“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Look, Erin. I know you don’t want to hear this, but…What did you want from him? Did you think you were going to move to the suburbs and have kids with him?”
My stomach turns as I think of that day we went to the clinic.
“I saw him,” I cut her off. “In the house.”
“Erin…” Her look of pity sickens me.
“He was there,” I nearly spit the words out. “With me. He came back to me.”
“Don’t, Erin.”
“I found him. I brought him back. His spirit found its way to me. Not you. Me.”
“Stop.” Amara’s voice echoes off the surrounding buildings. “I told you not to buy into Tobias’s bullshit. Which, if we’re being honest, is just more of Silas’s bullshit. Now you’re acting just like him, too.”
“Who?”
“Silas.”
Amara never cared. She never thinks about anyone other than herself. She’s always been selfish, selfish, selfish for as long as I’ve known her. Now she’s trying to run away.
“You saw something in the house, didn’t you?”
“Stop.”
“That’s why you’re leaving, isn’t it? You’ve been seeing them too. Just tell me you have.”
“No.” She slowly shakes her head, the word barely audible.
“Tell me.”
Amara steps back, away from me.
“Who did you see? Who? Was it Silas?”
Amara doesn’t say another word, turning around and returning to her party.
“DID YOU SEE SILAS? IS HE WITH YOU?”
The door slams shut behind her while I stand in the middle of the street. Fuck her. I don’t need her help. I start walking, fishing through my bag for my phone.
I don’t see the man until I nearly collide with him.
“Jesus!”
He doesn’t move, even when I shout. He simply stands in the middle of the street. I turn away the moment I realize he’s naked, a toadstool plug for a penis poking out from his crotch.
I keep moving, powerwalking directly down the center of the street. Now I’m running. Faster now. His pace is so slow, I lose sight of him in a couple blocks. I can’t tell if he’s following me anymore, so I pull out my phone and call for a Lyft. There’s one five minutes away, which means I have to stand at the corner and wait for “Roger” to pick me up.
Five minutes is nothing, I think to myself. I can wait that long.
I position myself underneath a streetlamp, leaning against the pole in my own pool of light. I have a good view of the block, able to see anyone coming or going from either direction. I keep a close eye on the direction I just came from. Nothing can creep up on me here. I’m safe now.
Four more minutes. I can see Roger’s car moving along the map on my phone.
A text pops up. It’s from Tanner: Is it something I said? I start writing back—I’m just going through a lot of stuff right now—but delete it. I could call him. He could pick me up, couldn’t he? Take me— home
I glance down both sides of the street. Things feel surprisingly quiet for this time of night, even for a Monday. Church Hill has never attracted a large nightlife crowd, but it’s downright deserted now.
Still four minutes.
I look up at the streetlamp and see moths swarming around the bulb. Their bodies arc so fast that the sheen of their wings creates trails in the sky. Don’t go into the light, I want to warn them, whatever you do, don’t go into the light.
The crinkling is faint at first—plastic scratching against asphalt. I look both ways, but the street remains empty.
I notice a white grocery bag. There’s no breeze, yet the bag keeps drifting through the air, occasionally dipping and dragging over the pavement. Sskrrrch. The sound sets my teeth on edge.
Every deli has a bag just like this one—a Day-Glo yellow smiley face, THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING WITH US—but something about this one conjures up a latent memory.
Silas was carrying a bag just like it.
There’s no way this could be the same one—and yet, somehow, I know it is. In my bones, I just know. His plastic bag found me. I almost expect Silas’s happy little phantom pal to wave back with one of its handles.
I never saw what was inside. It had to be personal belongings—keys and wallet, his lighter. What else? The bag’s handles span out like sails on a schooner, setting its scraping course over the road and aiming for my feet. It’s coming for me. It’s less than three feet away…
One foot away…
The bag finally skids to a halt. Now it’s stock-still. Only seconds ago, I would’ve sworn the bag was empty, but now I’m not so sure—it seems like there’s something weighing it down. The handles collapse inward, sealing the contents off.
I glance at my phone. Three minutes for Roger. His car icon is only a few blocks away from the pulsing blue dot that is me, and yet the distance between us feels insurmountable.
Two minutes and counting. Come on, Roger, move your ass!
The bag hasn’t moved. At all. It’s waiting for me to open it—I know it, I just know it—but I refuse to give in to temptation.
Still two minutes. Back to three minutes. Fuck.
I’ll just take a peek. What’s one peek going to hurt?
To hell with it. I’m looking.
I lean close enough to the bag to see the faint glint of someone’s eyes staring back.
A woman blinks up at me from inside. Her mouth opens like a fish out of water, silently gasping for air. She wants to say something but has no voice to speak.
My mind goes to a framed photo on Silas’s dorm room desk. To her car accident.
It’s her. It has to be. She’s staring right at me.
Silas’s mother.
I lurch backward, slamming against the lamppost.
The decapitated head of Silas’s mother stares up at me from the bag. This is worse than the other ghosts. I can’t live with this. I can’t stay here. Can’t wait for Roger another minute.
I need to run. I need to go—
home
I’m racing so fast, it takes me a moment to notice the bodies dangling from the trees. At first I think they’re branches. Willow oaks line the streets of Church Hill, one of the oldest neighborhoods in this city, where Patrick Henry requested liberty or death. Most have stood as long as the houses themselves, going all the way back to 1775, so it shouldn’t come as such a shock to see so many suspended spirits hanging by their necks. They twist in a wind that has blown for centuries now and I just can’t look. I don’t want to see their eyes staring blankly back at me. Even they can smell it—the Ghost in my blood. They reach for me as their bodies sway.
I’m losing my mind. I’m losing my mind…There’s no scrap of sanity left to cling to. I’m seeing them everywhere now. Some hide in dumpsters. Another is stuffed in a newspaper kiosk, face pressed against the glass. All the parked cars I pass are crammed full of spirits, like clown cars. Their gray eyes follow me as I run by. They lick at the windows—hungry for me.
Too many. There’s just too many of them.
I pass a McDonald’s and notice the drive-through windows are bursting with limbs every time the retractable flaps slide open. Whenever a patron opens the door, another lost soul slips in behind them, desperate for the safety of a vessel. Any vessel. They’d rather cram in together than spend another minute outside. But why? What’s so awful about being left out in the open?
Why do they need a home this badly?
These spirits are around us all the time and no one even knows. No one sees. But dosing on Ghost changes all that, doesn’t it? Ghost changes everything…
The city is alive and it’s hemorrhaging centuries of ghosts everywhere I go. I see members of the Powhatan tribe. This was their home—Shocquohocan to them—before Christopher Newport set sail to explore the James River.
What about the Battle of Bloody Run in 1656, when so many Pamunkey soldiers died that the creek ran red?
I’m running through their blood right now.
I can’t stomach the idea of passing the spot on Cary Street where the Main Street Hospital for the Medical, Surgical and Obstetrical Treatment of Slaves once stood.