Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

Wright closed his eyes, and his face aged. The morning light traced the stubble on his chin, half-gold, half-grey; lines of exhaustion pulled his slack face toward sorrow’s mask.

Sylvie took another quick look at the list of cars, wondering if any of them were on her way. Made no sense to pass by if she was just going to have to return later.

“Home, James,” Wright muttered. He reached out a sleepy hand and took the list from her.

She allowed it; she’d seen what she needed to. Each house on the list was a destination, not a drive-by. Instead, she turned the truck’s scarred nose toward her apartment and a couple of hours’ sleep. She sighed. One day back on the job, and she was down to catching bits and pieces of sleep when she could.

The ride was quiet, South Dixie blessedly clear at this early hour, and Wright collapsed into a boneless sleep she hadn’t thought possible in anyone past the age of fifteen. Like a colicky baby, she thought, soothed to sleep by the motion of a car. But if he was asleep and dreaming, his dreams were unpleasant.

He woke when the truck came to its usual coughing halt and squinted at the bright Miami morning, yellow light and haze, reflecting off the white-stucco apartment complex. “Come on,” she said, and he followed her past the cutesy would-be Chinese entry arch, the single stranded Kwan-Yin sculpture left bereft in a rocky alley pathway between the buildings, with only a raised brow for all the kitsch.

“Home sweet home,” she said.

“Thought Florida was all about the Latin look,” he said. He took in the view of tilted-up roof corners, red tile cartoon-bright against the blue sky, the expanses of raked gravel and sand.

“Landlord was trying for the foreign-student demographic,” Sylvie said. “Ended up with something as authentic as grocery-store lo mein.”

Her building was the one deepest into the lot, farthest from the pool. She’d chosen it for the quiet, plus the nice long view of the walkway, which let her see who was coming to visit.

One flight of stairs up, and Sylvie put the key into the lock, jiggling the key as it stuck again. Humidity was a killer. The lock gave after a solid thump , and she ushered Wright in, kicking the door closed. He moved forward with the awkward shuffle of a guest preceding his host, awaiting cues and guidelines.

Sylvie felt tight in her skin, all too aware of his eyes sweeping the small expanse of the living room, the tiny kitchen, the shadowed depths of her bedroom, her bed unmade, sheets still tangled from that final nightmare that had driven her out of town. She’d slept better in Sanibel, defying all logic. Slept soundly and at length, no matter that her most pressing problems were things she’d brought along.

She sidled past him once he had moved beyond the narrow pseudofoyer, and found herself standing awkwardly in the living room. Times like this, she wished she were more of a regular person, with a dog, a cat, an aquarium, even houseplants that needed watering—anything to let her fuss with until she got over that first stranger-in-the-house discomfort.

Instead, she had a nearly bare room, a comfy couch with magazines strewn along one half— Guns & Ammo , Closer , and a month’s worth of inserts from the Herald —newspapers piled beneath and beside the end table, collecting dust. A TV on a cheap stand, DVDs piled beside it. A bookshelf, three-quarters full. A floor lamp at strategic distance from the couch. It wasn’t even messy enough that she could justify a scamper round tidying. Instead, she just did a quick point and show. “Bedroom, mine, thataway. Couch, yours. Bathroom down the hall. Drinks in the kitchen. Help yourself. If you dirty something, put it in the dishwasher. I’m going to shower. I think I rolled in oil.”

Once off the road, out of the truck, in the clean confines of her apartment, the scent lingered about her like a cloud, a reminder of the failed night on her skin.

She grabbed a couple of blankets, one of the pillows from her bed, and tossed them to him. “Don’t worry. I don’t sing in the shower. You should be able to sleep.”

“I’m not that tired,” he said. “We could talk about my case.” He swayed gently, foot to foot.

“In the morning,” she said.

“It is morning. You’re the one who got PO’d I was holding out on you—”

“Know anything new and urgent, like a name?” she asked.

He wrapped himself in his own arms, shook his head. She said, “Then we’ll talk later in the morning. Much later. After coffee. After a spicy breakfast omelet. And more coffee. You need some rest, and I need a clear head.”

Maybe with some sleep under his belt, he wouldn’t look so close to the edge. Whatever sleep he’d gotten in her truck, it had been the opposite of refreshing. He looked strung tight, and worse, he looked . . . crowded, as if the thing in his head, having surfaced briefly, was watching for another chance.

Sylvie shuddered. He might be ready to talk about it; she wasn’t. Enemy, ghost, crazy? Or some combination of all of the above? Sylvie didn’t want to start that round of speculation again. Once had been enough, and nothing had changed in the interim.

“You came to me for help. I’m telling you now. Sleep will help. You can’t think clearly if you’re exhausted.”

“Can’t think clearly when someone else’s using my brain,” he muttered, but nodded agreement. He toed off a sneaker, white leather worn nearly grey with age and use, then the other, and Sylvie found herself shying away from his bony bare feet, the unwelcome intimacy of it. Ridiculous in a city where flip-flops were so common, but there it was. Wright needed help; she didn’t want to give it. She didn’t want to see any further signs of vulnerability—his or hers.

She grabbed a shower, scrubbing her skin clean, trying to purge the guilt over her reluctance to help. It was just bad timing. She’d been truthful with Alex; she wanted a nothing case. Not something that was life-or-death desperate. Wright’s problem was twigging every nerve in her body attuned to Serious Trouble.

The water was hot and plentiful at this hour, before her neighbors rose for work, and Sylvie lingered until the knots of tension in her spine—

What happened to the satanists, Sylvie?

Help me.

Find the thieves.

Save me.

That your gun, Lightner?

—faded away into a dull ache.

She got out, her fingers pruned, the mirror glass steamed and drippy, and dragged on a pair of ’Canes sweats, faded from forest to olive, and a black tank top.

The apartment was silent and dim; Sylvie expected to see Wright a mute, mummy shape of blankets along the couch. Instead, he perched on the edge, bare-chested, barefoot, bent over something small in his hand, something that gleamed with an opalescent shine. He was utterly still, staring into it.

Sudden rage washed Sylvie. She snatched it from his hand, the broken curve of glass leaving a tiny crescent of blood on his skin. He jerked back. “What the hell?”

“Don’t touch that. Where did you even—”

“It was on the couch,” he said. “ Memento mori? Didn’t expect you to go in for that sort of thing.”

On the couch, right. She remembered now. That last night before her vacation, packing and repacking and repacking again. All of it centered around a quarter moon of cloudy, broken glass that she couldn’t decide to take or leave behind.

A tiny broken piece of a crystal ball, cloudy with a fragment of a dead man’s soul. She rubbed it in her palms, familiar by now with the sharp edges. She’d left it behind. A fragment of a soul. It wasn’t good for much when the rest of it had been obliterated, devoured by the Furies. She’d slept better in Sanibel? Maybe because she hadn’t taken it with her. She rocked it in her hand now. Sometimes she swore she could see a slice of Demalion’s life in it. A boy in a blazer, raising his head, and facing down a school bully with nothing but arrogance.