The Dead Friends Society, page 4
Since when can ghosts get hurt? What the fuck is happening? Am I in Hell? Did I die and go straight to fucking Hell?
Drew’s downward spiral was interrupted as Eli’s computer monitor flickered on, awakened by the trackball’s movement. The screensaver was a scantily clad bikini model leaning over a red Ferrari. Drew rolled her eyes at the picture but couldn’t help but stare. There was something about the lameness of it, the stereotype of the dorky computer kid ogling an unattainable woman on top of an equally unattainable car that gave her a comforting sense of normalcy. It was a stupid but inarguably human thing, which was exactly what Drew needed as she was feeling less and less human. Drew couldn’t help but wonder how many other pictures Eli browsed through before deciding yes, this is the one for me. The idea of it made her laugh.
“Drew? Is that you?”
The voice drifted down from the kitchen, small, and timid, as if whomever it came from wanted so desperately to be heard but was afraid they might be heard by the wrong person. Yet for as faint and scared as the voice was, it was unmistakable. Drew’s eyes went wide.
Chapter 5
Rose Calder stared down at her own corpse. She focused on her dead face. It looked almost peaceful, like she had decided to take a nap and simply never woke up. But then Rose’s eyes drifted to the rest of the body and there was no peace to be found as she remembered all too vividly what it was like to die.
A thick phone cord was wrapped around her neck, its tangles lacerating deep into her flesh. There were even more cuts all over her skin, but they were from Rose’s own fingernails as she tried to claw the cord off. Rose hadn’t realized at the time how close she’d gotten but could see now the cord’s plastic shielding had torn away, exposing the thin copper wires inside. It looked so fragile, so delicate, as if all she had left to do was give it a final tug and the whole thing would have broken and unraveled, filling her lungs with a life-saving rush of air.
But The Fireman had been too strong.
He pulled that phone cord so hard around her neck that Rose thought it was going to slice clean through, beheading her. Instead, it slowly cut off the oxygen to her body, and as her brain underwent hypoxia, all of Rose’s senses went funny. She’d never done drugs — her aunt raised her to treat her body like a temple one should never pollute — but she’d heard enough from Drew and others to know, even if anecdotally, what getting high was supposed to feel like. And as she felt her body melt away and become weightless, as she watched the world around her tunnel to nothingness, she had a final, profoundly vivid thought: I should have lived more. If anyone was going to destroy my temple, it should have been me.
Rose couldn’t pry her eyes away from the corpse. Her hand started twitching uncontrollably and she had the overwhelming sensation that she was dying again, that the cord was back around her neck, strangling her all over again. Her hand involuntarily shot up to her neck, massaging where the cord had been. She knew she was dead; she knew her spirit had transcended from the physical to the ethereal, but even still, no amount of rationalizing could build a big enough barrier to hold back the very real sensations and memories now crashing down on her like waves in a storm.
Drew had gone to bed, leaving Rose behind with just Eli. Rose thought they might end up chatting for a little longer and she’d go crash herself, but then she and Eli ended up hanging out together for hours. They weren’t even talking the entire time. Sometimes a silence would fall, and the two of them would just sit there, nursing their beers, listening to whatever CD was in the boombox. The album would end, and then one of them would get up to put in another. It was lovely. Until he showed up.
Eli had stood to skip the track and The Fireman was just standing in the middle of the dining room, axe in hand. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t even do anything, he just stood there staring at the two of them like they were the ones who had broken into his house. At first Rose thought he had the wrong address or something, but he just stared back, chest heaving. Rose had long considered herself an empath who could read someone’s aura. The Fireman had no aura though. It’s not that she couldn’t read him, no, he was completely empty on the inside.
That’s when Rose dropped whatever polite attitude she’d managed up until that point and demanded that The Fireman leave the house. Rose tried to go open the front door for him and he reacted by lunging at her and smashing the knob clean off the door. Eli started shouting. It was almost impressive seeing Eli stand up to this giant of a man, but it proved to be a mistake. The Fireman swung his axe at Eli and the rest was a blur. Rose remembered grabbing the kitchen phone off its cradle and dialing 911, but before she could even beg for help, The Fireman was on her, choking her with the very thing she so foolishly thought would be her lifeline.
And then she’d blacked out the first time. Rose stirred back to life again at some point and called for help, but he’d returned just as she was waking and finished the job. So here she was now, staring at her own lifeless body.
Rose gripped her crystal necklace tight in her right hand. Aunt Bea had given it to Rose at her parent’s funeral, telling her it belonged to her mother. Rose said she’d never take it off and had stayed true to that word for the last ten years. The crystal was a security blanket to her. Whenever she was stressed, she’d touch the crystal and imagine she was holding hands with her mom. It calmed her every single time, without fail.
Until now. Rose was too troubled by the fact that the crystal existed both around her neck and the neck of her corpse at the same time. Her left hand was squeezing the fabric of her flowy dress, drawing it together in tight balls and then releasing it, only to repeat the process again and again, both hands trying to find some sort of physical grounding when what her eyes were seeing was so unbelievable. After her parent’s death, Rose had been raised by Aunt Bea to understand and respect the connection between this world and those beyond, but now that she was actually in the beyond, nothing was as she expected.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen when you died. She’d been obsessed with figuring out the afterlife ever since her parents’ death. Bea had all kinds of theories about the afterlife, of course, but Rose had latched onto her own favorite: reincarnation. She believed in it because it seemed the least terrifying, and because she refused to believe her parents had just poofed out of existence like clouds disappearing in the sky, leaving nothing behind but a lost little girl.
Rose rubbed the crystal harder, tracing tiny, figure eight loops in its smooth surface with her right hand, balling up her dress with her left hand, unable to take her eyes off of Dead Rose, off of this intimate stranger, this woman with the pale face and the blue neck, when suddenly a dull thud filled her ears. Rose flinched, always the scaredy cat, fearing the return of The Fireman. But he wasn’t there. In fact, it was a different sound entirely. This wasn’t a judge’s gavel, it was a stubbed toe, and it was followed by the sound of a young woman cursing.
Rose tip-toed over to the basement stairs. She peered down them but couldn’t see anything. The staircase was surprisingly long, and the light faded before it hit the bottom. Rose crept as close to the edge as she could muster and softly called out. “Drew? Is that you?”
Chapter 6
Drew gazed up the wooden staircase. The kitchen above seemed even farther away than before. When she was running from The Fireman, the staircase seemed so short it felt like she practically fell into the basement. Of course, Drew had been running for her life, barreling forward without hesitation. Now, in the light of day and without a slasher chasing her, the wooden staircase seemed to stretch on and on and on before disappearing into a wall of blinding light above.
Drew was frozen in shock. Was this the heaven moment she’d been expecting? Was Grandma about to step out of the light, milk and cookies in hand? Or was Drew supposed to go up there, into the light? Or were you not supposed to go into the light? Was that the bad thing? Drew couldn’t remember.
Before Drew could decide, a woman stepped into the light, and Drew felt her entire body seize up. She would have guessed her heart had stopped beating, but first she’d have to figure out if she still had a heartbeat. Drew stared up in awe at the woman floating in the light. There was an angelic airiness that surrounded her. The hem of her dress ruffled slightly in the air as if it were defying gravity. Drew’s heart raced. This was it. This was the moment. She was going to go into the light. She had a good feeling about it. This was definitely the right choice. She was going to leave this all behind. She was going to heaven.
The woman took a step closer, and all those thoughts of hope, of Grandma and heaven, popped like a balloon. Rose’s silhouette was unmistakable, and once again Drew felt like a fool for letting herself believe in a fantasy, believe something good could happen to her. Drew’s self-deprecation was fleeting, though, as the thought of going into the great beyond gave way to the realization that she wasn’t alone in all of this.
Rose took a cautious step down the stairs. Her voice cracked. “Drew? Is that really you?”
Drew stepped forward; her toe tapped nervously on the stairs. She felt her whole body vibrating from frayed nerves. “You can see me?”
Rose nodded, tears welling in her eyes. Drew’s face exploded with relief, and she rushed up the staircase, which seemed to shrink in size as she moved, from a grand stairway to heaven to an old, rickety piece of woodwork. Rose didn’t have time to move before Drew made it to the top of the stairs and the two slammed into one another in a deep hug. Rose felt warm — she always did — and Drew pulled her in even tighter, clinging to her friend out of the fear that if she let go, Rose would vanish just as quickly as she’d appeared.
“Rose, I’m so sorry,” Drew whispered. She hadn’t even meant to say it, but the guilt from being unable to save her was more profound than Drew realized.
“Don’t be. This is a good thing,” Rose said, taking Drew aback. She could tell Rose’s life-long history of unbridled optimism had already kicked in. Unlike Drew, whose own mom inadvertently raised her to be deeply cynical, Rose had long been raised to always see the good in everything, whether it be people, places, or, apparently, the afterlife. It was something Drew often teased her about but found immediate comfort in now. Drew pulled back from the embrace, her face scrunched up in confusion. “How is this possibly a good thing?”
“We’re still here,” Rose replied. “And if we’re here, it means something. It means we have a purpose.” How was she so cool, so nonchalant about the whole thing? It made Drew feel dumb for having felt so afraid. Drew blinked back at her, and Rose smiled her perfect, sunny day of a face, and despite her best efforts otherwise, Drew could feel her shoulders relaxing, could feel Rose’s optimism spreading to her like a happy virus.
“Oh yeah, what’s our purpose?” A man’s voice quipped from the dining room.
Drew and Rose’s faces dropped in unified surprise. They turned to find Eli standing by the dining room table, looking as if he’d just woken up from a bad hangover.
Eli Adams always felt like the third wheel to Drew and Rose’s friendship. Not that he minded much. He enjoyed being on the periphery of things. Just outside the spotlight was where he thrived. Drew once called him an extroverted introvert and he thought it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever said about him. That was before, though, when he was alive, and his biggest concerns were how to balance things like what his parents wanted him to do (finish his degree in Computer Science) and what he wanted to do (work at Suncoast for the next twenty years and be perfectly content). Things changed drastically the second he “woke up” staring at the inside of his own skull. He’d never felt so invisible, so disposable. He stared at his corpse and felt like he had awakened in some kind of Tales from the Crypt episode where his wish to be invisible was granted in the most fucked up way possible.
“You’re here!” Rose shouted as she and Drew simultaneously ran over to him, pulling him in a tight hug. His cheeks involuntarily bloomed in a cherry blush. Eli pulled back from the hug, trying to catch his breath from being squeezed a bit too tight. “Yeah, as a goddamned ghost.”
Rose’s eyes scrunched up a bit. “We’re not ghosts.” She said.
She spoke in a defensive tone, as if Eli had just insulted her honor. He always thought of himself as the Chandler to Rose’s Phoebe; they had chemistry together, but their storylines only ever crossed when someone else was involved. Until last night. Most of the time she laughed at his dumb jokes, but every now and then he crossed a line he didn’t realize Rose had. This didn’t feel like one of those times, though. His brain started backpedaling, trying to figure out what to say that wouldn’t offend her, when Drew pointed into the kitchen at Rose’s corpse.
“If we’re not ghosts, then what the hell do you call that?” Drew asked. Eli glanced behind the kitchen island to where Drew was pointing. Rose’s strangled body was crumpled on the floor. He recoiled in horror. Seeing his own dead body was one thing but seeing Rose like that was making this next level real.
Rose paced and clutched her crystal necklace, her thumb running over it in circles. She looked deeply anxious. It made Eli feel like a real jerk. This was complicated, and even though they were all struggling to figure it out, he didn’t want to make her feel ashamed for not wanting to admit the obvious; they were worm food and yet somehow still walking around like nothing had ever happened.
Eli began rambling, tripping over his words, trying to find the right way to acknowledge everything that happened without coming off like he didn’t care, that the truth was he was starting to think all of this was pretty cool. Now that the initial shock of being dead was wearing off, he was starting to feel surprisingly alive. The world had changed in an instant, everything he thought he knew exploded in some kind of big bang moment, ushering in a new, post-corporeal universe filled with possibilities. If he enjoyed being a wallflower before, he was going to love being on this side of the wall. Being a ghost was just going to be the ultimate wallflower existence, right?
“Well, I just mean ghost is such a loaded word. We’re more like… wandering souls,” Rose clarified. Eli’s eyes rolled uncontrollably. “Wandering souls” just sounded a bit too hippyish to him, like the vegan way of saying ghost. His inadvertent eye roll stung Rose a bit, and once again he felt a pang of remorse for accidentally doing something to make her feel bad. Rose turned away from him and Eli threw his hands up in defense.
“Okay, fine, call us whatever you want, but I’m going with ghost. And do you know why?” He pointed at Rose. “You’re dead” He pointed at Drew. “And I haven’t been downstairs yet, but I’m pretty sure you’re dead.” Eli pointed at himself. “And I’m mega dead in the other room. Wanna know what gives it away?” Eli raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer. He didn’t realize it, but he was grinning. Drew waved Eli to go ahead and tell them.
“It’s not the fact that Rose’s corpse is laying right there.” Eli motioned for them to follow him as he walked over to the foyer. He peaked back just to make sure they were still with him. Drew was watching intently. Rose had gone back to idly rubbing the crystal around her neck. Eli wondered if it was more than just a safety blanket thing and if it was bordering on OCD behavior. He was no stranger to that himself, obsessively rewinding video tapes at the store. The tape deck — a not-for-retail unit that could rewind tapes twice as fast as the high-end Sony player he had at home — would stop, and even though he knew it was back at the beginning, he’d still press rewind once more just to be sure. He silently shamed himself every time he did.
Eli continued his grandstanding. He was enjoying having their eyes on him, hanging on his every word. “It’s not because I now know what the inside of my skull looks like,” he said, cocking his head over to his own dead body in the foyer. Drew half-glanced at it, unshocked by the state of the corpse, and Eli wondered if she’d already seen it. She must have. If Drew died in the basement, she must have come across this already. The Fireman had caught him by surprise. He shuddered, wondering what Drew and Rose went through after he’d been killed.
Unlike Drew, Rose was staring intently at Eli’s body, transfixed by the jagged split down Eli’s head, the shards of white bone that poked through matted tangles of hair, the chunks of brain that once had a pinkish hue but were quickly greying. Eli was surprised by the reaction. He loved to play pranks on Rose because he knew she was so twitchy and would jump at even the slightest loud voice, but this was different. Her eyes were growing misty and distant. Eli knew she needed a distraction, knew he needed to wrap up his rambling.
Eli pointed out the farthest living room window that looked out onto the far edge of the front porch. He couldn’t help but smile, knowing he was about to blow their minds. “That lady is what gives it away,” Eli beamed.
Outside on the porch was a middle-aged policewoman, her face pressed against the glass, her hands cupped around her eyes to block out the light so she could see inside the house. Like Rose, the policewoman wore a necklace, but hers was Jesus on the cross. The woman lifted the cross to her mouth and kissed it, her eyes welling up with tears. Eli couldn’t hear her, but he could see her lips moving quickly. He didn’t know the words but was pretty sure it was a prayer.
Drew and Rose both ran to the window, waving their arms, shouting at the woman, telling her they were inside, that they were okay. Eli shook his head, explaining that she couldn’t see them. But Drew didn’t care, she wanted help. She wanted answers. She pounded on the window and the sound reverberated throughout the house.
Outside, the policewoman heard nothing. She couldn’t see Drew, Rose, or Eli’s ghostly forms, only The Fireman’s bloody carnage splattered around the old house. Eli wondered if that’s how the afterlife was going to work. They weren’t just invisible to this living woman: she didn’t even seem to exist on their plane of existence. He could see the glass window vibrate as Drew pounded on it. The lady on the porch was clueless.
