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He thought he had, perhaps for one of the first times in his life, done something good without expecting anything in return. How could he have never considered that before?
You weren’t angry. You were scared and acting angry. There’s a difference.”
We aren’t supposed to force someone before they’re ready. That’s not our job. We’re here to make sure they see that life isn’t always about living. There are many parts to it, and it continues on, even after death. It’s beautiful, even when it hurts.
Jump, he’d say, and they’d do just that. Not because of any allegiance to him, but out of fear of reprisal, of what he’d do if they failed him.
They were afraid of him. And he’d used that fear against them because it was easier than turning it on himself, shining a light on all his dark places.
Wallace balked. “Is it … bad? Like really bad? Lies! It’s all lies! I was a mostly competent person.”
Wallace whispered, “It’s easy to let yourself spiral and fall.” “It is,” Nelson agreed. “But it’s what you do to pull yourself out of it that matters most.”
“But isn’t that life? We second-guess everything because it’s in our nature. People with anxiety and depression just tend to do it more.”
Honesty was a weapon. It could be used to stab and tear and spill blood upon the earth. Wallace knew that; he had his fair share of blood on his hands because of it. But it was different, now. He was using it upon himself, and he was flayed open because of it, nerve endings exposed.
“He’s from Seattle,” Nelson whispered. “Went to London once a few years ago and came back talking like that. No one knows why.” “Because he’s ludicrous,” Wallace said. “Obviously.”
“She was sad, too, because she missed you.” His voice cracked, but he pushed through it. “Her body was tired. She fought as hard as she could, but it was too much for her. She was brave because of you. For you. You taught her joy and love and fire.
“Why?” she asked as she trembled. “Why do you care so much?” “Because I don’t know how else to be.”
“What are you?” “I’m Hugo,” he said. “I run a tea shop.” “Is that all?” “No,” he said.
“You’re a white man,” his assistant told him at the office Christmas party, her cheeks flushed from one too many Manhattans. “You’ll fail up. You always do.”
He’s a good boy. I worried, when we knew his time had come. We didn’t know what happened to dogs when they passed. They take a piece of our souls with them when they leave. I thought … I didn’t know what it’d do to Hugo.” He nodded toward the tea plants. “Toward the end, Apollo could barely walk. Hugo had to make a hard choice. Let him stay as he was, and be in pain, or give him the ultimate gift. It was an easier decision for him than I expected it to be.
“Understatement. Tea is serious business, Wallace. You don’t heat water for tea in the freaking microwave. Have a little class, man.”
He crowed in triumph when he felt the back seat of the scooter pressed against his rear and thighs. “Hell yeah! I’m the best ghost ever!”
Wallace wondered what would happen if they never stopped. Perhaps if they went far enough, Wallace would drift away into nothing, leaving all the pieces of him behind. Not a Husk. Not a ghost. Just motes of dust along a stretch of mountain road, ashes spread as if he’d mattered.
In death, Wallace had never felt more alive.
“My father used to bring me up here,” Hugo said, face awash with dying sunlight.
His last lucid thought was of Zach, and how he smiled like the sun, and Wallace knew his desire to feel the same hadn’t only come from himself. It was the last, forceful gasp of the man whose mind he now shared, the sun the last thing he’d held onto before the end of his humanity.
“It’s probably for the best.” Wallace didn’t know what it’d do to a person to remember their time as a Husk. Nothing good.
Wallace laughed against the lump in his throat. “I know. But I don’t want you worrying about that. I think … I think you helped to teach me what I was supposed to learn.” “Which was what?” Cameron asked. Wallace looked toward the sky, tilting back until he was almost horizontal with the ground. Clouds passed by, fluffy white things with no real destination in mind. He raised his hands, backlit by the warm sun. “That we have to let go, no matter how scary it can be.”
“And he loves you?” Cameron laughed wetly. “Impossibly. I wasn’t the best person to be around, but he took the worst parts of me and dragged them out into the light.”
“Perhaps,” Nelson said. “But what it represented isn’t. That can never be taken away from you. Remember what I told you about need versus want? We don’t need you because that implies you had to fix something in us. We were never broken. We want you, Wallace. Every piece. Every part. Because we’re family. Can you see the difference?”
“The Manager won’t like it, though.” Wallace chuckled. “No, I don’t expect he will. But regardless of what else he is, he’s a bureaucrat. And even worse than that, he’s a bored bureaucrat. He needs what I did.” “What’s that?” “A shock to the system.”
Wallace was devastated. If they were anyone else, this could be the start of something. A beginning rather than an end. But they weren’t anyone else. They were Wallace and Hugo, dead and alive. A great chasm stretched between them.
Hugo’s eyes grew heavy. He fought it, eyes blinking slowly, but he’d already lost. “I think it’d be nice,” he said, words slurring slightly. “If you came here. If you stayed. We’d drink tea and talk and one day, I’d tell you that I loved you. That I couldn’t imagine my life without you. You made me want more than I ever thought I could have. Such a funny little dream.”
The next morning—the seventh, the final, the last—Cameron said, “Will you go with me to the door?” Wallace blinked in surprise as he looked down at Cameron. “You want me there?” He nodded. “I’m not … I can’t go—not yet. I’m not going through yet.” “I know,” Cameron said. “But I think it’ll help, having you there.” “Why?” Wallace asked helplessly. “Because you saved me. And I’m scared. I don’t know how I’m going to climb the stairs. What if my legs don’t work? What if I can’t do it?”
He said, “Every step forward is a step closer to home.” “Then why is it so hard?” “Because that’s life,” Wallace said.
Cameron gnawed on his bottom lip. “He’ll be there.” Zach. “He will.” “He’ll yell at me.” “Will he?” “Yes,” Cameron said. “That’s how I’ll know he still loves me.” His eyes were wet. “I hope he yells as loud as he can.” “Until you think your eardrums will burst,” Wallace said, patting him on the top of the head. “And then he’ll never let you go.” “I’d like that.” He looked away. “I’ll find you. When you come. I want him to meet you. He needs to know you and what you’ve done for me.”
The last Wallace saw of him were the bottoms of his shoes. The door slammed shut behind him. The light faded. The flowers curled in on themselves. The leaves shrank as the door settled in its frame. Cameron was gone.
He’d found within himself the man he had thought he’d become before the heaviness of life had descended upon him. He was free. The shackles of a mortal life had fallen away. There was nothing holding him here. Not anymore. It hurt, but it was a good hurt.
The Manager stood on the porch. He wore a shirt that read IF YOU THINK I’M CUTE, YOU SHOULD SEE MY AUNT. Flowers hung from his hair, opening and closing, opening and closing.
“What are the Husks?” Wallace paused, thinking as hard as he ever had. “A manifestation of a fear-based life?” That seemed like the right direction, but he couldn’t quite get the picture to come into focus. “They … what? Are more susceptible to…”
“The only reason the Husks chose as they did was out of fear of the unknown.”
“Yes, yes. You’re alive again. How wonderful for you.” He looked grim. “This isn’t something to be taken lightly, Wallace. In all of history, there has only been one person who was brought back to life in such a way.” Wallace gaped at him. “Holy shit. I’m like Jesus?” The Manager scowled. “What? Of course not. His name was Pablo. He lived in Spain in the fifteenth century. He was … well. It’s not important who he was. All that matters is you know this is a gift, and one that can be taken away just as easily.”
“Yes,” the Manager said. “I know. It’s terribly vexing. I don’t know how you put up with it. Love seems positively dreadful.” He turned toward the stairs, antlers beginning to grow from his head, flowers blooming from the velvet.
It went on, life did, ever forward.
But a river only moves in one direction, no matter how much we wish it weren’t so.
