I’m the planchette. I wonder if I can slide from letter to letter and spell out Silas’s name.
Amara finally ventures, “Anybody got any good ghost stories?”
“Does Silas count?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Tobias mutters.
Amara turns until she’s facing away. “Well, this slumber party’s a bust.”
“Ever heard of the Good Death?” Tobias asks. I immediately sense we should all gear up for a lecture. “Look back to the Civil War—”
“I wanted to be scared to death, Toby,” Amara says, burying her face in her sleeping bag, “not bored to death.”
But he’s off and running, talking at the ceiling whether we want to listen or not. “Up to that point, when someone passed away, it happened at home. Your family gathered all around your bed while you just gently slipped off this mortal coil. Everyone got to say their goodbyes. Then came the Civil War. Soldiers were dying miles away from home, from their families. Nobody got the Good Death anymore. All those souls were…lost.”
Tobias holds his hands up, conducting a symphony. “Then came Maggie and Kate Fox. Only fourteen and eleven years old, but they could communicate with the spirit world.”
“Bull,” Amara moans into her sleeping bag, “shit.”
The Fox sisters were one of Silas’s favorite stories. Tobias sounds just like him, to be honest. I can nearly hear Silas’s voice. The Fox sisters let the parents of departed soldiers know they died a valiant death, spirited away by the graceful hands of God. If it was good enough for Mary Todd Lincoln, it was good enough for the rest of America.
A silence insinuates itself into the living room. Tobias has put both himself and Amara to sleep with his history lesson. I should turn the lantern off, conserve the propane for tomorrow, but I keep it on, listening to the hiss of its cylinder. I feel the plywood floor through my sleeping bag.
I slip out of my sleeping bag and grab the can of spray paint. Finding an empty space for myself, I tag the corner.
ERIN IS HERE
I step back to admire my handiwork, the pink letters bleeding all the way down to the floor. I am here. In this house. In the— The light from the lantern suddenly pulses and moves across the wall, drawing my attention along with it. It lands on Tobias’s satchel. The leather bag rests next to him, unbuckled, its flaps pulled back just enough to expose the books within.
There’s Silas’s composition book. I recognize the black-and-white cover right away.
“Tobias?” I wait to see if he’ll wake but he’s fast asleep.
As I tug on Silas’s notebook, a Ziploc bag falls out of the satchel. There are six gelcaps inside. I pry one open and an earthy aroma rushes out, like the trapped gases from a corpse’s bloated stomach. The smell clings to my skin, seeping in.
The mushroom he showed us earlier is in the bag too. I bring it to my nose, breathing in its earthiness.
I pop the mushroom in my mouth.
I taste dirt. Loam. My tongue runs over the cap’s gills. I gag as soon as I start to chew but I manage to force myself to swallow. I empty a whole bottle of water to keep myself from bringing it back up.
I’m going to puke, oh god, I’m going to—
I fight the nausea back. I can feel the water sloshing around my stomach. I know it’ll take some time for the Ghost to kick in, so I open Silas’s notebook.
It’s empty.
Every last page—completely blank. No poems or notes or hidden thoughts from Silas. Not even a single pencil mark. Tobias has been waving around a blank book this entire time.
Why would Tobias lie to us? To me? Because he couldn’t convince us to come along if I didn’t believe Silas had planned this all out? Because I needed to believe that it was— The propane lamp sputters and everything goes dark. The shadows in the far reaches of the living room rush toward me, swallowing me whole. I fumble for my cell—it’s on the floor somewhere. I left it just next to my sleeping bag, which is bound to be only a few inches from where I’m sitting. I pat blindly at the wood floor.
My fingers graze against something soft, spongey, like a—
mushroom
—and I yank my hand back. Just nylon. My sleeping bag, of course. A few more pats in the dark and I finally find my phone. The blue light of the lock screen pushes the shadows back a bit. The notebook is still open on the floor where I dropped it.
A single word is now written across the page:
ERIN
I swear it hadn’t been there before. I flipped through the whole composition book and found nothing. There’s no way, absolutely no way I would have missed it. I flip to the next page.
ARE YOU HERE
The tarp over the window seems to respire behind me. I turn on my phone’s flashlight and aim it at the window. The translucent sheet slowly expands and contracts, as if someone is standing on the other side of it, inhaling so hard the plastic sucks into their mouth, then exhaling out again.
I don’t know how long I stare at it. In, out. Air hisses through the plastic.
Turning back to the composition book, I flip to the next page.
FIND ME
A floorboard creaks over my head. I let out a gasp, startled by the abrupt sound.
It came from upstairs. I double-check that Amara and Tobias are still there in the living room with me. Neither of them has moved. Neither is awake. I try to rationalize the sound away—the house is just settling, that’s all. No one’s here. No one else was— I hear it again, louder this time. More pronounced. The sound of wood giving under pressure, followed by another.
Footsteps. Someone is walking along the second floor.
I hold my breath, eager—yearning to hear it again. Daring it to happen. Come on.
There it is. Another step. Someone is upstairs!
I rush up the steps on my tiptoes, trying in vain not to make a sound. But the wood won’t stay quiet. I hold my phone out before me, letting its flashlight illuminate my way down the hall. I shine the beam in each room, sweeping the light across the closet and— The light catches something that wasn’t—shouldn’t—be there.
I’m not sure if I actually see anything at first. I’m probably making it up, imagining things, but just to be sure, I glide the light back over the walls and— There. In the far corner. In the closet. Scrawled across the walls.
Words.
I don’t care how loud my footsteps sound, don’t care if I wake anyone else up now. Each step I take reverberates through the house as I rush for the closet and hold my phone up.
I AM HERE
It’s Silas. Even scrawled on the wall, pencil on plaster, I’m positive it’s his handwriting.
WHERE ARE YOU
I’d been in this room earlier and I swear I hadn’t seen anything. Did I just miss it? Had— Silas
—written it when we were downstairs? As if the answer isn’t obvious—as if it isn’t clear.
“Silas?” I call out to the room, shining the light all around me. “I’m here. I’m right here!”
The shadows shift with the light from my phone, slipping behind the exposed planks that hold up the room. They look like limbs. No, they are becoming arms and legs—taking shape.
Walking toward me. Standing before me.
Silas says get on your feet…
Silas says come to me…
He cups my jaw in both of his hands. He leans over and kisses my forehead.
Silas says:
“Hey there, Li’l Deb.”
comedown
Silas is in the waiting room. I’ve spent the last hour in the recovery room by myself, thinking of what I’ll say to him, knowing that he’s still out there, the same magazine in his hands, flipping through its pages without reading a single word, waiting for me so we can escape together.
A nurse checks on me twice. She smiles sympathetically whenever she ducks her head in. “Feel okay, hon?” Does she want me to say yes? “It’s okay to go now, if you feel up to it.”
They give me pamphlets. A prescription. Reassurances that I’ll be fine.