3. #3
At first, her addled brain thought it was Elias.
But that was stupid; Elias was dead, dead and gone and she had no idea where the body was, a fact that kept popping up and she kept mowing back down.
None of the Ashburys had mentioned an actual funeral, a burial, no one had mentioned a body.
In fact, the whole time she’d been here, they’d barely mentioned Elias at all.
So it wasn’t him here. Wasn’t his hands on her shoulders, his blue eyes looking worriedly into her own. The hair was wrong, too long and too disheveled and a shade too dark, the fleck of a scar by his eye wasn’t right.
Ash.
Claire hissed like a cat, bucking out of his hands and knocking the back of her head against the wall for the effort.
“Get the fuck away from me.” Her heartbeat was still hammering, her voice thin and breathy, but if she could curse at him, she was at least on her way out of the panic attack. “Get away.”
Her rolling eyes caught glimpses of the rest of the room, other walls papered in faded tabloid clippings.
The photos weren’t of her, though. They were older, yellowed.
A teenage girl with dark hair and a worried pinch to her mouth.
A boy with wide eyes and a kind face. They both looked half familiar, her eyes hazel and his deep brown.
Claire could imagine either of them staring out at her from a supermarket magazine rack, one more sad story to be read and quickly forgotten.
A lone candle sat on the table beneath the tabloid front page of Claire, unlit. Tiny green flecks in the wax, like algae.
Ash held up his hands, palms out, surrender. Still, he remained crouched on the floor, on her level. “It’s OK, C.” Soothing, placating, though his breath sawed through his teeth and he looked sickly pale. “You’re OK.”
Slowly her breathing evened out, the storm of her thoughts abating enough for her to do more than just shake. “Don’t call me that,” she stammered. “No one calls me that.”
“I call you that. So at least one someone does.” He still held up his hands, like he needed to make sure she knew they were empty, but he half turned to glance over his shoulder.
At the photo of her younger face, unaware of what would happen before the year was out, the loss slinking ever closer.
“Ah.” He nodded. “Yeah, this would make me freak, too.”
“What the hell?” It still came out shaky; Claire slapped her palm to the floor and pushed herself up, eyes darting around so they wouldn’t land on any of the familiar, tragedy-carved faces.
Ash looked at her like he was considering offering his hand, then thought better of it.
“What the hell is this? Why do you have a fucking shrine to me? To… whoever these others are?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?!”
“Claire, I can’t—” He coughed, a hack that sounded like it came from a nasty sinus infection, pulling something up his throat.
He bent double, hands on knees, hacking and hacking until a thin stream of spit left his mouth and dripped to the floor.
It still hung from the corner of his lip when he looked up at her.
“Fuck,” he muttered, almost to himself. His eyes blazed, bright and feverish.
When he spoke again, it was with renewed conviction, words coming fast and hard. “None of this is mine. I promise. Listen, I know this sounds insane, but you have to—”
One more cough, deep and ripping. Something came out of Ash’s mouth, spattered wetly to the floor. Another heave, and up came the whiskey, soured with bile, making Claire’s eyes water even from a yard away.
“Fuck,” he groaned again, and another torrent shot from his mouth, his jaw yawning open. It was brutal, punishing, and when he was done, Ash slumped to the floor.
Drunk. Drunker than anyone she’d ever seen.
She should help him, pick him up and make sure he got to his room, but Claire didn’t.
It didn’t matter what he’d said; who else would have a demented room like this?
It was all his, and clearly he was disturbed, but Claire couldn’t fix that. She just wanted to get away from it.
She edged around the pile of vomit. Ash stayed down, slumped to the side between her and the door, watching her with something like resignation.
“It’s almost too late,” he whispered.
“You should really stop drinking,” Claire replied. “I won’t mention… this… to anyone, but Ash, you need help.”
He stared at her, the corner of his lip twitching. Then he laughed, weak and low, but enough to make gooseflesh crawl over her shoulder blades.
Claire stared at him a moment, unsettled, not wanting to get closer. But when she inched around him, Ash didn’t try to stop her. He just lay there and chuckled to himself, blue eyes following her every move, the rest of him corpse-still.
As she opened the door and slipped out into the hall, the lamps outside caught the sick on the floor, giving her a better look than she wanted.
Surely it was a trick of the light and sleep deprivation and stress, but it looked like seaweed. Seaweed, dark and thick as an organ, smelling of acid and brine.