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It starts with the Scrunyuns.
Nikki’s chatting up the gas station clerk, leaning on the counter with both elbows to keep herself from falling over. The door jingles as her friend enters the store, posing as a stranger — which he was, a little over a day ago.
(She should probably ask his name.)
The plan is for him to lift a few supplies while Nikki creates a distraction. She may have had little more than snow and spit to clean herself up with, and her handcuff is this close to escaping her sleeve, but damn it, she’s giving it her all.
She’s just about to compliment the clerk’s polo shirt when a sudden noise steals his attention. The culprit turns out to be half a dozen Scrunyun bags that have fallen off a nearby shelf and onto the floor.
Her fringed friend is standing several feet away from the mess, seemingly too far to have caused it. He looks mad — that is, madder than usual. Then he makes a gesture that doesn’t appear to be directed at Nikki or the clerk, but rather at the shelf itself.
He turns his left palm up and brings the outer edge of his right hand down on top of it, almost as hard as he brought that ax down in the forest.
Nikki attempts to use the bizarre moment to her advantage, giving the clerk a look that says, “What’s that fella’s deal?”
Said fella returns the fallen bags to the shelf while the clerk returns his eyes to Nikki.
Five minutes later, they meet in the bathroom. Whatever weirdness Nikki just witnessed is overshadowed when her friend reaches into various pockets to produce his spoils — bandages, super glue, aspirin, a miniature sewing kit, a bottle of peroxide, and a bolt cutter.
It would seem this isn’t his first rodeo.
Wes — that’s his name, it turns out — has some money hidden away near the North Dakota state line, so by nightfall they’re tucked up in a dingy motel room with their bellies full of diner food.
It doesn’t take long for things to get weird again.
As tired as Nikki is, she can’t sleep. She keeps thinking about Ray, and the man at the bar, and what happened in the forest, and how she’s ever going to pay Wes back, and why the hell he stayed with her in the first place.
It certainly doesn’t help that her entire body is sore, even the parts that haven’t been bruised or pierced with arrows.
The TV is on, muted, showing some old Ronald Reagan movie. Wes likes to keep a light on when he sleeps, but the lamp was too bright for Nikki, so this is their compromise.
She rolls onto her back under the scratchy sheets, wincing, and stares at the screen without really watching. Finally, finally, she starts to doze off. But just as she’s about to topple into sleep, a sudden swell of music jolts her back to reality.
Somehow, the TV has managed to unmute itself.
Nikki scrabbles for the remote on the nightstand and tries to turn down the volume, but it doesn’t work. Instead, the TV starts cycling through random channels — a nature documentary, an Arby’s commercial, The Tonight Show.
In the other bed, Wes is dead to the world. It takes her a second to remember why the sound isn’t waking him.
After a few more unsuccessful attempts to make the remote work, Nikki drags herself out from under the covers with a groan and tries to turn the TV off the old-fashioned way, to no avail.
“What the…”
Smacking the side of the set doesn’t accomplish anything either, so Nikki resorts to feeling along the wall until she finds the outlet. She rips out the plug, half expecting the power to stay on anyway. Mercifully, the TV goes dark.
Along with the room.
“Shit.”
Carefully, Nikki follows the edge of the mattress to the nightstand, where she fumbles to turn on the lamp.
“You win,” she says, and wonders if anyone hears her.
They stay in that same room for almost a week, scribbling to each other on the motel notepad as they wait for their wounds to heal.
On New Year’s Eve, Nikki resolves to get revenge. Wes resolves to help her.
They move from one town to the next, gathering information and making plans. The notepads get less and less use as Nikki learns more and more sign language.
All the while, she can’t shake the feeling that they’re not alone.
There’s the smell, for one. Men’s cologne, woodsy with a hint of citrus. Nikki quickly realizes she’s smelled it before, first on the bus and later in the forest.
She didn’t think much of it then. After all, she was chained to a man, so it only made sense that he’d smell like one, underneath all the blood and sweat and bowling alley whiskey.
But these days, the two of them smell like nothing but cheap bar soap and mildew. She’s fairly certain Wes isn’t hiding any cologne bottles from her, so who is she smelling?
Then there are the moments that just feel… off.
Like the time she discovers a streak of her new lipstick on the bathroom mirror, as if someone was trying to write with it. Or when she wakes up to find her American Sign Language dictionary on the floor, open to a page about tools — hammer, wrench, screwdriver.
Sometimes, she catches Wes signing things to thin air. Initially, Nikki figures maybe it’s just his way of thinking out loud. God knows she does it all the time herself, even when nobody’s listening.
She doesn’t really question it until she starts to understand some of the signs.
Stop. Go away. Annoying. Leave me alone.
Okay, so that’s a little weird. But the weirdest thing by far is the phone call.
It comes in the middle of the night, about a month after Christmas. Nikki blinks awake and eyes the nightstand suspiciously, recalling the knock from housekeeping that preceded her arrest.
On the fourth ring, curiosity gets the better of her, and she picks up.
“Hello?” she croaks, brushing her overgrown bangs out of her face.
Whoever’s on the other line, they sound like they’re drowning at the bottom of a well. It’s a man’s voice, but not one Nikki recognizes. He seems to be rushing to get his message out, like he’s on a time limit. She can just make out a few garbled, echoey words, interrupted by static.
“Tell Wes — him — it’s —”
The only thing Nikki totally understands is the last sentence.
“This is Grady, by the way.”
With a click, the line goes dead. Nikki sits with the phone pressed to her ear for at least thirty more seconds, listening to the dial tone and wondering what the hell she’s gotten herself into.
Who’s G-R-A-D-Y? she asks Wes the next morning.
She’s already pretty sure of the answer. Wes may not be as chatty as she is, but she’s still managed to coax a few vague personal details out of him.
When he sees her sign the name, his eyes widen.
He’s seated at the foot of his bed, tugging his new boots on. They’re black, like his new jacket. The color takes on a different meaning when Nikki looks at him now, with that phone call still echoing in her ears.
P-A-R-T-N-E-R? Nikki signs when he doesn’t respond. Dead?
She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Wes flinch before, but he does when he sees that sign — one palm up, the other down, and then flip them both over.
It’s one of the first signs Nikki learned, after she told him about Ray. Back then, it looked almost comical, like fish flopping around on dry land. But the more she thought about it, the more beautiful it seemed. Comforting, even. As if death is just a mirror image of life.
Wes glances away for a second, considering, and then he teaches her another sign.
Nikki watches closely as he puts two F shapes together, left hand palm-up, and lets his right hand zig-zag up into the air like smoke from an idle cigarette. She imitates it, and he nods.
And then he spells out the word that’s been on the tip of her tongue for weeks now.
G-H-O-S-T.
“Huh,” Nikki says, surprised by how unsurprised she is.
She remembers what the man at the bar said about lost souls. It was a sad fate, it seemed. “Unfortunately,” was the word he used. He didn’t say anything about haunting, but Nikki supposes anything’s possible.
Can you see him? she asks now.
Wes shakes his head. He raises his right palm to his chest, middle finger bent toward himself, and brushes upward. She knows that one — it means feel.
Nikki nods. “His chi.”
He looks confused, so she fingerspells it. That doesn’t seem to help, so she lets it go.
Tell me about him, she signs.
Wes begins to respond, then stops and reaches for the notepad instead. He writes something down and holds it up for Nikki to read.
He’s a pain in the ass.
At that moment, the clock radio on the nightstand starts beeping incessantly, and the time scrolls continuously from one minute to the next like someone’s trying to reset it.
Nikki scrambles to turn it off. Wes looks at her like his point has just been proven.
She just keeps replaying that phone call in her head. “Tell Wes,” he’d said. Tell him what, she wonders now. Was that the closest he’s ever been to getting through?
Nikki takes the pen and writes, He’s trying to communicate.
Then she gives him a look that says they both know how that feels. Wes’ expression is sad, and a little bit guilty. Nikki knows how that feels, too.
She chews her lip, then signs a sentence she’s gotten especially good at over the past month.
I’ve got an idea.
No, Wes signs when he sees the Ouija board.
Why not? Nikki wonders.
Sure, she wouldn’t have bought into it either before all this happened. But Wes said himself, they’re dealing with a ghost here. Why not speak his language?
He’s H-A-U-N-T-I-N-G me, Wes responds, like it should be obvious.
Then he signs something Nikki doesn’t recognize, moving his right fist toward himself over the back of his flat left hand. It doesn’t look positive.
She realizes then that, in his view, whatever Grady has to say to him probably isn’t good. Maybe it’s taken so long for him to get through partly because Wes is resisting.
And really, who could blame him? Nikki had a soft little kitten — he’s got a poltergeist.
He didn’t sound mad on the phone, she assures him. He sounded…
Nikki doesn’t really have the right word for it, even in English. She eventually settles on U-R-G-E-N-T.
Wes still looks skeptical, but nevertheless he sits at the wobbly table in the corner of the room and stares down at the board. Nikki bought it at a big-box store, along with tampons and a new bottle of nail polish.
With a sigh, Wes gestures for her to take the chair across from him.
Nikki places her fingers on one side of the plastic planchette and directs Wes to do the same. It feels a little silly to be doing this outside of a seventh-grade slumber party, but what do they have to lose?
“Is anybody there?” Nikki asks to start, while Wes watches her lips.
They sit there for a moment, waiting for something to happen. The instructions say it could take anywhere from one to five minutes, but those were probably written by some buttoned-up fella in a cubicle, so Nikki takes it with a grain of salt.
She’s just about to repeat the question when the planchette shifts slightly beneath their fingers. After a couple of false starts, it slides slowly but determinedly toward the upper left corner of the board.
YES
Nikki and Wes stare at each other, wide-eyed. He nods for her to continue.
“Uh, who are we speaking to?”
Haltingly, the planchette moves down the board to the row of digits, 1234567890. It slides back and forth across all ten.
“Numbers?” says Nikki, confused.
But when she looks at Wes, he’s smiling, so she figures it must mean something she doesn’t understand. In any case, what are the odds there are two ghosts following them around?
“Is there something you want to say?” Nikki wonders.
The planchette is once again slow to start, but it eventually moves up the board to the letters, pausing on three in particular.
I … L … Y
At first, Nikki thinks he must be conserving his ghostly energy by using shorthand. Then she remembers the sign — the one she already knew years before she was chained to a deaf guy in the back of a prison bus.
What she didn’t realize back then was that the gesture was made of letters.
Nikki glances up at Wes, who has his eyes closed. When he finally opens them, they’re shiny. He avoids looking at her.
Wes takes his hands off the planchette and signs something to the empty space between them. It’s faster than Nikki’s used to from him, but she’s pretty sure of the translation.
You got a funny way of showing it.
He puts his hands back, and the planchette moves almost immediately.
H … A … H … A
Wes smiles again. It’s a small, crooked thing that doesn’t show his teeth, but this is the most Nikki has seen it in the time she’s known him.
She feels a twinge of jealousy that she can’t talk to Ray like this. But then she reminds herself that she got to hold him and kiss him and look into his eyes. He blinked at her, slow and trusting, and she read somewhere once that for cats, that means love.
Do you want to ask something? Nikki signs to Wes.
His smile wavers, and he sits up straighter. This must be what he was afraid of.
Wes takes his hands away from the board, and they hover in limbo for a few seconds before he makes that sign again — the one that looks like he’s trying to punch himself in the face.
In response, the planchette moves so fast that it actually escapes Nikki’s fingers, stopping in the upper right corner.
NO
It vibrates for a few seconds before lifting an inch off the board and then falling back down onto the same word, as if for emphasis.
NO
Wes visibly relaxes, like the weight of five years has just been lifted off his shoulders.
(Later that night, Nikki will flip through her sign language book until she finds that unfamiliar sign. She’ll learn that it means blame.)
She sits there awkwardly, wondering if she should give Wes and his ghost some privacy, since he’s apparently capable of expressing himself without a conduit.
Then Wes surprises her by signing another question.
What do you think of N-I-K-K-I?
Her own name was the first word she learned to fingerspell. She’s more used to seeing it backwards in the mirror, but still, it’s unmistakable.
Nikki looks down at the board and holds her breath. There’s a brief pause before the planchette moves below the numbers, stopping on GOOD BYE.
Her heart sinks at the sight of it, because apparently he’d rather exit the conversation entirely than say what he really thinks of her. Or maybe he’s telling her to leave. Either way, he obviously disapproves.
Then she realizes that only the first word is highlighted.
GOOD
“Oh,” she says, and can’t help but smile. “Thanks.”
Well, that’s a relief. She’d be lying if she said she never suspected that some of those strange happenings were designed to scare her off. As if she didn’t already have enough reasons to look over her shoulder.
It’s too bad Ray can’t reach out from beyond the grave and give Emmit a good spook.
Nikki blinks.
Unless…
Suddenly inspired, she leans forward in her chair and signs, for the hundredth time, I’ve got an idea.
What is it? asks Wes.
Nikki puts two F shapes together and dances her right hand into the air. Like a soul leaving a body, or a waft of familiar cologne.
“Ghost.”
They start making a plan.
Nikki thinks they should aim for the Ides of March, on account of the obvious symbolism. They’ve got a running list of ideas — the Corvette, the stamp, maybe even a mustache.
Cameras? Wes signs.
He’s got a point. Emmit’s office is sure to have them, and he’s sure to check the tapes.
Nikki grabs a pen. She tends to write more when she’s in planning mode, because her brain moves too fast for her hands to keep up.
We gotta be invisible, she scrawls.
As if on cue, a noise from the nearby Ouija board grabs her attention. They moved it to Wes’ bed when inspiration struck.
Nikki clears space on the table and carries it over.
“Did you wanna say something?” she asks.
The two of them place their fingers on the planchette and watch as it moves painstakingly from letter to letter.
I … C … A … N … H … E … L … P
They stare at each other. Wes smiles that rare smile.
“Well,” says Nikki. “Okay, then.”