His voice fades, silence creeping back into the room. I think he’s done talking, that maybe I’ve burned him out, but then he speaks again. “Almost as soon as they started, though, the messages stopped. Everything stopped, in fact. As though it never even happened.” His finger taps on the folder,tap, tap, tap. “Except I have these. No one else may believe me, but I know the truth, because I have the evidence right here.”
My fingers are trembling again as I lift the folder. I reread each word, slowly, warily. Taking my time as though I might miss some hidden detail if I rush.
After a few more coughs, Mr. Blackwood continues. “And so begins the story of my downward spiral. As the locals would call it, anyway.” I break my stare from the handwritten letters to glance up at the tired looking man. “I started researching. I was used to investigating already, so I knew how to do the initial footwork. Interviewed everyone from cosmologists to physicists to everything in between—anyone who would talk to me. Put together my own theories on it, some of which you read downstairs. None of them conclusive. All a bunch of hogwash and utter waste of time.”
“So that’s why you first moved here all those years ago? To try and get some answers?”
“Figured it was my best bet. Maybe he’d find his way home before anywhere else. And later, came this.” He reaches behind him and picks up the other book, then hands it to me. It’s the one I haven’t yet seen:Other Unsolved Mysteries.
I set the book in my lap, flipping through it gingerly with one hand and pressing my fingers to my heart with the other, where a strange knot is forming. I try to soothe it with a circular motion. It doesn’t take long to figure out what this book is about.1908, boy claims to see deceased mother. . .1922, family of six spends evenings speaking to the dead. . .1949, woman wakes from coma claiming to have witnessed the other side. . . Page after page, story after story.
Closing the book, I meet Mr. Blackwood’s gaze once more. My voice is gentle when I speak, partially for his sake, and partially because the pressure in my chest only builds, the uncomfortable sensation taking over. “So much of your life, you’ve dedicated to trying to figure this out. Haven’t you? Trying to work out what happened to him. What he was trying to tell you.”
He grunts, hazel eyes turning bitter. “Lots of good it did me. Or him.”
“Is that why that lady was here a while ago? I remember a woman coming by, talking about failing to make contact.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve lost count of the money I’ve wasted on so-called clairvoyants or mediums, whatever you wanna call them.”
A thought crosses my mind, but I need to take a second to steady my breathing before I speak. My fingers continue the circular motion over my heart, and I close my eyes for a moment, trying to block the discomfort out. “What if—what if he wasn’t quite . . . on the other side, exactly?”
Mr. Blackwood’s brows press together, a frown forming. “What are you talking about?”
I’m talking about the notes, I want to scream.
I’M LOSING MYSELF.
THE DARKNESS CONSUMES ME.
PLEASE. I DON’T WANT TO FORGET.
I’ve tasted what it’s like to feel yourself slip away. To be consumed by the darkness, and to lose any sense of yourself. Who you were, who you are, who you’re meant to be. And I was only there, in that place, for a matter of minutes. To be stuck for days, weeks, months . . . years. A shudder runs through me. I can’t even imagine the type of strength it would take to try to hold onto yourself after all that time.
“I just mean, what if he never fully crossed over? If he’s . . . I don’t know. If he’s somehow stuck somewhere? Couldn’t that explain why none of the specialists you’ve hired have been able to reach him?”
“So could the fact they don’t know what in the hell they’re doing.”
I shake my head, the pressure within me only increasing and my vision starting to blur. Something’s not right. Slowly, I pull myself up. I don’t know if it’s the overload of information, or if it’s something worse—far, far worse—but something is definitely wrong. When I shift my feet, a wave of nausea hits me, and my entire body tenses. No. I know this feeling a little too well. Could it happen right here? Right now? I need to leave, to go home.
“I—I’m sorry, Mr. Blackwood. I’m not feeling so great. Can I come back another day?”
He pushes himself up, balancing with his cane, and eyes me carefully. “Yeah. You, uh, you need to stay here and rest awhile?”
I almost smile. I want to make a joke, tease him for sounding remarkably similar to how a friend might. But I can’t seem to muster the energy. I need to get to where Death can find me. So I just shake my head.
I’m out the door and on the street in an instant, my thoughts as hazy as my vision. Not again, not again. Please don’t be happening again. If I cross over now, I don’t know that I’ll ever find my way back.
I walk and I walk, one foot in front of the other, hardly feeling my legs as I do. The sky is a grey, dull blanket above me, the breeze a sharp whip to my desensitized skin. The streets are quiet other than the sparse vehicle here and there, nothing but the sound of the wind’s push and pull whirling through my ears. Another step, and another, and soon I can’t feel myself at all. Any sensations in my bones, my flesh, are fading away, becoming numb, until my body is nothing more than an empty shell of my soul; a part of me I’m not connected with and yet can’t seem to separate from.
My surroundings swirl as I collapse on the sidewalk, but I don’t feel the impact. I must be on my back because the sky looms over my face, spinning even as I lay still, trying hard not to blink.
Do.
Not.
Blink.
If I do, the darkness might take me. If I do, I may never see the sky again.
