Off the Beaten Path: Eight Tales of the Paranormal Read online

  The look in Mark’s eyes was strange. He was evidently confused by my words, but he was far more confused by his immediate acceptance. The part of him that was dead believed my words as facts from a trusted medium, but his heart yet beat, and there was enough living in him to be suspicious.

  “When you collapsed, you died. Or you should have. Now, your body and soul… it’s like a flower wilting. Slowly, every petal shrivels up and loses its color.” I rushed on, the words unstoppable now. “You’ll be wilted soon, Mark. Your body is still breathing because there was a mistake, but you’re not truly alive, not the way you were before you collapsed.”

  Mark’s shoulders had slowly relaxed and he became more thoughtful, like a child listening to a fairy tale and only half sure it was fiction. I rested my hand on his, trying hard not to squeeze too tightly. “You’ll be happier if you go where you’re supposed to. You have to pass on. I know it’s an awful thing to ask, and I wish I didn’t have to, but I do. It’s my… well, it’s my job.” I whipped my hand over my eyes so fast that a nail scratched my cheek. “It’s not fair. I’m sorry, this just isn’t fair. To either of us.”

  I couldn’t look at him anymore. He hadn’t hit me, or laughed, or called the cops, but that made it worse. I could feel the belief in him. I gulped down sobs. “I’m sorry, but I guess I’m supposed to guide you to real death, not this in-between living body you’ve got.”

  Mark squeezed my hand, then wrapped an arm around my back. His skin felt lukewarm as he hugged me. “No, it’s not fair.” He looked thoughtful as he pulled away from me. “Nothing tastes the same, you know. I feel…” he stared at our hands for a second, searching, “like when the audio is slightly out of sync with the visual. It’s close enough to bear, but it doesn’t feel right. My body doesn’t react the way it should, as if there’s a disconnected plug.” His head shook slowly back and forth. Maybe the action lined up all the thoughts inside. “I guess I wondered if I’d die from it. I thought maybe the fall knocked my head too hard, you know?”

  “Do you want to know why you died?”

  “No, not really. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.” His eyes held hope for a second. “Does it have to be now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you can have a couple of hours, but any longer and the consequences might be bad.” My leg twinged in pain, and I held back a grimace. He nodded, and I echoed his nod slowly. “I need to be there, okay?”

  “What? Why?”

  “Without me, you can’t truly move to the next world. I think I might have to actually kill you.” My head sank into my hands. Apparently, that’s when it struck him that this was real. Still, he didn’t cry or shout, he just gave me an address and a time.

  I didn’t move for an hour and forty-five minutes. I couldn’t. I had just convinced Mark to allow me to murder him, or maybe he simply agreed to assisted suicide. Either way, it went against every moral I had ever had. My bones and nerves were aching with a terrible emptiness.

  When I finally stood, my stomach was in my throat, and I puked behind a tree until not even bile could come up. My leg could barely take my weight, and I could feel that the gouges had swirled over my knee, soaking the gauze from earlier. I touched my jeans and felt wet stickiness, but all I could see was dry denim. Another supernatural measure of protection, then.

  I walked to his house and climbed up to the window Mark had said to. He was ready, but I couldn’t make my mouth move. I finally spoke. “Hey. Um. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Since you told me, something feels different.” Thoughtfulness crossed his face, then was replaced with exhaustion. “Like static. I think I’ve been dying since we talked.” He grabbed my hand in both of his icy palms to prove his point.

  I sat on the side of his bed, and we talked about movies we had seen, music we hated, and other mundane topics. His voice faded, and he looked like he simply fell asleep. I swallowed, and whispered to him about the next world, coaxing him towards the realm of the dead.

  The familiar fizz began where my hand grasped his, and for the first time I watched a body part with the soul that filled it. Mark rose out of his shell, strings of soul stretching back to connect body and spirit until the strings snapped, like gum on a shoe.

  Then, he was just gone.

  He had moved on.

  I stared at his body. It didn’t matter that he had felt his death, or that he had felt relief in moving on. It didn’t even matter that I hadn’t needed to kill his body with a knife or a gun. For the first time in years of working with the dead, I felt the true weight of death, and part of me wanted to find the peace I had just promised Mark.

  I climbed out of his room and walked to our bench, struggling to breathe against the horrible pressure on my chest. My body sank onto the weathered wood, and I thought I’d be dragged into the dirt below by the heaviness of me. My palms bit with pain, my nails dotted with pinpricks of blood from tight fists, and the tears were unstoppable. I was a mistake, just like Mark. I was born to be a medium, but they didn’t make me strong enough to bear the pressure of the job.

  My jaw clenched so hard I felt my teeth vibrate from the tense muscles. It was the first time since Phyllis had died five years ago that I cried. I had swallowed my emotional reactions to every ghost for so long, never crying with the pain they conducted into my frail living mind. The dead no longer felt the pain that had tormented them, but I had taken every person’s pain for my own, each sorrow growing with the others until it ruled my life. And now, as I cried, I released their pain into the dark river, leaving only shadowy memories to torture me.

  I don’t know how long I was there. The sun had gone down, and my sweatshirt cuffs were soaked with snot and tears. I got up, shaky, and started the long walk to my car. The drive home felt like a cloud passing over the moon. I unlocked the door to find my parents reading in the living room, trying not to look worried that I was out almost to curfew.

  “Hey, sweetie! Were you hanging out with friends?” Mom looked so hopeful.

  I nodded and watched relief dawn on both their faces. “Well, did you eat with them? I saved you something.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not hungry right now.”

  The relief cracked and she was worried again.

  “I’m going to bed,” I said. “Good night.”

  Mom silently followed me up the stairs, and leaned against the wall. “Honey, are you sure you’re okay? You were so sick this morning.”

  I nodded and smiled. “Just still not feeling great; I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  She nodded, not really believing me. I think moms are engineered to sniff out half-truths, but she didn’t call me on it. I started to raise my arms for a hug, but let them fall again. Mom might be the only living person who will try to ignore the uneasiness and hug me, but I won’t force her through another night of bad dreams.

  “Goodnight, Mom.”

  “Sleep tight, sweetie.” She shut the door behind her and I flopped on my bed. Reaching under the bed, I pulled out my laptop, searching for a movie I hadn’t seen yet. I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, listening to the dialogue and watching the light play across the ceiling until I fell asleep.

  For the first time since I was ten, I did not dream of ghosts.

  “Soul Trading” is a thought-provoking story contributed by our English friend Sharon. I have retained the British spellings and nuances… and creepy feelings.

  Soul Trading

  Sharon Sant

  The flat was a chill void. Lighting the fire was too much work, and the central heating made unearthly noises, so Sasha wrapped herself in a quilt while she sipped tea laced with whisky and watched some terrible seventies movie about truckers. The whisky was the key ingredient. She had not been sleeping well lately and considering what had just happened to her in the pub, she didn’t expect to sleep again. This night, of all nights, she was afraid to take tablets, afraid of what might happen.

  When the film ended she went to bed. An hour later she got up and exer
cised along to a DVD featuring some irritatingly cheerful TV presenter who never released a bead of perspiration throughout the entire session while Sasha melted into a virtual puddle like an ice-lolly left out in August. She showered and went to bed again.

  Then she got up and finished the presentation that was due for Monday, even though it was Friday night and she had an unwritten rule never to prepare more than a day in advance for budget meetings. That was the way she worked best, under pressure, it was an unbroken habit from her student days. Even stretching that definition it was early Saturday, still twenty four hours too soon. Four a.m. came, the perfect time for peaceful death. At five a.m. she shared her bed with dreams that she couldn’t remember when she woke.

  Seven a.m. came and she was staring at the lonely greyness of her bedroom. Her mind, unbidden, ran a flashback of the night before, before that conversation, when she had first met him. Seeing him across the heaving room full of sweating, hormone fuelled bodies, she felt that now familiar, delicious tingle of instant attraction; through her imagination had rolled images in soft focus, stolen glimpses of heaven, the result she always hoped for but never got.

  They would have left together and in the morning, this empty morning, she would have woken to find the sun on his perfect ebony skin, his heavy black dreads snaked across the pillow next to her as he slept. She would have slipped out of bed and quietly prepared coffee and bacon, surprising him awake with a hot kiss and good food and they would have stayed between the sheets all day, and she would have made it so good that he could never bear to leave her again. Instead she was alone, unsettled, unsure of what she had left…

  “What if I could prove it to you? What if I could show you what is beyond the light?” he asked, his expression fervent in the dirty glow.

  Sasha giggled. She leaned in close and reached for his knee under the table. He smelt sweet, sweet all over – vanilla, cherry, honey, she couldn’t tell – the fragrance filled her head and made her giddy.

  Her hand crept up his thigh. “Is that an offer?”

  He took her hand firmly and placed it on the table top, fixing her with an intense gaze. “What do you think happens then?”

  Sasha swallowed a mouthful of wine. Her expression hardened. “Ashes to ashes, that’s how it is. We’re carbon, stardust, grass, cowpats. Whatever you want. But there’s nothing else.”

  “What about your eternal soul?”

  She groaned and sat back in her chair. “Please tell me you don’t have a copy of The Watchtower in your coat.”

  He laughed; his teeth white and perfect in the lamplight. “No. But really, don’t you want to believe there is more?”

  “Logically, there can’t be, so what’s the use?”

  “Logic. Does logic make you happy?”

  “Logic makes me satisfied. Logic makes me get on with things. Life is less complicated when you’re not watching your P’s and Q’s until the end in hope of a reward. You learn how to live properly.”

  His eyes were dark, deep pools – beautiful and frightening all at the same time. “I don’t think you do live properly,” he said quietly.

  “Jesus. I should never have told you about my dad. I’m allowed to have my own opinions.”

  “Of course.”

  They fell silent. Sasha glanced across to the bar where Mandy, mascara sliding down her face, had collapsed over a boy half her age. The boy happened to be the landlord’s stepson, kitted out in the requisite emo uniform, who had been trying to impress her in his own endearingly earnest way for a good part of the evening. Sasha found it hard to suppress the wry smile that was itching at the corners of her mouth. She made no move to rescue her friend; instead, she tilted her head in their direction.

  “Matt probably thinks all his birthdays have come at once.”

  He looked across at the odd couple but offered no comment.

  “Perhaps there is some truth in that theory,” she laughed.

  “Theory?”

  “Oh, you must know.” Sasha leaned over the table resting her breasts on it so they suddenly swelled like risen loaves. “The one about young boys and middle aged women… they’re well suited sexual partners.” She giggled and plopped back into her chair, “Poor Matt. He won’t know what’s hit him if she takes him home.”

  He looked at them thoughtfully. “She’s hiding.”

  Sasha frowned. “From what?”

  “Herself.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “I think so,” he replied. His smile was natural and fearless. “Will you think about what I said?”

  Sasha fiddled with the stem of her wineglass; her expression now lapsed into a sulking pout. “I ought to get her home.”

  “I don’t think it’s you she wants to go home with.”

  “Whatever.”

  Sasha shook the memories. Better to seek out company, get the whole incident out of her mind. She dressed carelessly, flicked a toothbrush around her mouth, pulled her hair back into a ponytail band, and headed for the car.

  “What are you doing here? It’s not even nine yet.” Mandy peered round the tiny opening of the front door.

  “We’re shopping, remember? What are you doing still in your nightie?”

  “How do you know I’ve got my nightie on?”

  “Because you’re not letting me in. Who’s there with you?”

  “No one.”

  “You’re such a liar. I don’t care, let me in anyway.”

  “Come in then. You’ll have to wait for me.” Mandy moved back from the door. Sasha stepped in to see Mandy’s naked figure return to the bedroom.

  Sasha cleared crumpled clothing from the sofa and sat down. She smiled to herself as she examined a studded belt and a Radiohead T-shirt. At least someone had been shown a good time. She wondered which one of them, Mandy or Matt, was more shell-shocked. Mandy returned a few moments later wearing a fitted top and some loose jersey trousers. Her thighs were rounded and firm beneath the smooth black fabric. She gathered up her overnight guest’s clothing.

  “I’d better take these into him. He looks like a hairless rat in the daylight; it’s putting me off my breakfast. Want a brew?”

  “Okay.”

  “Stick the kettle on for us then, Sash, while I go and get this sorted.”

  Sasha wandered into the north-facing kitchen, where it always seemed like perpetual twilight, and rattled around in Mandy’s dank cupboards for the mugs with the fewest chips. For the first time, it occurred to her that she actually considered Mandy’s flat seedy-looking. Her disturbing train of thought was interrupted as she heard Mandy come in.

  “How do you live like this?”

  “Easy.” Mandy sat at the counter-top on a tall stool. “I just don’t look.”

  Sasha sighed. “Does he want a cup of tea?”

  “He’s staying in bed. He’s too shy to come out. He can get one later when we’ve gone.”

  “You’re leaving him here?”

  “Won’t hurt.”

  Sasha shrugged and set two mugs out, joining Mandy at the breakfast bar. Mandy let slip a sly smile.

  “How did you get on? He was gorgeous.” She reached for a rust-bitten biscuit tin

  “Want one?”

  Sasha shook her head. “I left by myself, remember?”

  “Not really, to be honest. So you didn’t take him home and make beautiful music?”

  “The only music he wanted to make was Onward Christian Soldier. Weirdo. Might have known.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “God squad. Trying to save my soul.”

  “I could have told him you’ve got no soul to save. You’d get a better deal from the other side, you would. You’re half way to the hot place already. Why are you here so early anyway?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Why?”

  “Usual.”

  “You should get some of the pills I told you about – dead til morning on those.”

  Sasha shivered involuntarily.

>   In the end, their shopping trip had only lasted an hour. Mandy was, by degrees, losing patience with Sasha, who shrugged at her choices with no real interest and gazed about the jangling centre with a vulnerable, distracted air. The pseudo daylight was too harsh, the fake plants nauseating, the racks upon racks of fashion uniform grating. This was her natural habitat, everything that Sasha was manifested in this one weekly symbolic act – month in, month out. Yet today, Sasha suddenly felt like all her edges had gone soft, sanded away, and the world was jagged, sharp enough to puncture and bleed her soul dry. Everything that this was she suddenly hated.

  Mandy had eventually suggested Starbucks, and Sasha agreed, reasoning that what she needed was caffeine and processed sugars. When they arrived outside the vast glass window and Sasha caught sight of the queue snaking across the café – hard, bored, impatient faces staring back at her – it was as much as she could do to stop herself screaming and running.

  “You know what,” she bit the inside of her cheek, fighting the impulse to vomit, “I think I’ll go home, have a lie down.”

  “You’re sure?” Mandy, despite her words of solicitude, was clearly glad to be rid of her.

  Sasha nodded and, without another word, turned and headed for the car park. It took all her willpower not to break into a run. She made it into the car and locked the door, just as the wave of emotion broke over her and she collapsed into bitter sobs.

  At nine p.m. Sasha found herself standing at the corner of King’s Road, watching the entrance to The Cheshire Cat pub. The frosty night air bit into her exposed arms. Her toes had lost all sensation and her lips were numb and wouldn’t work properly. Childhood rushed back to her: memories of playing out on the streets in the depths of winter until the premature night came. She would return home and never cease to wonder how it was she couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘B’ properly until she had warmed up again.