Ghost Eaters

“You’re bleeding the bootlegger, baby!”

“Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea…” Amara is seriously butchering this song but the crowd eats it up, swaying in unison. “Wait for me, wait for me, I’ll be coming home…”

“No wonder Amara’s leaving,” James says. “Must be really hard on her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you know…him passing away must’ve been hard on her…I guess I can understand why she’d want to go.”

Of course it’s hard on Amara. It’s hard on all of us. Silas was our friend. But there’s an insinuation in his words that doesn’t quite settle for me. “She’s moving away because of Silas?”

James is really starting to sweat. “Well, yeah. I mean, they were…” His voice fades.

“They were what?”

He clamps up. He knows he’s really put his foot in it.

“They were what?”

I want to press him further but the woman standing next to me starts to edge into my personal space a little more than I’d like. I can’t let James off the conversational hook, so I push back with my shoulder, hoping whoever this woman is, she’ll get the message to back up.

“Hey, so, uh, I don’t know if this is your thing or not,” James keeps talking, trying to change the subject. “I scored some really strong stuff if you’re looking to get—”

haunted

“—a little elevated. Wanna come to the backroom for a little pick-me-up?”

This same fucking woman pushes against me again. Harder this time. More insistent. It’s almost like she’s more interested in rubbing up against me than getting James’s attention.

I’m about to shout something to her over the music when, from the corner of my eye, I notice her bare shoulders. Whatever she’s wearing, it’s ripped. Torn right down the back.

At first, I think her arms are covered in caterpillars—but no, now I realize they’re scars.

I turn to look at her.

A Black woman stares back at me, never blinking. She sees me. I recognize the desperation in her expression, the need in her eyes. She’s yearning for a connection.

She was never trying to get James’s attention.

She wanted mine.

“I…have to go.” I step back. I’m so tired. I can’t keep doing this. Can’t keep running. Everywhere I go, there are just more of them. They’re in every house. Every building.

Where can I go now? Is there anywhere left?

The woman’s expression brightens, glad that someone, anyone, has acknowledged her presence. She only moves when I do, as if we’re syncopated. She steps forward whenever I take a step back. I shouldn’t be seeing her—and she shouldn’t be seeing me.

I’m not looking where I’m going, pushing through the people behind me. I bump into some guy on the dance floor, his drink spilling over my shoulder.

“Watch it!” he shouts, holding his wet hands in the air.

The woman stands in the center of the dance floor, staring back with such a longing gaze, while everyone else faces the makeshift stage, lost in their singalong—“I neeeeed your love.”

How long has she been in the renovated basement of this antebellum mansion? How long has she drifted through the bar, no one ever noticing her presence?

They’ll always be here, won’t they? They’ll always be here because they’ve always, always been here. No matter where I go, there will always be more of them. This will never end.

How can I stop myself from being haunted?

“What do you want from me?!” I shriek as loudly as I can over the sound system. Everyone surrounding us jolts, as if I just fired a shot into the crowd. “Get away from me!”

Amara stops singing. The karaoke track keeps on playing, the hollow strains of “Unchained Melody” reaching their synthesized crescendo.

“Leave me alone!”

Nobody else sees the yearning in her ashen eyes. They can’t see her raise her hand. Can’t see her fingers graze my cheek. She’s shorter than me. I peer over her shoulder and see that her scars run down the length of her entire back—no, not scars. They’re still bleeding. She’ll always be bleeding. These wounds will never heal. The wounds open and flex as she touches my face.

“Leave me—”

No one sees this woman’s fingers reach in, sinking through my skin. The cold immediately clenches my chest. Vertigo takes hold. I can’t feel my legs. I’m falling backward.

I’m falling into—

—a gray body of water. A sea of ash. Waves of black. They reach as far as the horizon, met by gray clouds. The dull glow of what could be the sun barely penetrates the ozone.

There is no land in sight. Nothing but ink. The water boils over, creating massive summits of waves that crest and crash into one another, then fall back into themselves.

The clip lights overhead fluctuate until there’s nothing left but the gray haze of smoke, and I’m plunging even further under the surface. Into an endless ocean of shadows.

The water around me is too murky to see through. Billows of wet soot. So cold— I can’t breathe—

Amara’s friends grab my shoulders, catching me in mid-fall.

The woman’s fingers slip away. Separating us.

I gasp for air. For a moment I swear I felt my heart stop. It felt like I was— dead

“Erin?” Amara asks, her voice faint. She holds her hand up to shield her eyes from the spotlight as the karaoke track ends. Pin-drop silence descends. Everyone’s staring at me.

The woman focuses on her own fingers, transfixed by the hand that sank into me—through me—as if she’s just as bewildered by what happened as I am. She brings her fingers up to her mouth and licks. Her eyelids flutter in ecstasy, as if she’s just tasted the sweetest nectar.

She crams the knot of her fist deeper into her mouth. Her jaw dislocates, lips stretching taut and sealing over her wrist as she sucks down whatever’s left of the Ghost. One taste isn’t enough. She wants more. She takes a woozy step forward, as though she’s drunk. Reaching for me.

I spin around and force my way through the crowd of unfamiliar faces all these faces who do these faces belong to— The fresh air smacks me as soon as I stumble out the door. I close my eyes and lean forward, placing both hands on my knees until I can finally slow my breathing.

I just need to get my equilibrium back. I need the world to stop spinning. I need to— “Erin?”

Amara.

“Are you okay?”

“Did you see her?”

Amara remains silent.

“Did you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’s lying. I can see it in her face. Even now, she won’t admit it. What other secrets is she keeping from me? What else is she hiding?

“Did you sleep with Silas?” The question spills out before I’m even ready to ask it.

“Erin,” Amara says very calmly, “let me explain.”

I moan. “Don’t.”

“It wasn’t serious, I swear—”

“How could you?”

“What do you want me to say?” She takes a tentative step forward. “Silas made everyone feel like they were the most important person in the world. The only person.”

“Oh god…”

“We all fell under his spell, Erin. It was impossible not to.”

“When?”

Amara hesitates. “Off and on.”

“For how long?”

“Not long.”

“College?”

“No.”

“So after we graduated.”

“Yeah.”

“How could you do this to me?”

“To you?” Amara’s getting pissed now. “Erin, you’ve been in a holding pattern for years. Blame me or Silas or whoever, fine, be my guest, but nobody did a fucking thing to you.”

Our group. Our friends. Four Musketeers—one body. We always joked that Silas was the head, Amara was the balls, Tobias was the ass, and I was…what was I again?

The heart? This blackened, shriveled prune of a muscle? How had it been my responsibility to pump the lifeblood of our friendship through the rest of our veins?

We’ve been decapitated. Who are we without Silas?

Who am I?

Amara is still explaining herself. Atoning. “It wasn’t serious. It just…happened.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because…” Amara pauses for a second. “I knew it would hurt you and I didn’t want to.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

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