Harmonic: Resonance (2 page)

05 | In the smoke

I didn’t know how to reach Sam, or how I would tell him about our father. The power had gone out again, and I had sat in the dark, crying uncontrollably ever since returning to the house. I should have started the generator, but all I could think about was my father. The smell finally pulled me back to reality. All of the food in the freezer and the refrigerator had turned, or was turning, rotten. The milk, meat, fruit, and vegetables were in varying stages of decay, and with the fridge door open, the smell quickly filled the house. I took a garbage bag from under the sink, returned to the fridge with the neckline of my shirt pulled up over my mouth and nose, and began removing the various containers and lumps of blackening pulp.

I tied up the bag and carried it outside, feeling the slap of its soupy contents against my leg as I moved. With the front door left wide open, letting the clean air in and hopefully dissipating the rotten-food smell, I dropped the bag into the garbage can and fastened the lid with the attached bungee strap. My dad had used the strap ever since our garbage had been torn apart by scavenging animals during the first few weeks after we moved into the farmhouse. The black smoke was still visible in the direction of town, still pouring upward in a continuous stream; evidently, the emergency services were losing the fight, if they were still in it. I wondered what, if anything, had survived—if I would need to drive an extra three hours to the next town over to replace the food I had thrown out. I didn’t want to leave the house. I wasn’t ready to deal with anything other than the loss of my father, but there would be no chance of avoiding it; the fridge, freezer, and cabinets were bare, and I hadn’t eaten in days.

The drive with Harris had been surreal, both of us seemingly in shock and unable to process what had happened to my dad or what was happening in town. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Harris or driving home after I dropped him off. Without the numbing effect of shock, the further use of my father’s truck had transformed into an emotional obstacle course; every step of the process became a trigger for previously trivial, but now precious, memories.

I took his truck key from the loop that held a year’s worth of jobsite keys, a year’s worth of memories, and placed the rest back in the kitchen drawer. As I made my way to the truck, I stared at the embossed lettering on the tailgate. In my mind, the tailgate was pulled down, and we were sitting together, sharing coffee from his thermos, the way we had almost every day. I climbed into the truck and took a deep breath, inhaling the musky smell of his work jacket, tucked behind the passenger seat—I pushed the key into the ignition. A glimpse of the truck bed in the rear-view mirror triggered the memory of his return home, wrapped in a drop sheet. I collapsed forward into a heap against the steering wheel and wept.

***

My dad was never one to bury his head in the sand; instead, he would bury himself in his work. He used to say idle hands led to an overactive mind. You had to keep yourself occupied or
life
would drive you crazy. I guess that was what he’d done since my mom died, staying so busy there was never a spare moment to think about it. He sold what had been their home together and bought the farmhouse for cheap, leaving enough money to keep us going while he figured out how to raise two kids alone and work full-time to pay the bills. He took on small jobs that could work around our school schedule and brought us along when we weren’t in school, giving us easy jobs to keep us occupied, so
we
didn’t drive him crazy.

I pulled myself up from the steering wheel, wiped my face, and tried to pull myself together. I turned the mirror to reflect only the passenger seat, and turned the key in the ignition. The vibration through the steering wheel overruled the trembling of my hands as I drove along the dirt road, away from the house, and toward the smoking town.

***

The roads leading into town were blocked off by emergency vehicles and abandoned cars. Even the signposted detours eventually led to road closures. I circled the outskirts of town, driving slowly around debris and various obstructions. Thick black smoke filled the alleyways, backlit by the orange glow of flame. Yellow sparks traveled through the smoke, drifting out over the road and down over the hood of the truck like the burning embers of paper moths, hypnotizing and strangely beautiful. Even with the windows rolled up and the air vents closed, my eyes began to sting, and the acrid smell of toxic smoke started filling the truck cab. I veered away from the buildings, swerving across the road and up onto the grass embankment, no longer able to see or discern if I was moving into or away from the smoke, and I started to panic.

The ground leveled off then dropped away leaving my stomach on the crest of the hill as the truck tipped forward. The truck dipped below the smoke, and gray pavement flashed into view, followed by the front end of a car. I pulled the wheel but only succeeded in reducing the collision to a full-length scrape of the truck’s front fender along the driver side of the car. I pulled the truck to a stop, and took a minute to stop myself from shaking, before getting out to check on the driver of the car.

The car was unoccupied, parked, although now angled outside of the yellow lines delineating each stall of the hardware store’s parking lot. The ground flashed red and blue under the smoke, and with my arm over my mouth and nose, I made my way toward the lights. I could vaguely make out figures in the thick of the smoke, but as I moved closer, the smoke was too thick to breathe. My eyes began to sting, filling with what felt like boiling tears. I tried to circle around the smoke, dropping to a crawl between parked cars to catch my breath where the smoke was dense. When I passed through the worst of it, I stood and ran—at one point clipping my hip on a car’s wing mirror, which sent me sprawling on the pavement and returning to a crawl. Beyond the smoke, the flashing lights were blinding.

“Are you one of them?”

At first, I couldn’t find the source of the question, but as I moved closer, I saw the barrel of a revolver, clasped tightly in the hands of a police officer. “Stop where you are.”

As my eyes adjusted, I saw a small group of silhouetted figures behind the officer, their features strobing into view in vivid, alternating red and blue hues. The police officer reached a hand into his pocket and then flicked the hand toward me. The object seemed to travel in slow motion through the air, a red and blue disk, flashing on and off, before landing at my feet and spinning to a stop.

“Pick it up,” he said.

“What? I don’t—”

“Pick up the coin,” he repeated in a firm, uncompromising tone.

I did as ordered and stared back at the police officer, who was now walking slowly toward me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s the coin for?”

“So I know you’re not one of them,” he said.

“One of what?”

“
Them
,” he said, pointing the barrel of his revolver at the smoke behind me.

I turned and stared at the figures, barely visible in the smoke. As I strained to make them out, I realized they were not behind the smoke, but translucent, seemingly made of smoke.

“What—” I started.

“Ghosts.”

Unable to believe my eyes or my ears, I turned back to the officer. His face held its seriousness as he continued. “The dead, they’re everywhere.”

I returned my gaze to the smoke. The figures were all different shapes and sizes. Somewhere behind me, the officer’s words faded to a dull hum as I walked toward the figures. The hot air shimmered around them, distorting their features. They were people, see-through, androgynous mannequin-like bodies, but with human faces. A child-size figure with the face of a boy moved toward me, his arm extended, and he seemed to be smiling. As though watching myself in a dream, I continued closer, my hand out to meet his. Our hands met without physical sensation—our fingers passed through each other’s, and the boy’s smile dissolved. He turned to the larger figure beside him and moved his mouth as though speaking, but what I heard was a fizzing, crackling sound, followed by a loud bang; there was a flash of pain and then nothing.

06 | Mass hysteria

I awoke to a throbbing pain behind my eyes and through the right side of my head. My chest ached, and there was a stabbing pain in my lungs when I breathed in. I began to cough, an involuntary fit, amplifying the pain way beyond my threshold. I closed my eyes tight and held my breath until the urge to cough subsided.

“It’s okay, you’re safe,” a voice said.

Something touched the side of my head, and I pulled away. The pain was immense, as though each hair had been replaced by a nerve, their ends exposed and sensitive, each reporting the slightest touch with an excruciating electrical signal. I tried to raise my arm and felt a wave of nausea. I took in a large labored breath and opened my eyes again.

The room was a chaotic blur. “What happened?” My voice came out as a hoarse slur, and the room seemed to sway.

“You were hit by debris from an explosion; a police officer brought you in.”

“Am I in the hospital?”

“Saint Chrysanthus Church. You’re probably going to have a headache for a while, but you’ll be okay.”

I turned my head, following his voice. A rubber-gloved hand came into view, holding a bloodied cotton swab. As he moved his hand away, a young man’s face steadied in front of me. I tried to speak and stopped to clear my throat. As I attempted to lift myself up on my elbow, the room began to spin, and I had to hold my breath to keep from throwing up. I let the breath out slowly and resisted any further urge to move. “I’m cold,” I said.

“I’ll get you a blanket. Don’t try to get up; just wait for me to come back, okay?”

I offered what I could of a smile, but my attempt to say thank you was suppressed by another wave of nausea.

The church hall had been re-purposed as a temporary disaster relief shelter, like those I’d seen on the news after earthquakes or floods. Groups of people were huddled together on the floor, while others, some in uniform, rushed back and forth. By the time the man returned, so had most of my senses. I was still groggy but could now make out his uniform. The paramedic draped the blanket over my shoulders and offered a kind smile.

“Thank you,” I said and pulled the ends of the blanket to overlap. “I dreamed that there were ghosts in the smoke.”

The paramedic shook his head. “That wasn’t a dream. I don’t know what they are, but others have seen them too.”

I stared at him, while desperately trying to process what he was saying.

“The firefighters were trying to save them, rushing in to buildings and risking their own lives, but when they got close enough to pull them out, they were grabbing only smoke,” he said.

I thought about the boy and the confused look on his face as his hand passed through mine. “Are they people that died in the fire?”

“I don't know who or what they are, but I’ve been hearing stories for the past couple of days about these
ghosts
appearing everywhere, not just in the fire,” he said.

“What started the fire?” I asked.

“Most of the stories I’ve heard so far are about exploding appliances—televisions, microwaves, and breaker boxes sparking and bursting into flame right before the power went out. The fire department has been trying to keep the fires away from the gas stations, but they don’t have enough resources to control or contain it, and all the neighboring towns are dealing with the same thing, we’re on our own for now. The police have been trying to keep everyone calm, but they’re just as confused and scared as everyone else.”

I thought about the officer holding the revolver and wondered what good bullets would be against a ghost. “Where is the police officer who brought me here?”

“I don’t know; the police have been in and out, they’re searching for survivors. They’ve been at it for days, and they’re still finding people. They’ve been returning with a new group every hour or so.”

I brought my hand up to the source of pain at the side of my head. I felt the short stubble of shaved hair above my right ear and the knots and sticking-out thread from the edges of a sewn-shut fold of skin.

He mirrored my wincing expression before offering an apologetic smile. “Seventeen stitches.”

“Stitches?”

“You’re only the third person I’ve stitched up; it’s not usually part of my job, so the scar may be a little crooked, sorry. Your hair will cover it though, when it grows back—”

“Powell,” a male voice shouted from across the room.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a while, okay?” He touched my shoulder briefly, stood, and rushed to the back of the hall, where someone was being wheeled in on a stretcher through the open doors.

I continued running my fingers along my new hairline, an asymmetric Mohawk, accented by a stitched wound three inches long. I leaned back and closed my eyes, hoping the pounding headache would subside even a little if I kept still, but it remained and worsened when I tried to think about the events of the recent past.

***

Reduced to no more than a wincing spectator, I watched as Harris kicked the spade into the dirt, turned, and tipped the removed turf and dirt onto the dry grass behind him. I heard my sobbing and a rustling sound from somewhere behind me. I turned to see the heaped canvas drop sheet move from side to side and then fold in the middle. The body inside the sheet sat up and turned its head to face me.