As Mr. Blackwood sits at the foot of the guest bed, the same manila folder I’d seen once before spread open in his hands, I find myself toying with my mood ring again as my thoughts wander back to him, the man I slept with last night. The man from another world, who, despite the steel-eyed ways he’d known before me, had somehow managed to make love with all the raw passion of someone from my own world. Someone human.

Mr. Blackwood’s words float into mind, just because one theory has yet to be proven today, does not disqualify it from being an active truth—taking place before the very eyes we seek so desperately to prove them with. I can’t help but connect them to my own situation; what’s happening between me and Death. Crossing over to other worlds, the idea of the universe confusing us for one another, blending us together. What would Mr. Blackwood have to say about a thing like this? For a moment, I allow myself to contemplate revealing everything to him. To ponder over the possibility that there may be another person out there willing to try and understand.

“So,” Mr. Blackwood’s gruff voice calls me back into the guest room, to the manila folder he now extends to me. “You want answers?”

I take the file, opening it carefully. “Yes.”

“Well, I do, too. Take another look at those notes.”

And so I do. I remove them from the folder, fanning the small papers out. There are six all together. The ones that greet me first are the three I’d seen before.

I AM NOT DEAD.

I CAN’T HOLD ON.

SAVE ME.

The chill that came crawling up my back when I’d first set eyes on those words hits me again, chasing my spine with renewed purpose. I have to take a deep breath. Setting those behind the others, I read on.

I’M LOSING MYSELF.

THE DARKNESS CONSUMES ME.

PLEASE. I DON’T WANT TO FORGET.

The darkness. I’m losing myself. No. I know that feeling. I know that kind of darkness. But there’s no way this is the same thing. My grip has tightened, the papers crinkling in my grasp, shaking as my fingers tremble. “Wh-what is this?”

The creases around Mr. Blackwood’s eyes deepen as they narrow. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Mr. Blackwood, I’m serious. What is this?”

I don’t know if it’s the tone my voice has taken or if it’s that he’s just as tired of going in circles as I am, but he clears his throat, runs a hand through his scraggly grey beard, and gestures to an empty space beside him. Still trembling, I lower myself slowly onto the bed.

“You asked me before about the Hawkins boys,” he begins.

“Yes,” I breathe, barely a whisper.

“Well, I knew them once. We were . . . we were close.” He stops, clears his throat, and it turns into a coughing fit. His face turns red, his eyes widening, and I jump from the bed to grab him more water. He reaches out to stop me with his hand. “I’m fine,” he wheezes, the coughing fading and his coloring slowly returning to normal. “Sit yourself down.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, dammit. Would I tell you so if I wasn’t sure?”

I shrug, thinking yes, but keep my mouth shut and do as instructed.

“Anyway, what happened to them is what eventually drove me to become a PI. I specialized in domestic abuse. See, we didn’t have CPS back then. If the cops didn’t listen to you, you were screwed. So we worked the cases the cops couldn’t be bothered with, and made sure families who were too scared to go to the authorities knew they could come to us.”

“Is that how you met Grams? Did she hire you at some point?”

“Oh, no.” He shakes his head. “Tallulah and I go way back, before my PI days. I wasn’t the one who helped her—it was the other way around. But we’re getting off track now, aren’t we? Do you want to know about the Hawkins boys or not?”

After a beat, I nod. I desperately want to know his history with Grams, but figuring out my connection to those brothers is more important by a landslide right now.

“All right. Now, what I’m about to tell you is scientifically impossible. Do you understand? In fact, lately I’ve started to wonder if it ever really happened, or if it was in my head the whole time. I might really just be an old loon. Still up for it?”

Scientifically impossible? The man has no idea. “Trust me. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You say that now . . .” He rubs his wrinkled hands together, lets out a grunt. “So, I was in my twenties when it happened. Just another ordinary day working cases. And I, uh, well . . .” He stops, shakes his head. “I started seeing things. Hearing things. Things that sure as shit were not normal.”

“Like what sort of things?”

“Eh, you ever read ghost stories?”

“A little.”

“Well, think ghosts. Spirits. Otherworldly and all that crap.”

“So, you’re saying you saw a ghost?”

He scoffs, looking at me like I’m the crazy one. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t see a damn ghost.”

“I’m confused—”

“I heard one.” He inhales, long and slow, his eyes glazing over like he’s losing himself to the memory. “It started out at night, in my dreams. Sound familiar?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond before he continues. “I’d feel this strange pull. Like, well, like something was calling to me. Tried ignoring it, taking sleeping pills, then it got worse. Eventually, I’d hear his voice when I went out. Didn’t matter where I was, I’d hear him so much it nearly drove me mad. Not nearly, it did drive me mad.”

“His voice?” My palms are beginning to sweat. “Whose voice?”

“Enzo’s, dammit. Enzo Hawkins.” My stomach does an odd flip, my mind trying to comprehend his words. A strange expression crosses over Mr. Blackwood’s face, like a mixture of sadness and frustration, his hands clenching and unclenching.

“Enzo?” I repeat. “The older brother, the seventeen-year-old?”

“No, no, no.” Mr. Blackwood gets up so quickly he nearly falls over. He grabs onto the bed to steady himself, then plucks up his cane. He just paces, wobbling and all. “He’s not seventeen anymore. Well, he wasn’t seventeen when he died, anyway.”

“But I thought—”

“Just listen, child,” he barks, instantly shutting me up. “Yes, Enzo was seventeen the day of the fire. But he didn’t die that night. He—he needed to get away. He needed a life free of his past, where he could be his own person, move on. So, with the forced help of Chief Wayne Mulligan—” He pauses, stopping his frantic pacing to look me in the eye.

He doesn’t need to worry though; he has my undivided attention.

“When Mulligan tried investigating the case further, he was able to get enough soft evidence to prove Thomas’s death, but not Enzo’s. And so he became determined to find the boy. Mulligan may have been a shit husband, a shit human being, but he was a decent cop with a reputation to uphold. Didn’t hurt that he and the boys’ father were long-time friends, either, but really it was his reputation on the line. Mulligan wanted Enzo found, so he was gonna find him. He quickly learned Enzo was the one who started the fire and was willing to set the boy up with a decent lawyer to prove it was self-defense. He didn’t care so long as he was able to close the case.”

Mr. Blackwood reaches a hand into his coat pocket, retrieving the flask I’m surprised he hasn’t already chugged by now, and takes a long gulp. A sigh escapes him, and he squeezes the bottle like it’s his lifeline. I begin to wonder how long it’s been since he’s spoken to anyone about this. Or if he’s ever spoken about it at all.

“Anyway,” he continues, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, “he wouldn’t let it go. And Tallulah . . . well, Tallulah had left Mulligan that same year. He had a way of beating her into submission, threatening everyone she cared about if she ever talked, but after seeing what happened to those boys that night, that was it. She took her kid and got the hell out of there.

“She refused to have any contact with her husband at all, in fact, except when it came to this case. Eventually, she contacted him privately, blackmailed him to close the case. Said she’d stayed quiet about his abuse far too long. Now that she had gotten her daughter far enough away from him, she would do whatever it took to see that the boy, too, was free from that life. Let the report show Enzo Hawkins as being dead with the others, and allow him to live the new life he deserved. Otherwise he’d be spending who knows how long defending himself, and more than that, he’d always have his past tying him down in some way.”

That’s the second time he’s mentioned Grams in relation to these boys. My mind feels like a cogwheel, turning and turning until it hurts, trying to keep working even as more info is dumped onto the cogs. “What did Grams have to do with the Hawkins family?”

Another scoff, another grunt. He shakes his head, taking a step closer to me. “Tallulah was those brothers’ savior, child. They never could get to a hospital for their wounds, and with your grams being a nurse, she did the best she could for them. Stitching them up, about saving their lives every other week since their mom started taking off. Tallulah was practically their mother, for all terms and purposes. Even tried to report the abuse on several occasions but, well, you can imagine how that turned out with her husband as the chief.”

It’s then that a vivid image flashes in my mind. A piece of a dream. A piece of their memories.

We sneak around the back of the garden, as always, and I pray the shed’s unlocked when I reach for its handle. Thankfully it opens on the first try. I wince as I carefully lower Tommy onto the dusty cot, then turn to him with a questioning look. He nods, and I don’t waste any time before darting back outside, picking a small handful of rosemary from the garden and setting it on the neighbor’s window ledge as practiced.

We all know the drill. Now all he and I have to do is wait.

I race back to the shed, weakly collapsing beside my little brother. “See now?” I hear myself whisper, my eyes heavy as I rest my head against the hard wall. “We’ll be good and fixed up in no time. Nothing at all to worry about.”

“Grams,” I mutter, almost to myself. “She was their neighbor, wasn’t she?”

Mr. Blackwood only nods. My body feels heavy, the full weight of me sinking into the mattress as another piece of a dream dawns on me.

“There, there,” a gentle voice coos. The tension in my body eases as I remember where I am. The shed. Our neighbor’s land.

“Tommy,” I murmur, my voice wrangled as I try to lift my head.

“Shh.” The hand guides me back down. I manage to turn, just enough to see the boy lying beside me. Tommy’s bare waist is wrapped in white cloth, his eyes closed, chest rising and falling in his deep sleep.

He’s okay.

We’re okay.

For now.

“As I was saying,” Mr. Blackwood’s voice yanks me back again, and I have to shake my head to snap out of it completely, “Enzo Hawkins was not seventeen when he died. He had moved out of state, started a life of his own, and he was a good and grown twenty-seven years old the day of his actual death.”

Twenty-seven. I swallow, my throat suddenly painfully dry as I begin connecting more pieces together. “What . . . what happened to him? How did he die?”

The bed shifts as Mr. Blackwood lowers himself beside me. He’s quiet for a long moment, and I’m almost about to repeat the question when I hear his voice, soft and distant. “It was a car accident. Would have been, oh, forty-five, fifty years ago now.”

I turn my head at that, looking carefully at this man who sits beside me. This man with his cane, who lost his leg years ago in a car accident. “He was with you, wasn’t he?”

He doesn’t say anything right away, but he doesn’t need to. I know the answer. Eventually, once the room is filled with the heaviness of his silence, he speaks. “He wasn’t only with me, child. I was the one responsible for his death.” He looks at me solemnly, nothing but guilt and sadness in his eyes, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much torment written on a person’s face before. It practically eats him alive right in front of me, making my own chest want to cry. “I’d been drinking—go figure—and he didn’t know. Got behind the wheel thinking everything was just dandy, ‘cause shit if I don’t know how to handle my liquor, right?” He lets out a dark, sardonic chuckle. “But it gets worse.”

My stomach twists, the anticipation hurting enough in itself. My throat’s so dry that my voice is barely a croak when I ask, “What happened?”

“After the vehicle flipped, we were both in bad shape, but he—” He stops, swallows. “He was the worst. A piece of metal had lodged itself right in his chest and . . .” He closes his eyes, squeezes them hard like it could force the memory from getting too close. I’ve never seen the town’s angry Mr. Blackwood so pained, so vulnerable. “We weren’t as lucky with paramedics back then as your generation is now, but a passerby saw us and came to help. They tried to pull Enzo out first, but he wouldn’t let them. Straight up refused, insisting they get me first. All I had was a goddamn torn leg, but the bastard insisted the guy pull me out first anyway. So he did.”

He coughs as he takes another sip of whiskey, but he chugs right on through it. I don’t know how much he manages to drink before he finally puts the flask down. “The guy barely got me settled onto the sidewalk when the whole thing blew to shreds.” He pauses, shakes his head, his next words weak, broken. “It should’ve been me.”

I can hardly breathe as I try to process all of this. Last night comes crawling back into view, images of him, his bare chest and torso, all of those scars. My dreams, it can’t be a coincidence they’d begun just after he saved me in that lake. Just after the night my bond to him had been formed.

And in every dream, I’d felt everything the boy had felt. It’s Enzo’s mind I’d been inside. Enzo’s memories.

If my heart wasn’t quite literally broken right now, I’m certain it’d be in a frenzy, slamming against my chest and trying to beat its way out.