Chapter Text
The ghosts were getting harder and harder for Kai to avoid.
There must have been something about this part of town that was drawing them in.
They lurked everywhere . Especially lately. On the street. On the buses. In Kai’s neighborhood. At school. It was almost summer, right at the start of May, yet Kai always got the chills because of how close he’d just come to walking through a ghost.
He was living life, trying to mind his own business, but ghosts didn’t care about that. They didn’t care about much of anything beyond their own single-minded determination. All they felt was regret or sadness or resentment. What living people felt meant nothing to them.
It was kind of terrifying catching even a glimpse of their solid black eyes, or the bottomless pits of their mouths, or their pale and grasping hands.
They’d be so much easier to ignore if they didn’t make so much noise.
For example, the one standing at the end of the aisle in the convenience store where Kai was currently trying to pick between two different bags of Skittles. You could never go wrong with the sour kind but he was developing quite an attachment to those fruity smoothie flavors. He could always buy them both but he needed to save his change for lunch today. As it stood, though, he was leaning more towards the smoothie flavors. He could use a little sweetness in his morning. But, jeez, even with the rock music buzzing through his earphones, he could hear the ghost at the end of the aisle.
The sound was unnerving. Nails against a chalkboard. Like rain pinging against metal roofs.
Her voice was cold and hollow. Every sob that bubbled out of her throat made goosebumps crawl up Kai’s arms, even beneath the sleeves of his school uniform.
Kai put a hand in his pocket, found his phone and used his thumb to turn the volume up.
It didn’t seem to really help. He could hear the music in his ears, fast and rough, but he could feel the ghost’s wailing in his head . Rattling in his skull. Vibrating off of his thoughts.
He couldn’t hear the ghost’s words exactly, couldn’t name what she was begging for, but he could feel her sadness in his own chest like it belonged to him and her crying seemed to be getting louder and louder.
Closer.
A sudden chill shot down his spine. He almost screamed!
She was right beside him.
Right there!
He could see her out of the corner of his eye. Long, black hair laid in a tangled curtain over her face. Her tattered white dress hung to the tile floor. Tendrils of black smoke escaped from her eyes and sank down her hollowed-out cheeks like tears.
Don’t look at her , he screamed in his head. Don’t react to her. Don’t let her know you know.
He could never let them see that he was afraid. But that wasn’t always easy when ghosts got so close.
If he caught sight of them from afar, he could keep going about his day. He could steer clear of them. Plan his path around them. At certain distances, they looked like living beings, which made it so much easier to not get spooked. But when they got close, when he could no longer deny their lifelessness, that’s when he got scared. Like right this second. When Kai could feel the air tremble around him as the ghost tugged at the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead. That’s when it became really easy to slip up and let the ghosts know you could see them.
Like moths drawn to a flame, ghosts circled psychics. Haunted them. And the last thing Kai wanted was to drag one to school with him.
Drag one home .
Kai grabbed the neon-colored bag of sour Skittles from out of the box on the shelf and then turned on his heel to make his way up the aisle, doing his absolute best not to run.
He had to walk right through her. He had to! Her presence was so large that she took up the width of the aisle. But he couldn’t hesitate. As scared as he was, he couldn’t show it. Because if he acknowledged her, he was done for.
One step. And then another. Now he was passing through her.
It was worse than walking through a spiderweb. It was like flinging himself in a bath of ice cold water.
The ghost’s presence made his skin crawl. Made chills shoot through his system. Made his throat tighten up like he was choking. But he couldn’t react! He couldn’t gasp or shiver or focus on her.
His head swam. His vision blurred.
Oh no. He could feel them already.
It was always bad when a ghost’s emotions and memories sank in.
They could disorient him. Make him act irrationally. Make it real easy for a ghost to slip inside and take control.
Kai grit his teeth and kept walking. He had to be tenacious! One more step… two more steps and he had passed through the swirling black cloud of her.
Don’t look behind you , he thought. Because she was right there. Right behind him. Following him up the aisle, sobbing. Bone-cold fingers dug into his shoulders as if to pull him back. As if to beg him to stay and listen.
Tiny little glimpses of her death were still flickering through his head. He could see them so clearly. More lucid than dreams. She had a husband and four children and her love for them was deep and profound. But there was also pain. Agony.
Fire.
She’d lost them in a fire. The towering flames had swallowed half of the old apartment building. The walls were crumbling. The roof was about to collapse!
Kai kept going. He put one foot in front of the other and tried not to grunt as he dragged the ghost’s severe weight behind him like a ball and chain.
He was just a normal person, he reminded himself, who couldn’t see or hear or feel ghosts.
See , he wanted to shout at her, I’m normal. Go haunt someone else!
She couldn’t hear his thoughts. She would not go away. The ghost clung tighter to him. Her icy hands slid across his shoulders and held fast around his neck. She was trying to hurt him. Lashing out because of all of the pain she was still in.
More of her memories slipped through the cracks.
Screams. Tears. Panic.
An alarm blared loudly in the distance.
Smoke sat so thick in the air that it blinded. Choked.
She wasn’t going to make it out. Her youngest child had stopped crying in her arms. Her only escape route was blocked.
Kai pushed the dreadful imagery away. He wanted to cry out. He wanted to choke on the smoke that felt so heavy in his lungs. But he couldn’t react. He couldn’t!
Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a line at this odd hour in the morning. Kai walked right up to the counter, sweating profusely, and just about flung the candy down. The cashier, some girl in a safety vest who couldn’t have been too much older than he was, took note of Kai’s earphones and didn’t make any attempt to speak directly to him. She simply lifted her price scanner and aimed it at the bag’s barcode, not even bothering to smile.
A+ customer service, honestly.
They smoothly went about the transaction, exchanging a fistful of coins for the candy, but Kai couldn’t help but notice the way the cashier kept glancing over Kai’s shoulder, as if she could see the ghost clinging to the boy.
Could she see the crying woman?
Don’t look at her , Kai wanted to snap at her. Eyes were the window to the soul, after all, and eye contact with a ghost was begging to be possessed.
But the cashier didn’t react. She didn’t seem frightened like most people were in the rare case that they saw a ghost.
Perhaps she couldn’t see the crying woman after all. Maybe she was only looking over Kai’s shoulder, lost in thought. Bored. Ready for her shift to be over already.
For some strange reason, Kai felt let down by that. Even if it had only been for a handful of seconds, he had believed he wasn’t the only one who had to carry such a burden.
The cold thickened around him and he played off the shiver running up his spine by shoving his change in his pocket and checking the ugly, plastic watch on his wrist.
He was going to be late for school.
Kai held out his hand for his receipt and the bag of candy and tried his best not to break into a dead sprint as he walked away from the counter and headed towards the door. It was like trying to pull himself free of something sticky. It was like the ocean tide was dragging at his ankles, the sand ripping free from beneath his toes. The web of the ghost’s influence almost kept him pinned in place, but he managed to take one more step and then finally broke free of her.
Kai sucked down a breath of air. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it until then.
The icy cold weight on his shoulders eased and eased until it lifted entirely. The ghost had let go of him but she hadn’t disappeared. She was still present in the store, her sadness soaking the air like fog. Kai knew it was risky. He knew it might all be a trick to make him turn around and expose his vulnerability but he glanced over his shoulder anyway.
There was no ghost waiting to lunge at him and take him.
The crying woman remained at the counter, lingering next to the cashier, dripping tears across the floor.
She had latched on to someone else.
Good. Good for him.
As if feeling something strange in the air, the cashier rubbed at her shoulders for warmth.
Kai turned back around and pushed open the convenience store’s doors. The bell above his head jangled loudly. Then he was immediately swamped in the Wednesday morning humidity. Compared to how cold he’d been a moment ago, the oppressive summer heat on his skin felt heavenly.
He went left at the end of the parking lot and continued his journey to school.