Chapter 26: Marina Murders (6)

I’d never seen a ghost before.  I guess most normal people don’t.

Which also means I no longer fit in the scope of ‘normal’.

Never really did, I guess.

Technically, this was my second time seeing ghosts.  I’m talking about those things that were peeking in my RV moments after my awakening.  But I wasn’t sure that those were ghosts.  Maybe they had been, once upon a time.  

If they were once ghosts, they definitely weren’t simple ghosts anymore.  They were too twisted, too broken, and simply too menacing to be a regular ghost.

Susan arrived with the hair-raising coldness of the supernatural, her shoulders shaking with each gasping sob.

Imagine a person.  Now turn that person into grayscale, so that all the color has been bled out of them, except shades of pale gray, light blue, and white.  Then turn them thin, not thin as in skinny, but thin on an existential level.  

Thin enough to be transparent, thin enough for your hand to go straight through, and definitely thin enough so that they slip through the cracks of your immediate attention to reality.

Take that person and fade them out a hundred times over.  The small details that make them who they are.  The wrinkles around their face, the way they fuss with their sleeves, or in my case, the half-bitten fingernails.  Empty them of all their habits, the small little things that their family and friends remember them by.

Until all you have left is the general idea of who they once were.  Maybe a name and a face.  If you’re lucky, a core memory or two.  A childhood address, or the name of their wife, husband, or children.  Reminders of who they had been while alive.

And all those empty spots?

Fill it with memories of how they died.

Whether it was through murder, a car accident, or a tragic fire; those last intense moments in their lives are what remains.  And ghosts, by the very nature of how ghosts are created, tend to have very, very intense memories of death.

At first, Susan was just another elderly grandmother that you could see anywhere; albeit the ghost part.  She was on the thin side, her cardigan draped over her frame like a blanket.  The rest of her body was too grayed out, the reflected sunlight breaking through the lower half of body.  Susan had her hands covered around her face, her shoulders shaking slightly with each soft sob.

“Whoa,”  Lev said behind me.  “What’d you just do, Hallow?”

I fought not to breathe out, hoping that bracing myself would keep my focus from breaking.  Susan kept flickering in and out of my vision.  My instincts told me that it wasn’t me, that something was wrong with Susan’s ghost; that she was weak, even for a ghost, and that  I was racing against the clock.  It took everything I had to keep her in sight.

“Ix-nay on the alking-tay.”  I spoke through my teeth, trying to hold onto the feeling of keeping the Third Eye locked on Susan.

“Did you feel that?”  Lev either didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand what I meant.  My bet was on the latter.

“Lev, shush.”  Penelope said in a much quieter tone than he.

He did.

The respect I get.

As my concentration grew, Susan’s figure grew clearer.  Her cardigan regained some color, turning from white-blur to beige-pink.  The wisps around her hands solidified somewhat, turning to fingers.  I realized that she was covering her face with her hands.  Beneath them, bruise-like stripes and tiny cuts began to appear.  At first, just a bit like some cat scratched her.

Then the welt grew and grew.

Cuts small and large, long and short, deep and shallow…  The welts turned to thick, fat, angry, red, ropes of pain and swelling, turning her wrinkles inside-out and making her face twice the size of what it should have been.  I saw blood beginning to seep into the collar of her shirt and the cardigan sleeves, seemingly from nowhere.

And I could feel the cuts as if it were happening to my face.

Like someone had decided to slap me.  Suddenly, without warning, while their fingers were taped to shaving razors.

I took a breath and stepped back.

“...Hallow?”  Penelope said, somewhere behind me, worried and I heard the crunch of snow as she stepped towards me.

“Don’t come near me!”  My voice came out high-pitched and full of panic.

The more I tuned into Susan, the more I could feel what she was feeling.  The sharp pulsing pain as the blood rushed to the wound and flowed out.  Indescribable fear that began in the pit of my stomach, continuing to rise up until I felt tears swelling in my eyes.  

All the while, I had to listen to her cry.  The horrible, heart-wrenching sob of someone’s grandmother crying right in front of me.

The intensity of Susan’s emotions hit me like a thousand tons and I fell to my knees.

“Oh god.”  I swore.

I started seeing things.  A smiling boy, offering me a piece of sour candy from the box.  I knew that it was sour, it said so on the cover.  But I took it anyways and gave him the overreaction he was looking for.  A delightful laugh for my efforts.

The smell of fresh pasta, sauteed garlic, onions–

Her memories.  I was experiencing her memories.

I had to block her out somehow.  Focus on something strong.

Another vision hit me.  A blackened hand with grimy fingernails, taking my chin and turning me this way and that.  Eyes, eyes, eyes–

When I came to, I was kneeling with my hands supporting my weight.

“Susan, stop.  Please.”  I choked out, the fresh snow burying my words.

The hand reared back and then slapped me across the face.  A sharp stinging sensation.  Something wet dripped down my forehead and into my eyes.  The coppery taste of blood on my tongue.  

Everything was cold, dark, and wet.  Couldn’t see, except in flashes.  The feeling of icy pavement on my palm, embedding sharp, tiny, pebbles as I –she– tried to crawl away.

“Susan.”  I had to grab her attention.

…Hurts.

She kept sobbing.

“Pen.”  It must’ve been Lev’s voice but it felt so far away.  I could imagine the tall, dark-haired young man pacing, eyes narrowed and trying to see if there was anything to do.

“Give him a moment.”  Penelope’s answer.

Susan’s memories continued to flood into me, in incoherent flashes.  In one moment, I was a young girl, feeling the heat creeping up from my neck to my cheeks in a blush as Edward gave me a rose.  

Another moment, being dragged away into the dark.  I was just taking a walk, near the usual spot.  The streetlight was flickering, it felt colder than the usual night.  Had to hurry home, had to–

I bit my tongue on purpose, fracturing the connection between us.  Not complete, but just enough to put a pause on the rollercoaster of Susan.

She wasn’t doing this on purpose.  From what I knew about ghosts…

I was simply experiencing the echoes of her death.  The important things that flashed through her mind as she died, as well as how she died, all condensed into one sick movie preview downloaded directly into my brain.  I had to bring the ghost to the present, to make it pay attention to me and my words first, not the circumstances of her death.

The issue wasn’t what was happening.  It was how to stop it.

Her name.  Names had power.  But I had already called out her name and she hadn’t responded.  The ghost wasn’t paying attention or the connection to the name ‘Susan’ was already too faded.

I had to reforge it.