Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“Been ready,” he said. “You don’t have a single thing to eat, you know that?”

“Grocery shopping’s so passé,” she said. “I’m a modern woman. I dine out.” It was hardly her best. It all felt artificial, interacting with him, waiting for Demalion to resurface.

He smiled, but it was as brittle as hers, his good humor forced. Sylvie, stuck between ignoring his mood and wallowing in her own, opted for investigating his. “So, your wife—”

“Thinks I’m having an early-onset midlife crisis? Or an affair? God only knows what she’s telling Jamie. He asked if my sleepover was fun . . . .” Long strides sent him down the stairs as if he could outrun his aggravation. By the time she caught up to him, he said, more temperately, “And I felt so much better after my nap.”

“Yeah?” she said. “That makes one of us.”

He licked his lip, a quick, nervous gesture. “I didn’t see you leave.”

“You take long showers,” she said, still clipped.

Wright stopped on the edge of the parking lot, bent down, and collected a piece of gravel, turned it about in his fingers, before chucking it back to the ground. “I . . . There’s another gap. I don’t remember it. Don’t remember what I did.”

“It’s all right,” she said.

“I thought I was going to help you, and you were going to help me. Does lying to me count as help? It’s all right? What does that even mean now? It’s all right—the ghost came back but did no harm? Or it’s all right—you killed it, and it’s all over now? It doesn’t feel over.” His breath was shallow, quick; his worn T-shirt shivered. He didn’t remember, was afraid of what he’d done but still determined to face it.

Sylvie closed her eyes. Keeping quiet until she knew what to say would be so much easier if she didn’t like Adam Wright. More than that, she respected him. He was scared, but he faced things head-on. Didn’t understand the problem, and instead of closing his eyes to it, started looking for new answers.

She swallowed, gave out truth that meant nothing much. “Your ghost made an appearance, and it’s all right, because you did the smart thing and came to me. The ghost is benign—”

“It’s in my skin, deeper than cancer. How is that benign?”

“It’s probably just a matter of communicating last wishes,” Sylvie said. “We’ll get you through this. Solve this.”

Solve it, she said, like it was as easy as that. Like solving this didn’t mean losing Demalion all over again.

Her little dark voice growled, fed her an inverted platitude, designed to disturb. Nothing sane seeks its own demise.

She crossed the lot, her gait stiff, some of her hope for an easy resolution broken. The truck hadn’t been in the sun long, but when she brushed the metal, it was nearly hot enough to burn. Wincing, she keyed it open, gestured Wright into the cab; he paused on seeing the trash can. “It’s not a snake in there, is it?”

“Nope,” she said. “But don’t kick it.”

There was some awkward maneuvering as he folded long legs around it, pink plastic with a copy of Vogue duct-taped over the top, bright spots against his jeans.

Once he was situated, once they’d started moving into traffic, he said diffidently, “So if he just wants to get out his last requests, why not ask me? Why climb inside my brain in the first place? I mean, in movies, ghosts can talk over radios and televisions.”

“You know it’s a him?” He hadn’t said anything but blah, blah kaleidoscope before. Why the hell clients just couldn’t be open from the start—he might have spared her some of the shock.

“Not what I asked,” Wright said, eyes narrowing. He leaned back against the seat, nudged the trash can with the edge of his shoe, and absently reached down to steady it. Next moment, he recoiled, slammed into Sylvie’s space; she yanked the wheel, yanked it back, and kept the truck in her lane through sheer will and effort. “Christ, Wright,” she panted. “What the hell?”

“Wasn’t me,” he said. “All ghost.” He looked wrung out, eyes glossed with tears, as if he’d stared too long into the sunlight. He raised a pointy elbow, shielded his face. Traffic rushed by on either side, and the blaring of horns faded to a memory.

“Convenient excuse,” she said, less to needle him, and more to give him space to recover. “It wasn’t me who broke your lamp; the ghost did it. Honest . . .”

He gave her a shaky grin. “Yeah. Sorry.”

He folded his hands in his lap, braided his fingers, rubbed at the pale spot where his wedding band had been, frowned, looked at her with an expression shading toward unhappy.

Some information seepage, she thought. He had a glimmer of memory trying to make itself felt. Since she’d rather get out and walk the rest of the way to the office, full on summer heat and all, than talk about that horrifically inappropriate kiss, she shifted subjects firmly. “So what else do you know about him?”

“Not a lot. I didn’t lie,” he said. “I’m not an idiot, Sylvie. You consult a specialist, you tell ’em your symptoms. It’s just . . . I don’t know the words. Like a blind child, trying to describe the world. All I got are feelings, sensation, nothing real. Nothing I can grab hold of. Your name was the first real thing. Only real thing.”

He stared blindly out the windshield, not even squinting in the sunlight, utterly focused inward.

“When it started, it was like a rat tweaking in my brain, all twisted round, biting at everything. Panic all the time, on both our parts, I guess. Me ’cause I never know what I might do; him ’cause he didn’t know what he was. Then I got to you, and it changed. Got better. Still all activity, no purpose, but better. Can’t really make it sound right.”

The idea of Demalion waking scared and fragmented woke strange hurts in her chest, made it impossible to speak. She blinked furiously and changed lanes.

“It’s all different now.”

“How?” And her recovered voice was ragged enough to make him jerk in his seat.

He tangled his hands in his hair, drummed out a beat on the back of his skull; it made her think uneasily of knocking on a door, waiting to see who would answer.

“This morning . . . He’s clearer now. Got real feelings. Not just panic and confusion. In fact, he’s kinda—” Drum tap on his neck, the quiet thump of flesh against flesh.

“Kinda what?”

He folded his arms across his chest, gave her a brush of eye contact. “Worried. Guilty. Excited. Like a baby gangbanger psyching himself up to do something he’s not sure of.”

“I see,” Sylvie said, slowly. She didn’t like that description at all.

“He also feels . . . stronger.” His hands strangled each other, went white and tight, though the rest of his body strove for casual. “Like he’s more there.

“So, you going to tell me what he did to get you all handsy?” Wright interrupted her musings. His question was abrupt, hostile in tone, though she imagined it was fear that fueled it.

“Nothing important,” Sylvie said. “You weren’t out long, half an hour max, and most of that time you were couch-bound.”

He nodded, but gnawed on his lip as if he wasn’t sure he believed her. Wanted to, but doubted. He shifted, bumped the can again, and his attention jerked back to it.

Sylvie gripped the wheel tighter, eyed the traffic warily, but the moment passed without Wright or the ghost freaking out again.

“That’s . . . vile,” he said. “How can you . . . Where did you get that? What is it?”

Sylvie verified that the trash can was still tightly sealed, the cover of Vogue flattened over the top, shiny with duct tape. Answering him truthfully was likely to lead to argument, but it would also get them off the ghost topic. She’d had about as much of that as she could stand; he might be thinking it through, but she was remembering Demalion in her arms again, even with the wrong flesh pressed against hers. Remembering Demalion’s blood, a fine, sticky spray that had stained her face and hair and clothes, seeped into her pores, gotten into her nail beds, and taken days to scrub out.