Chapter 8 Collins
Collins
I ran up the stairs and pushed my front door open. It wasn’t locked—don’t tell Clarke.
I kicked off my Mary Janes and pulled off the black satin skirt I wore to work as soon as I was through the front door and left it where it fell.
I walked toward my bedroom—which took about three steps, but I didn’t mind. I’d only been here for a couple of days, but I really liked this apartment. It was cozy and creaky in all the right ways. My only complaint was all the unexpected roommates I was stuck with.
My biggest suitcase was open on the floor, and I swiped a pair of baggy black jeans out of it. Just as I did, I saw a soft glow out of the corner of my eye.
Ugh. She’s back.
“Did you need something?” I asked without turning toward the glow.
She’d been around every day—this specific fucking ghost—every morning before I went to work and every evening when I came back up to the apartment.
She seemed to prefer to appear in person form.
I could make out her long hair and leather jacket but no other identifying features in her blurry, gauzy appearance.
She would stare at me, but when I tried to talk to her, she would disappear.
Like clockwork, I watched the glow fade, and let out an annoyed sigh. If I had hoped that when I came back to Sweetwater Peak my abilities would come back, too—going back to your roots and all that shit—it’s clear these ghosts had other plans.
I pulled on the black jeans and grabbed my black hoodie I’d been sleeping in off the floor.
When I bent down, I saw the black hard-shell carry-on bag that held all of my camera equipment.
I hadn’t unpacked it yet. I didn’t know if I was going to—especially after I just lied to Brady about the battery.
I wasn’t a stranger to a little fib, but I was usually telling them to people that I didn’t know or would never see again.
What did I have to lose by telling some guy who was flirting with me at a bar that I was a champion water-skier named Alexandra?
The little lie I’d told Brady, though, was one I’d have to remember and keep up with, which already felt exhausting.
I stared down at the black bag again. X-ray vision wasn’t part of my abilities, but I knew exactly how everything was arranged inside—my digital camera, my film camera, all my lenses, and a million spare batteries.
I started taking pictures because I was desperate to hold on to moments after they were gone.
Recently, there weren’t any I wanted to keep, but there were plenty I wanted to be rid of.
I used my foot to push the bag back even farther.
Not today, emotional baggage. Not today.
When I pulled the hoodie over my head, I kept the hood on and pushed my hair back from my face. Suddenly, I felt the entire right side of my body go cold.
“Oh my god,” I whined. “If none of you are going to talk to me, the least you could do is not walk through me.” From what I could tell there were at least eight different spirits in Brady’s building.
I had visuals for four of them—the woman I saw daily, a teenager with a Metallica T-shirt, a twenty-something girl who looked like she was constantly chewing gum, and an older gentleman who sometimes had a cowboy hat on but always had a neckerchief.
The other four preferred to be more…illusive.
But each one had a different presence or vibe—like a fingerprint, each ghost had its own unique signature.
Most of the time, it was a smell or a sound.
Sometimes, like the one who’d just walked through me, it was a temperature change.
Other ghosts preferred physical reminders of their presence like flickering lights, slamming doors, or knocking tack jars off shelves, apparently.
One time, I met a ghost in Alaska who loved to scream—scared the shit out of me the first time I heard it. Once she realized I could hear her, she did it more and more. I begged for her to shut up.
Now I wish I could hear her.
Just then, something—someone, rather, I’m sure—knocked the plastic water bottle I’d been reusing off the small nightstand next to my bed, and I heard the hard-shell suitcase I’d just pushed under my bed start sliding across the floor again. I stuck my foot under the bed to stop it. Absolutely not.
I had a feeling at least one of these ghosts was familiar with me, even though I didn’t think I was familiar with them. But of all the things that got moved around my room since I got here, my photography gear seemed to shift the most.
It was really hard to suppress your emotions around your snuffed-out career when a bunch of ghosts kept forcing you into exposure therapy.
“Can you guys have some fucking decorum, please?” I said to no one in particular as I felt for a lighter in the pocket of my jeans—for the candles. My fingers felt the small rectangle through the denim, so I kept it where it was.
I didn’t get a response, and a heavy sigh escaped my lungs without permission.
“Stupid ghosts,” I muttered before making my way out to the kitchen. Surprisingly, I found it stocked with food. Unsurprisingly, I did not procure that food for myself.
Clarke couldn’t help herself. At least she kept it simple: the wheat bread with all the seeds that I like, peanut butter, a jar of honey from Wilkes Farm, crunchy granola bars, and mini M&M’s.
It was enough to hold me over until I could get to Boone’s. No doubt he would have plenty of food waiting for me.
Music was coming from Brady’s side of the apartment, and I found myself humming along to Blue Oyster Cult as I made a quick sandwich—peanut butter, honey, and a sprinkle of the mini M&M’s—and cut it in half. Diagonally, obviously.
I checked my phone and saw that I had a text from Clarke.
Lars: What are you doing tonight? Do you want to hang out with Sadie and me?
Lars: I’ll even ask if she’s open to a horror movie if you’re interested.
Sadie is Clarke’s best friend. I have aggressively neutral feelings about Sadie, but Clarke loves her, so I love her, too—in my own way.
Me: Hanging out with Brady.
Me: So Sadie is saved! Tell her you’re welcome!
Lars: That’s…nice?
I could feel Clarke’s curiosity (and vague judgment) through the phone.
Me: Yeah, we’re going to summon the dead by having sex and me carving my name into his chest and pouring his blood into the soil.
Lars: You’re a funny girl.
Me: I know.
Me: Chill. You know that’s not even how that works anyway.
Lars: Okay, well, be nice. Be good. Or whatever.
Me: Back at ya, sister.
I slid my phone into the back pocket of my jeans and went back to my sustenance.
The dishes that Brady had were all old and mismatched.
He told me they were here when he arrived—like almost everything in the apartment.
It seemed like the only things he physically brought with him to Sweetwater Peak were clothes and the old motorcycle that was covered with a tarp behind his truck.
Otherwise, he’d shipped all of his supplies—most of which belonged to his grandfather, I’d learned—so they were waiting for him.
I leaned against the kitchen counter and took a few more bites of my sandwich—the M&M’s add the perfect crunch.
“Ready?” Brady’s voice was close. I blinked a few times and realized I had no idea how long he’d been standing there.
I nodded and held out the plate with the other half of my sandwich on it. “Want?” I asked.
“Peanut butter?” he asked.
“And honey,” I said. He nodded and reached out to grab it. “And mini M&M’s.” Brady’s hand paused, and he raised a brow at me. I just shrugged, and he took the sandwich anyway.
He was wearing a navy blue hoodie—he had his hood up, too. But he was also wearing a dark green trucker hat, so he looked substantially less egg-like than I was sure I did.
I watched Brady take a tentative bite of his sandwich and chew slowly. He nodded a few times, and when he swallowed, I looked at him expectantly.
“Not bad,” he said. He smiled, and I noticed the wrinkles around his light blue eyes. They almost always looked like they were glowing. It was kind of…mesmerizing. And as someone who considered themself an expert on any type of glowing orb, that was a high compliment.
“Are you going to be warm enough?” he asked me.
His concern was…nice. “Clarke already mother-hens me enough, Brady,” I said with an eye roll. “I’m fine.”
“All right,” he said. “Should we go out your front door or mine?” I thought about how my entire wardrobe—undies and all—was strewn across my side of the apartment floor.
“Yours.”
—
“So do you really think this whole town is haunted?” Brady asked just as we made it to the dirt road that would take us down to the church.
It wasn’t quite dark yet, but it was getting there.
The Sweetwater Peak sky always flashed its most vibrant reds and oranges right before darkness fell—like a flame getting smothered.
I’ll admit that I did miss the sunsets while I was gone. And the stars—not an ounce of light pollution in this town.
“I already told you,” I said. “I know it is.” The dirt road wasn’t maintained at all—only flattened by the few that dared to drive on it, which were probably teenagers and the two of us, so I was getting rightly jostled on Brady’s bench seat.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“How do you not know?” I countered. “This place is creepy as hell,” I said.
“Not in the daylight,” Brady shrugged. “And that doesn’t mean it’s haunted.”
I shook my head. If only this guy knew what was going down in his apartment on a daily basis.
“What about at night?” I asked.
“Everywhere is slightly creepier at night,” he said simply. “That’s just because it’s dark and shadowy.”
“But Sweetwater is dark and shadowy in the daytime,” I said. “Have you never looked at the pavilion in the square?” I truly did not believe that anyone could come to this place and not feel like something was at least slightly off.
“It’s just old.” Brady shrugged.
“Your denial runs deep, Bradford,” I sighed.
Brady huffed a laugh. “What did you just call me?”
“C’mon,” I said. “Brady has to be short for something.”
“So you went with Bradford? Of all things? Braden is right there.”
“Is it short for Braden?” I asked.
Brady shook his head. “Nope. Brady is my full name.”
“What’s your nickname, then? If your full name is a nickname.”
“Coop, usually. B, sometimes.”
“Ah, I get the shop name now,” I said.
“What about you?” he asked. “Collins is a hard one for a nickname.”
“You’re telling me,” I grumbled. There were two things I wanted as a kid: glasses and a nickname. Why seven-year-old me wanted to be visually impaired? Who knows.
“Both Clarke and I were weirdly desperate for a nickname growing up. Everyone in our class had one, but nothing came along naturally for us. Like, there’s not a shortened version of either of our names, and our last name is too long.
But we came up with our own.” Brady stayed quiet—listening and waiting for me to continue.
“She calls me Olly, and I call her Lars. We tried so hard to get them to catch on with our classmates, but they never did. We can’t seem to break the habit, though. ”
“Olly, huh?”
“It sounds weird coming from anyone but Clarke now,” I said. “You’ll have to stick with Collins.”
“Well, Collins,” Brady started. “I’m going to need a little more convincing on this whole haunted thing.”
“You’ve never wondered why your tack hammer is in a different place than you left it every morning?” I chose to use this example instead of the tack jar. I felt like talking about ghosts potentially causing bodily harm wasn’t the best way to get him to believe me.
Brady looked over and made a face at me. “It’s not,” he said.
“It is.” I nodded eagerly. “You always leave it on the table by the compressor, and it always ends up on the longer workbench.”
“Always?” Brady asked. His voice sounded amused, maybe.
“Well, for the past five days at least,” I said quickly.
“Maybe I put it on the longer workbench before you come down in the mornings,” he said.
I shook my head. “Nope—you don’t touch the tack hammer until after you’ve stared at whatever piece of furniture you’re working on in deep contemplation for at least thirty minutes.”
Brady scoffed. “So you’ve got boring Brady all figured out, then? In less than a week?”
I shrugged. “Do you move the tack hammer?” Brady pursed his lips. “That’s what I thought,” I said smugly.
Brady’s truck dipped into a crevice in the road that was akin to the Grand Canyon, and both of us got rightfully jostled.
“Jesus Christ,” Brady said. “I don’t even think this can be classified as a road.
” We hit another bump and if it weren’t for my seatbelt, I would’ve gotten thrown directly into Brady’s lap.
It was getting dark fast now, and the eeriness that lurked underneath the surface of Sweetwater Peak started to leak out of the shadows cast by the trees against the sky.
I loved it. This was another one of the parts I could admit I missed about this place—the way it went quiet when the sun went down.
“We’re close,” I said. “The trees are starting to clear up a little, see?” I pointed ahead of us, where the trees were positioned in what looked like a nearly perfect circle—just slightly off, like this whole town.
The church came into view a few minutes later.
Its architecture didn’t really fit in with any specific style, but there were arched doors and remnants of stained-glass windows.
At one point, it was painted a light blue, but now it was mostly brown as time had chipped away at it little by little—at least the parts that you could see.
Vines and plants crawled up the walls and clung to the cracks.
If someone told me that this structure just…grew from the ground one day, I’d believe them. Honestly, I kind of liked thinking that it did: that it sprouted from the earth and would eventually return there if it was allowed to run its course. I hoped it was—too many things were anchored here.
There was a small stone courtyard in front of the church, and Brady brought his truck to a stop about ten feet before it. He let out a low whistle. “Damn,” he said. “This is…”
“Beautiful?” I asked. It was—to me anyway.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s go with that.”
I scooped the shoebox holding two lanterns and a bunch of pillar candles that I had grabbed from my car off the floor, and pushed the passenger door open.
When I looked at Brady, he seemed kind of apprehensive. “Scared?” I asked with a grin, and he shot me a dirty look. I laughed. “C’mon, let’s go wake the dead.”