Ike
I stared at her as she slept, her mouth curved up in a whisper of a smile. I told myself she’d been smiling anyway, and the pillar of modesty and humbleness that I was, I told myself I had put that smile there. The crisp white sheet was bunched around her, one of her smooth lean legs poking out. I wanted to trace my finger along the contour of muscle running down her thigh, but stopped myself, not wanting to wake her. Sitting up, I stretched before slipping on my t-shirt and boxers. We were still near the cliff Charlotte had created, the night sky glimmering with stars reflecting off the choppy water below. The magnitude of the moment filled my heart with a joy I’d never thought possible, and I found myself offering up the most honest and humble prayer of thanks I had to give.
Thank you, God. Thank you for finally giving me my peace.
Gratefulness consumed me. I felt like I’d waited so long for this. I liked to believe I was a good man. In life, thanks a great deal to my father and his example, I did my best to put others before myself. This frame of mind was one of the main reasons I joined the Army. I wanted to give, and when serving my country took my life, I wasn’t resentful. I felt I had died honorably and in a way that, though painful for my loved ones, would make them proud. My life was not taken or wasted. It was given. I couldn’t deny leaving Charlotte to cross over tested me in ways I’d never experienced before, but I stood strong and fought against it. I persevered against the evil thoughts and feelings that threatened to corrode my character and my soul. And now…I believed I was being rewarded.
Eventually, I raised my head, surprised at how much effort it took. When I finally caught sight of the starry sky, it seemed to crack like a pane of glass. I instinctively blinked in an effort to clear my vision but that served on to make it worse.
“Shit,” I muttered over my limp tongue. It was happening again—something was taking me down. Clumsily, I spun around and tried to make my way back to the bed before I passed out, but with each unsteady step, my body began to shut down and my legs grew weaker until they collapsed beneath me. Blackness pulled at me as I fell to my knees. Just before everything went black, I toppled over, hitting the ground hard.
I was floating in darkness, my limbs weighed down with fatigue. I was helpless to fight against whatever force was pulling me. It was happening just as it had the first time. Finally, I felt the ground beneath me, the cold surface sending a shiver across my body as it made contact with my bare skin. I was aware enough to be grateful I’d had the presence of mind to at least put my boxers and t-shirt back on.
Beep. Beep. Beep. What in the hell is that?
My sight slowly started to return, and I began making out my surroundings. A white drop-ceiling was the first thing to come into focus, which wasn’t very telling at all. Still unable to lift my head, I let it roll to the side and found a pair of black Chucks.
“Easy, love. Don’t rush to move,” a thick female British accent said. Panic slid over me as my body tensed in response to being spoken to, on top of being dragged against my will to parts unknown. My gaze shifted toward the source, and I could just make out a female silhouette, but none of the woman’s features. I was mostly blind, and I certainly didn’t like that someone was standing over me while I was physically incapacitated. What was this? Who was she?
“Don’t panic, Ike. I’m a friend of the family. My name is Marlena DuBois.”
“Do I know you?” I asked, blinking rapidly, hoping it would help me see clearer.
She moved closer and knelt in front of me, allowing me to make out her face better. Her green eyes were familiar…it was the woman I’d seen standing in the corner of the house where Charlotte had found Click. “You do not, no. But I know a great deal about you.”
With a heavy hand, I rubbed my head, clenching my eyes closed, wondering if I was just imagining all of this. A bad dream maybe? It had to be. Wasn’t I just tangled up with Charlotte moments before?
“Where are we?”
She sucked a breath in through her teeth, then said evasively, “Now, there’s a loaded question.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“No, Ike, I summoned you. I brought you here from the other side.”
“So you’re alive?”
She nodded, “That I am.”
If I wasn’t on the other side and this woman wasn’t dead, that only meant one thing. I was in limbo again. My stomach knotted. No. I couldn’t be in limbo again. That was a hell I never wanted to return to. “Why?” I grunted as I used all of my strength to push myself into a seated position. “Why did you summon me?”
The corners of her mouth lifted in a sympathetic smile. “I’ll explain everything, but first you need to let go of the panic. I won’t hurt you; you’re safe, I promise. The sooner you calm down, the more at ease you will feel.”
“How am I supposed to feel at ease when you’ve brought me back to limbo? I have no idea who you are, or where I am.”
She chuckled softly, “Now that’s not exactly true, Ike, is it? I’ve just told you my name, and that I’m a family friend, so I’m not a complete stranger.” She looked around the room briefly then said, “As for where you are…well, at the moment, you’re on the floor of a hospital room.” She unwrapped a green sucker and popped it in her mouth, then stood and stepped out of my line of sight, offering no further explanation.
I scanned the room in search of some clarity, but the more I saw, the more confused I became. I was leaning against the foot of the bed, and over my shoulder, positioned near the head, I could see some obvious medical equipment, one of which seemed to be the source of the incessant beeping. From my position on the floor, it was impossible to see who was in the bed, so I shifted to my knees and gripped the bed railing, pulling myself up. I wasn’t ready to stand without help, but at least I was moving. That was progress. Once marginally upright, I scanned the form lying in the bed, noticing the pallid color of the delicate hand that lay motionless at the patient’s side. When my gaze reached the face of the patient, I jerked reflexively away from the bed, barely managing to keep from losing my precarious balance.
That’s not possible…
“How…” I trailed off as my brain fought to decipher what I was seeing. Who I was seeing. “Charlotte?” I croaked. My mouth was dry. I was so damn thirsty. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt thirsty. Cautiously rounding the bed, I reached for her hand, but mine went through hers. My heart lurched in my chest.
I couldn’t touch her.
That meant I was dead and she…was not.
My gut twisted.
“She’s alive.” I said, more to myself than Marlena.
“Yes,” Marlena confirmed.
I frowned, staring at Charlotte, pale-faced and weak. This didn’t look like her at all. Charlotte was vibrant and full of color, but here, lying in a hospital bed, she looked lost in gray. I looked back at Marlena for an explanation, but she just peered at me through her dark lashes and thick black bangs.
“I don’t understand,” I managed, my throat burning as I swallowed.
“Charlotte is with you, yes? On the other side?” I nodded, and she went on, “As you know, Charlotte is unique. She’s not like everyone else.”
“Yes.”
“Her ability may allow her to be more…” she motioned her hand around as if searching for her next words “…open to other things.”
“Other things?”
Marlena’s mouth worked before she attempted to explain. “Charlotte isn’t dead, and though I’ve tried considerably, I’m unable to call her back as a result. I believe, in response to the trauma her brain has suffered, her abilities allowed her to come to you on the other side, even though she isn’t actually deceased.”
“Maybe she is dead,” I shot back defensively, unable to hide my growing anger at the nonsense this woman was spewing. None of this made any sense. “Maybe these,” I waved my hand at the machines attached to and around Charlotte, “are just keeping her alive physically, but she has actually crossed over.” I glared defiantly at Marlena, unwilling to accept the implications of what she was claiming. There was no way I was going to placidly accept anything that could take Charlotte away from me—not when I’d just gotten her.
Marlena pulled the sucker from her mouth with a wet pop as she let her stare drift to Charlotte, her voice calm and matter-of-fact when she finally spoke, “If she were truly dead, Ike, I would’ve been able to summon her.”
Whirling around to face her square on, I crossed my arms. “You said it yourself—she’s different. Maybe that’s why you can’t summon.”
Her green eyes pierced me as she raised an eyebrow, bobbing her head as she considered my statement. “She is special,” Marlena agreed cagily, clearly not believing my theory. After a moment she continued, “Look, Ike, I’m not saying what you suggest isn’t possible; despite what most think about people like me, I don’t know everything—there’s no special gifts or abilities guide book that I know of—so anything could be possible. But this has been my life a lot longer than it hasn’t, and while I know I don’t have all the answers, when you’ve seen as much as I have, you develop a sense of how things work. And in Charlotte’s case, that sense is telling me this isn’t her time.”
What the hell does she mean? That Charlotte might wake up?
Turning back to Charlotte, I fought back another surge of anger. We’d only just tasted the beauty of our eternity together, and now this woman was telling me it wasn’t her time. Our time. “What happened to her?” I finally asked.
“Aneurysm. The last thing she was doing was trying to help a little girl trapped in a house they call the Hell House. They call the little girl Click.”
“She’s mentioned her,” I said flatly as I remembered Charlotte explaining what happened with Click. Marlena’s brows lifted in surprise. “So she’s still there. The girl?” I asked.
“She is, yes. I may not be able to help Charlotte directly, but maybe I can help Click.”
My gaze fell to Charlotte’s face. “How long has she been like this?”
“A few days”
Did she say days? It felt like Charlotte had been on the other side with me for months.
“I’m told time works a bit differently over there,” she said, having apparently read my shock at her disclosure.
Several long moments passed in silence. “I’m sorry,” I eventually said and made a circular motion with my hand. “I’m just processing.”
“Understandable, but I’m sorry, Ike, we haven’t much time. I can only hold you here for so long and George will be back soon.”
My head shot up at my brother’s name. George. “How…how is he?”
“Well, he’s hanging in there, but hurting tremendously,” she answered bluntly. “He’s the one who found her.”
I closed my eyes at hearing confirmation of Charlotte’s fear and let out a heavy sigh, imagining once again how awful it had been for him, and the hell he must be going through right now. He had to want Charlotte to wake up, as badly as I wanted her to stay on the other side.
“So you’re like Charlotte?”
“I thought for sure I’d be all the rage on the other side, but clearly you’ve never heard of me,” she said with mock dismay.
“I’ve never even heard of anyone being summoned on the other side.”
She harrumphed, “Figures.” Turning serious she said, “Well, obviously I’m not like Charlotte, except that I have my own series on the tele back home, but yes, I do have abilities in the same vein as her. I can communicate with spirits on the other side and, as you can attest, I can even bring them back to this side if I want. I also have the ability to see things, the past mostly, but given the right parameters and circumstances, I sometimes catch glimpses of possible future outcomes.”
“Possible outcomes?”
“Yeah, that’s the rub. See, the future is always changing. A decision made today can change the course of one made yesterday that altered one made the day prior, and so on. If I do actually see anything, which isn’t as often as my producers would like,” she smirked dismissively, “there’s no guarantee it won’t change thirty seconds later.”
“So at some point you saw that Charlotte lived, and that’s why you don’t think she’s dead?”
“No,” she shook her head emphatically, “I haven’t seen anything, and I don’t expect I will, to be quite honest. Everyone around her is either too focused on what happened to her in the past, or believes she’s already gone. No, what makes me say this isn’t her time is the sense I keep getting that there’s still more for her to do here first.”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were when you brought me to the Hell House?” I asked, not wanting to discuss Charlotte’s destiny, as it were, any more.
She snickered. “That,” she snickered, “was something else entirely. Neither of us were actually there.”
I narrowed my eyes at her in confusion. “How is that?” I asked.
“I can’t just yank spirits back at random; I need a reference point to work from, a bread crumb to follow. Yesterday, I was attempting to use George’s memory to build a conduit to Charlotte, so I could bring her here the way I brought you here. Instead, I created one to you.”
“That just happened yesterday?” I asked incredulously before waving it off. “Never mind, that’s too much to grasp. How is it that you came to play a part in all of this?” I asked changing directions.
“George contacted me before the accident about helping Charlotte with Click. Actually, come to think of it, we were having a meeting via Skype when it happened. When Charlotte’s agent told me she was in hospital, I flew over straight away to help in any way I could.”
“But why?”
Marlena sat on Charlotte’s bed and looked down at her. “She was having a tough go of it. George knew it was cutting her up inside.”
“It still is,” I admitted. “She couldn’t help the girl cross over. It’s been hard on her.”
Glancing back at me, she sighed. “It wasn’t just that. Her struggle with helping Click was just a tipping point for Charlotte. She’d already been doubting her faith; her purpose. She was becoming angry. She was soul-sick, Ike. And that’s worse than any physical ailment for people like us. You’re well aware that this isn’t something we can just turn off when we need a break, or when we’re tired of it all. There’s no escape from it, and it wears us down in ways not even the dead on the other side can understand.”
I exhaled, completely depleting my lungs. It was painfully clear that I had no idea what Charlotte’s life had been like since I crossed over, especially right before she showed up on the other side. The way Marlena made it sound, Charlotte had been spiraling for some time, which I didn’t even want to think about. I never wanted her to be the way she was when I found her the day we met.
“I know you have more questions, Ike, but now isn’t the time. I’ve held you here as long as I can, and I need to send you back. George is on his way, and I’m not keen on him learning I’ve contacted you. Not yet, at least.”
I whipped my head toward the door. “Can I see him? Please? It’s not like he can see me, or anything.”
I felt the weakness begin to wash over me as she shook her head, her expression pained as she spoke in a whisper, “I’m sorry, not this time. Tell Charlotte. If she understands what’s going on, maybe it’ll be enough for me to reach her, but even if it isn’t, I need help with Click.”
I swayed as everything shifted around me in slow-motion, Marlena’s voice growing more distant as the blackness took me. The return trip was definitely easier than my arrival. A fraction of a second later, I opened my eyes and was back on the cliff. The disorientation cleared quicker, but the weakness was just as bad in this direction. I grunted as I pushed my way up, noticing Charlotte was exactly how I’d left her—wrapped up in the bedsheet and sleeping peacefully.
Seeing her lying there sent a wave of defeat through me. Charlotte. Wasn’t. Dead. I knew I shouldn’t be angry, but I was; worse, I couldn’t bring myself to care that she might actually have a chance to live a long and happy life with George. I finally had her. Here. With me. Then Marlena had gone and yanked me out of my eternal bliss and, in an instant, managed to kill me all over again. Desperate to feel Charlotte again, I moved to my feet and trudged over to the bed and slid in beside her.
She instinctually rolled toward me, molding her body to mine and resting her head on my shoulder. “Are you happy?” she mumbled sleepily.
Pressing my mouth to her forehead in a hard kiss, I squeezed her to me. “You have no idea, baby-girl,” I whispered, and that was the problem. I was happy. I was so fucking happy.
She wiggled closer and drifted back to sleep as I stared up at the sky, fighting back the despair and self-pity. If it wasn’t her time, I had no choice but to let her go. Somehow, I’d have to find peace with that. The thing was, the thing I hated to admit, was that this time...I wasn’t sure I could.