Never Enough Time, page 7
You know, the pack of birthday candles wasn’t full. I must have used some of the candles. Well, someone must have. It’s not like you can buy a used pack of birthday candles, is it?
When did I use them? For my own birthday? The thirtieth? The twenty-ninth? The eighteenth?
“Okay,” says Jae, who’s taken over from his talkative wife. They seem like the happiest couple in New York, if not in the Northeast. Both of them smiling like crazy and so upbeat.
Not like me and Raj, I can’t help but think. Although we’re not a couple at all. I’m not a couple with anyone. I don’t think so anyway. Maybe I’ll get surprised and my wonderful boyfriend will show up, like he did yesterday. Before he left me for a parent-ordered bride.
“Here’s the secret to a great séance,” Jae says. “We have to all believe. No messing around. I mean, yeah, this is kind of like a party—but the séance part? That’s not a party. This is real. So think of the spirit you want to summon, and when we get to you, we’ll all concentrate and get our summoning powers going.”
I wonder if I have any summoning powers, what with my powers being depleted every night in order to have seven years elapse before morning. That’s got to take it out of a person. Or, this person, anyway.
The believe part, though. That’s easy. I’m currently the world’s biggest sucker. I’ll believe just about anything. I do believe just about anything. That’s the life of a serial amnesiac and part-time visible spirit. Need someone to believe in anything at all? Call on me—I’m ripe for it.
“Usually I’d say ‘Turn off the lights’ here,” says Jae, “but, well—they are off!”
“I heard power will be restored by noon tomorrow,” says Ivan the Terrible, and everyone groans, because he’s delivering unwanted and frankly terrible news.
It’s far more fun to bounce about the city, play Monopoly, make new friends, and go to séances than it is to have electricity and go to your fucking sellout job where you analyze investments, which I still cannot believe I would ever ever ever choose to do, much less actually do. Much less have stayed an extra year in school just so I could do it.
Ghosts, spirits, amnesiacs, alien abductions, enchantments, and time travel are much much very easier to believe than Delaney Archer, investment analyst. Fuck me to fucking fuck.
“Well, like I said, there aren’t any lights to turn off, but it’s getting nicely dark out there—and in here,” Jae says.
“This is where the fun starts,” Marie, sitting next to me—Lady Di’s on my other side—says to me as she puts her hands on the table.
Some of Marie’s Our Lady of Guadalupe candles are burning on the sideboard—this couple is adult enough to have a sideboard—and the atmosphere is very séancelike. Maybe Vincent Price will show up. That’d be great.
Greater still will be if I show up. The real me, the one who’s not seventeen yet and who would never get anywhere near the analysis of any investment.
“Everyone, take the hand of the person on each side of you,” says Jae. His eyes are part in shadow, and I swear it’s like his face is kind of glowing from within while he says this. Marie takes my hand and turns around and blows out one of the candles—a red one—then takes the hand of Patrick, who’s sitting to her right.
“All hands are joined?” Jae says. His eyes are closed now—or they look closed from here, across the table, and he’s got such a spooky expression on his face, I’m expecting the spirits to show up immediately right away pronto.
“Yes,” says everyone at the table, including me. I feel like I’m at summer camp and someone’s going to start telling horror stories. Cool!
“All hands here are joined in the fraternity of the spirit,” says Jae. “Our lots are cast together here at this gathering. I now summon those who wish to come forth to guide us this evening, the evening of the Great Blackout, the evening that the spirits so arranged.”
I’ve got chills now. The spirits so arranged. That could explain every fucking thing.
Chapter 22
My blood turns to a waterfall of ice as three distinct knocks sound. Lady Di, on my left, flinches, but to my right, Marie’s hand is as steady as a three-million-ton granite slab. Mary, Queen of Scots, gasps. Everyone else is silent, waiting.
“The spirits are here,” Jae says. “The three knocks are their entry call.”
I turn to Marie, who nods to me and says, “It’s always three knocks.”
“Quiet,” says Jae, giving Marie a stare.
Marie nods and smiles and squeezes my hand. I squeeze hers back. As though I need to reassure her.
“Tell us your message,” Jae says. His voice sounds different. This is his spirit voice, I think. Whatever that is. I should’ve paid better attention when I was on the other side, over in Staten Island earlier.
Now the most horrific fucking scary thing happens—there are five knocks, a pause, then two knocks.
“You have a message for 5B?” Jae says. “You must confirm. She is new to the gathering and we need your assurance.”
Marie is gripping my hand—which is covered in sweat—tightly. Lady Di, I can tell, wants to let go of my other hand. I mean, who wants to hold hands with a visible spirit? No fucking one. Especially not if the amnesiac vegetarian zombie spirit has sweating hands. It just isn’t the kind of thing anyone wants to do.
While Marie’s gripping my hand tightly and squeezing her eyes shut and Lady Di is being very polite, as Lady Di would of course be, and is still holding my other hand, the knocks are repeated. Five, a pause, then two.
“Tell us, wise spirit. We await your message,” says Jae.
Marie grips my hand even tighter. I can hear Ivan the Terrible’s heavy breaths from here, across the table, but I spasm out of my seat when he starts talking. That’s why Marie is holding on to me so tightly. She knows I’ll be shocked.
I’m more than shocked. I’m horrified, terrified, and just damn scared, because Ivan says, “The cycle of sevens opens itself to only a few.”
Oh. My. Fucking. Buddha. Alternate reality. Jeezus. Cosmos. The cycle of sevens.
I try to pull my hand from Marie’s but she grasps me tight. I’d pull it away from Lady Di, but, you know, that’s not the kind of thing a mere civilian does to a princess. And she’s being so fucking nice, it’s making me nice in return.
“Tell us more, visiting spirit,” says Jae.
Ivan sits up taller—he’s a big man anyway, but he looks even bigger in the flickering candlelit and blacked-out city. Did I not mention that? It’s night now and the street is fucking cavern-deep ink-blot black.
“The cycle of sevens is not to be ignored,” says Ivan the Terrible.
I can’t fucking ignore it! I want to blurt out, but I contain myself and bite the inside of my mouth, which is gonna hurt like hell tomorrow, assuming that by tomorrow it hasn’t had seven years to heal.
But I’m developing a plan to stop this thing now, today, tonight, I mean, before three more days have elapsed and I’m a fucking ancient decrepit practically dead fifty-fucking-one years old.
“Those who have entered the cycle of sevens are guided by spirits whose names cannot be uttered,” says Ivan the Terrible.
Patrick kind of moans at this pronouncement, and I’m relieved of thinking this has anything at all to do with me. Even though the spirit indicated apartment 5B. I mean, spirits can be wrong, you know. Maybe Patrick lives in 4B and they made a mistake. Understandable, really.
Marie leans over and whispers into my ear. “The energy is passing through me to him. He’s expressing your hidden truths.”
I nod as though I agree with her, as though I have hidden truths that aren’t hidden so thoroughly that I can’t own them in the company of a bunch of séance attendees. Strangers, I mean. And pretty fucking strange.
“Come forth and claim your inheritance,” says Ivan the Terrible. His eyes are closed, his face is bunched up in a tight grimace, and he’s breathing really hard, like he just ran up the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building while carrying a hundred-pound backpack.
Marie squeezes my hand again, kind of pumps it, and when I look over at her, she’s nodding at me.
“You,” she mouths.
Chapter 23
“No,” I say to the séance assemblage. “I’m so sorry. Really. Very sorry. Very. But you have the wrong person.”
“Have you not traveled the path of the sevens?” says Ivan the Terrible. His voice is deeper and scarier than it’s been so far.
“No, no, no, no,” I say only four times, thereby proving that seven and I have nothing to do with each other.
Jae picks up the hands of the people on either side of him and bangs them into the table.
“The spirits demand honesty,” he says while the light flickers across his face, making him look like a character in a horror movie, which this could very well be.
Possibility #17: Trapped in a horror movie against my will.
“I don’t know what the path of the sevens is,” I say. That’s honest enough. I don’t know.
“Only those who travel that path can know it,” says Ivan.
“You see?” I say. “You do have the wrong person.”
“Tell us about yesterday,” says Ivan in a manner that I could describe only as aggressive.
“Why?” I say.
“Tell him,” Jae says. Am I the subject of an inquisition? I thought I was attending a fun séance. I brought those precious birthday candles with me for admission!
“It’s okay, Delaney,” says Marie into my ear. “You’re among friends.”
It’s pitch-black outside now and the Our Lady candles are making Jae and Marie’s apartment into an extreme horror-film-looking place.
“Yesterday?” says Ivan, prompting me.
“I can’t,” I say. “I don’t remember yesterday.”
“Tell us about the yesterday you do remember,” says Jae. “That’s what the spirits mean.” Jae is apparently a sort of spirit interpreter as well as the host of this scary fucking séance.
I let up the pressure on Lady Di’s hand when I realize I’m practically breaking it. Marie gives me another reassuring sort of pump and Lady Di nods at me. Very regal and benevolent of her, really.
“I was in grad school,” I say, “and I was much younger.”
“The path of the sevens,” says Jae.
“You are guided by the ancient spirits,” says Ivan.
“Tell us,” says Jae.
What the fuck. I tell them.
“I was seven years younger,” I say, giving up all pretense of not being the person the spirits are referring to. “Seven. Years.”
Patrick moans again and looks away from me. I guess the energy flow from me through Marie is too much for him. It’s too much for me.
“And the day before?” Ivan the Terrible says in an even deeper, even more demanding, even more aggressive tone. The way the candlelight behind him is wavering, it looks like his head might be about to catch fire.
I look at Marie, my look begging her to make this stop, but instead she smiles at me—she’s so fucking friendly—and does more nodding and squeezing.
“Go ahead,” she says under her breath.
“Is this required?” I say, looking across the table at Jae, who nods at me.
“The day before?” I say. “I was seven years younger than I was yesterday.”
Everyone at the table gasps, including Marie, including the ultrapolite Lady Di, including Patrick, who also moans again, including Jae, who I thought was impervious to such things, and including Ivan the Terrible, who looks like he might ignite into a giant death-fireball-spirit explosion. Even the stalwart Mary, Queen of Scots, has her mouth hanging open.
“The cycle of sevens cannot be halted,” says Ivan in the most commanding and emphatic pronouncement he’s yet made. The guy’s got a very impressive beard, and I watch it as his jaw moves and the beard moves with it.
“Do you have questions for your guiding spirits?” Jae says. I notice that Ivan isn’t the one asking this. Perhaps this is just Jae’s idea and the guiding spirits don’t give a fuck.
“I’ve got questions,” I say. “Thousands of them.”
“Ask,” says Ivan the Terrible. “Your answers cannot be denied you.”
I wonder if Ivan always speaks this way, like someone in another century, in another century on a stage, but I’m not going to waste my questions on such trivialities.
So I ask the biggest question I’ve got first. You know, in case the spirit guides change their minds or depart or the spell’s broken or the electricity comes back on earlier than rumored.
“Why is this happening to me?”
“You have been chosen,” says Ivan the Terrible, giving me a really terrible answer. Yeah, this much is obvious, isn’t it?
“But why? How come? How is it I’m the one who got chosen?” I say.
“You have been chosen for the journey of the sevens,” says Ivan very very very extremely annoyingly damned fucking unhelpfully. “Those who are chosen must remove the veil.”
I turned toward Marie, to beg for some help, but her eyes are closed, as though she’s in a trance. Great.
So I ask the next question on my mind.
“What about Raj?”
“Raj has his own journey,” says Ivan, giving me the most obvious fortune-teller answer of the evening.
“Yeah, right,” I say. My sarcasm is starting to leak out. “Everyone has their own journey. Everyone knows that.”
Patrick moans yet again, and I wish I could kick him, but I don’t want to kick Marie, who’s been helpful during this ordeal, and her legs are between me and the moaner.
“The spirits demand respect,” says Jae, warning me.
“What about tomorrow?” I say to Ivan.
“The journey of the sevens continues. It is your path.” Ivan looks like he’s straining now, like he’s trying to keep himself from saying something.
Jae must’ve noticed this too, because he says, “Tell her, spirit of the sevens.”
Ivan opens his eyes and leans forward on the table. I’m afraid he’s going to climb across and attack me or something and I pull back, but Marie holds tight, and now I notice that Lady Di’s grip is firm as well.
“You chose this,” Ivan says. “You asked. That is how the chosen are selected.”
“No,” I say. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
Chapter 24
“This cannot continue,” says Mary, Queen of Scots. “I need to commune with my own spirits.”
I had no idea MQofS was so selfish, but there you have it. Maybe this is what happens after your head’s chopped off. You get sort of more direct in your approach. Or maybe she’s learned this sort of behavior from her fellows over at Westminster Abbey.
Ivan the Terrible heaves a great sigh and lays his head down on the table. An ambulance goes by out on Ludlow, siren in full bloom, and the mood of the séance is destroyed.
Jae lets go of the hands he’s holding—MQofS on his right and Ivan on his left—and stands up.
“The spell is broken,” says Jae, who now looks less like a visitor to the spirit world and more like the friendly neighbor in a Korean TV drama. The one you trust to watch your kids while you’re out working the second of your three jobs because you’re so industrious and such a morally upright person.
“We’ll have to start again,” says MQofS. She reaches up to grab Jae’s hand, but he moves it away.
“Next time,” Jae says. “I think we all have a lot to think about after this evening’s encounter with the spirit of the sevens.”
Lady Di lets go of my hand first, then Marie does.
“Let’s have some refreshments!” says Marie, like we’re at a regular old party and it’s time for the chow. Has she forgotten that I’ve just been handed a sort of death sentence?
The journey of the sevens? By this time next week, I’ll be a thousand years old or something. What I mean is—I’ll be fucking dead.
“I’m starving,” says Patrick, like he hasn’t just spent the entire séance getting energetic or magnetic or something waves from me via Marie and moaning up a spook storm.
“I’ve got cupcakes,” Marie says. “Seven of them!”
Everyone in the room—except me—thinks this is extremely funny, but, like the rest of the séance suckers, even I want a cupcake. There’s got to be a bright side to all this, doesn’t there?
“And we have candles for them too!” Marie says as she holds up the pack of birthday candles I brought downstairs with me—my admission to hell.
Marie and Jae put the candles in the cupcakes, light the wicks, and pass the cakes around. My cupcake is pink with a marzipan dragon on the top.
“The star of the séance always gets the dragon,” Marie says to me in as much confidence as can be created in a room with five other people right on top of where you’re standing.
“I was gypped,” says MQofS, which is probably exactly what the real MQofS thought right before the ax fell.
We all devour our cupcakes—really extra delicious cupcakes. I wonder where they’re from and almost ask Marie, but then remember that the bakery probably won’t be here in seven years anyway. When I wake up tomorrow. Assuming I’m even still in New York.
I hope to fuck I’ve quit that investment analyst job I’m supposed to have. That I guess I do have, even though I cannot fucking believe I do. Yet I must. Sara and Ryan were pretty goddamn harsh with the facts. I doubt they made them up.
“Delaney, isn’t it?” says Patrick, who makes it over to my side of the room, where I’m standing with Lady Di and Marie. The three of us have bonded over the spirit connection, I guess.
“Yes,” I say. “Patrick, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You were really good. I mean, that was some impressive performance.”
“Delaney,” Ivan the Terrible says as he comes past Patrick and puts his arms around me in a bear hug. “You were amazing.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But, you know—”
I’m sure you can guess what I was about to say when I was cut off by the stern stare of spirit master Min-Jae, who’s also made it over to my side of the room. The side with the pink dragon cupcake and the parallel-universed amnesiac time traveler.
