Chapter 5
Five
Riley
The ritual calls for some things I need that I don’t have on hand, and others I haven’t wanted to touch since before . . . before my world turned upside down.
Rummaging through the side of the closet I’ve been avoiding all this time, I grab Gareth’s favorite hoodie and inhale the comforting smell.
His fading scent clings to my nose, and I rub my face along the soft, worn-out material.
This should work. It’s something he wore a lot.
Probably the only piece of clothing that hasn’t been washed since before the accident.
Pulling back the hood, I smile when I find a loose strand of hair latched onto the fabric.
It said three strands, though, so after setting the hoodie on the bed, I dig in the bathroom sink cabinet, taking the rest that I need from his brush.
Everyone said to box all his belongings up, that it would make things easier not seeing them every day. That would mean having them gone forever, though. The thought alone has my skin crawling. I wasn’t ready to let everything go for a reason—deep down I knew he’d need it all again.
Putting the hair inside a Ziplock bag, I press the top tightly together and shove it in my pocket.
The book is still open on my pillow, but I’m still lacking five items. Flowers blooming in the front yard is what I’m using for something from the place I want him to return to.
I add pictures of the both of us when we were at our happiest to the pile, along with a knife, red spray paint, and white tapestry candles.
What if it doesn’t work? What if it’s all for nothing? I’ll feel like I’ve lost him all over again, grieving the second chance we could have had together.
I can’t think about that. I have to stay positive, believing in the spell.
Believing it will work. He’ll come back.
Either tonight or tomorrow, he’ll knock at that door, and I’ll never have to think of the day of his funeral again.
Seeing him take his last breath will no longer hurt me.
It’ll be like it never happened. It’ll be like nothing but a bad dream.
The loud thud of dirt and roses on the casket.
The obituary talking about him in past tense.
My feet wishing they were sinking into the same dirt he was being covered in. All of it.
I toss everything in my bag, ignoring my phone when Leo calls.
I don’t feel like lying to him right now.
I’ll have to do it a lot after Gareth comes back.
It’s going to suck keeping something this big from him, but he can’t know I brought my husband back from the dead.
No one can. He’ll have to stay hidden until we can either come up with a good explanation for why he’s alive again after everyone attended his funeral or we have enough money saved up to leave town.
The second option will likely be the one I choose.
Nerves twist at my stomach and I sling the bag over my shoulder, looking at the picture of us on our nightstand one last time before exiting the house.
It’s a full moon out. There’s a small chill in the air.
It’s a nice break from all the hot days we’ve been having.
I toss the bag in the trunk and look back at Gareth’s bike.
My mom kept telling me to sell it. Leo agreed it would help with some of the debt.
The donations from family and friends only helped so much.
He didn’t have life insurance. He didn’t think it was necessary when I suggested it to him after reading about a widower who wished his husband had had it before unexpectedly passing.
“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. Stop trying to get rid of me,” he said multiple times, shooting me that wink he did whenever he was in a playful mood. I had that bit of him again in his final days. I wish I’d cherished it more. I wish I could go back in time and relish it all.
A honk from down the road snaps me out of my thoughts, reminding me of what I’m supposed to be doing. This is it. I’m doing it. I’m going to do it. Once I get in the car and I’m only minutes away from the cemetery, I know there’ll be no going back.
“White Wedding,” by Billy Idol blasts out of the speakers when I turn on the radio.
The loud music helps quiet my mind, lending me some distraction until I’m pulling into the parking lot across from the cemetery.
Parking any closer may ring some alarm bells.
The candles and whatever I’ll be chanting will be calling enough attention to me as it is.
I get out of the car, heart racing as I shoulder my bag and snatch the book from the back seat. Sucking air through my teeth, I look around as I scurry across the street. Luckily no one is visiting anyone here aside from me. No graveyard workers in sight either.
It doesn’t stop the knots from forming in my stomach, or the hair rising at the back of my neck.
I reach Gareth’s gravestone, clutching the book tighter to my chest as a chill tingles down my spine.
There’s a heavy sensation weighing on my shoulders as I lower myself to the ground.
Perching myself on my knees, I lay the book down open once I’ve flipped to the spell I’ll be using.
My fingers trace the old pages, my throat tightening as I read some of the words in my head.
I jump when a cat scurries over my lap, meowing while looking back at me with yellow eyes. A black cat. Is that some kind of omen, a warning or something? Or is that only when one crosses you on the street?
Superstitions were never something I followed, but my mom was full of them growing up.
According to her, I’m already destined to have bad luck for seven years after accidentally dropping her travel mirror and shattering the glass.
Shaking my head, I chuckle to myself. I miss her sometimes.
I moved away from all my family because of school and stayed for love.
Neither she nor my dad showed for the funeral.
They both came up with different excuses.
They didn’t approve of me living so far away or getting married at such a young age.
Well, my dad was more against me marrying a man, but he’ll tell others that isn’t true.
He can lie to everyone else all he wants but I’ve always known the truth.
My mom said he’d come to accept me as gay over time .
. . it would have been nice if it had happened while Gareth was still here.
If this doesn’t work, he won’t have to accept me ever dating the same sex again, because there will be no one after Gareth. He was so close to moving on from me so easily, and yet here I am, still completely pathetically lovesick over him.
He was my person. My everything. And I found another spell while randomly flipping through the book—in between meal prepping for the week—that will guarantee I’ll be all he ever needs too. The only one on his mind. The only one who’ll ever matter until the end of both our days.
Running my finger down the instructions, I dump everything from the bag and spray a symbol on the grass, carefully copying it from the page.
I light the candles, setting them in the circle, and lie the hoodie over the center of the grave.
The dirt is soft against the tips of my fingers, and I wipe them on my jeans before I finish setting everything up.
The photos are randomly spread out. I look down at one where he’s pulling me into his arms.
Soon.
The more I believe in the ritual, the more power I give it, and the more power I’ll give the spirit I’m summoning to help keep my husband inside his body longer.
He’s not strong enough to come back all on his own.
He’s still in there, though. I can feel him from where I’m leaning, only a few barriers standing between us.
“Come back to me,” I whisper, my heart pounding so loudly I can feel it in my fingertips and toes.
Yanking the knife from my pocket, I hold it over my finger, chanting the first two lines.
The candles flicker, the wind making an almost screaming sound around me.
I take a breath and continue, saying the next words louder while pricking my skin with the blade hard enough to draw blood.
It drips into the center of the circle, and I swear I see the ground moving.
The candles sink into the dirt, their small flames wave faster, and I squeeze more of my blood over the circle, calling for the spirit needed to complete the spell.
“I call for you,” I say to the sky with my hands lifted. “I call for you to give this body life again, and in exchange I give you a doorway that’ll land you back with the living. I give you my blood and anything else you’ll need from me down the line. I’m forever in your debt.”
I don’t know who I’m calling to exactly, but he knows. His presence is so heavy, and I can feel it all around me, playing with the air I breathe.
“Come back to me, Gareth. Come back to me.”
I repeat the spell several times, not stopping until the book shuts on its own and the candles burn all the way down to the wick, blowing out at the same time.
The night’s darkness is thick around me, like a second layer of skin. Leaning back, I close my eyes and breathe in the scent that once had me wearing my husband’s shirts after him and spraying his cologne in every room whenever I was home alone, waiting for him to walk in the door and replace it.
“Gareth,” I breathe. “Are you here?”
A loud cry of the air echoes around me, the wind picking up in quicker sweeping motions.
I look at his headstone and pocket some of the dirt to lay in the front of my house.
Lightening cracks above me, thunder booming in the sky right behind it.
I hurry and collect everything into my bag and rush back to the car as rain pours hard over me.
Soaking wet, I slip into my car after tossing my bag in the back.
As I’m ringing the water from my hair, I glance in the mirror, and something moves in the back seat.
I turn around, panic tugging at my chest, but nothing’s there.
I take a breath and blink hard, shaking my head.
I laugh, pulling out of the parking lot and hitting play on the playlist Gareth made me on Valentines Day.
He was all about the meaningful gifts. The ones that were made with love and time versus the kind bought with money.
I loved that about him. Did he do those things for the man he was falling for behind my back?
Pain spreads through my chest as I drive slowly down the road leading me to the highway.
A shadow lingers at the back window and I’m five minutes from my house.
My eyes keep bouncing between the dark figure and the road.
I don’t know who or what it is, but I try to make myself feel better by mouthing to myself, “It’s all part of the process.”
If it is, I don’t want to do anything to disturb it, so I focus on other things as best I can.
The laundry I need to catch up on, the bath I’ll need to soak in to get rid of the putrid smell of the dirt I was touching and sitting in.
I was surrounded by death everywhere there.
It was in the air, the ground, and in the whispers of the moving trees.
When I’m finally back home, I look in the review mirror and the back window is clear again.
Nothing is reflected in any of the others either or waiting for me anywhere around the house as I step out of the car.
I leave my bag behind, shoving a hand into one of my pockets.
I gather as much dirt as I can and some slips through my fingers before it can be sprinkled around my front porch.
I flip my pocket inside out, getting the rest out with a slap of my palm.
“Please come back to me,” I say again. “I need you, Gareth. I need you so much.” I look up at the crying sky and smile when I see more bright light flash across it, telling myself it’s him letting me know he’s on his way.