u/Downtown-Football248

I don't know what compelled me to confess here of all places. Maybe all the years in the pews caught up to me, took in the good word. Or maybe it is the lingering prognosis that has me crawling my way back to Jesus. I don't know. Either way, I am ready to talk. From what I read, this is the type of group to listen. Father Lincoln says that sins are like roots. You don't fully get them up unless you dig out the hole, right down to where it all started. He wears clothes to forgive. The internet throws words to condemn. To be frank, I could use a little of both.

So, let's dig it all out. Back to the first day of many mistakes.

"Oh, and lock the freezer after showtime."

"Come again?" I said, finishing the last swirl of my signature.

"That's the last part of the gig," Rustburrow coughed out as he inhaled the last bite of his cro-nut, showering the table and both of us in buttery flakes. "Studio closes just before sunset. You get here 15 minutes earlier, do your tasks, and lock the freezer no later than 7 p.m."

"Why does the studio own a freezer?"

He leaned back and swallowed. A deep breath wheezed in and out of him, indecisive on whether it was for annoyance or contemplation. He had heard that question before. Many times. His dense monobrow suggested he was considering whether he would have to hear it again.

"Do you want this job?"

The chill from the previous night's air still lingered in my bones. I was out of gas, and had only two blankets to my name. That rat cloth I had gotten from St. Mary's wasn't holding up as we ran into October, and I didn't know how many more nights in the Acura I could handle.

"Yes, sir. I do."

"It won't work out if you are curious. Believe me. Some doors? Better left shut."

I sat with that. Nothing about it sounded good. I'd heard the stories about these Hollywood types. Was it a vat of baby oil? A baby plantation to harvest fresh stem cells? The more my mind wandered, the more I wondered if I could handle whatever it was. If it were horror beyond my stomach, what would I do? Then my eyes landed on the contract again, and the length of the zeros made me unsure.

"Lock it after seven. Got it."

"No *later* than seven, kid. That's important."

"Alright, alright. Got it."

Rustburrow didn't seem pleased with that, but he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out my gear: an Outer Lights Security hat, a metal clipboard case with a laminated paper taped to the front that had the word "CHECKLIST" bolded at the top in faded red letters, and a Glock 19.

"Whoa. I get issued a gun for this job?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"No, I just... didn't expect it. Do studios typically have armed security?"

His eyes sat half-open, unamused. He reached over to the black security hat, analyzed it, then matted it down on my head.

"Do now." He smiled. His extra cheek fat curled around the corners of his lips, creating an echo of a double smile like he was silently laughing at me. "Listen, the talent we have here requires a bit of extra protection. I ain't no yuppie. If someone tries to get to where they ain't supposed to be, you use that. You hear?"

I nodded.

"Anyway," He brushed away some arm hair infringing on his Rolex. "Shift starts in about an hour. Why don't you watch from the screening room?"

"Is that okay?"

"Course. Welcome to the Outer Lights family."

I left Rustburrow's office and made my way to the screening area. The Glock heavy at my side. Always such a light thing in the hand, but heavy on my hip and in my guts. I'd never gotten used to it. I fired plenty in my life. A lot less since leaving Beaumont PD that Spring, but still. Authority. The power to do what needed to be done. Such big things. You think you know what you'd do, how you'd act in a situation where you needed to pull that trigger, to be someone's hero. Then you get to the moment and just about shit yourself.

The screening room was dead save for three individuals. The first was a man in his late forties. The studio lights blinded me from the reflection off his head. Wafts of cigarette smoke enraptured him as he sat, watching the talent perform from his director's chair. To his immediate left at the foot of the stage was someone in an all-black suit, sunglasses indoors, total G-Man. He was the only one who turned to me the moment I opened the door. He saw my hat and gave me a faint nod of acknowledgement. I didn't return it. But it was the man on stage who stole my attention.

Atop the stage, centered by six lights of soft white, blood red, and sapphire blue, was the star. He was young, no more than twenty-three. Dusty blond hair, striking green eyes, and a grin that said he knew more than you did. Draped over his shoulders was a scarred blue suit coat, painted with grime and old blood. He was shirtless underneath and had a gun in his hand. He looked down at it in his lap, switching his expression in an instant. I was never a movie type, but I could *see* his thoughts. He went from a generalized sorrow to now thoughts of impending oblivion.

"If she were actually fucking here, we would have Margorey enter stage left," The director said. I could now see the name Stillwell on the back of the chair. "Fuck's sake, can we get an intern or something to read her lines to Thomas?"

The man in the suit nodded at him and looked behind the curtain on the stage. At his glance, a frail nineteen of something jogged out, her brow drenched in sweat, a script in hand. Everyone stopped, waiting for each other to continue, until the director scoffed.

"It's your line, sweetie."

"Oh, sorry," She mumbled, flipping to the page in a frantic rush. She cleared her mousey throat and continued the scene in a jilted performance.

"Isaac? Just put the gun down. Whatever's wrong, we can fix it."

"They're gone, Alyssa."

"What do you mean, 'they're gone', Isaac? What happened? Where is everyone?"

Thomas, now fully his character Isaac, looked to her, his brow pinched into a grimace, lip quivering, eyes misty. "Alyssa..."

"Isaac, where are the others?"

"What about me? I'm right here! Right here, having to live with it." His eyes fell back on the gun.

"Isaac, where are they?"

"How can you ask me that?" He said, looking to her now. "Don't you dare look at me like that. You don't get to judge *me*. You didn't make those choices. You didn't feel the hunger we felt."

Stillwell spoke, reading the stage direction, and the actors followed suit. "As Isaac starts to cry, Alyssa hugs him, embracing the truth of what he did in those mountains—what they chose to do—to survive. She buries herself in his shoulder, apologizing for everything. But Isaac looks on to the mountain, looking on to what was left behind. Was it his friends or all of himself?"

Thomas then looked to the seats, right at me. His eyes gripped me like a thousand pleading hands begging me to stare. Gooseflesh broke out all over my body as he spoke.

"The jungle stole their lives. But I stole their souls. With every bite."

"Cut."

Thomas snapped up, ignoring the intern. "You don't think that line at the end is too much?"

Stillwell raised an eyebrow. "It wraps the story up well."

"Yeah, but what about just, 'I stole their souls...' I mean, the audience already knows I nibbled on my friends up there."

Stillwell looked at his watch. It was 6 p.m. He looked back at Thomas, and they had a silent conversation about that. "It's a good point, Tom. I'll consider it on the rewrite. We'll pick up tomorrow when Margory is here and not coked out in a Denny's shitter or wherever the fuck she is. Let's clear out so Security can close up shop."

They did. Not a single word or glance at me. I watched the room clear and, in a few minutes, it was just me. The majority of the checklist I had to do was basic items: cut the power to the stage, conduct walkthroughs at three-hour intervals, ensure building access points are secure by 6:30. All standard stuff I'd done before in some fashion. I knocked them out swiftly and was left with the last three items. The first of which gave me pause.

"Let in the groupie?" I read.

I followed the instructions, making my way to a service entrance deep in the heart of the studio. I opened the door, mostly to get a view of what to expect, when I heard a short scream as someone scattered to the ground. I looked down to see a young girl on her knees, looking up at me with a wounded expression. She was a frail thing. Pencil skirt, low-cut top, curly brown hair, a dense amount of foundation, and clashing red lipstick.

"Sorry," I said, helping her up. "I didn't see you there."

"It's okay." She said, though I could tell it wasn't. Still, she made an effort to put me at ease, and I appreciated that. I gave her a once-over and saw she now sported a small splotch of crimson on her left knee.

"Let's get you a bandage for that. It looks like a good scrape."

"No, that's okay. I'll clean it up in the bathroom."

I insisted. While cleaning her up, I found out her name was Regina. She was twenty, or so she told me, and that she was so, so, so thankful to be here. However, when the hydrogen peroxide hit her skin, her positive energy crumbled, and she stomped her good leg as if I was amputating the other.

"So, you know the actor? Thomas?" I asked, hoping to distract her. It worked. She lit up like Figueroa Corridor.

"No, but I *really* want to. We met at a coffee shop while I was practicing my lines—I'm an actress."

"Uh-huh," I said as I finished wrapping her bandage.

"He was so sweet, said he really liked my stuff, and asked if I could swing by after he finished rehearsal."

I was sure Thomas did like some of her "stuff", but I didn't have the heart to tell her. The girl was too young for me to be crushing her dreams. I looked over at the checklist as she prattled on for another minute or two. Next item was up: Take Groupie to Talent Manager.

"Well, let's get you backstage." As we turned around into the hallway, I all but crashed into Suit. All my years there and I never learned his name. He stood there like a brick wall in both size and demeanor.

"6:43," He grunted.

"Sorry?"

He tapped his watch. "You're late. She was supposed to be with me at 6:35."

"Yeah, sorry. She fell on the way in, and I wanted to get her patched up first."

He looked at her, snatched off his glasses, and dropped to his knees, analyzing her wound. Regina shifted back and forth as he glared at her leg, but she did well otherwise to hide her discomfort. Then, Suit clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"Not good."

"What? It's just a scrape."

"Yeah, I am fine!"

He stood up, looked at me, and shrugged. "We'll see, I guess. You are the one who's going to hear about it."

I didn't know what that meant, but he didn't give me any more time to contemplate it.

"Follow me, ma'am," She did like a giddy dog. I watched them walk off, some sinking feeling in my gut, but I wasn't sure from what. Was it for her? Or was it because of Suit's words? As I reflected on that, Regina looked back at me before she went around the corner, waved, and smiled. Then she was gone.

One item left.

*No earlier than 6:55, but absolutely no later than 7:00, lock the freezer.*

I open up the clipboard case, and inside was one of the most arcaric locks I had ever seen. A massive steel padlock with a thick two-inch iron key. I glanced at my watch, and the time read 6:54.

"Shit."

My jog broke into a sweat-soaked sprint as I dove further into the studio. The lights in the corridor were getting further and further apart. In my panic, I hadn't realized I was following Suit and Regina's steps. I thought they must have taken a different route, but as I followed the studio map more, I knew that wasn't the case. This was a one-way path. Three minutes to the deadline, I made it to a staircase that descended into the earth. A pitch-black void into nothing. Illuminated only by a single slit at the bottom, where the freezer door was barely ajar. I crept down. Sweat broke out on my neck. When I made it halfway, careful to avoid each creak and groan of the floorboards, I heard voices coming from inside.

"What the fuck is this? What happened to her knee?" This voice was new. Deep. No, thunderous. It rolled up the stairs like the boulder trap from Indiana Jones. When it reached me, my brain struggled to process it into language.

"She fell." That one was clearly Suit.

"She fell?"

"That's what the security guard said."

"And what am I supposed to do with that? You know she won't heal."

"I understand, sir."

"No, you don't!" Chains rattled. Something large was lifted and thrown, crashing into the wall below. The metal walls belted as the hard mass bent and warped the steel. Worry plunged into my heart as they described Regina. My hand snapped to my gun as I descended, quickening my pace.

"Calm down," Suit shouted. "It's a scrape. She's exactly what you wanted otherwise."

"She was perfect." The voice rumbled in an almost melancholy way. It swelled in my stomach like the base of some ballad.

"She still is. Do you know how hard it is to find someone with the exact aerolas you wanted? She even has an inverted navel."

"Find another then. This one is ruined."

"No."

"What did you say?" The voice seethed.

"Just... please. Can you at least try it on?"

It was then that I made it to the door. My eyes instantly searched through the crack. The freezer was filled with bodies. They weren't hung on hooks like food, but in neat, vacuum-sealed rows of industrial hangers like a macabre closet. Just beyond the door was Suit, his back to me. Beyond him, Thomas stood in front of an unconscious Regina. Then, his head snapped up, his jaw separated from his skull with a brutal crunch. A two-foot grey hand sprouted from Thomas's throat and used his forehead as leverage to pull the rest of it out. Another hand came out. Then, another. When the body that was Thomas crumbled to the ground like a skin suit without any bones, a writhing mass of floating hands, branching out of some undulating distortion in space, floated before Regina. At 6:59, the hands pried open her mouth and crawled in, inch by inch, cracking and breaking bone as it tunneled inside of her.

My hand was glued to my gun. I knew I should run in. Save her. That was my job, right? To protect and serve? At least it was. And once again I was here. All the power, all the authority, and all I could do was fucking nothing. I knew that poor kid didn't deserve this. And as that conflict roiled within me, Suit turned around to face me. He wore an expression of pure indifference. No hate, surprise, or worry. He shook his head. A warning. But it was for me, not against.

As the horror before me unfolded, I was right back to where I was two years ago, watching those masked men enter O'Leery's, guns in hand while I idled outside in my cruiser. Just like then, I froze at the door handle. My body torn down the middle by the fence I had planted my ass on. My body, my mind, screaming in refusal as I compelled it to go. I wanted so badly to be strong enough. To do my job. The right thing.

The seconds on the clock evaporated toward 7 p.m. I heard Rustburrow's words from our interview. As those people threw Mr. O'Leery onto the ground, beating him for petty cash, and as the bones of Regina crunched and crushed under the weight of "Thomas's" hands, I made the same choice that I did then.

I locked the door.

I don't know what compelled me to confess here of all places. Maybe all the years in the pews caught up to me, took in the good word. Or maybe it is the lingering prognosis that has me crawling my way back to Jesus. I don't know. Either way, I am ready to talk. From what I read, this is the type of group to listen. Father Lincoln says that sins are like roots. You don't fully get them up unless you dig out the hole, right down to where it all started. He wears clothes to forgive. The internet throws words to condemn. To be frank, I could use a little of both.

So, let's dig it all out. Back to the first day of many mistakes.

"Oh, and lock the freezer after showtime."

"Come again?" I said, finishing the last swirl of my signature.

"That's the last part of the gig," Rustburrow coughed out as he inhaled the last bite of his cro-nut, showering the table and both of us in buttery flakes. "Studio closes just before sunset. You get here 15 minutes earlier, do your tasks, and lock the freezer no later than 7 p.m."

"Why does the studio own a freezer?"

He leaned back and swallowed. A deep breath wheezed in and out of him, indecisive on whether it was for annoyance or contemplation. He had heard that question before. Many times. His dense monobrow suggested he was considering whether he would have to hear it again.

"Do you want this job?"

The chill from the previous night's air still lingered in my bones. I was out of gas, and had only two blankets to my name. That rat cloth I had gotten from St. Mary's wasn't holding up as we ran into October, and I didn't know how many more nights in the Acura I could handle.

"Yes, sir. I do."

"It won't work out if you are curious. Believe me. Some doors? Better left shut."

I sat with that. Nothing about it sounded good. I'd heard the stories about these Hollywood types. Was it a vat of baby oil? A baby plantation to harvest fresh stem cells? The more my mind wandered, the more I wondered if I could handle whatever it was. If it were horror beyond my stomach, what would I do? Then my eyes landed on the contract again, and the length of the zeros made me unsure.

"Lock it after seven. Got it."

"No later than seven, kid. That's important."

"Alright, alright. Got it."

Rustburrow didn't seem pleased with that, but he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out my gear: an Outer Lights Security hat, a metal clipboard case with a laminated paper taped to the front that had the word "CHECKLIST" bolded at the top in faded red letters, and a Glock 19.

"Whoa. I get issued a gun for this job?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"No, I just... didn't expect it. Do studios typically have armed security?"

His eyes sat half-open, unamused. He reached over to the black security hat, analyzed it, then matted it down on my head.

"Do now." He smiled. His extra cheek fat curled around the corners of his lips, creating an echo of a double smile like he was silently laughing at me. "Listen, the talent we have here requires a bit of extra protection. I ain't no yuppie. If someone tries to get to where they ain't supposed to be, you use that. You hear?"

I nodded.

"Anyway," He brushed away some arm hair infringing on his Rolex. "Shift starts in about an hour. Why don't you watch from the screening room?"

"Is that okay?"

"Course. Welcome to the Outer Lights family."

I left Rustburrow's office and made my way to the screening area. The Glock heavy at my side. Always such a light thing in the hand, but heavy on my hip and in my guts. I'd never gotten used to it. I fired plenty in my life. A lot less since leaving Beaumont PD that Spring, but still. Authority. The power to do what needed to be done. Such big things. You think you know what you'd do, how you'd act in a situation where you needed to pull that trigger, to be someone's hero. Then you get to the moment and just about shit yourself.

The screening room was dead save for three individuals. The first was a man in his late forties. The studio lights blinded me from the reflection off his head. Wafts of cigarette smoke enraptured him as he sat, watching the talent perform from his director's chair. To his immediate left at the foot of the stage was someone in an all-black suit, sunglasses indoors, total G-Man. He was the only one who turned to me the moment I opened the door. He saw my hat and gave me a faint nod of acknowledgement. I didn't return it. But it was the man on stage who stole my attention.

Atop the stage, centered by six lights of soft white, blood red, and sapphire blue, was the star. He was young, no more than twenty-three. Dusty blond hair, striking green eyes, and a grin that said he knew more than you did. Draped over his shoulders was a scarred blue suit coat, painted with grime and old blood. He was shirtless underneath and had a gun in his hand. He looked down at it in his lap, switching his expression in an instant. I was never a movie type, but I could see his thoughts. He went from a generalized sorrow to now thoughts of impending oblivion.

"If she were actually fucking here, we would have Margorey enter stage left," The director said. I could now see the name Stillwell on the back of the chair. "Fuck's sake, can we get an intern or something to read her lines to Thomas?"

The man in the suit nodded at him and looked behind the curtain on the stage. At his glance, a frail nineteen of something jogged out, her brow drenched in sweat, a script in hand. Everyone stopped, waiting for each other to continue, until the director scoffed.

"It's your line, sweetie."

"Oh, sorry," She mumbled, flipping to the page in a frantic rush. She cleared her mousey throat and continued the scene in a jilted performance.

"Isaac? Just put the gun down. Whatever's wrong, we can fix it."

"They're gone, Alyssa."

"What do you mean, 'they're gone', Isaac? What happened? Where is everyone?"

Thomas, now fully his character Isaac, looked to her, his brow pinched into a grimace, lip quivering, eyes misty. "Alyssa..."

"Isaac, where are the others?"

"What about me? I'm right here! Right here, having to live with it." His eyes fell back on the gun.

"Isaac, where are they?"

"How can you ask me that?" He said, looking to her now. "Don't you dare look at me like that. You don't get to judge me. You didn't make those choices. You didn't feel the hunger we felt."

Stillwell spoke, reading the stage direction, and the actors followed suit. "As Isaac starts to cry, Alyssa hugs him, embracing the truth of what he did in those mountains—what they chose to do—to survive. She buries herself in his shoulder, apologizing for everything. But Isaac looks on to the mountain, looking on to what was left behind. Was it his friends or all of himself?"

Thomas then looked to the seats, right at me. His eyes gripped me like a thousand pleading hands begging me to stare. Gooseflesh broke out all over my body as he spoke.

"The jungle stole their lives. But I stole their souls. With every bite."

"Cut."

Thomas snapped up, ignoring the intern. "You don't think that line at the end is too much?"

Stillwell raised an eyebrow. "It wraps the story up well."

"Yeah, but what about just, 'I stole their souls...' I mean, the audience already knows I nibbled on my friends up there."

Stillwell looked at his watch. It was 6 p.m. He looked back at Thomas, and they had a silent conversation about that. "It's a good point, Tom. I'll consider it on the rewrite. We'll pick up tomorrow when Margory is here and not coked out in a Denny's shitter or wherever the fuck she is. Let's clear out so Security can close up shop."

They did. Not a single word or glance at me. I watched the room clear and, in a few minutes, it was just me. The majority of the checklist I had to do were basic items: cut the power to the stage, conduct walkthroughs at three-hour intervals, ensure building access points are secure by 6:30. All standard stuff I'd done before in some fashion. I knocked them out swiftly and was left with the last three items. The first of which gave me pause.

"Let in the groupie?" I read.

I followed the instructions, making my way to a service entrance deep in the heart of the studio. I opened the door, mostly to get a view of what to expect, when I heard a short scream as someone scattered to the ground. I looked down to see a young girl on her knees, looking up at me with a wounded expression. She was a frail thing. Pencil skirt, low-cut top, curly brown hair, a dense amount of foundation, and clashing red lipstick.

"Sorry," I said, helping her up. "I didn't see you there."

"It's okay." She said, though I could tell it wasn't. Still, she made an effort to put me at ease, and I appreciated that. I gave her a once-over and saw she now sported a small splotch of crimson on her left knee.

"Let's get you a bandage for that. It looks like a good scrape."

"No, that's okay. I'll clean it up in the bathroom."

I insisted. While cleaning her up, I found out her name was Regina. She was twenty, or so she told me, and that she was so, so, so thankful to be here. However, when the hydrogen peroxide hit her skin, her positive energy crumbled, and she stomped her good leg as if I was amputating the other.

"So, you know the actor? Thomas?" I asked, hoping to distract her. It worked. She lit up like Figueroa Corridor.

"No, but I really want to. We met at a coffee shop while I was practicing my lines—I'm an actress."

"Uh-huh," I said as I finished wrapping her bandage.

"He was so sweet, said he really liked my stuff, and asked if I could swing by after he finished rehearsal."

I was sure Thomas did like some of her "stuff", but I didn't have the heart to tell her. The girl was too young for me to be crushing her dreams. I looked over at the checklist as she prattled on for another minute or two. Next item was up: Take Groupie to Talent Manager.

"Well, let's get you backstage." As we turned around into the hallway, I all but crashed into Suit. All my years there and I never learned his name. He stood there like a brick wall in both size and demeanor.

"6:43," He grunted.

"Sorry?"

He tapped his watch. "You're late. She was supposed to be with me at 6:35."

"Yeah, sorry. She fell on the way in, and I wanted to get her patched up first."

He looked at her, snatched off his glasses, and dropped to his knees, analyzing her wound. Regina shifted back and forth as he glared at her leg, but she did well otherwise to hide her discomfort. Then, Suit clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"Not good."

"What? It's just a scrape."

"Yeah, I am fine!"

He stood up, looked at me, and shrugged. "We'll see, I guess. You are the one who's going to hear about it."

I didn't know what that meant, but he didn't give me any more time to contemplate it.

"Follow me, ma'am," She did like a giddy dog. I watched them walk off, some sinking feeling in my gut, but I wasn't sure from what. Was it for her? Or was it because of Suit's words? As I reflected on that, Regina looked back at me before she went around the corner, waved, and smiled. Then she was gone.

One item left.

No earlier than 6:55, but absolutely no later than 7:00, lock the freezer.

I open up the clipboard case, and inside was one of the most arcaric locks I had ever seen. A massive steel padlock with a thick two-inch iron key. I glanced at my watch, and the time read 6:54.

"Shit."

My jog broke into a sweat soaked sprint as I dove further into the studio. The lights in the corridor getting further and further apart. In my panic, I hadn't realized I was following Suit and Regina's steps. I thought they must have taken a different route, but as I followed the studio map more, I knew that wasn't the case. This was a one-way path. Three minutes to the deadline, I made it to a staircase that descended into the earth. A pitch-black void into nothing. Illuminated only by a single slit at the bottom, where the freezer door was barely ajar. I crept down. Sweat broke out on my neck. When I made it halfway, careful to avoid each creak and groan of the floorboards, I heard voices coming from inside.

"What the fuck is this? What happened to her knee?" This voice was new. Deep. No, thunderous. It rolled up the stairs like the boulder trap from Indiana Jones. When it reached me, my brain struggled to process it into language.

"She fell." That one was clearly Suit.

"She fell?"

"That's what the Security Guard said."

"And what am I supposed to do with that? You know she won't heal."

"I understand, sir."

"No, you don't!" Chains rattled. Something large was lifted and thrown, crashing into the wall below. The metal walls belted as the hard mass bent and warped the steel. Worry plunged into my heart as they described Regina. My hand snapped to my gun as I descended, quickening my pace.

"Calm down," Suit shouted. "It's a scrape. She's exactly what you wanted otherwise."

"She was perfect." The voice rumbled in an almost melancholy way. It swelled in my stomach like the base of some ballad.

"She still is. Do you know how hard it is to find someone with the exact aerolas you wanted? She even has an inverted navel."

"Find another then. This one is ruined."

"No."

"What did you say?" The voice seethed.

"Just... please. Can you at least try it on?"

It was then that I made it to the door. My eyes instantly searched through the crack. The freezer was filled with bodies. They weren't hung on hooks like food, but in neat, vacuum-sealed rows of industrial hangers like a macabre closet. Just beyond the door was Suit, his back to me. Beyond him, Thomas stood in front of an unconscious Regina. Then, his head snapped up, his jaw separated from his skull with a brutal crunch. A two-foot grey hand sprouted from Thomas's throat and used his forehead as leverage to pull the rest of it out. Another hand came out. Then, another. When the body that was Thomas crumbled to the ground like a skin suit without any bones, a writhing mass of floating hands, branching out of some undulating distortion in space, floated before Regina. At 6:59, the hands pried open her mouth and crawled in, inch by inch, cracking and breaking bone as it tunneled inside of her.

My hand was glued to my gun. I knew I should run in. Save her. That was my job, right? To protect and serve? At least it was. And once again I was here. All the power, all the authority, and all I could do was fucking nothing. I knew that poor kid didn't deserve this. And as that conflict roiled within me, Suit turned around to face me. He wore an expression of pure indifference. No hate, surprise, or worry. He shook his head. A warning. But was it for me, not against.

As the horror before me unfolded, I was right back to where I was two years ago, watching those masked men enter O'Leery's, guns in hand while I idled outside in my cruiser. Just like then, I froze at the door handle. My body torn down the middle by the fence I had planted my ass on. My body, my mind, screaming in refusal as I compelled it to go. I wanted so bad to be strong enough. To do my job. The right thing.

The seconds of the clock evaporated toward 7 p.m. I heard Rustburrow's words from our the interview. As those people threw Mr. O'Leery onto the ground, beating him for petty cash, and as the bones of Regina crunched and crushed under the weight of "Thomas's" hands, I made the same choice that I did then.

I locked the door.

[Hello, everyone. This is a story I've mused about making into a multi-part story. Please let me know if you think it is worth continuing.]

I'm ready to talk about Jessica Lottie. I'm ready to talk about the Antler King

I think it best to give you a bit of insight as to who I am and who Jessica was before I show how she changed.

I grew up in Iowa, right on the border of Nebraska. From ages eight to eighteen, I bounced around foster care like a punched pinball without a case. But in a lot of ways, my life didn’t start until my stint in foster care. I recall almost nothing before my first day at the Rothus House. It’s the only life I ever knew.

Whatever happened during those years before burrowed deep into my brain. Probably for the best. Not that my time in foster care felt categorically better. It’s best summarized as a washing machine of rejection set to Permeant Press. Yet for all the pain I picked up during that time, without it, I wouldn’t have gotten a scholarship from FC2S to attend UNO (go Huskers).

Without it, I would have never met Jessica Lottie.

I know what you are thinking. Sad sack with a dark past meets a girl at a college bar. She’s a Psych major who learned the ways to mend a broken heart and he’s the injured bird who flew into town. He sees her from across the room through the smog of half-burned cigarettes and knows she is the light at the end of his tunnel. He saunters up to her, cool, dark, mysterious, and coordinated. He whisks her off her feet and into the sheets. But it wasn’t like that. Jessica wasn’t like that. I didn’t find her—didn’t choose her. She chose me.

“Hey," She said between short, tired breaths.

I looked up from my shaded reading spot, squinting against the Nebraska sun to glimpse whoever was talking to me. Silhouetted against the abusive rays was a tall girl with a taller personality. Her hands were on her hips like a superhero. She shined with fresh sweat in bright purple athletic attire. She gobbled up breaths and smeared snot off her nose while she untangled her blond hair from a haphazard ponytail. Without mincing words, she was an utter mess.

“…Hi."

“Jessica, we’re going to be late.” A voice, who I’d later come to know as Denise, shouted from behind her.

“Go on without me,” She said, never looking back.

I dogeared my book and closed it. Unsure whether to stand or not. Her closeness destabilized me. I was instantly unsure of myself around her. A feeling that wouldn’t dissipate until a year into our relationship. Then, she’d throw a pillow at my head and tell me to: “Hurry up and get over this melancholy weirdness.”

But on that day, I didn’t know whether to demand more space or adopt the fetal position. I sat there mouth agape like a venus fly trap. Not that it bothered Jessica. She paid little attention to how people reacted to her. It was her way. She was a river. You either were on a boat and enjoyed the ride or were just another rock for her to crash over.

“Do I know you?” I asked. My throat was locked in a vice. I was increasingly aware of how similar our sweat levels had become.

“No, you don’t,” she said stretching to her toes. She grabbed the balls of her feet and exposed corded calf muscles and a striated back. She upturned her head to me, smiling. “But I’d like to get to know you.”

At this point, it felt a little too much like a Hallmark movie. I assumed my roommate had put her up to this as a part of his ever-frustrated plan to get me out of my shell.

“Did Tyler—”

She closed the distance and crouched down to my level.

I’ve rewritten this paragraph a couple of times to try to capture that moment and I end up short each time. I’ll say this, my time in foster care was defined by the way people looked at me. Pity pickled empathy, disgust, I’d seen it all through the veneer of politeness. But never had I been more seen than in her eyes. Two sharp green headlights that cut through the fog of doubt and unfamiliarity between us, shining a light on who we were and who we were to be, killing the words in my throat. I never was adopted but the way Jessica held me in her stare had to be how it felt. To be picked, to be loved, to be safe.

“Can I be honest for a second?” She said. I didn’t have a response. An invitation for her to continue I never sent, but she took anyway.

“I saw you on my first lap. I thought, ‘I wonder who that cute boy is?’ Then I continued to think that. Do you know how many miles I’ve run so far? Eight. You’re still there. Rummaging around.”

“Uh. Okay.” Smooth.

“You probably think I’m crazy, but I don’t like masks. I rip them right off. I’m drawn to you. I’m not sure why, but I want to find out.”

She put a hand on mine. My skin roiled. My brain thundered commands, demanding me to run. I felt like a child being swooped up by a police officer. A warm embrace kind enough to remind me of what I never had. But I panicked because I didn’t know what I was being saved from. What monsters in the dark she locked away with her touch. All I knew is they were never farther than in that moment.

“I’m not sure what to say."

“Say you want my number and you are free Friday.”

I took her advice. I’m glad I did. Even now, when writing this out makes me wish I was knee-deep in a bottle of Buffalo Trace and back in rehab.

We were together for three years. There is a lot I could tell you all about that time. But I won’t. With my memory issues, I’ve become weirdly protective of them. My moments with her are the clearest I’ve ever had. I fear sharing them, taking them off the shelf and out of their protective glass, will wear the paint off my mind and they’ll be lost. But I do want to share a few things to help you get a more complete picture of Jessica.

She was the kind of person to run into oncoming traffic to save an injured, and still actively spraying, skunk. I watched her put some douche-canoe into an armbar after he touched Denise’s shoulder at Neighbers and said “You’d looked good on my face.” But what I hold dearest were our little moments. Once, we watched some sappy RomCom (my request not hers) and she kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’m sorry you had to hide your laugh for so long.”

The shift in her behavior started on October 14th.

Jessica loved horror. In addition to this page, she’d watch Monster of the Week films, knew the script to Scream by heart, toted around a vintage Scooby-Doo lunchbox—would even rank her iterations if you inquired. The live-action ones rated higher than I thought appropriate but even our soulmates can have flaws.

A local store of ours was shutting down and held a 90% flash sale to clear out their stock. When I mentioned it, Jessica lit up almost as bright as the day I proposed. Before we could discuss it further, she was out the door. Half covered in mismatched clothes and a toothbrush askew in the corner of her mouth.

We arrived at the store at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Saturday. I can’t say I was shocked the store was to be closed. We were the only patrons. We said hi to the owner Bill and started to browse. Bill had two carts for the whole store. Jessica had taken one and demanded I take the other. By the time I had both hands on the handle of my cart, she had loaded up hers with an undead iteration of the nativity scene.

“You think that’s in good taste?” I asked.

“Is anything on Halloween in good taste?” She said, cradling the zombie baby. She looked good as a mom.

“Still a bit daring.”

“Jesus was the first zombie, Al.” She snorted, uplifting “Jesus” in a Lion-King-like fashion. Closer inspection revealed Bill may have made it himself with a splatter of green paint and a Chucky doll head.

“I see buying this as paying tribute to our great Lord.”

“Fine,” I chuckled. “Just remember how much space you have in your dorm. I don’t think Denise is going to appreciate living in a haunted house for another semester."

She didn’t slow at my protestations. A pair of skeletons mid-waltz joined the hoard. “We will just have to start looking at houses early then.”

My heart stopped at her mention of a home. We’d been engaged for three months, but college had an illusory effect on time. All of our life seemed so movie-like until then. Talks of a home and marriage were so grounded it’d ripped me out of the fantasy. With each milestone we passed in our relationship, the forest of life was more mapped. We were voyagers out of the known territory of adolescence and moving unto the true-blue thicket of adulthood. I was smitten with the idea of it all.

“It needs to be a big house too. I’m gonna need room for all this crap!” She shouted as she darted down the aisle, mushing her cart to a breakneck speed before drifting it around the corner, tossing in the occasional macabre bobble along the way.

With the beast satiated, I decided to conduct my search. The halls of Bill’s were dense. Imagine an overrun forest cloistered over a small dirt path. Replace the path with rotted linoleum tiles and the canopy of trees with shelves bloated with ghouls, ghasts, and undead trinkets and you are right there. I even had to side-shimmy at one point to make it through the density of the Witch section. After a duckwalk past the chandelier of knives, I crested through and found myself in an alcove haphazardly formed by the store shelves. I would have thought I had stumbled into another world if I couldn’t hear Jessica’s giggles beyond the shelf to my right.

“It even shoots blood!” She screamed, mechanical whirling and gushing chasing her words produced by… whatever shot blood.

I smiled and combed through the racks in front of me. Costumes and masks from cult classics like The Wolf-Man to newer, less great, films like The Nun hung packed the hangers. Jessica had been looking for a Creature from the Black Lagoon Mask for some time but had made specific requests about the color. Something about how it had to be darker because a different one was used during the water scenes? I don’t know, but that’s what I searched for when I stumbled upon the deer mask.

I had parted the clothing rack enough to expose the wall behind it. There, atop a single wall hook, was a paint-weathered, orange deer skull sewn to a black cowl. Some might have called it a Wendigo mask, but the Ojibwe Wiindigo were more akin to frozen cannibals. Besides, it wasn’t the impression the mask gave. The bleached white antlers had holes drilled through various places along the tines. Thin gold chains fed through the holes and enshrined across the tips to form a circlet. What I remember most was how much I wanted to pick it up. Not in some kind of cursed object way, but how you might grab a ball or a TV remote you have fiddled with before.

I picked up the mask and tossed it into the cart without much thought. I added a few more bits and bobs before I met back up with Jessica at the register. She had loaded piles of tombstones, grim garments, and caustic brews onto the counter. Even Bill looked shocked. As soon as she saw me with my sparse cart, her smile died.

“You disappear and this pile is all you have to show for it? Weak, Al. Weak.”

“Disappear?”

She pursed her lips. “You were gone for about thirty minutes. Bill didn’t even see where you went.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I must have lost track of time. Lookin’ for that Black Lagoon mask. No dice.”

“Think I got one in the back if you want me to look,” Bill chimed in. A glint of hopefulness in his eyes. I knew the second that man walked away, he’d return with no Lagoon mask and instead a pile of things he’d think Jessica would buy for his “discount”.

“Was it a part of the ’73 production series? If so, I’m *definitely* interested.”

Seeing that Bill had no idea and was only keen to make a sale, I tried to distract Jessica with my trove.

“Or, you could take a look at this crazy thing instead.”

I bent over and dawned the cowl. I was all but blind in it. The portion of the mask that extended down and covered the eyes was thick burlap or canvas that had been painted black. Only the edges of details were discernable. I stood up in my best Dracula stance—even held an invisible cloak—and turned to Jessica.

“How do I look?” I said in my plainest, midwestern voice. Everyone always expects Eastern European.

“Oh, man,” Jessica said. “Where did you dig that thing up, Bill? Are we adding roadkill to the collection?”

Bill hummed for a moment. “Not sure, actually. May have been a local drop-off. Some of my stuff is from the early 90’s. Lots of hobbyists came in and tried to pawn off their spooky junk during that time.”

I reached out to Jessica with zombie-like arms. She squealed. She stifled her laugh and made, what I tried to discern through my poor view, a serious face.

“Are you a vampire or a zombie? You need to pick one here. It’s the law.” She got close and analyzed the face.

“Seems much more regal than monster-like. Wonder what all the gold is about?”

I pulled the mask off and studied it. “I don’t know. It does seem a little royal.”

When I looked back at her, Jessica’s face melted. Her eyes twitched, blinking in rapid bursts. Her smile was on stilts, and her eyes wet. At first, I thought it was the air quality. Bill’s place wasn’t ventilated at all. The miasma of dust had stirred to a full dust devil since we arrived. But then I heard the squeaking of soles on linoleum. She was inching towards the door.

“Jess? You okay?”

She coughed, strangled down a small yelp, and backed away further. Her other hand jittered, trying to conceal efforts to find the door. “No. Yes! I-I’m fine. Just got... cold all of a sudden. I’m going to grab some air. Can you get all this stuff loaded up?”

Before I could agree, she was out the door. Bill and I shared a look of bewilderment before I tossed the mask into my cart with the rest of the things I had selected. I opted to take only Jessica’s item for brevity’s sake. When I got to the truck, I stopped dead in my tracks.

Jessica was in front of the Ranger's driver-side window, eying her reflection. She shook fast enough to get a hypothermia diagnosis. Her eyes radiated hate. It was as if she were trying to melt the glass. Then, I heard her whisper under her breath.

“Not one. Two. Not one. Two. Can’t take this little piggy to market. The bacon’s already sold.”

“Jessica. You okay?”

Her hands snapped to her head.

“There’s just no room!” She screamed. Suddenly, she threw open the door of the Ranger and slammed it. She did this in a loop while she screamed the same phrase.

“There’s just no room!”

When someone does something so surreal, your body freezes. She couldn’t have done this for more than twenty seconds, but we waded through the bog of that moment in years. When I came to my senses, I ran to her. She flailed, catching me with a stray slap. It rocked my vision like Mike Tyson had skinned walked in place of my fiancé. I crashed onto the pavement. When I looked up, her head was cinched in her hands like she was preventing it from flying away. She was bent over at the waist, eyes fixated on the ground and shaking around their sockets. Then, her gaze snapped to me. Her confused expression curdled into a horrid amalgamation of pain-wrinkles and angry tears.

“No room.”

She threw up. A bottomless stream of bile roared from within her. The smell of acrid eggs and rotten waffles wafted throughout the parking lot and straight to the back of my throat. I stumbled to my feet to comfort her, hold her hair, rub her back, or something. When the edge of my fingers made contact with her blouse, she snapped upright and shoved me flat on my ass again.

“Don’t fucking touch me.” She screamed through gurgled bursts of bile.

“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I’m going to get help.” I said. Or tried to. My voice was gone. She had never spoken that way; never acted that way. I want to pretend I rushed to her. Strong and confident like some action hero. I didn’t. I crumbled beneath my fear. Sure, she was acting strange. But in a way tailor-made to torment me. Her display had unearthed some crawler under the rock of my soul. I just froze.

“No!” She said in between spurts of yellow ichor.

“I’m fine.”

After a moment, she finished. Eventually, my legs worked again and I eased past her to the Ranger, half expecting her to slap me down once more. But she didn’t move. Only dragged in large gulps of air and spat out the foul residue. I fished out some paper towels. Wincing in anticipation, I handed her a bundle.

When she took them, her hands were soft in both touch and demeanor. Replaced from what she was a moment ago.

“I’m sorry, Al.” She said. Her cheeks were blotched red from her tears and her hair clumped around her brow, but she smiled. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“A fucking demon if I had to guess. Jesus, Jess. Are you okay? What was that about?”

“Yeah. It felt like…all of my guts wanted to jump out of me. Real Exorcist moment.” She let out a small chuckle.

With how things went, I should have pressed harder. I should have dug deeper, but I was still drenched in fear. Part of me didn’t want Jessica to see how scarred I had been. But a more selfish part didn’t want to tug on the thread of why. I had no idea what about her display resonated with me, but when the avenue of ignorance opened up, I took it.

“Let’s just get you home.” I said.

“Yeah,” She said. “Could just be bad clams.”

“You hate clams.”

“Shut up, Truman,” She said, burping up stomach acid between her words.

We laughed and things seemed to revert to normal. I helped her into the truck, slapped on some George Strait, and we drove back to her dorm. Idle chatter filled the drive. She even cracked a few jokes about what had happened. It truly seemed behind us. When I got to her dorm, I unloaded her treasure trove, kissed her despite her concern over her truly disgusting breath, and made my way to leave.

“See you tomorrow for breakfast?” I asked.

She had crawled into bed and faced the wall. It stood out as childlike to me. Her whole stature seemed smaller. I towered over her now in some way. And I hated it.

“If I am feeling better.” She said. I believed her. Even if her weak voice conveyed no confidence. Tomorrow came and I texted her the moment I woke.

“Hey, Bean. Still squirting?” I asked.

She sent a few laughing emojis but no response. After an hour, I just asked if she wanted me to bring her something to make her feel better.

“Thanks,” She replied. “But I don’t want to get you sick. Denise thinks I need a MedEvac. Gonna get me soup.”

I tried to persuade her to let me get it but she insisted otherwise. Said whatever she had was going to kill her and she’d hate for me to get it. Those words in particular have my sobriety coin between my fingers like a rosary.

I accepted her response and asked if she wanted to get me the course material from any of her classes. She said yes and that she’d send me a list after a nap. I didn’t hear from her for the rest of the day. I called a few times until Denise answered. She told me Jessica had racked out at 3 o’clock and hadn’t stirred since. I made her promise to let me know if she worsened so I could take her to the ER. I didn’t trust Bill’s place to not be ground zero for Nebraska’s source of asbestos. She laughed but promised she would call. After a couple of hours of unease and worry, I fell asleep.

I received a random text from Jessica at two in the morning. All it said was:

“Deers can’t turn Witches into salt.”

Denise never called but the text had me confused. I sent Jessica a reply asking her what it meant. She said she didn’t know and she had intended to write in her dream journal and not text. Eventually, our conversation shifted and I told her I’d be by after my morning classes, soup in hand, and would deliver it whether she liked it or not. She shot back a thumbs up.

I arrived at her dorm at 1030. It was empty. I stored her extra spicy Pho #5 (her favorite) in her mini-fridge and took a look around. Two things stood out to me. Her freshly acquired spooky goods were still packaged up. Not entirely weird but I had seen this girl marathon the Friday 13th series with a sinus infection. Notable if nothing else. The other was when I tried to give her a call.

Her phone rang from her closet door.

I followed the sound. I felt like I had wandered into a horror movie. Jessica was whacky in lots of ways, but not one to enjoy a closet nap. As the handle was in my grasp, the bolt slowly turning, I realized I hadn’t hung up. Her Kim Possible ringtone bleated out as I pulled the door open. Hearing something so stupid, so childish, while my stomach roiled is a feeling I can’t forget. This horrid entangling of the endearing and the endangering. Trust and turmoil. I didn’t know what was beyond the door, but part of me prepared for the worst.

I flung it open. Hard enough to thud against the interior wall. Jessica wasn’t there.

Sitting alone on the carpeted floor was her phone, a wastebasket full of tissues, and a kid’s hairpin. I picked up her phone to silence the call and picked up the hairpin out of happenstance.

Some of you may not appreciate this, but I unlocked her phone. Jessica and I had long established permission for one another to do so (hence why I had the code) but I had hoped to see any texts or calls to Denise or others to indicate where she had gone. She hadn’t sent any texts to Denise but what I found was weird. It’s part of what pushed me to post this here. She had placed ten calls within the last eight hours. Two missed calls to her parents and eight to someone called Oatman. There was also one text to an unknown number:

“Whenever you are free, we’ll meet.”

“Oatman?"

“What are you doing?”

I fell forward out of shock. I snatched onto Jessica’s coat rack for stability and snapped it out of place, smashing my face into the closet wall. I rolled over onto my back and looked up. Jessica stood in the doorway like an obstacle of shadow. Her eyes were sunken and her eyelids puffy. Her shoulders slouched so far down it replaced her spine with a candy cane. Her hair was matted. I smelled, even tasted, the air of yesterday’s vomit off her.

“Oh my god. You scared me.”

“Why are you in my closet?” Her tone was cold. Colder than I thought her capable.

“…Your phone. When you weren’t home. I called. It rang from in here. I thought you might have fallen asleep.”

“In a closet?”

“Yeah I thought it was weird too.”

She said nothing. She sauntered up to me as if on wheels, reached down for the phone in my left hand and the hairpin in my right. She ushered them into hers and then went back to bed. She moved across the floor like on skates. All efforts calculated to mitigate as much movement as possible.

I got up to my feet and sat in shock for a moment before the silent tension compelled me to speak.

“Who’s ‘Oatman’?”

“A friend.”

“Just a friend huh?” I said, joking about infidelity. Which wasn’t funny but neither was the situation. Regardless, she just rolled onto her side and looked at me in a way that said to let the question die

.

“Were you meeting someone to sell something on campus?”

Nothing but the dull clicking of her ceiling fan broke the glass of quiet. It was a silence that made my heart ache. As more time went on, the guiltier I felt. I had no idea as to why my stomach turned, but it did all the same. Her behavior had been odd since Bills. Maybe it was because I suggested we go there, but somehow this sickness seemed like my fault. She sat up, suddenly.

“Do you want my whole schedule? First all these questions about my friends and now you are reading my texts?” She had a curt tone, but I pushed past it. We aren’t our best all the time. I sat down on the bed next to her but she scooted aside.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How exactly did you mean it?”

“I just…I’m sorry. I’m not trying to snoop. I’m worried about you.”

I went to brush her hair, but she withdrew.

I placed my hands in my lap and bit my lip. I wanted to help her but I didn’t know how. Each action of mine seemed to worsen things.

“Okay. I brought you your favorite soup.”

“Not hungry.”

“Have you eaten today?”

Silence.

I sighed. “Do you have the list of your classes? I can go there right now.”

She turned to me. Eyes cold, empty. It’s as if I wasn’t in the room. “Don’t worry about it. It’s taken care of.”

“What does that mean?”

Suddenly, her eyes focused. I was warped back from whatever distant world her stare had placed me in. A sheer moment of lucidity had kicked in. Whatever had consumed her throughout this time, she had broken free from.

“I’m sorry, honey. Whatever bug I picked up is taking a lot out of me. I’m feeling a bit better now.”

Relief washed over me. It’s selfish, but the little light in the tunnel she offered me was such a blessing, that I didn’t take the time to analyze where it came from. Again, I just took it.

“You don’t need to apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m sorry. I feel like I am making this about me somehow. I just hate being so helpless.”

She placed a hand on my face. “It’s the worst feeling imaginable. A dark so big and deep, you don’t even know if you have eyes anymore. All you can do is say, ‘Good-bye’.”

Before I could speak. She kissed me. Her hand worked my belt. Each time I tried to stop, to talk, her passion increased. It overtook me. The wildness of had put me on island. Each attempt to get close had been rejected. This small connection had sucked me in. Desperate to return to our lives only a few days ago. She read me like a book. I see now that is what she wanted.

When we were done, we cuddled for the rest of the day. We watched a few movies, she ate half of her soup and perked up a bit. All the oddities had melted away in the small moments of bliss. Sometime in the evening she took some medication. It lifted her spirits but she was still in and out of the bathroom a lot, throwing up more than at Bills. With how many meds she was taking, I grew concerned. I went to the bathroom, washed my face, and committed to taking her to the ER. But when I returned to her room, she’d fallen asleep. I opted to wait for her to wake up. Half way through a Terry Pratchett book, the night took me too.

I woke up in the pitch black of her room sometime later. I didn’t know the time, but judging by how groggy I was I assumed past midnight. I reached for my phone on her nightstand and my hand thudded into something soft.

It was Jessica. Upright on the nightstand, clutching her knees and watching me like a bird of prey. In my half-lucid state, I wasn’t sure she was there at all. Not because of how she was sitting, but because of what she was wearing. She sat there, naked all save for the deer mask from Bill’s store.

The one I never bought.

“I’m not afraid of you.” She said through clenched teeth. My eyes focused and I could see she had gripped her forearms hard enough to leave marks, even draw blood.

“I’ve got magic beans to kill the big bad giant. But they make Jessica a dull boy.” She said, rattling a bottle of pills.

“Jessica?” I tried to stand but my legs were jelly.

She shook her head, whipping her hair hard to the left and right like a cartoon character. “Oatman, Oatman, Protecter of the Night! He’s who keeps the deer at bay.”

Terrified, I tried to get up, and she climbed atop me. “Don’t worry! They help. Help give you want you want.”

“Stop!” I shoved her off of me. She slammed into the wall beside her bed. I rushed to her. I didn’t even think I pushed her that hard. I was half way to standing when she arched herself up into a bridge. Her hair dangled upside down like rotted insulation. Her skin seemed pallid and dead. The only drop of color on her person was the fucking deer mask.

“You don’t want me?” She screamed. “You picked me. You chose me!”

I thought I lost it. I thought this was all some dream. It was crazy. Was it whatever made her sick? Fever-induced mania? What kind of fucking sickness causes you to act like that? I had just readied myself to wake up when a dose of reality crashed me down.

“Just stick it in the girl already so she’ll shut the fuck up.” A male voice said, thundering blows against the dorm wall.

I backed up, working my way to the door.

“Jessica, I don’t know what is going on but we need to get help.”

She stood up straight from her bridge, pulled by invisible strings.

“Then you can get the fuck out, Al.”

Her lucidity whipped me like a rubber band. It made me furious. I was trapped between a psychotic break and some sick joke. My fiancé, the strongest person I knew, was now no better than all the people in foster care. All those bastards who laid hands on you after they promised to care. I snapped.

“Fuck you! You are acting like a lunatic. I don’t know if it’s because you are high on some ‘magic beans’ or whatever but we’re leaving. You need a doctor, a psychologist, or a goddamn exorcist.”

I expected her to be angry. Furious. Fight me. Something. But she didn’t. She got on her hands and knees and kissed my feet, whimpering like a dog who had been struck for stealing food.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,’ Her voice had raised an octave, threatening all the glass in her dorm room. “Don’t leave, your majesty. Please don’t go! I hate when you close the door. I’ll return the Forest of Tines. I’ll make you whole.”

My back hit the door. She was atop me in moments. I froze. She crawled up to me like a spider, smashed the cowl of the mask into my face, and licked me through the burlap.

“For the good of the Kingdom.”

Everything she said, every word, every action, every tear she cried, and all the begging, strung a cord deep within the well of my soul. All those desires to run, my insecurity, bubbled up like an overflown septic tank. I would have fallen apart right there if Denise hadn’t opened the door and caused me to fall into the safe, musty air of the dorm hallway.

I spilled out, gasping. Jessica towered over me like an effigy of her former self. She smiled, but her eyes were fountains of silent tears.

“You two love birds having a good time,” Denise asked, fiddling in her bag and not yet appraising the situation.

I pulled Denise into the hallway and slammed the door. Jessica didn’t react. I drew in frantic breaths. Then she started to knock. A light knock that could be confused for a mouse’s footsteps.

“What the hell, Al?”

“Denise. I don’t know what the fuck is going on but Jessica is…I don’t know. Possessed or something. Maybe high because of that Oatman guy?"

“The hell is an ‘Oatman’?”

“Some fucking guy in her phone. I assume who gave her these?”

Denise took the pills from me and looked to the door. “Oh, no."

“Whatever she said, don’t hold it against her. She took a lot but I think she’ll be fine after some sleep. Just go home. I’ve dealt with a lot of dudes on these kinds of trips. I’ll mellow her out and give you a call in the morning.”

“But—”

“I know you want to do the right thing, Al. But pushing the issue with someone who is blasted out of their gourd is never a good idea, man. Trust me.”

I took one last look at the door and relented. Denise would be with her and once she was sober, we’d figure it out. People do these drugs all the time. Jessica wasn’t going crazy. She just was having a rough couple of days. That’s all. That’s what I told myself over the next couple of hours until my body gave out and I fell asleep.

My ringtone thundered, waking me from dreamless sleep. I snatched my phone and gleamed the time. It was just a little past five in the morning.

“Hello?” I said. My lips were dry enough to be Velcro, sticking and peeling away from each other.

“Al. You need to get over here.”

“What’s going on?” I shouted, darting to my truck.

“Just hurry. Al. Something's wrong. Jessica. Don’t!” The sound of crashing glass erupted through the receiver.

I sped across campus until I was right in front of her door. My tires squealed to a halt. I threw on my hazards and abandoned my truck. I yanked my keys but pulled the spare out from the sunvisor and threw it on the dash. If someone needed to move it—steal it for all I cared—they could. When I rounded the hallway to Jessica’s room, I saw Denise standing there, clutching her phone in terror. A small gathering of students had filtered out from their rooms. A couple were mid-discussion about calling campus security. They all were surrounded by a hallway littered with broken stuff. Shattered glass, pieces of a vase, lights, a lamp or two, the decorations from yesterday. It wasn’t until I was next to Denise that I noticed the commonality of all the items.

They were all things we’d gotten together.

“Is she still high?” I asked Denise. Unaware I had begun to whisper.

“No, she’s not fucking high. I woke her up, she tells me she was feeling better and even apologizes for her loopy bullshit. Then she sees a photo of you two on her desk, zones out, and starts freaking the fuck out.”

I peeked into the room as Denise spoke. Jessica was on her bed, head on her knees, rocking back and forth.

“Did you two break up or something?”

“What? No. Just stay here.”

I inched towards the door. Smashed bits of glass and memories crunched underneath my feet. Jessica didn’t react when I entered, but as I got closer I noticed she was saying something underneath her breath.

“…a witch.”

“Jess?”

By the time I got to her bedside, she was clear like an audio loop of an asylum patient played straight into my brain.

“Not-a-witch.”

I reached out for her and she launched at me. I fell to the ground. My head crashed into the floor. A sharp piece of glass nicked me. Blood surged from the wound and into the dorm carper. Then she was atop me, beating my chest with all her might. Her fists slammed down on my ribcage like she were an animal trying to break through a clam shell. Each strike crumbled my heart beneath.

“Not a witch! I’m not a witch. I’m not a witch!” Fervent spit rained on my face. I tried to restrain her, to hold her, but she fought me. She punched me in the face hard enough that I saw stars. Her dormmates flooded in to get her off of me.

“Jessica, it’s okay!” I shouted. My nose dribbled blood into my mouth, but all I wanted was to reach her.

Then, her anger broke into tears. She went limp in our arms. All the will to fight was gone in an instant. I went to her. Fearful of her like one might be to a wild animal. But when my hands reached her, she didn’t snap. Didn’t beat me. Didn’t attack. She just looked at me.

“I’m sorry.” She choked out through the sobs. “I’m so sorry—”

She ran.

I darted after her, staggering from my beating and across the chaos strewn about the floor. I was hot on her tail but Jess was a runner and I was a fucking book nerd. By the time I had gotten down the stairs, I saw the taillights of my Ranger speed out of the parking lot. The cold autumn wind bit me as I watched her leave. I slapped my person for my keys. Then, I remembered the dash and fell to my knees. I pulled out my phone to call but she never answered. I waited two hours. Two hours of constant calling to have her come back. We’d figure this out. It’d be okay. But nothing happened. She never came back.

I called every ten minutes. Nothing. And that was it. I didn’t know she was gone until I received a letter in the mail four months later. Penned by Dr. Benjamin E. Quaker from Plainview, Nebraska. Oatman.

Reading his name, I wasn’t convinced he was real. When I looked up his practice on Google Maps, it showed a barren parking lot. But Plainview was close. The thought of her being so close, yet so far, sundered my heart. Reading her note, reading how much she loved me hurt, but still decided to follow through with her plan, is what led me to rehab.

I’m not here to share the details of those beautifully, horrid five pages. I’m here for answers. I’ve tried to run from this. But I’m armed with a three-month sobriety chip and a failed college degree now. No one believes me about my fiancé’s suicide. They think I am exaggerating how different she had become. They kept telling me there were signs and we missed them. That Jessica was putting on a brave face. That the drugs played a part.

Bullshit. There is something else going on here. Something bigger than a big girl with a brave mask. I hope there are people here who will make sense of it. Jessica talked about this page a lot. She said it was a community willing to listen—to indulge in the unexplained and odd. I hope she’s right. Because I need someone to believe.

But they weren’t there. They didn’t see the whole picture. They didn’t read her suicide note. They didn’t read its last line.

“I’m sorry, Al. It’s not your fault. It never was your fault. It was him. It was the Antler King.”

"Come again?" I said, finishing the last swirl of my signature.

"That's the last part of the gig," Rustburrow coughed out as he inhaled the last bite of his cro-nut, showering the table and both of us in buttery flakes. "Studio closes just before sunset. You get here 15 minutes earlier, do your tasks, and lock the freezer no later than 7 p.m."

"Why does the studio own a freezer?"

He leaned back and swallowed. A deep breath wheezed in and out of him, indecisive on whether it was for annoyance or contemplation. He had heard that question before. Many times. His dense monobrow suggested he was considering whether he would have to hear it again.

"Do you want this job?"

The chill from last night's air still lingered in my bones. I was out of gas, and the two blankets I got from St. Mary's weren't holding up. We were well into October, and I didn't know how many more nights in the Acura I could handle.

"Yes, sir. I do."

"It won't work out if you are curious. Believe me. Some doors? Better left shut."

I sat with that. Nothing about it sounded good. I'd heard the stories about these Hollywood types. Was it a vat of baby oil? A baby plantation to harvest fresh stem cells? The more my mind wandered, the more I wondered if I could handle whatever it was. If it were horror beyond my stomach, what would I do? Then my eyes landed on the contract again, and the length of the zeros made me unsure.

"Lock it after seven. Got it."

"No later than seven, kid. That's important."

"Alright, alright. Got it."

He didn't seem pleased with that, but he reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out my gear: an Outer Lights Security hat, a metal clipboard case with a laminated paper taped to the front that had the word "CHECKLIST" bolded at the top in faded red letters, and a Glock 19.

"Whoa. I get issued a gun for this job?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"No, I just... didn't expect it. Do studios typically have armed security?"

His eyes sat half-open, unamused. He reached over to the black security hat, analyzed it, then matted it down on my head.

"Do now." He smiled. His extra cheek fat curled around the corners of his lips, creating an echo of a double smile like he was silently laughing at me. "Listen, the talent we have here requires a bit of extra protection. I ain't no yuppie. If someone tries to get to where they ain't supposed to be, you use that. You hear?"

I nodded.

"Anyway," He brushed away some arm hair infringing on his Rolex. "Shift starts in about an hour. Why don't you watch from the screening room?"

"Is that okay?"

"Course. Welcome to the Outer Lights family."

I left Rustburrow's office and made my way to the screening area. The Glock heavy at my side. Always so light thing in the hand, but heavy on my hip, and in my guts. I'd never really gotten used to feeling. I'd fired plenty in my life. A lot less now since leaving Beaumont PD, but still. Authority. The power to do what needed to be done. Such big things. You think you know what you'd do, how you'd act in a situation where you needed to pull that trigger, to be someone's hero. Then you get to the moment and just about shit yourself.

The screening room was dead save for three individuals. The first was a man in his late forties. The studio lights beamed straight at me from the pure reflection on his head. Wafts of cigarette smoke enraptured him as he sat, watching the talent perform from his director's chair. To his immediate left at the foot of the stage was someone in an all-black suit, sunglasses indoors, total G-Man. He was the only one who turned to me the moment I opened the door. He saw my hat and gave me a faint nod of acknowledgement that I didn't return. The last, however, was the one who caught my attention.

Atop the stage, centered by six lights of soft white, blood red, and sapphire blue, was the star. He was young, no more than twenty-three. Dusty blond hair, striking green eyes, and a grin that said he knew more than you did. Draped over his shoulders was a scarred blue suit coat, painted with grime and old blood. He was shirtless underneath and had a gun in his hand. He then looked down at it in his lap, switching his expression in an instant, conveying a man thinking thoughts of impending oblivion.

"If she were actually fucking here, we would have Margorey enter stage left. Fuck sake, can we get an intern or something to read her lines to Thomas?" The director said. I could see the back of his chair said Stillwell. The man in the suit nodded at him and looked behind the curtain on the stage. At his glance, a frail nineteen-year-old or something jogged out, her brow drenched in sweat, a script in hand. Everyone stopped, waiting for each other to continue, until the director scoffed.

"It's your line, sweetie."

"Oh, sorry," She mumbled, flipping to the page in a frantic rush. She cleared her mousey throat and continued the scene in a jilted performance.

"Isaac? Just put the gun down. Whatever's wrong, we can fix it."

"They're gone, Alyssa."

"What do you mean, 'they're gone', Isaac? What happened? Where is everyone?"

Thomas, now Isaac, looked to her, his brow furrowed into a grimace, lip quivering, eyes misty. "Alyssa..."

"Isaac, where are the others?"

"What about me? I'm right here! Right here, having to live with it." His eyes hovered on the gun.

"Isaac, where are they?"

"How can you ask me that?" He said, looking to her now. "Don't you dare look at me like that. You don't get to judge me. You didn't make those choices. You didn't feel the hunger we felt."

Stillwell spoke, reading the stage direction, and the actors followed suit. "As Isaac starts to cry, Alyssa hugs him, embracing as the truth of what he did in those mountains, what they chose to do to survive, becomes known. She buries herself in his shoulder, apologizing for everything. But Isaac looks on to the mountain, looking on to what was left behind. Was it his friends or all of himself?"

Thomas then looked to the stage, right at me. His eyes gripped me like a thousand pleading hands begging me to stare. Gooseflesh broke out all over my body as he spoke.

"The jungle stole their lives. But I stole their souls. With every bite."

"Cut."

Thomas stood up, ignoring the intern. "You don't think that line at the end is a bit too much?"

Stillwell raised an eyebrow. "It wraps the story up well."

"Yeah, but what about just, 'I stole their souls...' I mean, the audience already knows I nibbled on my friends up there."

Stillwell looked at his watch. It was 6 p.m. He looked back at Thomas, and they had a silent conversation about that. "It's a good point, Tom. I'll consider it on the rewrite. We'll pick up tomorrow when Margory is here and not coked out in a Denny's shitter or wherever the fuck she is. Let's clear out so Security can close up shop."

They did. Not a single word or glance at me. I watched the room clear and, in a few minutes, it was just me. The majority of the checklist was basic items: cut the power to the stage, conduct walkthroughs at three-hour intervals, ensure building access points are secure by 6:30. All standard stuff I'd done before in some fashion. I knocked them out swiftly and was left with the last three items.

"Let in the groupie?" I read.

I followed the instructions, making my way to a service entrance deep in the heart of the studio. I opened the door, mostly to get a view of what to expect, when I heard a short scream as someone scattered to the ground. I looked down to see a young girl on her knees, looking up at me with a wounded expression. She was a frail thing. Pencil skirt, low-cut top, curly brown hair, a dense amount of foundation, and clashing red lipstick.

"Sorry," I said, helping her up. "I didn't see you there."

"It's okay." She said, though I could tell it wasn't. Still, she made an effort to put me at ease, and I appreciated that. I gave her a once-over and saw she now sported a small splotch of crimson on her left knee.

"Let's get you a bandage for that. It looks like a good scrape."

"No, that's okay. I'll clean it up in the bathroom."

I insisted. While cleaning her up, I found out her name was Regina. She was twenty, or so she told me, and that she was so, so, so thankful to be here. However, when the hydrogen peroxide hit her skin, her positive energy crumbled, and she stomped her good leg as if I was amputating the other.

"So, you know the actor? Thomas?" I asked, hoping to distract her. It worked. She lit up like Figueroa Corridor.

"No, but I really want to. We met at a coffee shop while I was practicing my lines—I'm an actress."

"Uh-huh," I said as I finished wrapping her bandage.

"He was so sweet, said he really liked my stuff, and asked if I could swing by after he finished rehearsal."

I was sure Thomas did like some of her "stuff", but I didn't have the heart to tell her. The girl was too young for me to be crushing her dreams. I looked over at the checklist as she prattled on for another minute or two. Next item was up: Take Groupie to Talent Manager.

"Well, let's get you backstage." As we turned around into the hallway, I all but crashed into Suit. Who stood there like a brick wall in both size and demeanor.

"6:43," He grunted.

"Sorry?"

He tapped his watch. "You're late. She was supposed to be with me at 6:35."

"Yeah, sorry. She fell on the way in, and I wanted to get her patched up first."

He looked at her, snatched off his glasses, and dropped to his knees, analyzing her wound. Regina shifted back and forth as he glared at her leg, but she did well otherwise to hide her discomfort. Then, Suit clicked his tongue in disapproval.

"Not good."

"What? It's just a scrape."

"Yeah, I am fine!"

He stood up, looked at me, and shrugged. "We'll see, I guess. You are the one who's going to hear about it."

I didn't know what that meant, but he didn't give me any more time to contemplate it.

"Follow me, ma'am," She did like a giddy dog. I watched them walk off, some sinking feeling in my gut, but I wasn't sure from what. Was it for her? Or was it because of Suit's words? As I reflected on that, Regina looked back at me before she went around the corner, waved, and smiled. Then she was gone.

One item left.

No earlier than 6:55, but absolutely no later than 7:00, lock the freezer.

I open up the clipboard case, and inside was one of the most arcaric locks I had ever seen. A massive steel padlock with a thick two-inch iron key. I glanced at my watch, and the time read 6:54.

"Shit." I gave a brisk jog further into the studio, the lights in the corridor getting further and further apart. In my panic, I hadn't realized I was following Suit and Regina's steps. I thought they must have taken a different route, but as I followed the studio map more, I knew that wasn't the case. This was a one-way path. Three minutes to the deadline, I made it to a staircase that descended into the earth. A pitch-black void into nothing. Illuminated only by a single slit at the bottom, where the freezer door was barely ajar. I crept down. Sweat broke out on my neck. When I made it halfway, careful to avoid each creak and groan of the floorboards, I heard voices coming from inside.

"What the fuck is this? What happened to her knee?" This voice was new. Deep. No, thunderous. It rolled up the stairs like the boulder trap from Indiana Jones. When it reached me, my brain struggled to process it into language.

"She fell." That one was clearly Suit.

"She fell?"

"That's what the Security Guard said."

"And what am I supposed to do with that? You know she won't heal."

"I understand, sir."

"No, you don't!" Chains rattled. Something large was lifted and thrown, crashing into the wall below. The metal walls belted as the hard mass bent and warped the steel. Worry plunged into my heart as they described Regina. My hand snapped to my gun as I descended, quickening my pace.

"Calm down," Suit shouted. "It's a scrape. She's exactly what you wanted otherwise."

"She was perfect." The voice rumbled in an almost melancholy way. It swelled in my stomach like the base of some ballad.

"She still is. Do you know how hard it is to find someone with the exact aerolas you wanted? She even has an inverted navel."

"Find another then. This one is ruined."

"No."

"What did you say?" The voice seethed.

"Just... please. Can you at least try it on?"

It was then that I made it to the door. My eyes instantly searched through the crack. The freezer was filled with bodies. They weren't hung on hooks like food, but in neat, vacuum-sealed rows of industrial hangers like a macabre closet. Just beyond the door was Suit, his back to me. Beyond him, Thomas stood in front of an unconscious Regina. Then, his head snapped up, his jaw separated from his skull with a brutal crunch. A two-foot grey hand sprouted from Thomas's throat and used his forehead as leverage to pull the rest of it out. Another hand came out. Then, another. When the body that was Thomas crumbled to the ground like a skin suit without any bones, a writhing mass of floating hands, branching out of some undulating distortion in space, floated before Regina. At 6:59, the hands pried open her mouth and crawled in, inch by inch, cracking and breaking bone as it tunneled inside of her.

My hand was glued to my gun. I knew I should run in. Save her. That was my job, right? To protect and serve? At least it was. And once again I was here. All the power, all the authority, and all I could do was fucking nothing. I knew that poor kid didn't deserve this. And as that conflict roiled within me, Suit turned around to face me. He wore an expression of pure indifference. No hate, surprise, or worry. He shook his head. A warning. But was it for me or against me?

As I made my decision, I thought about what Rustburrow said to me in the interview. I hated that he was right.

And I locked the door.

Everyone else is gone. Just the two of us left. It took me 8 years to realize how hard I have been running from this, running from Algernon‘s Lip, hoping to forget our little Plymouth Rock of Hell. But that is the thing about ghosts, isn’t it?

They don’t haunt you to kill. They haunt you to remember.

"Donatello's my favorite."

It was the first thing Tommy ever said to me. I looked up from my secretive doodling, concealing the finishing touches on Raphael's mask, worried it had somehow been gleaned from the crook of my elbow. When I noticed it was only Tommy, a twinge of relief washed over me.

Even at twelve years old, Tommy was as unfortunate an individual as one could look. Square in the torso and from deep poverty. He shared ancestry with those dilapidated refrigerators left to rot; white, stained, skewed, mingling among the rust of your neighbor's five scattered cars across a dirt yard. His voice was much the same. A dull hum that stumbled into language. Somewhere between a lisp and an indication of mental deficiency. He had beady black eyes behind two-inch-thick frames, perched atop a statuesque nose. His lips were forever chapped, and he licked them raw daily. The worst of it? There wasn’t more. The cold truth was Tommy was just smart enough to confuse the lines between disabled and freak. A perfect presentation of the struggling lower class of social worth. Not dumb enough to be pitied for clout, but not normal enough to avoid getting the shit beat out of him.

Everything I knew of Tommy at that point was derived from pure survival. Middle school was a jungle. His presence at my table broke me into a cold sweat. There weren’t many rungs between us on the invisible ladder, but I still believed—no, I knew—that what little cushion I had could be lost by pure exposure. It feels so stupid to think about how petrified I was. Even now, alone in my car years later, my heart reflexively falls into those familiar beats. Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrumthrumthrumthrumthrum. Prey rabbits avoiding wolves. To congregate in packs was how you drew predators. That survival voice screamed at me to run. I might have even lifted from my chair.

But I also loved Ninja Turtles.

"Raphael's the coolest, even if he gets mad at dumb things," I said, mumbling like I didn’t care what I was talking about. The words left like vomit, beyond my control. Some inner screw shook free. I avoided eye contact as to feign a lack of acknowledgement. My favorite spot to sit; right atop the fence.

He laughed. In an odd juxtaposition to his appearance, it was full. Honest.

"Yeah. That's why he's so tough." The "tough" of his sentence dragged before fading into a half-dropped syllable. Then, he pushed up his glasses and did some stupid impression of Wushu. Each chop and kick triggered all cylinders.

"Run! Look. Make sure no one is watching you, loser. Freak. Freak. Freak!" My frontal cortex screamed. I shook, ready to bolt, or conjure some awkward excuse for why I, of all people, shouldn't be talking to this loser. But the child in me, that stubborn fragment not yet killed by Travis D. in Algebra, pinned me in an armbar and wrestled control back. I laughed, too. We both laughed. We spent the next hour talking about all the things I had hidden away in shame. Tommy liked them all. The more we had in common, the greater this oasis I found grew. No more hiding. Just me.

“Dude! These rock.” He said, flipping through my sketchbook. I still have it. It's resting on the dashboard in front of me. The same drawings of Yu-Gi-Oh monsters, Toonami classics, and Disturbed album covers. None of it pussy wetting material to say the least, but Tommy got more and more excited with each flip of the page. One conversation turned to two. Then, it was game nights on Saturdays. Before I knew it, Tommy and I helped each other survive middle school.

For the next three years, we were socially homeless. Wandering from group to group, going anywhere someone would tolerate us, surviving at all costs. We found our niches, endured a lot of beatings, but came out the other side. However, things changed in our freshman year. Both socially and literally, Tommy grew wide, but I grew tall. He stayed where we had been, an honest guy with uncool hobbies and unfortunate looks. I got bigger, put on a few pounds of muscle, started playing football, and got noticed by a couple of girls. I started to hide my hobbies—myself. It became second nature. I lived in the juxtaposition of outwardly cringing when I would see some dude Naruto run down the hallway, while smothering the part of me that envied them.

The more I buried myself, the more I ended up in circles of people who, not three years prior, had been stomping on my back for kicks. You think I would be bitter about that. But I hadn't realized how far from my mind it had left me. It turns out, the less weight you have tossed on your back, the lighter you are. Like a trained dog, you stop doing the behavior that got you the belt. You stop being honest with yourself. The God’s honest truth, the only truth, is you are so desperate for it to stop, you don't even care why it did. You obsess over preserving that peace. Then, you are so far away you don't even really remember what you left behind. Tommy and I stayed together through sheer force of will. As I grew more social, I dragged him along, convinced it was just bad luck that kept him down. After all, if I could be accepted, he could be too. I didn't know what we were walking into then. I didn't know what we would find up there.

I became a running back for the Billboy Bulldogs at the end of freshman year. I quite literally ran into Roman at practice. After dusting off, I found out that the relaxed, buff, black dude was a huge nerd who loved Mortal Kombat. I hadn't found someone like me who never seemed to struggle. Roman wore who he was on his sleeve. The bitterness in me wondered if all I needed to do was be tall, dark, and handsome, but I knew it was more to it. He invited me over, and three sets of Raiden v. Liu Kang made us thick as thieves. He introduced Tommy and me to Darren, Cameron, and Shilo from there. This was the group I dragged Tommy into.

This was the group that took us to Algernon's Lips.

It was October of 2006. We were tucked away under the bleachers, skipping 4th period. Tommy protested, Darren called him a loser, Cameron told him studying was for "the gays", and Roman read a book while it all happened. They went on without us, and I pleaded with Tommy that it was just a hangout and he should come. One mention of cheer practice going on at the same time won the day. Tommy was a nice guy, but he was human, after all. We watched the girls in their weirdly inappropriate outfits perform maneuvers, smoking cigarettes, and dropping our GPAs.

“You guys hear about Tristan?” Darren asked, his long blond bangs curtaining the smoke that slithered through his teeth. Girls ate up his alt fringe schtick. He handed me the dart. Tommy raised an eyebrow at me, but I shrugged and dragged it. I swallowed my coughs so as not to look like a bitch and handed it to Roman. He took a quarter of it down easily.

“That motherfucker who died in Spring?” Cameron said, hanging from the underbelly of the bleachers. His shirt sheeted over his face, revealing the muscle definition he had carved this past summer. These days, you were lucky if he only took his shirt off twice a day. Tommy glanced up from his comic as he spoke, and darted back down when he and Cameron's eyes met. He often did that. No matter how much I persuaded him to stand his ground. I winced in embarrassment, but didn’t bring any attention to him.

“Yeah. Heard he fell, if you catch my meaning, straight off that ridge,” Darren said.

“The Lips?” Roman said, looking away from the pages of the Spawn comic he was reading over Tommy's shoulder.

"Yeah," He continued. "Another one bites the dust on Ghost Mountain. That's, like, 4 people now in the past 30 years?"

"Five." Tommy corrected.

"Whatever," Darrren said, rolling his eyes.

“Nah, man," Roman said. "It's just a shitty trail with no rails. Guy probably just slipped trying to take a piss. It's only haunted when you want to get a girl into your tent.”

Shilo put six inches of straight brown skater locks behind his ear. It was barely past third period, and he was blazed out of his mind. I had no idea how he hadn’t failed out.

“No, dude. That place is downright spooky. Things get lost—Blair Witch style. I heard people go up there and lose memories, man. It happened to me.”

“Shilo,” Darren said, “The last two times you were there, you were so deep in your skunk weed, you threw up on Tasha, and asked who stole your car.”

“…and I never found it. Things. Go. Missing.”

“I drove you, man.” I said. He looked at me, but not really. Guy was on another planet.

"Hey, Ryan," Tommy said. "You hear that Ratchet and Clank Future is coming out?"

Darren and Cameron raised an eyebrow at me. I responded instantly. "Huh? Nah, man. I don't mess with that stuff."

"The fuck is that?"

"Some game about a Rat or something," Cameron said.

"Fucking weird."

"God of War II looks tight though," Roman said, deep in thought.

"Ooo. Yeah, it does." We all laughed. Tommy looked at me, confused, and I just shrugged with apologetic eyes.

"What made you bring up Tristan?" I asked.

"I thought we could go check it out." He said, snatching the comic out of Tommy's hands. He flinched out of instinct, and Roman raised his hands in a "what the hell" gesture.

"I was reading that, man."

"I'm thinking we ask Ryan's girl and see if any of the cheerleaders are down for a ghost hunt this Saturday." He turned to the field where the girls were practicing. There, at the top like the star she was, beautiful blond curls pulled tight into her ponytail, was Amber, straining every gorgeous muscle in her body. I wondered why she ever went for a loser like me, but I knew why. Or rather, I knew what she didn't know about me. And out of all the new things I had gotten with my new 15 minutes of fame, Amber was what I wanted to protect most.

"I don't know, man," I started. "Amber isn't a huge horror fan." I also thought about how some of her friends had spoken about Darren and Tommy, but I didn't want to say that. Darren looked at me, confused and quietly angry. The whole group went quiet as the tension thrummed. It always happened suddenly. Despite us all being friends, Darren pushed a lot of people around. He forced issues. Got his way. But he was well-liked. The sad part is, looking back, I was stronger and taller than him at that point. But not the meek loser in me. That never got bigger. It stayed the same, pathetic size. Right to the end.

"But... maybe they'd be down for a candlelight vigil? For Tristan."

A flick switched. He smiled and wrapped an arm around me. Relief bubbled in and over me as he did, and I found myself smiling too.

"Now that's a fucking idea. That'll get them nice and wet for sure." He rubbed his nose, deep in thought. Cameron nodded in approval. Roman, the voice of reason, chuckled, saying, "You're a freak, man." Still, I laughed too. When I looked at Tommy, almost as if to give him a cue to join, he was just looking at the dirt.

Amber and her friends took the bait once I mentioned Cameron would be there. At least three cheerleaders wanted to hear his rendition of *Your Beautiful*, for some reason. So, we agreed to meet on Saturday. Tommy texted me on Monday night, and again, and again. He had texted me fifteen times between that Monday and Thursday night. I finally glanced at our text threads on Thursday night, when I was drunk in Cameron's basement, worried only about how Amber's thighs felt in her skirt. Maybe it was the Coors or the time between responses, but I became acutely aware of how long it had been since I wanted to hang out with Tommy.

"Yo."

He responded immediately. "Hey."

"Want to link up for gaming tomorrow night?"

"Hell yeah. Okami?"

True to our word, our eyes were glued to the CRT that was burning the dye out of the carpet in the center of my room. Tommy was soaring through the game and for the first hour or two, it was just us. Joking. Talking about anime, when Amber texted me with some delightful photos, my attention quickly shifted, and the distance between us returned. I don't know how long we sat in silence, but eventually Tommy broke through.

"Hey, Ryan?"

"Sup?"

"Maybe we shouldn't go tomorrow."

I remember an instant pang of annoyance at his words. Tommy did this often. He'd back out at the last minute, and I would beg him not to. I could see our entire evening before us the moment he asked the question. He'd plead we do something like this instead—just hanging around with our dicks in our hands, I would then commit to convincing him to go, regaling him with reasons why he should. I'd partially lie about people wanting him to come, hammering home the same tired truth about his reputation. At which point, he would either get sad and agree or go quiet till I left. It got old. Yet I had convinced myself it was my job to pull him up. The more I embraced that manufactured responsibility, the more I began to resent him for not being appreciative.

"Why's that, man?" I sighed, harder than I intended, too.

"They don't like me."

"You know that's not true, dude. Roman loves you."

He turned to me. His eyes glimmered with wetness, reflecting the flickers of watercolor light from the video game. "And Darren? Cameron? What about them? Roman won't even talk to me unless you're around."

I didn't understand why he was getting so worked up about this, but it made my skin crawl with frustration. It felt like I was trying to put an oxygen tank on a drowning man, and all he did was thrash in my arms.

"Dude, it's because—" I cut myself off and bit my tongue. Don't, I thought.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No," He snapped, now full on crying. "No, fucking tell me."

I didn't. I just let him sit there, alone in those feelings, like a true asshole. Then, almost inaudible under his breath, he whispered in a broken voice:

*"Why do you even hang out with me?"*

"Look, I know I always say this, but let's go to the party. I promise it will be great."

He wanted to say, no. I could see it. But whether it was my apology or the emotions of the situation, he didn't. He perked up, reached into his closet, and dusted out an Ouija board.

"Maybe they'll get a kick out of this, huh? A seance after the vigil?"

"Dude, that's perfect." And I truly thought it was.

Saturday night came. We exited Shilo's 2002 Explorer into the crisp air at Algernon's Lips. The hiking trail that led to the Lips wasn't truly a ridge, but it was a steep climb into a dense thicket of trees. The path sloped up at a roughly 60-degree angle for about three-fourths of a mile. At which point, it plateaued into a small clearing. That was the Lip. The only path to it was one eroded down by the soles of horny climbers. It would be a hike either way.

"The things I do for pussy..." Roman said, zipping up his parka.

"Come on," Cameron snorted. He wore a thick hoodie and bike shorts. Still had to show off his calves. "It ain't that bad. Coach T has made us do worse."

"Are the girls gonna' be okay to get up here?" I asked.

"Not to worry, bro," Shilo said. "I shall escort our maidens safely to our haven."

A silence sat with the group for a moment. "So, again, are the girls gonna be okay to make it up there?"

"Don't worry, Ryan. It'll be cool," Darren said. "Besides, the longer it takes for them to make the climb, the more eager they will be to stick around." He raised his eyebrows to me, Cameron rubbed his hands together at the thought, and I exhaled through my nose in confirmation. Roman and Tommy filed out of the car. Roman gathered up all the lights and candles, struggling to fit everything into his box. He was in the middle of trying to juggle a fire extinguisher into the box when Shilo came up.

"Let me bring that up later, man."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, it's no sweat. You guys have got your hands full. Besides, it will let me show the ladies how serious I take safety."

We thanked Shilo, who went back down the trail to wait for the girls. We then turned to Tommy, who had his own bag of tricks that he and I had prepared the night before. As we all began our ascent, I looked to him, gave a nod, cuing him to speak.

"Oh, guys," Tommy said, dropping his bag. "I brought a few things to make the night a bit more e-exxciting." Darren and Cameron moved into position, likely prepared to roast him for pulling out something stupid. Instead, Tommy ushered out a 24-pack case of Natty Lite we stole from my dad and the Ouija board.

"Drinks and entertainment." He said, confidence booming from him for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

Cameron clicked his tongue. "Very fucking nice, Tomcat." He had never called Tommy that a day in his life. He tried to conceal his excitement the best he could, but we all ignored it when he failed to do so. Dog have his day, kind of thing.

"Aphrodisiacs. Nice," Roman said, patting him on his shoulder. We all looked to Darren subconsciously for approval. He sneered but ultimately broke into a smile.

"Great idea. Now, can we stop sucking each other off and get up there?"

We marched up. Dread sank into us all the moment we crossed from the pavement onto the dirt. Humans never truly escaped our animal instincts. It's in me now, years later, as I sit in my car, waiting, aware of every flinch and flicker in the night. I was in tune with it then, too. We passed some point of no return the moment we ascended. With each crunch of leaves underneath the light of the pregnant moon, as our breaths grew heavy, our fingers cold, and our desire to reach the top desperate, so too did this inevitability within us. We didn't know what killed Tristan. We all but knew he jumped. Yet we were all afraid to find out if we were wrong. The air, the forest, the Lips, all of it could sense it—the hesitation to learn the truth. It returned that tension in kind.

When we arrived, we were ill-prepared for what it could look like, but breathtaking is how I remember it. A small slanted patch of grass that angled itself in such a way to face the moon and the remaining forest below. I could see Amber and me, lying in the Red Fescue, looking at the stars over the edge from the safety of our tent, acting out all the things she had texted me about the night before. Despite the slant, the majority of it was safe to walk on. The very apex of the slant and the edge of the Lip were the only dangerous parts. The Lip itself was surely the reason for so many deaths. Soft, craggy ground which seemed to squeak in anticipation as you neared it.

"Trying to take a dive, Ryan? Get away from there and help me get this blanket set up." Darren barked.

I hopped to it, and we all got to work setting everything up. A weird silence fell between all of us as we got into a work rhythm. That invisible thing between us grew more tangible by the moment. We had made it to the Lip on edge. All keenly aware of whatever threatening miasma hung about. Everyone except for Tommy, that was. He was on cloud nine from his rare moment of appreciation at the base of the trail. He hadn't shown any signs of exhaustion. He drove into the center of the clearing the moment we summited and got to work fast, setting up the candles, boombox, and tents. Roman and I were impressed, Cameron indifferent, and Darren almost seemed irritated that Tommy was in high spirits. Noticing that, I gave Tommy another look to enact another of our rehearsed plans. He saw me, smiled, and sprang into action. He snagged everyone a chilled beer to ease the tension. Cameron hooted in excitement and called him a "beautiful bastard". Even managed to squeeze a thanks out of Darren. I was grinning ear to ear. Happy he was coming out of his shell. This was what I had always wanted. Him, truly in the fold.

We finished setting up and were about 2-3 beers deep when my phone buzzed.

"Shilo says that he and the girls will be here in about 45 minutes."

"Fuck," Darren seethed, slurring his words more than I expected him to be. "I can't wait that long, dude."

"Hey," Tommy said, putting down his beer. It sat among four of its crushed siblings. He had been putting them away. Part of me wanted to warn him, but I also wanted him to live a little. "Why don't we, like, rehearse the seance? You know, for the girls?"

Cameron scoffed. "What is this drama club? Get out of here, dude."

"No, it's a good idea," Darren said, drunkenly shoving Cameron. "I want to know my lines before Rachel gets here. You think she'll like me, Ryan?"

I had no idea how to answer him. One, because it was more vulnerable than I had ever seen him be, and two, because I knew how deeply repulsed Rachel was with him, and any guy for that matter.

"Never hurts to shoot your shot."

"Here-here." Roman lifted his can and crushed it on his forehead. We all did it in agreement Everyone but me. Who got a huge ring on my skull, a headache, and a bunch of drunk assholes laughing at me. For once, Tommy was one of them. That made me happy.

The jokes died when our hands landed on the planchette. The wind seemed louder, the moon brighter, the Lip closer. Electric numbness surged through my fingertips. We were on the precipice of something, I could tell. A subtle vibration ran through the board. I looked over to see Darren stilling a shake he couldn't conceal. Roman looked more focused than I had ever seen. Cameron noticed Darren alongside me, gave me a "you seeing this?" glance, and went back to the board. Tommy, in rare form, led it off.

"The energy levels are perfect for this tonight," He murmured in a low growl.

"What does that mean?" Darren asked.

"You can feel it, can't you?" Tommy said. "The thread of something else. The veil lifted. Cut. You've all been much quieter since we got here. I know you sense it."

"What is it?" Roman asked, a tenderness to his voice I hadn't heard.

"It. The Great Divide. This place has seen so much death. Accident or foul? Are these spirits vengeful or benevolent? Perhaps that is for us to decide. Maybe by calling them, by speaking them into life, we taint their energy and give them shape. The question then changes. It is not who you call, but instead who places it?"

"Jesus Christ..." Darren whispered. His hand flinched, going for his beer before quickly second-guessing himself and placing it back on the board.

"Someone needs to call. It can't be me." Tommy looked at me at that.

"Uh...okay. Who should be call?"

"What are you concerned about minutes?" Darren snapped. "Just fucking pick Tristan."

I nodded. "Tristan, if you are there, could you say, 'hi'?"

The board snapped over to the 'H', and then slowly over to the 'I'.

"Oh. What the..." Cameron started.

"A response," Tommy said, shaken. It terrified me. "Quickly, make sure you take him into you. His spirit needs a place to reside. A home. Otherwise, it will leave, and the connection will be broken. Ryan, keep going."

We all breathed in deep and kept going.

"How did you die, Tristan?"

F-A-L-L

"If one of you is moving this damn thing, I swear to God—" Darren started.

"Quiet. We need to concentrate." In a rare moment, Darren shut up at Tommy's command.

I continued. "Was it an accident?"

NO.

We all took our hands off the board for a moment. Every branch, bug, cicada, and critter seemed amplified tenfold at that exact moment. I look at Tommy. The genuine worry in his eyes gave me pause.

"Guys, maybe we should stop." He said.

"Just ask the question, Ryan," Roman said, Darren and Cameron nodded.

"Okay. Tristan, who pushed you?"

The planchette moved around like crazy. It hovered over some letters before circling the board again and again. After what felt like an eternity, it gave its answer.

B-E-H-I-N-D Y-O-U

We all turned around in a flash. Then, a blood-curdling scream erupted right in our ears.

"BLAH!" Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs. We all screamed in return, long and hard.

"Pretty good, right?" Tommy said, chuckling.  

"You motherfucker!" Darren said, reaching over the board to shove him. “You think this is funny?”

"W-what? You guys thought it was scary, right? Think of how the girls will feel."

"Man, I knew we shouldn't have let Ryan bring this freak."

"Chill, Darren. It was a good story." I said, trying to shove my heart back in my chest.

"Yeah, Darren. Chill." Tommy sneered.

"The fuck you say to me?" Darren said, standing up, fists clenched. Surprisingly, Tommy stood up to meet him. Up straight, wide as a fridge, he looked scary in this light.

"I said, 'chill'. Or do I need to tell everyone another ghost story so you can finish pissing yourself for real? I'm sure Rachel is going to love the smell."

They got in each other's faces. Roman and I snapped up, separating them.

"Just you wait, fatty. Keep talking like that and see what happens."

"I can’t hear you with Darren in your mouth, Cameron," Tommy shouted back.

"Y'all all need to calm the hell down," Roman said, holding both Cameron and Darren back. One mind, both ready to scrap.

I held Tommy back. His eyes were filled with red-hot tears, and he was strong. Just to hold him at bay took everything I had, and I had never seen him work out a day in his life.

"Dude," I whispered. "What the fuck. You are ruining the night."

He shoved me.

"I'm ruining it? Not this fucking pussy?" He thrusted his whole arm at Darren who tried to surge past Roman, but made no progress. "You guys ask me to tell a ghost story, and I am the bad guy because you all believed it? Give me a fucking break."

"Look, we are all drunk. But, come on, we can let the night keep being fun if we admit it wasn't cool and apologize."

That did it. Somehow, despite all that had happened since we had been friends. I had never seen Tommy angry. Not a single time had I heard him raise his voice beyond a hoarse answer in class. But as my words left my mouth, pure vitriol carved into his features. I took two steps back. He closed the distance.

*"Fuck. You."*

"Me? What did I do?"

"'Apologize'? To the piece of shit bully with a chip on his shoulder? What about me, Ryan? What about the jokes, and the looks, and the threats, huh? Where's my goddamn apology, dick?"

He shoved me, and I crashed onto the rocks.

"Hey, man. Knock it off." Roman said.

"Suck my dick, Roman," Tommy said, spittle flying from his lips. "You can quit the good guy act. I've heard you three talking about me when Ryan takes a piss. You know what he calls me, Ryan? Crisco Cocksucker. Because I am fat and, I guess, gay? That's the guy who "loves" me."

"Tommy—"

"And Cameron is too busy working up the nerve to tell Darren he is in love with him to have his own opinion. What a joke."

"Roman, let me go," Cameron said. Roman didn't, but he was certainly not holding back as much as he had been.

"And you know what, Ryan? I tried. I tried to play pretend as you do. I chased you around all these years because... we were friends. Best friends." He sniffled as his words broke, only for them to reforge into fury. "Then, a handful of pieces of shit treat you nicely because you can run 20 yards faster than most white kids, and all of a sudden, I was dead meat. Just a shit on a doorstep you could drop whenever you wanted."

Water filled my eyes, but I refused to cry. Anger flowed in and out of my blood with each pump of my rapidly racing heart. I hated Tommy in that moment. He had ripped off the scab of my shame, and the bleeding pink tissue underneath seared with the pain of truth against the cold. I hated him because I hated myself. Yet, somehow, the pain I felt, the resentment I had built for him slowly over the years, blended those honest emotions into contemptuous ones. I knew I was committing to feelings I didn't want to, but I was held hostage by the release.

"Shut up, Tommy," I said through clenched teeth.

"You aren’t like them, Ryan!" He shouted, spinning to them. "He plays Magic at home with his little brother. He stays up late to watch Cowboy Bebop. He makes DnD characters in his free time but never wants to join a group. Everything you think is fucking dumb, he loves. And he hides it. You know why? Because he is too afraid to be—"

His nose crunched beneath my fist. Blood erupted across his face and oozed through the clenched crevices of my fingers. The next thing I knew, he was on the ground.

*I ran to him. Apologized. Picked him up, dusted him off, and told Roman, Cameron, and Darren that Tommy was right and that we were leaving. We left down the trail, hitchhiked to town, and left that whole night behind us. It's what I do over and over again in my dreams every night. It's what I wished to see as I dug in every needle.*

Then I remember.

Roman, Darren, and Cameron all descended on him like vultures to carrion. They kicked, beat, and twisted all parts of Tommy. He thrashed, got his licks in here and there, screamed, but they were three, and he was one. I watched it all like a car crash. The paralytic cowardice that Tommy talked about, what had followed me my whole life up to that point, took hold, and I let it. It seeped into my veins like a hard narcotic. I floated away while my best friend was nearly beaten to death by three drunk assholes. As they stomped, kicked, and bashed, I remembered that old quote about the opposite of good. When I blinked, it was over.

"Okay, easy, Tommy," Roman said, as they all stepped back. I snapped back in time to see the glint of a gun Tommy was holding. A polished Ruger SP101. Loaded. He brandished it around wildly. He was in a horrific state. One eye sealed shut, possibly to the point of no return, judging by the amount of crimson which poured from the wound. The other didn't fare much better. His good eye, if it could be called that, was in a permanent squint, assessing all threats as he inched his way towards me. His breath squeezed out of him through a straw-like slit where his nose had been, shattered from where I sucker punched him. His lips sagged down on the left, and I could see the shards of broken teeth piercing through the skin. He dragged his left foot behind him as he kept the other three at gunpoint. It was broken, twisted at an angle I thought impossible.

"Tommy, Tommy, please," I said. The barrel flashed to me. Still, I wasn't afraid.

"Tommy, I am sorry. You were right. You were always right." His battered eye focused on me the best it could. "Let me help you. Please. We'll go to the cops."

"What the fuck, Ryan?" Darren shouted, the gun panned to him, and that shut him up.

"Tommy! Please. I mean it. Just let me help you down the mountain. Please. Please don't let them push you to do this. Please, Tommy. Please."

I was crying at this point when he looked at me. Those tears were for him, for what I did to him. I shouldn't have brought him here. I should have never convinced him that these were good people. We both knew it, but I had deluded myself stupidly these past few years. I poured as much honesty as my voice could muster into my words, and he truly saw it. He hesitated, ever so slightly. A flicker of doubt that I could discern through his crushed visage. The faintest ember of trust. He lowered the muzzle, barely a flinch down, but it was progress. Relief washed over me. I had him. I just had to get him down the mountain.

The fire extinguisher cracked him in the back of the skull with a sickening crunch. He fell like a bag of sand.

Dead weight.

I fell to my knees and looked over him in horror. Shilo, panic in his eyes, looked down at the gun, then to me, and dropped the extinguisher in realization at what he had done.

"Oh fuck, man. What the hell is going on?"

Darren and Cameron lunged forward and wrapped the gun in Cameron's loose shirt. Roman attempted to check his pulse, but then looked at his hands and paused. The same realization dawned on all of them.

"Shilo, where are the girls?" Darren demanded.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

He slapped him. "Where?"

"About 15 minutes down the trail, man. They insisted on going up themselves. What the hell happened, guys?"

Roman, Cameron, and Darren all shared one final look. "He fell. Just like Tristan. Right?"

Their eyes fell on Shilo and I. I said nothing. Just as I did nothing. I buried my knees in the rock and stared at my best friend's corpse.

"Or do I need to remind you that you were the one who hit him with the extinguisher?" He looked to me. "Or threw the first punch?"

"R-right... he fell," Shilo said. They didn't wait for me.

"Drag him to the Lip."

His body scraped across the rock. I went to move, go to him, them, make them stop. Make all this stop. Each attempt to move my body froze it firmer. I banged at the walls of my brain, crying for the friend I had lost, hating myself with each passing second. Yet all I did was stay there, watching the spot where his body had been. I still hear the whispered grunts they made as they hoisted his body to the soft Lip, the squeak of soft earth giving way to Tommy's body and the sound of weight plummeting until the finality of its soft thud at the forest below.

Then, they screamed. More rehearsed than the ghost story. Roman picked me up, saying we had to go. And, my deepest shame, I went. We ran. Down the mountain, away from the adult sins we had uncorked. We retreated into the fraudulent innocence of adolescence. Then, we lied. They by direct means, and I by omission. Tommy fell. We had no service. We were afraid to report it because we had been drinking. We ran as fast as we could. We couldn't find him. The police questioned me the most, but each attempt to talk about Tommy pushed me into a deep isolation. With the campsite cleaned, no fire extinguisher to be found, there was no reason to doubt them. The town searched for three months for Tommy's corpse. I searched six. Nothing. Not a trace. All but forgotten. Not by me. Not anymore. It only took seven years strung out on heroin, haunted by what I am, for me to realize what I must do.

Darren just pulled in. He's been doing well for himself. Day trading or some other stock market, finance stuff. They were all well, actually. Roman, Shilo, and Cameron, all of them fairly happy. Not a single one thought of my stopping by in a negative light. No shame, no confession, nothing. Not a single ounce of guilt percolated their thoughts. Shilo couldn't even remember Tommy's name.

Each time I confronted them, the same way Tommy had at the Lips, I found myself thinking of what he said. That spirits are tainted by those who call them. I figured out that that's what I was to you, Tommy. You came to me, called when I needed you most, and I took your energy, clean and pure, and pushed myself to a place away from you. Left you drained. Tainted. And when I wrapped you around me like a coiled spring, filled it with hate, I balked at the inevitable kickback. I did that. No one else but me. I threw the first punch. I made you go. And when they beat you within an inch of your life, I let them. All because I was too afraid to stand up.

I'm sorry, Tommy. It's not enough, but God, I'm so sorry. I can't make it right. Can't go back. So, let me channel one last time. Let me speak your name that everyone wants to forget.

Be my ghost. So, they can remember.

Everyone else is gone.

Just the two of us left now. It took me 8 years to realize how hard I have been running from this, running from Algernon‘s Lip, hoping to forget our little Plymouth Rock of Hell. But that is the thing about ghosts, isn’t it? They don’t haunt you to kill. They haunt you to remember.

I am done trying to forget.

"Donatello's my favorite."

It was the first thing Tommy ever said to me. I looked up from my secretive doodling, concealing the finishing touches on Raphael's mask, worried it had somehow been gleaned from the crook of my elbow. When I noticed it was only Tommy, a twinge of relief washed over me.

Even at twelve years old, Tommy was as unfortunate an individual as one could look. Square in the torso and from deep poverty. He shared ancestry with those dilapidated refrigerators left to rot; white, stained, skewed, mingling among the rust of your neighbor's five scattered cars across a dirt yard. His voice was much the same. A dull hum that stumbled into language. Somewhere between a lisp and an indication of mental deficiency. He had beady black eyes behind two-inch-thick frames, perched atop a statuesque nose. His lips were forever chapped, and he licked them raw daily. The worst of it? There wasn’t more. The cold truth was Tommy was just smart enough to confuse the lines between disabled and freak. A perfect presentation of the struggling lower class of social worth. Not dumb enough to be pitied for clout, but not normal enough to avoid getting the shit beat out of him.

Everything I knew of Tommy at that point was derived from pure survival. Middle school was a jungle. His presence at my table broke me into a cold sweat. There weren’t many rungs between us on the invisible ladder, but I still believed—no, I knew—that what little cushion I had could be lost by pure exposure. It feels so stupid to think about how petrified I was. Even now, alone in my car years later, my heart reflexively falls into those familiar beats. Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrumthrumthrumthrumthrum. Prey rabbits avoiding wolves. To congregate in packs was how you drew predators. That survival voice screamed at me to run. I might have even lifted from my chair.

But I also loved Ninja Turtles.

"Raphael's the coolest, even if he gets mad at dumb things," I said, mumbling like I didn’t care what I was talking about. The words left like vomit, beyond my control. Some inner screw shook free. I avoided eye contact as to feign a lack of acknowledgement. My favorite spot to sit; right atop the fence.

He laughed. In an odd juxtaposition to his appearance, it was full. Honest.

"Yeah. That's why he's so tough." The "tough" of his sentence dragged before fading into a half-dropped syllable. Then, he pushed up his glasses and did some stupid impression of Wushu. Each chop and kick triggered all cylinders.

"Run! Look. Make sure no one is watching you, loser. Freak. Freak. Freak!" My frontal cortex screamed. I shook, ready to bolt, or conjure some awkward excuse for why I, of all people, shouldn't be talking to this loser. But the child in me, that stubborn fragment not yet killed by Travis D. in Algebra, pinned me in an armbar and wrestled control back. I laughed, too. We both laughed. We spent the next hour talking about all the things I had hidden away in shame. Tommy liked them all. The more we had in common, the greater this oasis I found grew. No more hiding. Just me.

“Dude! These rock.” He said, flipping through my sketchbook. I still have it. It's resting on the dashboard in front of me. The same drawings of Yu-Gi-Oh monsters, Toonami classics, and Disturbed album covers. None of it pussy wetting material to say the least, but Tommy got more and more excited with each flip of the page. One conversation turned to two. Then, it was game nights on Saturdays. Before I knew it, Tommy and I helped each other survive middle school.

For the next three years, we were socially homeless. Wandering from group to group, going anywhere someone would tolerate us, surviving at all costs. We found our niches, endured a lot of beatings, but came out the other side. However, things changed in our freshman year. Both socially and literally, Tommy grew wide, but I grew tall. He stayed where we had been, an honest guy with uncool hobbies and unfortunate looks. I got bigger, put on a few pounds of muscle, started playing football, and got noticed by a couple of girls. I started to hide my hobbies—myself. It became second nature. I lived in the juxtaposition of outwardly cringing when I would see some dude Naruto run down the hallway, while smothering the part of me that envied them.

The more I buried myself, the more I ended up in circles of people who, not three years prior, had been stomping on my back for kicks. You think I would be bitter about that. But I hadn't realized how far from my mind it had left me. It turns out, the less weight you have tossed on your back, the lighter you are. Like a trained dog, you stop doing the behavior that got you the belt. You stop being honest with yourself. The God’s honest truth, the only truth, is you are so desperate for it to stop, you don't even care why it did. You obsess over preserving that peace. Then, you are so far away you don't even really remember what you left behind. Tommy and I stayed together through sheer force of will. As I grew more social, I dragged him along, convinced it was just bad luck that kept him down. After all, if I could be accepted, he could be too. I didn't know what we were walking into then. I didn't know what we would find up there.

I became a running back for the Billboy Bulldogs at the end of freshman year. I quite literally ran into Roman at practice. After dusting off, I found out that the relaxed, buff, black dude was a huge nerd who loved Mortal Kombat. I hadn't found someone like me who never seemed to struggle. Roman wore who he was on his sleeve. The bitterness in me wondered if all I needed to do was be tall, dark, and handsome, but I knew it was more to it. He invited me over, and three sets of Raiden v. Liu Kang made us thick as thieves. He introduced Tommy and me to Darren, Cameron, and Shilo from there. This was the group I dragged Tommy into.

This was the group that took us to Algernon's Lips.

It was October of 2006. We were tucked away under the bleachers, skipping 4th period. Tommy protested, Darren called him a loser, Cameron told him studying was for "the gays", and Roman read a book while it all happened. They went on without us, and I pleaded with Tommy that it was just a hangout and he should come. One mention of cheer practice going on at the same time won the day. Tommy was a nice guy, but he was human, after all. We watched the girls in their weirdly inappropriate outfits perform maneuvers, smoking cigarettes, and dropping our GPAs.

“You guys hear about Tristan?” Darren asked, his long blond bangs curtaining the smoke that slithered through his teeth. Girls ate up his alt fringe schtick. He handed me the dart. Tommy raised an eyebrow at me, but I shrugged and dragged it. I swallowed my coughs so as not to look like a bitch and handed it to Roman. He took a quarter of it down easily.

“That motherfucker who died in Spring?” Cameron said, hanging from the underbelly of the bleachers. His shirt sheeted over his face, revealing the muscle definition he had carved this past summer. These days, you were lucky if he only took his shirt off twice a day. Tommy glanced up from his comic as he spoke, and darted back down when he and Cameron's eyes met. He often did that. No matter how much I persuaded him to stand his ground. I winced in embarrassment, but didn’t bring any attention to him.

“Yeah. Heard he fell, if you catch my meaning, straight off that ridge,” Darren said.

“The Lips?” Roman said, looking away from the pages of the Spawn comic he was reading over Tommy's shoulder.

"Yeah," He continued. "Another one bites the dust on Ghost Mountain. That's, like, 4 people now in the past 30 years?"

"Five." Tommy corrected.

"Whatever," Darrren said, rolling his eyes.

“Nah, man," Roman said. "It's just a shitty trail with no rails. Guy probably just slipped trying to take a piss. It's only haunted when you want to get a girl into your tent.”

Shilo put six inches of straight brown skater locks behind his ear. It was barely past third period, and he was blazed out of his mind. I had no idea how he hadn’t failed out.

“No, dude. That place is downright spooky. Things get lost—Blair Witch style. I heard people go up there and lose memories, man. It happened to me.”

“Shilo,” Darren said, “The last two times you were there, you were so deep in your skunk weed, you threw up on Tasha, and asked who stole your car.”

“…and I never found it. Things. Go. Missing.”

“I drove you, man.” I said. He looked at me, but not really. Guy was on another planet.

"Hey, Ryan," Tommy said. "You hear that Ratchet and Clank Future is coming out?"

Darren and Cameron raised an eyebrow at me. I responded instantly. "Huh? Nah, man. I don't mess with that stuff."

"The fuck is that?"

"Some game about a Rat or something," Cameron said.

"Fucking weird."

"God of War II looks tight though," Roman said, deep in thought.

"Ooo. Yeah, it does." We all laughed. Tommy looked at me, confused, and I just shrugged with apologetic eyes.

"What made you bring up Tristan?" I asked.

"I thought we could go check it out." He said, snatching the comic out of Tommy's hands. He flinched out of instinct, and Roman raised his hands in a "what the hell" gesture.

"I was reading that, man."

"I'm thinking we ask Ryan's girl and see if any of the cheerleaders are down for a ghost hunt this Saturday." He turned to the field where the girls were practicing. There, at the top like the star she was, beautiful blond curls pulled tight into her ponytail, was Amber, straining every gorgeous muscle in her body. I wondered why she ever went for a loser like me, but I knew why. Or rather, I knew what she didn't know about me. And out of all the new things I had gotten with my new 15 minutes of fame, Amber was what I wanted to protect most.

"I don't know, man," I started. "Amber isn't a huge horror fan." I also thought about how some of her friends had spoken about Darren and Tommy, but I didn't want to say that. Darren looked at me, confused and quietly angry. The whole group went quiet as the tension thrummed. It always happened suddenly. Despite us all being friends, Darren pushed a lot of people around. He forced issues. Got his way. But he was well-liked. The sad part is, looking back, I was stronger and taller than him at that point. But not the meek loser in me. That never got bigger. It stayed the same, pathetic size. Right to the end.

"But... maybe they'd be down for a candlelight vigil? For Tristan."

A flick switched. He smiled and wrapped an arm around me. Relief bubbled in and over me as he did, and I found myself smiling too.

"Now that's a fucking idea. That'll get them nice and wet for sure." He rubbed his nose, deep in thought. Cameron nodded in approval. Roman, the voice of reason, chuckled, saying, "You're a freak, man." Still, I laughed too. When I looked at Tommy, almost as if to give him a cue to join, he was just looking at the dirt.

Amber and her friends took the bait once I mentioned Cameron would be there. At least three cheerleaders wanted to hear his rendition of Your Beautiful, for some reason. So, we agreed to meet on Saturday. Tommy texted me on Monday night, and again, and again. He had texted me fifteen times between that Monday and Thursday night. I finally glanced at our text threads on Thursday night, when I was drunk in Cameron's basement, worried only about how Amber's thighs felt in her skirt. Maybe it was the Coors or the time between responses, but I became acutely aware of how long it had been since I wanted to hang out with Tommy.

"Yo."

He responded immediately. "Hey."

"Want to link up for gaming tomorrow night?"

"Hell yeah. Okami?"

True to our word, our eyes were glued to the CRT that was burning the dye out of the carpet in the center of my room. Tommy was soaring through the game and for the first hour or two, it was just us. Joking. Talking about anime, when Amber texted me with some delightful photos, my attention quickly shifted, and the distance between us returned. I don't know how long we sat in silence, but eventually Tommy broke through.

"Hey, Ryan?"

"Sup?"

"Maybe we shouldn't go tomorrow."

I remember an instant pang of annoyance at his words. Tommy did this often. He'd back out at the last minute, and I would beg him not to. I could see our entire evening before us the moment he asked the question. He'd plead we do something like this instead—just hanging around with our dicks in our hands, I would then commit to convincing him to go, regaling him with reasons why he should. I'd partially lie about people wanting him to come, hammering home the same tired truth about his reputation. At which point, he would either get sad and agree or go quiet till I left. It got old. Yet I had convinced myself it was my job to pull him up. The more I embraced that manufactured responsibility, the more I began to resent him for not being appreciative.

"Why's that, man?" I sighed, harder than I intended, too.

"They don't like me."

"You know that's not true, dude. Roman loves you."

He turned to me. His eyes glimmered with wetness, reflecting the flickers of watercolor light from the video game. "And Darren? Cameron? What about them? Roman won't even talk to me unless you're around."

I didn't understand why he was getting so worked up about this, but it made my skin crawl with frustration. It felt like I was trying to put an oxygen tank on a drowning man, and all he did was thrash in my arms.

"Dude, it's because—" I cut myself off and bit my tongue. Don't, I thought.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No," He snapped, now full on crying. "No, fucking tell me."

I didn't. I just let him sit there, alone in those feelings, like a true asshole. Then, almost inaudible under his breath, he whispered in a broken voice:

"Why do you even hang out with me?"

"Look, I know I always say this, but let's go to the party. I promise it will be great."

He wanted to say, no. I could see it. But whether it was my apology or the emotions of the situation, he didn't. He perked up, reached into his closet, and dusted out an Ouija board.

"Maybe they'll get a kick out of this, huh? A seance after the vigil?"

"Dude, that's perfect." And I truly thought it was.

Saturday night came. We exited Shilo's 2002 Explorer into the crisp air at Algernon's Lips. The hiking trail that led to the Lips wasn't truly a ridge, but it was a steep climb into a dense thicket of trees. The path sloped up at a roughly 60-degree angle for about three-fourths of a mile. At which point, it plateaued into a small clearing. That was the Lip. The only path to it was one eroded down by the soles of horny climbers. It would be a hike either way.

"The things I do for pussy..." Roman said, zipping up his parka.

"Come on," Cameron snorted. He wore a thick hoodie and bike shorts. Still had to show off his calves. "It ain't that bad. Coach T has made us do worse."

"Are the girls gonna' be okay to get up here?" I asked.

"Not to worry, bro," Shilo said. "I shall escort our maidens safely to our haven."

A silence sat with the group for a moment. "So, again, are the girls gonna be okay to make it up there?"

"Don't worry, Ryan. It'll be cool," Darren said. "Besides, the longer it takes for them to make the climb, the more eager they will be to stick around." He raised his eyebrows to me, Cameron rubbed his hands together at the thought, and I exhaled through my nose in confirmation. Roman and Tommy filed out of the car. Roman gathered up all the lights and candles, struggling to fit everything into his box. He was in the middle of trying to juggle a fire extinguisher into the box when Shilo came up.

"Let me bring that up later, man."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, it's no sweat. You guys have got your hands full. Besides, it will let me show the ladies how serious I take safety."

We thanked Shilo, who went back down the trail to wait for the girls. We then turned to Tommy, who had his own bag of tricks that he and I had prepared the night before. As we all began our ascent, I looked to him, gave a nod, cuing him to speak.

"Oh, guys," Tommy said, dropping his bag. "I brought a few things to make the night a bit more e-exxciting." Darren and Cameron moved into position, likely prepared to roast him for pulling out something stupid. Instead, Tommy ushered out a 24-pack case of Natty Lite we stole from my dad and the Ouija board.

"Drinks and entertainment." He said, confidence booming from him for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

Cameron clicked his tongue. "Very fucking nice, Tomcat." He had never called Tommy that a day in his life. He tried to conceal his excitement the best he could, but we all ignored it when he failed to do so. Dog have his day, kind of thing.

"Aphrodisiacs. Nice," Roman said, patting him on his shoulder. We all looked to Darren subconsciously for approval. He sneered but ultimately broke into a smile.

"Great idea. Now, can we stop sucking each other off and get up there?"

We marched up. Dread sank into us all the moment we crossed from the pavement onto the dirt. Humans never truly escaped our animal instincts. It's in me now, years later, as I sit in my car, waiting, aware of every flinch and flicker in the night. I was in tune with it then, too. We passed some point of no return the moment we ascended. With each crunch of leaves underneath the light of the pregnant moon, as our breaths grew heavy, our fingers cold, and our desire to reach the top desperate, so too did this inevitability within us. We didn't know what killed Tristan. We all but knew he jumped. Yet we were all afraid to find out if we were wrong. The air, the forest, the Lips, all of it could sense it—the hesitation to learn the truth. It returned that tension in kind.

When we arrived, we were ill-prepared for what it could look like, but breathtaking is how I remember it. A small slanted patch of grass that angled itself in such a way to face the moon and the remaining forest below. I could see Amber and me, lying in the Red Fescue, looking at the stars over the edge from the safety of our tent, acting out all the things she had texted me about the night before. Despite the slant, the majority of it was safe to walk on. The very apex of the slant and the edge of the Lip were the only dangerous parts. The Lip itself was surely the reason for so many deaths. Soft, craggy ground which seemed to squeak in anticipation as you neared it.

"Trying to take a dive, Ryan? Get away from there and help me get this blanket set up." Darren barked.

I hopped to it, and we all got to work setting everything up. A weird silence fell between all of us as we got into a work rhythm. That invisible thing between us grew more tangible by the moment. We had made it to the Lip on edge. All keenly aware of whatever threatening miasma hung about. Everyone except for Tommy, that was. He was on cloud nine from his rare moment of appreciation at the base of the trail. He hadn't shown any signs of exhaustion. He drove into the center of the clearing the moment we summited and got to work fast, setting up the candles, boombox, and tents. Roman and I were impressed, Cameron indifferent, and Darren almost seemed irritated that Tommy was in high spirits. Noticing that, I gave Tommy another look to enact another of our rehearsed plans. He saw me, smiled, and sprang into action. He snagged everyone a chilled beer to ease the tension. Cameron hooted in excitement and called him a "beautiful bastard". Even managed to squeeze a thanks out of Darren. I was grinning ear to ear. Happy he was coming out of his shell. This was what I had always wanted. Him, truly in the fold.

We finished setting up and were about 2-3 beers deep when my phone buzzed.

"Shilo says that he and the girls will be here in about 45 minutes."

"Fuck," Darren seethed, slurring his words more than I expected him to be. "I can't wait that long, dude."

"Hey," Tommy said, putting down his beer. It sat among four of its crushed siblings. He had been putting them away. Part of me wanted to warn him, but I also wanted him to live a little. "Why don't we, like, rehearse the seance? You know, for the girls?"

Cameron scoffed. "What is this drama club? Get out of here, dude."

"No, it's a good idea," Darren said, drunkenly shoving Cameron. "I want to know my lines before Rachel gets here. You think she'll like me, Ryan?"

I had no idea how to answer him. One, because it was more vulnerable than I had ever seen him be, and two, because I knew how deeply repulsed Rachel was with him, and any guy for that matter.

"Never hurts to shoot your shot."

"Here-here." Roman lifted his can and crushed it on his forehead. We all did it in agreement Everyone but me. Who got a huge ring on my skull, a headache, and a bunch of drunk assholes laughing at me. For once, Tommy was one of them. That made me happy.

The jokes died when our hands landed on the planchette. The wind seemed louder, the moon brighter, the Lip closer. Electric numbness surged through my fingertips. We were on the precipice of something, I could tell. A subtle vibration ran through the board. I looked over to see Darren stilling a shake he couldn't conceal. Roman looked more focused than I had ever seen. Cameron noticed Darren alongside me, gave me a "you seeing this?" glance, and went back to the board. Tommy, in rare form, led it off.

"The energy levels are perfect for this tonight," He murmured in a low growl.

"What does that mean?" Darren asked.

"You can feel it, can't you?" Tommy said. "The thread of something else. The veil lifted. Cut. You've all been much quieter since we got here. I know you sense it."

"What is it?" Roman asked, a tenderness to his voice I hadn't heard.

"It. The Great Divide. This place has seen so much death. Accident or foul? Are these spirits vengeful or benevolent? Perhaps that is for us to decide. Maybe by calling them, by speaking them into life, we taint their energy and give them shape. The question then changes. It is not who you call, but instead who places it?"

"Jesus Christ..." Darren whispered. His hand flinched, going for his beer before quickly second-guessing himself and placing it back on the board.

"Someone needs to call. It can't be me." Tommy looked at me at that.

"Uh...okay. Who should be call?"

"What are you concerned about minutes?" Darren snapped. "Just fucking pick Tristan."

I nodded. "Tristan, if you are there, could you say, 'hi'?"

The board snapped over to the 'H', and then slowly over to the 'I'.

"Oh. What the..." Cameron started.

"A response," Tommy said, shaken. It terrified me. "Quickly, make sure you take him into you. His spirit needs a place to reside. A home. Otherwise, it will leave, and the connection will be broken. Ryan, keep going."

We all breathed in deep and kept going.

"How did you die, Tristan?"

F-A-L-L

"If one of you is moving this damn thing, I swear to God—" Darren started.

"Quiet. We need to concentrate." In a rare moment, Darren shut up at Tommy's command.

I continued. "Was it an accident?"

NO.

We all took our hands off the board for a moment. Every branch, bug, cicada, and critter seemed amplified tenfold at that exact moment. I look at Tommy. The genuine worry in his eyes gave me pause.

"Guys, maybe we should stop." He said.

"Just ask the question, Ryan," Roman said, Darren and Cameron nodded.

"Okay. Tristan, who pushed you?"

The planchette moved around like crazy. It hovered over some letters before circling the board again and again. After what felt like an eternity, it gave its answer.

B-E-H-I-N-D Y-O-U

We all turned around in a flash. Then, a blood-curdling scream erupted right in our ears.

"BLAH!" Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs. We all screamed in return, long and hard.

"Pretty good, right?" Tommy said, chuckling.  

"You motherfucker!" Darren said, reaching over the board to shove him. “You think this is funny?”

"W-what? You guys thought it was scary, right? Think of how the girls will feel."

"Man, I knew we shouldn't have let Ryan bring this freak."

"Chill, Darren. It was a good story." I said, trying to shove my heart back in my chest.

"Yeah, Darren. Chill." Tommy sneered.

"The fuck you say to me?" Darren said, standing up, fists clenched. Surprisingly, Tommy stood up to meet him. Up straight, wide as a fridge, he looked scary in this light.

"I said, 'chill'. Or do I need to tell everyone another ghost story so you can finish pissing yourself for real? I'm sure Rachel is going to love the smell."

They got in each other's faces. Roman and I snapped up, separating them.

"Just you wait, fatty. Keep talking like that and see what happens."

"I can’t hear you with Darren in your mouth, Cameron," Tommy shouted back.

"Y'all all need to calm the hell down," Roman said, holding both Cameron and Darren back. One mind, both ready to scrap.

I held Tommy back. His eyes were filled with red-hot tears, and he was strong. Just to hold him at bay took everything I had, and I had never seen him work out a day in his life.

"Dude," I whispered. "What the fuck. You are ruining the night."

He shoved me.

"I'm ruining it? Not this fucking pussy?" He thrusted his whole arm at Darren who tried to surge past Roman, but made no progress. "You guys ask me to tell a ghost story, and I am the bad guy because you all believed it? Give me a fucking break."

"Look, we are all drunk. But, come on, we can let the night keep being fun if we admit it wasn't cool and apologize."

That did it. Somehow, despite all that had happened since we had been friends. I had never seen Tommy angry. Not a single time had I heard him raise his voice beyond a hoarse answer in class. But as my words left my mouth, pure vitriol carved into his features. I took two steps back. He closed the distance.

"Fuck. You."

"Me? What did I do?"

"'Apologize'? To the piece of shit bully with a chip on his shoulder? What about me, Ryan? What about the jokes, and the looks, and the threats, huh? Where's my goddamn apology, dick?"

He shoved me, and I crashed onto the rocks.

"Hey, man. Knock it off." Roman said.

"Suck my dick, Roman," Tommy said, spittle flying from his lips. "You can quit the good guy act. I've heard you three talking about me when Ryan takes a piss. You know what he calls me, Ryan? Crisco Cocksucker. Because I am fat and, I guess, gay? That's the guy who "loves" me."

"Tommy—"

"And Cameron is too busy working up the nerve to tell Darren he is in love with him to have his own opinion. What a joke."

"Roman, let me go," Cameron said. Roman didn't, but he was certainly not holding back as much as he had been.

"And you know what, Ryan? I tried. I tried to play pretend as you do. I chased you around all these years because... we were friends. Best friends." He sniffled as his words broke, only for them to reforge into fury. "Then, a handful of pieces of shit treat you nicely because you can run 20 yards faster than most white kids, and all of a sudden, I was dead meat. Just a shit on a doorstep you could drop whenever you wanted."

Water filled my eyes, but I refused to cry. Anger flowed in and out of my blood with each pump of my rapidly racing heart. I hated Tommy in that moment. He had ripped off the scab of my shame, and the bleeding pink tissue underneath seared with the pain of truth against the cold. I hated him because I hated myself. Yet, somehow, the pain I felt, the resentment I had built for him slowly over the years, blended those honest emotions into contemptuous ones. I knew I was committing to feelings I didn't want to, but I was held hostage by the release.

"Shut up, Tommy," I said through clenched teeth.

"You aren’t like them, Ryan!" He shouted, spinning to them. "He plays Magic at home with his little brother. He stays up late to watch Cowboy Bebop. He makes DnD characters in his free time but never wants to join a group. Everything you think is fucking dumb, he loves. And he hides it. You know why? Because he is too afraid to be—"

His nose crunched beneath my fist. Blood erupted across his face and oozed through the clenched crevices of my fingers. The next thing I knew, he was on the ground.

I ran to him. Apologized. Picked him up, dusted him off, and told Roman, Cameron, and Darren that Tommy was right and that we were leaving. We left down the trail, hitchhiked to town, and left that whole night behind us. It's what I do over and over again in my dreams every night. It's what I wished to see as I dug in every needle.

Then I remember.

Roman, Darren, and Cameron all descended on him like vultures to carrion. They kicked, beat, and twisted all parts of Tommy. He thrashed, got his licks in here and there, screamed, but they were three, and he was one. I watched it all like a car crash. The paralytic cowardice that Tommy talked about, what had followed me my whole life up to that point, took hold, and I let it. It seeped into my veins like a hard narcotic. I floated away while my best friend was nearly beaten to death by three drunk assholes. As they stomped, kicked, and bashed, I remembered that old quote about the opposite of good. When I blinked, it was over.

"Okay, easy, Tommy," Roman said, as they all stepped back. I snapped back in time to see the glint of a gun Tommy was holding. A polished Ruger SP101. Loaded. He brandished it around wildly. He was in a horrific state. One eye sealed shut, possibly to the point of no return, judging by the amount of crimson which poured from the wound. The other didn't fare much better. His good eye, if it could be called that, was in a permanent squint, assessing all threats as he inched his way towards me. His breath squeezed out of him through a straw-like slit where his nose had been, shattered from where I sucker punched him. His lips sagged down on the left, and I could see the shards of broken teeth piercing through the skin. He dragged his left foot behind him as he kept the other three at gunpoint. It was broken, twisted at an angle I thought impossible.

"Tommy, Tommy, please," I said. The barrel flashed to me. Still, I wasn't afraid.

"Tommy, I am sorry. You were right. You were always right." His battered eye focused on me the best it could. "Let me help you. Please. We'll go to the cops."

"What the fuck, Ryan?" Darren shouted, the gun panned to him, and that shut him up.

"Tommy! Please. I mean it. Just let me help you down the mountain. Please. Please don't let them push you to do this. Please, Tommy. Please."

I was crying at this point when he looked at me. Those tears were for him, for what I did to him. I shouldn't have brought him here. I should have never convinced him that these were good people. We both knew it, but I had deluded myself stupidly these past few years. I poured as much honesty as my voice could muster into my words, and he truly saw it. He hesitated, ever so slightly. A flicker of doubt that I could discern through his crushed visage. The faintest ember of trust. He lowered the muzzle, barely a flinch down, but it was progress. Relief washed over me. I had him. I just had to get him down the mountain.

The fire extinguisher cracked him in the back of the skull with a sickening crunch. He fell like a bag of sand.

Dead weight.

I fell to my knees and looked over him in horror. Shilo, panic in his eyes, looked down at the gun, then to me, and dropped the extinguisher in realization at what he had done.

"Oh fuck, man. What the hell is going on?"

Darren and Cameron lunged forward and wrapped the gun in Cameron's loose shirt. Roman attempted to check his pulse, but then looked at his hands and paused. The same realization dawned on all of them.

"Shilo, where are the girls?" Darren demanded.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

He slapped him. "Where?"

"About 15 minutes down the trail, man. They insisted on going up themselves. What the hell happened, guys?"

Roman, Cameron, and Darren all shared one final look. "He fell. Just like Tristan. Right?"

Their eyes fell on Shilo and I. I said nothing. Just as I did nothing. I buried my knees in the rock and stared at my best friend's corpse.

"Or do I need to remind you that you were the one who hit him with the extinguisher?" He looked to me. "Or threw the first punch?"

"R-right... he fell," Shilo said. They didn't wait for me.

"Drag him to the Lip."

His body scraped across the rock. I went to move, go to him, them, make them stop. Make all this stop. Each attempt to move my body froze it firmer. I banged at the walls of my brain, crying for the friend I had lost, hating myself with each passing second. Yet all I did was stay there, watching the spot where his body had been. I still hear the whispered grunts they made as they hoisted his body to the soft Lip, the squeak of soft earth giving way to Tommy's body and the sound of weight plummeting until the finality of its soft thud at the forest below.

Then, they screamed. More rehearsed than the ghost story. Roman picked me up, saying we had to go. And, my deepest shame, I went. We ran. Down the mountain, away from the adult sins we had uncorked. We retreated into the fraudulent innocence of adolescence. Then, we lied. They by direct means, and I by omission. Tommy fell. We had no service. We were afraid to report it because we had been drinking. We ran as fast as we could. We couldn't find him. The police questioned me the most, but each attempt to talk about Tommy pushed me into a deep isolation. With the campsite cleaned, no fire extinguisher to be found, there was no reason to doubt them. The town searched for three months for Tommy's corpse. I searched six. Nothing. Not a trace. All but forgotten. Not by me. Not anymore. It only took seven years strung out on heroin, haunted by what I am, for me to realize what I must do.

Darren just pulled in. He's been doing well for himself. Day trading or some other stock market, finance stuff. They were all well, actually. Roman, Shilo, and Cameron, all of them fairly happy. Not a single one thought of my stopping by in a negative light. No shame, no confession, nothing. Not a single ounce of guilt percolated their thoughts. Shilo couldn't even remember Tommy's name.

Each time I confronted them, the same way Tommy had at the Lips, I found myself thinking of what he said. That spirits are tainted by those who call them. I figured out that that's what I was to you, Tommy. You came to me, called when I needed you most, and I took your energy, clean and pure, and pushed myself to a place away from you. Left you drained. Tainted. And when I wrapped you around me like a coiled spring, filled it with hate, I balked at the inevitable kickback. I did that. No one else but me. I threw the first punch. I made you go. And when they beat you within an inch of your life, I let them. All because I was too afraid to stand up.

I'm sorry, Tommy. It's not enough, but God, I'm so sorry. I can't make it right. Can't go back. So, let me channel one last time. Let me speak your name that everyone wants to forget.

Be my ghost. So, they can remember.

My entire life changed in high school. Some people got a deeper voice, a few inches, and a scholarship to an impressive college. I got a broken home. My last year at Rythm Heights, for a long time, was something that needed to be relegated behind the doors of a therapist's office rather than a yearbook to look back on.

Until I went to Pikeral Park.

"Everyone is going after midnight tonight. You in?" Dylan asked.

"You know parks are open during the day," I said as I closed the steel door of my locker, half paying attention to him. The rest of my focus dedicated to a Calc finale I was woefully unprepared for.

Dylan rolled his eyes and elbowed me.

"Dude. Two words: Amber Rothaus." He then pantomimed an hourglass figure as if that meant something.

"The girl who has wanted nothing to do with you since junior year?"

"The very same." He wrapped an arm around me. "Until I slipped her some beautiful poetry straight from the heart that made her *swoon*."

"That's an odd way to say: 'Thank you, Scott, for making me sound less like a creep'."

"What I had before was from my very core..."

 "Ten mentions about how great she looks from behind? People don't immediately think of where you sit in Spanish class, Dylan."

"Anyway," He coughed to move on. "We've been texting since last Saturday and really hit off. Your wingman-ship and my silver tongue secured us an invite a sick ass party."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "...At a park. At midnight?"

"A *haunted* park at midnight, Scottie." I hated it when he called me Scottie. "It's the one where that kid went missing."

I parked myself at the door of Mr. O'Reilly's Calculus class. "And you think that lovely background is going to get you an award-winning hand job from Amber?"

Dylan whistled. The scar on his bottom lip, the one he got back in the third grade from running headfirst into a flagpole, winked at me with the same lack of subtlety as his eyes. Given what he was saying, he was still the spitting image of that kid who loved to run Mach 3 into a broken face.

"I am appalled at your crass assumption of such a lady. I am a gentleman, Scottsman. I aim only for second base during first courtship," he said, marching toward our seats in the back of the class.

I sat down and unpacked my things. As I prepared to carve off another chunk of my GPA, Dylan leaned over to me, whispering to avoid Mr. O'Reilly’s Oscar worthy ass chewings.

"Before you cop an excuse, you are going. I need a homie there, and we both know you need this."

I shot him a glare, it was all Dylan needed to kill that line of thought.  He put his hands up in a defensive stance, expecting me to box him.

"All right, all right. But you know I got a point."

I didn't know that. At the time, I was convinced of everything but. Dylan had spent too much energy convincing me of what I needed lately. The only thing I knew for certain was my best friend was becoming a real pain in the ass; even if a well-intended one.

Yet, I found myself ready at eleven that night, zipping up my hoodie and making my way towards a party that, at best, got my best friend laid. I didn't even want to consider the worst case. Some things are better left as surprises.

What was no surprise was where I found Dad lying that night. His usual spot, half-dozing on the dining room table. A bottle of cheap scotch drained dry. If he was on schedule, he’d been there since work and hadn’t eaten anything. The thought dawned on me as I threw the couch’s throw over him. Most people on their way to this party had to forge cover-up stories to make it, and I was covering my dad. Just in the hopes he wouldn't freeze after he crashed onto the tile floor mid-stupor.  Before I left, I put a glass of water on the table, tossed the meatloaf I made yesterday into the microwave, picked up a Sharpie, and wrote instructions on his limp arm.

"*Went out. Dinner in Mic-wv*"

I cringed as I ran out of room. Then, the buried part of me spoke out. I meant to think it, but it broken free from containment as I loomed over him.

“Fuck it. You’ll figure it out.” I hovered at the door of the house for what must of been five minutes before habit ans guilt mingled toughe.

"Night, Dad," I said and was on my way.

Dylan and I got there about twenty minutes late. His idea. He insisted show times were for suckers. As we rolled up to Pikeral Park, killing Tears for Fears as they demanded we abandon Mother Nature, I thought Dylan might have underestimated how seriously other people might take his rule.

The scene was dead. There were maybe fifteen people. All clustered around a couple of barrel fires like a homeless encampment. The rest of the place didn't fare much better. The park was a scab of West Texas dirt, itching the skin of some emaciated pine woods. One cigarette and the whole thing would go up like a bad a Burning Man impression. Somehow, it was the off-beat reggae blaring out of some crappy, base heavy, Bluetooth speaker that was the worst part.

I looked at Dylan.

"Looks like we are early," he said.

"Dude."

"Okay, okay. It's bad. But the real party is at the lake in the back. There are probably more people there."

"Lake? You said it was a pool."

Dylan shrugged. "Just what it's called, man. You know, Camelot and shit."

"Right. The famous story of King Arthur and the Lady of the *Pool*."

Dylan opened the door. "Never heard it. Too busy listening to the Dillweed in the Subaru Outback. Would you just get out of the car?"

We sauntered up and, in moments, Dylan locked onto his goal.

"Miss Amber, I presume?" He said, shouting from afar. Once we made it to Amber’s little huddle, he leaned over the beer keg in the center and proffered his hand so he that might kiss her's. Riley, Amber’s best friend, grimaced in disgust–an appropriate reaction. The other three dudes I didn't know exchanged bemused glances. Amber, though, wore an ear-to-ear grin wider that threatened to leave permanent wrinkles.

"Oh, *darling*," She said, flicking her dusky blonde hair over her shoulder and twirling some imaginary pearls. "Long how I’ve awaited your arrival."

"Exquisitely, I’m sure, madame."

As Dylan went on with his horrid pageantry, I wandered over to the side of the group to get some distance. I could almost hear my internal Geiger Counter for cringe quieting as I did. The tallest of the gaggle, a guy with an X-Men Letterman Jacket, strapped tight over an athletic build, stuck a hand out to me as I approached.

"Sup, man. I'm Tomas. That's Dean and Rick."

Dean was a short and stocky guy with a stapled-on smile, clearly blazed out of his mind. Rick was a spectacled fellow with straight slicked-back hair, a short-sleeved button-up, and astute eyes. I'm pretty sure he was our school's photographer, or maybe a pre-bite Peter Parker. They both threw me some nods, and I gave them my name in exchange.

 "You want a beer?" Tomas asked, offering me a red solo cup.

"I'm good. Not a fan, honestly." Someone had to be sober in my family. Part of my brain lingered on Dad for more moments than I wantes to offer, wondering if he made it into bed tonight or if he had elected to paint the kitchen tile red with bile instead.

"You smoke?" Dean wheezed out, confirming my assessment of him. I declined again, killing all conversation. Two swift strokes and I had become the D.A.R.E. counselor.

Before we could all sit around in silence like a group of husbands abandoned by our wives at a BBQ, Riley chimed in, the look of utter disgust still on her face. At least, I believe it was disgust. She was hard to discern in the dark. She wore all black and had midnight pitch hair. Her skin was a dusky olive color and melded with the shadows seamlessly. Had it not been for her emerald eyes, I would have lost her in the night.

"They were cute for ten seconds, but now I am gonna’ be sick." She gestured to Dylan and Amber, who didn’t seem halfway done with their train wreck.

"I think it's sweet," Rick said.

"That's because you are a theater nerd," Dean said, passing his joint to Riley, who took a drag with such familiarity, it was like she asked him to roll it for her.

"Y'all got no chill," Tomas laughed.

"I don't think I can watch that anymore," I said. "Why don't we go check out this 'pool'?"

"Great idea," Dylan shouted, bursting into the group, hooking Riley and I into his pits.

"Shall I lead the way... to our *doom*?" He said, fingers wiggling. Only Dean and Amber laughed. Both of them were delirious in their own way, I suppose.

As I trailed the cluster, a lead weight dropped into my stomach. Not an uncommon phenomenon that year. Each passing day, the weight lessened–or I got more used to it, but now and again, it would hit. My legs would turn to fresh forged iron; heavy and fragile, flimsy and scathing. To move was to suffer. So much of me wanted to crash into the dirt but, like always, I put it on the shelf of my mind and marched on, even when it was difficult enough to hurt. There was too much to do and too many people who would see.

Except that didn't solve it like before. The weight persisted. A bad smell in the air. A corpse was unearthed. Something real. Tangible. Foul. I scanned the tree line; convinced something was in wait, watching. Each snap of a twig and rustle of leaves pinged around my head as if it were happening right in the canals of my skull.

Then, I saw it.

A blob of shadow, innocuous save for its isolation atop a branch, silhouetted by the crooked moon behind. At first, it was just a mass of shadow I had convinced myself I was characterizing. Laundry in the corner of a dark room that morphs into a serial killer. But right as I started to turn, two beads of piercing yellow opened from the center of the shadow.

Trained right on me.

Then, as if a stray piece of wind had kidnapped some long-forgotten syllable, a hoarse sound funneled into my ears.

"*...you...*"

"What?"

"I said, how are you feeling—"

"Jesus!" I yelped, muffling it into a whisper as the word burst from my lips. I turned to see Riley, recoiled in shock.

"Sorry," she chuckled.

I snapped my head back to the tree. No eyes. And, as if in response to my fears, the wind brushed it. The confusing mass that had glared at me rustled into individual leaves. Just a tree branch.

*But that voice...*

I let out a sigh. "No, I'm sorry. I think I am seeing things."

"I bet. You are probably stressed out of your mind."

"What'd you mean?"

Then there was a pause. A hesitation only those with pity to spare wear. Ahead, Dylan was locked in arms with Amber. Chatting. Joking. He looked at her and no one else. But I knew the side of his eye was on me. I should have known. He had told Amber, who had told Riley, and now I was the Make-a-Wish kid who didn't know they had cancer.

"Right," I said. The image of what had terrified me moments ago overtaken by a budding resentment.

"I’m sorry."

"It's fine, Riley. Really."

"It doesn't have to be," She whispered.

She was kind. I knew it then, and I know it now. But it was warm like a sauna I had been locked into. I wanted to scream. I wanted to ask how many days the living must endure the condolences for the dead? How long do I have to hear how hard I must have it and how bad other people feel for me? I wanted to look her square in the face and say: “When the does my face pull back the panhandle and stop collecting bullshit tips on how to move on?”

But I didn't. I put it on the shelf of my heart. It creaked in complaint, long pushed past its capacity. It wouldn't buckle tonight. So, I said thank you.

"I wasn't trying to bring it up, Scott, I understand what you are going–"

"Woah," Amber said. "Check it out, guys."

I was so preoccupied, I hadn't noticed. We had made it to the lake.

Pikeral Pool was a sheer piece of glass in the weak moonlight. Undisturbed. Not even a skitter bug ran across its surface, and the wildlife seemed to be under the same obligation. No wind, caw, or howl pierced the stillness of the air or water. It was as if the lake was a crystal lid to a terrarium we had unknowingly been placed in.

"Damn. Shit's dope," Dean said through a skunk scented cloud of smoke.

"Told you, dude," Dylan whispered. "Camelot!"

I shot him a confused look. Tomas walked forward to the lake's edge. 

"Check it out."

It was a small memorial. A cylindrical cedar post, painted white, and adorned with fresh flowers, Pokémon drawings, and images of superheroes. At its base sat a little xylophone, tiny enough for a five-year-old to play. A memorial much like those you'd see on the side of the road for folks who lost their lives in car accidents. But the middle stood out. Enshrined around the mid-section of the post was a tattered cape, cloaking a gold plaque. I read it aloud.

"In loving memory of Isaac Clemmons. Whose hugs, kisses, and laughs saved our day, every day.  Our loss is Heaven's gain. Miss you, bud."

The words fell out of my mouth like stones. We sat in silence. No one moved. Afraid to disturb the tension as unbroken as the lake. With each passing second, the reality of our situation worsened. We all thought the same thing. Seven loser kids, ready to get trashed and literally dance atop a kid’s grave. Motivated by shit beer and second base. It made me sick.

Then, Dylan walked up to Isaac's memorial, knelt, and placed his hand on the top of the post.

"Dude, Furret is an awesome Pokémon. When I played, I thought Sandslash kicked ass— Sorry. I thought he rocked. I used him even though he sucked. And is that a Blue Beetle drawing? My man!”

We all just watched as Dylan carried on a conversation with no one. If it were anyone else, it would be a joke, a sick one at that. But not the way Dylan talked. You'd swear he was a divining rod who had contacted the spirit world with the way he spoke to that boy's grave.

“You seemed like a great guy, Isaac. Just going by what your parents wrote," He held the corner of his cape between two fingers. “A real hero…”

He looked back at me for a moment. Though he said nothing, his eyes spoke volumes. Filled with the words I had rebuked over and over again. I gave him a nod that I hoped showed my appreciation. He returned it with a smile like always and turned back to the memorial.

"Save our night, Isaac. A lot of us could use a pick-me-up."

He stood up and placed his hand on the top of the post, like he was ruffling the kid's hair. It was honestly too much, but if you knew Dylan, you'd know he wasn't saying that to impress a girl or to get laid. He was the real deal. I didn't deserve him as a friend.

"That was sweet," Amber said, hands clasped at her chest. Maybe his chances weren't shot, after all.

"Yeah, bro. Poetic as hell," Tomas said, helping Dean set up the keg.

It must have worked, too. The mood picked up. Tomas busted out a good speaker and started to play some acoustic country. Dean made sure everyone was tipsy. We all settled into various parts of the lake to have a good time. Amber and Dylan were deep in the pool, playing a flirtatious game of Marco Polo. Amber's giggles constantly exposed her position, but they didn't mind. Rick took photos of the moon, Dean and Tomas chucked a football back and forth, and Riley mingled all around the water's edge, dancing by herself.

And there I was, sitting by Isaac's memorial. I wasn’t sad or miserable for him. I related to him. A shared unfairness felt across the barriers of death and life. I winced in pain. I had twisted the denim of my jeans into tight spirals in my fist, my knuckles bleached white.

How is it that the heart is one of the strongest pieces of the body, yet so feeble that when we lose those we love, it fails twice? The physical loss. Their absence. The destruction of routine, joy, anger, and annoyance. A robbery of our lives by vandals we trusted. The days are the second failure. A slow, insidious erosion you can't stop. You just break. That's where I was. When mom died, it was as if someone chucked a window through my glasshouse and there was no repairman in town. My only solace was that as each day passed, I got to wander past the fractured panes to muse over some tainted nostalgia? What a bitter joke.

"My dad died when I was ten," Riley said, sitting down. Glazed in a light sheen of sweat from her dance, looking to Dylan and Amber in the middle of the lake. Not truly, though. She was elsewhere. Wrapped in the arms of a man who'd been dead for almost a decade. Even with dilated, stoned eyes, red-tinted from tears and drugs, she was quite beautiful.

"He was my whole world. Still is. He loved doing things with me. We'd cook, clean, stuff like that. It's so weird. I never thought I would miss doing chores."

I didn't want to face her. was intruding on some pure moment by just being there. A crinkle of her nose, a stifled tear, the unblinking way in which she watched the water, all of it was hers. If I spoke, I would just be lemon juice curdling the cream.

"But he made it, like, silly. You know? He'd give a flashlight have a voice, add sound effects to things."

She put a finger up to her nose to mimic a mustache and deepened her voice: “‘It only work if you make the noise first, Rye-Bread. Boop!’”

She laughed. A deep croak, which seemed rude not to join. After a quiet time, I found myself talking.

"How did he die?"

"Just... did. In his sleep. Aneurysm."

"That's..."

"Yeah."

She made small swirls in the dirt with her thumb.

"I don't pity you, Scott. Even at ten, each shitty condolence was like a hand pushing down on me. They all tried to pull me out of the water, save me from drowning, but each attempt just sunk me deeper." She skipped a stone. It fell through the surface as though it were made of air, hardly a ripple. I ain't going to sit here and lie that you will feel better one day. I haven’t. Not totally, but there are ways to keep going."

She put a hand on mine. And before it could be something more, Dylan shouted over.

"Scottsman! Make a move or get in the water."

Our hands snapped away. A beet red flush overtook both of us.

"You are the worst," Amber said, splashing a torrent of water towards Dylan.

"You want to take turns dunking him?" Tomas said, suddenly at our side, removing his jacket and shirt.

"Nothing would make me happier," I said. Riley cracked her knuckles in agreement.

After about ten minutes of waterboarding Dylan, we were all deep in the lake. The water kissed my skin. People say that but it truly was like an intimate embrace. I never wanted to leave. A rich warmth spread through my guts and invaded my bones. A cradle of nature. Each ripple of movement was a departed lover. My lungs were clear. My nose, which usually sported a congested passage, was free and filled with the scent of fresh ozone of a coming rain, but the sky was clear and peppered with stars.

"That's the spirit, Scottie." Rick said, his demure disposition abandoned in favor of a glazed-out, back stroke that glided before me like a wayward duck. I was confused for a moment, but then I touched the upturn of my cheeks. I hadn't noticed. I had a smile on my face. Looking around, we all did. And how long had we been idle here? Hadn't we been playing Marco Polo? Now, we were each meandering in our own waters. Content with nothing but the light of the moon, the dead air, and the warm water to swaddle us.

Rick was the first to go.

No one saw it. It stood atop him, weightless, using him like Carion's boat down the River Styx. A frail figure with messy hair, sheen grey skin, and a coat of white fur draped around its shoulders and back. Its arms were thin, twig-like, falling down to sharp, straight claws. Its face had no mouth and two light beams of yellow instead of eyes.

It looked down at the Rick, fascinated and analytical. It turned its head and narrowed its beamless eyes. Rick didn't see it and didn't feel it. His eyes closed. Lost amidst the same bliss which had ensnared me. I felt feverish. A lost actor in a dream I was half in. I couldn't speak and didn't want to. So at peace, the sight before me wasn't horrifying, but rather too precious to disturb. Fear hadn't paralyzed me. Joy had.

"...hurt..." Its croaked in the dry gasp I had heard before.

"W-what the–" Rick said, suddenly snapping away from his peace. His expression flipped like a coin, and it disgusted me to see it. He sneered. His face spiraled into a tight curve. His mouth carved out a snarl and he flailed, intent on striking the monster.

"Get the fuck off me, you absolute freak! I hate you. I hate everything you fucking are. You sad, pathetic, waste of a goddamn population point–"

The figure raised its arms, pointed its needle fingers towards Rick’s face, and did it with a slowness of someone half interested. Then, they shot forward, pierceing Rick's eyes, and exiting out his skull, killing the words in his mouth.

"...hurt..."

Then, they sank. The water swallowed him without effort, falling beneath the tension without acknowledgment. Just like the stone Riley had skipped before. The monster went with him, sinking like the captain aboard its capsized vessel. When all the strands on his head were beneath the glass pool, I was able to break my gaze.

Looking around the lake, no one noticed. They were all preoccupied with their serenity. Riley swam in a small circles, Dylan and Amber were sucking on each other’s faces, and Tomas and Dean tossed a football back and forth. Not a concerned soul among them. On the outside, I wasn’t either. My placid smile and dazed eyes were etched onto my face like I were stone. My heart rate must have hovering in the mid-60s. I even paddled a few lazy breast strokes amidst my welling panic. I screamed, but only the echo of one boomed in my mind. A faint resistance. An fragment of horror from the well of me. A trapped line of thought, half buried in a numb vessel. Each movement was an action coated in molasses. Both in control and not. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay.

Then, it emerged near Tomas and Dean, but it wasn't alone. Rick rose with it. His skin now opalescent, and his eyes the same feverish yellow, shining bright enough to leave small circles of illumination on Tomas's skin. He wore a smile woven not with maliciousness, but rich, full happiness.

"...hurt..."

The figure crawled atop Dean's stocky shoulders like a spider. It pierced his eyes more slowly this time, moving its needles around his sockets in a blending motion. Dean's peace shattered. His hands snapped to his head, desperate to hold it together, and he bellowed the ugliest shriek I have ever heard.

"Stop! Please, God. Stop! I'll be good. I swear I'll—" It was all he could manage before he sank into the pool. Not even a gargle from the water which filled his open mouth. Just a soundless plunge before erasure.

Tomas blinked and was freed. "Holy shit!" Rick had already begun to crawl atop him, urging him deeper.

"It's okay, man. It's okay. You'll see. It’s all fine,"  Rick beamed, pulling on his clothes, his face, and hair, each tug sinking them both lower and lower.

Tomas wailed down on him, landing haymaker after haymaker on Rick's face. He had almost 40 pounds on the guy, but it was like battling a statue. Red welts painted his knuckles, battered and bloodied, while Rick’s face remained clean and blissful. They went down like that. Just before the water swallowed him, he looked to me, and failed to scream. The openning of his jaw snatched by the hands of Dean and Rick, silencing him as he plunged beneath the surface.

The hold over me was lighter now. Maybe the creature's bifurcated focus helped, or my internal resistance had pulled through. I wasn't sure but it didn’t matter. The water had gone from cement to syrup, and I pulled on the fleeting thread of sanity I had to flail to Amber and Dylan. I could feel the veins in my face strained my skin, pressure intense enough to burst. God, I was still so damn happy for them. I cried tears of joy as I paddled like a drunk dog across the lake, urging my throat to scream, but unable to overcome the foreign cooing of happiness that bubbled up instead. With each stroke, the gulf seemed harder and harder to cross.

When I was halfway, Dean, Rick, and Tomas emerged, encircling the two love birds in locked hands. A ring of cultists to their love. The creature sprang from the water in a spiral tower of flesh. Its thin legs and torso coiled tightly, stretched till it dangled over Dylan and Amber like an angler fish lure. The gang pulled the two apart with conviction. Their focus was on Amber, not Dylan.

Dylan opened his eyes wide after being ripped from Amber's lips.

"Guys, what the hell?" He said.

His confusion spoiled to fear the moment he saw their eyes, and their smiles, and then dangling horror above creature. He turned to me, a flailing, crazed, smiling mess. He realized how dire the situation was, immediately, but he didn't run. Whatever enchantment this was didn't affect him. And he swam to the fray towards Amber.

As they lifted her to the creature above, he yanked, pried, and clawed at their hands. An act of frivolity that none of the participants noticed. Certainly not Amber, hoisted atop all of them, backlit by the lagoon glow of all the eyes beneath her. She embraced the dangling horror with pure glee. There was no snap free moment for her. Not even when it caged her skull with its needle grip and methodically pierced it with each finger. The squelch of her brain being skewered ushered their descent back into the glass lake below.

"No!" Dylan screamed, crying, slamming his fists on Dean's back, whose headbeams were too enamored with Amber to mind the pitiful blows. Then, all but the creature’s head was gone. It floated amidst its wisping strands of soaked hair and stared at Dylan in analysis. Then, the creature's mouthless visage tore open on a jagged hinge. A thin line broken through its pallid flesh as if someone had cut invisible strings sowing the flesh shit. Its crooked lips turn upward, unveiling dozens of fangs.

"Saved."  It purred.

With a plunk of a mis-skipped stone, it descended.

"Scott, we should go." It was Riley. She was behind me. Hushed. She tugged on my hand beneath the water. The moment her fingers graced mine, my trance shattered. I blinked, then flailed. I searched around the lake, my head snapping around. Nothing but the sheen surface reflecting the dead sky and the glowering moon and Dylan. Who bobbed and floated in complete shock.

"Dylan!" I said, whispering as loudly as I could. I reached out to touch him. He floated back and forth like a buoy, staring at where the Amber had been.

"Dylan, come on, man." I started to pull him. "We got to get the fuck out of the water."

"It's my fault," he said.

"What?"

"He... he said, 'saved'." Tears welled in his sockets. "He said, 'saved', Scott!"

Riley's hand tightened around mine. She was shaking. She was terrified. But I couldn't leave Dylan. I grabbed his shoulder with my free hand.

"Who gives a flying fuck what it said. We have to go."

"He's right, though. We are saved."

My heart sank. I tried to move my hand from her grip and was met with crushing vice instead of a tender hold. Then, Riley's other hand groped my chest. Then, another grabbed my hip. One snared my thigh. In seconds, I was swarmed in the spider snares of ten hands, yanking, clawing, and caressing me down. I craned my neck to look behind me. Riley floated rigid in the front of the pack. Two corridors of brimstone had swallowed her vision and beamed at me. It hurt to look at. She vibrated. Not with fear, but pure excitement.

"Scott, trust me. You will feel so much better." Her voice was hers, but coated in some saccharine sickness. “Just let go.”

“No… no…” I started. The rest of the group had moved in an instant, surrounding me in a circle of smiling, sunken heads, beaming with joy.

"Come on, man,” Tomas said. “Lighten up.”

The hands worked their way up to my face. They yanked, clawed, and pushed. With each attempt, the bliss that had swallowed me had been replaced with a violent rage deeper than I ever thought possible. A thread of electricity ran through each vein, burning my fingertips, gritting my teeth. I felt the violence of a thousand hatreds, bubbling up from me like I had been set to boil. I want all of them to die bloody deaths. I saw a fantasy of Riley with her dad once more just to watch him be stabbed to death like the bitch deserved. The image of Dylan battered and bloodied beneath me, holding a baseball bat, and me screaming how much he needed to leave me alone.

“Get off me, you pieces of shit. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all of you. I will drown you till each fucking bubble leaves those pathetic lungs.” My eyes rolled around in scalding hot tears. “Stop it. Stop it right now. Mom, please. Please help me. Dad? Mom? Anyone? Mom… Mommy!”

They forced my face up and instead of the serene sky which had bathed us before, I was faced with the grey-skinned monster, its slimy nose so close that it touched mine. All that anger melted out of the ice and into watery despair. When my eyes fell beneath the water, as it poised its needles over my eyes, the image of the creature blurred. Its bloody grin watered down to a concerned smile. Its jaundice eyes were blue sapphires now riddled with tears. And the matted fur animal coat had been supplanted by a pristine, red cape.

“You’re hurting.” 

Before I could scream beneath the surface, the needles pierced my eyes, and black was all I saw.

Then, after an eternity, white. Details filtered in bit by bit as my eyes adjusted. But they were closed? I was crying, rubbing my eyes with fists too small for my face. A small chirp of distant birds rippled into my eardrums, muffled as if underwater, but the wind that pulled on my shirt and shorts was crisp and clear.

“Mommy, I want my mommy,” I said in a voice that was not mine. Or at least, wasn't currently mine. It was rehearsed audio, played through me as if on a recording.

“I guess it is a good thing I am right here.”

I opened my eyes and there she was. Right there, beautiful, tall, safe, and warm. Clad in her favorite white dress with blue flowers. I snatched her leg without a moment’s notice, burying my face into her knees.

“I thought I’d lost you,” She cooed, brushing my hair. Her words were soft with a tinge of buried sadness trailing them. She must have been worried sick.

“I thought I had lost you!” I shouted into her dress. “I was… so… scared… and I-I-I…”

“Take a deep breath, bug.” My mom said, stroking my hair.

I did. And I felt so much better. 

“I thought you left me behind on purpose.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You might! You might wake up one day and realize you don’t want to be my mom anymore.”

“Oh, honey.” She pulled me into the tightest hug I had ever felt. The kind that holds your whole body together and stops you from turning into a puddle of tears.

“That would never happen. Can I let you in on a little secret?”

I nodded, rubbing my eyes. When I stopped, she was crouched down at my level. Her red air curled around her in the light breeze, and she smiled something deep and somber.

“Some days, Mommy wakes up sad. Those days, I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to be anyone or anything. Even on those days, the only thing I ever want to be is your Mama.”

She Eskimo kissed my nose and ruffled my hair. When she pulled away, our eyes locked on one another, and I was freed, in control of myself once more. I still was me. This version of me from when I was young, but acutely aware of where I was and what had happened.

“But it's not enough. You will wake up one day, and being Mama won’t be enough to make you stay.”

Her smile faded, and she stared off into the parking lot. The pavement withered into the white like a half-finished watercolor painting, and she and I were the only subjects in frame.

“Maybe... but that isn’t because you made me go. It’s because I wasn’t strong enough to stay.”

“And that’s not fair!” I stomped my foot. “Why should I have to be alone? Why should Dad have to drink all day? Just because… because you were too much of a coward to—”

She pulled me in tighter.

“You are right. It’s not fair. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that, Scottie. You didn’t deserve to have a mom like me. You didn’t deserve to find me like that." She cried into my shoulder. "I’m just so sorry.”

In all the days since I had found my mom’s body, in all the condolences and heartfelt comments, through the tears and anger, her words here were the only time I had felt seen, touched. I sobbed into her chest for an eternity. The void of the water muffled my ears, reminding me where I was. I had been on an island of pain since that day. Now, I was wading through the surf to find land.

“This isn’t real. You aren’t real. I am just drowning, imaging this stupid fucking closure.”

She clamped my cheeks between her hands and kissed me on the forehead.

"It’s okay. It’s all okay.”

Over her shoulder, I saw him. A little boy, no older than five, with dusky blond hair, a red cap, who was shedding happy tears. Mom craned her neck to see him.

“Is it that time already?”

He nodded.

She turned back to me. “I have to go, sweetie. You have to go. But you need to know I am so proud of you. I was then, and I am now. I always am. Mommy made a mistake. One she regretted the moment she did it, but it was never your fault. No one’s but mine, you hear? I know that won't fix it; it won't undo anything. But you need to hear it. You need to hear it so you can stop drowning yourself and finally come up for air.”

I looked into her eyes. A million thoughts and aches came to mind. I want to show how much I loved her and hated her for what she did. It flooded in and through me. Each thought made me lighter, lifting me higher. I start to float as I wondered through those waves of emotion. She grinned as I ascended, holding my cheeks as my legs lifted towards the surface of the dream. I waded through each painful remembrance with the deliberation of years. The moments of suffering lapped upon me like tides of the surf, and pulled away just as quickly. Isaac clapped soundlessly in the back as I did.

“I love you, Scottie.”

Then, all those thoughts, all those aches, all that anger, all that sadness, muddled into five little words.

“I love you too, Mom.”

“Scott!”

Dylan shouted into my face. Suddenly, I was on the lake’s edge, looking at my crying friend, and the sprinkling of stars overhead. I glanced about. It wasn't just me. We were all back on land. Bone dry. Eyes on the sky above.

Riley started to sob; Dean looked out at the lake, bewildered, ruffling his short hair; Rick and Tomas looked at one another as if ascertaining whether they had dreamed this or not.

“What…” I groaned. My body ached with the exhaustion of a completed marathon. I wasn't sore, just... spent.

“Did you guys see that thing?” Dylan screamed. “It… it took you all. Beneath the water. And, you were so happy about it. 

You were down there for so long. Like, twenty minutes. You should all be dead."

Riley ignored Dylan and ran over to me, crashing at my side and squeezing my shoulders. 

“Did you see her, Scott? Did you?” Before I could answer, she hugged me.

“I talked to my Dad. We… we played Monopoly and talked. It was a Sunday, right before he died. He told me he saw how sad I had been and… Please tell me you saw your mom. Please tell me I am not fucking crazy.”

Dylan looked at me with abject horror on his face. I looked over to Tomas and Dean. The moment our eyes met, they looked away in seeming embarrassment. 

Eventually, they returned my gaze with a soft nod. I never found out totally what they saw, but they both stood a little straighter than when we entered the water; more resolute in themselves.

“I saw my Dad,” Rick said, hugging his knees by the water’s edge. “He was watching TV, like he was when I left. But I got to hear the things he wants to say, but is too proud to. I… I got to go home.” 

He peeled off the sand and bolted to his car.

Amber looked at Dylan, smiling ear to ear. “She’s okay, Dylan. My sister’s okay.”

She kissed him and wrapped her arms around his neck. The horror on Dylan’s face melted into confusion. He had seen a monster killing our friends. He must have been so lost and afraid, never getting the relief we had. But Amber’s embrace had begun to push him past the first barrier of doubt. He patted her on the back, looked at me, waiting for my answer, as if permission to believe any of what had happened did.

“My mom told me she was sorry and that she loved me.”

A silence fell over us. A warm one. One of comfort that eased the hallucination into something more. Then, we all looked to the lake and Isaac’s grave. The wind picked up his cape, and we heard, in a clear, crystalline voice, of a little boy.

“Saved.”

There were so many more things we could have said. But much like how the water had held us in this strange warmth, the aftermath of our baptisms had a similar hold. We all but Dylan shared the same look at first. A deep confusion we exchanged for relief bit by bit. The need to wonder lessened. I don’t believe much in God, but if those who witnessed Jesus’s miracles are to be believed, then I understand them now. Some things are too beautiful to ask more information about. Sometimes, you have to let a miracle be a miracle.

The fears, the horror, the insecurity, had all been swallowed by the water. We were cleansed, but not completely. In a way, we were still damp, but on our way to being dry and no longer held beneath the water. And as we made our way back to our cars, we joked. Laughed. Talked about things like we hadn’t experienced anything crazy at the lake at all. In some way, the experience faded. We remember, I certainly still do, but not in the way you remember an event. More like how you see an era of your life. A collage of experiences you wandered through and internalized. It was this precious, glass-sealed gift we had been given. None of us had any interest in shattering that seal. 

But the gifts didn't stop at the lake. When I got home, ready to pick up my father off the floor, I found him upright on the couch instead, still draped in the blanket I had given him. The plate on the table before him was cleaned, and he had a *sober-ish* smile on his face as he stared at Mom’s photo. I took a seat next to him.

“I had this wonderful dream about her. It was so real.”

He turned to me, and I swore he saw the scab on my heart that started to form. He hugged me suddenly, but it wasn’t for my sake. He did it like someone lost adrift in a blizzard, desperate to find heat for survival. It was as if he could sense the dryness inching away at the damp, and pulled himself to leech a bit for himself. And I knew, then and there, that he deserved it too. I lost my mom. He lost that and more.

I don't know if what happened was real. Maybe we were crazy, or drunk, or lost. I know I didn't drink that night, but is it more plausible to believe I *couldn't* have than what I remember? My life hasn't been perfect since I went to Pikeral Park, but the pain I felt up to my plunge doesn't ache like it used to. The scar is still there, but it has healed. It's firm now. Strong. Faded to a benign mark. And, yes, I do muse some nostalgia over the broken windows in my glasshouse.

Whether or not it was real doesn't matter. Because my life turned around that night and the morning after. I don't know what compelled me to ask him, but I am glad I did.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, Scottie?” His breath smelled of whisky, but the word Scottie didn’t sting. I hadn't realized how much I had missed it.

“There’s this pool in Pikeral Park. Will you go with me?"

Everyone else is gone.

Just the two of us left now. It took me 8 years to realize how hard I have been running from this, running from Algernon‘s Lip, hoping to forget our little Plymouth Rock of Hell. But that is the thing about ghosts, isn’t it? They don’t haunt you to kill. They haunt you to remember.

I am done trying to forget.

"Donatello's my favorite."

It was the first thing Tommy ever said to me. I looked up from my secretive doodling, concealing the finishing touches on Raphael's mask, worried it had somehow been gleaned from the crook of my elbow. When I noticed it was only Tommy, a twinge of relief washed over me.

Even at twelve years old, Tommy was as unfortunate an individual as one could look. Square in the torso and from deep poverty. He shared ancestry with those dilapidated refrigerators left to rot; white, stained, skewed, mingling among the rust of your neighbor's five scattered cars across a dirt yard. His voice was much the same. A dull hum that stumbled into language. Somewhere between a lisp and an indication of mental deficiency. He had beady black eyes behind two-inch-thick frames, perched atop a statuesque nose. His lips were forever chapped, and he licked them raw daily. The worst of it? There wasn’t more. The cold truth was Tommy was just smart enough to confuse the lines between disabled and freak. A perfect presentation of the struggling lower class of social worth. Not dumb enough to be pitied for clout, but not normal enough to avoid getting the shit beat out of him.

Everything I knew of Tommy at that point was derived from pure survival. Middle school was a jungle. His presence at my table broke me into a cold sweat. There weren’t many rungs between us on the invisible ladder, but I still believed—no, I knew—that what little cushion I had could be lost by pure exposure. It feels so stupid to think about how petrified I was. Even now, alone in my car years later, my heart reflexively falls into those familiar beats. Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrumthrumthrumthrumthrum. Prey rabbits avoiding wolves. To congregate in packs was how you drew predators. That survival voice screamed at me to run. I might have even lifted from my chair.

But I also loved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

"Raphael's the coolest, even if he gets mad at dumb things," I said, mumbling like I didn’t care what I was talking about. The words left like vomit, beyond my control. Some inner screw shook free. I avoided eye contact as to feign a lack of acknowledgement. My favorite spot to sit; right atop the fence.

He laughed. In an odd juxtaposition to his appearance, it was full. Honest.

"Yeah. That's why he's so tough." The "tough" of his sentence dragged before fading into a half-dropped syllable. Then, he pushed up his glasses and did some stupid impression of Wushu. Each chop and kick triggered all cylinders.

"Run! Look. Make sure no one is watching you, loser. Freak. Freak. Freak!" My frontal cortex screamed. I shook, ready to bolt, or conjure some awkward excuse for why I, of all people, shouldn't be talking to this loser. But the child in me, that stubborn fragment not yet killed by Travis D. in Algebra, pinned me in an armbar and wrestled control back. I laughed, too. We both laughed. We spent the next hour talking about all the things I had hidden away in shame. Tommy liked them all. The more we had in common, the greater this oasis I found grew. No more hiding. Just me.

“Dude! These rock.” He said, flipping through my sketchbook. I still have it. It's resting on the dashboard in front of me. The same drawings of Yu-Gi-Oh, Inuyasha, Sailor Moon, and Disturbed album covers. None of it pussy wetting material to say the least, but Tommy got more excited with each flip of the page. One conversation turned to two. Then, it was game nights on Saturdays. Before I knew it, Tommy and I helped each other survive middle school.

For the next three years, we were socially homeless. Wandering from group to group, going anywhere someone would tolerate us, surviving at all costs. We found our niches, endured a lot of beatings, but came out the other side. However, things changed in our freshman year. Both socially and literally, Tommy grew wide, but I grew tall. He stayed where we had been, an honest guy with uncool hobbies and unfortunate looks. I got bigger, put on a few pounds of muscle, started playing football, and got noticed by a couple of girls. I started to hide my hobbies—myself. It became second nature. I lived in the juxtaposition of outwardly cringing when I would see some dude Naruto run down the hallway, while smothering the part of me that envied them.

The more I buried myself, the more I ended up in circles of people who, not three years prior, had been stomping on my back for kicks. You think I would be bitter about that. But I hadn't realized how far from my mind it had left me. It turns out, the less weight you have tossed on your back, the lighter you are. Like a trained dog, you stop doing the behavior that got you the belt. You stop being honest with yourself. The God’s honest truth, the only truth, is you are so desperate for it to stop, you don't even care why it did. You obsess over preserving that peace. Then, you are so far away you don't even really remember what you left behind. Tommy and I stayed together through sheer force of will. As I grew more social, I dragged him along, convinced it was just bad luck that kept him down. After all, if I could be accepted, he could be too. I didn't know what we were walking into then. I didn't know what we would find up there.

I became a running back for the Billboy Bulldogs at the end of freshman year. I quite literally ran into Roman at practice. After dusting off, I found out that the relaxed, buff, black dude was a huge nerd who loved Mortal Kombat. I hadn't found someone like me who never seemed to struggle. Roman wore who he was on his sleeve. The bitterness in me wondered if all I needed to do was be tall, dark, and handsome, but I knew it was more to it. He invited me over, and three sets of Raiden v. Liu Kang made us thick as thieves. He introduced Tommy and me to Darren, Cameron, and Shilo from there. This was the group I dragged Tommy into.

This was the group that took us to Algernon's Lips.

It was October of 2006. We were tucked away under the bleachers, skipping 4th period. Tommy protested, Darren called him a loser, Cameron told him studying was for "the gays", and Roman read a book while it all happened. They went on without us, and I pleaded with Tommy that it was just a hangout and he should come. One mention of cheer practice going on at the same time won the day. Tommy was a nice guy, but he was human, after all. We watched the girls in their weirdly inappropriate outfits perform maneuvers, smoking cigarettes, and dropping our GPAs.

“You guys hear about Tristan?” Darren asked, his long blond bangs curtaining the smoke that slithered through his teeth. Girls ate up his Kurt Cobain schtick. He handed me the dart. Tommy raised an eyebrow at me, but I shrugged and dragged it. I swallowed my coughs so as not to look like a bitch and handed it to Roman. He took a quarter of it down easily.

“That motherfucker who offed himself in Spring?” Cameron said, hanging from the underbelly of the bleachers. His shirt sheeted over his face, revealing the muscle definition he had carved this past summer. These days, you were lucky if he only took his shirt off twice a day. Tommy glanced up from his comic as he spoke, and darted back down when he and Cameron's eyes met. He often did that. No matter how much I persuaded him to stand his ground. I winced in embarrassment, but didn’t bring any attention to him.

“Yeah. Did it all weird, too. Jumped off the ridge,” Darren said.

“The Lips?” Roman said, looking away from the pages of the Spawn comic he was reading over Tommy's shoulder.

"Yeah," He continued. "Another one bites the dust on Ghost Mountain. That's, like, 4 people now in the past 30 years?"

"Five." Tommy corrected.

"Whatever," Darrren said, rolling his eyes.

“Nah, man," Roman said. "It's just a shitty trail with no rails. Guy probably just slipped trying to take a piss. It's only haunted when you want to get a girl into your tent.”

Shilo put six inches of straight brown skater locks behind his ear. It was barely past third period and he was blazed out of his mind. I had no idea how he hadn’t failed out.

“No, dude. That place is downright spooky. Things get lost—Blair Witch style. I heard people go up there and lose memories, man. It happened to me.”

“Shilo,” Darren said, “The last two times you were there, you were so deep in your skunk weed, you threw up on Tasha, and asked who stole your car.”

“…and I never found it. Things. Go. Missing.”

“I drove you, man.” I said. He looked at me, but not really. Guy was on another planet.

"Hey, Ryan," Tommy said. "You hear that Ratchet and Clank Future is coming out?"

Darren and Cameron raised an eyebrow at me. I responded instantly. "Huh? Nah, man. I don't mess with that stuff."

"The fuck is that?"

"Some game about a Rat or something," Cameron said.

"Fucking weird."

"God of War II looks tight though," Roman said, deep in thought.

"Ooo. Yeah, it does." We all laughed. Tommy looked at me, confused, and I just shrugged with apologetic eyes.

"What made you bring up Tristan?" I asked.

"I thought we could go check it out." He said, snatching the comic out of Tommy's hands. He flinched out of instinct, and Roman raised his hands in a "what the hell" gesture.

"I was reading that, man."

Darren continued, holding the comic sideways like it was a porno mag, analyzing it for value. "I'm thinking we ask Ryan's girl and see if any of the cheerleaders are down for a ghost hunt this Saturday." He turned to the field where the girls were practicing. There, at the top like the star she was, beautiful blond curls pulled tight into her ponytail, was Amber, straining every gorgeous muscle in her body. I wondered why she ever went for a loser like me, but I knew why. Or rather, I knew what she didn't know about me. And out of all the new things I had gotten with my new 15 minutes of fame, Amber was what I wanted to protect most.

"I don't know, man," I started. "Amber isn't a huge horror fan." I also thought about how some of her friends had spoken about Darren and Tommy, but I didn't want to say that. Darren looked at me, confused and quietly angry. The whole group went quiet as the tension thrummed. It always happened suddenly. Despite us all being friends, Darren pushed a lot of people around. He forced issues. Got his way. But he was well-liked. The sad part is, looking back, I was stronger and taller than him at that point. But not the meek loser in me. That never got bigger. It stayed the same, pathetic size. Right to the end.

"But... maybe they'd be down for a candlelight vigil? For Tristan."

A flick switched. He smiled and wrapped an arm around me. Relief bubbled in and over me as he did, and I found myself smiling too.

"Now that's a fucking idea. That'll get them nice and wet for sure." He rubbed his nose, deep in thought. Cameron nodded in approval. Roman, the voice of reason, chuckled, saying, "You're a freak, man." Still, I laughed too. When I looked at Tommy, almost as if to give him a cue to join, he was just looking at the dirt.

Amber and her friends took the bite once I mentioned Cameron would be there. At least three cheerleaders wanted to hear his rendition of Your Beautiful, for some reason. So, we agreed to meet on Saturday. Tommy texted me on Monday night, and again, and again. He had texted me fifteen times between that Monday and Thursday night. I finally glanced at our text threads on Thursday night, when I was drunk in Cameron's basement, worried only about how Amber's thighs felt in her skirt. Maybe it was the Coors or the time between responses, but I became acutely aware of how long it had been since I wanted to hang out with Tommy.

"Yo."

He responded immediately. "Hey."

"Want to link up for Okami tomorrow night? You are way better at it than I am."

"Hell yeah."

True to our word, our eyes were glued to the CRT that was burning the dye out of the carpet in the center of my room. Tommy was soaring through the game and for the first hour or two, it was just us. Joking. Talking about Dragon Ball GT and Cowboy Beebop. But when Amber texted me with some delightful photos, my attention quickly shifted, and the distance between us returned. I don't know how long we sat in silence, but eventually Tommy broke it.

"Hey, Ryan?"

"Sup?"

"Maybe we shouldn't go tomorrow."

I remember an instant pang of annoyance at his words. Tommy did this often. He'd back out at the last minute, and I would beg him not to. I could see our entire evening before us the moment he asked the question. He'd plead we do something like this instead—just hanging around with our dicks in our hands, I would then commit to convincing him to go, regaling him with reasons why he should. I'd partially lie about people wanting him to come, hammering home the same tired truth about his reputation. At which point, he would either get sad and agree or go quiet till I left. It got old. Yet I had convinced myself it was my job to pull him up. The more I embraced that manufactured responsibility, the more I began to resent him for not being appreciative.

"Why's that, man?" I sighed, harder than I intended, too.

"They don't like me."

"You know that's not true, dude. Roman loves you."

He turned to me. His eyes glimmered with wetness, reflecting the flickers of watercolor light from the video game. "And Darren? Cameron? What about them? Roman won't even talk to me unless you're around."

I didn't understand why he was getting so worked up about this, but it made my skin crawl with frustration. It felt like I was trying to put an oxygen tank on a drowning man, and all he did was thrash in my arms.

"Dude, it's because—" I cut myself off and bit my tongue. Don't, I thought.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No," He snapped, now full on crying. "No, fucking tell me."

I didn't. I just let him sit there, alone in those feelings, like a true asshole. Then, almost inaudible under his breath, he whispered in a broken voice:

"Why do you even hang out with me?"

Thankfully, that got through to me.

"I'm sorry, Tommy."

He looked up, hopeful. I crouched down.

"I just...get frustrated when I see you like this. It's not fair. I shouldn't. I know these people will love you, man. Like I do. Plus this is the perfect place to strut your stuff. No one knows more about ghosts than you. It'll take a bit of finesse, but if you just listen to me, we can get them eating out of your hand."

"You are just saying that, man."

I wasn't. I really believed it.

"Look, I know I always say this, but let's go to the party. I promise it will be great."

He wanted to say, no. I could see it. But whether it was my apology or the emotions of the situation, he didn't. He perked up, reached into his closet, and dusted out an Ouija board.

"Maybe they'll get a kick out of this, huh? A seance after the vigil?"

"Dude, that's perfect." And I truly thought it was.

Saturday night came. We exited Shilo's 2002 Ford Explorer into the crisp air at Algernon's Lips. The hiking trail that led to the Lips wasn't truly a ridge, but it was a steep climb into a dense thicket of trees. The path sloped up at a roughly 60-degree angle for about three-fourths of a mile. At which point, it plateaued into a small clearing. That was the Lip. The only path to it was one eroded down by the soles of horny climbers. It would be a hike either way.

"The things I do for pussy..." Roman said, zipping up his parka.

"Come on," Cameron snorted. He wore a thick hoodie and bike shorts. Still had to show off his calves. "It ain't that bad. Coach T has made us do worse."

"Are the girls gonna' be okay to get up here?" I asked.

"Not to worry, bro," Shilo said. "I shall escort our maidens safely to our haven."

A silence sat with the group for a moment. "So, again, are the girls gonna be okay to make it up there?"

"Don't worry, Ryan. It'll be cool," Darren said. "Besides, the longer it takes for them to make the climb, the more eager they will be to stick around." He raised his eyebrows to me, Cameron rubbed his hands together at the thought, and I exhaled through my nose in confirmation. Roman and Tommy filed out of the car. Roman gathered up all the lights and candles, struggling to fit everything into his box. He was in the middle of trying to juggle a fire extinguisher into the box when Shilo came up.

"Let me bring that up later, man."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, it's no sweat. You guys have got your hands full. Besides, it will let me show the ladies how serious I take safety."

We thanked Shilo who went back down the trail to wait for the girls. We then turned to Tommy, who had his own bag of tricks that he and I had prepared the night before. As we all began our ascent, I looked to him, gave a nod, cuing him to speak.

"Oh, guys," Tommy said, dropping his bag. "I brought a few things to make the night a bit more e-exxciting." Darren and Cameron moved into position, likely prepared to roast him for pulling out something stupid. Instead, Tommy ushered out a 24-pack case of Natty Lite we stole from my dad and the Ouija board.

"Drinks and entertainment." He said, confidence booming from him for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

Cameron clicked his tongue. "Very fucking nice, Tomcat." He had never called Tommy that a day in his life. He tried to conceal his excitement the best he could, but we all ignored it when he failed to do so. Dog have his day, kind of thing.

"Aphrodisiacs. Nice," Roman said, patting him on his shoulder. We all looked to Darren subconsciously for approval. He sneered but ultimately broke into a smile.

"Great idea. Now, can we stop sucking each other off and get up there?"

We marched up. Dread sank into us all the moment we crossed from the pavement onto the dirt. Humans never truly escaped our animal instincts. It's in me now, years later, as I sit in my car, waiting, aware of every flinch and flicker in the night. I was in tune with it then, too. We passed some point of no return the moment we ascended. With each crunch of leaves underneath the light of the pregnant moon, as our breaths grew heavy, our fingers cold, and our desire to reach the top desperate, so too did this inevitability within us. We didn't know what killed Tristan. We all but knew he jumped. Yet we were all afraid to find out if we were wrong. The air, the forest, the Lips, all of it could sense it—the hesitation to learn the truth. It returned that tension in kind.

When we arrived, we were ill-prepared for what it could look like, but breathtaking is how I remember it. A small slanted patch of grass that angled itself in such a way to face the moon and the remaining forest below. I could see Amber and me, lying in the Red Fescue, looking at the stars over the edge from the safety of our tent, acting out all the things she had texted me about the night before. Despite the slant, the majority of it was safe to walk on. The very apex of the slant and the edge of the Lip were the only dangerous parts. The Lip itself was surely the reason for so many deaths. Soft, craggy ground which seemed to squeak in anticipation as you neared it.

"Trying to end up like Tristan, Ryan? Get away from there and help me get this blanket set up." Darren barked.

I hopped to it, and we all got to work setting everything up. A weird silence fell between all of us as we got into a work rhythm. That invisible thing between us grew more tangible by the moment. We had made it to the Lip on edge. All keenly aware of whatever threatening miasma hung about. Everyone except for Tommy, that was. He was on cloud nine from his rare moment of appreciation at the base of the trail. He hadn't shown any signs of exhaustion. He drove into the center of the clearing the moment we summited and got to work fast, setting up the candles, boombox, and tents. Roman and I were impressed, Cameron indifferent, and Darren almost seemed irritated that Tommy was in high spirits. Noticing that, I gave Tommy another look to enact another of our rehearsed plans. He saw me, smiled, and sprang into action. He snagged everyone a chilled beer to ease the tension. Cameron hooted in excitement and called him a "beautiful bastard". Even managed to squeeze a thanks out of Darren. I was grinning ear to ear. Happy he was coming out of his shell. This was what I had always wanted. Him, truly in the fold.

We finished setting up and were about 2-3 beers deep when my phone buzzed.

"Shilo says that he and the girls will be here in about 45 minutes."

"Fuck," Darren seethed, slurring his words more than I expected him to be. "I can't wait that long, dude."

"Hey," Tommy said, putting down his beer. It sat among four of its crushed siblings. He had been putting them away. Part of me wanted to warn him, but I also wanted him to live a little. "Why don't we, like, rehearse the seance? You know, for the girls?"

Cameron scoffed. "What is this drama club? Get out of here, dude."

"No, it's a good idea," Darren said, drunkenly shoving Cameron. "I want to know my lines before Rachel gets here. You think she'll like me, Ryan?"

I had no idea how to answer him. One, because it was more vulnerable than I had ever seen him be, and two, because I knew how deeply repulsed Rachel was with him, and any guy for that matter.

"Never hurts to shoot your shot."

"Here-here." Roman lifted his can and crushed it on his forehead. We all did it in agreement Everyone but me. Who got a huge ring on my skull, a headache, and a bunch of drunk assholes laughing at me. For once, Tommy was one of them. That made me happy.

The jokes died when our hands landed on the planchette. The wind seemed louder, the moon brighter, the Lip closer. Electric numbness surged through my fingertips. We were on the precipice of something, I could tell. A subtle vibration ran through the board. I looked over to see Darren stilling a shake he couldn't conceal. Roman looked more focused than I had ever seen. Cameron noticed Darren alongside me, gave me a "you seeing this?" glance, and went back to the board. Tommy, in rare form, led it off.

"The energy levels are perfect for this tonight," He murmured in a low growl.

"What does that mean?" Darren asked.

"You can feel it, can't you?" Tommy said. "The thread of something else. The veil lifted. Cut. You've all been much quieter since we got here. I know you sense it."

"What is it?" Roman asked, a tenderness to his voice I hadn't heard.

"It. The Great Divide. This place has seen so much death. Accident or foul? Are these spirits vengeful or benevolent? Perhaps that is for us to decide. Maybe by calling them, by speaking them into life, we taint their energy and give them shape. The question then changes. It is not who you call, but instead who places it?"

"Jesus Christ..." Darren whispered. His hand flinched, going for his beer before quickly second-guessing himself and placing it back on the board.

"Someone needs to call. It can't be me." Tommy looked at me at that.

"Uh...okay. Who should be call?"

"What are you concerned about minutes?" Darren snapped. "Just fucking pick Tristan."

I nodded. "Tristan, if you are there, could you say, 'hi'?"

The board snapped over to the 'H', and then slowly over to the 'I'.

"Oh. What the..." Cameron started.

"A response," Tommy said, shaken. It terrified me. "Quickly, make sure you take him into you. His spirit needs a place to reside. A home. Otherwise, it will leave, and the connection will be broken. Ryan, keep going."

We all breathed in deep and kept going.

"How did you die, Tristan?"

F-A-L-L

"If one of you is moving this damn thing, I swear to God—" Darren started.

"Quiet. We need to concentrate." In a rare moment, Darren shut up at Tommy's command.

I continued. "Was it an accident?"

NO.

We all took our hands off the board for a moment. Every branch, bug, cicada, and critter seemed amplified tenfold at that exact moment. I look at Tommy. The genuine worry in his eyes gave me pause.

"Guys, maybe we should stop." He said.

"Just ask the question, Ryan," Roman said, Darren and Cameron nodded.

"Okay. Tristan, who pushed you?"

The planchette moved around like crazy. It hovered over some letters before circling the board again and again. After what felt like an eternity, it gave its answer.

B-E-H-I-N-D Y-O-U

We all turned around in a flash. Then, a blood-curdling scream erupted right in our ears.

"BLAH!" Tommy shouted at the top of his lungs. We all screamed in return, long and hard.

"Pretty good, right?" He said.

"You motherfucker!" Darren said, reaching over the board to shove him. "I should fucking kill you."

"W-what? You guys thought it was scary, right? Think of how the girls will feel."

"Man, I knew we shouldn't have let Ryan bring this freak."

"Chill, Darren. It was a good story." I said, trying to shove my heart back in my chest.

"Yeah, Darren. Chill." Tommy sneered.

"The fuck you say to me?" Darren said, standing up, fists clenched. Surprisingly, Tommy stood up to meet him. Up straight, wide as a fridge, he looked scary in this light.

"I said, 'chill'. Or do I need to tell everyone another ghost story so you can finish pissing yourself for real? I'm sure Rachel is going to love the smell."

They got in each other's faces. Roman and I snapped up, separating them.

"You are dead, fatty. Dead when I get to you."

"I'll eat your heart, cocksucker," Tommy shouted back.

"Y'all need to calm the hell down," Roman said, holding both Cameron and Darren back. One mind, both ready to scrap.

I held Tommy back. His eyes were filled with red-hot tears, and he was strong. Just to hold him at bay took everything I had, and I had never seen him work out a day in his life.

"Dude," I whispered. "You need to calm down. You are ruining the night."

He shoved me.

"I'm ruining it? Not this fucking pussy?" He thrusted his whole arm at Darren who tried to surge past Roman, but made no progress. "You guys ask me to tell a ghost story, and I am the bad guy because you all believed it? Give me a fucking break."

"Look, we are all drunk. But, come on, we can let the night keep being fun if we admit it wasn't cool and apologize."

That did it. Somehow, despite all that had happened since we had been friends. I had never seen Tommy angry. Not a single time had I heard him raise his voice beyond a hoarse answer in class. But as my words left my mouth, pure vitriol carved into his features. I took two steps back. He closed the distance.

"Fuck. You."

"Me? What did I do?"

"'Apologize'? To the piece of shit bully with a chip on his shoulder? What about me, Ryan? What about the jokes, and the looks, and the threats, huh? Where's my goddamn apology, dick?"

He shoved me, and I crashed onto the rocks.

"Hey, man. Knock it off." Roman said.

"Suck my dick, Roman," Tommy said, spittle flying from his lips. "You can quit the good guy act. I've heard you three talking about me when Ryan takes a piss. You know what he calls me, Ryan? Crisco Cocksucker. Because I am fat and, I guess, gay? That's the guy who "loves" me."

"Tommy—"

"And Cameron is too busy working up the nerve to tell Darren he is in love with him to have his own opinion. What a joke."

"Roman, let me go," Cameron said. Roman didn't, but he was certainly not holding back as much as he had been.

"And you know what, Ryan? I tried. I tried to play pretend like you do. I chased you around all these years because... we were friends. Best friends." He sniffled as his words broke, only for them to reforge into fury. "Then, a handful of pieces of shit treat you nicely because you can run 20 yards faster than most white kids, and all of a sudden, I was dead meat. Just a shit on a doorstep you could drop whenever you wanted."

Water filled my eyes, but I refused to cry. Anger flowed through my blood. I hated him in that moment. Not because he was telling lies, but because he was right. Tommy ripped off the scab of my shame, and the bleeding pink tissue underneath seared with pain against the cold. I hated him in that moment because I hated myself. Yet, somehow, the pain I felt, the resentment I had built for him, blended those honest emotions into contemptuous ones. In that moment, I knew I was committing to feelings I didn't want to, but I was held hostage by the release.

"Shut up, Tommy," I said through clenched teeth.

"You love Rachet and Clank!" He shouted. "He plays Yu-Gi-Oh at home with his little brother. Everything you think is fucking dumb? He loves. And he hides it. You know why? Because he is a gigantic pussy too afraid to be—"

His nose crunched beneath my hand. Blood showered his face and squelched and eeked through the clenched crevices of my fingers. The next thing I knew, he was on the ground.

I ran to him. Apologized. I picked him up, dusted him off, and told Roman, Cameron, and Darren that Tommy was right and that we were leaving. We left down the trail, hitchhiked to town, and left that whole night behind us. It's what I do over and over again in my dreams every night. It's what I wished to see as I dug in every needle.

Then I remember.

Roman, Darren, and Cameron all descended on him like vultures to carrion. They kicked, beat, and twisted all parts of Tommy. He thrashed, got his licks in here and there, screamed, but they were three, and he was one. I watched it all like a car crash. The paralytic cowardice that Tommy talked about, what had followed me my whole life up to that point, took hold, and I let it. It seeped into my veins like a hard narcotic. I floated away while my best friend was nearly beaten to death by three drunk assholes. As they stomped, kicked, and bashed, I remembered that old quote about the opposite of good. When I blinked, it was over.

"Okay, easy, Tommy," Roman said, as they all stepped back. I snapped back in time to see the glint of a gun Tommy was holding. A polished Ruger SP101. Loaded. He brandished it around wildly. He was in a horrific state. One eye sealed shut, possibly to the point of no return, judging by the amount of crimson which poured from the wound. The other didn't fare much better. His good eye, if it could be called that, was in a permanent squint, assessing all threats as he inched his way towards me. His breath squeezed out of him through a straw-like slit where his nose had been, shattered from where I sucker punched him. His lips sagged down on the left, and I could see the shards of broken teeth piercing through the skin. He dragged his left foot behind him as he kept the other three at gunpoint. It was broken, twisted at an angle I thought impossible.

"Tommy, Tommy, please," I said. The barrel flashed to me. Still, I wasn't afraid.

"Tommy, I am sorry. You were right. You were always right." His battered eye focused on me the best it could. "Let me help you. Please. We'll go to the cops."

"What the fuck, Ryan?" Darren shouted, the gun panned to him, and that shut him up.

"Tommy! Please. I mean it. Just let me help you down the mountain. Please. Please don't let them push you to do this. Please, Tommy. Please."

I was crying at this point when he looked at me. Those tears were for him, for what I did to him. I shouldn't have brought him here. I should have never convinced him that these were good people. We both knew it, but I had deluded myself stupidly these past few years. I poured as much honesty as my voice could muster into my words, and he truly saw it. He hesitated, ever so slightly. A flicker of doubt that I could discern through his crushed visage. The faintest ember of trust. He lowered the muzzle, barely a flinch down, but it was progress. Relief washed over me. I had him. I just had to get him down the mountain.

The fire extinguisher cracked him in the back of the skull with a sickening crunch. He fell like a bag of sand.

Dead weight.

I fell to my knees and looked over him in horror. Shilo, panic in his eyes, looked down at the gun, then to me, and dropped the extinguisher in realization at what he had done.

"Oh fuck, man. What the hell is going on?"

Darren and Cameron lunged forward and wrapped the gun in Cameron's loose shirt. Roman attempted to check his pulse, but then looked at his hands and paused. The same realization dawned on all of them.

"Shilo, where are the girls?" Darren demanded.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

He slapped him. "Where?"

"About 15 minutes down the trail, man. They insisted on going up themselves. What the hell happened, guys?"

Roman, Cameron, and Darren all shared one final look. "He fell. Just like Tristan. Right?"

Their eyes fell on Shilo and I. I said nothing. Just as I did nothing. I buried my knees in the rock and stared at my best friend's corpse.

"Or do I need to remind you that you were the one who hit him with the extinguisher?" He looked to me. "Or threw the first punch?"

"R-right... he fell." Shilo said. They didn't wait for me.

"Drag him to the Lip."

His body scraped across the rock. I went to move, go to him, them, make them stop. Make all this stop. Each attempt to move my body froze it firmer. I banged at the walls of my brain, crying for the friend I had lost, hating myself with each passing second. Yet all I did was stay there, watching the spot where his body had been. I still hear the whispered grunts they made as they hoisted his body to the soft Lip, the squeak of soft earth giving way to Tommy's body and the sound of weight plummeting until the finality of its soft thud at the forest below.

Then, they screamed. More rehearsed than the ghost story. Roman picked me up, saying we had to go. And, my deepest shame, I went. We ran. Down the mountain, away from the adult sins we had uncorked. We retreated into the fraudulent innocence of adolescence. Then, we lied. They by direct means, and I by omission. Tommy fell. We had no service. We were afraid to report it because we had been drinking. We ran as fast as we could. We couldn't find him. The police questioned me the most, but each attempt to talk about Tommy pushed me into a deep isolation. With the campsite cleaned, no fire extinguisher to be found, there was no reason to doubt them. The town searched for three months for Tommy's corpse. I searched six. Nothing. Not a trace. All but forgotten. Not by me. Not anymore. It only took seven years strung out on heroin, haunted by what I am, for me to realize what I must do.

Darren just pulled in. He's been doing well for himself. Day trading or some other stock market, finance stuff. They were all well, actually. Roman, Shilo, and Cameron, all of them fairly happy. Not a single one thought of my stopping by in a negative light. No shame, no confession, nothing. Not a single ounce of guilt percolated their thoughts until I put a barrel in their face. Shilo couldn't even remember Tommy's name. After tonight, we'll all have the same issue. Just more names to be forgotten; spoken finally into oblivion by the Lips.

Each time I pulled the trigger, I found myself thinking of what Tommy said up there. How spirits are tainted by those who call them. I figured out that that's what I was to you, Tommy. You came to me, channeled when I needed you most, and I took your energy, clean and pure, and tainted it. Wrapped it around me like a coiled spring, filled it with hate, until all that was left was the inevitable kickback. I did that. No one else but me. I threw the first punch. I pushed you too far. And when they beat you within an inch of your life, I let them. All because I was too afraid to stand up.

I'm sorry, Tommy. It's not enough, but God, I'm so sorry. I can't make it right. Can't go back. But I can even the score. I begged you not to make this choice that night. I'll be strong enough to make it for you tonight. Let me channel one last time. Give me your strength, your honesty.

Just one more night to help me pull the trigger on the last two who hurt you.