Imprint (11 page)

Drew chuckled. “I’d like to get reincarnated as an animal, preferably.”

“Why?
” Sean asked, genuinely interested
.

“Figure it’d be easier, you know. There’d be a lot less to worry about.”

“I thought you didn’t even believe in reincarnation.”

“I don’t. I’m just saying, if it was real, that’s what I would want.”

Another ten minutes passed relatively serenely. They trekked through a few more neighbourhoods, all with their own bus stops that proudly displayed overcoats of graffiti and accessorised with chewing gum buttons.
It was worrying
that it took dying for him to finally notice the state of the neighbourhood.
He
sighed. After a while he grew
bored, s
o he took to murmuring the colours of the cars
as they passed
to distract himself. They seemed duller, though. The reds weren’t quite as vibrant, the yellows not quite as illuminating and the blues not quite as vivid.

A little later they
came across a jogger. The jogger was a woman, well into her forties, with a tiny bun of
bark-coloured hair and large thighs that stretched the sweatpants she was wearing
like flour sacks
. She was breathing heavily,
face pink from exertion
. Sean had to jump quickly out of the way to avoid her running right through him.
They came across a
man
who looked to be in his 60s
and a young girl a few minutes later, as well. It was funny how people seemed to come in
little clumps and
groups;
they were like schools of fish, or herds of wild cows sticking together to escape predators. Safety in numbers, that’s how the saying went.

Sean noticed that t
he
re was something strange about the
old man
and the little gir
l whose hand he was holding
, something that made them different.
They were
pale, ghostly white, and their eyes were dull and sunken.
T
he little girl looked up from th
e pavement and he could see a
look of absolute amazement in her eyes when she caught sigh
t of them. She pulled on the
man’s sleeve and he saw them as well,
that
same expression of shock settling
into the aged frown lines of his face.

“You understand
, don’t you?” h
e heard
Drew mut
ter beside him. B
oth parties had stopped and were sim
ply staring at each
other.

“I think so,” Sean replied quietly. “Those t
wo – they’re imprints,
aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are.
”

And then, before Drew had a chance to say any more, the old man began to advance threateningly towards them, the young girl tagging along but keeping
safely
behind him. 
“Sean Lane?
” he questioned
, and Sean guessed it was directed at both of them. How the hell did this creepy old man know his name?
He caught sight of
the man’s
stunned eyes, a sad pale blue, and a strange sensation settled in his chest. He didn’t want to call it déjà vu.

“Calm down, Brian,
I told you it would work.”
T
o his relief, the
man turned his attention
to Drew who gave a little wave, cas
ual smirk in place.
The man’s expression morphed into one of awe.

T
hen t
he little girl peeked behind her grandfather’s legs
, sapphire eyes large and haunting,
and timidly stuttered: “D-drew?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he gave an assuring smile, add
ressing both of them. “
I managed to
transplant myself into Sean’s-
” he jabbed a finger towards him at this point, “body. W
e’ve
switched places.”

The man, who Drew had addressed as Brian, turned to peer at Sean with w
hat seemed a
scientific fascination, as though he were simply the product of an experiment gone wrong. It made him feel uncomfortable, and he shuffled slightly and averted his eyes.

“So,” he
started. “You’re
Sean, correct?”

“Yes.”

H
e turned
to the other boy. “Drew?
”

“That’s right.”

Sean saw a collage o
f emotions flash through
those
hollow
eyes.
The first was an almost ch
ild-like wonder and for a second
there was life in the man’s face. And then
something else, unidentifiable,
took its place and the brightness dissipated as fast as it had come. The young girl
, maybe five or six
, was gripping the man’s trousers tightly as her eyes – large and round and innocent – flitted between them in awe.

S
he tried to touch him. The girl reached out tentatively for Drew and attempted to grab the hem of his jacket, but to no avail. Her hand slipped right through it and appeared on the other side. It suddenly made everything seem even more real. The man let out a sharp intake o
f breath and tried to touch the jacket
as well, as if he did not trust his vision.

“So it
’s true, then,” he
muttered, more to himself. “You’re alive; back from the dead.”

“I wouldn’t quite say that, old man,” Drew grinned slightly.
“I can’t be completely alive, be
cause I can still see you two.”

Sean broke in then, before this little reunion could continu
e. “S
orry to interrupt, but can someone
please
tell me what the hell’s going on?”

Drew fixed hi
m with an annoyed look. “Where are your manners
?” he muttered,
but nevertheless did the introductions
. “Sean, this is
Brian and Penny. Both resident I
mprints around these parts. Brian died aro
und six years ago, and Penny three
. Brian was the one who explained most of the important stuff to me when I died.”

The
man turned a crooked smile, that at one time may have been welcoming, to Sean. “Pleased to
finally
meet you,” he greeted in a croaky voice, hol
ding out a shrivelled hand. Sean
shook it absently, and was surprised tha
t he made contact with the hand, even if he couldn’t feel it.

“You’re one of us, now,” Penny
said in a quiet but deceptively firm voice.
She looked like a swe
et enough little girl, once he
got
past the fact that she, and who he assumed was her
grandfather, were lost souls. Quite literally.

“How did you know my name?” Sean
asked
, trying to ignore the girl’s comment. Honestly, it scared the hell out of him.

“I told him, of course,” Drew broke into the conversation. “They
thought
I was a pervert or something when I started obsessively stalking you. I had to explain.”

Penny started to giggle. “
Drew
said that he wanted to get inside you but he was scared that it might hurt
you
if he did it while you were still awake and he wasn’t
sure if it would work.”

Sean raised an eyebrow.

Drew tinged a pale pink. “I didn’t say it
quite
like that,” he muttered, averting his eyes. He turned serious again though, glancing at a watch on his wrist. “Anyway, we should probably get going now. We have to be back soon.” He gave Brian and Penny an apologetic glance. “Sorry you two, but we’re
in a rush. I’ll explain properly some other time, okay?”

“Sure sure,”
Brian sighed, then smiled. “I’d like to talk with you
too though
, Sean. Whenever you can, come find us on this street. We’ll be around.”

Sean had to work hard to keep his face straight and not let
the foreboding feeling in his stomach overwhelm him. There was just something off about the man. He was too casual, friendly, too
something.
He couldn’t pinpoint it.
He
didn’t reply and
quickly
f
ollow
ed
Drew, who had started limping down the street again, so that he wouldn’t h
ave to look at those two other I
mprints and see their almost translucent skin and their hollow, hollow eyes.

It was only once the
y were nearing the house
,
and
the feeling was almost gone
, that Sean broke the uneasy silence that had fallen. “How did they die?” he asked.

“
Brian wa
s cancer.
I’m not sure about Penny.”
Sean d
idn’t miss the use of ‘was’,
as though
how they died defined them.

“That doesn’t sound so bad. At least it was natural,
”
Sean murmured.

“Depends on the person, I guess. I’d prefer a more exciting death personally.”

“How did you die, then?”

Drew stiffened
, and Sean noticed. His shoulders relaxed after a moment though. “
I drowned,” he finally answered, but hi
s voice sounded heavy
. “Yeah, I drowned.”

Chapter 7:
Because you’d never say so

Sean
was confused
. A few days had past, and the
strange feeling of light-headedness hadn’t quite left him. It wasn’t
just
that which worried him, though.
There was something else, hibernating out of sight like a dormant weed, that bothered him.
It was an
odd feeling.
And the strangest thing was that he didn’t really feel angry anymore. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he was just too tired to be angry, but he suspected it was
something else
. He
was beginning to realise that
maybe, he did not de
serve his life as much as he’d
thought.

The days grew into a week, and his
belief became firmer. Drew was
not what he had expected. He was snarky and rude, but at the same time he was ambitious and curious and energetic. He had a crude sense of humour as well, but that was beside the point.
Unlike him, Drew was motivated. He talked back and argued, smiled and grinned and laughed and made innuendos at every chance he had. Each morning, as instructed at physiotherapy, he woul
d force himself to walk to the High S
treet and back, and then he would spend time reading through school notes and completing the piles of homework that Ali would bring with her on her regular visits.
The school curriculum had changed a lot in the four years since he had died, Drew mentioned once.
Plus
Sean was takin
g two A level subjects, English and E
conomics, which Drew had not taken during his own life and he needed to catch up
on
before the start of school.

“I was always
a straight A student back in those
days,” he boasted one rainy afternoon, onc
e Ali had finished their Economics
study session. “Well,
apart from that one B I got in P
hysics.”

“That’s not straight As then, idiot,” was Sean’s reply.
But even so, he was secretly impressed. It was hard to get
three
As in A levels, especially in the subjects which Drew mentioned he had
t
aken: P
hys
ics, C
hemistry, F
rench
and Biology
. Before the accident, Sean
was just
managing to a
chie
ve a C in Biology and P
hysics
, getting a poss
ible B in economics, and
an
A in English.

But school grades held no meaning for Sean,
not
anymore. The point was this: Drew was more alive than he had ever been. And that, due to the hours spent listening to lectures from his English teacher about literary devices, was a perfect example of irony.