Determination (3 page)

“Roxie!” Sekiro landed at her feet, then kneeled besides her, her face crinkled with worry. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I feel so tired and hungry. It’s like I haven’t eaten or slept in weeks or something.” That was an exaggeration. They both knew it. She’d be dead in days without water--or would she, an Aigis? No matter the truth, she needed both badly for some reason. She closed her eyes. Hands grabbed her face, pulling her up from the downward spiral into sleep.

“Don’t fall asleep!” Sekiro’s face hovered inches away.

“Why?”

“You’re dying. You need to get in contact with the living. Right now.”

Chapter 3

Sustenance

“How?” Roxie gently removed Sekiro’s hands and pulled her own knees to her cuirass-armored chest.
I’m dying?

“I gotcha covered. Sorry if this makes you uncomfortable.” Sekiro turned Roxie’s head so she faced her, and put her hands on her shoulders. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to hers. “I have to tune myself to your third eye. This is the only way it works. Sorry.”

“Anything to not die while I’m here.” Even though Roxie knew this contact wasn’t any sort of advance, she felt uncomfortable. Still, the last thing she needed was to die and actually belong in the spirit world. She closed her eyes.

“Closing your eyes is fine, but don’t fall asleep, okay?”

Roxie focused on staying awake as blood pounded away behind her eyelids. She squinted and fought the urge to lie down and clutch her aching head. A tingling sensation where their foreheads touched provided her with a merciful distraction, and then it felt like a hand was reaching into her skull through her forehead. She shivered involuntarily.

“Sorry. The sensation will go away in a sec.” Sekiro’s voice sounded muffled and distant.

The hand filled up her entire skull and settled there. Roxie lost the feeling of the world around her. It felt like she was being held up by a giant pillow floating in the middle of a motionless pond. She couldn’t feel Sekiro’s touch anymore; just warmth and stillness, and silence. She no longer felt her fatigue or pain. There was just her, as if she were in a meditative trance.

“Okay, let’s go find some help.” Sekiro’s voice echoed, sounding like they were inside a small, vaulted room with a pool.

Roxie opened her eyes. Instead of seeing the Numina’s face, she saw Buffalo splayed out below her, and without the grey film over everything. She flailed her limbs, then stopped when she realized she hadn’t started rushing towards the ground. She still expected to plummet at any moment. Her body was slumped against the lighthouse.

“Don’t worry,” Sekiro’s voice said. “I gotcha.”

It was nighttime. The city’s light pollution smudged out all but the brightest stars in the inky sky. “Is this the living world?” Her voice echoed as well. “Why are our voices echoing?”

“We’re occupying two planes at once, so it’s like two of us are speaking at the same time. And yes. Where do you live?”

Roxie’s mind honed in on the neighborhood outside of Buffalo, where her house sat. The city whipped by like someone was fast-forwarding aerial footage taken from a low-flying helicopter. They rushed past tall buildings and over rooftops and trees, then several neighborhoods and more trees before coming to a halt on the back porch to her house. She reached for the outer door. Instead of seeing her arm, her vision passed through the doors and stopped at the end of the hall. “Whoa. What just happened?”

“Erratic continuity of the spirit world,” Sekiro said.

Roxie looked down and saw her own body, but she was wearing her Versaton clothes, instead of her armor. She inspected both sides of her hands. They looked solid. “How did I pass through the doors?”

“You’re not fully into the world of the living. You’re like a ghost right now, just a spirit among the living. Who are we looking for?”

“My grandma.” Roxie looked at the two doors she’d just passed through and a wave of nausea gripped her. She still felt solid, yet she’d somehow passed right through another solid object. She involuntarily shivered again, creeped out by it all. She understood that that wasn’t what just happened, but her preconceptions of reality didn’t want to accept the truth. She desperately wanted to cling to the way things were supposed to be.

Roxie tore her eyes from the undisturbed doors and took in her kitchen and living room, both of which lay empty. The curtains over the table were drawn, and a basket of fruit sat in the middle of the mahogany table. The counters were free of clutter, the sink empty, and the fridge softly hummed away, a few pieces of paper pinned to the upper half with magnets. Roxie crossed to the fridge and scanned the papers.

One was a grocery list, another a flyer of coupons for gardening supplies, and the third a folded brochure advertising vacation spots in Florida. So Grandma had been able to go on about her life after their sudden parting. The sight was heartening. She’d worried about her in the back of her mind ever since. Now she could relax a bit, knowing there was less to worry about.

The television was off and the couch empty. Grandma had accidentally fallen asleep on the couch every once in a while, which had always been amusing to walk in on, her grandmother’s mouth ajar and a soft snore coming from her throat. Roxie had always woken her to save her grandmother’s neck from the awkward angle.

It had to be late enough at night for Grandma to be sleeping. The conclusion brought Roxie to right inside her grandmother’s bedroom. She flinched and shied towards the door. She’d never barged into her grandmother’s room before. It was quite the invasion of privacy. At least Grandma was sound asleep, so Roxie’s sudden appearance wouldn’t give her a heart attack. And good thing her Versaton outfit had returned. The last thing she needed was to reappear, looking like some sort of angel come to collect her grandmother and take her into the next life.

Sekiro said, “Hmm, this might be a bit of a problem.”

“How so?” Roxie whispered, her voice still echoing.

“You don’t have to whisper, by the way. Unless she’s clairaudient, she’s not going to hear you.”

“All the psychic stuff is real?” she said at normal volume.

“It’s very real. I can explain it to you some other time.”

“No, it’s okay. I believe you. My perception of reality has expanded quite a bit the last few weeks.” More information she’d have to sort through later. “What do you want me to do?” Grandma lay curled up on her side, her head sunk deep into her pillows. Slivers of light snuck into the room around the sides of her blinds, and a digital clock shined a deep red light from the nightstand.

“Wake her up and convince her to feed you,” Sekiro said earnestly.

Roxie turned to give the Numina an incredulous stare, but she wasn’t present.

“Trust me on this. Your comment about starving reminded me of this Mexican I once guided. Just wake her up and I’ll explain more.”

“Okay,” she said, anything but convinced. She snuck to Grandma’s bedside and tapped her on the shoulder. To Roxie’s relief, her hand didn’t pass through her, but Grandma didn’t stir. She gave a gentle shake and whispered to her. That didn’t work either, so, humoring all the shows where people hunted for ghosts, she knocked three times on the nightstand.

Grandma’s deep breathing paused, and then she yawned.

“Grandma?” Roxie said softly.

Grandma rolled onto her other side so she lay facing Roxie, but settled back into her pillow with a sigh through her nose.

Roxie called to her again, but got no response. She knocked on the nightstand three more times and her grandmother’s eyes popped open. She stared ahead brows furrowed, but didn’t seem to notice Roxie standing right in front of her. She slowly sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed, making little noise, and looking more through than at her. Her ankle-length nightgown was bunched around her knees.

Roxie backed up half a step to allow room for her grandmother to stand. “Hi, Grandma.” Her voice came out small, yet still echoed.

Grandma’s gaze darted to Roxie’s face. She stared intently. After a good few seconds she said, “Roxie?”

She felt herself smile as she bent closer and wrapped her arms around her grandmother. Contact with her only family brought some much needed comfort, and she hugged gently, unsure if her superhuman strength translated in spirit.

Right as she realized her hug wasn’t being reciprocated, Grandma gasped and flinched.

Roxie let go as if she’d been electrocuted and Grandma wrapped rubbed her upper arms as if she were trying to warm herself.

Sekiro said, “Roxie, I don’t think you’re going to be able to communicate with her. She doesn’t see you.”

“Hold on.” She hadn’t given up yet. Grandma had said her name. On top of that, she’d reacted to her touch. She had to be getting somewhere. She rapped on the nightstand again, which startled her grandmother, but got her to look at it. Grandma pulled aside the blinds and looked out the window--at the window, Roxie realized when her grandmother touched the wood frame, then pushed down on the top of the bottom half. She gave the swiveling lock a wiggle, left it locked, then touched the base of the ceramic lamp and gave it a wiggle. Only the lamp shade wobbled.

Sekiro said, “She’s trying to replicate the knocking sound you made. She has no idea you’re here.”

“Then why did she say my name?”

“You did just wake her up. She’s already dismissed feeling your hug as her being only half awake. On top of that, she misses you very much. She believes feeling your presence was just a dream. Roxie, she has no reason to believe you’re in the Realm of the Dead, trying to make contact with her. We need to find someone more sensitive to the spirit world.”

Grandma slipped her legs back under her blankets and lay back down.

“Let me try something else.”

“Roxie, this is serious. I don’t know how long you’ll last.”

“She’s family,” Roxie snapped with harsh finality. Hearing that her grandmother missed her made her want to cry tears of a bittersweet kind. She tapped on the nightstand three times and her grandmother opened her eyes again. Grandma threw the blankets off her, then slipped off the bed and dropped to her hands and knees, and lifted the bed skirt.

“Tucker, what are you doing?”

“Great. She thinks I’m the cat.” Roxie crossed to the door and knocked on it. Grandma gave her door a suspicious stare, then got up and turned on the lamp.

Roxie let out startled cry as the light blinded her. She shielded her eyes with a forearm and once her eyes to adjusted to the illumination, she found herself standing outside the room. It took her a moment to realize where she was, but she recognized the hall that led to the back door. She knocked on the bedroom door again to keep her grandmother’s attention. Grandma opened it a little, then looked down at Roxie’s feet. Roxie backed down the hall and knocked on the wall by the bathroom door. Grandma’s attention shot to her again. Roxie backed to the kitchen counter space that separated the kitchen from the living room and waited.

Grandma hesitated before opening her door wide. She went deeper into her room, then came out a moment later, slipping her arms into her bathrobe, blinding Roxie a second time with the hall light. Once her grandmother reached the bathroom door, Roxie knocked on the kitchen counter. Grandma paused, brows furrowed, then gave a nonchalant shrug and headed for the counter.

“What’s she thinking now?” Roxie said. “You can read her mind, right?” She’d surmised as much based on what Sekiro had said a minute ago about her grandmother assuming she was dreaming.

“Yeah. She’s not sure if she’s dreaming or not. She finds your knocking really strange since your house isn’t haunted. But, since she’s aware of the existence of extended reality, she’s humoring your breadcrumb trail.”

Roxie rounded the counter and knocked on the fridge, then braced herself as Grandma turned on the light that shone right over the table. Roxie thought of opening the fridge for her but, if she were in her grandmother’s place and saw it open of its own accord, she’d probably run out of the house screaming. “C’mon, Grandma. Please feed me.” Roxie knocked on it again.

Grandma opened the fridge and peered inside, bending a little to get a good look at the highest shelves. She closed the fridge and opened the freezer, and cold air poured out as the internal fan hummed louder without the door muting it. She closed the freezer and put her fists on her hips.

Roxie’s heart sank.

“She didn’t see anything out of place. She doesn’t get what you’re trying to tell her; she’s looking for something unusual, like a letter where it doesn’t belong. She has no clue she needs to feed you.”

Roxie remembered she had sticky notes on her bedroom desk. Suddenly she was standing before her desk in the darkness of her room. She looked around to make doubly sure of where she was, then fumbled around for the lamp near her monitor, and retrieved a pen from a coffee mug once she could see. On one bright yellow square she wrote:

Please feed me.

-Roxie

For some reason, the act of writing was a monumental task. Her hand and wrist tired to the point where it felt like she was trying to use a frozen appendage. The “e” in “me” looked more like a backwards, lowercase “g.” All the letters slanted downhill, each of them getting progressively sloppier, but still legible. “Why was it so hard to write that?”

“You have to use energy from the living world to affect the living world. It’s another reason why I’d recommend getting in touch with someone else. You’re only making this harder for yourself.”

Roxie didn’t care how hard this was. She was with her family. Now all she had to do was--she found herself looking at the fridge, instead of her desk. The sudden shift in scenery made her jump. “This teleporting thing needs to stop. It’s really disorienting.”

“You’re not teleporting, actually. You walked up the stairs and everything. I’m not sure how to explain it properly, but your mind is going to sleep during mundane moments, and waking back up when you need to act and grow as a person. Am I making any sense?”