“You can’t do this forever…”
“Why not? Did you see the people in the living room? They came to me ‘cause they’re looking for something to fill their lives back up again. Ghost gives them that. I give them that. Our ghost stories are spreading. It won’t matter what happens to this house or the house next door or any of the other houses in the neighborhood. Ghost will be everywhere soon. This city—the South—is steeped in it, but nobody fucking looks. We’ve been taught to avoid death at all costs. To look the other way. But Ghost erases that barrier, doesn’t it? We’re ready to rip that veil away once and for all. You never have to be alone again, Erin.”
His voice lowers and I can hear him, actually hear Silas’s voice slithering across Tobias’s tongue. “Isn’t that what you always wanted? We can be together forever now. You and me. Two spirits. One body. Isn’t that beautiful?”
He used me. Silas used me. “People are dying.”
“People die all the time! What does it matter when we have Ghost?”
“Amara’s dead!” I shout. “I saw you kill her—”
“Erin, that—” Silas stops, takes a measured breath before laughing, actually busting out laughing, as if this is the funniest goddamn thing he’s ever heard. “That was you.”
He’s lying. “I saw someone…in the room.”
“That was all you, Erin. Talk about brutal. Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
“That’s not true…” I slowly shake my head. There’s no way I could have done that to her. It’s not possible. I saw her body lift off the floor. I saw her get thrown across the room.
I saw her die.
“We all heard screaming,” Silas says. “I ran upstairs and when I came into the room—”
“Stop it.” The sound of her neck breaking still echoes through my head. There’s no possible way I could have done that to Amara. She’s my best friend. The only friend I had left.
“When I came into the room, I found Amara on the floor and you were smiling—”
“STOP IT!”
My bones grow heavy. All I want is to lay my body down and let the ghosts take over.
“I didn’t. I couldn’t…I…”
“You shouldn’t have called her, Erin. That’s on you. You brought her here. If you didn’t want her to die, you shouldn’t have reached out to her in the first place—”
“That wasn’t me…” I say.
“Why don’t we ask her?” I see Tobias step forward and I instinctively step back. “Come on. All it’ll take is one quick hit and we can call her up.”
“No!”
“Let’s reach out to Amara now. She’ll set the story straight. I’ll bet you a buck it was—”
“NO!”
Silas backs away, hands held up, a smile on his lips. “Fine, it wasn’t you, it was the Ghost. Some bad spirit made you do it. Nobody’ll blame you for what happens when you dose.”
He offers a consoling hand, palm up.
I spot the gelcap. It shimmers. “No,” I moan. “Please, don’t…”
“Come on, Erin…Don’t make me beg.”
“I want to live.”
“Then live forever. With me.” Tobias looks deep into my eyes and I see Silas lingering within, his eyes staring back at me, settled into the sunken sockets of his spineless friend.
“You were my original vessel, Erin,” he says. “My first. I always knew you could do it. You proved Ghost could work for anyone. Jesus, just look at you…Your vapid life. Your willingness to do whatever I told you to. You were perfect. You’ve always been so empty.”
I try to keep myself together, not wanting to believe him. But of course he’s right.
I am an empty vessel. I always have been.
calling all spirits
“Let us begin,” Silas intones as if this is a church service. Even if it’s Tobias’s body sitting on the living room floor, I know it’s Silas who’s speaking. It’s always been Silas. He is an emissary for Ghost, spreading his addictive religion, pleased as punch to be its messenger. Or dealer. A mushroom by any other name…
“This will unlock our ghosts,” he says. “Whoever haunts you the most.”
His followers crawl out from their corners of the living room, reviving themselves long enough to circle around. The wood warps under their hands and knees. It’s like they can smell the Ghost, revived by its scent. Their glassy eyes reflect the candlelight. The flames pulse under the duress of everyone’s breath, dancing with each fetid exhale. I see the same starved sneer on everyone’s lips. Their eyes sink into their sockets, the flesh so taut they have no eyelids at all. They came here to reconnect with someone they lost, only to succumb to this addictive existence, losing hold of their lives, no longer alive or dead but caught somewhere in between.
I’m just like them. Even now I can feel the undertow of our home.
The house is calling for me.
“Everybody grab a cap.” Silas passes a Tupperware container. It makes its way around the room. “Take two! We have a special house-guest. Everybody say, ‘Welcome home, Erin.’”
And they do. Good god, they all turn to look at me with eyes that are no longer eyes, smiling with lips that no longer look like lips, echoing Silas: “Welcome home, Erin…”
“We’re ripping the door to the other world right off its hinges today, folks, so let’s get ready to open our minds as wide as they’ll go…”
Each member receives their sacrament. I watch the container move around the room until the skeleton next to me turns, her smile a withered rictus.
“Melissa?” I barely recognize her. All that’s left is a skull draped in an ill-fitting husk of dried parchment. An outcropping of white-heads sprouts all across her cheeks, threatening to burst. She holds out a gelcap for me. “Here you go…”
I feel the sweat seep out from my pores. Here’s the craving again, the slumbering worm tightening around my intestines, desperate for a fix. Don’t. I’m dizzy within my addiction’s grip.
Even now I’m trapped. My ghosts won’t let me go. This isn’t life. It’s death.
There’s nothing beyond our world. The dead know this. Silas knows this. That’s why they’re clamoring to crawl back in. This drug isn’t a door for us—it’s for them. To come home.
“No,” I say.
“Come on, Erin,” Silas says. “Don’t make us force you…”
“I won’t.”
Silas barely nods and all at once, his followers swarm me. They grab my wrists, my legs, my head. I can’t pull free. Their bony claws sink into my cheeks as they pry my lips apart.
“Here comes the choo-choo…” Melissa brings up the gelcap and presses it against my tongue. I bite her fingers but the skin is so brittle and loose that the top layer of dried baklava flesh simply sloughs off between my teeth. She tugs her fingers out and presses her palm over my mouth, pinching my nose until I have no choice but to—
“Swallow,” she says. I feel the pill plummet down my throat, practically hear the hollow tumble down, down, all the way down the well and crashing into the pit of my empty stomach.
They let me go and I slip to the floor. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t escape. God help me I’m home.
“Everyone hold hands,” Silas instructs. “Let’s get haunted.”
There are two circles, an inner and outer ring, to accommodate every member of the family. Tobias’s body sits in the center. The others sit in silence. Already their bodies sway.
Silas takes a deep breath and recites, “Exsurgent mortui et ad me veniunt.”
Both circles sway in a steady pulse, gaining speed. The faster they go, the more their bodies blur, until they’re no longer individual bodies but a single band of color. Their faces slip by so quickly, their open mouths blending together.
At any moment, I fear the floor at the center of the circle will bottom out, like a carnival ride, plunging Silas all the way through the earth. I sense the house buckling under the weight of so many users and their ghosts, clamoring for a chance to slip inside.
“Exsurgent mortui,” he repeats.
There is safety in a contained séance. Just a small group of people, no more than five or six at a time, all sitting around a table, lights dimmed, save for a single candle.