Kia and Gio (3 page)

Inside myself, I know I'm not gonna leave Eliades. I can't. Giovanni is with me, somehow. I know it as clear as I know my name. He's been with me all day, like he was there, whispering the story in my ear all along. I turn. Take a step through the murk towards the back of the store. Make my way down the middle aisle, past the different colored candles and the mason jars full of herbs and tinctures. Eliades is sprawled out in the half-price easy chair, his arms to either side, his mouth hanging open, a little drool trickling out. His breaths come in shallow gasps, his eyes squeezed shut.

Just above him, the air is … it's off. It shudders like those updrafts of heat on a summer day. If I squint, I can just make out a shape—no, two shapes: great heaving forms reaching down towards Eliades, crushing him.

Giovanni is with me. He is my bravery, my strength. I step directly in front of Eliades and look up into the nauseating shimmer of spirit above him.

Baba Eddie says people make too big a deal out of ghosts; they get freaked out and don't know how to handle them, because we so full up with freaky stories about poltergeists and whatnot. He says most ghosts just want something, and usually all you have to do is ask what they want and then give it to them; it's that simple.

I put my hands to either side, not unlike Ishigu right before he takes off, and say “Spirit!” It sounds so cheesy; but still, something shifts in the room. “Spirit,” I say again. “What do you want?”

When nothing happens, I feel even sillier, but that's better than the sheer terror. I am, after all, still alive. I exhale, drop my arms. I'm thinking maybe some absurd coincidence happened; Eliades stroked out just as the smoke alarm malfunctioned and the power went out
and
I had an anxiety attack, yes that's it—and then a searing pain erupts in the center of my head. I close my eyes and all the bright color splotches resolve into a pair of diamonds, and then they open, they're eyes.
See me.
It's like a hundred people whispering the same thing at the same time. I hold my breath.
See me.

“Spirits just want attention,” Baba Eddie told me once as he watched a jubilant customer walk out the door. “Like, more than half the time. And they'll do what they gotta to get it. Ignore them, they'll up the ante.”

See me.
It's not talking to me, this thing. It's talking through me. And I can't really blame it: I volunteered myself. I put my hand on Eliades' contorted face. He's clammy, trembling. “Open your eyes,” I say. “Look at it.”

Eliades shudders, shakes his head.

“Do it.”

Slowly, one at a time, his eyes open. I step back, step away from it all. The heaviness leaks steadily out of the room. I can breathe again. Eliades' face unclenches and tears pool at the edges of his eyes. His chest heaves up and down, silent sobs. The presence is still in the air just above him but it's dissipating. “I'm sorry,” Eliades whispers. “Isadora. Lo siento.” He's staring up at it, watching it go. “I'm so so sorry.”

*   *   *

The night of the roaches wasn't the last time I saw Giovanni, but it might as well have been. In the weeks after Jeremy disappeared, Gio withdrew deeper and deeper into himself until one day he was just gone. His parents had kicked him out years earlier, but my dad loved him like their only son. They wallpapered the neighborhood with flyers, pestered the police about it everyday, put search teams together to scour all the back corners and abandoned fields. Nothing. The boy was just gone. It barely got a blurb in the papers of course—a little missing notice in the local crime section of the same issue that had a moving tribute to Jeremy on the front page.

I've made up so many stories. But the practical part of me knew he was just a hurt kid that had been through some fucked up shit he couldn't make any sense of, couldn't even tell anyone about. But then again, so was I. And then he was gone and I was truly alone.

Baba Eddie comes in just as Eliades is leaving.

“You don't want your reading anymore?”

“No, Baba, I'm all set.” Eliades wipes his eyes. “I feel … I feel light. I feel like I can go on now. Your student is quite impressive.” He whistles as he walks out into the street. The door shuts with a jangle of bells.

Baba Eddie looks at me. “The fuck did you do to him, Kia?”

“I don't wanna talk about it.” I keep my eyes on the computer screen. “Just show up on time next time, please.” I should tell Baba Eddie all about it, everything. I want to. But I also don't. Because right now, I'm busy saying goodbye. Giovanni has been with me all day, just like Isadora, whoever she was, hung in that cloud over Eliades. Which means Gio's gone. Really gone. Dead and gone, gone. Which means I have to stop pretending, stop making up stories, and finally, finally for real this time, let go.

So I do.

 

 

Copyright © 2014 by Daniel José Older

Art copyright © 2014 by Goñi Montes