“Dang it.” Dillon had been pacing behind Noah as he listened in to the three-way conversation between Noah, Avery, and Chaupi, but now he took himself off to the far end of the patio, dropping into one of the empty chairs with a sigh. Most of the other ghosts followed him, leaving Chaupi and some of the wisps hovering by Noah and Avery.
The news wasn’t good. Chaupi had left behind a pregnant girlfriend in Peru. He wanted her to know his fate, that he hadn’t abandoned her intentionally. But it had been thirty years, maybe more, and all he had was the address where she had once lived.
“Hmph,” Nadira snorted. “A man who conceived a child outside of marriage? This is the gate you would have us go through? Surely it must lead to a particularly dark corner of hell.”
“No, it won’t,” Rose said absently, watching Chaupi with a frown.
“Tell me that after you have gone through a dozen of these doorways, not just one,” Nadira said smartly.
“Maybe we could go through his door without him,” Dillon suggested. “Rose, if you can show us where…”
Rose interrupted him, shaking her head. “If that worked, one of you would have popped out of here by now. You’ve walked right past the door more than once.”
Dillon scowled. It seemed unfair that Rose could see it and he couldn’t. “You could take us through, couldn’t you?”
Rose wrinkled her nose. “What if using it closes it? I’m not stealing Chaupi’s afterlife from him.”
“Maybe we could convince him to go without waiting.” Dillon eyed the older ghost. Chaupi was standing by Noah and Avery, head cocked to one side, as if he was trying to understand their conversation. He’d been a ghost long enough to have started fading, the colors in his plain t-shirt, white apron, and khaki pants beginning to wash out as if they’d been out in the sun for too long.
Nadira followed his gaze. “Can we not find another doorway? One that does not belong to an adulterer?”
“How can he be an adulterer if he wasn’t married?” Joe took a seat in the chair next to Dillon, leaning back and extending his legs.
“You know nothing about sin.” Nadira rolled her eyes.
“What’s an adulterer?” Misam asked.
“Never you mind,” his mother said. She waved him toward the grassy lawn. “You go and play.”
He ignored her.
Unexpectedly, Sophia spoke up. “Why don’t we have doors of our own? If he gets one, how come we don’t?”
“I think it’s because we shouldn’t have died when we did,” Rose responded. “We’re like the unripe fruit of souls, not ready to be picked.”
“Ew,” Nadira protested. “I am not fruit. Or a chicken.”
“You had a door, though, didn’t you?” Dillon asked Rose.
“Yes, but only after Henry came back. If I’d lived, I would have been pretty old by then, so maybe that’s when I would have died if I hadn’t… well, made a mistake,” Rose said.
“What was your mistake?” Misam asked Rose.
Dillon opened his mouth to say something, anything. He knew how Rose had died. Akira had told him the whole story after Rose had moved on the first time. He didn’t want her to have to share it if she didn’t want to.
But before he could think of what to say, Rose, quite calmly, said, “I conceived a child outside of marriage. And then I tried to stop it from being born.”
Nadira drew in a sharp breath as Misam asked, in a tone of innocent curiosity, “How did you do that?”
“Never you mind,” Nadira snapped at him. “Go and play. Now.”
He ignored her again.
Rose smiled at him. “It’s not important.” She looked at Nadira and said, “My doorway didn’t take me to hell, and Chaupi’s is probably safer than mine was. Less of a sin.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
Nadira bit her lip, looking troubled, then put a hand out to Rose. “I am sorry for your loss. And for any offense I might have given.”
“None taken,” Rose assured her.
Sophia said, “If we’re unripe fruit, shouldn’t we wait? Until we get our own doors? Until we’re ripe?”
Dillon wanted to bang his head against the nearest brick wall. “It’s not an invitation-only party. We’re dead. That means we’re ready.”
“Hey, I hate this as much as you do.” Sophia folded her arms across her chest.
“More, probably,” Dillon admitted. He hadn’t managed to create a vortex until he’d been sure he’d totally screwed up his mother’s life.
“But maybe we’re supposed to resolve our unfinished business.” Sophia hunched her shoulders. “I could probably talk to my parents.”
“What and then you’ll get a white light? And your grandparents waving at you from the other side? I’ve talked to my parents. I’ve seen my grandma. It didn’t help.” Dillon jumped up from the chair so he could start pacing again.
Calm, he told himself. Calm. He didn’t want to open a vortex just because he was so desperate to avoid one. He took a deep breath and let it out in a quick exhale. “Sorry.”
At the other end of the patio, Noah nodded at something Avery was saying and then started talking, his expression serious.
“If we have unfinished business, Misam and I, it would be in Iraq.” Nadira pursed her lips.
“Do you think we need to see Papa?” Misam sounded doubtful. He slipped his hand into hers.
“I don’t know what there would be to say to him. And…” Nadira glanced at Joe, then looked away. “Well. No.”
Joe studied his toes, but his dimple flashed in a quick smile.
“It’s not right,” the angry man muttered.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I’ll never get this clean.” Mona dropped to her knees and began scrubbing the paving stones of the path.
“That’s for sure,” Sophia said. She crouched next to Mona and pointed at the moss and grass flourishing in the tiny gaps between the stones. “They need the dirt to survive, Mona. Leave it alone. Unless you want to be a plant-killer.” She said the last word with an emphasis that made it sound equivalent to serial killer.
“Oh, dear.” Mona sat back on her heels, eyes wide and perturbed.
“Mona’s unfinished business seems to be cleaning something she didn’t get clean enough the first time,” Joe said.
“Trying to get it perfect for her husband, yes,” Nadira agreed.
“Even if we could find her husband, she should tell him to get lost instead of trying to clean for him,” Dillon said firmly.
Sophia stood and turned to Joe. “What about you?”
“Me?” Joe looked surprised.
“You. What’s your unfinished business?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Dillon grumbled. He’d done the unfinished business thing. His business was done, as complete as he could get it, but he still didn’t have a door. At least they weren’t arguing about whether to go, though. That was progress.
“I don’t know.” Joe shrugged. “I mean, my whole life is unfinished, isn’t it? I was twenty years old. I don’t think there’s some magical thing I needed to accomplish to make my life complete.”
At the other end of the patio, Avery began to talk, using their hands freely. They arched a doorway and spiraled a finger around in a twisting circular motion.
“What’s Avery doing?” Dillon said. He headed back toward Noah, the other ghosts joining him. He’d moved away so he could talk without disturbing Noah and Avery, but now he wanted to know what Avery was saying.
Avery kept speaking. They drew their hands toward them as if dragging something heavy, flickered their fingers, pausing now and again as if searching for the vocabulary they needed.
Chaupi looked startled and drew back. He responded so quickly that Noah had to put up his hand in another slow-down motion, before repeating his words to Avery.
Avery nodded in satisfaction. They spoke some more, without bothering to translate for Noah. This time a wide arm gesture indicated the world and Dillon distinctly heard his Uncle Zane’s name.
“What’s he saying?” Misam whispered.
“Shush, love,” Nadira answered in an equally hushed voice. “Let him listen.”
Chaupi looked torn. He glanced around at the watching ghosts, then dropped his gaze to the ground. He walked a few steps away and stared at the garden wall, then turned back. He folded his arms, considering.
“What’s he saying?” Avery asked Noah.
Noah shook his head. “Nothing. It’s quiet.”
Avery stood and started speaking again. This time their words seemed more earnest than passionate. They patted their chest with an open palm, then turned the hand outward.
“You promising him something?” Noah asked, leaning back.
“Sure.” Avery gave a shrug. “I go home every year. I’ve told him we’ll find his girlfriend and that I will personally visit his village and tell them what happened to him.” He added another sentence or two in Quechua, sounding more caustic, and sat back down, crossing his legs in a defiantly relaxed motion. “And now I’ve told him that if I say his soul has been eaten by a qosqo, I’m sure they’ll be saddened to hear it.”
“A what?” Noah asked.
“Your vortex,” Avery said. “An energy center that eats living energy. We have them in Peru, too.”
Chaupi gave a sharp nod. He didn’t look entirely pleased, but he stepped closer to Noah and said a few words. Then he looked around at all the other ghosts and gave an almost beatific smile. He made a wide, sweeping motion with his arm, the motion seeming to encompass all of them, even the bobbing lights and the faded wisps.
“Oh, dear,” Nadira said.
“Oh, yes!” Dillon punched the air. “He’s going to take us, isn’t he?”
Noah repeated Chaupi’s words and Avery gave a smug nod. “He’ll help.”
Finally.
If Dillon’s heart still beat, it would have been racing. When his gran left, she’d asked him if he wanted to join her, but he hadn’t been in a hurry to leave the rest of his family. Being able to communicate with them was new to him. He’d wanted to spend some time with his dad, and getting to know his parents better had been great.
But now he was ready. No more risk of the vortex, no more chance of being trapped by some ghostly power he didn’t understand. Metaphor or not, it was time to learn to fly.
Nadira buried her hands in the arms of her robe. “I don’t know about this.”
“Me, neither,” Sophia said.
“What?” Dillon turned to them. “But we have to go. It’s too dangerous to stay.”
“This door could be dangerous, too,” Nadira said.
“It’s an adventure, Mama,” Misam piped up. “You like adventures.”
“Noah should take us to New Zealand,” Nadira said. “That would be a nice adventure. I’d like to see Middle Earth.”
“That other place.” Sophia held her chin high. She wasn’t crying. “That thing that was dragging me. You said it was nothingness. Unbecoming. Maybe I want that instead.”
“Oh, Sophia, no.” Dillon didn’t know whether he should hug her or shake her. The memory of the grimy ammonia sensation, the swallowing gray poison oozing over him, came back to him and he shuddered. Sophia’s soul wouldn’t be like that. She was unhappy, but he’d seen her sparks of humor, her sarcastic rejoinders, her moments of enthusiasm. She didn’t belong in the crushing emptiness of the energy ocean. “No way.”
“Nothingness sounds good,” Sophia insisted, but her voice was softer.
“I’ve been there. You don’t want to go there.”
“If I deserved a door, I’d have a door.”
“Well, you don’t have one. And if you stay, if you don’t wind up in the vortex, you’ll turn into one of them.” Dillon waved his arm toward the faders and wisps. “Is that what you want? To spend decades fading away until you’re just a single memory? One last remnant of who you once were, floating around, saying the same thing over and over again?”
“I… no,” Sophia said in a smaller voice. “No, I don’t want that.”
“We need to move on,” Joe said.
Nadira sighed. She let her eyes drop to Misam and put a hand on his head. Then she gave a single nod, pressing her lips together.
Sophia sniffled and wiped a hand irritably against her cheek. She didn’t say anything more.
Dillon looked around at the others. Most of the wisps seemed as oblivious as always. How were they going to get them through Chaupi’s door? “But how are we going to make this work?”
He reached out for Chaupi’s hand. The older man held his hand out willingly, but it drifted right through Dillon’s, only a mild tingling buzz to indicate where their essences met.
Joe gave a bark of laughter. “Damn it. Not so easy, after all.”
“Well,” said Nadira cheerfully, “that was a good idea, Dillon, but we’ll have to try something else.”
“I’m not giving up.” Dillon scowled.
Energy, that’s what ghosts were. Energy, still trapped on this plane of existence. Chaupi just needed more energy to become solid again.
New ghosts, fresh from their deaths, emotional or angry, could generate energy, but the older they became, the longer they existed in an incorporeal state, the more their energy dissipated and the less able they were to renew it. Even if somehow he could frustrate Chaupi, the older ghost probably couldn’t make himself solid again.
But Rose knew how to absorb the energy from other ghosts. That’s what she’d done with Sophia.
“Rose,” Dillon said. “That thing you did with Sophia. Can you do the opposite to Chaupi?”
“Hmm.” Rose folded her hands in front of her face in thoughtful speculation, then shrugged. “Maybe.” She reached for Chaupi’s hand. Her hand passed through him, like Dillon’s had, but instead of pulling back, she kept it there.
“It’s not just Chaupi, though.” Joe waved an arm around the yard. “We can’t leave all the crazy ghosts to haunt Noah. That would suck.”
“It’s not right,” the angry man said, stepping closer to them.
“Hey, no offense, man,” Joe said to the angry man. “But come on, no one wants to listen to that for the rest of their life. You gotta go, too.”
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the colors in Chaupi’s clothing, his skin, his hair, were starting to darken and deepen, until he was no longer transparent. He gripped Rose’s hand and lifted it to his lips, bowing his head over it, and said, “Gracias.”
“It’s not right. It’s not right.” The angry man turned to Rose.
“What’s going on?” Noah asked.
“It’s okay,” Rose replied to Noah. “I can make this work.”
“Make what work?” Noah asked. “What are you doing?”
“What’s happening?” Avery asked, their eyes intent on Noah’s face. “This is so wild.”
Rose placed a finger on the center of the angry man’s chest, the tip passing through a button on his white shirt. He waited, his eyes on her. Like Chaupi, he slowly began to solidify, the colors draining into his clothes and hair until he was fully present.
“The numbers were wrong,” he said to Rose earnestly. “There was an error in our calculations. It wasn’t safe.”
She smiled at him before saying, “It’s over now. It’s time to go.”
“Yes.” He lifted a hand, turning it as if admiring it, then reached toward Chaupi. Their hands met and clasped. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Rose glanced around the garden, at the wisps and balls of light, and seemed to brace herself. “This might take a while.”
“Are you sure you can do this, Rose?” Dillon looked around the garden, too. Restoring Chaupi was one thing, but there were a lot of ghosts. Did she really have enough energy?
“Sure thing.” Rose waved off his concern and put her finger into the nearest wisp. Under her touch, it gradually began to take shape, becoming a young man in a old-fashioned baseball uniform, his expression surprised.
“Time to move on,” she said to him, patting his arm. She gestured toward the angry man, who reached out to take the baseball player’s hand.
In a quiet voice, Joe began telling Noah what she was doing. Noah relayed the news to Avery as Rose went around the garden, rejuvenating ghosts.
Not every ghost solidified. The balls of light drifted away from her hands, unchanged, and a few of the wisps seemed to turn away from her, too. Most, though, reformed into people. And it must have been obvious what they should do, because one ghost after another joined hands.
The noise level in the garden was going up as wisps reclaimed their voices. Noah was frowning, listening to Joe and the chaos, and telling Avery what he was hearing.
“Are you going to say good-bye to your parents?” Sophia asked Dillon.
“Good idea.” Dillon should have thought of it himself, but no matter. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Moving on. Love, D. That would do for his mom, his dad, his grandpa.
But Akira needed more. He paused, then texted her, Moving on. Thanks for everything. Take care of H. Love, D. There was so much more he wished he could say. She’d changed everything for him. He would be forever grateful. And he hoped he’d see her again, one way or another. But if he tried to express all that… well, he’d be a fader himself before he finished saying everything he wished he could say.
He ought to message some other people, too — his aunts, his uncle. But they’d get the news from his parents or his grandpa.
“You’re lucky.” Sophia stared at the ground as if she could learn something from the patterns in the paving stones on the patio.
“I guess. Do you want me to…” He let the words trail off, not sure what he was offering. He didn’t know Sophia’s parents.
She lifted a shoulder. “What, send them a text? It would just confuse them.”
“You’ll see them again,” Dillon tried to reassure her.
She made a scoffing noise. “In forty years, maybe. My mom’s not that old.”
“It’ll feel fast, I bet. Time probably moves differently over there.”
“My mom’s here, though. It won’t feel fast to her.” Sophia looked away.
Dillon didn’t know what to say. He wished he could help, but he didn’t know how. At least she wasn’t talking about wanting nothingness anymore.
Nadira was fussing over Misam, smoothing down his hair and dabbing at his cheek as if cleaning imaginary dirt. He stood patiently under her touch, his face wearing a grin a mile wide. His eyes met Dillon’s and Dillon grinned back at him, seeing excitement to match his own.
“Ready?” he asked Misam, reaching out for the little boy’s hand.
“Yes!” Misam grabbed Dillon’s hand. Behind him, Nadira was shaking her head, her lips shaping words that looked like a prayer.
The line trailed through the garden now, doubling back around the hedges and bougainvillea.
And Rose was finished.
“It’s not all of them,” she said. “But I think it’s enough.”
Joe straightened from where he’d been leaning over Noah. He nodded. “The balls, they don’t make noise. They’re okay. And those other ones…”
“They don’t want to come back. I could feel them pushing me away.” Rose curled her arms around herself, huddling into them with a shudder as if she were cold.
“But they’ll be quiet,” Joe said with satisfaction. “Good enough.” He dropped his hand on Noah’s shoulder. For a second it looked like Joe wanted to say something more, but then he nodded. His expression was resolute as he turned and walked back to the others.
He hesitated as if unsure whose hand to take, but Nadira waggled her fingers at him peremptorily. His lips curved into a smile as he grabbed her hand.
“If we wind up burning in hell, I want to be sure I am close enough to hit you,” she told him. “Hard.”
He laughed, but his eyes were affectionate.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Mona’s feather duster appeared in her hand. She began dusting the plants.
“Stop doing that.” Sophia reached for the feather duster. “You don’t have to clean anymore. Everything’s clean enough.”
Mona stared at her, then at the duster in her hand. She drew it in to her chest, clutching it possessively, then looked around at the other ghosts. For a moment, Dillon wasn’t sure what she’d do, but she took a deep breath and nodded at Sophia.
The feather duster disappeared and Mona took a place at the end of the line, holding onto the hand of a girl in a pinafore, who was looking around her with wide eyes. She held out her other hand to Sophia.
Sophia paused for a moment, then took Mona’s hand. Dillon grabbed Sophia’s free hand. Rose reached for Joe’s hand. Her fingers slid right through.
“Oh!” She gave a startled laugh and stepped away from him.
The long chain of ghosts rambled around the garden, Chaupi at one end, Joe at the other. Only Rose wasn’t a part of it.
“Rose?” Dillon’s voice cracked on the word.
“Go on, Chaupi.” Rose motioned with both hands, the backs of her fingers toward Chaupi, as if pushing him along. “Time to go.”
Chaupi inclined his head to her and said something, adding in English, “Good-bye.” Holding tightly to the hand of the ghost next to him, he turned and stepped away, disappearing into nothingness.
“Rose?” Dillon said again.
She turned toward him. He could see the bougainvillea through her body, he realized, as the ghostly conga line began to move. The deep peachy colors of her skirt and sweater had faded to a pastel pink and her skin no longer held even a trace of healthy golden glow.
She’d become a fader.
She’d given too much of her energy to the other ghosts. It had drained her, past the point where she herself was substantial enough to touch another. Had she gone too far? Would she be able to regain the energy she’d lost?
“Are you coming?” he demanded.
“Don’t worry about me, Dillon. You go on now.”
“But, Rose, you’ve faded. You’ll turn into one of them.” He indicated the nearest revivified ghost with his chin, unwilling to let go of his grip on Sophia’s and Misam’s hands.
“I’ll be all right. I’m sure I’ll catch up to you someday. We’ll meet again.” Her smile was encouraging.
The line was moving, one ghost after the next popping out of existence.
“How?” Dillon demanded. “That’s not what happens and you know it. Faders just fade away.”
Rose lifted a hand, fluttering insouciant fingers. “I’ll be fine.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “You know I like it here.”
“Yes, but…” Dillon looked at the line ahead of him as the baseball player disappeared into emptiness.
Could he go? Without Rose?
Could he really leave her behind?
A woman called, “Carly?” in a soft voice as she stepped away and disappeared.
Rose was wrong. She wouldn’t be fine. If the vortex was the destruction of self, fading was the extinguishing of self. It was slow oblivion. But what he could do about it? If he stayed, could he help her?
The girl in the pinafore was gone.
Dillon’s hand tightened on Sophia’s, his fingers clutching hers as hard as he could. He wanted so badly to go.
He swallowed hard. He had to decide.
And he had to decide now.