Ren had gone from being chained to the broken door to being tied to a hospital bed. I should’ve known this would happen. I rushed to his side.
“You’re going to be OK,” I said.
He turned to me sluggishly, his eyes bloodshot and glazed. They’d doped him up. His left wrist had been put in a cast. I wondered if he’d broken it while struggling, or if the cops hadn’t been gentle when they brought him in.
“Fucking pigs,” I said. “Are you under arrest?”
No response. I couldn’t tell if he was too drugged up, or just mad at me. At least he’d ended up here in the psych ward, rather than jail. It could’ve been worse, not that he needed to hear that.
I noticed the way he flexed the fingers of his right hand, as much as he could in his restraints. As if he was waving at me. Once he got my attention, he strained to point a single finger. He couldn’t aim straight at the camera on the ceiling, but I found it all the same. I stepped up into the air and tipped it up to point at the wall, away from his face.
With that out of the way, he spoke, still staring over the edge of the bed. “I’m fucked.”
I kneeled into his line of sight. “Why’s that?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I’m going to get committed again.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve got a record,” he said. “It’ll follow me the rest of my life.”
Slowly, I reached out. He had room to flinch back if he didn’t want to be touched, but he let me brush his hair out of his face. “I’ll be here with you.”
“Don’t be.”
I barely hid my wince.
“I don’t want you distracting me while they’re watching,” he said. “Besides, you should be with the gang.”
He must’ve been pissed at me. I took a guess why.
“I’m sorry about the kiss,” I said.
His face and tone remained literally sedate. “Did it feel real?”
I managed not to roll my eyes. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s out of the picture.”
“I don’t scare easy,” he said. “We’re even now.”
If that wasn’t what had pissed him off, then we hadn’t made up as well as I’d thought before shit went down. We still had to address the question of what would happen now between us.
* * *
The Haunt still stood, for now. The demolition crew had hauled away their second failed machine. From the pandemonium inside, you’d think the roof was falling.
“Where’s Alastair?”
I hadn’t realized, with all the change the older ghosts had seen—the world spinning on without them—this place and its host had been the one constant they could rely upon. Nobody had expected he would one day disappear. He seemed beyond it—beyond any of us.
“Where did he go?”
So many ghosts were blinking in and out, trying to spirit to him. They’d only end up at his grave. I wondered how many of them would stop to read his name.
“This ain’t funny,” said Flo. “He should be here.”
“He’s gone,” said the mall rat.
“You’re lying,” Wilhelmina sobbed, tears streaming down her face.
“I saw it happen,” mall rat insisted. “He just disappeared.”
After that came the weeping. They weren’t stoic about it, either. Old-fashioned mourners, not quite gnashing their teeth, but definitely wailing. I had half a mind to join them. It hadn’t quite hit me until then just how many years on this earth I’d have to spend without him. We’d all thought he’d be here for the decades ahead, even centuries.
He would’ve been the one to comfort us in times like these. Now, it fell to me. My own cry would have to wait. For now, I had to suck it up.
I tried on Alastair’s grin for size. “Come on, he wouldn’t want us to mope around.”
“What else are we supposed to do?” said Wilhelmina.
“We ought to celebrate his afterlife,” I said. “We’re going to throw him a wake.”
It would have to be a dry wake, unfortunately. Clementine’s wasn’t open yet. But that might’ve been for the best. I didn’t think any of us wanted to leave. We might not have much time left in this place. We had to make it count.
I had to get everyone’s attention, over the noise and rushing around. It happened with barely a thought. My empty hand suddenly closed around the shadow of my old drumstick. I crashed it against a phantom cymbal, nothing more than a memory, but the sound thundered loud enough for everyone to hear and look up at me.
They did. I took a step up in midair, onto the imagined stage where the band played every night.
“Alastair isn’t gone,” I said.
Several ghosts piped up in protest, all talking at once, but I shut them up with another cymbal crash. I hadn’t earned their trust yet, but I could get their attention my way, by being louder and more annoying.
“He might not be with us anymore,” I admitted. “But he brought us all together. And now that we’ve known him, we’re not the same. We’ve all learned something from him. He showed me how to make the best of my lot, so that’s what I’m doing. As long as I’m here, I’m going to have a good time. And I want to make sure the rest of you do, too. That’s how he would have wanted us to honor him. It’s a bit of his soul that’s rubbed off on the rest of us, and as long as we keep it alive, he’s still here.”
I took a seat in midair. That stage in my head became real, after all. But all the waiting faces were bathed not in darkness, but light. I only regretted the one I didn’t see.
Under my breath, through the tears, I said, “Sorry it took me so long.”
Hopefully he’d be listening, somewhere. Backstage, waiting in the wings.
In my opposite hand my other stick appeared, chafing my old callouses. Around me, barely tangible in the sunlight, formed the shadow of my favorite drum set. I tapped the cymbals, soft as a whisper on the wind, before hitting it.
For a moment, everyone went silent, simply watching. Then came the lilt of a piano. We were off to a somber start. Soon we picked up the tempo, and along with it rang the bombast of horns. I’d never had the privilege of attending a jazz funeral myself—and, sadly, I hadn’t thought to request one—but some of my fellow bandmates had played their friends out, and others returned the favor. Their memory guided our fingers, the same as the rest of them picked up the chords and words from me. They played as if it were an ancient anthem they knew in their bones.
All the ghosts began to dance. Even as machinery roared outside—the demolition crew had brought a backup for a third and final round. We didn’t stop as the walls shook, leaves shaking down from the dried vines, crumbling plaster falling like snow, and then like hail. At last, the ceiling came crashing down on us, walls toppling soon after that. The rubble went through our heads. Once it crashed to the ground, it looked like we were rising from the dust. And still, even with tears on our faces, trembling in our bones, we kept dancing and playing as the house came down.
It had never been ours, anyway. We only borrowed it for a time. And we’d find another, just the same. At least we were still together. We could always find someplace to dance.