Intersections Read online

  “Oh gawd,” she said.

  “Dad didn’t respond, even when I licked my fingertip and wiggled it in his ear. I got up and ran away, expecting at any moment for him to follow.

  “He didn’t. I hid behind a bench, watching and waiting for him to leap up as a snarling werewolf or stand up as a cruel vampire.

  “He didn’t. The drizzle blossomed into rain, hammering down on us both and plastering my dress to my body. I walked over to him. His shirt was soaked. His eyes stared upward. I expected him to blink.

  “He didn’t.”

  She clearly didn’t know how to respond to that. I didn’t know why I’d shared it. Only a few people knew that story. I guess when you died together—when you shared your last breaths—then you could share almost anything.

  In many ways, I’d been pretending to be a zombie for the past few years. I hadn’t had any real meaningful connections with anyone. I’d been walking through life, seemingly animated but dead inside.

  I held out my hand. “Please help me up.”

  She grabbed my arm, and a little tingle ran up my phantom spine. Gold specks flashed in our auras. The pain in my shin simmered to a dull throb. Once on my feet, I did a few leg swings and settled into a walking lunge, stretching out the injured limb. This was my pre-run routine.

  “I used to run cross country back in middle school,” I told her. “It’s the only sport I ever loved. It felt so good just to run, run, run. I was pretty damn fast, too. But I ditched it by the time I got to high school.”

  “I do the 100-meter and 200-meter dash. And the high jump.”

  “Cool.”

  “What got you started running again?” she said.

  “How’d you know I started back?”

  “It’s a small town. I’ve seen you running around in the early morning and at night.”

  This gave me pause, the idea that she’d seen me. Noticed me. Ever since I’d returned to Davis after the divorce, I’d felt like nothing but a ghost in this town. “Yup. That’s when I like to run. I’ve got a course around town. Depending on the time of day, I go clockwise or counter-clockwise so that I can time it so that I’m running away from the sunset or the sunrise.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I like to chase my shadow when it’s all stretched out like that. Also, I’m fair skinned. I burn easy.”

  “You never answered my question. Why’d you start running again?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was trying to run away from my wrecked marriage and the fact that I was living with my mom. Maybe I was just trying to find myself. Maybe I just needed to get out of my skull for a while. Running’s cheaper than booze. And less complicated than sex.”

  “Let’s do it together,” she said.

  I stopped short, almost tripping over my feet. Was she propositioning me for sex? Anticipation swelled in my chest. What would I say? Yes or no? Before I could decide, she bent over and stretched her legs, too. Ah. She only wanted to run—not fuck. I bit my lip, surprised by my own disappointment.

  Turned out, Shannon and I kept pretty steady pace with each other. Up until now, I’d only sprinted as a ghost. I’d never had to sustain a run. Gone were the familiar rhythms of inhaling and exhaling, and the steady hammering of bodyweight on my kneecaps. It took a long time to settle into a new groove without these cues. Ghost-running was more like flowing as a river. Except where water relied on gravity for momentum, I had to supply that force through sheer will. The asphalt blurred below my bare feet. I wished I had sneakers, but it didn’t really matter so long as I clutched my lone shoe in my hand to keep it from slipping onto my foot.

  I sideways-glanced at the girl a few times. Amidst the whirring of her limbs, her face had frozen as hard as ice. Her eyes narrowed. Her jaw clenched. She wasn’t running toward Hilltop. No, this girl was running away from something.

  At the entrance of Hilltop Acres, two rectangular brick walls flanked either side of the wide street. Unlike the cracked and broken roads in the middle of Davis, the asphalt here was as smooth as buttered toast. The neighborhood looked like a damn banshee block party, with spirits of all shapes and sizes mingling on streets, porches, and driveways.

  Shannon and I exchanged looks and panted. I tried not to stare at her eyes, which were blacker than they were only an hour ago.

  She must’ve been seeing the same thing. “Your pupils are ginormous,” she said. “I can barely see any white left.”

  “Great.”

  We worked our way through the crowd of grinning idiots and down the street. Hilltop was one of those neighborhoods where all the houses looked vaguely the same and all the lawns were neatly manicured. The avenues formed a labyrinth of turns and dead-ends, and they all had nature names like Bluebird Drive or Oak Nest Road in honor of the tiny ecosystem that was destroyed to make room for all of this. I didn’t bother paying attention to how many turns we made.

  As we crossed an intersection, the church bell down in town chimed.

  Clong.

  I paused to look at her. “Were you coming from track practice when you . . . when we died?”

  “No.”

  Clong.

  “Then why were you wearing your track uniform?”

  “I wasn’t. But for some reason I’m wearing it now. Maybe sometimes ghosts wear what they die in or get buried in, and other times they wear what was most important to them.”

  “I guess.”

  Clong.

  At the sound of the last chime, all the ghosts stopped talking. For a moment, they stood or sat in place as still as statues. Shannon and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. As if on cue, all the spirits dropped to the ground and convulsed like fish out of water. The closest ghost was an older man that used to bag groceries at the local IGA. His arms and legs went rigid while his torso bucked back and forth. He arched his back and his mouth opened impossibly wide, as if to puke. Except what came out was darkness—the same wiggling black that had consumed all their eyes, but now it poured out of him and over his face and down his chin. It erupted out of his navel, eclipsed his hips, and dripped down to his toes.

  This happened to the entire neighborhood of ghosts. The darkness consumed them entirely, even their clothes until they rose on wobbly legs like newborn fawns. A crowd of impossibly black figures now stood all around us. Every single one of them turned to face our direction. They swayed ever so slightly like trees in a breeze.

  For a moment, time froze.

  Terror gripped me. I couldn’t move.

  Shannon grabbed my hand, which jarred me out of my paralysis. Yet we had nowhere to go. We were completely surrounded.

  10

  THE DARKNESS

  The hour struck three o’clock and the Darkness could barely contain its excitement. Pressure built, eager for release. Three bells.

  One.

  The Darkness pressed forth from inside its disciples’ phantom bodies. It spilled from their mouths and ruptured from their eyes. It poured like rivers from their fingernails, leaking out of all their many crevices and holes until it encased them completely. Wholly. Holy.

  Two.

  For so long, the Darkness had endured in its lesser role as mere shadows crouching low beneath the Light’s razor sharp rays. The Darkness had suffered as an afterthought. Now it was poised to reclaim its rightful mantle. Dark was not merely the result of light. No, no. Far from it. Darkness was the root of eternity. It was the rich soil from which all things bloomed forth. It was the place of dreaming, the source of all opportunity, and the wellspring of endless possibilities.

  Three.

  Like a bruised cloud finally allowed to release its burden, the Darkness stormed upon the stranded and infected souls of the world—as it had every night at the stroke of three since the Light broke.

  Now, the Darkness rained. Soon, it would reign.

  11

  The Shadys inched forward. That was what I called them in my head without even thinking about it. Shadys. They wavered back and forth almost l