Chapter 12 Cyrus
CYRUS
Holy fuck, I touched her. I fucking touched her, or as close as I can get, but I felt something.
For the first time since I’ve crossed over into this liminal space between life and death, the vacuum of despair constantly sucking me in has dissipated.
Even if it was only for a few moments, I had eternity at my fingertips.
I want her to know it was me, to know I’m more than a memory tingling in her subconscious.
Her body remembers, responding effortlessly to my caress.
Her muscles unwound beneath my fingers, finding familiarity in the either—proof she could feel my presence.
Each time she stared into the closet, I waited for her to glimpse me, begging for her eyes to fall upon me—to see me. Her mind won’t allow it just yet, but she felt me—I know it. How will she react when she finally does? She doesn’t even know I’m dead. Does she?
My ghostly form fills the space she vacated moments ago, imagining it still being warm from her body.
I would give anything to feel the heat of her touch again.
It’s a curse to feel unpleasant sensations but not the ones I wish for the most. All the trial and error I’ve done over the years, testing my limitations, and it all still seems so fucking random.
My old man can see me most of the time, but others can’t, even when I’m standing right in front of them.
I’ve reduced it down to me really wanting that asshole to see me, but that wouldn’t explain why Jace can’t.
I’m desperate to figure out my boundaries so I can actually use them to my advantage instead of constantly guessing.
The expressions that cycled over her face as she sorted through the box flicker through my mind: curiosity, fear, disgust, sadness.
Whatever she was looking at gave her more questions than answers, it seems. If only she were one of those people who think out loud.
She’s always been quiet, keeping everything bottled up until the pressure is too great to contain.
The box is still here, hidden only feet away.
I roll to my knees, crawling under the bed to look through the papers myself.
It’s difficult to see anything at first, my sight adjusting to the darkness.
When my vision comes into focus, my body tenses.
Dozens of ‘MISSING’ flyers litter the floor, several loose photographs dispersed among them—my pop’s shit-eating grin looks up at me from several.
I wish I could shred each one, ripping all this from my memory.
There’s nothing down here but years-worth of unresolved trauma from our time in Devil’s Nest. I wonder how much Jace knows about this, the cult or the significance of what she’s discovered.
She came so close over the years to piecing it all together, what I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud to her.
I struggle to sift through the remnants of our past, taking several tries to move each piece of paper.
Moving objects isn’t as easy as the movies led me to believe, though I’ve had plenty of practice attempting to knock shit over at my pop’s house.
Jace should have left this hidden away, forever rotting and forgotten in the shed.
One particular picture makes me hesitate, staring at two children, both around ten years old.
They’re solemnly standing side by side, not even a hint of a smile.
Pain slices through me like a hot knife.
The image is of me and my cousin, Mattie, dressed in church clothes, although we’re not at a Sunday service.
We’re outside the Gibson family cabin in the Hellsmouth Woods, just outside Devil’s Nest. This day was the last time I ever saw her, forever burned into my memory.
Our fathers were as close as two brothers can be, but Mattie’s mom rarely let her out of the house, or out of her sight, really.
Her dad, Ezra, insisted on getting us together this day, despite our mother’s protests.
I still remember the sadness filling my mama’s eyes that morning as she got me ready.
Together, Mattie and I were forced to play several games, strange ones that felt more like tests.
Ezra, my father, and their friends stood around watching us, making occasional comments about how well, or poorly, we did.
The unsettling feeling from that day washes over me, fresh, like it never left, only waiting for the right moment to be released upon me again.
I’m not sure I’ll ever know what they were testing us on, but I must have failed, because no one ever brought it up again.
The longer I stare at the photo, the more vividly my memories emerge.
Each photo is a reminder of how deep I pushed down the little signs my pop and Ezra were up to something sinister.
Even when the truth was inescapable, a blazing neon sign, I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.
Mattie’s emerald green eyes bore into me, her young face frozen in time, pleading with me to find a way to change the trajectory of what our lives were to become.
A year after I died, my old man got a phone call on our landline, surprising me enough to make me curious.
I can count on one hand how many times it rang while I was still breathing.
The call was from Lee Danvers, sheriff of Devil’s Nest since his father and brother were gone, saying there’d been an incident with Mattie.
Lee said Elias was her only next of kin, so he was just calling to let him know she had murdered his brother, Rustin, in cold blood.
When they went to arrest her, she resisted, resulting in her death.
My pop seemed more relieved than grief-stricken.
Mattie’s death made him the only Gibson still walking this Earth—well, the only one with a pulse, at least. I figured he’d shed at least a tear or two, but he only thanked Lee and mumbled, “Maybe we’ll be left the fuck alone now.
” After that call, his drinking and rambling only increased.
The ghost inside him took up permanent residence to haunt him better than I could ever hope.
Even after we left Devil’s Nest, Mattie never strayed far from my mind.
Just before our departure from that hellish town, my uncle was found dead in the Blackwater River.
My aunt, Pearl, was presumed dead as well in a possible murder/suicide.
Mattie and I were both technically adults by then, allowed to make our way out in the world, but we remained trapped in our own ways.
Her parents were gone, but she spent a lifetime being sheltered by her mother.
She had no life experience outside their cabin, so she stayed behind.
Last I knew, before Sheriff Lee’s call, she was doing all right.
I went back to visit a few years after Pop and I left, stopping by the roadhouse I heard she’d been working at.
She hadn’t answered any of my texts, so I was determined to see her in person.
The owner, Wiley, told me Mattie wasn’t working that day, but he poured me a few rounds and gave me what little he knew about her.
He said she was no social butterfly, but she showed up to work and didn’t cause any trouble with the customers.
That was good enough for him, so it should be for me as well.
She’d even gotten close enough to one of the other women working there who he might consider them friends.
My visit surprised him, though. Mattie had never mentioned me—or any other family—so as far as he knew, her relatives were dead and gone.
Wiley couldn’t say where she was living.
He didn’t have an address and had no reason to ask.
I reached a dead end, not remembering how to make my way back to the Gibson cabin.
After I sobered up a bit, I thanked him and left.
I didn’t see much point in searching for someone who didn’t want to be found.
Mattie had my number if she needed it, but she never ended up getting the chance to use it.
Memories are strange, the way they come and go without warning.
Maybe I’ve just repressed a lot of shit, so it takes the first opportunity it can to bubble up into my consciousness.
Either way, recalling my childhood never gives me the warm, fuzzy feeling it seems to give other people.
Even Jace managed to recall our time as children fondly.
There’s nothing for me to reflect on positively, though, only a heaviness permeating my present.
The more I see under Jace’s bed, the stronger my desire is to go back to my old man’s home and burn the fucking thing down.
My need to know why Jace is looking through all this to begin with is my sole motivation to continue sifting through the box’s contents.
There must be a reason she’s so eager to unravel the threads of our past. If walking through the broken glass of my childhood is what I need to do, I’ll gladly slice myself open for her.
Obsession pushes me onward, embracing the strangeness of the need to solve the sudden mystery surrounding her—one I didn’t see while we were together.
Her view on life was always so simple compared to mine.
When I was still breathing, I never put enough energy into our relationship.
I know that now, but back then, I saw no point, worrying I’d eventually become my father and fuck it all up anyway.
I kept Jace, kept everyone, at arm’s length to keep from crushing them with my family’s secrets.
The grief in her eyes now, though, matches my own.
Those sad, honey-colored orbs pierce through me, cutting away every doubt I had before.
After a few tries, I slide the photo of Mattie and me aside, revealing another picture.
Confusion clouds my thoughts, leading to a gut-wrenching realization.
My eyes lock onto a piece of paper, four photos taped next to a list of names.
The left-side edge is torn, like it’s been ripped from a notebook.
My face stares back at me along with the faces of Mattie, our cousin Roux…
and Jace. There’s large red exes marked through my face and Mattie’s.
The date and our ages at the time of our deaths are scrawled beneath our names.
Strange enough, but what fills me with dread is the red circle around Jace’s face.
I shove the paper as far back as I can manage, hoping Jace won’t discover it.
What the fuck have I found?