Chapter Eleven

Ghost

“I’LL GO. I’LL be back before you know it,” James said as if he was a brave astronaut about to take a one-way trip to save the world.

“You can’t. You’re supposed to be dead, remember? We can’t risk someone seeing you. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just stop at ALDI and come straight back.” Vincent got up from the kitchen table to find a clean shirt. In truth, he would have much preferred to remain in the small oasis they’d created in their apartment. His heart beat a little faster at the thought of leaving James’s side. But he didn’t have much of a choice. Sam’s casserole and what few foods of theirs that hadn’t rotted had only kept them going for a few days.

James followed him into the bedroom. “What about the cash? We can order Chinese.”

Vincent fished a fresh shirt out from his dresser. James must really want him to stay. He despised Chinese food and only put up with it for Vincent’s sake on special occasions. Vincent was tempted, but the growing stack of bills outside their door made him think better of frivolously using the cash Sam and Tyler had raised. He still had a little money left in his bank account; he just had to spend it wisely if he was going to keep them going for a while. “Relax. Take a shower. I don’t know if it’s you, me, or this apartment, but something stinks.”

James pulled him close and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Just be safe.”

“I’m not going to war. I’m going to get groceries. Please release me.” He’d have to leave soon if he was going to get there before it closed. It was already close to eight.

James let him go. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Vincent grabbed his keys and left before James tried to knock him out and go on his own. He snuck down the stairs. He hadn’t spoken to Sam since she’d brought him that casserole, and at this point, he didn’t know what to say to her. He hated knowing she was still mourning James’s death, but James was right; involving her in this mess would only endanger her.

Thankfully, Tyler was blasting some sort of coverage of a game that announcers were hotly debating. Vincent could’ve slammed the front door, and Sam would be none the wiser. He didn’t take any chances. He shut it quietly and snuck to his car.

He was so worried about running into her that he didn’t even think about how unaware he was of his surroundings beyond the apartment until he got behind the wheel. He looked around. He didn’t see anyone except for a neighbor down the street who was smoking on her porch, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t somewhere in the night, waiting for him to let his guard down. He locked the car door before he set off for ALDI.

Silence filled the car so absolutely it was almost tangible. The last thing he needed was quiet time alone to mull over the events of the last few days. He was tired of overthinking everything. James was back. He should just be grateful instead of making more problems for himself.

He tried the radio. Flipped through the stations. A car commercial. An old country song. Some sort of church service about atoning for your sins. A pop song he used to belt out on his way to work. He kept it on. Tried to sing along to it. But the lyrics didn’t sound carefree in his mouth now. They tasted hollow.

He turned off the radio and almost became resigned to suffering through the drive in silence until he remembered he had another option. He had a cassette he could play. One that James had found for him at a garage sale after learning that Vincent’s car had a cassette player. Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album. He skipped to track four, “Rhiannon,” and tried to empty his mind.

Even Stevie Nicks’s vocals couldn’t halt the onslaught of racing thoughts. The store seemed farther away than he remembered, each passing minute adding more distance between him and James and more time he’d have to be away from him. More than anything, he didn’t like the idea of leaving James there alone. Despite being at his side day and night, James hadn’t said much of anything since he’d returned.

Vincent had caught his distant stares more times than he could count over the last few days. Last night, Vincent had this terrible nightmare that he was falling down that slope off the trail, but he never reached the bottom. He just kept falling, smashing into underbrush, and catching pale faces peeking out from trees. He awoke around three in the morning, and when he turned to James to wake him so that he could hold Vincent until the feeling of falling dissipated, James was still awake, staring blankly at the ceiling. Like he was in a trance.

Vincent couldn’t stop thinking of all the terrible things that could have happened to James in the three weeks they’d spent apart. His mind oscillated from the reasonable to the fantastic. From being a misidentified hospital patient to falling victim to some strange experimental trial concerning super healing. He’d tried to broach the subject on several occasions, but James didn’t seem to understand it any more than he did.

Vincent had a sinking feeling James was hiding something from him. That James remembered every second of those three weeks, and he was keeping it to himself because he didn’t think Vincent could handle it.

He turned up the volume as high as it would go. The bass vibrated in his aching chest. He just wanted their old lives back. While he knew it would take time and the important thing was that James was alive, James didn’t seem like himself. He was so quiet. So withdrawn. Vincent would wait for him as long as it took, but living with him, being so close to him and yet knowing he was unreachable, only made Vincent miss him more.

The parking lot was packed. Vincent couldn’t think of any sort of holiday that would prompt such business. Then again, he’d never gone to the store so late in the city. Maybe the avoidance of crowds in the day had created its own chaos at night. He got a shopping buggy and hurried into the store. The narrow aisles were filled with people chatting, reading labels, and staring at the rows of food. He maneuvered around them, snatching items from unoccupied shelves. After staples like lunch meat, cheese, and bread, he collected a pile of canned goods. He wanted to put off his next visit as long as possible.

He tried to think if he needed anything else, but he couldn’t concentrate. There were too many people crammed into the store. He felt like one of the cans on the shelf, boxed in and waiting to be selected and consumed.

He gravitated toward the meat section. A man dug through a pile of chicken breasts beside him. His bulging muscles could make quick work of Vincent’s neck. Not that such strength was needed to end his life. The little girl skipping around her mother could easily do it if she knew how to point a gun and pull a trigger. Hell, the older woman who was inspecting a can of soup farther down the aisle could pull a letter opener from her wicker purse and slit his throat.

Vincent wiped the sweat from his forehead, selected a pound of ground meat, and set off for the freezer section. He didn’t know how people walked around the world so clueless to just how vulnerable they were to the whims of each other. He’d had horse blinders on, and now they had been snatched away, he couldn’t help gawking at all the terrible possibilities around him. Every person in this store had the capacity to kill him.

He opened the first available freezer door and stuck his head inside, letting the frosted air cool his heated face. He leaned farther in, as if he was inspecting the frozen fish, and took a deep breath. The cold tickled his nostrils. He just needed to calm down. He’d been to the grocery store a million times without incident. There was no reason this time would be the exception.

A hand tapped his shoulder, and he jumped back, shielding his face in a sad attempt to defend himself as he slammed into the shelves of frozen food. The small older woman he’d spotted before stood behind him, her big eyes magnified in thick glasses. Hardly a trained assassin.

“Excuse me, young man. I didn’t mean to startle you. Could you grab me a can of lentil soup from the top shelf?” She motioned to the cans farther down the aisle.

Several other shoppers had stopped to see what the commotion was all about. He tried to ignore them. “Of course.”

He got her the can and retreated to his buggy. He didn’t even have a chance to collect himself before one of the onlookers was on him. “Vincent, is that you?”

Vincent glanced up at the young woman. She was dressed in black with hair cut in a short blond bob. Jen. One of his classmates in Dr. Cowart’s Myths, Legends, and Folktales class. “Hey, Jen. How’s it going?”

“Fine. Just grabbing some late-night snacks to cram with.” She raised the pita chips and hummus in her hands. “I’ve missed my…fellow rebel.”

They spent most lectures messaging memes back and forth about Dr. Cowart and trying not to laugh. They often continued their bashings after class at G Door, formally known as Garage Door Saloon, where they’d order a few of the questionable yet completely delicious pickle shots. Everything had seemed so much simpler then. Another life, where he was young and the world was full of possibilities. Talking to her now was like seeing a ghost.

“Same.” He could see her surveying him, eyes darting around to take in each cut and bruise.

She looked down at her food, her pale cheeks turning red. “So, ah, how are you doing?” She cringed as soon as the words left her lips.

Of course, she knew what had happened to him. Pitt was a big school, but between the police’s warnings and Sam and Tyler’s collection, word of his tragedy had undoubtedly traveled fast.

How long would it take for this spotting at ALDI to make its rounds? He could picture his classmates discussing how distraught he acted, flinching under the gentle touch of an elderly woman, and how terrible he looked. Jen meant well, but he doubted she would keep this chat to herself. People fed on bad news like vultures on a dead carcass, tearing away at it until they picked it clean.

“I’m okay.” He needed to get the hell out of this store. He looked down at his food in the hope of hinting that it was time to euthanize this awkward conversation. “Just getting a few things.”

“Well, I should probably get going. If you ever need anything or want to chat, just let me know.” With a halfhearted smile that dipped into a frown, she set off down the aisle.

He wondered if this would be the last time he saw her in person. Jen was originally from Washington, and she’d be graduating in spring with Sam and all the students in his year who’d managed to keep their shit together for four years. And he, well, he didn’t know. That, like so many other aspects of his life, was a problem that could be later addressed if he survived long enough for it to become a more pressing matter.

“Excuse me, I just need to get some tilapia,” a man said, cutting behind him to get to the freezer.

Vincent moved out of the way. He was ready to get back to the apartment. He dumped some frozen food into the buggy on his way to the checkout. The muscular man got in line behind him, and he was standing so close to Vincent that the man’s heavy, stale breaths brushed the back of his neck and assaulted his nostrils. Vincent was never more grateful for an efficient cashier.

When he finally pushed his buggy through the automatic doors, he pulled off to the side of the entrance, just within the reach of the fluorescent lights inside the store, to breathe for a second. He was alone at last.

All alone in a dark parking lot. The space between the entrance and where he parked seemed incredibly long and full of shadows. Like the world had been wrapped in those tall tunnel walls where their attackers had been waiting to trap and kill them.

Vincent gripped the handle of the buggy in a vain attempt to stop his hands from shaking. He wished Jen were back at his side with awkward small talk to keep him from thinking about all the places where someone could hide in this poorly lit parking lot.

The first of the two sets of automatic doors opened behind him. The muscular man was walking out of the store with paper bags held in his massive arms. He was looking right at him. Vincent pushed the buggy forward into the darkness. He tried to walk at a normal pace, but when he heard the swish of the second set of automatic doors opening, he ran for it.

He grabbed his keys from his pocket when he neared, abandoned the buggy beside his car, and tried to steady his hands long enough to get the key in the lock. He missed a few times, scraping away faded blue paint to reveal the silver steel beneath it. He glanced over his shoulder. The man was walking right toward him. When, at last, he got his key in, he turned it so fast he thought it might snap. He pulled it out and jumped in the car. He went to put his keys in the ignition, but he dropped them on the floor.

He was reaching for them, hands clawing at the dirty mat on the floor, when a fist rapped on the glass beside his head. He froze. Forced himself to look up at the man, who towered over him. Only then did he realize that he never locked his door.

“Hey, man. Don’t forget your groceries.” The muscular man then continued to a Jeep on the other side of his car.

You’ve got to pull yourself together, he told himself in the rearview mirror. The only thing the man was guilty of was civil decency. He found his keys under the seat and got out of the car. The parking lot was starting to empty. He moved quickly, tossing groceries at random into the tote bags in his passenger’s seat. Despite his interaction with the muscular man, he didn’t want to have his back to the parking lot for long.

He was drenched in sweat by the time he’d emptied all the groceries into his car. He turned around to return the buggy, and he spotted the silhouettes of two people standing near the entrance. Fuck no. He left it in an empty parking space beside him—someone else could attend to it—and got back in his car. He peeled out of the parking lot as fast as his old car would take him; the bags banged against one another and the door. He rolled down his window and focused on the road ahead of him.

His heavy breaths filled the car. He knew he was acting paranoid, but there was a disconnect between what he knew and how he felt. He saw nothing except a world full of executioners, and he feared that the minute he stopped would be when one finally swung the ax down on his neck.

The light ahead turned red. He slowed to a stop and took a deep breath. Held it in despite the pain in his chest. Relax. He reached for the play button on his cassette player. Then, he heard himself exhale.

Only, he was still holding his breath.

What the…

The air slipped from his open mouth.

His body tensed.

He looked at the passenger’s seat. Nothing except groceries. Of course not. He didn’t expect anyone to be there. He was familiar enough with horror tropes to know where the killers hid. He pulled his eyes up to the rearview mirror, but all he could see in the blinding headlights pouring in from the car behind him was the headrests.

See? Nothing.

But if it was nothing, then he wouldn’t have a problem craning his neck back to make sure he was right. Turn around and confirm that no one was hiding behind his seat, out of the view of the mirror. There was no point in doing it though. He was alone. The wind must have made a strange sound coming in through the window.

The light turned green.

The car behind him beeped.

He drove.

There was no time for a person to get in his car anyway. He didn’t have automatic doors, and he always kept his doors locked. Even now, he could see the little tabs were pushed down. He may have been distracted in the parking lot, but he seriously doubted that someone could have climbed into his car without him noticing. This was just more fear giving birth to wild illusions.

Same as in the parking lot—the shadows playing tricks on him.

Unless… Well, unless that uneasy feeling in the parking lot wasn’t just a feeling. Unless he had accidentally left his door unlocked back at the apartment and those fuckers had tracked him down and snuck into his car and locked the doors and waited for him. Unless the small pressure in his lower back was the knees of a man crouched down behind his seat. Vincent wondered which one was in the car with him. The tall man, the leader, wouldn’t stoop so low himself. It’d have to be the stocky man or the kid.

Vincent didn’t understand why they wouldn’t have just gotten it over with already until he thought about it. With him rushing in and out of the store, the assailant must not have had the chance to kill him before they were back on the road. The fucker wouldn’t risk ending his own life for the sake of Vincent’s. He’d probably wait until Vincent parked in front of his apartment before he slit his throat ear to ear.

Vincent didn’t need to worry about random shoppers at the store. He needed to worry about the three assholes who had landed him in the hospital. The ones who believed Vincent was the only one who’d survived the attack and seen their faces close up. The loose thread that needed to be tied up before he could identify one of them in a police lineup. And he had been so oblivious that he walked right into their trap.

He couldn’t lead them back to James. He should jump out of the car and try to tuck and roll away to safety. Or drive to a police station. Or, hell, even speed up and drive into something. Put them both out of their misery. He remembered hearing about a guy who did that once. Apparently, his car brakes had gone out at the top of a hill leading down to a crowded schoolyard. Instead of taking the risk of hitting one of the kids, he just ran into a brick wall and ended his life.

A noble thing to do. James wouldn’t hesitate to do it if the roles were reversed. Vincent was coming up on one of the abandoned houses in their neighborhood. If he just cut the wheel, he could end it all and take one of those fuckers out with him.

He glanced in the rearview mirror again, hoping to catch the eyes of the asshole hiding in the back before he sent him on a first-class trip to hell. He didn’t see anyone. Whatever surge of emotion and determination he felt immediately deflated. He couldn’t see directly behind his seat. Right where the fucker was probably sitting, but he hadn’t, after all, seen anyone. Just thought he heard someone exhale and thought he felt knees pushing into his back, which was still all screwed up from the attack.

And he was ready to go all Joan of Arc on a whim.

He laughed so hard his chest hurt and eyes teared. The absurdity of it all. That he was in a deathmatch with one of the attackers, and he was going to defeat them like some sort of action hero. He didn’t stop laughing until he parked his car in front of their apartment. The bottomless pit of his imagination was playing tricks on him again. He’d made it all up.

He looked at the lights glowing in the windows of their apartment. The sight had a sobering effect. That nagging uncertainty—the one he’d been avoiding since Sam’s last visit—returned. Was the man in his back seat the only person he was making up? After all, no one had seen James since the attack, and he managed to disappear every time someone came around. Maybe Vincent had lost it in that cemetery, and everything since then was just a strange collection of delusions.

No.

He needed to stop thinking and get the damn groceries.

Still, he moved faster than usual grabbing the tote bags, and no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to look in the back seat—even after he’d shut his car door. He made a beeline to the front door of the apartment building and shut it behind him.

Just then, a door pulled open. He screamed and dropped the bags in his hands. Sam stepped into the hallway as the food spilled onto the floor. His cry seemed to frighten her as much as she’d scared him. “You okay?”

Vincent laughed even harder. “Yeah, I just wasn’t expecting you.”

His reaction did little to ease the concern on her face. “Sorry. I’ve just been worried about you.”

“You worry too much.” He leaned over to collect the food, but his ribs had no intention of bending that way. He opted for kneeling instead.

“Here, let me help you with that.” Sam dropped a pack of cheese back in the bag.

“Thanks.” He collected the rest of the food, put one bag over his shoulder, and was about to grab the other one with his free hand.

“I got this one.” Sam snatched it away from him before he could get a good hold on it.

Vincent was too tired to argue with her. He stood up. “Thanks.”

Up the stairs they walked. Sam climbed first. She kept glancing back at him, her brows knitted with distress. He waited for the inevitable discussion of how he needed to take better care of himself. However, she didn’t say a word. Not that she needed to with the look on her face.

Maybe Jen and Sam were onto something. Was he a fool for thinking he was doing fine? The events of the night were definitely working in their favor. He couldn’t go to the store without falling apart, and the only moments of joy were when he was lying beside a man who he wasn’t altogether sure was real.

James.

He didn’t even think about him being up there when Sam offered to help. Even if James answered the door, he wasn’t entirely sure that Sam would be able to see him. But there was that sliver of doubt—a raw slice of meat cut so thin you could see through it—that made him worry she might see James and compelled him to be somewhat proactive.

“I appreciate you helping me with all of this, Sam,” he said loudly in the hope of tipping James off.

Sam stopped for a moment, as if she was going to say something, but for whatever reason, she didn’t. She continued up to the door. In a tired voice, she said, “No problem, Vincent.”

Vincent took his time with the keys. He feigned ignorance of their location until Sam pointed out that she could see their outline in his pants pocket. He then accidentally relocked the deadbolt and turned the key the wrong way in the hope of giving James enough time to get the hell out of sight if he was, in fact, real. Sam reached forward with her free hand, twisted the key the right way, and pushed the door open.

The hallway was dark and empty. James might’ve just run off into the bedroom or bathroom to hide. Or he might never have been there at all.

“Thanks. I think I can take it from here.” He held out his hand for the other bag.

Sam handed it over to him. “Vincent.”

“Sam.” He almost started laughing, but Sam didn’t look in a humorous mood. Her heavy lids and pursed lips appeared solemn.

“Just take care of yourself. Okay?”

He focused on the bag. The stitching on one of the handles was fraying. It would snap one of these days. “You too.”

Sam started down the stairs, and he shut his door. He expected to feel relieved. He’d survived his trip to the store. No such feelings came. Doubt plagued him. He was starting to understand why Jen and Sam appeared so concerned. He could see the headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few weeks from now: YOUNG MAN GOES INSANE WITH GRIEF. IMAGINES BOYFRIEND CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD.

He set the bags down on the floor and flipped on the light.

James stood at the end of the hall. “Close one.”

A knot had formed in Vincent’s throat that kept him from responding. He hurried down the hall, arms outstretched. James met him halfway. Held Vincent in his arms. Ran his hands through his hair as he cried. “Babe, what happened?”

Vincent looked up at him. “Nothing. Just missed you.”

James kissed him. “Missed you too.”

The door creaked open. “Look what rolled into my apartment.”

Vincent turned around. Sam stood in the doorway, holding a can. She dropped it the second her eyes focused on them. She opened her mouth to speak, but she seemed to have lost the words. After a moment, she managed to say, “James?”

James was real.

Sam could see him.

The reality of that statement hit Vincent with the force of a falling anvil.

Fuck.

Sam sees him.

Tears ran down her face. “How…how is this even possible?”

Vincent looked to James to answer her, but he seemed to be at a similar loss for words. “We can explain.”

Sam backed away, knocking into the doorframe. “But we buried you.”

She looked like she was going to faint. Vincent took a step toward her. “Sam, just breathe.”

Sam pointed a shaking finger at James. “We fucking buried you.”

Before Vincent could do or say anything, she ran down the stairs. Her words lingered in the empty doorway.

We fucking buried you.