Home again—
What should’ve taken thirty minutes takes two hours as I get lost on back roads, the sun quickly sinking below the horizon. It’s dusk when I find my way back to my apartment building. I can’t enter without getting buzzed in. Once I slip through and slowly navigate the stairwell, finally reaching my door, I find someone inside my apartment. Someone else has moved in.
“What are you doing here?” I hear myself ask but whatever answer the woman gives doesn’t reach my ears. She’s looking at me like I’m sick. Like she doesn’t want to touch me.
I want to apologize for writing my name on the bedroom wall. I offer to paint over it, since Erin is no longer here, but she won’t let me in. Her lips move but I can’t make out the words. Something about calling the police. I’m dialing 911.
I’ve got nowhere to go. Nowhere else but home again.
Home again—
* * *
—
—jiggety jig.
Nobody seems to notice I was gone.
Or care.
I head upstairs to my nest in the nursery. I need to be alone for what comes next.
I reach into the crack in the closet and pull out the Ziploc bag where I’ve been stashing pills. I’ve been double-dipping into the reserve whenever I’m on kitchen duty, stockpiling my spirits for a special occasion.
I’ve never ingested more than a couple caps at once.
This time I take five.
I know he’s testing me. His absence lately is just his way of trying to prove my love.
But we can be together forever now.
I just have to cross over.
“Silas? I’m here…I’m on my way.” Maybe he can’t hear me. His words are still scrawled on the wall, but the letters have lost their sharpness. Black mold rotting.
I’ve built up too high a tolerance. I have to push through—tear the veil away and dive into the afterlife. So I swallow another pill. And another. I lose count of how many caps I’ve taken.
“Silas, I’m coming…” I need to let go of this body. Peel my spirit away from this skin.
I haven’t eaten anything for I don’t know how long. All I ingest are ghosts now.
“I’m ready, Silas. Please. Take me. Take me away.”
My stomach pinches. The cramps reach in deep.
“Silas—”
I retch. Nothing but liquid spills out. Something keeps pushing, working its way up. My tongue swells, pressing against my jaw until I gag. A slender stalk of pulsating pink pushes past my lips. Tears well in my eyes but all I can do is watch the cap expand in a fleshy umbrella, gills rippling in a halo just over my head.
The spirit turns to me—sees me. It has eyes, a slit that mimics a mouth.
Hey there, Li’l Deb, it whispers.
I try to bite down on the stem, but my teeth keep slipping.
The spirit unspools. Its tapering tail of ectoplasm slips from my lips with a wet flick, releasing me. My body drops, hits the floor. Slap. I can breathe again but every inhale burns. My throat is raw, like a cord of rope has been flossed through my insides and out my mouth.
Spots of mold dance before my eyes. I’m about to black out. Please don’t pass out. I can feel the darkness coming from all around. Please don’t pass out don’t pass out please— “Erin?”
Someone is shaking me. My head rolls over the floor. There’s a pair of hands gripping my shoulders, lifting me up and dragging me back from the shadows.
“Erin—wake up!”
It takes a moment for my eyes to peel open, as if they’re crusted shut. I focus on the face hovering above me as it comes into view.
“Erin—can you hear me?”
Amara to the rescue. There’s the vaguest halo around her head and I want to believe she’s real, need to believe she’s actually here, but I can’t trust the touch of anything anymore.
“Is it you?” Please let her be real. Please let it really be her.
“It’s me, I’m here.”
“I thought I saw a…”
ghost
It’s really her. Amara. I can’t stop crying. I never thought I’d see her again. I have to touch her, feel her face. I wrap my arms around her, pressing against her so hard. It’s her.
“You stopped answering your phone…Nobody’s seen you for over a month.”
“This is my home.” The words hurt my throat.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.” Amara’s voice strains as she lifts me to my feet. My legs buckle, but Amara props me up, draping my arm over her shoulder so I won’t fall.
My feet feel weighed down with concrete. My muscles ache so much. “I can’t…leave…”
“Yes, you can.” Amara does most of the walking for both of us. I’m nothing but dead weight. How many times have we propped each other up after a night out? Just like old times.
“You got this,” she says. “Come on, Erin. Baby steps. One foot in front of the other.”
From the corner of my eye, I spot the black mold following us along the walls. Silas is reaching for me—calling me.
“Silas is here.”
“No, he’s not. He’s not even in his fucking grave anymore—” Amara cuts herself off.
“…What?” The words don’t compute for me.
“Someone…someone dug him up.”
What does she mean? His coffin?
“Whatever’s going on here, it’s…not good, Erin. You need to get out of this place now.”
My attention drifts. Amara keeps talking, pleading with me, but her words fade. I’m no longer focusing on her, but behind her—in the far corner. Where the dark gathers.
A shadow takes shape. The spirit I just expelled is collecting itself—I see it now.
“There he is.”
Amara turns to look behind her. “I don’t see any—”
“Silas?”
Amara looks again, losing her patience. Her eyes never land on the right spot. Is she being stubborn and just pretending not to see it? “Erin. Stop. We don’t have time for this.”
She doesn’t see it. See him. “He’s coming closer.”
“Erin, goddamn it—”
“Silas is right behind you.”
“Erin, no one’s there—”
“He’s reaching out.”
“Nothing’s—”
Amara chokes. Something has grabbed her by the back of her neck, like a kitten caught by the scruff. Her feet lift off the floor. I simply watch as her spine arcs backward, arms cutting through the air. She reaches behind her, but she can’t grab hold of— Silas —whatever is holding her aloft. I can barely make out the hazy outline of his silhouette rippling in black mold. He’s there one second, gone the next, raising Amara up.
“Erin…?” She’s about to say more, but before she can give the words voice, Amara’s arm snaps back at the elbow. The hollow pop reverberates through the nursery.
I flinch at the sight of her forearm dangling loose.
Amara screams. I’ve never heard her—heard anyone—scream like that before. She’s thrown across the room. Her shriek is cut short the moment her face makes impact with the far wall, sending a crack through the Sheetrock. A crooked fissure erupts across the plaster, smeared with her blood. Her body slides to the floor in a soft pile.
“Amara?” I push myself onto my knees. The room wobbles. I try to find my balance and stand on my own two feet, but I can’t.
“Amara?” She isn’t moving. Her eyes remain fixed on one spot, looking at nothing.
She isn’t answering me. Isn’t blinking.
“Amara, please…”
Silas draws closer. His body won’t take shape, won’t clarify itself. His silhouette is there but he remains persistently in shadow, in fluctuating mold, rippling black.
“Why—Why did you…Amara’s your friend. She—she was—”
A cold thought enters my mind. It’s faint at first, but once the notion takes root, it grows and grows, until there’s no taking it back. “Who are you?”
The silhouette vacillates, stubbornly refusing to come into focus.
“You’re not Silas…are you?”
The shadow shakes its head—No. I can’t tell if it says it out loud or if I simply hear its gravelly voice in my mind, but the word rushes through my brain, blossoming with such force.
NO.
When was the last time I connected to Silas? What if…What if I’ve been haunted by…
What if it pretended to be…