Chapter 10
10
A loud buzzing sound tugs me out of the deepest sleep I’ve had in years. I groan, willing my eyes to open as I reach out blindly to grab my phone from the bedside table and silence the disruption of my respite. It takes my sleep-addled brain a while to grab it, and I blearily blink the crust out of my eyes as I bring it up to my face to see who the hell is calling me.
Emma’s picture stares back at me. A surge of panic supplants any lingering fuzziness from being woken up, and I answer immediately.
“Emma?” I croak, my voice still thick with sleep.
“Hey!” She sounds cheery and not like she’s about to deliver terrible news, which allows my spiking heart rate to chill out a bit.
No one is dying. Everyone is okay.
“Hey. What’s up?” I ask, trying not to betray to my sister the reflexive worry I felt. I don’t want her to think she can’t call me because I’m going to freak out.
“Just wanted to see if I should pick up some breakfast for you on the way to your place. I’m on the road now and should be there in about an hour. There’s a cute little diner that I tried the last time I was in Moonvale that I could put in a to-go order with.”
“You don’t have to do that. I can get us breakfast. You’re the one that’s going to be my guest this weekend.” I mentally chastise myself for not planning better for her visit. I set up the guest room and got some extra groceries, but I’ve been so wrapped up in texting Jessie that I didn’t put as much thought into Emma visiting as I should’ve.
“Nonsense! You’ve been busy getting settled in and it’s no trouble for me to swing by on the way. Unless you think your ghost grandma is going to make you another brunch today, in which case, I won’t bother,” Emma says with a chuckle.
Oh god, the ghost!
My stomach lurches as the memories of what happened before I fell asleep last night come into focus.
No. It wasn’t real. I must’ve fallen asleep while I was jerking off. That’s a thing that can happen, right? Because there’s no way.
There’s no fucking way .
I push myself up and wince as I realize I have a crick in my neck from sleeping at an odd angle. I look down my body to find my sweatpants still pulled down past my hips, and dried cum splotches all over my stomach and flaccid dick.
The memory of my hair being gripped by a phantom hand and the weight of a soft, solid unseen body pressed against my chest as something invisible teased my cock until I begged to come slams into me, knocking the air from my lungs.
I gasp at the visceral fear and lust the memory evokes.
No. No. That isn’t a memory. It was a dream. Because if it was a memory, it means I’ve gone insane.
Maybe I have. Maybe I’ve been so fucking lonely and pathetic that my mind has conjured up a ghost girlfriend.
“Uh, earth to Noah? You fall back asleep?” Emma asks, startling my attention back to our conversation.
“There’s no ghost!” I blurt.
“Whoa! Someone’s cranky this morning. I thought you agreed with me that the ghost was real,” Emma says with a giggle.
There’s nothing funny about this to me.
I rub my eyes, and another memory—no, part of a dream —comes back. The prickling awareness that someone was speaking to me, even though I couldn’t hear them. A wicked intention behind every tug of my cock and a shuddering sigh as I exploded all over the invisible hand.
Get it together. It wasn’t real!
I clear my throat. “Sorry. I’m tired and feeling really out of sorts this morning. I’ll be fine by the time you get here. I promise.”
“Noah.” Emma’s voice sobers. “You know it’s okay if you’re not fine. I love you and I’m excited to spend the weekend together. It doesn’t matter to me if you’re feeling grouchy the whole time, or you don’t want to talk about your ghost. All that matters to me is getting to spend time with my brother.”
We both know what she’s leaving unsaid, because I’ve had the same thought. We need to spend time together because you never know how much you have left. Mom left us so fast after she got sick, and Dad almost didn’t make it. We cling to the opportunities we have to be with our family, understanding how precious they really are.
“I know…and I really appreciate that, Em. I want to be happy not just for your sake, but because I’m tired of being this way.” I sigh, scrubbing a hand across my face. “I’d thought moving to Moonvale would be good for my mental health, but… I’m not so sure now.”
That’s an understatement if there ever was one. My grip on sanity has apparently become so tenuous that my mind is convinced I received a spectral handjob last night from a ghost who edged me for ages and made me come harder than I have in my entire life.
God, it felt so real .
I guess if I’m going to experience a break from reality, hallucinating something that got me off is better than a ghost attacking me. Gotta focus on the positive, right?
I fight back a hysterical laugh.
“Moving is hard. You made a huge change and you’re decompressing from years of suppressed stress and trauma. It’s okay to be having a hard time. It’ll get better, I promise. The move was a good thing.”
It’s hard to share her positivity after all the tricks my mind has played on me since I moved. But maybe it will get better. Maybe if I stop spending all my time outside of work alone, I won’t keep imagining such absurd things are happening to me.
I mean, I met Jessie, and she’s amazing. Hopefully, once we see each other in person, all of this will go away.
“Since when did you get to be so wise?” I ask.
Emma laughs. “You’d be surprised how many private cam sessions turn into me being someone’s therapist. I get a lot of practice helping sad dudes work through their issues.”
“Gee, thanks. I love to be compared to pathetic dudes who are paying to get a woman to talk to them.”
Emma laughs harder. “Hey, not all of them are pathetic! A lot of men have a hard time opening up, and it’s less vulnerable to them to pay a sex worker to be their emotional support than it is to go see a therapist.”
I groan. “I’m not one of those guys. I have plans to see a therapist. And I certainly don’t… use that kind of service.”
“Quit sounding so judgy or I’ll change my mind about my offer to bring you breakfast.”
“I’m not judging you!” I protest. “I respect that you like your job and don’t have any problems with sex work. It’s just… can we not talk about this? It makes me uncomfortable to talk about with you because you’re my little sister.”
“Sure thing. No more work chat. So… what do you want from the diner? Pancakes? Bacon and eggs? Ooo, maybe blueberry waffles?”
I’m not feeling particularly hungry right now. My stomach is still twisted up with the false memories of what happened last night.
“Any of that sounds great. Do our usual.”
Ever since we were kids, Emma’s had a hard time deciding what to get when our family went out to eat. It got to the point that she’d be so stressed that she would say she didn’t want anything to eat at all. I felt bad that she was struggling, so I got in the habit of telling her to order two things that sound good, and then taking the one she doesn’t want.
“And you act like you’re not a good big brother,” Emma says, the warm fondness in her tone a balm for my agitated nerves.
Her visit is going to make things better. I’ll get a grip once I spend some time not so isolated. There won’t be any more dick hauntings.
Emma arrives in a burst of color and enthusiasm, laden with enough luggage that she could spend three weeks at my house and a two to-go bags filled to the brim with diner food.
She’s never been one to exercise restraint, but I don’t mind. It makes me happy that she got through the many difficult years without losing her spark. Being around her abundant, bubbly energy helps make everything that I lost of myself feel worth it.
She looks up at me after stuffing a bite of cinnamon apple French toast into her mouth with a silly grin. She’s managed to make a dent in the veritable buffet of breakfast food even though I’ve done little to help. My stomach still hasn’t settled, even after vigorously scrubbing the evidence of last night off my body and busying myself with tidying up before she arrived.
“ Youm faid somfing abou a prefen ?” Emma asks unintelligibly, mouth still full. It’s just like her to not want to stop talking even while she’s eating.
“What was that?”
She shakes her head and swallows, taking a sip of her coffee to wash it down. She grins again. “You mentioned you had a present for me. I know I’m being tacky as fuck asking about it, but you know you can’t tell me there’s a present and expect me to wait.”
The bubble of peace that’d surrounded me when she arrived pops. I bought her that thank you gift before things started getting intolerably weird with the whole ghost situation. The last thing I want to do is remind her of the topic.
“Oh, yeah. Uh, it’s really dumb. I don’t think you’re going to want it. We can go out and I’ll buy you a better present.”
Emma’s brow furrows. “Don’t be silly! I’m sure it’s great. Besides, it’s the thought that counts.”
I shake my head. “Seriously, I’ll get something else.”
She glares at me. “Stop being weird and let me open my damn present. You worry way too much.” Her eyes scan the kitchen and eventually land on the gift bag that’s tucked partially behind a paper towel holder. “Aha!” Emma leaps up and scurries over to grab it.
Shit.
Please let her open it, say thanks, and then move on. Please don’t remind me about how I’ve lost my mind and keep having encounters with a non-existent spirit.
Emma gleefully tears the tissue paper off the top of the bag, and digs inside. “Ooo, a book!” she exclaims as she pulls it out. Her eyes widen in delight as she sees the title. “Oh wow. Communing With Spirits ? This is so cool!”
I start to sweat, discomfort roiling inside me as she turns the thick hardback around in her hands, examining the embossed title and slightly jagged edges of the pages with wonder in her eyes. “Dude, this looks like a real spell book,” she says, clearly impressed.
Normally I’d roll my eyes and remind her that magic isn’t real, but that would only lead to more ghost discussion. I give her a shaky smile. “Glad you like it. Anyway, so I was thinking maybe we’d go check out a bar called Nightlight this afternoon. I keep wanting to go, but figured it’d be more fun with you.”
My sister completely ignores my attempt to change the topic, flipping the book open and thumbing through the pages. She’s lost in it for a while before remembering there’s still stuff left inside the gift bag, and when she pulls the spell components out, her eyes go even wider.
“You even got the stuff needed to cast the spells? I thought you didn’t believe in magic.”
I shrug, attempting to appear like I’m not on the verge of a mental breakdown if I have to keep discussing this topic.
She reaches back into the bag and smiles when she sees the love and happiness candle, and I momentarily have hope that she’ll focus on that instead of the fucking ghost book.
“Aww, this is so sweet!” She looks at the candle for about five seconds before setting it aside and grabbing the book again.
Shit. Please don’t bring up the ghost. Please move on to talking about something else.
“If you don’t want to day drink, maybe we can go see a movie?” I ask. “There’s a sequel to that awful cyborg movie that I’ve heard is even worse that the first one. Could be fun.”
Emma sets her book down on the table, propping it open with a bag of herbs. A sick sense of dread hits me as I see the diagram of a circle of candles and a hand sprinkling dust over a spectral figure.
“There’s even a laser tag place a few miles out of town! It’s been ages since we’ve tried that.” I sound overly chipper about the idea. Playing laser tag always stresses me out, but anything is better than sitting at home while she reads that damn book and pesters me about the ghost.
It’s not real. I know that. But giving any attention to the idea that a spirit is haunting me feels dangerous for my mental health, given my hallucinations or whatever the hell that was last night.
Emma finally pulls her eyes away from the book and snorts, giving me an incredulous look. “What are you talking about? We’re not going anywhere tonight. We have a ghost to commune with!”