What the Dead Can Do, page 33
At that moment, Tag hoped she might be waiting for the right amount of silence to try using a phone to call for help or to rush to a neighbor’s home nearby. He could not help himself and tried in vain to lift his son from the floor. When Emily turned around to do the same, all Tag could do was watch as she clutched Ethan tightly against her chest and headed for the stairs.
Once in the living room, Emily did not stop to observe Aidan’s malfunction, but she did stop for only the time it took to turn off the lamp on the side table to the man’s right. Dark got darker, and Aidan’s head never made the full turn necessary for him or Amanda or both to watch the girl extinguish the light, or catch her walking carefully behind the short length of couch.
Even when Emily found Nicole’s body at her toes, her brief pause and recovery were masterful. She simply stepped higher, widening her stride, and she didn’t miss a beat as she and Ethan passed over the stillness of the dark mass that was her mother on the floor.
She put Ethan into a comfortable chair at the furthest corner of an adjacent room that looked like a reading nook, then Emily came back and grabbed Nicole by the hands.
Sliding Nicole’s weight across the wood floor would have been an easy move for an adult, but it wasn’t going well for Emily. She had her mom by both arms, pulling gently at her toward the kitchen. Each new tug only moved Nicole’s body an inch. She’d done all this while Aidan’s body shook in short fits as if he had a violent fever. He looked like a defective bear trap, and Tag worried that any next move Emily made would spring him.
Emily eyed the blood stain on her mother’s gown, mouthed, “I’m sorry,” and then, with a heave better suited for a sack of cement, managed to get the momentum she needed to succeed.
On the kitchen floor, Nicole coughed. Her bark was bloody and loud, and unexpected. Em was unfazed. Nicole opened her eyes, and the fear in them did not spark any in Emily’s. She patted her mother on the head lightly, dropped to a knee, and leaned in close for a whisper. “I’ll be right back, Mom. I promise.”
Nicole’s hand reached for her daughter’s, and Em took it, squeezing it gently.
“But I need you to be as quiet as possible until then,” Emily said.
With Aidan still fighting Amanda on the couch, the girl capably disappeared back up the stairs, was gone for less than a minute, and then returned with a first-aid kit in hand. She put it next to Nicole, who was breathing steadily by then and seemingly alert enough to tend to herself. Without saying another word to her mother, Emily turned and marched to the basement door.
Aidan’s spasms now were that of a death row inmate, perpetually frying upon a cushioned electric chair, with a vacancy in his eyes that made identifying who had control of him difficult.
Before Tag could check on Emily, she returned from the basement. She closed the door quietly, then walked up to Aidan’s body, which was still trembling in its pose on the couch.
The man’s hands had yet to move from his knees, and Tag appreciated his commitment. They stayed put as Emily removed the gun from the denim basket his crossed legs had formed. In the split second that it took for her to grab it, Aidan’s eyes opened, and Tag could see that they’d become every bit Amanda’s eyes instead. Not gray or black, but green. Not swirling like smoke, but intent and dead set on attacking Emily. If eyes alone had been capable of killing, the girl’s life would have ended right then and there.
Aidan kept his body his own, and he did so long enough for Emily to cross the living room, gun in hand, to take a seat in a chair. She sat, put one leg over the other, and steadied the gun for shooting on her right thigh. Its stubbed barrel, which was aimed at Aidan, showed not even a quiver. Aidan’s body had gone completely still, and his eyes were closed.
Emily could have fired it over the coffee table right then, but she didn’t.
While living, Tag had not known Emily well. At the dinners Matthew hosted, his daughter always seemed a touch sad and, if not sad, quiet. He never thought of her as shy, though, because if he asked a question, anything from “How’s school?” to “Who’s your favorite band?” she animated quickly. She was a vibrant speaker with strong opinions, and Tag remembered once remarking to Amanda that he hoped their child would be similar. Who she would become for what they’d put her through wasn’t something he wanted to speculate on.
The girl kept the gun on Aidan, waiting for the man or his wife to wake, and all Tag could do was bear witness. Emily’s motivations were her own.
Though Nicole would come to later, she had, for now, passed back out in the kitchen. Ethan still slept undisturbed, which didn’t surprise Tag, given how often his son had conked out in the thick of New York City’s roar.
Then, Aidan or Amanda or both woke.
* * *
As much as it’d been hell to watch what transpired after that, Tag remained in awe of Emily’s resolve and courage. He was also happy she hadn’t had to be the one to pull the trigger.
He felt Amanda arriving now. Unlike the last time they spoke in Second Plane, the molecules offered no indication of what mood she might be in. He braced himself for the worst.
“Well,” Amanda said. “That was something.” The last part of her façade to form in front of him was her face. She looked calm.
“Aren’t you upset?” he asked.
She didn’t answer for a while. The silence could have been five minutes or five years.
Time itself is a construct.
“There’ll be other opportunities,” she answered. She may have even believed it.
“Yeah, could be, I guess,” Tag said.
The next pause between them speaking was thicker than the first, the product of an actual distance growing between Amanda and Tag that he didn’t yet realize.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Amanda said.
“Don’t be,” he said. “You should be, but don’t be. It won’t make much difference now.”
“Is Lucinda here?”
“Yep, she’s a resident, alright.”
And she was, and somehow Tag had already spent years with his mother there, and he knew that his mother understood, and he knew that she relished the minor role she’d played in saving Ethan’s life, and Lucinda had already told him that knowing that she’d helped prevent her grandson’s death, in a small way, was enough for her to move on as a resident. All was forgiven.
Besides, she didn’t give a shit what the suggestions outlined. Very Mom.
She’d also told him she would always and forever check in on her grandson—she would keep tabs on his son.
“It wasn’t me, you know,” Amanda said, “I mean, I get that she died because of the things I was doing, but—” Her voice wasn’t her own, not quite.
“Amanda, I need to—” His voice wasn’t his either.
“You don’t sound so great, are you OK?” she asked.
“You sound like shit too, hon, if I’m being honest.”
In fact, she looked worse than she sounded, looked as bad as he felt. Yes, felt.
“Oh shit … Oh shit,” Amanda said, not panicky but resigned while wanting to disbelieve.
“What?” Tag managed to ask.
He thought about trying to hold her hand to tell her he was reporting them to the council, but when he moved his hand to take hers, it wasn’t there.
“Oh … yeah,” he said. “I guess we fucked up. Like, we really, really fucked up.”
“Did you say something to someone already about what I did?” She didn’t sound as angry as he thought she’d be. Tired, but not angry.
He hadn’t said something to someone, but it didn’t matter.
“We’re dying, Tag. Goddammit, we’re dying—dying again, aren’t we?”
“Maybe, but we’ll be alright.”
There wasn’t much of Amanda left to look at, but her eyes were there and were hers again, from before, no longer gray or callous, but emerald green and part of her glow.
“But what about Ethan?” she asked.
He didn’t have an answer for her.
“Tag?”
Or maybe it was because he couldn’t answer her.
“Tag, answer me. What about Ethan?”
Her voice sounded like she existed galaxies away. Maybe they were stars after all. He wished he’d told her he loved her, not that he’d forgiven her—even dying a second time, he wouldn’t have said that he forgave her. He didn’t think he ever could forgive her.
Then again, they’d have far fewer distractions where they were headed. Total blackout. Forgiveness was a possibility. Like love, forgiveness could be real and always a possibility, and he imagined that would be true in Third Plane and anywhere else he and Amanda ended up.
She said Ethan’s name one more time. “Ethan.”
Was it her?
Or was it him wanting to hear her say it?
It didn’t matter.
Ethan.
His son’s name was the last thing he heard right before somewhere else, before a place as blank as they needed it to be, before he remembered he’d never see his son again. His son, whose life he loved more than his own and certainly more than what his existence had become. He wouldn’t see him now, not in Prior Plane, and not when Ethan was an old man and a resident in Second Plane, and then …
Tag’s thinking on Ethan ended forever, right before he read the first words in a book that appeared in front of him as a new resident of Third Plane.
WELCOME, TAGGART!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Save for a few sociopaths I have known personally, I can’t think of anyone from my life that doesn’t deserve thanks on this page for the part they played in my arrival at this destination. That said, as it pertains to this specific text, I’d like to convey extra appreciation to the following indomitable forces: my Higher Power, Ariele Rosch, Karmen Wells, Johnny Compton, Elle Nash, Danielle Vinson, Ally Wilkes, Jess Verdi, Benita Conde, Jake Lovell, Mom, Dad, King Baby (not the real one, but the one who knows who he is), Jeff and Meredith Clark, mothers, teachers, Ari Weiss, Crooked Lane Books, Tom Nugent, Reid Miller, and my son, Bodhi, who I will love deep into the next plane.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Peter Rosch is the author of multiple dark fictions born from the various addictions he chased while living in New York City as an award-winning writer and creative director. He’s many years sober now but remains an addict’s addict. What The Dead Can Do is his debut novel.
Books should be disposed of and recycled according to local requirements. All paper materials used are FSC compliant.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2025 by Peter Rosch
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of
The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 979-8-89242-183-6
ISBN (paperback): 979-8-89242-280-2
ISBN (ebook): 979-8-8924-2184-3
Cover design by Meghan Deist
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: August 2025
The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is eucomply OÜPärnu mnt 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, Estonia, hello@eucompliancepartner.com, +33757690241
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Peter Rosch, What the Dead Can Do
