What is it with spirits and total darkness? Why can’t they transition to the netherworld with open eyes and rainbow brightness? Because they don’t want to be dead, I reasoned. With closed eyes, they can deny anything is happening to them.
At last, the darkness thinned to a familiar murk. I’d made it through the transition to the Other Side. Distorted sounds tumbled at me like a plastic bag in an errant wind. Standing still made me feel like a target. I trudged forward, waiting for the vision to unfold. A group of bad-boy spirits wandered by with jeers and catcalls. I growled at them, and they moved on.
I summoned the dead guy’s face to mind, and the oddest thing started happening. Black and white cartoon images flashed before my eyes, flipbook style. A stick man appeared, followed by a bouncing ball. More detail appeared on the page, and the stick figure was now sporting a skirt and corkscrew curls. A doorway appeared beside her. A much larger figure appeared behind her, mouth turned down in a frown. Tears flowed from the woman. The big figure shouted “Go.” The stick woman walked through the doorway and vanished.
The words “THE END” flipped by. Then I heard children’s voices, saw their faces. Young boys about Larissa’s age.
“It’s mine. I found it,” Blue Shirt insisted.
“Nuh-uh.” Red Shirt tried to wrest the flipbook from the other boy. “You got to keep the last one we found here.”
Blue Shirt stashed the book in his pants pocket. “Can’t help it if I’m a better finder than you.”
Red Shirt kicked the floor, rustling old newspapers that littered the wooden planks. “This place is creepy. What does he do out here?”
Blue Shirt’s eyes rounded. He pointed up, to the rafter. A fat spider clung to an old fraying rope. Red Shirt followed his gaze. Both boys yelled, “Ayyyyy!” and ran out of the shack.
But the vision didn’t follow them. Instead, the room fluttered and then came into crisp focus again. The perspective was different, higher. Another person had watched the boys from the rafters.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The scene shifted again. The boy from the rafters reappeared near me, but he looked older, teenaged possibly. He wore a grimy white T-shirt and torn jeans. He had close-cropped dark hair and dark eyes like our victim. “Haney,” he said in a cotton-soft drawl. “My friends call me Haney.”
Finally. I was on the right track. “You make the flipbook?”
“I did.”
“What does it mean?”
“What does anything mean? How’d I get here? I haven’t seen my dad’s fishing shack in years.”
A lie. He knew this place well. “Is the cabin on the reservoir?”
“Who are you? Did you drive me here?”
“I’m … a traveler. I stopped because of you. This place have a name?”
He shook his head, drifted toward the rafters again. His appearance altered until he once again looked younger, gangly like a boy. “Mama told me not to talk to strangers.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Was he regressing in age with each thought? Was this part of the process of accepting you were dead? “I’m trying to help. What’s your mom’s last name?”
He muttered something I couldn’t quite catch. “Haney, please, tell me your last name.”
“None of your beeswax.” He picked up an old broom, began working it across the unfinished floor. “I have chores to do, so go away. Daddy will beat me if I’m not done when he gets back.”
This was the part I hated, but why let him spend eternity pushing a broom? “Haney, you don’t have to do chores ever again. Your dad can’t hurt you now. Something made you want to share this life scene with me.”
Haney leaned on the scruffy broom, which was nearly as tall as he was. “You don’t make any sense.” Suddenly he whirled and threw the broom at me. Since neither I nor the broom had actual mass, the broom went right through me.
The boy gasped and recoiled. “Are you dead? Are you a ghost?”
“Not dead, but I’m temporarily a spirit like you.”
“I’m no spirit. I have a family, and they will be home for supper soon. Mama’s fetching vegetables from the garden. Daddy’s fishing. I’m cleaning the house.”
“You’re dead, Haney. I’m sorry to break the news to you.”
He scanned the room. “I can’t be dead.” Without warning, he vanished.
I hated it when that happened. At least I’d gotten a name. The cops would have something to start with. Might as well go home, because if past experience was any indication, Haney wouldn’t show himself again right away.
A flutter of wings sounded behind me. I whirled, ready to go on the offensive, but it was Rose, my Other World mentor and guide, decked out in her badass biker clothes. Tattoo ink blackened both her arms and neck. Her heavy, Goth-styled makeup and blackened fingernails added to her sinister appearance. Just what the day needed to be perfect. A visit from a powerful entity with a bad attitude.