My dad was going to teach me how to play the drums. He was going to teach me how to play the harmonica too, though I was less interested in that. But he can’t teach me anything right now, because he’s lying unconscious in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of his face and a bunch of fancy machines monitoring him.
Mom and I stand beside him. She’s crying and holding his hand. I wonder if he feels it and knows it’s her. Can you recognize someone by the feel of their hands? Maybe he’s dreaming that they’re walking together down at Wolf Lake where we always have family reunions. That’s his favorite place in the world I think. Mom’s holding my hand too, because right now the three of us are what’s left of our family after Roger got mashed in a car accident three months ago.
I hear her crying, but I’m not watching because I’m too busy keeping my eyes on the lady in black, Officer Flowers, who’s standing across the bed from us, charred up like a human marshmallow by my friend Meredith. Whenever my family and I go camping we make smores and I love to cook my marshmallow over the fire until it’s all black and crispy on the outside. Then I squish it with the piece of chocolate between two graham crackers and all the white marshmallow goop spurts out.
Now I’m imagining squishing Officer Charmallow between two giant graham crackers and white goop oozes out of her. Oh yuck. Okay, I just ruined smores for myself.
Officer Flowers is staring back at me– I think. It’s hard to tell since her eyes are all black too. Last time I saw her she was curled up into a ball on the floor of Meredith’s bedroom, still on fire. I’d almost think she got better or something but that’s never the case with things around me. The fact that my mom can’t see her is another big hint.
I have a premonition that in a couple minutes, the doctor is going to walk in and get my mom to leave with him somehow. I looked up “premonition” and found that “pre” means “before” like a “preview” is something you view before the actual thing. A “monition” is a warning. So a “pre-monition” is a warning of something before it happens. But aren’t all warnings about something before it happens? You don’t warn someone about piranhas after they get eaten by piranhas. Unless that person is Jeffrey Baker or Lisa Welch. Then I’d be like, “oh no look out, Lisa, piranhas in the water, oh no too late.”
Sure enough, just as I think about excusing myself to go to the bathroom, the doctor walks in with his white lab coat and his glasses on top of his head. I wonder if he knows he left them there? He’s got a folder full of papers.
“Mrs. Maverick?” he says to my mother, “If I may, I’ve got some things we need to go over. Your daughter can stay here.”
Mom doesn’t bother to correct him on our name, she just nods quietly through her tears then takes my hand, puts it on Dad’s hand, and she and the doctor walk out of the room together where they start talking about my dad’s condition right outside the window like I can’t even hear them. But I can. He’s saying something about a medically-induced coma and brain trauma. Trauma is never a good word in the hospital. They have a whole ward dedicated to it.
Officer Flowers just keeps staring at me, so I stare at her back. I’m really good at staring. Roger used to always tell me to stop staring at him so I made a habit of remembering to blink from time to time.
I wish Paschar was here with me, but I left him in the room with my stuff while they bandaged me for my broken ribs. Are broken ribs cool? This kid at my school, Tyler O’Neil, once broke his arm in a skateboarding accident, and everybody at school kept coming up to him and going, “whoa!” and asking to sign his cast. I wonder if people will think I’m cool now since I got broken ribs. Also the whole escaping a burning building thing. Then again, Meredith escaped the burning building too. It seems like things become less cool the more people do it. If everybody escapes burning buildings, nobody’s going to care if you do it too. I wonder how Meredith is doing?
“I don’t belong here.”
It’s Officer Flowers. The inside of her mouth is bright red, so I can see it when she talks. Otherwise, it’d be like looking at just this crumpled up ball of paper that got tossed in the fireplace.
“Well maybe you should go where you belong.” I don’t like her being here. Things die when she’s around. Like an entire pet shop.
She reaches up to the front of her burnt uniform and I notice that her police badge is still shiny and undamaged. She touches it and says, “Dumah. Dumah says I was not meant to die.”
”You can hear Dumah?”
Officer Flowers nods, which makes a crackling sound like wax paper. Oh God, that’s the crunchy sound of her charmallow body, isn’t it? I gag at the thought.
“Now that I’ve passed the veil, I can hear him. He’s had a lot to tell me.”
I hear the voice of Dumah in my head. As he talks, her badge seems to shine just the slightest bit brighter. There was a plan, he says, an order to things, but one mistake in the design of the path caused everything to go bad and get steadily worse.
“I don’t understand.” I tell them both. Outside in the hall, my mom is nodding as the doctor continues to tell her things I can’t hear now, she looks in at me and holds up her hand.
Officer Flowers takes over. “It’s important for you to know this, because you are the knife that cuts the veil. Each of us was given a purpose and a plan we followed, in most cases unknowingly. Then, by chance or poor planning, the paths of two intersected. Do you understand?”
“I’m nine, not stupid.” I have no idea what she means about me being a knife. “You’re talking about Meredith and Mr. Felix.”
The charmallow nods again. I wish she wouldn’t. It sounds awful when her burnt skin crunches, and little bits of her crumble off. I shouldn’t call her a charmallow. I’m sorry, Officer Flowers.
“The incident between the two caused a disruption in the plan. This was exacerbated by the fact that Felix Clay carries the totem of the Holder of Secrets, Raziel. His awareness of the situation and the collapse of his mental state from the loss of his son changed things. Instead of our paths never crossing, we are becoming like a tangle of strings.”
This is making my head hurt. “What does asserbated mean?”
She stands there silently for a moment. “Exacerbated. It means to make things worse.”
“I probably should have guessed that. Okay, so…” I lean to look around her and make sure my mom and Doctor Lab Coat are still talking. Geez, I could probably wander off and find the cafeteria and get a snack and be back before they even noticed I was gone. “…you’re saying I was never meant to meet Meredith. Or Felix. Or you. In fact, none of us were meant to meet ever?”
“Ever.”
“How did you get tangled in this?”
Dumah responds. I had been guiding Samantha Flores down a career in law enforcement as an avatar of vengeance. Though we couldn’t communicate, I was able to enhance her senses, making her a better detective and hunter. She worked for the Ryland Falls police force at the time that Joseph Clay died on stage after a fire broke out during a magic show being performed by his father.
Jeez, this Dumah really likes to talk. I can almost hear him sticking his nose in the air and holding a wine glass between two fingers while adjusting his monocle as he describes how he single-handedly made Officer Flowers into some sort of super cop. It’s like everything he says gets run through a computer and translated into snob.
“I could sense that something was off.” Officer Flowers folds her arms. The sound of her crunching sleeves makes me shudder. “While I did not come into contact with Felix Clay, there was this residual aura left behind by him. I’d never seen anything like it before. I found that I could track his movements by following the trail, though I didn’t know at the time that it was him I was following.”
I need to interrupt. “I have to use the bathroom.”
She stands there looking at me silently, arms crossed. “Seriously?”
I shrug. “I’m nine years old, I got a little bladder.”
“Fine.”
I step past her, smelling the burnt hamburgers from my picnic dream as I do. Mom and the doctor stop their conversation to look at me. I tell her I’m just going to use the bathroom, and then wander off down the hall where they got these funny bathrooms with stalls for people who might need help getting back up. There’s even a cord you can pull to have a nurse or someone come and help lift you off the toilet. I wonder if they ever get people who pull it even though they’re fine.
Just as I’m sitting there about to go, the lights flicker and Officer Flowers seems to step into existence like she’s made out of smoke. I scream naturally because WHAT. THE. HELL. LADY?
“I followed Felix Clay’s trail to the burning of the Patterson residence that claimed the lives of John and Camilla Patterson, leaving their only child, Mered–”
“Oh my God, are you seriously doing this? I’m on the toilet!” I’ve never seen ghosts before, but now that I have, can I just say that they are HUGE JERKS. I tried to be polite, but you know what? You are Officer Charmallow now.
“–leaving their only child, Meredith. I did not know of Meredith’s involvement in the fire that killed Joseph Clay, but my job became clear: to track down and enact vengeance upon Felix Clay for the deaths of John and Camilla Patterson.”
“Okay, well, as you can see he’s not here in the bathroom. No Felix hiding in the trash bin or toilet bowl. You should go–”
“I can’t go anywhere. I’m bound to the hospital now. My body is down in the morgue.”
I feel ready to burst. “Why are you telling me all this? What do you want from me?”
“Like me, you and your father’s destinies have been altered by the course of events. Although I’ve crossed the veil, I do have some limited influence before my totem becomes another’s. If you will perform one last act and avenge me, I can help your father. Doing this will also fix the tangle of strings that are our paths and put things right again. There are others at risk from this. We need to fix it before too many others become affected by it.”
Let me get this straight… I can’t even keep a hamster alive, but the angels are expecting me to fix their mess-up that has killed at least four people that I know of, put a pet store out of business, burned down two homes and put my dad in a coma.
“Can you give me two minutes to think about this?”
She turns away from me, and for a moment I think she’s going to step back into nothingness like how she got here, but she just stands there, this looming, adult-sized, burnt corpse in a crispy police officer’s uniform with little flaky bits falling off her.
“Outside?” I say.
She steps forward, vanishing like smoke.
“Jesus Christ.”
Thinking on it, I was figuring Felix wasn’t done with Meredith anyway. He’s got it in his head that he’s going to fill her noggin with lies and turn her into some sort of punisher of normal people. I wonder why, if the angels gave us these… these “gifts” if you want to call them that, why they don’t just take his away, brush their hands off and then kick his weasel butt into the lake of fire. I wonder if there really is a lake of fire. I should remember to ask Paschar when I get back to the room with my stuff.
On the other hand, I’ve never killed anybody. I don’t know that I could. I mean, it would be pretty easy, if I just got close enough to him I could tell him that he’s going to trip down a flight of stairs and break his neck. I always tried to avoid killing him though. I just… I don’t know if ‘ve got it in me.
But I guess when it comes down to it, the most important thing is helping my dad. He still has to teach me how to play the drums. Otherwise we gotta pay for a tutor.
I finish up my business finally now that I’ve got privacy, wash my hands (you should always wash your hands), and then step out to find Officer Charmallow standing right outside staring at me. I almost have a heart attack. It takes me a moment to catch my breath.
“Alright, I’ll help. But I’m not shaking on it. I just washed my hands and your hands are really gross.”
Thank you, child, says Dumah.
“But if I do this and you don’t make my dad get better, we’re gonna have a problem.” That’s how my mom always talks. She says “we’re gonna have a problem” every time she expects me to do something like empty the dishwasher or clean out my backpack after a week of returned homework assignments. “Lily, you better get your butt in the kitchen and empty the dishwasher or we’re gonna have a problem.” I’ve learned from experience that the “problem” we’re gonna have is that she’s going to repeat herself only louder.
In this case, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. It’s kind of an empty threat, but I hope she does what she promised.
Officer Charmallow reaches up and removes the shiny badge from her chest. She holds it out to me. “Take this, it’s my connection to Dumah.”
“Isn’t that a ghost badge? I mean, isn’t your real badge down in the morgue with your body?”
“No one else will be able to see it, yes. Do you want to be seen carrying the badge of a dead officer?”
I can think of some kids at school who I’d score cool points with if I showed up with a dead cop’s badge, actually. But not kids I want to associate with, and yeah, I get her point. Careful to avoid touching her flaky, blackened skin, I pluck the badge from her hand. The moment I do, I feel strange. The lights in the hall seem to get brighter, and the air becomes dirty. I realize that I can see the little particles of dust floating around. And when I breathe in, I can smell and taste what each bit of dust is and HOLY HELL I’m in a hospital full of sick people and I can smell and taste them. There’s a person in one of the nearby rooms and they smell like fungus.
Even worse, I suddenly become aware of other people in the hall. There’s an old lady in a wheelchair leaning against the wall just down a ways from us. She stares at the floor and doesn’t move, but I can tell she’s not really there because she sort of fades in and out of my vision. Another one, a little boy whose face looks swollen and purplish, is sitting on one of those rolling hospital bed things. He’s watching me, and I wonder how long he’s been doing that.
“This is what every day was like for you?”I feel a burp coming on but it may be my tummy deciding to empty itself. I force it back down. “This smells terrible!”
“You now possess the power of Dumah. You are an agent of vengeance,” Officer Charmallow seems to turn somewhat transparent, like she really is made of smoke. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it. I just want to kill Felix and save my dad.”
She starts to fade away. Her feet have already vanished. Her legs are trailing off like the genie’s in Aladdin. She would make a terrible genie. Unless you were wishing for nightmares. Heck, I wasn’t even wishing for nightmares and now I’m going to have nightmares.
“Never mind Felix Clay. Avenge me as we agreed and then return here.”
“What do you mean never mind Felix Clay? How am I gonna–”
Oh no.
Her body is wisps of smoke now too. Her head and shoulders are all that’s left. “You must kill Meredith Patterson.”
She’s gone.
“WAIT ONE MINUTE,” I shout.
Dumah’s badge shines in my hand. I tip my hand to drop it, and it vanishes the moment it hits the floor. A second later, it appears pinned to my shirt. Panicking, I claw at it, but my fingers go through it like it isn’t there. The ghosts in the hall watch me silently.
You must kill Meredith Patterson if you want to save your father, Dumah says.
“I did not agree to that!” I yell. A nurse passing by frowns at me.
Yes, you did.
“Meredith didn’t do anything! She was under Felix’s spell! He made us both think things we wouldn’t have otherwise!” I need to get back to my room. I start running in the direction of it so I can get Paschar and talk this out. A doctor sees me and calls after me to stop running, so I turn it into a speed walk because those are allowed in hospitals.
Meredith is the thread that tangles the knot, Dumah keeps talking. He really does sound like a giant snob, like one of the jerk girls from Lisa Welch’s crew. I don’t want to talk to him, I want to talk to Paschar. If you kill Felix Clay, you and Meredith will remain tangled. More will become tangled. The only thing binding you to Felix Clay is Meredith Patterson. Once she’s gone–
“Shut up!”
–he will have no reason to remain here.
I get back to my room and Pashar is chilling on my hospital bed in his snazzy vest, leaning propped up against my backpack. He doesn’t act at all surprised by the fact that I show up wearing Officer Charmallow’s badge. I’m out of breath and my ribs have started to hurt some again so I have to take a moment to calm down.
“Paschar, I’m seeing dead people. And I think I made a bad deal with one.”
I know, he says, I warned you. I’m sorry that it’s had to come to this.
“What do you mean? Isn’t there anything I can do?”
Yes. Unfortunately you must get rid of Meredith.
I can’t believe this is happening. This is a bad dream. Wake up, Lily! Wake up! “I don’t understand! Felix is the real threat! He knows about you all and is evil! Why does it have to be Meredith?”
It’s not our place to question the plan. This must be done to set things right. Any further deviations risk catastrophic consequences. Don’t you want your father to get better?
I don’t want to do this. I want to make things right, but killing my third best friend is not making things right. “Have any of you thought about how this is messing up my fragile mental state?” I ask.
I told you I’m sorry. I care about you, you know that. I’ll always be here for you. You must do this one thing for us. I tried to guide you away from this outcome, but was unable to. I can only promise I’ll never ask it of you again. If you don’t do this, things will continue to get worse.
I gather up my stuff, hesitate picking up Paschar, then sigh and take him as well. “You better be ready to go with me to all my new therapy sessions, because I’m definitely going to need one now. This is so messed up. By the way, how come I’m seeing ghosts? You told me when people die they either go one way, the other, or sit in their bodies in purgatory!”
Dumah the snob chimes in. *Some people are never buried. They are cremated. A soul with no body to wait in can wander–
“Oh shut up, you.” I snap.
We walk… I walk back to my dad’s room in the intensive care unit. The doctor in the lab coat is gone and Mom is sitting in the room next to Dad, holding his hand again. When she sees me, she stands up, comes over, and gives me a great big hug.
“I see you went back to your room and got your stuff.” she kisses the top of my head.
“Yeah.” And a little something more. I wonder if she notices there’s anything different about me. I notice more things about her than I think I ever have before. For one thing, I can smell her deodorant. There’s coconut and shea butter in the shampoo she uses. Also, her heart is beating really fast. I can taste her hug. It’s so unpleasant, but she feels warm and I hug her back anyway.
“Your father is struggling, but they have some hopes of a recovery.” she says. I can tell that she’s lying because she uses this higher pitched tone of voice. It almost makes her sound like she’s a little kid. I can’t explain how I know this, I just hear it and detect it. “We’ll visit and check on him everyday until he gets better.”
I squish against her. “Okay.”
“Do you want to get something to eat? And then head home. It’s been an awful day. I imagine you just want to get some sleep.”
“Sleep sounds nice.”
Mom ruffles my hair. She’s trying to be playful, but with dad in a coma right next to us, it kind of loses its flavor. “Tomorrow I’ll take the day off and we’ll do some stuff, just you and me. Sound good?”
“I kinda want to just go to school.” I say glumly.
Mom looks saddened. “Oh, okay. I understand. Sometimes it’s easier to take our minds off things if we just stick to our routines.”