street. I’d assumed it stood miles outside of city limits, where it could be left undisturbed. Instead, it loomed on the corner of a quiet intersection, boarded on one side by younger, smaller houses; on the other, and across the street, there gaped empty lots of grass.
It looked out of place. Out of time. It must’ve watched its historical brother and sister buildings in the surrounding plots come down. The only one left of its kind, like a mammoth, or an ancient shipwreck.
Alastair worked in the yard, among the overgrown grass and towering weeds. He grunted, probably more from frustration than actual effort, as he tugged at something. I moved closer for a glance.
It looked like a sign. My dead heart skipped a beat as I skimmed, hoping it wouldn’t say FOR SALE.
Even worse, it read:
VANCE PROPERTIES
The sign came crashing down, dented in half with a good kick.
“Don’t fret,” said Alastair. “We’re always passing from owner to owner. But the damage is too extensive, both repairs and demolition too expensive, and, of course, I’ve gotten very good at making appraisers feel…” He paused, but then went for it with a slight bow. “…Apprehensive.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Anyway, you’re still here?” he asked, busying himself breaking apart the wooden supports, bit by bit. “Did you finish your business?”
I flung out my hands, gesturing to my continued person. “What do you think?”
He scoffed, punctuating his words with snapping wood. “Oh, the whole notion’s balderdash. You really think most folk die with absolutely nothing left unsaid, no duties left unfilled, dreams unsatisfied? We’d be swimming in a sea of souls if that’s why we linger. You’re fortunate the whole effort didn’t make you go geist.”
I pouted, though he didn’t look up to appreciate it. “Aren’t you relieved to see me, then?”
“Not during the day. Did I forget to tell you? If you need me, it has to wait till after sundown.”
How many other chores did he perform that he didn’t want anyone to catch him doing? It certainly clashed with his carefree facade.
“Isn’t it sundown somewhere?” I asked.
He gave back my eyeroll. “Why are you pestering me?”
“Just returning the favor,” I said. “And, uh…” I nearly choked on the words. Half of them didn’t come out. “I need to touch.”
At last, he looked up with his usual grin. “Where’s the romance? We may have had a few drinks, but we still haven’t danced.”
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a glare, but I couldn’t help it. “I swear on my grave I am never going to dance with you.”
He sucked in a hiss of a breath, his lips puckered. “Your poor grave.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“I’ve been trying.” His voice grated with weariness.
“Well, I’m ready now.”
He picked up a piece of the post and tossed it in the air before catching it. Then he threw it toward me. It fell through my hands, disappearing into the long grass.
“There’s a trick to it,” he said. “You have to forget you’re dead.”
Evie must’ve been echoing him earlier. I wondered how many other people he’d tutored before me, making our afterlives easier to endure.
“Of course, it helps to have some distraction,” he added. “Up for a drink?”
* * *
Clementine’s must’ve barely opened for the evening, though it already had plenty of drinkers to choose from, lining up in the last light of sunset pouring through the windows. He paraded us straight through all of them, since they were only tipsy, nobody full-on drunk quite yet. But putting them all together gave me the spins. Like my first time, I stumbled, my feet looking for ground and finding nothing. I might’ve let out a yelp.
Alastair laughed, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Steady there.”
He spirited us straight upstairs, letting go and pulling a pool cue off the wall rack. “Here’s to a second chance.”
The cue left his hand, flying toward me. I put out my hand, but just as my fingers began to curl around the wood, I flinched with doubt. The cue slipped straight through my arm and my body, clattering somewhere behind me.
The noise didn’t stop. Suddenly, all the billiard balls scattered across the table, smacking into each pocket, leaving only the nine-ball. It was too deliberate a move to be a geist fit.
Alastair let his head loll in a weary tilt. “What’s it going to take?”
He took up another cue, bowed deeply, and sank the last ball. Just for show, since, apparently, he didn’t even need to use his hands to bend the world to his will.
“Were you forgetting about being dead just there?” I asked. “It looks like you’re really enjoying it.”
“I doubt you’d find that approach any more fruitful,” he said. As he ranted, his accent swayed more and more British. I wondered if he reverted when he drank. “In all my years, I’ve never met such a killjoy. You won’t play, you won’t dance, you won’t let yourself savor a single whim. If it weren’t for your portrait in the papers, I would’ve thought I had the wrong girl. For fuck’s sake, take a look at yourself.”
He threw up his hands, his inflection swinging all the way back to American. “I’d take you for a wallflower, except if you were, I would’ve rocked your fucking world by now.”
I spent too long spluttering for a response. “I’m not a killjoy.”
“So prove it, would you?”
My lips pursed as I thought about it. Back in the day, I wouldn’t have hesitated before crawling into his lap. I’d never let a dare go unanswered.
But he wouldn’t be easy to escape in the morning. He could just spirit after me.
As he watched me and waited, he sighed. “I fucking beg of you.”
“Is this all it takes?” asked the corseted lady, followed closely by the guitar gent and the flapper. “If I held out on you for a decade or so, would that be long enough for you to come pleading back to me?”
“You’d never last that long,” scoffed the guitar gent.
“I would, as long as you’d be gracious enough to keep me company,” she said, tucking herself under his arm, even guiding his hand down into her bust.
“What makes you think I’d be fool enough to believe you this time around?” he asked, even as he indulged in exploring, taking the obvious bait. I couldn’t watch, my skin flushing hot.
The flapper sighed in boredom. I wondered how many decades it had taken them all to hook up, or whether it had happened right away. They were obviously close enough to be family, like my band, but with a way longer lifespan. This pseudo-incestuous tension felt exactly the same. Sometimes it took bringing in fresh meat to break it.
I wanted absolutely no part in that—not again. Maybe I couldn’t have helped that sleeping with my band’s lead guitar before joining had led to somewhat reluctantly dating him for real after he asked me to fill for their drummer. And maybe I couldn’t help falling for our bassist, either. But we had to see each other every day, crammed in the same tour buses and hotel rooms and backstage hallways. Boyfriends and side guys should never be that close, let alone help write songs about each other.
And I really shouldn’t have tried rubbing out our poor shy keyboardist so he wouldn’t feel neglected. That one was definitely on me. Giving up and declaring myself the bad guy had felt so satisfying, like when I’d abandoned the notion of ever getting into heaven as a teen, reveling in causing as much trouble as I could on the path to hell.
“It must be the years and years of never learning,” said the flapper. She’d gone from bored to restless, looking at me with slightly tipsy desperation. She turned to Alastair. “You ever consider that you’re not her type?”
“You’re always trying to poach,” said the guitar gent, tearing himself away from a kiss long enough to speak. I wondered how long it would take to get her out of that corset.
“Go on and try,” said Alastair.
“Why, don’t mind if I do,” the flapper retorted.
She smiled like a starlet, totally out of my league, yet still reaching for me with teasing fingers. I wavered, but at the last moment, shrank away from all of them. Even if my skin was numb, my mouth sick of its own taste, I’d already bared too many memories today. And if I did get all the way naked, I didn’t know what I feared more: being pressured to play, or tossed aside.
“See what I mean?” said Alastair. “She’s just a drag.”
I’d probably be better off figuring out how to touch on my own.