TWEXCERPT

Chapter One 

Eyes Wide Open

When I was five years old, I watched my big brother die.

That single event was the most tragic of my life but it opened my eyes to another world that most people weren't privileged to see -- a world in which the souls of the murdered roamed, lost and alone, waiting to be released to something better. It wasn't a beautiful or wonderful world. It wasn't an ability most people would ask for but I had it and I accepted it. It broke my heart and wore on my soul to watch the souls of the murdered suffer  but I wouldn't give up my ability to see them for anything.

The accident that took my brother's life happened the day before my sixth birthday. It had been a hectic day and Mom's nerves were frayed as she rushed around the house trying to make last-minute arrangements for the party. It was going to be a special celebration since Mom told me she'd gotten a clown for the party and invited all the kids from my Kindergarten class.

I was also supposed to get my first swimming lesson that day. That was what I had looked forward to most, even more than the clown, the cake, and being the center of attention. Water called to me. I felt an attraction to it at the core of my soul. Mom and Dad wouldn't allow me to swim, so I guessed that was part of the reason I wanted to get into the water so badly -- I wanted what I couldn't have. It was forbidden, and there's nothing more alluring to a child -- indeed to anyone -- than that which was forbidden.

Mom had the phone wedged under her ear  as she spoke on the phone, her voice harried, when we heard a loud splash from the back yard. It sounded as though something heavy had been thrown into the pool. Mom walked over to the screen door, her face pinched with annoyance. Undoubtedly my brother, Carlos, had jumped into the pool. He wasn't supposed to swim without supervision -- a rule he broke every chance he got -- and apparently he had broken it again.

I'll never forget how she froze. I'll never forget the way her back stiffened. I almost expected her to fall to the floor at any moment.  She seemed to stand that way forever, and I remember the anxiety that pooled in my belly like something hot and bitter. Even at that young age I knew something was terribly wrong. The phone dropped from Mom's shoulder and clattered noisily to the floor, breaking apart on impact. The noise snapped Mom out of her shock and she shoved the back door open, screaming my brother's name.

I wasn't quite six years old but I didn't need to be an adult to recognize the terror in her voice. I rushed outside and watched her dive into the pool. I'd never seen her in the pool without a bathing suit on, and for some reason that scared me as much as the sight of my brother floating face down in the water.

Carlos had been very fond of a game called Dead Man's Float, and for good reason -- he was very good at it. He could hold his breath for almost a minute and a half. I hated it when he played that game because he'd always scared me into believing he'd really drowned. . I'd hoped against hope in that moment that this was another game of Dead Man's Float, and that Carlos would suddenly open his eyes and laugh while Mom yelled at him for scaring her, but he didn't.

Mom was a Nurse Practitioner so she knew what to do in emergencies. She pulled Carlos to the side of the pool and lifted him out, screaming for help as she did so. She was trained to remain calm in a crisis, but this was no ordinary crisis. This was her son.

I stood watching, confused and frightened, wondering what I should do to help her. I wanted to run and call 9-1-1, like I'd been taught at school, but my feet wouldn't move. All I could do was stand by and watch while Mom tried to revive Carlos.

It was then, right in that very moment, that my eyes were opened to the world of the Specters. A strange light rose from Carlos's bellybutton. It was gold and green, and it sparkled like glitter as it shot high into the air. The glittering light disappeared in the bright summer sky.  

I watched the sky for a long while, wondering what I'd just witnessed. I wondered if the light would return. Our elderly neighbors, the Aldersons, arrived to see what the commotion was. Kindhearted Mrs. Alderson held a cordless phone in one hand and called for an ambulance while standing next to me, holding me tight. Mr. Alderson tried to breathe for Carlos while Mom did chest compressions.

Despite Mom's best efforts it was clear that Carlos was gone.

I cried. I cried harder than I had ever cried before in my life. I didn't really understand death at that age but I knew my brother was gone and I would never see or talk to him again. He lay on his back, his eyes black and unseeing as they stared toward the sky. Mom wept into Mr. Alderson's shoulder, and Mrs. Alderson told her husband to close Carlos's eyes.

"He's asleep now, dear," Mrs. Alderson had told me.

He was asleep and I knew he would never wake up.

A terrible aching pain started in my chest and spread up in a painful line through my neck and into my eyes. It was so intense it made me sick. I fell to my knees and vomited with my head throbbing, and with sharp, stabbing pain behind my eyes.

Mrs. Alderson tried to help me. She stood me up and tried to lead me back into the house, and that was when I saw my first Specter.

It was a little girl clutching a teddy bear by the back yard fence. I knew something was wrong with her as soon as I looked at her. She looked like a photograph that had been processed to have nearly all the color washed out of it. She existed almost completely in black and white. She was about my age, but there was a hole in her forehead and a tiny dribble of blood had seeped out on one side, as though she'd been poked in the head while lying on her left side.

At first she merely gazed at me. When she realized I could see her she rushed toward me, moving unnaturally fast. I grabbed Mrs. Alderson's leg, afraid of the strange girl.

"Help me. Please help me," the girl begged.

"Where do you live?" I'd asked her.

Mrs. Alderson mistook me. She thought I was talking to her. "I live next door, dear," she said wetly. Her tears fell from her wizened face and splattered on top of my head.

"Not you, her," I pointed at the gray girl.

Mrs. Alderson looked to where I pointed with a blank face. I realized at once she couldn't  see the little girl.

I allowed Mrs. Alderson to usher me into the house. She led me through the kitchen, then into the living room where we took seats on the sofa. The girl followed behind me, floating an inch or so above the floor, until we sat down. Then she stood in front of me, looking pitiful and scared and occasionally holding her head as though she was in pain.  

She begged incessantly for help but refused to answer any of my questions.  It was like she couldn't comprehend the words I spoke to her, or wasn't aware that I was speaking to her at all.

The paramedics and the police came next, and Dad arrived a few minutes after them. He held me in his arms and I'll never forget how glad I was to be wrapped in his strong embrace. He made me feel safe from the strange little girl who wouldn't quit asking for my help.

"Daddy, please make her shut up," I complained. My brother was gone. I knew I'd never see him again. I was sad enough as it was. I didn't need this girl -- this girl that only I could see -- harassing me.

He looked shocked by my annoyance. He thought I meant Mom, who wept bitterly at the kitchen table while the paramedics worked to load Carlos's body onto a gurney.

"Mommy's sad, honey," I remember Dad saying. "She's crying because she's sad."

"Not Mommy, her."

I pointed to the girl. Dad looked right through her.

Over the next few days I tried to convince my parents there was a little girl with a hole in her head aggravating me night and day, begging for help but saying nothing else.  Because they couldn't see or hear her they assumed I was traumatized from witnessing my brother's death. I had no relief from her constant demands for help until finally, unable to stand it any longer, I shouted at her to shut up and leave me alone. She immediately obeyed. Her pleas fell silent and receded from me, getting smaller and smaller, until she was gone. She eventually returned, but after that moment she remained silent, doing her pleading with her incessant stare but never uttering another word. 

Mom and Dad were scared for me. They took me to a counselor, and as soon as I sat down across from him I knew at once my parents thought I'd gone crazy. I feared being taken away from home and put in a place for crazy people so I began to lie and say that I didn't see the little girl anymore.

Thankfully they believed me.

The trips to the counselor eventually stopped. I never mentioned the girl again. I never mentioned any of the other ghosts -- I called them Specters -- that approached me as time went on.

They all behaved the same way. I would go to Kindergarten, or out with my parents, and they would realize I could see them. After that they'd approach to beg for help and I would have to wait until I was alone, sometimes for hours with two or three of them incessantly begging for help, before I could Banish them and force them to leave me in peace. I only had to do it once. After that, even if they returned they never spoke to me again. The worst part of seeing the Specters wasn't that I had to pretend they weren't there. It wasn't that I had to carry this secret ability alone. It wasn't even their obvious, never-ending pain. The worst part was that I never really got to know them.

Specters stood silently by, existing in a world I wasn't sure they were fully aware of themselves -- at least not in the same way that I was aware of my world.  Their entire existence seemed to me to be nothing more than waiting and hoping for freedom that I could never give them.

I dreamed of them at times. I dreamed I could see the world through their eyes. It was an empty place, cold and forever frozen in the time period they died. The loneliness I felt was profound and about the closest thing to hell I could imagine.

In the dreams I existed completely alone, unaware even, of other Specters. Then I would find someone I knew was alive, someone who had the power to see me. I knew this person had a duty to save me from my torment and pain.

I would rush to them, elated, begging for help, only to be rebuffed. My lips would seal. I would try to plead for help but the words wouldn't come. The one who was supposed to help me only condemned me further to a never-ending existence of misery and solitude, and that always added to my pain.

As I grew older I stopped shying away from the Specters. I realized they weren't just ghosts. They weren't people who had died in their sleep, or by accident. Every single one of them had been murdered, and that was the reason they were trapped.

*****

It was a few days before my eighteenth birthday. I wouldn't celebrate it at home. Dad had a new job in a little town named Coalton as an accountant for a coal mining company. The new job would more than double his current salary. Mom also found work at a private clinic which would get her out of the frantic pace of emergency room work and also pay more with better benefits and hours.

While I was happy that things were looking up for them I couldn't deny that I was sad they were selling the house I grew up in. Because of the move I would have to leave everyone I knew from school. I'd have to leave my home and my friends.  I missed the place already and I hadn't even left it yet.

I wondered if there would be Specters in Coalton. I was sure there would be, but I doubted there would be as many there as there were in Huntington. I wondered if moving to a new location would have any effect on my ability to see the Specters. Whenever we left Huntington I often didn't see new Specters in another location until I'd been there at least a day, and they rarely seemed aware of me.

When I was a kid I began naming the Specters. I named my first Specter Margaret.  She appeared in my bedroom and I crouched down to her level and reached out for her only to see that my hand passed through her. It felt like passing my hand through a curtain of cold water.

"I'll miss you, Margaret. I'm sorry to leave but I have to go."

She only stared back, a look of profound longing on her face, and I knew exactly what she longed for: Freedom. She longed to move on to the afterlife where she would know peace, where she could finally rest.

"I wish I could set you free," I told her.

All these years she'd waited for me to help her but I never did. The guilt made my stomach burn.

"I'll never forget you."

She didn't respond. I didn't expect her to. Some part of me hoped she would have some kind of breakthrough but I wasn't surprised by her silence. I supposed she wanted to say something but she couldn't. I'd silenced her long ago.

"Maybe there are others like me out there. Maybe you'll find one of them and they'll be able to help you. Look for them."

She turned away to reveal that nearly almost all of the back of her head had been blown away from the gunshot that had killed her.  Not for the first time I wondered who could do such a thing to a child.  

Margaret wasn't the last to show up in the house. Specters clogged the hall as I walked from my room and downstairs with a bag in hand. Over the years I'd made up names for them as well.

Old Jerry, a black man who was murdered by a tomahawk to his back, stood near the stairs.

Beside him was Mrs. Mingzhu Li, a middle-aged housewife who had died after someone held her under water. Ghostly water coughed from her mouth and dripped from her clothes into nothingness, rather than pooling on the floor. Over the years, though, I had often been blamed for inexplicable pools of water in the kitchen or the downstairs, and I often believed this was Mrs. Li's fault.

There were ten more Specters in the yard. Some of them sported stab wounds, gunshots, neck trauma and other grisly injuries, but some looked perfectly normal -- poison victims, most likely. 

They were all eerily silent, crowded up on one another, some of them blending together because they occupied the same space without realizing it. They could only see me in their lonely, empty world, but I could see all of them.

"You ready?" asked my dad, Andrew, when I step onto the porch.

"I'll miss this place."

"I know. So will I," he said empathetically. He locked the door. "You'll be back in Huntington this fall when you start classes at Marshall. At least you'll see some of your friends."

"I won't be able to live here, though. Strangers will be here. Coalton is in the boonies, Dad. Will they care if you and Mom are a mixed couple?" I asked.

Dad smiled and shook his head. "I don't think it's going to be a problem."

He put a hand on my shoulder and led me through a crowd of souls he couldn't even see. They couldn't see him, either: I was the only one who existed in their world. "I'm sorry but your mom and I couldn't pass these opportunities up."

"Yeah, I know."

"You want to drive?" He was kind, trying to cheer me up, but I just shook my head and climbed into the back of his new Chevy Suburban. Hundreds of Specters had gathered to watch me leave.

None of them tried to follow when we started off down the street, and soon they were gone completely from view, along with the house I'd grown up in.

I imagined their misery as their one hope of ever finding freedom drove away.