Shinigami
Some ghosts can’t talk but they have other ways of communicating; cryptic feelings, subtle visions, sudden apparitions, vivid dreams. The dead have a command on the weary mind. Sleep, after all, is the cousin of death. When the dead want to get a message across, the abstract realm of dreams is their postal service.
I turn when I hear the padding of feet behind me but see nothing but wall. I turn back in my seat and the ball is gone, my hands hang empty in the air. I sit up on the support of the couch and look around the room. She looks at me from around the corner. Her hair is long and black. Her eyes big black holes. She leers at me for a moment then disappears down the hall, the padding of her little feet echo behind her.
The corridor is empty and the silence of it makes me shutter. My head is pounding, and I’m too tired to sleep. I turn on the 24-hour news channel, but I don’t learn anything about the girl.
Sometimes the dead are actually missing and need to be found before they let go.
~*~
The time is 3:15 and I’ve just spent the last hour searching the internet for missing children. Hundreds of them are reported each day and there’s no telling how long this girl has been gone. No telling if she even exists. I try to picture her. The big black eyes. The long black hair. I imagine she’s wearing a red dress, but I’m unsure why. My eyes are tightened wads of rubber pressing into my skull. I pinch the bridge of my nose and for a moment my head lulls. I wake just in time to catch it. I yawn and stretch. Something grazes my bare feet. For a moment, I think it’s the cat. Then I remember that the cat is dead.
I look down and there she is, hunched over with her face between her knees. Her body is shaking, shivering. Is she crying or laughing? I shift back away from her when she grabs my toe. Her grip is icy cold. I pull my foot away.
She raises her head slowly, like a wind-up doll getting ready to open her wooden mouth to sing. Her hair falls across her face like an ink waterfall. She looks up at me, through me. She opens to mouth but nothing comes out.
“Who are you?” I ask.
Then I’m in the middle of the road. A horn blares behind me and I feel the heat of the headlights at my back. I turn around and for the smallest moment I see the bumper. Then there’s nothing. I come in and out like flip-book with pages torn out. I’m in the air. I’m on the ground. I’m rolling down an embankment. The world turns over and over. Then there is darkness.
I wake up on the ground. I’m cold and it’s dark. I don’t know where I am. It looks like a pit. In the distance there are voices and a whirling, churning crunching sound. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Pain shoots up my body. I try to close my eyes, but they’re stuck. I see the black skies and the edges of the pit. I hear the voices coming in and out. Above all, I hear the whirling, churning crunching sound.
It takes a lot to move my head. Just to get a quick glance left or right is agony. I am alone and afraid and I will die in this hole, without comfort and without warmth. I feel something touch my face. I see it vaguely out of the corner of my eye. A red shape. My red ball. When I look up, I see the big metal teeth of the ugly machine lift its pelican head up high and the the dirt comes, falling like brown rain. It all comes down on me, covering me, until I am no more.
The time is 6:05 when I wake up. I call the police.
The time is 3:40 when the coroner comes out of the construction yard with a body. I’m nervous. I might have outted myself. Still, telling the police that I’m a psychic was the only way to get anyone to listen. It might have been a mistake, but I didn’t have a choice. They wheel out a black bag the size of a small doll and place in the back of a black van. I shake my head, feeling anxious. I walk over to Inspector Goro.
“You were right.” He says. “Right you’d said she would be.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me feel good.”
“Yeah, well.”
I look down at the ditch they’ve dug.
“How could have this have happened?”
“Driver thought he hit a cat. She rolled into the ditch just as they were filling it up. They couldn’t hear her over the noise.”
Someone picks up a red ball and puts in a bag. Goro pulls out a business card and hands it to me.
“In case” He says and I leave.
I walk for a few bocks in no particular direction. I stop when a ball rolls out of an empty alley and hits my foot. I kneel and pick it up.
She looks at me with her long hair and her dark eyes. I reach out, handing her the ball, and she plucks it out of my fingers with eager hands. She looks at me and for a moment I can see her smile. I stand and I cut the cord.
~*~
The time is 10:41 and I sleep.
