Page 16

Rhodes

I couldn’t stop my gaze from drifting towards the treeline as I left my house in the morning, even if I’d wanted to. My emotions were going haywire this morning. I couldn’t decide if the prominent emotion was anxiety or dread, but they were also warring with the excitement I felt over the prospect of seeing Kali again. I couldn’t have stopped my heart from fluttering when that excitement crested when I spotted the object of my most recent obsession already there, waiting for me just inside the treeline. She beckoned me closer with a wave of her hand, and like an infatuated idiot, I followed without question.

She could have been a siren sent to lure me to a watery grave, but I was dying anyway, so why wouldn’t I follow the beautiful, mysterious woman into the woods?

She led me further into the trees than we had gone before, and I kept checking for those little markers my parents had left to point out the property line: three vertical slashes on the bark of certain trees. I had seen them on the other side of the property plenty of times, because of the campsite boundaries, but I didn’t recall ever coming this way before. Or had I? The longer I thought about it, the more my head pounded and the fuzzier it became until I couldn’t remember what I was thinking about so hard. Why was I in the woods?

‘Rhodes?’ a sweet voice called out to me from somewhere to my right. I followed the sound to a vaguely familiar face, and I stared at her strikingly pale, ethereal features as I tried to place her. ‘Rhodes, are you okay?’

I blinked, the memories trickling back in as I finally realised why I recognised her. I grinned, shaking off the brain fog. ‘Kali, hi.’

‘What just happened?’ she asked, and though her tone was soft, they were also blunt. I decided that I appreciated it. I hated it when people walked on eggshells around me, because it went hand-in-hand with the pity I so detested. Talking to Kali was a breath of fresh air. What wasn’t, however, was the confusion her question brought on, and I glanced around me at the trees, wondering how and why I had walked into them. Seeing Kali before me, I realised I must have spotted her and followed her in, but I didn’t remember.

I gave her the only answer I could give, tapping my head with a mocking smile that I used to hide my wince. My head fucking hurt, and the tapping only exacerbated the throbbing. ‘Brain tumour. Sorry if I acted a bit strange. I don’t… my memory isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Your memory?’ she asked, concerned.

‘I… I don’t… um,’ I stumbled over my words, trying to piece together what was happening.

‘What was the last thing you remember?’ she asked, her tone so gentle and patient that it brought tears to my eyes. Not because of her kindness, but because she wasn’t making me feel like a burden just because I was sick.

‘Uh, I think… I was putting my shoes on, and then… I don’t…’ My head began to swim, my vision doubling, tripling, and eventually blurring into indecipherable blobs of colour.

‘Okay. I don’t think you lost much time…’ She paused. A white blur I deduced must have been Kali suddenly appeared right in front of me, taking up my entire field of distorted vision. ‘Rhodes, do you need to sit down?’

I nodded, then winced at the sensation of my brain smacking against the inside of my skull. I squinted my eyes and leaned my shoulder against a nearby trunk, completely disoriented, and barely even felt the scrape of the bark against my arm as I slid to the ground. Leaves and twigs crunched beneath my weight, but I barely heard or felt a thing as the thrumming pressure grew too much to bear. My hands flew up to the sides of my head, and I squeezed in a feeble attempt to relieve the pressure. When it didn’t work, a groan of pain escaped my mouth without my permission, and I tipped over to lie on my side, the trunk at my back the only thing letting me know where I was.

‘Rhodes?’

‘M-med… M-med’ca-tion,’ I slurred. ‘T-truck.’

‘Fuck, Rhodes. Shit. Okay, you’re medication is in your truck?’

My only response was a whimper of pain.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t get it for you. You need to move. Can you sit up?’

Her words were simultaneously too loud and too muffled, and it took me a while to sift through them to finally comprehend. She couldn’t help, or wouldn’t?

‘W-why?’ I asked, my mouth struggling to form the word through the pain.

‘I can’t, Rhodes. I’m so sorry. There are so many things I can’t do yet, but I can sit with you. Would that help?’

I could hardly think over the sheer agony shooting through my brain that was slowly starting to travel down. My neck tensed, then my shoulders, and then I felt it. My mind was slowly shutting down in preparation for the seizure coming in hot.

The last thing I managed to think was how I found it strange that this mystery of a woman wanted to offer me moral support, but refused to retrieve my medication from my car.

∞∞∞

Everything hurt.

I wasn’t sure what happened, but my head pounded, my muscles were stiff and achy, and my eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my head. It was all-encompassing, and I struggled to push through the fog coating my brain to focus on anything else.

Sounds were muffled and incomprehensible, just like everything else. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I tried to open my eyes to see where I was, but they were either glued shut or I was too weak to pry them open. A groan rumbled in my chest, but barely made it past my throat, which felt closed off. I wanted to panic that I was going to suffocate to death, but I didn’t have the energy. I felt weak, pathetic, and absolutely useless as I lay here, pushing my brain and my body to start working properly.

It came slowly, starting with my senses.

Touch came first. If I’d thought things were painful before, I was in a whole world of hurt now. Every movement, every brush against my skin, all of it combined into an amalgamation of torture.

Then came the taste. Bile and something metallic that I hoped wasn’t blood coated my cotton-like tongue. With the way it throbbed, I had a feeling I’d bitten it.

My hearing came next, and that was what finally provided me with enough strength to peel my heavy eyelids open. The sweet sound of a woman’s voice humming a lullaby nearby was like a balm to my soul. I couldn’t quite pick out the words, nor could I determine the owner of the voice, but it helped to relax me enough that the pain began to ebb. My vision, however, was just as fuzzy as my hearing. I could see blurred colours, lots of greens and browns and a large blob of blue that I assumed was the sky, but it was the slice of white that stood out starkly against the darker colours of the world around us that truly drew my attention. I stared, focused hard on that sliver of white nearby, until it finally came into focus.

No, not it, she. The source of the beautifully haunting singing.

She must have noticed me coming to because her lovely song suddenly cut out, and then she was kneeling in front of me, twin orbs of icy blue studying me with concern and a level of care I wasn’t sure I had earned.

‘Rhodes, can you hear me?’ she asked, her speaking voice just as pretty as her singing voice, though a little huskier.

I mumbled unintelligibly, but she seemed to get the message.

‘Okay, that’s good. Do you think you can sit up? I’d let you lean on me, but… I can’t touch you.’

I wondered what she meant by that, but another wave of pain had my body locking up when I tried to move, so I assumed she meant she didn’t want to make it worse by touching me.

After a while of lying there, waiting for the pain to subside, Kali’s sweet voice humming soothingly in my ear, I was finally able to open my eyes without feeling like I was being stabbed in the skull. Still, I groaned as the light attacked my sensitive eyeballs and raised a shaky hand to shield them from the sun. It was higher in the sky than I remembered, but I couldn’t trust my memory right now. I didn’t know if it was lower when I went down, or if my memories had tangled and converged.

I was pretty sure I’d just had another seizure, but without anyone to help keep track of me and my illness, I was going to struggle until my body eventually gave out and I passed through to the next life.

When I felt my pulse throb inside my skull, I knew I needed to get to my medication before it got any worse. I patted my pockets, only to find them empty of everything except my wallet and my keys. ‘Fuck, where are they?’

‘Where are what?’ a feminine voice spoke unexpectedly from beside me, and I startled, swivelling to see who was there. It took me a moment to push through the foggy confusion, but recognition hit quickly enough.

‘Kali?’

Something flashed in her icy blue eyes too quickly for me to catch before she schooled her features into something patient and kind. ‘That’s me.’

‘What… how did I get here?’

‘We were going to talk, then you collapsed and started seizing,’ she explained, confirming my suspicions. ‘You seem to be struggling to remember. Are you finding it a bit easier now, or are things still a little fuzzy?’

I frowned and mulled over the question. Were things fuzzy? Yes. Yes, they were. Another hard pulse rocketed through my head, and I felt a little dizzy, but it reminded me of what I was looking for, and I began patting the floor around me as I searched for the little orange tube.

‘Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?’ I chanted beneath my breath, dread and panic twisting my stomach into knots.

‘Where are what, Rhodes?’

‘Meds. Where are my meds?’

‘You said they were in your truck,’ she reminded me lightly.

‘My truck… My Bessie. Yes, they’re in Bessie.’

‘You named your truck Bessie?’ she asked, her amusement lifting the tone of the moment, and my eyes were suddenly glued to the way her full, pale pink lips tilted up into a smile. The skin crinkled around the corners, adding a depth to her otherwise flawless features that only endeared me to her more. I wanted to lick them to see if they tasted as frosty and sweet as the rest of her looked.

‘Rhodes? Did you zone out again?’

I blinked rapidly, cursing my brain for failing me in more ways than one. I was behaving like such a creep. ‘Sorry.’

‘Can you stand up?’ she asked.

I tested my achy limbs, finding they felt stronger than before, even if they still throbbed painfully. ‘I think so.’

When I didn’t immediately stand, she sat beside me for a while longer before eventually releasing a small chuckle. ‘Are you going to stand or sit here all day?’

‘Oh, right. Standing. I can do that.’

On wobbly legs, I managed to haul myself into an upright position, though I needed to lean heavily on the nearest tree trunk to do so. The scrape of the bark against my skin helped to ground me, the sensation reminding me that I was alive. I had survived another seizure, though there wouldn’t be much more luck like that in my future. It was a stark reminder that I was running out of time, and I was suddenly filled with the overwhelming need to make the most of it.

‘Walk with me?’ I asked Kali as I began to stumble my way out of the woods. She nodded, motioning for me to lead the way. The toes of my boots kept snagging on roots, sticks, and underbrush, but luckily, I was able to keep myself from falling. I was dreading when the trees would end, for I wouldn’t have anything to hold me up, and Kali was keeping her distance, careful not to touch me.

‘You won’t hurt me, you know,’ I told her, pleased when my voice came out stronger than before. The was still a small warble, but it was now inconsequential.

‘I know,’ she said, her voice small but sure.

‘Then why…?’ I began, looking over my shoulder with the question in my eyes, only to freeze at her stupefied state. She was like a statue, eyes wide with despair written plainly across her features as she stared out at something in front of me. A knock sounded, and I turned back to see Chance, Ashe, and Gloria standing on my porch.

‘Hey!’ I called out, grabbing their attention. ‘A little help here, please!’

They rushed over, each of them wearing expressions of concern and alarm when they saw me stumbling onto my front lawn.

‘Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?’ Chance asked as he took one of my arms to steady me. Ashe propped me up on the other side, and it was a little awkward with the height differences, but we made it work.

‘My truck,’ I guided them. ‘I had a seizure. My meds are in the glove compartment.’

‘Here,’ Chance said, snatching my keys by the lanyard which was dangling from my pants pocket. ‘You stay here. I’ll grab them.’

I watched him jog away through squinted eyes, panting at the amount of energy it was taking to keep myself standing through the increased pounding inside my skull. Gloria came to take Chance’s place, propping me up a little more evenly since the girls were around the same height, though it was still a bit awkward since I was about a foot taller than them.

‘You okay, Rhodes?’ Ashe asked me, her voice strained beneath my weight. I realised I was leaning more heavily on her at the same time as Gloria, and we worked to rebalance me.

‘Been better,’ I admitted, then I realised something else. Kali hadn’t joined us. I glanced over my shoulder again to see her still frozen, half hidden in the shadows of the trees. Her gaze was fixed firmly on Chance, but her expression was… fearful. Cautious. Not pleased, or at the very least nervous.

Ashe followed my line of sight, squinting much like I was, only for a different reason. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Are you coming?’ I called back. She tore her eyes away from Chance, but only for a moment. They flickered right back to him and stayed put as he jogged back, and her bottom lip trembled before her expression completely shut down.

‘No,’ she said simply, then merged with the shadows, effectively disappearing from view. I knew from experience that we wouldn’t be able to find her if we tried to follow, so I faced forward again, only to feel Gloria tense beside me. She was almost as rigid as Kali had been.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. ‘Babe? What’s wrong?’

‘Kali…’ All the blood drained from Gloria’s face as she breathed the name.

‘What?’ Chance was suddenly even more alert, scanning the area for any sign of the mysterious woman. ‘Where?’

‘Gone,’ Gloria and I said simultaneously, but our tones brokered vastly different meanings. Mine wasn’t the only head that whipped towards the small Latina.

My gaze bounced between them all as they seemed to have a silent, grim conversation, but I couldn’t figure out what they were saying. When Chance staggered back like the breath had been knocked out of him, his eyes wild with the sort of pain I had only seen during my stints in the hospital, something niggled at the back of my mind. Something important, but it wasn’t quite connecting.

‘No…’ Chance whispered in a broken voice. ‘No, you’re wrong. Not after… But Rhodes said…’

‘Rhodes is dying,’ Ashe pointed out, and an understanding passed between them that I was also excluded from.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, needing to be clued in.

Ashe turned big, sad brown eyes on me. ‘You saw Kali, right? Talked to her?’

I frowned, but answered despite my confusion. ‘Yes.’

‘Did you touch her?’

I reared back like I’d been slapped. ‘What? No.’

‘Not like that,’ she rushed to elaborate. ‘I meant, have you brushed against her by accident, or patted her arm, anything like that? Has any physical contact between the two of you been made?’

I thought back to when I woke up. My brain was still a little fuzzy, my memory of everything that had happened today hazy around the edges, but I could distinctly remember her telling me that she couldn’t touch me. A statement that had stuck with me because I’d needed her help, and she’d refused.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I don’t think so. She said we couldn’t…’

A sound of pure grief tore from Chance’s throat, and he collapsed onto his knees.

‘What…?’ I began to ask, but I didn’t even know what the question needed to be.

Gloria was the one who filled in the blanks, but she did it with a tear tracking down her cheek. ‘This is the cruellest way to discover the woman you love is dead.’

My breath hitched. ‘Dead? Who’s dead?’

‘Kali.’ Her voice broke as she uttered the name that sent confusion and dread rolling through my entire body. ‘I can talk to spirits, Rhodes. And so can you. Likely because you’re so close to death yourself.’

If what she was saying was true, then that meant… Kali was…

A ghost.