My mouth is so dry, I can’t get the pill down. The muscles in my throat wrestle with the capsule. Melissa offers me a bottle of water. It’s room temperature, but by the time it hits my stomach, I can feel it boiling over—Double, double toil and trouble.
“This house is a safe place,” Tobias says. “We can fill its rooms with those we’ve lost. You’ll invite your own ghost inside. Your connection will draw them to us. Focus on that bond. Take each other’s hand and close your eyes,” he instructs. I watch everyone in the circle follow along, shutting their eyes and letting Tobias’s voice send them off. “You’ve come here because there’s someone you wish to contact on the other side. Go ahead and picture them in your mind.”
I close my eyes and I immediately see Silas, as if he’s been waiting for me there, hiding behind my eyelids. His face is so clear in my head—his hair hooked around his ears, his hazel eyes, that devilish grin.
“Now I want you to say their name out loud. Call out to them. Cast out that first line.”
“Hutch,” Stephanie says.
“Sabeen,” Melissa says.
“Mark,” Adriano says.
I don’t call out for Silas. I keep his name inside, hidden, as if to save him for myself.
“Keep them in your mind. Hold on to them. Don’t let go. Some must travel a great distance. It won’t be easy. But your connection, your link, will bring them home.”
I hold on to Silas. His face. His smile. His laughter fills my mind.
“This house is merely a receptacle,” Tobias says. “A vessel for our ghosts to inhabit. It’s you who are truly haunted. We need to unleash them, release them, within these walls.”
The picture of Silas slips just a bit. It’s hard to hold on to the mental image of him while Tobias speaks. I keep getting distracted.
“We’re going to take a tour of this house in our minds, walk through each room. All of them are empty, waiting to be filled. Let’s start by looking at the front door. It’s closed now, but I want you to imagine it opening. Go ahead and open the door in your mind. Open it.”
I swear I hear the front door slowly open on its own. The thin squeak of its hinges echoes down the hall.
“Come inside. Walk through the front door. Into the hallway…See the space in your mind. See its rooms waiting to be filled. Follow my voice. Can you hear me? We wish to reach out to those spirits we carry with us. We have been granted access to the other side and now we are ready to see.” Tobias really has perfected his spiritual sales pitch since our last séance. Or maybe his demographic has changed. Without Amara around to call him on his shit, Tobias is in full command of the room.
I feel the grips of both of my neighbors tighten, their hands sweating against mine.
“We are ready to receive your message. Please speak to us.” I sense the slightest sway in the circle. Suddenly, we’re all rhythmically rocking side to side in tandem with one another. The movement gradually gains momentum the louder Tobias’s voice rises. “Spirits, we wish to communicate with you. Show us a sign.”
I can feel the pull and tug in each of my arms, left to right.
“Hutch: Is there someone here you wish to communicate with?”
—back and forth—
“Sabeen: Is there someone you wish to speak to?”
—back and forth—
“Mark: Is there someone you—”
The swaying halts. I feel a snap in my neck as the circle stops rocking. Someone—Melissa, maybe—gasps. I open my eyes.
There’s a flicker in the center of the room. A single flame the size of a silver dollar suspends itself over our heads. There’s no source that I can see.
It draws near. I reel back, frightened at first, as the free-floating flame slowly approaches me. Me. The rest of the circle sees it, too, marveling at it. Tobias’s chest sinks as he can’t stave off his exhaustion any longer.
The flame hovers in front of me, mere inches from my face, letting me take in its glow. It now fluctuates with all kinds of colors. A ring of green swirls through the orange and yellow, there and gone, now replaced by a brilliant red ribbon, then blue. There’s a pulse to it.
A heartbeat.
“…Silas?”
The light grows brighter at his name. The flame flattens itself, elongating. It’s now as large as my hand, growing, deepening. I can see through it, and yet it still possesses depth.
I catch sight of Silas’s face.
“Silas, is…is it really…”
Every time I say his name, a new color swells through the flame. The pulse picks up. The light now looks like a flipbook of translucent pictures. His motions are slow, segmented, but I watch as the quivering image of his hand lifts to touch my face.
“It’s you,” I say, tears suddenly running down my cheeks. “It’s really you.”
The light passes through me—Silas’s spirit enters my body—and I swear I’ve never felt so warm in all my life. I gasp as the heat of him reaches through my limbs. I swear this feels like the first breath I’ve ever taken.
He’s inside. Possessing me. When I look out at the room, my eyes are no longer my own. They are his eyes—our eyes—now. We are together, fusing as one. His spirit and my body.
I let go of my neighbors’ hands and ease back onto the floor against the spray-painted Ouija board. I have always been the planchette. I feel the light spread through my bloodstream, the heat of Silas’s spirit circulating throughout my entire body, touching every nerve, seeping into every cell, until there isn’t a part of me that’s not his.
They say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, but all I see is Silas’s. In this moment, sprawled across the floor, I bear witness to the entirety of his existence. Gravity is gone as my body separates from my consciousness. My limbs are now his, my body now his, my flesh for his past, my soul for his history. His birth. His infancy. His boyhood.
I watch Silas grow and blossom in a rapid-fire procession of memories, spiriting through his lifetime so fast, I can barely breathe. The force of his presence pins me to the floor.
Then everything halts. Time slows down all at once and I feel Silas suddenly slip. My body’s grip on his spirit loosens and I need to tighten my bones around him. Why did we stop?
We’re following a young woman, trying to catch up. There’s a bruised aura about her—something vaguely familiar. I know her from somewhere. She radiates bands of deep purple. The atmosphere all around her bends and warps in concentric, iridescent circles.
She is a black pearl.
Oh god…it’s me. I’m looking at myself outside myself, through Silas’s eyes. I barely recognize myself. I look absolutely radiant, my body somehow distorting the spectrum of light. I’m eighteen, wearing an outfit I haven’t worn since— Wait. I remember this. I’m in college. This is the first time Silas and I ever spoke to each other. Was he tripping when he approached me? The colors coming off my skin make me look like a human oil slick, wrapped in undulating rings of purples and greens and blacks and blues. I can feel his heartbeat pick up and I know it’s my heart mimicking his palpitations.
Excuse me, he says. Erin, right? We’re in Brooke Stevens’s writing workshop together.
I see the expression of my own face shift. I’m trying to remember him. Hey.
You don’t remember me. That’s okay. Our class is pretty forgettable. Not a lot of Updikes in the mix.
…Dykes?
As in John Updike, the author. I’m not making any broad sweeping statements about the sexual orientation of our classmates, I swear. Just their talent.
Ah…Glad we cleared that up.
I just wanted to say I really liked your story today. Pretty grim.
Were you expecting some sugar and spice? Sorry.
To be honest, I was actually hoping I could read more. Something else of yours.
…Of mine?
Yeah. Give me something you’ve never shared with anyone else—the really dark stuff—and I’ll give you something of mine. Only fair, don’t you think?
So…what? We’re playing doctor now? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?
Sure. Why not? If it blows me away, you’ll never be able to get rid of me. But if it’s trash…you’ll never have to worry about me bothering you again.