Eight Days

I writhed as if a terrible pain had engulfed my entire body. I was asleep, but I was the foggiest bit conscious and could feel as I twisted in the sheets. I was actually aware of a lot in that vague consciousness as I slept, as I dreamt nightmares. First off, I was aware that I was dreaming in the first place as a horrific, unexplainable sense of déjà vu overcame me. I then recognized the dream as soon as the blackness shrouding my vision suddenly faded away and I was standing in a snowy white forest. Lastly, I knew that I would be reliving a death that would haunt for the rest of my life. And the worst part? I knew that I wouldn’t be able to wake up from it. I could only watch it.

I was standing in a small white forest clearing that was only a few feet wide. The tall trees all around prevented me from seeing the sun, but the sky above me was a mixture of the peach and pink colors of sunset. Then I heard a low thudding sound, but from having this nightmare so many times, I already knew who it was.

Over a span of three minutes, the thudding became louder and louder until I could hear distinct, small footfalls lightly crunching snow. Then suddenly a small girl emerged from the brush directly in front of me, and I was staring at the living Mary, the one who was just hours from dying. She wore dark denim jeans, a brown shirt, a black hooded jacket, and black sneakers—the outfit she wore now as a ghost. Her long dark hair fell in small twists, and her cheeks and nose were a bright rosy color I had never had the chance to see in person.

“This isn’t right,” Mary murmured to herself as she looked around the clearing in confusion. “My house should be here, not forest. Where is my house?”

“Oh, Mary,” I whispered, shaking my head. I wanted nothing more than to just help her, but I couldn’t.

Mary glanced around a bit longer, and then she walked through me. In this dream, I was the ghost while Mary was the living one, for a ghost had hopelessly watched all this unfold and then shared this memory with Mary after the fact. It was an ironic and sad twist, and it made me feel absolutely useless.

When I caught up to Mary, I heard her take in a shaky breath before she said, “I’ll be okay. I’m just going to get back home using a different way than I took, and when I get home, Mom will get me some warm food while Dad adds some wood to the fire. Then tonight I’ll be snuggled in my bed with the blue night light glowing like every other night.”

“Mary, turn around. This won’t get you home,” I said uselessly. She only ignored me. I had to remind myself that most of the living didn’t hear the dead, and I was the ghost in this scenario.

“Yeah,” she went on, attempting to comfort herself further. “Tonight I’ll be in my warm bed and everything will be fine.”

Instantly tears came to my eyes and spilled over. I loved Mary dearly. She was the sweetest little girl and had always been there for me in all the time I had known her. She was everything I wished Molly was, and I was going to have to watch her die all over again.

For what felt like a few hours, I followed Mary through the forest and pleaded for her to stop and turn around. There were moments when my crying would cease, but then it would come back at me and increase tenfold. Finally we came to the dreaded spot, and a sob erupted deep from within me. My chest ached, and my stomach felt like a bottomless pit. I knew this place too well, and I knew all too well what was about to happen.

There was the sound of a twig snapping behind us, perhaps from an animal moving about. Mary gasped and snapped her head around to glance back. She let out a small whimpering sound, and then she faced forward again and took off running.

“Mary, stop!” I screamed as I went after her. “Please, Mary. Just stop!” But I was too late. I watched as she caught sight of the drop before her and tried to stop. I saw how her foot caught on a tree root sticking out of the ground and fell forward down the drop with one sharp cry escaping her throat in the process.

When I reached the drop, I peered down and saw Mary sitting in a crooked upright position, completely unconscious. Without hesitation I jumped off the ledge and landed on the ground feet-first. I then fell down to my knees and slumped into an awkward sitting position with my hands cupped over my mouth and nose, tears streaming down my face. Mary was still alive at the moment, but in an hour’s time she’d be dead. She’d be dead, and there was nothing I could do about it…

“Casey? Casey, wake up.” Just as I was able to recognize the voice as my mother’s, I felt her grab my shoulder and roughly jolt me.

“I’m up,” I croaked. “I’m up. Now go away.”

“You need to get ready,” she informed me in a decent, somewhat soft voice. Then in a firmer, darkener tone she added, “And Casey, I don’t care how tired you are, but you will not talk to me like that. It’s completely disrespectful.”

To get respect, one must earn respect, I thought sourly.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Where do I have to go?” The last thing I wanted to do on a Saturday morning was wake up early to do something that pertained to Molly.

“Today is the craft show at your high school,” she informed me. “I had signed you up with Molly and me to help out. You do remember, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I muttered as I finally opened my eyes. Immediately my heart’s pace quickened and the pulse thudding at my temples drowned out all other noises. In my room were about eight ghosts besides Mary and Hailey. I wasn’t scared of them, but it always startled me to see so many strange spirits so suddenly.

“Casey, are you okay?” my mom asked slowly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

If only you knew, I thought bitterly. I took in a deep breath to steady myself, let it out, then replied, “I’m fine, Mom. I just… I don’t know. What time do we have to be out of the house?”

“In an hour, at eight o’clock. Be ready.”

“I will.”

As soon as my mom was out the room, Mary hurried from the window seat to sit in front of me on my bed. “I’m sorry, Casey,” she said quickly. “I tried to tell the other ghosts to stay away until you woke up, but they didn’t listen to me.”

“It’s okay, Mary,” I replied with a small smile. “I’m not angry with you or anyone.”

After I forced myself from bed and convinced the ghosts other than Mary and Hailey to leave my house for the time being, which is never an easy task to do, I went into my bathroom with a change of clothes. I shrugged out of my red shorts and plain black t-shirt, and then I slipped into a pair of dark blue jeans and soft black tee with Gir from Invader Zim on it. I also grabbed a ten dollar bill I saw laying on the counter and shoved it into my pocket just so I would have some money on me.

I zeroed in on my reflection in the mirror. My long black hair, only inches from reaching my waist, was highlighted with chunks of crimson on top and two streaks of blond hidden in the lower layers of my hair. I noticed that it was suffering from a case of bed head due to my thrashing about in the night. My skin was pale, but I was fortunate enough to not be ghost white, no pun intended. My amber eyes were bright and alert despite my drowsiness and still rimmed with the tiniest bit of yesterday’s eyeliner.

I let out a sigh as I plugged in my flat iron, and then I pulled out my makeup to start on that while the iron heated up. I didn’t wear much makeup—only a light mineral powder that prevented my face from shining, and eye makeup. The eye makeup, however, easily took me ten minutes to do because I was so precise about it. I started with eyeliner on my eyelids and drew a line across them just above the lashes. Then I proceeded to draw lines within the lashes on the top and bottom. After that, I applied mascara and covered my eyelids with charcoal-colored eye shadow.

Once my makeup was applied and my hair was straightened and teased to my liking, I cast one more glance at the mirror. Happy with my overall appearance, I stepped back into my room to slip into my sneakers.

After grabbing my shoes from beside my bed, I bent over to slip them on because I knew that if I sat down I’d just be tempted to crawl into bed again. Just as I was about to slip on the second shoe, though, Mary appeared in front of me with wide eyes.

“Casey, get to the living room right now! It’s about Hailey!” she said urgently. Her tone immediately caused my anxiety level to skyrocket, and with a shoe on my right foot while the other was in my hand, I bolted for the staircase.

“…Hailey disappeared five days ago,” Anchorwoman Ann Marcel said as she gazed directly into the camera. “Last night, however, her body was found and since then a suspect in the murder has been arrested. In other news—”

I glanced at my dad, who had just turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the sofa. When he looked my way, I asked, “Who were they talking about, Dad?”

“Some seventeen-year-old girl named Hailey Martin from San Diego,” he replied. I then glanced at Hailey, who was standing off to the side of the TV about five feet in front of me, watching us. “Case, is that the girl who was here last night?”

“She’s here right now,” I murmured, keeping my eyes on her. She made no move to speak.

“So what’s going to happen to Hailey now?” he asked, focusing on the direction I had been looking at in an attempt to see her. He still saw nothing.

“I don’t know,” I said slowly as I glanced at her questioningly. She wasn’t looking at me, though; she was looking past me, at the wall.

“I…I think I’m looking at the light, Casey,” she whispered, smiling.

“But that guy hasn’t even been found guilty of being your murderer,” I pointed out. “It usually takes more than just someone getting arrested for an earth-bound spirit to move on.”

“I feel it, Casey,” she said as she started walking in my direction, her eyes still trained on that one spot. I turned back to glance at the wall and saw it: a glowing white portal with a center so bright that it was blinding. “Everything’s going to be fine. The judge and the jury will find Rodney guilty and he’ll be sentenced to time in jail. I feel it, and I’m ready to go.”

“Then you should go,” I encouraged. “I wish you well.”

Hailey stopped in front of me and smiled. “Thank you, Casey,” she said, her tone drowning with gratefulness. She then wrapped her arms around me in an attempt to hug me. I just felt warm tingles where her arms touched me.

“Bye, Hailey.” It was Mary who spoke as she came to stand beside me. My right hand then started to tingle, and when I looked down, I saw that Mary was attempting to hold my hand. A small smiled played on my lips and I did my best to hold her hand back.

“Bye, Mary,” Hailey said softly. She hugged the small girl, at which Mary hugged her back with her free arm. I couldn’t help but feel a tad bit jealous; I wanted more than anything to be able to hug Mary like that. Then Hailey walked past us and into the light. Just like that she was gone, along with the light, and I was just standing there with a ghost child holding my hand and my dad trying to make sense of what just happened.

The room was quiet and tranquil for a moment until my dad cleared his throat and asked, “Do I even want to know what all just happened?”

“Hailey moved on,” I said with a shrug. “Now it’s just me and Mary again.”

“Now things can go back to normal,” Mary added.

My dad was about to speak when my mom and Molly entered the living room. “Oh, there you are,” Mom said as she glanced at me, her surprise clear in her voice and eyes. “Well, since you’re down here, let’s just go.”

“All right,” I agreed with a shrug as I started walking to the front door. I stopped when I realized that Mom and Molly were looking at me as if I had grown a second head. I eyed both of them quizzically then asked, “What?”

“You’re shoe,” Mary whispered from the front door, pointing at the shoe in my left hand.

“You’re shoe,” Molly said, pointing at my hand in a similar manner.

“Oh,” I murmured. “I forgot all about it.”

“Nice, Casey,” Molly said cynically with narrowed eyes. I scowled to myself as I slipped on the shoe; had I said that to Molly, Mom would have had a conniption fit.

*****

It was noon. I had managed to escape the craft show all the way on the other side of campus in the school’s gym, and now I was sitting at the top of the front staircase as I had the afternoon before. Mary was there with me, too, and since we were alone, we held occasional conversations. For the most part, though, we just sat in silence. Mary, the curious little thing she is, was looking around and observing every person or car that passed by. I just held my gaze to the clear blue sky to look at the nothingness.

“Mind if I sit here with you, Casey?” a familiar male voice asked.

I glanced down at the foot of the school stairs to see Scott peering up at me. He was alone, which was unusual since he normally hung out with a group of four or five people.

“Sure, I guess,” I said with a shrug.

He proceeded to climb up the stairs, and after sitting on the other side of the railing across from me, he asked, “So what are you doing sitting all alone over here when the craft show is going on all the way on the other side of the campus?”

“I’ve been here since eight o’clock this morning,” I told him. “I helped people set up this morning and a little while ago I managed to slip out without anyone noticing.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” he said nonchalantly. I just gave him a ‘did you really just say that?’ look.

“No, it isn’t,” I grumbled. “I had no choice. My mom volunteered me to help without even asking me if I was okay with it, and she would’ve blown up on me if I told her I refused to go.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “Is it just that your mom would have been angry or is it something more than that?”

“There’s more to it,” I said with a sigh, “but it’s a long story.”

“I’ll listen,” he said indifferently, shrugging. I let out a slight laugh.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss it with you,” I told him. “We might have been in school together since kindergarten, but I wouldn’t discuss something with you anymore than I would with Caleb Dawson. All you ever do is tease me. I don’t even know what you’re doing here sitting by me of free will, much less talking to me.”

“If you want me to leave, I will,” he said, taken aback.

“Don’t let him go,” Mary said suddenly from beside me. She had disappeared when Scott came over, and I hadn’t even noticed when she reappeared.

I sighed and, taking her advice, said, “Don’t go, Scott. I just… I don’t know. I’m not that good with most people.”

He chuckled. “I can see that. Why is it, though?”

I looked away, off toward the road that ran in front of the school. “It goes back to my problems with my mom,” I admitted.

“I just never thought your mom was the type to have problems with her children,” Scott mused. “I mean, I see her around a good bit because I’m always out with my friends, and I see how good she is with Molly.”

“You have no idea how wrong you are,” I said bitterly. At that point, I decided that our conversation needed a subject change, or an end, so I stood up and said, “Well, it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry, so I guess I’m going to go find a place to eat.”

“They have food in the gym.”

“I’d rather not go back to the gym. There’s better food elsewhere.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” he offered, standing up as well. His cheeks flushed slightly and he added, “If you want me to, I mean. I was planning to go grab a bit when I finished talking with you.”

“Let him go with you, Casey,” Mary said at my side again. I turned my gaze to her instinctively. “He’s being nice. He wants to hang out with you.”

I smiled, but then that smile was wiped off my face when I caught Scott looking in Mary’s general direction. With a look of plain confusion on his face, he asked, “Casey, what are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

He smirked. “You’re lying to me.”

I smirked back. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

Suddenly I was smiling at Scott. I had a good feeling about him.