“Hello?” No answer. I lowered the gun barrel, taking a passive of a stance as possible. For all I knew, the person could’ve had a gun pointed at me as soon as I entered the kitchen, and my life hung on a single false step. “Hello,” I repeated.
I adjusted my headlamp, hoping to get a better view of the person. It was a woman… Her eyes were wide open like she’d seen a ghost or something. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. Her mouth was closed, lips pinched so tight that there was scant difference between the upper and lower lip. My first inclination was that she was dead. There were a newspaper and a half empty glass of water sitting on the table beside her. Maybe she had an aneurysm or something – just died while reading the morning paper.
I moved closer, feeling comfortable enough in my assessment that she was no longer with us. Sam’s voice could be heard from the living room. He and Tish were talking about something, but I couldn’t make out what precisely. It never entered my mind to call out to them. Hell, I’d forgotten I had found the needle and thread. My focus was squarely on what was unfolding in the kitchen.
The woman was middle-aged and had been, at some other time, attractive. Then, though, her skin was a sickly, blueish-gray color, slick and shiny from a film that covered her exposed skin. Her eyes were dark and too large for her face. The whites were replaced with the same sickly gray color of her skin, except they were interspersed with large deep red blood vessels. Her irises and pupils were almost indistinguishable from one another. I’d never seen a dead person’s eyes before, but not even in my most wicked of magic-mushroom driven dreams could I imagine conjuring up anything that remotely looked like hers.
A sudden noise nearly caused me to jump out of my boots. It sounded like something heavy had been knocked over in the snow outside the house– muffled but loud enough to send another wave of adrenaline through my already saturated nervous system. I quickly walked towards the window facing the back yard. Even with the extra light twilight afforded, the only thing I could see of note was the pile of broken appliances. It didn’t help that my headlamp was casting a reflection off the window pane. I switched it off, but still couldn’t see anything.
More ghosts, I thought. I returned my focus to more important matters. I flipped my headlamp back on. Damn, were her eyes creepy as shit. Wait. No – no, I didn’t just see that. Fuck that, I remember thinking.
I moved closer but saw the same thing several seconds later. One of her eyes was as wide open as it was before. The other one, though, blinked, two times in as many minutes.
Another noise. This time inside the kitchen. Footsteps, I thought. The shadow-cloaked figure moved towards me. Acting on pure instinct, I swung the rifle around to greet my assailant. I remember striking something hard as I swung the rifle.
Much of that encounter was clouded in adrenaline and pure unadulterated fear. I do, however, remember hearing Titouan’s voice, while taking aim at my attacker. Too bad for Titouan, my mind didn’t register the possibility that the known voice might belong to the still veiled figure.
Everything happened in slow motion besides the trigger pull. I remember the flash of the muzzle and the smell of cordite. I fucking shot Titouan in the face.
“Goddamn you, William!”
I didn’t kill him, or it didn’t appear that I had. Dead people didn’t run, but their eyes weren’t supposed to blink either. He took off towards the living room, holding the right side of his face.
“Shit.” I couldn’t believe I shot him.
“Fucking bastard shot me,” I heard him say from the living room.
I heard Sam tell Titouan, “It’s a damn scratch. You ain’t goin ta die.”
I was relieved by that. He was a dick, but I didn’t want to kill him. Somebody else would probably end up doing it, but I didn’t want that person to me.
I felt a tug. Of all people, Avery was the one who took the rifle away from me. Seriously, he was the sensible one? I was bad off.
“Are you okay?” Avery asked.
“Did you see her?”
Avery looked confused. “Her?”
“The woman sitting at the damn table!”
Avery raised his lamp to get a better look. “I do not see anything.”
Since my headlamp’s battery was fading, I took Avery’s lamp from him. She wasn’t seated at that table like she had been just a couple moments ago. “She was sitting at that table, dammit. Right there!” I said pointing at the table.
“You are not well. Maybe you are suffering from delirium brought on by our current—”
“Shut up – please, just shut up for a minute.” I walked around to the back of the table. She was lying on the floor, obscured by the table and the dim light from Avery’s also battery-drained lamp. “I told you there was a woman sitting at the table. I’m not fucking crazy.” I said I wasn’t crazy, but I’m not sure I believed it.
The impact I felt when I wheeled the gun around was me bashing the side of her skull with the barrel of the rifle. I hit her so hard that I knocked her out of the chair and into the floor. The problem was she was lying in the same position she was while sitting in the chair. I grabbed her hand, but it rubber-banded back into the same pronated position it was when I first saw her.
“She is dead, William.”
“Unless I killed her when I hit her with the barrel, I don’t believe that to be true.”
“That is impossible.” He nudged her arm with the barrel of the gun, but as soon as the barrel was removed, her arm bounced back into position. “She smells dead. She has rigor mortis. She is dead.”
I’m not sure why I did what I did next. I spun her around on the floor until she faced me. I then bent over and grabbed her, but she slipped out of my grasp three different times. Determined, I wiped the slippery film covering her exposed skin on my pants and grasped her around her waist. Avery whispered a prayer, as I struggled to put her back into the chair. Sucking breaths and dizzy from my manic episode, I nearly knocked the lamp off the table as I placed it near her. Tears had formed in her eyes and watery trails ran down her cheeks.
I sniffed my mucous covered hands. It smelled like bad fruit. Not exactly terrible, but you wouldn’t want to wear it on your first date. There were some disinfectant wipes on the counter. I grabbed a ton of them and began violently wiping at my hands and coat, trying remove every drop of the slimy substance.
“Dead people cannot cry, William,” Avery said, snapping his fingers.
She began to whimper. “They don’t do that either,” I reiterated.
Avery dreamed of moments like we were experiencing: an authentic unexplainable incident, and what does he do? He tucks tale and full-on runs into the living room, uttering more prayers to God and all his saints. I followed him, hoping some of the prayers would be answered. I was desperate.
“Now what in the world is wrong with him? Hell, ya both look like you’ve done seen a ghost,” Sam said, as he finished cleaning up Titouan’s face.
“Try to kill him, too?” Titouan snarled.
“Not fucking now,” I told him.
“Son, what’s ’at noise in ’ere?” Sam asked.
“The dead woman,” Avery blurted, as he rocked back and forth on the couch.
Sam walked over to where Avery sat and grabbed the rifle. “Neither of you’ins gets to hold ’is for a while. Stop being crazy, and I’ll give y’all ’nother chance,” he said, eyeing both me and Avery. “Now, let’s see what the hell is goin on in the kitchen.”
Avery began to pray: first barely audible then growing louder and louder.