The Departed

Chapter 5: Summon

"This is harassment! Get your hands off of me!" Kellam continued to yell and struggle against the two security officers. Ansley stood out of the way, not having left his side since she literally walked through the door a few hours prior.

"Sir, calm down. You may visit again tomorrow but you can not stay here overnight anymore. I have bent the rules for you thus far and I will not do it any longer." An older looking nurse spoke. She came towards Kellam who stood, staring down the bored looking guards. She placed a strand of her white-grey hair behind her ears before placing her hand on his shoulder. He looked down, his eyes only softening a bit.

"Go home to be with your family, son. We will call you if anything changes."

The boy's shoulders slumped in defeat and he began to sluggishly return to his vehicle. Ansley hurried along and caught up with him easily.

After a few minutes of walk in silence, they finally reached his Chevrolet truck, or his 'ole beater' as he called it. He might've threw off on it at times but considering he had paid for the old discolored thing himself, he held pride when talking about it.

Ansley pressed her hands against the passenger side of the door and forced her way through the metal; once again she shivered in displeasure the second she had achieved her goal and was seated in the passenger seat. Kellam jumped in the truck, slamming the door roughly and placing his head on the steering wheel. He groaned as if his truck wouldn't start before taking a couple deep breaths and starting the vehicle. It was a good five minutes later before he began to slowly exit the parking lot.

Ansley sat watching him with sad eyes as he looked tired and broken. She would rather give her life up completely then see him in so much pain. He leaned forward a bit and turned the radio up. It was a fairly slow song off the CD she had made him for his 17th birthday. It was his, as well as her, favorite off of the mixed tape. She smiled briefly remembering how they would just sit and talk for hours on end and she would make him listen to this particular song over and over until it was his favorite, too. Scooting over to the middle, she lay her head on his shoulder and he breathed a sigh. She felt him relax somewhat and this brought a smile to her face. She felt some relief in knowing she could still be there for him in a way.

The ride was silent as they both sat listening to the hypnotizing lyrics. When they came closer and closer to his house, she half expected him to stop but he didn't. He kept driving until he was sitting in her driveway.

She didn't think too much of it and exited the vehicle the way she had entered, following him inside and all the way up the stairs to her bedroom in the attic. Everything lay untouched but a stale smell hung in the air as if to taunt the two. Walking over to the bed, he lay down (which admittedly wasn't weird), but he did lay in her spot. Ansley let out a groan of protest as usual; she was glad to see things hadn't changed entirely.

She summoned the memory of their all too familiar argument, which they had had many times before, in her head.

•••••

"Kellam, you are in my spot!" Ansley whined, crossing her arms as if she was a child. Her lower lip pouted slightly but Kellam simply ignored her by closing his eyes and resting his hands on his stomach. She picked up her pillow that lay beside his head quietly and brought it up above her head.

When the heavy, feather-filled object came in contact with his face he started; looking up at her bewildered, feigning innocence.

"Get up, you big oaf!" Ansley tried her best to remain serious but a smirk shone its way through. She felt smug, though that feeling quickly dissipated when Kellam just ignored her and made himself comfortable in her spot once more.

Ansley whined and laid down with her back to him. After a few moments the huffing began. Ten minutes later and she was beginning to lose hope.

"Fine." Ansley had completely given up on him as minutes passed but when arms encircled her waist, she knew she had won once again. He pulled her over top of him and she slid down in the, now cozy, warm space that was in between the wall and Kellam. She was tucked in and she loved it. She felt safe.

He flipped over onto his stomach with his head facing away from her.

"You can have it. Your spot wasn't even all that comfortable to begin with." Ansley chuckled at his pouting and stretched out, laying her head on his back. His breath hitched at the surprise contact but went back to a steady pace, that was lulling Ansley to sleep, soon enough.

•••••

No more words were said at that particular moment, ever. And there were a lot of those exact same moments. That was there time to just be in the moment and to stop thinking. Now, though, it seemed as if thinking was all that could be done.

He lay facing the room with his back to the wall so Ansley lay down in front of him and stared as he took every detail of the bedroom in. At one point, he looked straight ahead at the door and into her eyes. She wished he was actually seeing her and not just through her.

"I'm so sorry, Ans. This was all my fault." He still looked broken but he did not shed another tear. Ansley could feel that small amount of hope still resting within him and she smiled.

"Don't worry, okay? We'll figure this out."

Standing up, Ansley was now a woman with a purpose. Walking quickly down three flights of stairs she now stood in front of Mirabel's room. She barged in, not bothering to knock, because Mira wouldn't answer the door anyway, especially not for her. Mirabel, with her head phones in, music all the way up, and laying on her bed with her head hanging upside down, came into view. The room was dimly lit. The only light came from white fairy lights that hanged loosely and haphazardly at the top of each wall.

Ansley stood waiting with her arms crossed until Mirabel opened her eyes. She looked slightly startled but closed her eyes once more, waving her hand at her sister in a dismissive manner.

"I was sure that you had disappeared by now; huh, too bad."

The older of the two then marched over and jerked her headphones out, making Mira squeak in protest. The black ear buds hanged from the iPod in her sister's hands and blared a 'screamy' song with a rapid and slightly confusing tempo.

"Hey!"

"Mirabel, I could care less that you don't believe I am actually here. The only thing I care about is your help, because unfortunately for me, you are the only one that can seem to see me." Ansley left out the little nugget of truth that was her little friend at the hospital. "So pretend I'm not here all you want but that won't change the fact that I am here."

Mirabel just stared, looking torn between two decisions. As silence filled the room, Ansley couldn't help but to tune back into the song that was still blaring. The unique screams rubbed at her memory as the phrase 'I wanna die, wanna die, wanna die, alright?' was repeated over and over. To say she was concerned about the content of the lyrics was a complete understatement, but she decided to bring that up later. Ansley's memory pricked for a moment at the end of each phrase, struggling to think of who it was and irritated that her memory seemed to have suffered from her fall. She couldn't shake the feeling that she knew the song and the voice that it belonged to somewhere deep in her mind as a new string of lyrics blasted out. ("I hate myself!"; pleasant.)

"The Used?" Ansley gestured towards the headphones and Mira sent her a look mixed with disbelief and intense disapproval.

"Leathermouth." They had had this argument more than once. "You are lame."

"Oh, they sound a lot alike."

"They literally sound nothing like each other. Frank and Bert have two completely different styles." This small conversation brought a sense of normality back to the situation and Mira finally began to see a bit of Ansley within 'the hallucination' that claimed to be her sister. It planted a seed of doubt and that was all Ansley needed to wake Mira up. "Who even compares The Used to Leathermouth?"

"It's their voices."

"That makes even less sense. Bert sings in The Used! Frank screams in Leathermouth! You are-" Mira stopped herself, refusing to fight with her imagination. This was ridiculous. She grabbed her temple, telling her mind to make Hallucination Ansley just agree with her, because you could do that, right? "Nevermind. I'm not going to fight with someone who isn't even there, over bands."

"But I am-"

"Shut up. It isn't possible. You are only in my head." Mira looked doubtful of herself so Ansley grabbed her sister's wrist much too tightly, using her nails for embellishment. Her aim wasn't to harm; it was to prove a point.

"Ow, Ansley, let go!"

Ansley loosened her grip but held on. "Is that in your head too?"

Mirabel jerked her arm back and rubbed on the tender skin to try and take away the sting. Ansley, however, stayed silent and let what had just happened sink in.

"I guess not, but then again it could be a manifestation of the pain I feel inside?" Things went uncomfortably silent. The doubt in Mirabel's voice now rang out loud and clear. "Maybe I'm schizo and hurting myself or something. I don't know, okay?"

It was Ansley's time to strike.

"Look, Mirabel, I am not sure how this is even possible but I need you now more than I have ever needed anyone in my life, that is now in the process of ending. I am here, really here," Ansley, awkwardly, placed her hand on her sister's shoulder. Mirabel flinched slightly at the contact in which she couldn't deny. "and I am scared."

Ansley hadn't realized how truthful those words were until that very moment. They weighed upon her like the time Kellam decided he wanted to sit on her stomach for close to fifteen minutes just to prove that she wasn't as strong as he was. He won.

"Okay, suppose you were really here." Mira clicked her tongue against her teeth, telling herself there was no harm in just humoring her imagination. "What makes you think I can help?"

"You are the only one who can."

Mirabel rubbed her forehead with the palm of her hand, sighing. "Just give me some time, dude. This is just too much right now."

Ansley knew that they might not have much time but her sister's stubborn attitude was award-winning and useless to fight against. Without another word, Ansley walked from the room and back up the stairs to find Kellam sleeping restlessly.

His brows were furrowed much to her displeasure. She glanced to her right, her eyes scanning the room for anything to occupy her attention since she wasn't anywhere near tired. Her eyes fell upon a large book that rested on her nightstand. Her addiction to anything with a decent story line had not let up in her current situation and she smiled bitterly as she recalled telling her mother that she wished she had more time to read a few days prior. She scoffed as she fingered at the binding before picking it up.

Just as she began to walk away, however, a glimmer of gold caught her eye and Ansley looked back to the nightstand to see a worn and dusty book that had lay hidden beneath the modern fiction she now held in her hands. The black book with gold writing, which she had abandoned a long time ago called to her. She took a step towards the nightstand once more but the closer she got the more dread filled her and soon she could feel an unnerving presence within the room.

She reached for the book and a large gush of icy wind blew right past her, emanating from the window. She spun around quickly and once she had she wished that she hadn't. Ansley's eyes did not focus on the closed window but instead on the shadowed image just to it's right. She knew it was alive and evil and it was watching her.

A shiver ran down Ansley's spine as she watched the figure watch her. She made a mental checklist of all of her options quickly.

One: She could run, but then she would be leaving Kellam to this thing's mercy as he slept.

Two: She could attack it, but seeing as she only had a year's worth of elementary school level training in Jujitsu, it was most likely a lost cause.

Three: She could continue doing what she was already doing and stair back at it until it made the first move, hoping that when it did attack, her survival instincts would kick in, butthat was probably stupid.

She huffed as she thought the word 'survival' and simultaneously wondered if it would hurt to die since her current status in life was dead; at least to her it was. She had chosen number three. For the next few moments it just stood there watching. It looked to be the silhouette of a person but the shadows around this 'person' pulsated quickly like static on a television screen when it was on the wrong channel.

Without warning, it made an inhuman screeching sound and Ansley dropped to her knees while, closing her eyes, and holding her ears tightly. When it stopped she was breathing heavily. The spot in which it had resided was vacant. She touched her ears, lightly, expecting to find blood or some other evidence of the pain that she was still feeling in her head but came up short.

"Ghosts don't bleed?" Ansley spoke the rhetorical question aloud to herself.

An icy, callused hand gripped her shoulder tight and another screech resounded through the area before the creature disappeared once more. Ansley held her heart, as it felt like it might explode, and searched around the room frantically for the shadow, fearing it would pop up again. After checking underneath the bed, in her closet, outside of the window, and behind her more than once she began to settle.

Ansley stepped back from the window and saw herself in the reflection. A small amount of blood seeped from the clawed injury and a dark shadow in the shape of a hand began to reveal itself. Ansley began to cackle uncontrollably until she was keeled over in pain. She stood up straight still holding her stomach, subconsciously feeling for newly developed abs.

"I guess that answers that." She was still smiling a bit but she was far from happy. Now, not only was she an almost dead ghost with an unreliable contact of a sister, she was an almost dead ghost who was being attacked by evil shadows. Life (death?) was awesome.

She bent over to pick up her dropped piece of literature and stormed from the room, into the hallway, but stopped. She had nowhere to go. All she could do was think about what she wished she could do. She breathed a sigh and continued down both flights of stairs once again.

Mira was probably still upset and Ansley felt a pang in her stomach. It wasn't fair to put Mira through this but what other choice did she have? She reached up to knock but stopped, weighing the pros and cons.

Mira hated to be around people when she was really upset, just like her sister, but she also might be upset because of the way Ansley went about it. Ansley thought about her vice grip on her sister to prove her point and felt horrible. How would she feel if her dead sister was hanging around?

By the time she was finished there were more cons than pros but Ansley convinced herself that one small apology wouldn't hurt and she could be on her way. Really, it was just her selfish side coming through. The longer she stayed in ghost form the more detached she felt. And having your only contact ignore you left a person pretty lonely.

She knocked lightly on the light colored wooden door that was adorned with many band posters, provocative signs, and thing written and crossed out in Sharpie. Ansley poked her head into the room and scanned; stepping in when Mira wasn't asleep. She heard the water running and walked across the room, knocked on the bathroom door a few times, and waited.

When she didn't get an answer she barged in and came face to face with Mirabel on the floor starring at a mountain of pills and a box which held a habit that Ansley thought her younger sister had gotten rid of. Mira was in tears in the corner.

"Mirabel, what are you doing? How many did you take?" Ansley was on her knees in an instant checking her legs, neck, and wrists. All that consumed her was the thought of Mirabel not being around. They never spent time together but the thought of her not being there providing the occasional snide comment had her at a loss for words. Mirabel pushed Ansley back with force but jerked back at the cold, dead feeling of her older sister's skin.

"Can't you just let me have this one thing?"

"What?"

"I know, okay? You can stop haunting me now. It was my fault; I get that. Everything was all my fault. We don't have to go on this long journey for me to figure that out. I don't need the ghost of sisters past to guide me. I'm sorry. Can you just stop pestering me now and leave me in my misery?"

"No, because it isn't your fault. If you weren't at the party I would've taken that same route by the lake home. I do every time. I am surprised that I hadn't fallen in sooner." She grabbed her sister's tear-stained face and looked straight into her eyes. "I am not haunting you, but I do need your help. Like I said before, I can't do this without you. Now, how many did you take?"

Mirabel jerked her face away from Ansley's hands on instinct, uncomfortable with the close proximity, and took a moment to compose herself, sniffing loudly a few times.

"None: I couldn't do it."

Ansley breathed a sigh of relief but soon her cheeks began to burn. She cleared her throat and stood up, rubbing her hands on the front of her jeans and then switching to rubbing them together.

"Oh okay, well, good then." She felt embarrassed at her overreaction. The embarrassment lessened as she looked down and Mirabel was awkwardly rubbing her own forearm just the same. "Don't try that again and, uh, get some rest. We have a lot to talk about tomorrow."

"Yeah, I guess we do. Goodnight, Ansley." At hearing her name leave her sister's lips she became that much more hopeful. The way she said it revealed to her that she finally, did in fact, believe that Ansley was really there. The normal Ansley not the haunting, 'I want revenge' Ansley that Mira was previously convinced she was.

It wasn't much to be hopeful about but at that moment it was everything. A step toward figuring out why she wasn't waking up and how they were going to fix it.

"Night." Ansley left the room quickly, wishing to escape the thickening atmosphere and ended up in their studio/garage. She looked towards her own side of the room but, lacking in inspiration, she ended up wandering toward the middle of the room and pulling back the curtain that extended down to the floor.

It had been a long time since she had dared to venture to the forbidden part of the room that was her sister's but seeing as she was a ghost she figured she had nothing more to lose. Ansley walked over towards the workspace, all the while checking behind herself as if the shadow or Mira or both would pop up at any given moment. She didn't know what she expected to find but what she did find shocked her.

The drawings were dark. The paper was covered in intricate strokes and with closer inspection she discovered that they looked like the shadows she had been seeing in her dreams. She was completely engulfed in each drawing. The eery resemblance sent cold chills up her spine as she looked at more and more.

Next, Ansley found a stack of poems and pictures in the large drawer that depicted these shadows. The poems describing in incredible detail everything she felt when they were around. The older girl couldn't stop herself. The more she looked at them the worse she felt.

How had this gone unnoticed? The signs were all there. She looked at the date on the back of the drawing on the bottom of the stack.

February 16, 2013

A year, almost a year had passed.

Ansley picked up the stack of pictures and moved the tarp to the side. Soon she was sitting at her own desk and unlocking the box that she kept hidden behind the couch on her side. She fumbled with the key on her necklace before ripping it off of her neck and jamming it into the slot with shaky hands. The box opened and Ansley flipped past her own drawings and stories about the shadows until she came to the papers dated February 2013.

She pulled out the first story she had written about the shadow the night she had first woken up from the drowning dream and a small pamphlet toppled out onto the table with it. It was the small booklet that they hand out at funerals and the beautiful faces of her grandparents graced the front. The date of their births and communal deaths were on the cover under the names and photo. Ansley ran her hand over the tacky green pattern that surrounded everything, as was custom for their local funeral home, and smiled as she thought about what her grandmothers opinion on this pattern would be. Her hand hesitated on the photo for a moment longer before she stuffed it back in its rightful place.

Refocusing on the task at hand Ansley searched the cover page until she found the date.

February 16, 2013

Almost exactly a year. The same date as Mira's first drawing.

For the next hour she studied every drawing and poem of Mirabel's in detail. The same shadow but different settings each time.

The hour was coming to a close and even though she still didn't feel physically tired her mental state was questionable. Ansley locked the box and put her things away before returning to Mira's side of the room. Something white caught her eye on the way over. A drawing, the final drawing in the bunch. She sat back down at the old 'workbench' that use to hold their dad's tools and looked over the picture warily. The drawing was an exact replica of the creature she had seen that night.

As her hands absentmindedly skimmed the large piece of paper she noticed it was smooth and besides a few rough places where you could tell the eraser had been used, Mira had drawn it without difficulty. It scared her to think that Mira knew the look of the creature that well. Dark grey stained her fingertips from the lead of the drawing; she scrubbed her hand on her jeans not wanting to have any of the picture stay with her. (As if it was a choice.)

Ansley focused on her breathing as the familiar panic rose in her once more. The eyes, looking so devoid of anything at all, and yet full of evil, were burned into her brain forever. She would admit Mirabel had most definitely improved when it came to drawing. She had even captured the static around their bodies. The drawings were so intricate that the shadows almost pulsed with life.

Turning away, she was afraid to look back over it for the sheer presence that that one drawing held alone seemed to summon it. And seeing whatever it was again was at the very bottom of her things-I-never-want-to-see-again list right below The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Ansley was lost when it came to dying etiquette and protocol but if there was one things she was sure of, it was that Mirabel had seen the creature, and she seen it more than once.