I stare at him, not really understanding what he’s trying to tell me. Sensing my confusion, he hurries on.
“I mean I can see their ghosts, their spirits, souls—whatever you want to call them. I see dead people. I’m talking full-on Haley Joel Osment, dead people popping up all hours of the day and night trying to talk to me.”
I blink slowly, my brain trying to comprehend his words, but they don’t make sense. Tristan is one of the most scientific, empirical people I know. I would never have guessed for a second that he would believe in this kind of paranormal stuff, let alone claim to be able to see ghosts.
“I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.” He waves his hand. “It all began with Dusty. The truth is, I never knew her. I’d never met her before she was wheeled into my post-mortem room. I didn’t know Chan either. The first time I met her was at Dusty’s funeral.”
“I don’t understand.” I frown. “You knew all those details about Dusty.”
“I knew them because she was standing right next to me throughout the whole investigation.” He gives a defeated sigh. “I know this is a lot to take in, but it’s the truth. After my near-death experience, my perception was altered. It woke up a part of me that had been dormant. Ever since then I’ve been able to see spirits. They come to me for help.”
“Help?” I repeat.
“Some of them need help crossing into the light, particularly those who have died before their time and are locked in a death cycle like Dusty was. She was murdered and tethered to the earth, stuck looking exactly as she did at the moment of her death. She couldn’t move on until her unfinished business was resolved. At first, we thought solving her murder would free her but it didn’t. It turned out it wasn’t finding her killer that brought her peace. It was resolving all the things unsaid between her and her father.”
“You gave him a box of letters,” I mutter. “Dusty’s father.”
“Yes.” He smiles faintly. “She told me where to find them, and they said everything that she wanted to say in life but didn’t. Do you remember that I told Dusty’s dad to close his eyes and imagine that Dusty was right in front of him?”
I nod.
“Well, she was,” he says. “It was hearing him say he loved her just the way she was, unconditionally, that allowed her to move on.”
“So you’re saying she went…” I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this. “She went into the light?”
“Yes and no.” He smiles in amusement. “Yes, she went into the light but she didn’t stay. She convinced the Upstairs Management to let her come back as my spirit guide. She’s been with me ever since. Well, when she’s not at the bookshop with Bruce.”
“Bruce?” My brows raise in confusion.
“That’s a story for another day.” He shakes his head. “The important thing is Dusty chose to come back for me, and now she helps me to help other spirits.”
“Other spirits?”
“Ever since Mrs Abernathy died, she’d been attached to me,” he explains. “It’s really difficult trying to figure out the unfinished business of an old lady with dementia when you can’t have a straightforward conversation with her. But the good news is we did—figure it out, I mean. Me and Dusty. Delores Abernathy is now packed off safely into the light with her true love who’d waited nearly eighty years for her. It really was a Titanic moment. You know, right at the end, when Rose goes back to the ship and Jack is waiting by the clock. It was exactly like that… well, except minus Leonardo Di Caprio… and the boat… and the iceberg.”
My brain feels like it’s stalled. I can’t quite wrap my head around the calm matter-of-fact way he’s talking about ghosts as if they’re real, reconcile it everything I’ve known up until now.
“You don’t believe me,” he says with a sigh. “It’s okay, I get it. I wouldn’t believe me either, but in this case I can prove it. Are you ready?”
“For what?” I ask in confusion.
He turns and looks at the corner of the room. “Dusty?”
I open my mouth to say— well, I’m not sure what—when suddenly the coffee table in front of me starts rattling and banging. I fall back against the sofa, eyes wide, absolutely speechless, as the table actually levitates a clear two feet off the floor. It doesn’t stop there though. The lights throughout the whole flat flicker on and off rapidly, and the TV clicks on and cycles through the channels. Books start flying off the bookshelves, spinning madly in the air.
“Jesus, Dusty,” Tristan hisses. “I said a small demonstration, not full-on The Conjuring. And will you stop the banging? Unless you want Mr Grumpy in the downstairs flat banging on the door and complaining about the noise…” He pauses for a moment, about the same amount of time it would take for someone to reply to him. “Well I won’t be bloody moving anywhere if you give Danny a heart attack. I said help me convince him, not make him feel like he’s on the set of Poltergeist… What? Actually, it is pretty impressive. Have you been practising?”
The lights settle down, the TV flicks off, and the books reorder themselves neatly on the shelf as the coffee table lowers gently back down to the ground. I’m still staring speechlessly as he turns back to the corner.
“I think we might have broken him,” Tristan says in concern. “What? No, I’m not telling him that.” He waits a beat again before rolling his eyes. “Fine, thank you, and tell Bruce I said hi.” He turns back to me, wincing apologetically. “Sorry about all that.” He waves his hand behind him. “It’s the drag queen in her, she’s all go big or go loud, doesn’t know the meaning of the word subtle.”
I’m still staring at him. I open my mouth, but no words come out.
“Please say something,” he says quietly. “I know this is a lot, it was for me too. I may have had six months to get used to it, but I still have days when I struggle, or I see things I wish I hadn’t. I wasn’t given a choice. And apparently the gift is non-returnable.” He tries for a joke but his heart isn’t in it. His eyes fill with tears at my prolonged silence. “This is who I really am, Danny. I knew it might change how you look at me, that it might change the way you feel about me, but I couldn’t spend the rest of my life lying to you,” he says as he bites his lips, quickly wiping away the tear that slid out from under his glasses, and I realise how stripped bare he is right now.
He risked everything to show me the truth so that we can have something real between us, something solid, something we can build on. It just isn’t in Tris to create this elaborate kind of prank. Deep down in my gut, something is telling me this is real. Am I a little freaked out to find out ghosts are real? Yes would be a gross understatement. Does it change the way I feel about Tristan? Not a chance in hell. If anything, I’m a little in awe of him, of the bravery it took to not only embrace this gift he had thrust upon him, but also to open himself up to me, to make himself completely vulnerable, knowing I could reject him.
“Say something,” he whispers as another tear slides down his cheek.
