Page 91 of A Subtle Scar
I closed my eyes for maybe a second to take a deep breath, but when I opened them again, the world was black, and Hermes was gone.
“Shit,” I mumbled.
I was sure this was a dream all over again. There was a syrupy feeling to the world around me, but when the darkness receded, the details came in crisp and clear.
The field of wheat, ears bowing in the wind, the cop car off to the side.
Everyone else was gone though, Hermes, Charon, the two cops.
And yet, Victor was there, right in front of me, lying on the flattened wheat and moving his arms and legs as if he wanted to make a snow angel.
“You can see the moon and the stars from here,”my dead brother said.
When I slept in a bed instead of my couch, when I got that feeling as if he were reaching for me, the problem was never that it scared me. Ghosts were urban legends, evil ghosts even more so.
No, the problem was, whenever I felt Victor reach for me, I wanted to reach for him, hold him, bring him back, even if reason told me that was not possible. I tried every time I felt him, I tried so hard, and every single time, I inevitably failed.
I tried now, tried reaching down to scoop him up, but he was faster.
Victor jumped to his feet before I had a chance to grasp him and started running.
“Vinnie! Vinnie! Always chasing, never stopping.”He was giggling, smiling at me over his shoulder.
I chased after him for a long time. I never caught up. We were running until the sky above darkened and the stars came out.
Victor pointed up to where the Perseids gleamed brighter than they should, right next to Venus.
“There they are! So pretty! The seven-spoked crown of the gods. The seven sisters who aren’t gods, but still powerful.”
I looked up, and because it was dark, but also because this was a shitty dream, my right foot caught on something, and I fell face forward into darkness.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Charon said. He sounded both pissed and worried.
“Look, he’s opening his eyes,” Hermes said. He sounded more worried than anything. “Plus, what was I going to do? Tell him no? I cannot tell our boyfriend no, Ronny.” The last bit, almost panicky.
Charon sighed. “He does have that effect.” Cool fingers brushed across my forehead. “Darling? Darling, open those pretty blue eyes and look at me.”
“Hey, guys, do we need to call paramedics?” I heard a female voice say, the cop. I couldn’t see her from where I was…lying on the ground? Where Victor had tried to make his snow angel?
“Not necessary. He went into a trance,” Charon said.
“Isss not…’s too rare,” I said, and with the sheer force of will I’d honed by pulling all-nighters on active cases, I pushed myself up into a sitting position.
The first thing I did was look around, toward where Victor had run off to. A part of me hoped that he would be there, his navy polo bright against the overripe wheat, his mop of black hair bobbing up from the ears. It was so irrational, but that hope, that looking for him always, whether it was here or in any crowd, anywhere, it was something that had always sneaked up on me. Something I always did. It was another type of phantom pain, constant and constantly aching.
There was nothing there, of course there wasn’t, but when the absence of him registered, a new sense of urgency swept in.
“Baby, don’t move,” Hermes said, his hand on my sternum.
“I have to,” I said, pushing against that hand.
Charon sighed. “Let him.”
Why I needed their permission I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to argue with the two of them.
I needed to gosomewhere, I just wasn’t exactly sure where that was, but each step pulled me closer. And closer. I was going where Victor had run off to. Following him.
My thighs were burning when we cleared the field, almost as if all the running I’d done in the dream had been real. I was panting.
