Chapter 17
Nataliya was there, playing in the yard, her chores done for the day. She looked to be twelve or thirteen, but I understood her to be much older than that, mentally, as children of that time period were forced to be. A man was calling her into the house and obediently, she went to him. He shouted at her in Russian, and I couldn’t understand the words, but I felt her humiliation, her anger, and her fear. Once inside, the man backhanded her across the face knocking her to the floor. The red imprints of his knuckles showed immediately. I understood that it hadn’t been the first time he’d struck her, and that he had done worse to her, to her mother, and to her sister, Petra.
I thought about John and about some of the beatings I’d endured at his hand. In the vision, Nataliya’s father struck her again and again. I didn’t want to watch but it was impossible not to since I wasn’t seeing the scene with my eyes, but in my mind. Her memories were my memories and I wanted so much for the images to stop.
“Please,” I said. “Please.”
Then I was back in the basement. Nataliya was still with me, still inside me as the others watched. I wondered if my pupils had drawn down to pinpoints like Robin’s had.
“What about the poisoning? What about the horse?” I asked.
Her response was laughter. When she did, I relaxed, and when I relaxed, things became more clear. We continued to talk, or whatever you call it, and Nataliya set me straight. They weren’t words exactly, but everything translated well enough. I watched her and I was her.
“I killed no one. The legends you know are just that, legends. Stories told by children,” she said.
“But you were beaten by your father?”
“Yes. But never possessed. I never saw a ghost until I died.”
I thought for a moment.
“Aren’t you possessing me right now?”
“Only because you need to know the truth. I will stop if you prefer.”
“No. I want to know,” I said.
She nodded.
“We were only children,” I said. “Back when we first came here. I was thirteen. My sister, Robin, was only six. We were children and you scared us to death.”
“That was never my intention.”
I felt her aura or whatever I was wrapped up in change temperature. She grew warm, and it gave me the feeling of sorrow.
“My sincerest apologies,” she said, but what I heard was, “Приношу искренние извинения.”
Shoes and knees. She’d been trying to apologize.
“You’re sorry? But why would you kill us if you were sorry?”
Her aura went cold again. Anger, anxiety, frustration.
“I told you. I killed no one.”
“My sister, Sean, Matt…my brother Danny?”
“I did not kill them.”
“She didn’t kill them,” the chorus of Danny, Matt, Sean and Robin said.
“What about the words you spoke. Orange, it licks. White and light. Blade?”
Again, the words I heard were Russian…but what I said was English, communicating through the strange ghostly bond, through the psuedo-possession.
“Did Matt not die by fire? Sean by a knife’s blade and your brother by electricity?”
“Yes. All of those things happened. Are you saying you had nothing to do with them?”
The cold dissipated as she came to understand my misunderstanding. I knew before she spoke again how wrong I had been, how wrong Matt and Danny had been about her. About how wrong Sean had been.
“I tell you as I told them. I showed you the future. Not the when of your deaths, but the how. I cannot cause these things to happen,” she said. “I was only trying to help. I had no idea how much pain knowing would cause.”
She warmed again.
My sincere apologies. Shoes and knees.
But she was there when Danny died. She was laughing. I grew angry and struggled to free myself from her but she held on tight.
“You were there when Danny died. You watched the lightning come in and take him. You laughed while it burned.”
“You are mistaken. I was there, but I was as frightened as you. As frightened as he.”
“I heard laughter and I saw you.”
“I was at all of their deaths. Robin with the car, Sean in his bathroom, and Matt on the freeway. I was there for them all. I’ve been present at dozens of deaths throughout the last two centuries. You were only there when Danny passed.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a bond with them and I sensed their passing.”
“But why witness that on purpose? Why go where others die.”
There was a long pause and the aura became very warm, deep sorrow coursed through me. I felt for her again, and I knew the answer somehow before I heard it, as if she was thinking and using my mind to do so.
“Because their path opens up and I always hope that I can follow.”
“Follow?”
Her presence became shaky, like nausea. She felt frustrated, betrayed—so I felt frustrated and betrayed.
“There is no door for me, Todd McNeill. There never has been. I am forgotten and there is no door for me, none that I have found. I’ve been to many such tragedies and also some deaths that were peaceful. So far, each has been escorted into the beyond. I cannot follow them, but I always go and I always hope that one day, my door will open.”
“Even Sean? Don’t suicides go to hell.”
“No. Sean was taken into love, met by his grandparents and carried beyond. He too had his own doorway.”
“Then why are they back? Why are you all here?”
I stared at the spirits, challenging. I still did not quite believe that the whole scene wasn’t just some trick played on me by a demon. I didn’t want to be the fool…not again.
“We’re here because you need us, Sean,” they said, all in one voice.
One thing still didn’t add up. I focused back on Nataliya.
“I saw you smiling. I heard laughter while Danny was dying.”
I felt her smile and the warmth increased. Love and gladness. It was a much more intense warmth than sorrow.
“That was me, Todd,” Robin said.
“What? Why…”
“I came to take him home. It was my laughter you heard.”
I thought back to that moment. It was such a terrible thing to witness. The laughter seemed so out of place, so evil by its mere presence. I’d never considered Robin, and how could I? It was Danny’s most vulnerable moment. All I remember was Nataliya and the storm and the horrible way Danny…but then I remembered seeing Robin, seeing Matt…seeing Sean. We were all there, together for one last time until now.
A peace came over me then. I felt the cold of the concrete floor seeping through my clothes, and once my mind was back in the real world, I found myself lying on the floor. My legs were pulled up in the fetal position and I was staring at the Zippo, which was still lit and flickering. I jumped to my feet, knocked it over and the flame went out once more.
“Wait!” I shouted.
It was silent. I felt small and sunken and I wished I could’ve taken back all the hate and all the worry. I wish I could’ve spent the time with Danny and with Matt knowing that there was some joy, and even in tragedy they would be taken care of. Nataliya had told me that. There was a door for each of them. Even for Sean.
I was a fool. All those years and I was a fool. I sat back down in the floor of that basement and cried for each of my friends, for my sister and for my brother. I cried tears of actual grief…closure I never received before. At their funerals I had cried tears of anger and frustration and those emotions had grown so big they had overwhelmed me and taken me over. But to actually grieve, to actually get rid of all that hatred was a blessing and a relief. I cried for a long while and when I was done, when I was exhausted, I finally felt free.
“Thank you,” I said, talking to the spot where they had been moments before. “Thank you, Nataliya, and I apolo
gize for all the years I hated you.”
It felt good to say those words, better to mean them. Yet something still nagged at me and it took a minute to pinpoint it. When I did, I felt frantic, as if it was my turn on Santa’s lap and I’d forgotten what I wanted. But I hadn’t forgotten.
“What does it mean…it eats?”
The words came out in a cracked voice I didn’t recognize. I hoped she hadn’t gone, but feared I’d lost my chance at the only answer that still mattered. I cleared my throat and tried again.
“What does it mean?”
There I stood, hands out, palms up and eyes wide. I turned my head and waited, looking, hoping for that faint blue glow to return. I waited for the warmth or the cold chill or the voice in my head, the smell and taste of death.
A second later, it was there. But it wasn’t Nataliya.
“You really want to know, bro?” Matt said.
I nodded, looking at him. “I do. What does that mean?”
He looked at the floor as if he was unwilling to deliver the bad news.
“I thought you might, that’s why I stuck around. Danny and Robin didn’t want to talk about it.”
“What? Talk about what? What eats?”
He leveled his gaze at me and with hesitation, he said, “Cancer, buddy. You have terminal cancer.”
I blinked and he was gone. The knot in my stomach untied, but not all the way, and the lighter on the floor sparked to life.