Now
Large bold letters painted on the flyer said to meet at CHINA BEACH, WHERE THE LOGS CROSS. Shade and Andi So arrived at the meeting location where they met six other grieving individuals. While Shade was familiar with this section of the beach, this was Andi’s first time. Smiles with pinched brows and limp handshakes were exchanged from stranger to stranger. As the sand crept and crawled between her toes, Andi sat in one of the ten chairs that meticulously encircled two damp and decrepit wooden logs that rested slightly perpendicular on one another. Shade was in the middle of exchanging pleasantries with a man whose name he’d already forgotten when two other individuals trudged and planted in the chairs opposite of his love. He rushed to the chair facing across from her.
One by one, the greetings faded to the sounds of black waves crashing and sea foam bubbling behind. Salt and wet wood breached Shade’s icy nose and throat while he watched his love rub her palms together in between her thighs. A lantern beamed brightly in between the bereaved bunch that burned a dome of gold around the circle. Tufts of sand flickered against the lantern as a woman approached. She spoke to the group.
“Good evening, everyone. I am happy you are all here to hold space for each other and for yourselves,” the woman announced as she scanned over the faces. She introduced herself as Manecia and her practice under several labels: black magic, mediumship, shamanism, reincarnation. “When people hear the term ‘necromancy’, their mind conjures images of reanimating the dead. Resurrection. But it is merely the practice of communication with those that have passed on,” a few coughs and scoffs filled the silence after. “I understand your skepticism. It’s okay to feel your feelings. Each one is valid. Sitting with me tonight is the first step,” her palms opened to the black night above as they waved over her guests. “You are all here because you have someone you’ve lost, I presume. I am here to provide the guidance in reconnecting with their lost voices.”
Shade never thought he’d spend his last days studying black magic. His brow furrowed deeper and deeper as he watched Manecia speak about the “art” to the people around him. It was difficult to hide the skepticism. Images of a Mary Shelley novel popped in his mind. At least she wrote about a scientist, not some sorcerer. But he wasn’t there for himself or anybody he had lost yet. He was there for Andi. His love. Her previous husband, Pat Rhodie, disappeared two years prior. The authorities exhausted a two-month investigation before they called off the search.
Shade was hoping this would give her some closure. That it would help her move on. Watching her planted on the couch in solemn silence, staring at water-damaged photographs of their marriage broke him in two. Impotent sorrow filled his helpless heart. Andi’s hesitant acquiescence to attend this…seminar was a step in the right direction. Watching her listen to Manecia gave him slight hope. He was the one who took the flyer and placed it in front of her home. Bringing it to her directly may have made her less receptive, as opposed to her finding it on her own. It was the least he could do after Pat’s vanishing.
Manecia spoke to the group. “I’ve lost someone as well. Years ago, my little boy drowned. Right there in that ocean behind you.” Some turned around to look out at the black waves, as if he were still out there, and some brought their hands over their mouths. “This was his favorite spot on the beach. He used to say to me ‘Mommy, let’s go to where the logs cross!’ It used to be his X on a treasure map. I chose this spot for him. My treasure.” Shade’s eyes sat beneath heavy brows and his open mouth could taste the cold salt foam. “It doesn’t get any easier. You just learn to manage it more. I went to groups. Like this one. I went to church. I hated myself. I did it all.
“Then I found this book,” she reached into her felt knapsack and pulled out a thick velvet black tome that camouflaged itself with the sky. “I was skeptical at first, like some or all of you might be right now. But I read it cover to cover. Then I did it again. And again, until I was able to recite specific passages from memory. It changed me. I was able to talk to my boy again. I was able to forgive myself. None of you have to take it tonight. I understand all of your reservations. But I do hope you’ll think about it. And I hope me going first will help any of you speak tonight. Silence is also valid. Holding space for each other is one of the first steps in healing.”
Heads swiveled back and forth as the cacophony of critters chirping and waves colliding into sand filled the night sky. Shade was counting the waves and listening to the swell creep closer. Manecia opened her mouth to speak when Andi rose from her chair that shifted in the sand behind her. Shade looked at the frays and tears of her black jeans, worried the sand would take refuge in the openings. She should have worn the strapped pants, his favorite. She spoke. Not necessarily to the group. She just spoke. “My name is Andi So,” her stoic tone paused. “My husband went missing two years ago. One night he just never came home from work. His dinner went cold. Stayed cold. Two years later, I’m at a coven learning about resurrection,” a wave of soft chuckles rolled over the logs. She opened her mouth again, but didn’t speak right away. The ocean crashed ahead of her. The black waves looked like obsidian spearheads constructed from an ancient empire. Her eyebrows dug deep and her teeth clamped down. “I’m sure he’s dead. I don’t want to ask him where he went. How he’s doing,” she paused once more. Through a clenched jaw, she continued, “I want to ask him why. Why me? Of all the women he could have hurt, why was it me?”
Then
Shade only knew Pat from stories and memories. The story Andi was now telling. Her memories. Pat’s ghost left an imprint in Andi’s mind. A phantom pain that struck her in remembrance. Shade watched their marriage crumble. The windows of their kitchen absorbed spattered dinner remnants. Angered shouts and cries were embedded in the glass panes facing the shrubbery outside. Salt droplets stained her side of the kitchen table. New blemishes sprouted nightly on the wood below as the fire from Pat’s mouth siphoned more tears from her cerulean eyes.
The lights of their bedroom beamed into the morning hours as the two of them rarely slept. It was difficult to sleep on cocaine and ecstasy and methamphetamines. Shade knew Pat would always come from work late at night with one or two little baggies of powder or pills. He would reach into his front pocket and pull out a small bag that he would dangle and shake in front of Andi in between his thumb and index. Andi’s wide eyes and teeth would shine in the dimming kitchen light when she looked at it. When she tried reaching for it, Pat would snatch it back and wag his finger at her. After saying something—indistinguishable—he would retreat to the living room and the fluorescent glow of the television would outline his emaciated neck and head while Andi began rummaging through the refrigerator and cupboards to cook a quick dinner. On several occasions, after he took a bite, Pat’s dinner would wind up on the floor or the walls or the window. Andi’s cries were always cut short when Pat dangled that little bag from his pocket again. Shortly after, dinner was always ready when he got home.
Watching her depend on the pain shot daggers into Shade’s heart. Shade wished that she would leave him. That she would run away from the darkness that Pat wrapped around her life. The dark vortex of harm and anguish and fear and blank melancholy. But she never did. It was everyday pain that turned commonplace. Familiar. Familiarity was difficult to run away from. A suffering she could not change. A suffering she accepted.
Shade’s aunt used to always say that you can’t do anything about being stuck in traffic. You only have two options: you can get out of the car, but then you have a two ton ghost sitting on the highway. Or you can stay in the car and wait for the highway to move itself. Shade watched Andi stay in the car. He was ready to pull her out.
Pat’s dinner fashioned from his lovely wife emitted a small stack of steam. Their kitchen was previously filled with complaints of his dinner lacking taste or why she didn’t do his laundry. On this particular evening, a song of moth wings flapping and cricket legs chirping and Andi’s soft breathing through a clogged nostril filled the kitchen. The song continued on a loop as the food’s thick steam waned into tiny rivulets of vapor. Pat stared at his dinner. Food that was once sensationally warm and delicious was now congealing and constructing hardened edges.
It was the first night the kitchen table remained dry. An orchestra of chirping owls and crickets began to dissolve. The golden glow of the morning sun draped over the stale dinner and faded the salt spots on the table. Days that followed showed clean kitchen windows. The beaming light in their bedroom extinguished at a reasonable hour, ensuring an uneventful night of slumber. Pat’s disappearance was a blessing for that home. For Andi. Shade knew it was a blessing for her. He also knew Pat didn’t simply vanish. He was the one who killed him.
After days of watching them, Shade discovered Pat’s place of work. Shade followed him to a strip mall. One giant building housed several small businesses that operated at regular hours except for the storefront Pat entered nightly. Red illuminated letters emboldened above blacked out windows read HADES as the lights behind the E and S flickered on and off. After the other businesses closed, individuals arrived at HADES carrying large metal boxes of equipment from rental vans. Muffled guitar riffs and amplified shouts emanated from inside the club. A heavy metal venue.
Pat would enter this place before the line of people started and would leave long after the crowd left. Shade never found out what purpose he served to this club. Nor did he care. He only cared about when Pat was alone. It took three nights to discover the pattern: Crowd arrived. Band played. Crowd left. Pat emerged.
It was easy. Killing him. The moon shone a diffused glow from behind billows of dripping iron clouds onto a parking lot devoid of cars and people. A truck of chipped paint and skewed bumpers sat beneath a flickering light post. Pat’s truck. He came out of the club and turned a set of keys behind him. Each leg seemed to have a mind of their own as they intermittently collided with each other and tripped over the front of his sneakers. Andi stumbled in zigs and zags to his truck as the light above powered off and on.
He arrived at the door to the steering wheel and reached inside his pocket. The sound of keys jingling together came from his pocket and then fell to the ground. His vision twisted and coiled as the world around him weaved and writhed. Pat’s head bobbed back and forth as he reached for his keys. When he finally stood upward with his keys in hand, Shade was behind him. Pat whirled around to him. He tilted his head and raised an eyebrow as if he recognized the stranger. Before he could define how he knew the man, Shade drew a crimson line across Pat’s neck with a blade. He threw Pat into the truck and drove it into the night.
Now
Andi wiped the tears trailing down her face. Shade and the rest watched and listened. She looked out at the night sea ahead of her. The waves actually didn’t look so much like obsidian weaponry anymore. Perhaps they looked more like satin bedsheets. Snug and inviting. Though she would never see the sun again, Andi wondered what they would look like under the golden morning glow. She was tired. Tired of crying. Tired of talking. Tired of the day. Every day since he disappeared.
She reached down to gather her belongings and make a hasty exit when a pale thin hand with black pointed fingernails laid upon her arm. Manecia stared up at her with a soft smile. Her lips spoke but her voice remained hidden. ‘I’m proud of you’ her lips said. Andi glanced from the hand on her arm to the face that it belonged to and paused for a moment that ended all too soon. Her eyes bounced from Manecia to the ground to the other hand extending. The black velvet book was given to her. Not paying attention to the bequeathing, Shade scanned around his feet to gather his gear. Andi quickly resumed her exit when Manecia shouted something to her.
“Remember that there are imperative instructions!” she cried out as Andi shrank into the night. Shade took his time in rounding up his belongings. He finally followed his love’s leaving. Manecia and the others stared at him leave in silence. Their faces—almost confused—dashed from Shade’s to their own while murmuring to each other. One even pointed at him. The wind carried some of their perplexed voices, but Shade couldn’t decipher what they were saying as he went to be with his love.
X
To his naked eye, it appeared as if Andi was already well-versed in the practice of necromancy. Shade saw the walls of her room adorned with pentacles and ankhs and sulfur crosses. The constant pulsing orange candlelight created sprawling shadows from her ritualistic regalia. The occult artifacts began to hang from her wall after her husband died, although Pat Rhodie was never officially declared as deceased.
Shade came around the house to the backyard, as he always did. He tiptoed underneath the glowing clouds. While gliding through the side of the house, he heard something. Something that froze him in his slow steps. A voice. A familiar voice. His love was in the backyard. Strange, he thought to himself, wasn’t her usual routine to come home, make herself a small dinner and retreat upstairs? What was she doing in the backyard? That was his area.
He followed the measured beats of her voice. The rise and fall of her tongue were shrouded in a blanket of darkness. The black of the night sky fell over her muffled speech. The sounds of her voice were struggling through clouds that began to pierce through as he drifted towards the black outdoors. A buzzing of bees in his stomach tried stopping him in his place. Shade listened to the words. They were orchestrated beautifully. Almost rhythmic, like a song. Or a poem. He knew he should have remained in his place, unseen so as not to disturb the flowers in her voice, but his legs disobeyed as the trance slowly took him to her. An icy breath from the clouds enveloped him as he turned the corner.
Up until his death, Shade regularly thought back to the moment he realized he was going to kill his love. It was never something he wanted. But it was necessary. In order to get her back, he had to kill her.
His arms twisted and linked together for warmth. She stood still as a statue, reading from the tome in her hands. The recitation continued. Poetic beats climbed and dropped through the breath of midnight. Shade saw the book. It was the book from before. The one Manecia handed to Andi as she left the meeting. It wasn’t a poem. It was the ritual. The ritual to restore the voices of those perished. Voices that lived in dreams. Memories. Echoes of the past. The betrayal sliced through the hornets in his stomach and the hot blade left his insides eviscerated into a molten magma of deception. Why did she want to reach Pat? He was all she needed.
A twig snapped under the weight of his boot and the incantation stopped. The dense pages of the book made a thick pop as it slammed shut. Andi froze under the moon. Shade thought of how beautiful the pale glow draped over her milky satin skin. His love looked so beautiful in that moment. For the first time ever, she spoke to him.
“Wh-who are you? What are you doing in my backyard?” she stammered to the stranger. Shade wished she saw him as her lover. It hurt to be seen as this stranger. Andi squinted as she examined him more carefully. “Wait. You’re the guy from the meeting, aren’t you?”
The night exhaled one last icy breath as Shade moved as quickly as the gust that took him. He ascended the patio and grabbed his love. His eyes began to well with water as he reached in his pocket. Before she could scream, a knife carved through the night and embedded in her throat, severing the carotid artery. Her arms flailed and reached at his face, then at the moon, then at nothing at all. A crimson ribbon unraveled down her neck. Tears began to bead down his face. They both fell to the floor.
For the first time ever, Shade held Andi in his arms. Crouching under the sickly ashen glow of the moon, he watched a red pool creep from underneath his love. A beaded wall of red inched toward something to his right. The book she read from. With Pat gone, Shade could finally be with Andi. With both of them gone, Shade would never have to worry about Andi communicating with Pat. She needed to see him as her lover. With her gone, Andi would only communicate with Shade. He knew what he had to do.
Shade grabbed the book in black. His tears stopped flowing. He took Andi and placed her in the truck. The two of them drove into the night. Back to the beach. Where the logs crossed.
X
Shade went back to the familiar spot on the beach. The night sky hung low and almost shot a beam of gray moonlight down onto the X on the treasure map. His map. And he was burying his treasure.
He was surprised to see some familiar fragments buried deep in the sand. Small slivers of ivory jutted outward from the earth, caked in bits of dirt and soot. Even two years later, the evidence of Pat’s inability to be officially declared deceased remained six feet under the logs. Shade obviously made the right decision in where to hide his body.
Andi was floating through the air. Her body was gracefully raised from the truck and glided to the hole in the ground. Unlike Andi being hoisted over his shoulder, Shade cradled Andi in his arms and was careful not to disturb her descent into the earth. Particles of sand crept into the ankles of his boots as he kept a stern sense of equilibrium. He placed her on the ground next to the hole. Shade climbed down and gently raised her once more before he settled her into her final resting place. He positioned her with elegant poise: her legs stuck outright and huddled against each other, her hands were placed atop one another, her eyelids were then closed. His own personal wake. He crouched down and kissed her forehead as a tear dripped on her cheek. Their first kiss. Shade climbed out of the grave and the hole began to refill.
It was time for him to help her one last time before she was completely his. The sand around the logs resumed its undisturbed position. Shade took the shovel back to the truck and reached for the black book. Its velvet exterior clumped together under his damp fingers. The clouds overhead barricaded the moon and a slight darkness washed over him like a crashing wave. He stood over the grave. The book opened and was flipped through to the ritual. Shade needed his love back now. He skipped over the beginning and went straight to the ceremony.
The ancient phrases were recited to the cold. The coveted words floated through the night air and sunk into the earth. Thicker clouds ballooned and bellowed above and beckoned to the black. A crashing of distant thunder shot through the sky. Shade read from the tome louder. As the incantation grew more powerful, more clouds materialized. Almost at an unnatural rate. Thunder roared above.
Shade continued speaking to the sky. Finally, the sky responded. A giant branching, jagged pillar of electricity blasted down onto the earth in front of him. The clattering of earth and sky shot him backward off of his feet. The beach turned to day for less than a moment. A great reverberating blast muffled his entire world. A soft screeching rang in his ears as the beach and sky twisted and spun. The moon above split in two and began to orbit each other as his vision divided.
He lay on the sand, propped up by his elbows, and saw the orange glow glisten brighter and brighter. The blending colors of gray and black and orange and blue marbled at a slower pace. The moon slowly reconnected with its duplicate and became one again. Sounds of crashing waves and sparkling embers became coherent in Shade’s head. A great roaring flame brightened before him. Climbing towards the sky was a booming blaze erupting from the logs where the earth electrified into a huge campfire.
He slowly struggled to his feet and picked up the black book. Did something go wrong with the ritual? He thought back to Manecia giving Andi the book. She had shouted something to her as she left. Something about the instructions. Shade opened the book one last time and read the instructions. There in black bold letters stated “The human body begins to liquefy after one month. Reaching the deceased must be done after this period in order for the ritual to work properly”. The words clattered and crashed in his head. He made a mistake. Shade wondered what would happen if somebody were to skip the waiting period, and the sand responded.
Basking in the vast orange glow of the flame, the earth began to move. Tiny orbs of eroded rock rolled atop one another until larger patches began to whirl. The sand billowed high and small, like the crashing waves behind him.
Two little gray pegs pierced through the sand. Shade froze in the frigid breath of the wind. Three more pegs jutted through, curling inward and gripping more sand. Fingers. More sand roiled about three feet away from the pegs until something emerged. A gray hand with black fingernails reached for the sky until it came down and began to pull. More fingers and another hand erupted. A bolt from the sky came down once more and a corpse began to move. Something out of a Mary Shelley novel. Shade almost chuckled but nothing in his body agreed to move. He was frozen in place. Like being stuck in traffic.
A face surfaced from six feet under the earth. There she was. His love. All those nights he spent outside her window and in her backyard, watching her laugh and watching her cry, she was always so beautiful. She emanated a constant pale glowing radiance that made him jealous of Pat. She should have never been with him. So he fixed that. She should have been with Shade. He thought he fixed that, too. But she didn’t want him. She didn’t know him. He did everything right to fix her. Didn’t he? Why, then, did he find himself back at the beach? In this predicament. Was it his place to fix her at all?
Eyes of storm clouds stared at him. Lifeless. Andi crawled out of the earth. But this wasn’t Andi. Andi was beautiful. She had other traits, but Shade couldn’t remember what they were. Did he ever? He didn’t know her either. But he loved her.
Shade thought he spent the whole time with his love feeling empowered. Empowered to fix her pain that would inadvertently fix his own. Empowered after he brought her back. But nobody’s power could heal her. Only her own. An outcome he wasn’t willing to endure. To simply sit on the sidelines and wait for her to get better on her own. He froze on the beach as the thing crawled towards him. Its cold decayed fingers coiled around his ankle. Salt and foam crashed behind him. The body slid against the ground and onto his legs, leaving bits of its flesh seeping into the sand. His arms and legs fell paralyzed.
For the first time during his love for Andi, Shade felt powerless. The new Andi climbed. He wasn’t frozen, he simply did not move. Powerless. And for the first time, that was okay.
The clouds above opened for the moon and she was upon him.
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