I found myself in a haunted house—the fake kind, with strobing lights and plastic cobwebs, blaring spooky organ music punctuated by pre-recorded screams. I latched onto every detail, clinging to the darkness to keep it from turning into the white of a hospital.
Weren’t you going to wait till you’re twenty-seven?
An actual scream startled me lucid.
“That wasn’t funny!” said a feminine voice.
The masculine answer sounded confused. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t touch me!”
“I didn’t!”
I barely stepped aside in time as the couple stormed past me.
“Boo,” said a familiar voice.
I didn’t flinch. My annoyance must’ve grounded me somewhat. I could talk without the tube down my throat. “Shut up.”
Alastair drew closer, getting sharper in my vision. Like he was coming out of a fog, and not one made by a machine. “I thought I’d have to drag you out tonight.”
I wanted to retort that I’d expected better from a real ghost than coming to haunt this place, but combined with the hospital fading in and out of my vision, the scares weren’t so cheap.
As he peered down into my face, his grin overturned. He gripped my shoulders, hard enough to hurt, but it steadied me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Didn’t I warn you off lingering among the living? Your guilt and regret are as good as hellfire.”
I tried to growl as usual, but my voice came out strangled. “Really, must you?”
“I’m sorry.” He gave a slight sigh. “Truly, I am.”
His hands slid down my arms, circling my wrists, as if he were trying to replace the restraints. It worked. My skin went from cold and chafed to warm and throbbing. Just as I’d hoped. That’s why I’d come to him, my last resort. I needed something to feel.
“Go on, then.” I stared up at him through my lashes. “Make it up to me.”
He stepped back, heaving an exasperated breath. “Not now.”
I thrashed my arms, his hands moving with them. “Haven’t we danced around long enough?”
“We literally haven’t.”
“What, you need some wining and dining first? I didn’t take you for a romantic.”
I tried to lean in, our noses brushing. But he still pulled back.
As he gazed down at me, brow furrowed, the glint in his eyes might’ve been pity. “Your tears aren’t dry yet.”
Of course, he had to pick the worst time to be a gentleman. “They’re just late.”
When he released me, my stomach dropped, as if I were about to fall. I clutched at his chest, digging my fingers into his shirt. He compromised, putting his hands over mine, too gently. I needed it harder.
“Please, I’m ready.” I tried calling to him through our touch, the same as on the dance floor, sharing through my blood exactly what I wanted him to do to me. “Show me a good time. Give me a warm welcome. Make me feel like I’m better off dead.”
He shook his head with a woeful smile. “I’d hoped you’d be feeling better by now.”
Now that I’d finally admitted to myself what I’d done—what I’d cost the ones I loved—there was no hope for “better.”
I brought his fingers to my lips in a murmur of a kiss. “Just help me forget.”
His walls were still up, if only by a couple of loose boards. But his blood answered, hot and tempted. “I suppose we all grieve in strange ways.”
At last, he leaned in, letting his eyes drift shut, lips unguarded. I took them, moaning with the rush of tasting again. Not to be outdone, he clutched me by the nape of the neck, until he had me bent back and clinging onto him. Thunder and howling crescendoed over the stereo.
He wasted no time undoing my buttons, shocking my nerves back to life as he teased his mouth down my neck and chest. Before long, he’d sunk to his knees, lifting my skirt and peeling down my underwear. I clutched his hair, joining the taped chorus of screams. Even if it weren’t really his own tricks of the tongue my body remembered, he played the part so well.
When he rose back up, he took me with him, doing his best to pin me against the wall. He gripped my wrists again, though the hospital bed had been replaced with much better restraints in my memory. Just for fun this time. I wrapped my legs around his waist. When he buried himself in me at last, it felt like the other way around.
* * *
By round two, he’d pushed us through the wall, into a room with a graveyard scene. After being bent over a fake headstone, my phantom knees were shaking, ready to collapse. Once we finished, I did. He followed me down, lying beside me like he thought I might want to cuddle.
But he never did like wasting nightfall. After I stayed put, making it clear I wouldn’t draw any closer, he sprang up, like I hadn’t tired him at all.
“Get decent,” he said, pulling his pants up, but leaving his vest and shirt open. “Or don’t, I suppose there’s no need anymore, is there?”
I sat up, my skirt still bunched around my waist where he’d ridden it up, along with my tank top, though my blouse and underwear weren’t coming back anytime soon.
“Why?” I asked.
“Did you think I’d let you off so easy?” he said. “Come on, the night’s still young.”
He held out his hand. I took it.
We swung by Clementine’s for a drink, blowing out the lights to the delighted shrieks of the costumed crowd. As we drank, we brushed shoulders on purpose as we passed, and perhaps some of those strangers turned to strike up conversations, thinking they’d bumped into each other.
Once we’d gotten good and tipsy, we hit the streets. Bigger kids stealing candy got their bags ripped open, spilling their stolen loot. Smaller kids afraid to visit scarier houses found the jump-scare decorations didn’t work until after they’d grabbed their candy, so they could run for it. At a tween sleepover, all the Ouija board questions were answered with encouragement about their crushes and final grades.
After the kids went to bed, we stayed up for the afterparty. We went to a costume ball, though none of the living danced as well as the dead. It did help to accidentally pick up somebody’s acid trip. All the costumes looked real, dancing ghouls like me.
By the time daybreak glowed blue between the buildings, mingled with the orange of the last streetlights, I didn’t want it to end. We were walking side by side down the street, candy wrappers whirling in the wind along with the dead leaves around our feet.
“You know what day it is?” he asked.
I’d nearly forgotten. My accent tasted rusty in my mouth. “Día de los Muertos.”
Gloria never even mentioned it. She’d thought it too pagan. I ended up learning about it in school. While all the other kids made tiny shoebox ofrendas to Frida or Elvis or Kurt Cobain, I’d done one for my dad. I kept doing it on my own, every year, until I got old enough to start bringing them to his grave, leaving him more realistic offerings of booze and cigarettes. Up till I’d started touring, at least. I hadn’t picked up the tradition again afterwards.
“Come with us,” said Alastair.
I couldn’t help but side-eye him. “Why are you celebrating?”
“You think I’d pass up a party in our honor?”
Funny how I felt so protective of a holiday that didn’t even feel rightfully mine, like if I didn’t feel entitled to it, he shouldn’t, either. “I don’t think you’re the dead my people are expecting to come home tonight.”
He answered in Spanish, this time slowly enough for me to follow, even if it took me a moment to contextualize the words. “You don’t think I’ve been invited? Your ancestors were happy to have me, down in Mexico.”
I turned my head to hide how far my eyebrows had ridden up and refused to come down. Not only did he have better pronunciation than me, but for once, he’d acknowledged his age. I’d known from the start that I’d decided to fuck a much older man, but I didn’t particularly want to do the math. No wonder he’d had time to practice his accent.
“It’s different in your time,” he admitted. “Have you ever heard of the danse macabre? Back during the rule of kings, they used it to comfort the poor, these etchings of skeletons dancing together free of flesh, no crowns or rags, equals in death. Everyone gets theirs, no matter their birth.”
I’d wondered why I’d seen so many ghosts of different colors getting along, despite their different eras. Even so, he sounded a little idealistic. “Are you saying we don’t have bigots on this side?”
He smirked. “You know which direction they go.”
I laughed, wanting to believe him now. “Good riddance.”
His hand found mine. Our touch was easier than ever, my walls more like a fence, low enough for the neighbor boy to perch on.
“So,” he said. “Will you be joining us?”
He swung our hands, whirling me slowly and gently around, relying on me to go along with it. I did, even if it still made my heart skip a beat, thinking of dancing at last.
But what else could I do? Now that we’d slowed down enough for me to finally recall what had happened last night before I fled, the streetlight above us buzzed like a dying insect.
“Hey,” said Alastair.
He pulled me in for some more kissing. I hadn’t really expected we’d still be going at it. I’d thought he only needed to get me out of his system, and afterwards, he might not even care about getting me in the band anymore, satisfied with a win of another kind.
“Think about it,” he said. His hands wandered over and then under the clothes I’d barely gotten back.
“Again?” I asked. “So soon?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, with a mocking pout. “Did I tucker you out already?”
As much as I expected to be tired, when I thought about it, my aches had already eased, all the bruises and bites gone too soon.
I went to my knees, my turn for some taste. He grabbed my shoulder, spiriting us somewhere I didn’t even care to look. I would’ve had him right there on the street, for all the world to not see.
He trailed his hands through my hair. “So much for being a killjoy.”