SEVENTEEN

THE NEXT MORNING, I was still on edge. Hard as I’d scrubbed, my face was still smudged, but when Jess didn’t say anything about it, I knew it was only visible through a spiritual lens. She stood by the door, loaded down with all the new baby stuff, Jackson strapped into his stroller. But she kept hesitating to grab the doorknob and leave.

“Thanks for letting us crash with you like this.”

I handed her a baby sock that had fallen behind a chair. “Sure.”

“You’ve always been there for me when I need you.”

I gave her a polite smile —the we’re-just-friends kind.

“By the way, why won’t you tell me who came over last night? I heard you and a man talking.”

“You did?” That threw me.

“Yeah. I wasn’t, like, eavesdropping. I just happened to hear. Something about an address, I think?”

“Oh . . .” I nearly dropped my phone.

“What’s the big deal?”

I paced my living room. “You have a history of not believing me, Jess, remember?”

Jackson started fussing, but she ignored him. “How about you give me another chance?”

I got the feeling that’s what she’d been wanting to say this whole time —about us.

Jackson arched his little back and protested until she finally scooped him up and held him. “Okay, tell me.” Jess was never one to let me off the hook.

I sighed then lowered myself to the floor, sitting on the carpet across the room from her. “Did I ever tell you that I figured out who my father was and that he was presumed dead?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, he’s definitely dead.”

“Okay?” She came and sat across from me with the baby in her arms.

“He’s been . . . visiting me.” I braced myself for a sarcastic remark, but she didn’t say anything. “He’s who I was talking with last night. I’m surprised you heard him.”

More silence, then — “How cool! Owen, that’s incredible! I mean, I’ve seen this stuff on TV, but wait —can you hear him and see him, or just hear him?”

“Both.”

“Crazy! Do you think I could see him too sometime?”

My sacred experience was starting to feel like a circus sideshow. “I don’t know about that.”

“’Cause I would love to meet him. I would try not to freak out.” She put Jackson on his back on the carpet, then stood and practically galloped around my living room, dragging her cuffs along. “So you’re saying that voice I heard last night, that was a dead guy?”

Her question rubbed me the wrong way, but what she said next was about the most uplifting thing I’d heard in a while.

“Owen!” She sprawled out in front of me. “I’m so happy for you. That’s so great that you get to connect with your father, after all this time. I bet you’re super excited.”

Finally, someone was celebrating the miracle of my reunion.

“I am,” I said.

“Then why do you look so bummed?”

It surprised me that Jess could still read me so well. “Not everyone is thrilled about it.”

“Let me guess —Ray Anne?”

My lack of an answer was answer enough.

“Oh, please.” Jess turned on her side and propped her head up with her elbow. “What, like, ghosts are against her religion?”

“He’s spirit —not a ghost. And she’s asked me to stay away from him.”

“Do you do everything she says?”

I glared at Jess. “I was talking with him last night, wasn’t I?”

She smiled, visibly pleased with my defiance of my girlfriend’s wishes. At least I hoped Ray Anne still considered herself my girlfriend.

Jackson clawed at his tired eyes and started fussing all over again.

“You want to hold him?” she asked me.

There was no point in playing house and toying with her emotions. “That’s okay.” I stood and gathered her sacks of stuff. I was tired of company and wanted her to leave —for real this time.

Finally, she and her metal appendages were headed out the door.

“You never told me where you live.”

She shrugged, trying to look carefree, I think, but she didn’t pull it off. “I have a friend who says I can move in with her for now —you know, until I get my own place.”

It was an odd turn of events. Jess had lived her whole life in extravagance, and now she was basically homeless. With a baby on her hip.

I had the money to help her get on her feet, but I knew better than to swoop in and try to rescue someone in her situation. She needed to grow up on her own, and I needed to keep my distance. Our season together was over, and I had no desire to rekindle things. I still found her attractive, but her life was a hurricane of bad choices and noisy chains. I wanted nothing to do with her.

In spite of everything, my heart remained with Ray Anne.

I gave Jess the thirty dollars cash that was in my pocket, and she took it without hesitation. I could only hope she’d spend it on her son.

That afternoon, I hammered out a portion of a research paper, but it was torture because, as usual, my mind was consumed with other things —mainly last night’s assault against me. Thank you, Lord, for sending my father.

I hadn’t heard from Ray Anne since she’d left my apartment yesterday, and I didn’t know if it was because she wanted time and space away from me or because I’d missed church again this morning. Either way, it irked me. But I didn’t text or call her. I had to prove I wasn’t desperate. Mainly to myself.

That night, I made up my mind to go to 136 Sycamore Lane and follow through this time. As if the graveyard scene wasn’t eerie enough, a thunderstorm had rolled in. I’d get soaked on my motorcycle, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I stuffed a flashlight inside my jacket pocket and left.

I was on my balcony when an oppressive thought came: Demise is out to get me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I approached the stairwell, and there was the one-handed Creeper, moving toward me in the driving rain, walking in midair above the parking lot as if on the same third story as me.

I’m too weak to endure this.

I knew the thoughts were being launched at me like darts at a bull’s-eye, but they felt true. Like I was thinking them up myself.

I’m outmatched. Every thought stirred crippling emotions. Defenseless.

Demise kept tracking, moving toward me faster than its steps alone were taking it. It stopped abruptly just beyond my balcony, then extended its index finger, curling it back and forth, coaxing me over the railing. Then came a vivid mental picture of me climbing up and over, breaking my neck on the wet cement below.

Is this what Demise had done to Meagan? Plowed the soil of her soul so Suicide could rush in and finish the job?

A forceful thought pierced my mind: True freedom and power are found only in the afterlife.

Suddenly the idea of suicide was not about escaping this life but deliberately upgrading to another, shedding my flesh to advance to a superior realm. I knew the notion was evil, and yet I couldn’t deny the appeal —the longing for a passageway to an existence where weakness would be eradicated forever. But it had to be a lie. All Creepers do is lie.

“Get away from me.”

Demise thrust itself forward, through the banisters, and its companions from my dream, Murder and Regret, came rushing to its side. All three surrounded me, their disfigured feet just outside my aura. The rest of their towering bodies pressed in so close I shivered, hardly able to stomach the stench. I was living my nightmare all over again, only completely awake.

Why were they able to torment me like this? To physically badger a shackle-free person?

I’m serving the wrong side, the losing kingdom. It was such a strong thought, it was practically audible.

I intended to call out to my father, but another word echoed in my mind and sprang from my mouth —two syllables I’d thrown around all my life, mostly sarcastically or as part of a string of curse words. I figured God must have put the word on my tongue, because the instant I said it, all three of my attackers shrieked and jumped back. Demise contorted its neck disgustingly low and hissed at me with a wide-open mouth, then gave an order to the other two in their hellish language. They raced away, disappearing in the pouring rain.

The warmth of victory rushed through my veins. If my father was aware, he had to be proud of me right now —and God, too. There was nothing weak about what I’d just accomplished.

Who would have thought the name of Jesus could be so potent? So threatening to evil forces intent on threatening me? As cliché as it felt to admit, evidently there really was power in his name.

Even in the rain, I could see in my rearview mirror that the black smudges were fading from my face —another relief. I turned into the cemetery on Sycamore Lane one minute before midnight and drove right, then parked against the curb at the big cul-de-sac with the mourning oak tree.

I’d been told to stand under that tree, so using my flashlight and the aura around my feet, I trod through the wet grass toward it, passing rows of headstones —and corpses —but I suppressed that thought. I faced the street and waited beneath the massive branches, putting up with big droplets tapping my soaked head.

Nothing happened.

In my nervous boredom, I shined my flashlight on the headstone nearest me, heart-shaped granite. A woman’s name was engraved with dates: 1952–2009.

Fifty-seven years old. Cancer, maybe? A car accident? Sick as it may sound, I wished the cause of death had been listed. It bugged me not knowing.

I found myself thinking about my mother and the possibility that she might be buried in this place someday —probably sooner rather than later. Could I live with myself if we never spoke again?

I pushed the morbid thought aside.

Ten minutes passed, and I wondered if I’d missed the point of all this somehow. But then an echoing sound caused me to jerk the flashlight in every direction while the hairs on the back of my neck became stiff. It was a boy’s laughter, like a young guy was running in circles around the tree, cracking up in the night rain.

I was done.

I’m aware that what happened next sounds like a scene from a low-budget horror movie, but that’s how it went down. As I started back toward my motorcycle, I fumbled my flashlight when I needed it most. I bent down to grab it, and it was illuminating the headstone a foot in front of me.

Lucas Benjamin Greiner.

I was kneeling at the grave of Ray Anne’s younger brother.