Authors: Lilian Carmine
I stared at her back, scrunching up my lips in guilt. “Mom?”
“Yes, honey?”
“I’m really sorry, for all this mess. I feel like this is all my fault. I should have known something was wrong, I mean, the signs were all there! He never left the cemetery; he was always there. And he never ever touched me, not even for a quick handshake. And he looked so lonely and so sad,” I said, looking down at my feet.
“Joey, please,” she interrupted, taking the pan off the heat for a second, turning to look at me. “This is nobody’s fault. Not yours. Not his. He must be feeling pretty scared right now, can you imagine? And he’s your friend, you obviously care a lot about him, so we’ll do our best to help him through this and support him, okay? Don’t worry about it. We’ll sort this out.”
I sighed in relief. “Thanks, Mom.” I knew I could always count on my mom. She was the best!
She gave me a comforting smile and a nod, and then turned back to her cooking.
“So,” she said, without looking at me, “this is the boy who’s been keeping you so busy since we’ve arrived, huh?”
“Huh. Yeah. This is him.”
“He’s really cute,” she said and I knew for sure she was sniggering, even though she had her back to me.
“Okay, Mom. I know where this is going,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“What? I didn’t say anything! I was just telling you my perception of his appearance, that’s all. He seems a lovely young man. Very handsome,” she said in a stern voice.
We heard someone clearing their throat close by and turned to see Tristan leaning against the doorframe. He was watching us, and something flashed across his eyes for a second. I thought of asking if he had overheard what my mom and I were talking about, but as soon as my wide-eyed gaze landed on him, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was absolutely speechless.
“Oh, my God! Look at you!” my mom exclaimed. “You look adorable!”
Adorable
was definitely NOT the description that came to my mind. Smoking hot was more like it.
He was wearing baggy jeans – I guess my mom had chosen them to be sure they would fit – a bright blue T-shirt that hung perfectly on his body, and some sneakers. He looked very, very good.
Very!
His hair was a little messed up from pulling the shirt on, giving him – unintentionally – the look most boys favoured: the methodically messed-up hairstyle. His new look was so modern, so utterly different from his tidy hair and formal clothes from before. From monochrome to vibrant, vivid, ocean-blue colors. It was like an old photo coming alive, in a breathtaking image. He looked at us expectantly, waiting for a response.
“Is this all right?” he asked uncertainly. “It looks sort of strange to me. Not many kids visited the cemetery, so I don’t have much basis for comparison,” he mumbled, putting his hands inside his jeans pockets. “And they’re not like the jeans I wore when I was … um … alive.”
“Oh. It’s all right,” I answered slowly, trying to steady my voice. “It’s … good.”
“Come and sit, Tristan, your eggs and bacon are almost ready!” my mom said, beckoning him to the table and turning to me, mouthing a silent
“Oh My God”
. I shook my head in despair. I would never hear the end of this!
“Joey, dear, sit here, next to Tristan. I’ll get your plate ready! There’s bread and fruit as well. Help him out, honey!” she ordered, bustling round the kitchen.
We sat at the table and stared at each other. I looked into his strangely blue eyes.
“That’s odd. Your eyes are blue now,” I said curiously.
He looked down at his new shirt and smiled timidly. “Actually, they’re still gray. I’ve checked in the bathroom mirror. It’s color reflection, I think. The shirt,” he said, pointing to his blue shirt.
“So, if you were wearing a green T-shirt, you’d have green eyes, then?”
“I suppose so,” he said shrugging.
“That is
so cool
. You can change eye color.” I was a little jealous of that.
“They’re not actually ‘changing’ colors, they’re always gray, but I get your point,” he said, growing a little impatient at my obsession with his eyes. Then his stomach made a loud rumble. He blushed, embarrassed. “Sorry. I’m … really hungry,” he said staring at his plate “I forgot about that.”
“Forgot about what?”
“You know, being hungry,” he said quietly, putting his hand on his belly.
“It’s one of the many fabulous perks of being alive. Still happy about it?” I said, smirking.
“Yeah. I’m still happy,” he said, smiling softly, with indeed so much happiness in his eyes.
That knocked me a little sideways, and it was my time to stare at my plate in an awkward silence, but not for long. My mom appeared with two plates heaped with eggs and bacon. “Here we go! Eat up, you two!” she commanded.
Tristan ate in silence, focusing on his food, while my mom and I chatted non-stop about all the things that happened yesterday, retelling the incident from our points of view. We tried not to ask him questions, to give him time to adjust and feel more at ease, more comfortable so he could start trusting us. Even though my head was buzzing with a thousand questions. When did he die? And how? Was he now fully human? Would he age? Did he know what happened at the cemetery and why he was alive now? He would glance at us occasionally, sometimes looking mystified, sometimes looking like he was avoiding something, but he didn’t say a word. When we were done eating, he stood up and grabbed our plates.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Gray, I’ll do the dishes. Thank you for a wonderful meal, everything was great!”
My mom raised her eyebrows at me, clearly impressed. I guess you could say that whatever time Tristan was from, it was one where people had far better manners!
The doorbell rang and my mom jumped. “Oh, dear. Look at the time! She’s here already. Miss Violet’s come for a visit,” Mom said, rising from her seat. “She’ll want to talk to us all. Tristan, you can leave those dishes there. Don’t worry, they’ll still be here when you get back.”
Tristan frowned and reluctantly left the dishes at the side of the sink. He clearly did not want to have this conversation; I could tell by his sudden sour mood.
We walked into the living room while Mom answered the door. We greeted Miss Violet as she entered, and we all sat down: Tristan on the couch next to me; my mom and Miss Violet in the armchairs either side of us.
“How’s your friend doing, Miss Violet?” I asked, remembering how frail the old lady had looked yesterday evening.
“She’s doing all right now, dear. It’s very nice of you to ask,” Miss Violet said. “She actually helped me last night to unravel part of the mystery you’ve got yourself into.”
“I-I’ve got myself into?”
“With the help of your friendly ghost over there, evidently,” she retorted.
Something dark flashed in Tristan’s eyes as he glared pointedly at Miss Violet.
“Now, about your little predicament here,” she said, looking at me and not caring at all about Tristan’s glares. “We did some research into the Gray family tree – as much as we were able, at such short notice. The internet is a wonderful thing, my dears,” she said as an aside, surprising both Mom and me. “Apparently, there’s witch blood in your bloodline, which is why you were able to see Tristan when he was a ghost, Joe. And probably why you were able to perform that spell even without realizing. The magic in you is untamed, but it’s really strong. You seem to have developed quite a lot on your own already.”
“Are you seriously saying I’m a witch?” I shrieked, freaked out.
“I’m always serious, dear,” she said a little sharply. “But no, that’s not what I said.” Then she added quickly, “Well, you’re not a witch yet. You have potential, but it requires work, training, commitment, lots of practice and a lot of study to become a real witch.”
“That’s nonsense!” I shook my head in denial. “I have nothing magical going on here. I’m just plain Joey. And witches don’t exist.”
“Oh, you have no trouble accepting ghosts that come back to life, but you have difficulty accepting witches, now? That’s funny,” Miss Violet scoffed, mildly offended.
“I-I … that’s not what I meant. I’m just saying I have no witch blood in me whatsoever,” I corrected myself, looking at Tristan.
Suspicion passed across his eyes. Did he think I was lying?
“I’m not lying!” I snapped at him. “How can you think that?”
“How did you know what he was thinking?” Miss Violet asked squinting her eyes at the both of us.
“I just … saw it. In his eyes,” I mumbled, feeling confused.
“She always does that,” Tristan said quietly. “Even when I was a ghost. She always knows exactly what I’m feeling when she looks at me. It’s been bothering me for some time now. I didn’t know how she was doing it. But it is always very … accurate.”
“It’s not quite telepathy, more empathic insight. You need visual contact to do it, right? You can read what the other person is feeling. Quite handy,” Miss Violet said to me.
“Everybody can do that. It’s normal, right, Mom? Did you not see suspicion in his eyes just now?” I asked, bewildered.
“No, dear,” said Miss Violet, “We just saw him looking at you. Nothing more. He had a pretty blank expression. I don’t know what he was thinking or feeling, and I’m a pretty good observer of human behavior. I have been around in this world for some time now. I know how to read people. And he was letting nothing out.”
I shot my mom a pleading look, silently asking for her help.
“You have always been spot on about people’s feelings, honey,” she said thoughtfully. “I just thought you were very perceptive, but you’re scarily accurate. I’ve got used to it over the years, but strangers sometimes notice, don’t they? Remember your friends at your old school used to say it kinda creeped them out. After a while you stopped vocalizing your reads, but you could still see, right?” she asked me.
I bit my lip and shifted uneasily on my seat.
“What about this spell you talked about, Miss Violet? What actually happened last night? Do you have any theory that could help us figure this out?” My mom finally decided to ask the million-dollar question. She didn’t seem upset at all by the revelations happening in her own living room. Perhaps she too had suspected there was some “witch blood” in our family, and was only now verifying this.
“Well, we’re still trying to figure that out, but it seems that Joey here managed to set a very powerful spell in motion. We knew something was going to happen; my friends and I had seen some signs alerting us. That’s why I’d been going there a few days each week lately, to see if I’d catch something. I suspected it was something to do with the girl – you, Joe – when I saw her first speaking to a ghost boy without realizing it. After that, I asked my husband to keep an eye on her … on you,.” she said, looking at me. “We never thought this could happen, though. To bring back the dead … it’s tricky and dangerous. Not to mention extremely difficult. It takes many powerful elements to be combined at the same time and requires a lot of power to perform such an act. We never knew what those elements could be, but from what we observed last night, we now have a vague idea.”
“Elements? Spell? Bringing back the dead?” I asked, stunned. It was just too much information and nonsense for my head. And I’d done this?
“Apparently we had seven people present there last night. Seven is a powerful number for magic. Five elements were combined – fire, air, earth, water and the most important one, the one that made the connection between the boy and the girl. Also, there was the importance of place and time. Everything combined at that place, in the exact centre of the graveyard, as the old year ended and a new one began. The result you get is right there, sitting on your couch, living and breathing for the first time in what … sixty years?” she said, looking now at Tristan.
Tristan died sixty years ago? That meant he was last alive in the 1950s. No wonder his manners and vocabulary were so strange. But what had Miss Violet also said? “Seven people? There’s a mistake right there,” I said, counting on my fingers. “You and your friends, that’s three. Me and Mom. That’s five.”
“Forgetting about Ghost Boy over there, are we?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, yes. I didn’t know a ghost could be counted as ‘people’. Sorry, Tris. But that’s still only six.”
“Yes, there was also another one. A very important one. You missed it because you were in transition during the spell, but it was there all right,” she said, avoiding my eyes.
“It?” Miss Violet ignored my question and, under her withering gaze, I let it go for now. “Okay, seven people.” I counted again. “And five elements … fire, air, earth, water and something else.”
I mentally identified what each could have been. Fire. From the candles. I remembered their flames vividly after I had bumped my head. Air was the wind. I remembered how fierce it had been, how it swept through my whole body. Earth beneath my fingers from when I was lying down on the grass.
“What was water? And the something else?” I asked.
“You were crying. That’s the water part,” Miss Violet told me.
“I-I was?” I didn’t remember crying. It all felt like a distant foggy memory. “So what about the something else?”
“Did you cut yourself yesterday?” she asked.
I turned the palms of my hands upwards. There were scratches and tiny cuts all over both hands from when I had fallen.
She smiled, seeing me stare at my scratched hands. “Blood is a powerful thing for spells. It created the bond between you and him for the spell to work, and it sealed the deal.”
I remembered that everything had gone dark and I hadn’t been able to see Tristan any more, but that I could feel him close to me. I had felt something on my lips. And pinpricks of energy … I think. The memory was blurred now, like I was seeing it through distorted glass. But I think that was when the spell was bound. The final touch. The second his lips had touched mine, I’d been jolted back and Tristan had appeared out of thin air.
“And this spell has its price. All magic does,” Miss Violet continued. “It’ll be collected, heavily taxed, mind you. The boy should’ve thought about that before going through with it,” she snapped at him.