“You haven’t, Isaac,” said Eric. Cassidy stepped on the bus first, looking at the pained face of Morgan. The lightweight dress she wore had smatterings of paint on it and Cassidy felt an instant kinship to the woman.
“Morgan? Morgan, I know you can hear me,” said Cassidy. “You might not be able to show me but I know you can hear me. I’m an artist too, Morgan. I paint, I draw, I sketch. I was just at your studio and your work is beautiful.”
The woman didn’t move, sitting in the back of the bus, staring out the windows.
“Morgan, no one is angry at you. We want to help you to move on and we think we’ve found a way to do that for you. Morgan, do I have your permission to finish some of your work for you?”
There was just a slight movement. It was barely there. Her head tilted slightly, then a horrible sobbing. It was as if she’d ripped out her heart.
“Morgan, I don’t have to do it. I can leave your work as is but it feels as though I need to do this for you.”
The crying continued and Cassidy took a step toward the woman.
“Cass? I don’t know if you should get too close,” said King.
“She ain’t hurt me yet,” said Isaac. “I don’t think she wants to hurt anyone poor thing.”
“Morgan? Please look at me, Morgan. Can you please do that?” she begged. But it was as if the woman couldn’t move, still staring out the window of the bus. Eric stared at the woman, then remembered something from the police reports.
“She’s stuck,” said Eric. “When she overdosed, she was staring out the window of the car. She’s stuck.”
“How do we get her unstuck?” asked Cassidy.
“Honey, I have no clue. Morgan, we’re going to finish your work for you. We’ll make sure it’s what you want but if you can help us it would be great.”
There was no sound, no flashes of light, nothing. Morgan just disappeared.
“Where’d she go?” asked Isaac.
“I wish I knew,” said Eric. “Thank you for calling us. I’m not sure what she was doing here but it seems to be the same location that she was with you before. I wonder if this spot has significance to her.”
Isaac nodded, looking around at the surrounding area. There were tons of restaurants, shops, and other businesses, but there were also some new high-rise residences.
“Let’s get back to the studio and see if they need our help. After that, we take all this to our place and see what we can do.”
It took a lot longer than Eric thought it would to pack up the easels, the canvases, the drawings, paints and pencils.
“Don’t you have paints at our place?” he frowned.
“Eric, we have to match what she’s started here. Her ocher might be different than mine,” said Cassidy.
“Ocher? What the fuck is ocher?”
“It’s a color,” laughed Ela. “And she’s right. Everything is different. She could have mixed some of this herself.”
When everything was loaded on the carts to take downstairs, Eric took one more look around the studio. As he began to close the door to her bathroom, he noticed another canvas behind the door.
“I didn’t see that one,” said Cassidy. She tilted her head, trying to determine what it was. “I think it’s going to be a portrait but I’m not sure.”
“How can you tell?” asked Joseph.
“It looks like a blanket, and legs beneath a blanket. Maybe an elderly person or it could have been something more intimate. I won’t know until we speak with all the potential customers.”
“Alright, let’s go,” said Eric. “I sure as shit hope she doesn’t freak out and jump into the car or something.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” said King. “I’ll take a bullet, a knife, or a bomb before I take a ghost offing me.”
“No one is offing anyone,” said Joseph. “Right now, she can’t do anything and that’s disturbing. We see our ghosts every day. They can talk, walk, eat, touch, all the things we do. This poor woman is stranded somewhere between dark and light.”
