“Let’s go outside, Tyler.”
On their way out, Andi grabbed the two yoga mats that were always standing at the French doors leading to the veranda. Since he was rested, the onslaught of information coming from the garden was easy to mute like the murmuring of a brook in the background. Andi ignored the drama taking place—death and sex and birth and feeding, endlessly spinning—and concentrated on the teenage boy seeking his help. He wished he could do more, but ghosts were crawlers of another kind, one he didn’t have access to. Once he and Tyler were settled on the mats, with their legs folded, Andi’s movements were more graceful than Tyler’s, who clearly didn’t do yoga. Andi started with a simple breathing exercise, being careful not to slide into his own world.
“Breathe in for one, two, three, four, hold, then out for one, two, three.” It took a few minutes for Tyler to relax. Once his breathing was even and controlled, Andi started talking again.
“The ghosts—are they here?”
“Yes, Boyd has his hand on the female’s shoulders.”
“Good. Now, I want you to close your eyes and relax. Don’t reach out to them, don’t look at them, don’t try to talk to them. Just be nice and relaxed. Open.”
It was clear Tyler had problems following Andi’s instructions. He whined. “It’s not helping!”
“You’ve been doing it for less than thirty seconds. Patience.”
Another whine then a huff. “Fine.” The pout was back, a poor teenager carrying the weight of the world. Unfortunately, Tyler was carrying more weight than any adolescent should, so his pout was somehow justified. Seeing ghosts was different from being pissed because your parents wouldn’t let you go to a party.
Andi watched as Tyler tried to concentrate and relax at the same time. Carefully, Andi reached out with his own senses, using the pill bugs under the gazebo to get a feeling of where the ghosts were located. To the pill bugs, they were like static in the surrounding flow of minuscule electric fields, showing Andi their location behind his left shoulder, on the steps leading into the gazebo. As far as the pill bugs could tell, they weren’t moving. That was all the information Andi got, and it felt strange for once not to be the person with the most knowledge about his surroundings.
Tyler’s face was starting to relax. His shoulders sagged a little. He took a shuddering breath. “They love each other.”
“That’s good. Don’t start pushing. Let them come to you. Breathe in and out, keep your rhythm.” Andi tried not to give too many orders while at the same time keeping Tyler in his zone. They were getting somewhere, and he could feel the boy’s urge to just grab whatever he could. Which wouldn’t work, of that, he was sure.
“There’s also hate.” Tyler hesitated. “Not from them. At them.” He shuddered. “It’s a disgrace! How can you shame your parents like this? No daughter of mine will be with a fucking N—” Tyler gasped. His eyes had a wet sheen. “So much hate,” he whispered. “And all they did was love each other. Tina. Her name is Tina. She loved Boyd so much. Still does. It was perfect, and they—her family—they hated it, hated him, hated them. They couldn’t see their happiness.” The tears were now falling freely. “Andi, how can somebody hate so much?”
“If we knew why people hate, this world would be a much better place. Don’t lose the connection now, Tyler. They want you to know what happened, let them tell their story.”
“But it hurts so much!” In this moment, Tyler was just a fourteen-year-old boy who had no business plunging into the depths of human depravity. And yet here they were, both of them robbed of their choices at birth, with little to no agency over what happened to them because it was outside forces who decided for them. It hurt, and it chafed, and it made him mad at the world, and it was inescapable, and their only choice was to bear this burden with dignity and wasn’t that just the shitty cherry on top of an already terrible cake?
“I know. I know. And I know you can push through the hurt and ignore your own needs and see what they want, what they need. You can do this, Tyler. I know it.”
Tyler took a shuddering breath. “Tina Namara, that’s her name. She loved Boyd. They wanted to elope to a place where there wasn’t so much hate.” Tyler gulped. “She was pregnant. A daughter. The symbol of their love. Her parents found out about the elope and then Boyd vanished. Her cousin killed him. Troy Namara. He shot Boyd in the head and buried him in the back yard of his family home. Here in Charleston.” He whimpered. “When her parents found out about the baby, they wanted her to get rid of it. She refused. Her mother put rat poison in her food to make her miscarry. She was five months along.” Tyler was sobbing. “It killed both of them.” He looked over Andi’s left shoulder where he could feel the static more prominently. Something was happening.
“They died, and he died, and they found each other. Tina’s holding the baby.”
“What do they want, Tyler? Revenge?”
“Tina’s parents are already dead. They…” He narrowed his eyes. “They made them suffer. They are waiting for Troy. That’s not it.”
“What then, Tyler? What is it they want from you?”
Tyler whimpered again. “They want to be buried together. If they couldn’t be joined in life, they want to rest side by side.” Another whimper, then Tyler broke down, fell forward with heaving shoulders, the sobs breaking from his mouth felt as if they were dragged out of a place deep inside of him.
The static indicating the ghosts was gone.
Thump, thump, thump. Safe, warm, good. George was coming, running, no doubt because he heard Tyler crying. Andi leaned forward to gather the boy in his arms, rubbing soothing circles on his back.
“It hurts so much, Andi. It hurts so much. Their pain, and they’re so devastated because they never got to live. How can anybody feel so much pain? It didn’t hurt that much with Izzy and the others. Never.”
Andi kept stroking Tyler’s back, not voicing his worries that Tyler’s gift was getting stronger and, therefore, the emotions inevitably tied to it as well. George was here, bending down to lift Tyler up, guiding him back into the house, onto the couch, where Tyler and Andi sat down. Tyler snuggled close to Andi, still crying, but the worst seemed to have passed. The sobs were ebbing until they were down to sniffling.
George went into the kitchen and returned with two mugs of hot chocolate, the real stuff he made himself, chopping the very expensive chocolate he bought from an organic provider online and then slowly melting it in the milk. Tyler’s cup had a decent amount of mini marshmallows, something Andi didn’t even know they had. When he looked at George, his partner winked. “Secret emergency stash,” he whispered. Then he proceeded to bring a plate full of freshly baked cookies, which meant the best lover a man could wish for had stopped his mental redecorating of their home to bake and be prepared for an emergency.
Tyler fell onto the cookies like a starving wolf. Connecting with the ghosts had likely cost him more calories than he had ingested in the past three days. Another sign that his gift was growing in strength. Tyler had lost all the baby fat he’d carried around when they first met. At the moment, he looked well within the range of what a healthy teenager should weigh, but Andi could see him veering toward too thin quickly. A growing body needed fuel. A growing body dealing with an extra feature needed even more.
George sat down with them. He, too, had a cup of hot chocolate, but he steered clear of the cookies. They found a college baseball game, a rerun from the previous year, which George never minded, and Tyler obviously didn’t care. He drank his hot chocolate and decimated the cookies then snuggled back into Andi’s side and promptly fell asleep. Once it was clear he wouldn’t wake, George turned to Andi.
“I assume you were successful?”
