Where One Goes(4)

I rub my head as I struggle for the right words. She can see dead people. Although it seems like a plus for me, it probably has a lot of downfalls for her. She’s obviously alone in the world. My gaze meets hers again and I ask, “What if I can help you with all of that? Well . . . most of it. What if we make a deal?”

“A deal?”

“I’ll introduce you to some nice people, help you get a job, a place to stay, and you . . . you can help me settle things.” She stares down at the water and shakes her head, dismissing me. “Listen, I don’t know you or what you’ve been through, but I know I’d give anything to still be alive right now, no matter what.” Tears stream down her face, and I think my words have gotten through to her. “Don’t waste what so many of us never got the chance to have,” I plead.

She continues to stare down at the water, her sniffles the only sound to break the silence, when she shakes her head and slides down the railing back to the road of the bridge. “You people won’t let me be. I can’t even kill myself!” she groans as she tromps in the opposite direction toward her sport utility vehicle.

“Where are you going?” I yell as I jog to catch up to her. My mind is on overload. She can see me and speak to me. I’ve been dead for months with only myself to talk to. This is incredible!

“My 4Runner is this way,” she mumbles, stating the obvious, as she shivers.

“Well, if you need gas, the closest station is this way.” I jab my thumb over my shoulder. “The Mercers own it. They’re nice people. They’ll help you out.”

She stops and faces me for a moment, and her face is turned in such a way that the lights from her vehicle show me her gray eyes and they nearly take my breath away. It’s hard to explain why the pain in her gaze seems so beautiful. She looks like a wild creature, a being meant to be free and roaming, that’s somehow been entrapped. Her dark hair is wet and stuck to her face, and I so badly want to reach out and slide it back to see all of her. Our gazes remain locked for a long while when her almost blue lips tremble. She’s freezing.

“We have to get you warm. Let me help you . . .” I let my last word trail off, hinting I’d like her to tell me her name.

She takes a deep breath and sighs. “Charlotte,” she says, quietly. “But people call me Char.” Charlotte. I smile softly at her name. It’s pretty, like her.

“Okay, Charlotte. Do you have some dry clothes to bring with you?”


“In the truck.” She jogs ahead of me and opens her back driver’s side door, climbing in. Moments later she comes out with a backpack and a small duffel bag. After turning off her headlights, she shuts the door as the rain begins to come down hard again. She looks up to the sky, letting the rain pelt her face roughly. Her free hand comes up, and she jabs her middle finger up to the dark abyss, and I chuckle. I want to cover her, carry her bags, but . . . I can’t.

With a huff, she passes by me, and I quickly join her. “I’m sorry I can’t help you carry those.”

She snickers softly. “I’m sorry you can’t either.” She pauses for a beat before adding, “I mean, I’m sorry you can’t carry them because you’re not alive.” Her words hang heavily in the air as the rain beats down on us. “How’d you go?”

I shove my hands in my pockets and sigh. “IED. Afghanistan.”

“Shit,” she sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, if I was going to go . . .” My sentence trails off, and she gives me a nod of understanding. Death sucks. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. But at least I died a noble death. There are worse ways to go.

“So, where are you taking me?”

“You don’t know where you are?” I feign disbelief.

She smiles timidly. “I didn’t care where I was going. I planned to drive until my SUV ran out of gas and . . . well . . . you foiled the rest of it.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry about that,” I answer honestly. “Is it really that bad?”

The rain abruptly stops again, as if God himself flipped an off switch, and we both stop and look up. After a moment, she starts walking again and I follow, the sounds of her boots making squishing noises to break the quiet. “Every day of my life for the last six years has been spent with the dead. I have no friends—the ones I had all think I went crazy, my parents didn’t know what to do with me, so they just pretended like I wasn’t there, and forget about a boyfriend. So you see, I have nothing but death. My life is settling the dead’s business so they can crossover, and dammit, I’m tired.”

She looks it, too. Her pale face and sunken eyes tell a story of a hard life. “We can help each other, Charlotte. This is a good place. You’ll like it here.”

“And where is here?”

“This is Warm Springs. It’s a little town inside Bath County.”

“Warm Springs?”

“Yeah. Where one goes to rejuvenate,” I say in my best radio announcer voice. “Jefferson Pools? Never heard of them?”

“Nope,” she answers.

“They’re special springs . . . they stay warm all year round. General Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jefferson frequented them.”

“Is that so?” she asks dryly, clearly unimpressed.