Intersections

  “I am Mr. Shady.”

  15

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” I said to Shannon.

  I sat in the truck’s bed with my hands over my ears, but there was no not-hearing what was going on in the front seat. We were parked in a wooded lot that must’ve been at least several miles from the Dayton International Airport. The truck’s suspension creaked with a steady rhythm. One man grunted and the other moaned. The squeaking built in intensity until one man gasped and said, “Oh, shit. Yes.”

  The ride here had been terrifying. The truck had passed several Shadys, but fortunately, none could keep up with our pace. The last to chase after us appeared to be female. She’d collapsed in the road, and the dark slickness covering her had faded—revealing a blond woman in nursing scrubs.

  Shannon had pointed at the clock on the dash. 4:02.

  The Devil’s Hour was over.

  After that, I was left to simmer in my sorrows while the pickup barreled through the night. Jeremy had killed himself and then sacrificed his soul to save my own. I’d spent the last years of my life hating him for not loving me enough, only to realize that the strength of his love wasn’t the real problem. No, it was my lack of perception? Or his pride? Or maybe just good old-fashioned lack of communication?

  I’d curled into a fetal position and sobbed in the bed of the truck. Shannon had done her best to soothe me, patting my back and telling me it was going to be okay.

  From the truck cab, a preacher’s voice had rambled over the radio: “Friction is how we move forward. There are peacekeepers and there are peacemakers. As we move forward and rub against one another, we need to lubricate ourselves with the oil of the Holy Ghost. We must be anointed. Adversity is sometimes necessary. Friction is necessary.”

  I crawled to the rear of the still-moving truck’s bed and hung my head over the side, letting the wind drown out the sermon. The rushing air whistled through me, scrambling my aura and offering not quite peace but white noise. I stayed like that—letting the air scrape away my tears and feelings—until the truck slowed. Except we weren’t at a warehouse. We were in the country.

  Shannon said, “Uh, I think we have a problem.”

  The truck crept down a gravel road into a desolate parking lot, maybe for a nature center. A sedan was parked nearby. The driver—a middle-aged man in khakis and a polo shirt—got out of his car and into Mr. Noble’s truck.

  They’d talked long enough for us to realize that Mr. Noble had lost his job some time ago, was deep in debt, and was only pretending to go to work. Oh, and he was secretly raging gay.

  Now, his head worked frantically at the other guy’s lap. Judging by this dude’s moaning, Mr. Noble was awfully good with his mouth. The men’s keys, cellphones, and wallets cluttered the dashboard. The windows were cracked. A travel mug sat perched in a plastic cup holder on the driver side door. I sneaked another look to see what Mr. Noble was doing with his lips and tongue. His companion clutched Noble’s short hair and grunted. Jeremy had never writhed like that when I gave him head. Frank did, but he was totally enthralled.

  “They’re putting on quite a show,” I said. “And I don’t think they’re lubricating themselves with Holy Ghost oil.”

  Shannon shook her head. “I can’t believe Tara’s dad is gay.”

  “You have something against gay men?”

  She stared at me. “You know how many times I heard that man call someone a faggot?”

  I shrugged. “We should probably go.”

  We climbed out of the truck and walked down a tree-lined gravel driveway that emptied onto a desolate country road. Farmland sprawled in all directions. I had no idea where we were.

  “Let’s try that way.” I pointed at a field, its soil neatly combed into long rows. From that direction, I could hear maybe the thrum of interstate traffic. “We’ll cut through that field. Hopefully we’ll end up at a road and can somehow hitch a ride.”

  “This blows,” she said.

  We hopped a leaning wire fence and jogged over the tilled dirt. I was grateful that it was early in the season. Otherwise, corn or soybean stalks would’ve skewered our ghost feet.

  The movement liberated me somehow, as if I could run away from Jeremy’s loss. We picked up speed. I clutched her hand and my shoe, and soon we zoomed across the field—a golden comet streaked across the groomed soil. Dawn was coming, and bats flapped over our heads and nipped at bugs. The field ended at a sparse forest, and we moved between the trees. We eased to a steady pace, not wanting to impale our feet on a random branch.

  “How was your viewing?” she said.

  “Do you care?”

  “Well I asked.”

  “To be honest, it was fucking miserable. Hardly anyone showed up, which shouldn’t be a surprise. I’ve spent the past few years since . . .” I almost said his name. “. . . since the divorce, disconnecting myself from everyone that ever cared for me. The one guy who did show up . . . his name’s Frank. I got involved with him right after my divorce. Thing was, he was married.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. I was a mess. It was a bad choice. He fell so hard for me. I knew it was wrong, that he loved me far more than I loved him. But I let it go on. I needed to be needed. And then, when I broke it off, I tried to be gentle, but I demolished him. His marriage. His three kids. I left it all in shambles. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”

  God, how he’d begged and cried. Snot and tears had slid down his red face. He’d done everything but throw himself at me. I hadn’t thought anything could feel worse than getting divorced. I’d been dead wrong.

  “The thing is, I’ve spent the years since playing the victim. I told myself that the reason I became a zombie was because I was so hurt by Jeremy. The truth is, I just don’t want to hurt anyone else the way I hurt Frank. I didn’t want to do that again. I guess I’d rather feel nothing at all than risk causing hurt like that again.”

  Silence throbbed between us.

  “Well, my viewing was well-attended,” she said. “Everyone was there.”

  I sighed, stung by her words. “I’m sure.”

  “Even people I didn’t know. Friends of my parents, I guess. And they put on quite the show. They always do. You know, we have this big house with big cars and a big garden, but inside it’s practically hollow. No art on the walls. A bare minimum of furniture. A pantry full of tomato soup and ramen noodles. I was never allowed to have friends over, because my mom didn’t want them seeing how we lived—rolling debt upward from one credit card to the next, gambling away the savings, drinking away my college fund.”

  “That sucks.”

  “But what really sucked about my funeral was that everyone was memorializing this girl that didn’t really exist. I never . . . y’know, came out. I never showed the world who I really was. I was just as bad Mr. Noble back there. Mom always talked about how much I shined. The thing was, that light was artificial. It wasn’t really me. I never let anyone see my real shine.”

  “What about your friend? Tara?”

  “Yeah, she saw me shine. And she loved it. She loved me. And I pushed her away because I couldn’t handle it. So, I made myself someone else. This Shannon construct, and all I could think about at the funeral was how that pile of skin and bones wasn’t really me. It was going to rot around poor Bastion, and it wasn’t even me.”

  “Bastion?”

  “He was a stuffed animal. A black and white cow. I’d had him since I was little. They put him in my coffin, and now he’s all alone in the darkness forever.” She sobbed and shook her head.

  “Earlier in the sewer, you kept saying you were sorry. Why?”

  Before she could answer, a chill passed through me. She must’ve felt it, too, because we slowed to a stop at the same time.

  We still held hands, the both of us squeezing hard.

  My eyes fumbled with the thicket of shadows surrounding us. We turned in all directions, trying to see what we knew was there. Her grip on me tightened. I gasped, the
n I saw what she saw, and I gasped again.

  He seemed to float several feet above the ground. It was Jeremy, except he’d gone entirely dark—so dark that he seemed to glisten like an oil slick. When I squinted harder, I realized he wasn’t floating after all. No, he was riding a bizarre conglomerate of Shadys—a strange jumble of arms and legs and torso bound together by squirming shadows.

  One soul fell away from the pack. The darkness surrounding the ghost faded away, revealing a young man in a dark suit. The bewildered spirit looked around warily. Jeremy gestured toward the ghost, and the dark souls reached out and snatched him back into the darkness. He barely had time to scream before his light was extinguished once again. A shiver rocked my gut.

  “I am Mr. Shady,” said the black spirit atop the pile of stained souls. His voice was as low, smooth, and dirty as a puddle of used motor oil. “Come to me, Molly.”

  16

  MR. SHADY

  The two female ghosts stared up at Mr. Shady, both of them exuding their pale golden light. Molly in particular looked simply glorious—a spectral vision. The fossilized remains of unending adoration—no, obsession—smoldered inside Mr. Shady’s skull. He would possess her, as surely as he possessed the squirming disciples that now composed his conglomeration.

  The many spirits writhed below him, at once drawn to and repulsed by his power. As long as they stayed in touch with his new form, they would remain dark—Devil’s Hour or no. Mr. Shady was not controlled by the long hands of any ticking clock.

  He throbbed and pulsed inside the enduring soul that he had liberated from the Light. This had happened before. He knew it had. The Darkness had splintered into other everlasting souls across the world since the Light broke—the heartsick librarian in Osaka, Japan, the obsessed construction worker in Halawa, Hawaii, the mad gardener in Nenagh, Irleand—but somehow every time was like the first time.

  Sweet rebirth.

  With a wide smile, he offered his hand to Molly. As expected, she clutched her companion and ran the opposite direction. His lips erupted with laughter.

  17

  Shannon and I grasped hands and hauled ass through the forest away from Mr. Shady. Outstretched branches sliced through my midsection. Twigs stabbed at my feet. We both cried out, but we couldn’t slow down. We had to press onward.

  I chanced a look back. His horrid mount smashed and slashed its way through the trees, literally rending the souls of his slaves apart. Their screams nearly made my ears bleed. The real world—the dark forest—appeared so tranquil, and yet overlaid with that dark calm was a horrible storm of anguished souls. Like bursts of lightning, souls split from Mr. Shady’s monstrous ride—flashing dull grey as they fell away screaming and writhing only to be sucked back into the darkness. The relentless chill withered my heart. My bones crackled. Inside my phantom skull, shadows nibbled at my vision. A seed of the Darkness already lurked inside me—eager to consume all that was light.

  Mr. Shady’s slave ship plowed relentlessly between the trees, as steady and patient as the coming dawn. Fortunately, its size made it unwieldy in the forest. We managed to lose Mr. Shady.

  We sprinted across the tidy soil in the tilled field and climbed back over the wire fence. There we collapsed. Maybe Shannon pulled me down or maybe I tripped and yanked her. We hit the ground hard, our souls bruised, broken, and bleeding ectoplasm. Across the field, Mr. Shady and his shadowy nest soon emerged from the forest. They drifted this way, and I could almost feel his eyes probing the darkness for us. We ducked out of sight.

  “We’re screwed,” Shannon said.

  “I can’t argue. We’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s only a matter of time before he finds us. It’s not like we can call 911 for help.”

  “That’s it!” She grabbed my face and kissed my lips. For one instant, our mouths came together. A thrill ran through me, eclipsing all my new wounds. I parted my lips for her tongue but she pulled away from me. “You’re brilliant,” she said.

  “I am?”

  Before I could ask her to explain, she dragged me to my feet and pulled me down the gravel driveway. At higher speeds, the jagged rocks sliced and gouged my feet. The two vehicles were still parked in the lot. The pickup truck rocked steadily as we limped toward it.

  “Wow, these guys have endurance,” I said.

  “Come on.”

  Shannon pulled me to the driver side of the truck. A thin layer of moisture coated the outside of the window. It was rolled down a few inches, otherwise the panting men inside would’ve definitely fogged the glass. Mr. Noble had his back to us and was pounding away at his companion.

  “Why are we here?” I said.

  “We’re going to use his phone to contact Tara. She can use her Ouija board to summon us out of here.”

  “Um, yeah. Great plan, except we can’t use the phone.”

  She reached through the window and grabbed the smartphone on the dash. Her eyes closed. Her brow knit. She tilted her head and massaged the screen. It remained blank.

  “Fuck,” she said.

  “What’d you think was going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe my spirit could slip inside and possess it.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Well it happens in movies sometimes.”

  “So do shark-infested tornadoes. Doesn’t make it a real thing, Shannon.”

  “Don’t take a tone with me.”

  “Then don’t have stupid ideas.”

  “Then don’t have a stupid face!”

  Maybe it was frustration. Maybe it was the comment about my face. Maybe I was just sick of being dead. Something inside me snapped and I shoved her back against the truck. She got the “Oh no you didn’t” look on her face and then it was on. We wrestled against the door, grabbing wrists and blocking slaps and pushing at each other to the soundtrack of two middle-aged men butt-fucking. Flashes of gold tinged our auras.

  Shannon saw it first. Her eyes went wide. She put up her hands in a sign of surrender.

  “Wait,” she said.

  I was sorely tempted to get in one last cheap shot slap. Instead, I followed her gaze to the window. What I saw made my jaw drop open—a comma-shaped smear in the condensation on the glass. Somehow we’d done that. We’d touched the world.

  18

  We tried and tried to lift the phone, but nothing worked. Shannon thought maybe the smear we’d left on the window had to do with us being angry, so we yelled awful things at each other while trying to move the phone. “Come on, you stupid bitch,” Shannon yelled. “Pick up the phone. You’re weak. You suck. No one likes you!”

  “That’s not helping,” I said, as my fingers slid uselessly over the phone’s smooth edges. I tugged and shoved, but it was like trying to unsheathe Excalibur from its stony home.

  I slammed my head against the window in frustration. The men kept on grunting and moaning.

  “God, I wish they’d at least put on some fucking music,” Shannon said.

  Her words reminded me of something the ghost had said earlier at the funeral parlor. After he’d asked me if I could play guitar. It’s okay. I can teach you. We can play together, you and I.

  Yesterday when I’d tried to get past Shannon in the van, the horn had honked. She’d shoved me into it. We’d done it together.

  We can play together, you and I.

  “That’s it!” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s about our connection—our souls touching. You know how we run faster while holding hands?”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “I think when we’re working together, we can move things. Like earlier, when we honked the horn in the van. Remember? Come here.”

  I guided her in front of me. Our bodies pressed together outside the truck, with me spooned behind her. At first, the contact nearly overwhelmed me—a full-body tingle that throbbed inside my core and rippled through the edges of my being. I kept thinking of the radio sermon. Friction is how we move forward. Her
aura intertwined with mine. We reached inside the truck, my hand over hers. Friction is necessary. I pressed my fingers over hers, not unlike her hands earlier on the girls’ planchette. Golden flecks sparkled in our auras. We pressed together upon the phone’s home button.

  Nothing happened.

  I held her tight with my free hand, pressed my face against her neck. She moaned. We pressed harder. The button finally relented. Pale light from the lock screen bathed the dash. My dead heart skipped a nonexistent beat. I glanced at the men, who thankfully seemed oblivious.

  “Fuck,” I said. “We need to move the phone.”

  “Are you serious? We can barely turn it on.”

  “The light’s too bright. If we do this here, they’ll see us. We have to carry the phone away.”

  Shannon gripped the phone, and I clasped her hand. We moved as one, lifting the little device off the dash. It was as heavy as a damn brick. As a sack of bricks. It rose maybe a few centimeters and fell. The both of us nearly fell. My legs trembled with the effort. We tried again.

  Mr. Noble’s thrusts built in intensity. Hard to imagine him lasting much longer. Once he came, he’d likely sit down. Our window of opportunity was about to shut.

  “Focus. They’re almost done.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because he stopped moaning and started gasping.”

  The scene on the other side of the glass built in intensity. The truck rocked harder. I couldn’t say which came first, the horrid shrieking in the distance or the chill that oozed through my phantom spine. Mr. Shady was closing in. Shannon stiffened against me. The raspy screams seemed to come from all around the wooded lot. I tried to peer between the trees to find the demon that was stalking us, but the shadows stood too thick. Mr. Shady could’ve been anywhere. At that moment, Mr. Noble tensed and moaned with exhausted finality. He collapsed over the seat back, his head buried in his companion’s neck. His arm worked back and forth, giving a frantic reach-around. I couldn’t make out their whispers, not over the shrieking all around us. Chills crept inside my bones, making it nearly impossible to focus on what we were doing. The cacophony of anguished souls intensified.