I glance at our shadows along the wall. Only three forms flicker across the plaster.
Amara knows better than to laugh. Tobias has always been fragile. In our freshman creative writing workshop, he would always shut down when a classmate criticized his short stories. Not that Silas ever heeded it—he fanned the flames. Fuck ‘em if they can’t see it.
See what? Tobias wanted—needed—to know.
They don’t get you. ‘I don’t understand your narrator’s motivation.’ ‘Maybe you should try writing in third person.’ Conventional bullshit. Silas planted the seed in Tobias’s mind that he was a misunderstood genius. If Silas saw it, then it must be true. Now Amara and I are left to deal with the rotten fruit of Tobias’s bruised ego. Thanks, Silas.
“Hey…” Amara treads carefully. “Toby, it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
Amara rests her hand on his shoulder, hoping to console him. Tobias jerks back. “Don’t.”
Tell them what you saw, I think. Tell them about the light, tell them about— “Why didn’t it work?” I ask.
“I—I don’t know. It takes time for the drug to take root, I think? Maybe it needs to…to acclimate to your brain chemistry or something. Silas and I were still beta testing.”
“Testing.” Amara says. Not a question. Even if Tobias doesn’t pick up on it, I sure can: Once was enough. Amara tried, Amara’s out. Stick a fork in her ‘cause this girl is done.
Tobias doesn’t pick up on it. “Until we establish contact, we’ll have to keep trying.”
“I’m not too keen on being your spiritualist guinea pig, Toby.” Amara does her best not to roll her eyes. Whenever she’s frustrated or pissed or incredulous or all the above, you know it. She turns over onto her hands and knees before picking herself up from the floor so Tobias won’t see her face. “I need a cigarette break. Wanna join me?”
Tobias springs up. “You can’t go outside.”
“Toby. Chill. I’ll go in the backyard.” Never get between Amara and her American Spirits.
“Somebody will see you.”
“…You’re not going to let me go outside? To smoke?” Amara’s temper is spiking. This really isn’t going to end well. I want to become invisible, to be as translucent as a plastic tarp.
“We’ll go upstairs,” I suggest. “Nobody will see us, okay?”
“Don’t bother.” Amara exits the living room without another word. I hear her footsteps on the stairs. The house strains beneath her silent anger. We listen to her clomping on the other side of the ceiling. Suddenly I’m reminded of how my parents would fight in complete silence. Entire wars were waged between my mom and dad without a single word exchanged between them. They’d lob passive-aggressive glances and stiff-lipped looks for days on end, and there I was, caught in the crossfire, aware of how loud a house could be in the absence of sound.
Tobias and I remain where we are, marinating in the quiet. He reminds me of a ten-year-old mad scientist moping over his botched experiment. “We’re so close.”
“Is this what you two were doing before Silas died? Is this what killed him?”
“Ghost doesn’t work like that.”
I want to ask: Then how does it work?
“If we’re able to establish contact, just think about the implications. We can reconnect people with anyone they’ve ever lost. Death doesn’t have to be the end. Not anymore.”
I want to tell him about the shadow—about Silas. It was Silas, wasn’t it? Tobias will believe me. He’ll probably feel vindicated, even. Told you so, he’ll say to Amara.
What if I’m wrong? What if I didn’t see him? It could’ve been just a trick of the light. That’s all it was—light, shadows shifting. Nothing more. “Maybe we should try again,” I say.
Tobias doesn’t understand. “You mean, like, right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow,” he says. “We should get some rest. I need to…need to figure this out.”
Nobody’s asked Tobias how he’s taking Silas’s absence, how hard it’s hit him. Who is Tobias without Silas around to prop him up? He might need Silas even more than I do.
“Hey.” I place my hand on top of his, drawing his attention. “I believe in you.”
His mouth hangs open, empty of any words for a moment. Of breath. “You…you do?”
“You’ll figure this out. I know you’ll—”
I don’t notice Tobias lean in until his lips press against mine. The gesture is so tentative, as if a moth has brushed its wings against my mouth.
I pull back. “No.”
The word seems to wake him up. Even in the dim light of the lantern, I see his cheeks flood with blood. What the hell just happened? Tobias has never tried to kiss me before. I try filtering through all my memories of us alone, just to see if there was ever a moment of me feeding into his belief that he could do something like that.
“I’m sorry. I’m—”
“It’s okay,” I try to recover. “I—I just don’t—”
Tobias retreats into himself, the snail back in his shell, shooting up from the floor. His pants are covered in sawdust that drifts off his body like snow. “It’s late. I…”
“Toby—”
“I’m going to pick a room upstairs. Good night.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, heading out without looking back. I can’t tell if he’s ashamed or frustrated or both.
I listen to his footsteps march up the stairs, wood buckling under the weight of his body.
Now I have the living room all to myself.
And its shadows.
You know what a real haunted house is? I remember my mother drunkenly mumbling to me—or over me—after I asked if there was a ghost hiding under my bed. It’s where we suffer in silence. When you’re older, you’ll see. Trust me. You’ll see for yourself. She pressed her finger to her lips and smiled a smile that wasn’t a smile. Shhh. When I was a girl I always felt there were so many stories my mother wasn’t telling me: secrets that existed in the house alongside us, things just out of reach of my understanding, simply waiting for me when I finally grew up and became a woman. I always felt so fed up with her because I thought she was living in the past, living some antiquated housewife life, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe she’s always been the one trapped in our house, left to wander its halls like a lonely ghost.
I’m sitting in the silence of this empty house and I can’t help myself. I have to ask it— “Silas? Are you there?”
* * *
—
Hssss.
Sleep didn’t come easy for me last night—not on these hardwood floors. I feel like a Hot Pocket tucked in the sleeve of my sleeping bag, fresh out of the microwave and drenched in sweat.
Hsssss. At first, I figure a snake has been let loose in the living room. Then I hear the metallic clack-clack-clack of the ball bearing rattling within a can of spray paint. Hssss.
The axe blade of a migraine splits my skull wide open. I’ve had plenty of hangover headaches before, but this one feels operatic—downright Wagnerian. All that’s left of me is this desiccated husk of a human being.
Hssss. Tobias is tagging the living room. The plywood floor is covered in a pattern of graffiti that stretches toward the walls and reaches for the ceiling. The fumes burn my lungs.
“What do you think?” he asks, rather pleased with himself. Pink letters bloom like weeds across the floor, still wet. On one wall, Tobias has painted YES in bold letters, while NO dries across the opposite wall, and GOODBYE on the third. Tobias has turned the entire room into a massive Ouija board.
“Impressive. Did you fashion a planchette the size of a surfboard, too?”
“We don’t need one,” he says, as if that’s supposed to make sense. “We’ve got you.”
“So I’m the planchette? Got it.” I nod a little too quickly, my neck bones popping like bubble wrap. “Got any coffee? Or a shotgun?”
“We’re pretty dried out.” He hands me a water bottle. “We need to rehydrate.”
I feel like ass is such an understatement. No matter how much water I drink, I can’t wash this loamy flavor away. A cat died in my mouth; no other explanation works. “I don’t want to know what I look like. If it’s half as bad as how I feel, put me out of my misery.”