Death in Spades Read online

  that this woman will never see to their end. On a chair by the door rests a quilt with one seam open, like she’s nearly done sewing it. I feel an uncomfortable pang of sympathy clench in my throat and I force my eyes away.

  The old woman lays on the floor, one hand gripping the fabric of her shirt over her chest tightly and the other scratching at the tiles desperately. She looks up at me, and her eyes meet mine for just a moment. She can see me. She’s still alive – even if just barely – and she can see me.

  Am I going crazy? Is this all some fever dream that I’m going to wake up from tomorrow and laugh with Olivia about in a day or two? Maybe I didn’t even kill myself. After all, I’ve thought about it loads of times in the past couple of years and haven’t done anything about it; why would this time be any different?

  “That’s how you know her soul is ready to leave.”

  I jump back, my feet slipping right through the couch and halfway into the coffee table on the other side. Mellie stands –

  hovers – a few feet to my right, her arms crossed and a smug look on her face. She’s got half of a smile on her lips as she watches me try to untangle myself from the table, my feet scuffing the wooden floor and echoing sounds through the house that only we can hear. Her hair looks redder somehow, but maybe it’s just the lighting.

  “Are you gonna make a habit of scaring the crap out of me every time we meet? Because if that’s the case, I’d rather just haunt this part of town on my own, thanks very much.”

  Mellie laughs, a sound that rings like a bell and takes some of the tension out of my shoulders. I float up a few inches until I’m at eye level with her and focus half of my efforts into keeping myself steady and the other half into listening to her.

  “I can’t help it that you spook easily. You’d think being dead would make you a little less afraid of ghosts, wouldn’t you?”

  “Ha ha, very funny. Why are you here, again?”

  I can hear the old woman running her nails along the floor and the sound makes me feel sick. Suddenly, I’m overwhelmingly glad that Mellie is here; I’m not sure I could do this alone. I’ve never seen anyone die, and I honestly never wanted to.

  “I figured you could use my help,” Mellie says, gesturing to the dying woman, whose eyes are roving from me to Mellie and back again. “Plus, you looked ready to keel over the second she saw you, and I didn’t want to have to deal with you freaking out and flying around the whole neighborhood looking for me.”

  I want to tell her that I would never do something like that, but she has a point. I was just getting ready to call for her when she showed up. Perfect timing, though she could use a little work on her

  entrances.

  The woman gapes up at us, her mouth wide open but no sound coming out. Just when I’m about to ask Mellie when she’s going to finally die – because I’m more than a little creeped out and I hate having to watch her suffer like that – the old lady takes one last, shuddering breath and her head falls back on the floor with a thump that’s muffled by her tightly curled hair.

  “So they can see us?” I ask, eyeing the body warily like it’s going to spring back up and pounce on me at any moment. “Can everyone who’s going to die see us, or just people who are really close?”

  “If someone’s death has been determined, they can see spirits like us. Even if they aren’t going to die for an hour, or a day, or sometimes even a week. As long as they’re ready to die, we’re totally visible. Really puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?”

  I nod like I know what she’s talking about, even though I’m only half-listening. I keep waiting for the old lady’s soul to jump out of her body; my hands are out like I’m expecting I’ll have to catch it when it does, even though Mellie keeps giving me odd looks out of the corners of her eyes.

  Mellie sighs and floats over to the woman’s side, staring down at her with the same sad, withdrawn look I saw on her face the first time we met. She almost looks like she’s going to cry, which is odd, considering how long she’s been doing this job for. You’d think she’d be used to it by now.

  She puts one hand on the woman’s shoulder and pinches, pulling back with something wispy and silver clinging to her fingers.

  It’s a soul, I realize at it materializes and takes shape. Before my eyes it floats out of the old woman’s body and becomes a flickering opaque spirit, hovering above the ground over the body on the floor.

  Mellie keeps her hand on the spirit’s upper arm, guiding her away from her body. The woman looks confused, but realization dawns on her as she looks around. Her eyes seem to linger on me as

  she begins recalling her memories of her life, starting with the most recent – her death. That’s always the hardest; at least, it was for me.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Esther?” Mellie addresses the old woman, who nods and glances down at her body with an unreadable expression on her face. “My name is Mellie, and this is Terra.” She gestures to me, and I manage a halfhearted wave that probably makes me look like an idiot. “We’re here to help you. We’ll answer any questions you have, and help you move on when you’re ready.”

  Mellie’s voice is soft and gentle, like she’s speaking to a small child. It’s soothing, and just listening to it relaxes me and takes away some of my anxiety. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until the sensation starts melting away and I let out a deep breath I’d been holding.

  Ghosts don’t need to breathe, obviously – it’s like a reflex, a bad habit that’s really difficult to unlearn. I don’t have lungs anymore, so any air I take in goes straight through me like a miniature gust of wind. It feels kind of strange, but not breathing at all feels even stranger, so I allow myself this small gesture of humanity. Mellie does too, even if she won’t admit it; I’ve caught her gulping air like a fish when she thinks I’m not watching.

  Esther looks somber but resigned, like she knew her time was coming soon anyway. She’s probably at least eighty years old, but that doesn’t mean anything – my great grandmother was ninety-two when she died of old age. A heart attack is less predictable. If I were Esther I’d be freaking out right now.

  Instead, she gives Mellie a small, almost timid smile. “Thank you, my dear. I’m ready to go, I think.”

  I can’t imagine being so willing to let some stranger take you away from the only life you’ve ever had. I think that even if Mellie had been there when I died, I wouldn’t have gone with her. Maybe I’m stuck here because of my own stubbornness.

  Mellie guides the old woman towards the door, nodding to me to follow. With only minimal difficulty, I manage to float through another table and a cushioned armchair and out one of the windows at the front of the house. I was aiming for the door, but flying is a lot harder than it looks; it takes a lot of balance, even though my ‘body’ is completely weightless. I imagine that if the wind didn’t phase right through me, it would blow me away like a sheet of paper.

  I look back at the house, a chill sweeping over me despite my inability to feel. The lights flicker off and the stillness of the place is eerie. It’s unsettling to think that there’s a dead body inside, just one room away from the front door. Even though Esther is right in front of me, clearly doing just fine with her transition into being a ghost, I can’t help but feel sad for her. I wonder if anyone was this sad for me when I died.

  I’m so lost in my own thoughts that I don’t notice where

  Mellie and Esther have gone until a bright, yellow light flares in the corner of my eye and I turn in the air, almost losing what little balance I have. Mellie is hovering a few feet above me, but Esther is nowhere to be seen. It takes me a second to realize that the sparkling

  ball of light radiating in front of Mellie is Esther, and as it flickers and fades away, that must be her going to Heaven. Or Hell, but I doubt a bright light would welcome her there. Plus, she seemed like a nice old lady – what could she have done to deserve eternal punishment?

  “Heaven,” Mellie says softly, answe
ring my unspoken debate. “If it was Hell, you would know. Trust me.”

  The way she says it sends a cold shiver up my spine. I don’t know where I’m going or what tomorrow will bring for me, but I know just by looking in Mellie’s eyes that this place is better than the alternative.

  Chapter Four

  Nearly a week passes before another death occurs. I’m just starting to get used to the silence, like a blanket over the town where I’m free to wander without any rules or restrictions. I see some people I know, and some that I don’t recognize. My memories are seeping back into my mind slowly, mostly just simple things like the classes I took in school and the way I decorated my bedroom. I’m guessing that the heavier topics won’t return until I’m the least ready for them – like why I killed myself. I would gladly spend the rest of my life – afterlife – not knowing the answer to that question.

  The second death I witness is definitely more exciting than the first, but not in a good way. Where Esther had passed slowly, naturally, and transcended the physical plane with ease, David is a bit… different. In pretty much every way possible.

  The pulling sensation starts affecting me five days after I watched Esther die. At first I think that maybe it’s going to lead me towards whatever is going to help me find enough closure to move on, but it’s the same feeling that led me to Esther’s house, and all

  this one takes me to is the middle of a large dirt crossroad on the edge of town.

  There’s nothing here – no cars, no pedestrians, and only a small cluster of houses within a mile. I wait for the invisible string to pull me somewhere else, but it remains resolutely, stuck in the center of the road.

  A car buzzes past me and I jump a solid foot into the air, falling back into the dirt with my elbows halfway through the ground. If Mellie was here, she would probably be laughing at my stupidity, but she’s not. I guess I’m going to have to deal with this one on my own.

  I look around at the nearby houses, trying to figure out which one I’m supposed to go to. Last time I was pulled right through the front door, but now that I’m here I don’t feel anything. Somebody is going to die outside, then. In spite of myself, I start thinking of how it could happen – heat stroke, even though it’s still the tail end of winter here; hypothermia, even though it’s warm enough to melt every trace of snow off of the ground; another heart attack, or maybe a stroke this time. Someone’s about to keel over in their own front yard, but there’s no one outside and no movement from any of the homes I can see around me.

  I push myself up off of the ground and stand in the dirt, kicking against it with my heels. I feel dusty and gross, like I haven’t bathed in weeks – which, technically, is true. Do ghosts even need baths? Wouldn’t the water just run right through me?

  The sudden, deafening screech that cuts through the silence startles me, knocking me back into the dirt. I hadn’t even noticed the

  two cars, coming from opposite directions and meeting at the crossroad. A tiny blue sports car and a large, shiny silver pickup truck. The smaller car is crushed under the hood of the pickup, wheels spinning in the air and smoke curling up from the impact.

  It feels like my heart is hammering a million miles a minute, even though that’s impossible for someone who doesn’t even have a heart. My head is spinning with anxiety as I take in the crash, afraid to look inside of the cars because I know exactly what I’ll see.

  The pickup driver is alive, bent over the steering wheel with blood dripping down his forehead. He’s moaning and trying to move, and I want to help him, but I know he’ll be fine regardless. He’s not the one I’m here for.

  The entire front half of the small blue car is pinned underneath the truck, crushed down and steaming. Shards of glass and scraps of metal litter the ground outside of the wreckage; I step over them gingerly as I make my way over to the cars, even though I could just as easily float right over the mess.

  That’s when I see him – or rather, what’s left of him. A man in his late twenties or early thirties, with short black hair and wearing a dark blue suit that’s covered in tears and blood. His head is down, so I can’t see his face, but the entire dashboard of the car is crunched down to half its size and covered in sticky red blood, and the man’s torso is bent sideways at an unnatural angle. He’s covered in cuts and scratches and I can imagine at least half a dozen bones in

  his body that must be broken. It would be a miracle if he was even still alive, but as I look closer I see that, somehow, he is.

  His chest is heaving in and out, and one arm is scrabbling messily around the seatbelt clip. It clicks, and he slumps over sideways, his head hanging out of the broken window. Splitters of glass cut through his neck and I wince and take a step back.

  He looks right at me, one eye bloody and surrounded by deep purple bruises. His mouth opens and closes and he gurgles, saliva spilling over his lips and half-formed words echoing in my ears. I think I hear him ask for help a couple of times, his hands grasping at anything they can reach – the steering wheel, the door frame, the lock. The desperate look on his face makes me feel horribly guilty. I should be helping him. I should be figuring out how I can help him.

  But Mellie’s words echo in my head. “You can’t get involved. You can’t do anything to prevent their deaths. Bad things can happen to people to interfere with the natural order of things.”

  But is this really ‘natural’? It’s not like he’s dying of old age, or from an incurable disease. If any one small thing in his day had delayed him even a few seconds, this crash never would have happened. It could have all been avoided; he could have been saved, and here I am, gaping down at his trembling body, feeling like this is all somehow my fault.

  I’d been standing here at this road for nearly half an hour before the two cars emerged. If I’d had the foresight to predict the crash, could I have prevented it? Would I have dared to try?

  The man in the wrecked car spits out a mixture of blood and saliva and leans back in his seat, staring at me through glassy eyes. Again, it feels like my heart is going to burst out of my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him, holding my hands up in defeat. “I’m so sorry. I can’t help you, not right now. It’ll all be over in a minute, though. I promise.”

  I can’t promise him something like that. It could take seconds or minutes or hours for him to die. Either his organs start failing and he passes quickly, or he bleeds out slowly and suffers. Like I did.

  I put one hand on the window frame, touching my fingertips to his. I don’t expect to feel anything, but when our hands meet the pulling sensation returns, strong and forceful. It tugs me forward, my entire hand sinking through his arm. I grip my fingers into a fist and step back, pulling away with as much strength as I can muster. His soul comes with me, shimmering and soft, and his entire body materializes in front of me, looking exactly how I imagine it did just before the crash.

  He’s handsome and tall, with bright blue eyes and soft features. His hair is neatly styled and his suit is crisp and clean. He looks like he could be on his way to work, or maybe going home afterwards. He looks completely human and very much alive, except for the fact that his feet are a foot off the ground.

  He looks calm for a second, glancing around at the wreckage and frowning down at his torn apart body. He takes in a deep breath, seems to realize that he can’t actually breathe anymore, and starts completely panicking.

  His feet sink into the ground and he flails his arms wildly, sputtering a string of words that I can only partially understand. I put one hand on his shoulder and try to hoist him out of the dirt but he struggles, pushing me away with a strength that I didn’t even know

  ghosts possessed. I guess if we can touch each other, we can push each other too, because for the third time today I fall on my ass and scuff my shoes through the mud.

  “Can you calm down for a second?” I say, speaking loudly over his panicked shouts. He doesn’t even look at me. “Freaking out isn’t going to help anybody. I
can explain what’s happening if you just calm down.”

  My voice rises in pitch the longer he ignores me until I’m yelling so loud I half expect the man in the silver pickup to hear me, even though that’s impossible. Unless he’s going to die, too. I don’t think I can handle two deaths in one day.

  I grip my fingers around his upper arm tightly, using all of my strength to keep him from pushing me away again. He tries to shrug me off, wide eyes flickering from his body to the crumpled hood of his car and the now-unconscious driver behind the wheel of the pickup.

  “I said calm down!” I shout, fingernails digging into the flesh of his bicep. If he could feel pain, I imagine it would hurt quite a bit and maybe even bleed, but all it does is shock him the way Mellie’s touch startled me.

  He looks at me, fear in his eyes, and for the first time I see the situation from his point of view. I must look like something

  terrifying – a spirit that only shows up when he’s about to die and does nothing but yell and freak him out after. Esther processed her death a lot better, but she was old and probably knew it was her time to go. This man is young and his death came as a complete surprise. If I had died like this, I would have been scared too.

  “My name’s Terra,” I tell him, trying to make my voice soft like Mellie did; it comes out a little scratchy and rough, but much gentler than the alternative. “What’s yours?”

  At first I don’t think he’s going to answer. He looks at the wreck, then back at me, and his eyes widen as if he’s only just now recognizing what just happened.

  “David,” he says, wincing. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “Yep. Welcome to the club, Dave.”

  “It’s David.” The corners of his lips twitch in the barest hint of a smile. If I can’t soothe him like Mellie can, the least I can do is make him feel more comfortable. “What are you? A ghost?”

  “I think so. Probably.” I shrug my shoulders and let go of his arm now that I know he’s calmed down a bit. “Kind of like the Grim Reaper, but a lot less cool. Although I’m guessing you’d have freaked a whole lot more if you saw a guy with a black robe and a scythe coming after you, am I right?”