CHAPTER THREE
I woke up in a cold place. That’s all I could feel, this terrible chill that enveloped my body from inside and out, an icy hand that gripped my organs and froze my heart.
Where was I? I tried to open my eyes but my lids seemed fused together. I was lying down, on my back somewhere, seemingly all in one piece.
Another dream? I hadn’t had a nightmare or anything like this for what seemed like months.
Perry, a familiar voice came floating into my head. Open your eyes, darling.
I did as the voice asked and saw nothing above me but grey, heavy clouds. I slowly sat up and when I realized what I was looking at, I was struck with a mix of fear and relief.
Everything around me was grey—monotone—fields that stretched on forever with grass that did not move and air that felt thick like soup. Smelless. Soundless. Tasteless.
In front of me was my grandmother, Pippa. She wasn’t close, just a few yards away, but even then I could tell there was a marked change in her. Despite the fact that she was dead, the times I had seen her in the past she’d looked a lot more vibrant. Now she was skinnier, and dressed in a shapeless dress and long coat that hung off her bones. Her hair was thinning more, the curls dull. There was no makeup on her face at all, making her look both more human and more vulnerable.
“Pippa,”I said, never feeling comfortable enough to call her Grandma. “Where am I? Am I in the Thin Veil?”
We are somewhere I think is safe, she said without speaking.
Am I dreaming? I asked, remembering I could just think it and she would hear it. I was wearing every day clothes, not Dex’s t-shirt I fell asleep in every night. This had to be a dream.
She held my gaze steady, her eyes still full of life even though the rest of her seemed to be wasting away.
I’m sorry I haven’t been around, she said.
I swallowed and nodded, noticing the tense tone of her voice.
Things are changing over here, she said. Things are changing for me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you very often.
Why?
I don’t know. But I feel it. I know you can see it in me. Though I am dead, I am also dying. And you…you are growing stronger.
I bit my lip. I don’t understand. Stronger how?
You are able to put your thoughts in other people’s heads and you’re starting to pick up on their thoughts. Not with everyone, but with others like you. Like me.
So? I mean, what’s the use in that? I don’t want that, I don’t want people to know what I’m thinking, and I don’t want to know what they’re thinking.
You will learn to block your thoughts and learn to block theirs. But that is beside the point. You are gaining these gifts at rapid speed, which means you have the capacity for immense power.
I’m not a f*cking superhero.
Don’t swear, Perry, she chastised me, her nostrils flaring.
Sorry, I replied.
I’m trying to warn you.
Then come out and say it. You know this passive aggressive dilly dallying has never worked in my favor.
I would tell you more if I knew for a fact, for certain. Alas, I do not. She looked up at the sky, frowning. I followed her gaze but saw nothing out of the ordinary for whatever world we were in. She went on. But I do feel things, and I have…instincts…that I never had when I was alive. The demons on the other side are growing. The ones that make it through to the Veil are strong. The ones who make it through to your side are even stronger. It gets worse each year.
My heart slowed a few beats, but still I raised a brow, forcing myself to be cynical rather than scared. Is that so?
She smiled lightly which only made her hollowed out cheekbones more pronounced. You feel it. Everyone on your side feels it. The disasters, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes. The daily violence. The fall of humanity. Everything crumbles for a reason.
So what do I have to do with the fall of humanity? I asked. What she said did make sense but you could probably say that about humanity at any time during our planet’s history.
You don’t have anything to do with it. But maybe you will. Or someone you know will. Someone who is as equally special as you.
Dex, I said, exhaling slowly.
Yes, she said. I think he might be a target. Could be. Or maybe your sister. Or maybe other people that I do not know. I just know that when demons get to the other side, they look for a host and they go after the ones with power.
Been there, done that, I said, narrowing my eyes at the memory. Have the t-shirt.
This isn’t the time for jokes, Perry.
Well what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I asked, raising my hands in frustration. I don’t even know where I am and you’re telling me that more demons are looking for people like me.
Her eyes turned soft, her mouth grave. I just wanted to warn you. Nothing I said is necessarily true. It is just what I feel and what I fear. If something did happen to you, to Declan, to Ada, to…she trailed off and swallowed hard. Just know I had to tell you, even if it turns out to be nothing.
Well, let’s just hope it’s nothing then, I said, because honestly, dealing with this seeing ghost business is hard enough. Thank God for Dex, because if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t know how I’d cope in this life, always seeing things that others can’t.
It is lonely. And I wouldn’t wish it upon my greatest enemy. I felt a life of isolation and sorrow roll off of her and onto me.
Suddenly her head jerked up, and this time there was something to see in the sky. I couldn’t quite make it out; it seemed to be both very close and very far away. It looked like a bat, a giant black one, with a wingspan that grew larger as it grew closer.
“Time for you to go,” Pippa said.
Everything shimmered, rippled, a dance of air on a palette of grey.
Then I was back in the apartment, standing in the living room in Dex’s t-shirt, my legs and feet bare and cold. I heard a little snuffle from beside me and saw Fat Rabbit roll over on the couch, seemingly asleep and uninterested.
The f*ck just happened? Was I sleepwalking, dreaming I was in the Veil with Pippa? Or had she actually, physically brought me there? Wasn’t that supposed to be dangerous in a way?
I just know that when demons get to the other side, they look for a host and they go after the ones with power.
I shuddered at her words as they played over in my head. I’d already faced my demons, I’d already gone to hell and back. There was no way that could happen to me again. No way.
But what about Dex? asked the voice in my head. Ada?
I knew I’d do whatever I could to protect both of them. But I also knew I couldn’t freak out over an unsure warning in what might have been just a dream.
It had to be a dream.
I sighed. I headed to the bathroom to pee when suddenly there was a burst of vibration and a buzzing sound. With my hand at my chest, I spotted Dex’s cell on the kitchen counter, dancing and skipping from a muted phone call.
I frowned and quickly went over to it. Not only was it four in the morning, but the number was 1-234-56789123456789, something I had never seen before.
I picked it up and pressed answer. “Hello?” I said quietly, not wanting to wake Dex if I didn’t have to.
There was silence though I thought I heard breathing.
“Hello?” I asked again.
Someone cleared their throat. “Sorry. I may have the wrong number. Is…is Declan Foray there?” >
I brushed a wayward strand out of my eyes, mulling it over. “At least once a day. I think. It’s hard to tell, in Seattle anyway. Sometimes I think I’m looking at a ghost but it turns out to be a meth head.”
He put his elbows on his knees and his fingers together like a steeple. “Do you ever get scared?”
I snorted. “Yeah. Of course.”
I mean, they were ghosts. We weren’t seeing puppies. We were seeing the dead, and both of us knew very well that the dead had the power to kill us. Of course, they had the power to kill anyone, but when they found someone who was actually able to see them, able to communicate with them, it made things a bit riskier. They wanted to be around us, they wanted the attention they so rarely got. That’s why when we went ghost hunting with Rebecca, she was never in any real danger. It’s not that she wasn’t scared herself, there were a few times where she was freaking out on behalf of what we said we were seeing, but we both knew the ghosts wouldn’t usually bother with her. She didn’t see them, so she didn’t really exist herself. Sometimes I felt like Dex and I were the ghosts—that the dead could only see us—and every other normal person was just a passing shadow to them.
“Me too,” he said, his eyes focusing now on the surfers. “I keep thinking I’ll get used to it, but I never really do. Some days I can just kind of, you know, gloss over them. The old man bleeding on the sidewalk that people are walking past…I can almost pretend he’s real. As if that f*cking makes it better. But I can ignore it. Then sometimes I have a strung out woman with a broken neck in my face, flies coming out of her nose and…” He trailed off and I saw a shudder roll through him.
I reached for him, putting my hand gently on his leg. “I know what you mean.”
“And then it just slaps me in the face. Hey, I’m a f*cking freak. Hey, this is the reason I was put away in a mental institute. Hey, this is never ever going to go away.”
“Unless we go on medication,” I said quietly.
He shook his head. “No way, baby. I’ve seen the light. I can’t go back to hiding from it. This is me. This is us. No other way around it, we just have to deal.” He tilted his head down and eyed me. “You know that. It’s us against the world.”
We both fell into silence that was occasionally punctuated by the cry from a soaring gull. How right he was.
Eventually he cleared his throat and gestured to the houses that lined the beach to the right of us. “Could you imagine yourself living here in five, ten years?”
I eyed the houses, all of them grand with large landscaped lots and views to die for. “Sure. I guess. It’s nice here. But I think I’d have to be independently wealthy.”
“So say you were. Say you could live anywhere. Where would you live?”
I pursed my lips as I looked at him curiously. “Why are you asking?”
“Why not? We’ve never really discussed our future with each other…have we?”
I swallowed hard, those damn butterflies making an appearance in my insides.
“Of course,” he went on, “I’m being a twat in assuming that I’m actually in your future…”
I gazed at him steadily, my eyes focusing on his ear, where just the tip had been left scarred from his encounter with the voodoo priestess in New Orleans. “Dex. I just got a tattoo for you. I let some humorless dude brand me with a needle and ink in a place I look every single day.” I waved my wrist at him. “Of course you’re in my future. You’re the only thing I know about the future.”
His eyes blazed passionately before he broke his stare. “Then if that’s true…where do you see us?”
Now what was he getting at? What did he want me to say? That in five years I wanted to be married to him, to have his babies, to be putting up a white picket fence? These were dreams that I rarely allowed myself to entertain…none of that ever seemed possible for us, no matter how in love we were.
“I see us…happy,” I answered feebly.
“Doing the show?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like enough, if you know what I mean.” His blank stare told me he didn’t. So much for mind reading. “I mean, I think, I feel, like the show is a means to an end for now…but it’s also the beginning of something, not the end. I think one day we’ll be doing something that’s more…respectable. Something that matters.”
“And me?”
“And you’re there with me. I don’t know what it is, but we’re doing it together.”
“I don’t think you can count wild monkey sex as a career, Perry.”
“I’m counting it as a perk,” I said with a smile. “But I think we’re both destined for something more. I’ve always felt that, right from the very start. I think in five, ten years, Experiment in Terror will be a memory. A scary, kind of fun and meaningful memory, but something in the past.”
“And we could be living in Seattle…or Seaside…”
I took my hand off his knee and started pushing my fingers into the cool sand. “Anywhere. San Francisco. Boston. Anywhere. As long as I’m with you, I’m happy.”
I could feel his eyes boring into me, and by the time I looked back up, he had taken out his phone and was glancing at it. “We oughta get back to Rebecca. She’s probably getting sucked into a timeshare by now or getting cotton candy stuck in her hair.”
Dex helped me up off the log and took his sweet time brushing the sand and bark off my backside. When we were back at the Lewis and Clark statue at the end of the promenade, he put his arm around me and pulled me in close. “Are you ready to say hi to Uncle Al and your dopey cousins?”
Are you ready to start making amends with your family, is what he was really asking, even though my uncle Al was barely part of the equation.
I let the strength and warmth of Dex’s hold wash over me and nodded. As long as he was at my side, I’d manage.
At least I’d try.