Shards

It’s funny how most people think ghosts are bullshit even though they see them every day.

That old man on the bus staring out the window. The young guy sitting on the curb who never looks up when someone walks by. The girl so focused on her phone that she would have plowed right into you if you didn’t sidestep her. The woman at the bar who looks right through you as if you weren’t even there…

Sure – sometimes they’re real, living people who just happen to be lost in their own worlds during the brief moment they enter and exit your consciousness, just as soon forgotten as you go on with your hustling, bustling, super important, super busy life.

But sometimes, they’re shards.

Roman started calling the spirits, or ghosts, or whatever they were shards once she realized they were only fragments of the people they used to be – sad little pieces of lives still stuck in the physical flesh of the world like broken glass it stepped on and didn’t care enough to dig out. When Roman first discovered, about the time she turned twelve, that ghosts weren’t just stories for the campfire she’d been thrilled. How fantastic – something she believed in withstood the litmus test of childish scrutiny! All of a sudden ghosts were more reliable than Santa, more trustworthy than God. They made sense, and they were right there to be seen, heard, smelled, even touched.

Then, her first taste of bitter disappointment: her parents didn’t share Roman’s enthusiasm. Instead they thought their perky daughter Lydia was losing her marbles. A few cards short of a full deck, a screw loose, a total nutter butter, as they said.

Her parents wrapped their misgivings in marshmallowy, innocuous phrases at first. Lydia had an active imagination, then she was going through a phase, then she wanted attention. But, as little Lydia Roman continued to insist the people all around them were not just folks with poor manners but were, in fact, the spiritual debris left behind from actual formerly living individuals, her parents bandied about less minimizing terminology.

Lydia was acting out. She was overcompensating. She was introverted, in her own world, melancholy. Neither parent wanted to come out and say their increasingly sulky, increasingly quiet, increasingly obstinate daughter might in fact be crazy, be cuckoo, be totally fucking crackers, but eventually Lydia helped everyone clear up the confusion during her senior year of high school on what became known in certain privileged circles as ‘the day Lydia Roman utterly lost her shit.’

Oh, the memories.

Roman made a face at her mirror, then pulled on her favorite black fishnet long-sleeve and a matching black T-shirt. Her scars were more of a shot across the bows than most people’s but she’d found that out of sight meant out of mind more often than not. Don’t ask, don’t tell, as her army dyke bunkie once told her back in the ding wing.

“Lydia, honey – breakfast is ready!”

Roman rolled her eyes at the way people never just said what they meant. A bowl of cereal was ready as soon as you poured the milk over it; but what mother dearest meant, of course, was ‘we still get nervous when you spend too much time by yourself, sweetie, so come on downstairs and present yourself for inspection.’

Roman wished she could tell them they never had to worry about their darling dear’s suicidal tendencies again – she’d been cured forevermore by the horrifying realization that if she’d managed to finish herself off on that fateful day in the gym shower, she might have been spending her eternity as a naked, bloody joke on a nasty bathroom floor.

As a freakin’ shard.

“I really wish you’d brighten up,” her mother said, grimacing at Roman’s black hair, black nails, black shirts, and black boots. Roman shrugged, then dug into her gourmet meal of Frosted Flakes and two-percent.

“My jeans are blue. That’s like a summer sky.” She flashed a smile that someone, somewhere, might mistake for sincere.

“Really, Lydia – it’s your first day of college. That’s a major milestone. Would it kill you to can the sarcasm just for today?”

Not even my demons at their strongest could kill me, she didn’t say. Instead she tortured a more genuine smile from the depths and tried not to wreck her mother’s attempt to find something about her only child of which to be proud. Little Lydia’s big day. Knowing that her parents had been dreaming of her going to an Ivy League school since they first saw the ultrasound, it rang a tad hollow when here sat Little Miss Overachiever almost twenty and fresh from the booby hatch, ready to trudge off to conquer her grueling two-class day at Racine Community College.

But really dear, everyone’s just relieved you’re not foaming at the mouth and pulling out your hair – you’ve come so far!

Roman muttered her goodbyes, endured a hug for posterity’s sake, then made her exit stage left. The air was crisp, cold as a waiting room full of her parents’ friends feasting on gossip while a surgeon Roman never actually met made sure she’d recover almost full use of her hands. She zipped up her fur-lined parka and began her odyssey.

She saw two shards on the mile long walk to the bus stop, one a little boy with a red ball and clothes decades out of style and the other a familiar face. Roman hadn’t realized the middle aged woman was a shard until the third time she’d seen her wearing the same dumb ‘Puma Pride’ sweater and weaving her way down the sidewalk like a midmorning drunk. She first encountered the gin-soaked cheer mom four months ago by the library, then again staggering past the school parking lot. Two weeks ago she bumped into her at Morrigan’s Grocery and made the connection: the woman cast one pickled eye over Roman, waiting for her to get the hell out of the way, but said nothing. Once Roman did, she continued on her stumbling trek without so much as a single box of macaroni and cheese or a frozen pizza.

Shards generally ignored you unless you got in their way. Even then they would duck and weave like pro boxers; physical contact seemed to really disturb them. The few shards Roman had touched became quite agitated, though apart from being icy cold they felt real enough. Pissing off a ghost struck her as an inauspicious way to start her scholarly endeavors, so Roman moved aside for Puma Pride and hopped on the bus.

She arrived just in time for her English Composition class. She sank into a seat in the back as the teacher began a well rehearsed ‘welcome to college, impressionable young people’ speech. A furtive survey from behind her blank notebook revealed more than a few familiar faces. Bugger. She’d hoped that her two year sabbatical at the funny farm would insulate her from the cohorts of her storied high school days – alas, that was not the case.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, given that Racine Community College – go Pumas! – was the de facto dumping ground for students with ambitions as modest as their incomes, but Roman still sank deeper into her seat until the bell rang.

After English she had an hour to kill until Abnormal Psych, an interest sparked by personal experience if ever there’d been one. She sat in the little courtyard watching her peers play grab ass and smoke. Normal people bored her, so Roman decided to hunt for shards rather than make chitchat.

Finding a shard reminded her of those puzzles where you got a picture of some humdrum slice of life and were tasked with finding the five things out of place: the 1920’s farmer’s digital watch, the sweatshirt guy on the beach, the lady opening an umbrella indoors, and so on. Shardspotting required the same attention to detail. Shards could appear anywhere but they gravitated to places where lots of living people went, then followed their scripts no matter how out of context their action seemed.

As far as Roman knew they weren’t sentient. People died. Their souls went on to wherever. Sometimes a piece of one broke off and stayed behind like an echo. If you walked down to the 7-11 every morning at eight for malt liquor, there was a decent chance your shard would keep doing it after your death.

Roman saw no potentials, but her study of the crowd detected one anomaly: some dude kept staring at her. From behind her sunglasses she stared back.

He looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of Surfer Dudes Monthly, with his shaggy blond hair and scruffy beard, his ragged blue jeans and Hawaiian T-shirt, too cool for school with his old motorcycle jacket and the cynic’s smirk tempering the handsomeness of his rugged face. Surfer Dude leaned against the wall where people could post ads for roommates, band gigs, and crappy cheap furniture.

And kept looking at Lydia Roman, and not like she was a circus geek. She couldn’t imagine what caught his eye – her scrawny body? Her no boobs? The remains of her teenage acne she still toted around? It disturbed her in an ineffable way. Male attention came to an abrupt end once she’d gone all Three Mile Island and Roman’s sideshow had been a solo act ever since.

So what was this cute jerk staring at? Roman decided to call his bluff.

She walked straight to the bulletin board. She pretended to study it while Surfer Dude’s eyes burned a hole in her. Whatever witty gem she’d planned to deliver withered under the intensity of that gaze. She caved, grabbed a paper at random, and turned to go. Surfer Dude laughed.

She spun, scowling. “What’s so funny?”

“Didn’t figure you for the type.” He jutted his chiseled chin at the advertisement she held, his smirk undiminished.

‘Tired of never getting a second date? Try new Ironman Elite Male Enhancement–’

“Goddammit.” Roman crumpled the paper up. “Why are you staring at me?”

“It’s a crime to window shop?”

“No – it’s just,” Roman blushed. “Ugh.”

“So what are you doing later?”

Roman’s blush became a five alarm fire. “Why – do I look like someone who’s got nothing better to do than kick it with some random guy?”

“Easy, kitty – I just wanted to grab a drink with you.”

Roman grunted. “Even if I wanted to, which is – whatever – I’d get carded.”

“What card?”

“Um, hello? My ID.”

“You’re a college girl. You must be over eighteen.”

“The drinking age is twenty-one, in case you’re new on this planet.”

He shrugged. “I’ll pick something up and we’ll go back to my place, then. How ’bout it?”

Roman looked at her watch and cursed herself for falling for this guy’s slick routine. “I’m going to be late – see you later.”

“I’ll definitely see you around, doll,” he called after her. She squeaked out some lame reply and hurried off before she lost her nerve not to look back at that stupid handsome jerk smile.

After her introduction to the world of Abnormal Psychology Roman walked really slowly across campus. By the time she reached the street she had to kick herself for hoping Surfer Dude would be waiting for her. Did she even have a brain? Like the jerk wouldn’t run screaming after he got to know her for ten seconds.

Since it was only two and Roman died inside at the thought of spending yet another long, unbearable afternoon with her mother hovering over her, she decided to ride downtown and get some lunch, maybe hit up the crusty little book nook that always had some obscure gem to catch her eye.

Cutting across to the bus stop, she heard shoes scuffing on the asphalt and grunting. It spoke volumes about her state of mind that her first thought was someone having sex in the school parking lot. Low voices and a cruel laugh belied that, as did the unmistakable meaty sound of punches connecting. Someone getting beat up in the school parking lot – she’d almost prefer to stumble upon the former.

Roman walked on cat feet up to an SUV. She peered around it and saw three guys. Two looked vaguely familiar. One she definitely recognized: Marlon Drinkwater, asshole extraordinaire. He’d been two years ahead of her in school, a classic jock douchebag. His girlfriend Carly Newton had been instrumental in precipitating the Great Meltdown of 2015.

Now Marlon chortled as he punched some skinny kid in a parking lot. A class act.

Their victim, already a bloody mess with a torn shirt and one eye swelling shut, staggered forward. He threw a clumsy right hook towards one of Marlon’s cronies as they boxed him in against a Jeep. The other crony kicked him in the back of the knee. As he stumbled, Marlon socked him square in the nose. The punching bag fell down.

“Just stay down and they’ll lose interest,” she urged, wishing she had telepathic powers. Roman knew exactly how bullies worked and what got them off. Apparently their target did not.

Roman cringed as he stood up. This time he managed to bloody one of the goon’s lips before they beat him back to the asphalt. Again he rose, slower but just as stubborn. Again he was laid out before Marlon and company treated him to a round of kicks.

Roman couldn’t watch any more. She hurried towards them, her heart racing. She pulled out her phone and held it to her ear.

“Yeah, 9-1-1? I’m witnessing an assault at Racine Community College. One of the attackers is Marlon Drinkwater. Send the cops, quick!”

“You rat bitch,” one of the goons sneered, but her bluff did the trick. The three gave their target a final round of kicks for the road.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Marlon said, then he squinted. “Heyyy… Ain’t that Superfreak?”

The goon with the bloody lip laughed. “It is!”

“Ee-eee-eee-eee!” Marlon’s other asshole made slasher-movie sounds as he sawed the edge of his palm across his forearm. They all cackled, then flipped her the bird as Roman raised her phone to take their picture. They ran.

“Thanks,” the bloody mess on the ground said.

“Jesus – nobody ever taught you to play dead?”

“I have an uncommon caliber of tormentors, and they’re rarely so easily deterred.”

Roman snorted. She helped him to his feet and got a better look at him: longish brown hair, crooked nose, and the one eye she could see was hazel. If he didn’t look like he’d just gone a few rounds in the Octagon he would have been cute.

“I didn’t really call the police. Should I?”

“Nah, more trouble than it’s worth. I’m just going to go home. ” He wiped his face on his torn shirt and gave her a ghastly grin. “My name’s Eddie by the way, and nice to meet you and all.”

“I’m Roman.” She hesitated, then shook his outstretched his dirty hand. “What was all that about, anyways?”

“You know how jerks like that are.”

Roman did. “So, how do you know Marlon?”

“We were best buds in high school.”

“You went to Racine High? I don’t remember you.”

“I missed a lot of school, and we weren’t in the same grade. Also, everyone called me Hooker.”

Roman definitely remembered the Notorious Kid Hooker. His unfortunate last name brought no end of giggles, but she mainly recalled that he got expelled for some drug thing. He’d been the hot gossip topic until Roman so thoroughly upstaged him six months later.

“You used to get suspended for fighting all the time.”

“Yeah – just like I was fighting these clowns.”

“Well – do you need to go to the hospital or something? Your eyebrow’s bleeding a lot. You probably need stitches.”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“But it’ll leave a scar.”

“Maybe girls will think it’s hot?”

Roman snorted. “Most people I know think scars are disgusting, but whatever.”

“I think scars remind us of things we survived. There’s nothing disgusting about being tough enough to take what life dishes out and keep getting back up after it knocks you down.”

“Is that the lesson you just learned, O Wise One?”

Eddie grimaced. “No, that one was ‘you can’t outrun the past.'”

“I could have told you that, and I wouldn’t even have to kick your ass.”

“Next time I need a tutor I’ll come see you first.”

Roman rolled her eyes. “So, besides bleeding, what are you doing right now? Because I’m hungry.”

“The magic’s working already,” Eddie said, tapping his split brow. “I’d like to take you to lunch for saving my butt, but you probably don’t want to go out with someone who looks like this.”

“No, I think you’re cute,” Roman’s mouth said without her brain’s permission.

Eddie blinked. “I meant because I look like raw hamburger, but thanks.”

Roman just stared at him, her mouth tasting thoroughly of foot. Eddie smiled anyways.

“So… Rain check?”

“You want my number,” a frog croaked, throwing its voice to sound as if Roman said it.

At the nuthouse Dr. Sonya Burdick had always ragged on her for keeping her self esteem in the trash can. Roman hoped the old bat felt vindicated; she hadn’t expected Eddie to really pull out his phone to get her digits. Two guys paying attention to her on the same day – what kind of superstar was she?

~

On the ride home after a tasty lamb gyro Roman flipped through her new acquisition, enjoying the old book smell of ‘Speaking with the Dead.’ She had long been a sucker for all things occult no matter how cheesy and this grim tome practically leapt off the shelf into her arms as she walked by. Published upwards of seventy years ago, it outlined three distinct methods for making contact with spirits who had passed beyond the veil between worlds. In the back it even included a handy guide for interpreting the often cryptic answers the necro-curious were apt to receive.

Roman read herself all the way home, rushing to gather her things when the bus rolled to a stop at her corner. After her long day and her heavy lunch she felt sluggish, but something prickled at the back of her neck. As the bus pulled away she looked up to spy a shard crossing the street.

“I guess more than chickens want to get to the other side,” she giggled. Sometimes she just knew – this chick wore a yellow baby doll T-shirt and a plaid miniskirt in forty degree weather like it was the thing to do. More tellingly, the wind still blew steadily but not a strand of the girl’s long black hair stirred. Roman shivered as the shard locked eyes with her.

“Freaky,” she muttered. “Almost like you’re looking at me.”

The shard lurched across the street. A car swerved, blaring its horn. Roman gaped as the shard ran straight for her. Shards never took active notice of people –

“Oh, shit,” she said as the shard lunged. Roman staggered back, then screamed when icy fingernails scored her shoulders through her jacket. The shard was babbling and her breath smacked Roman in the face like a sack of fish guts. She struggled but the shard had her in a vise.

“TellimtellimtellimTELLIM!” She screeched, shoving Roman back into the wall behind the bus stop. Her head whacked against the bricks and her vision went screwy. The shard bared her teeth, mostly rotten and mossy. “TELLIM!”

Roman’s knees buckled. She cowered on the sidewalk but no further attack came. When she finally looked up, she was alone. She stifled a sob and touched the back of her head. She winced, then stared at the blood on her fingers.

“Hey – are you alright, miss?”

Roman blinked. Her thoughts churned through the mud. A guy her dad’s age in a Ralph’s Market shirt was running up to her. He must have seen the shard –

“Miss? Are you hurt? Do you need 9-1-1?”

“N-no. I’m fine.” Her head throbbed and her tongue was way too big for her mouth.

“Oh my God – you’re bleeding!”

“S’nothn. ‘M fn. Reh.”

“Huh?”

Roman fell into blackness.

~

God. Damn. Fuck.

These three words swam through Roman’s muddled mind on an endless loop, a thousand times or a million. She ignored the refrain and clawed her way up from the bottom of a tar pit one sucking step at a time. Each heave upwards brought a fresh barrage of images, disjointed and sexual but in no way sexy.

Roman stared at her boyish self in a broken mirror while steam swirled around her ankles. She tried to speak but her throat gaped open, sloshing blood down her chest in a crimson waterfall. When she saw her face, her mouth had been stitched closed and her eyes were empty sockets.

Roman lay on her bed struggling beneath a burly body that ended at the neck. She thrashed, but the headless corpse pinned her down. Its icy fingers closed around her neck and started to squeeze.

Roman ran with a crowd, then she stumbled, then she fell. She fought to keep from being trampled into the mud. All of a sudden she realized she was at the bottom of a mass grave. The dead clawed and bit and grabbed and held her, dragging her down beneath the press of cold flesh as more and more of their kind tumbled in from above.

Roman screamed herself awake in some hospital room that reeked of disinfectant and old piss. Her mother, standing vigil at her bedside, gasped. She clapped a hand to her chest – pause for effect – and sagged with relief.

God. Damn. Fuck.

Once Roman’s mother’s initial salvo of nervous chatter abated, she pled her bladder to get a break. She locked the bathroom door and gave herself a checking over. Peering under her gown she found one puncture on each of her shoulders where the shard dug her thumbs in. Eight more in two half moons on her back attested to one hell of a grip.

In addition to the concussion and the six stitches to mend her split scalp, Roman also bore a scratch on her cheek and bags under her eyes big enough to carry her schoolbooks in. Otherwise Roman looked pale and plain as ever, so she resolved to get the hell out of here as fast as possible – after the Incident, she’d dreaded ever setting foot in a hospital again. She put her ear to the door and heard voices.

Naturally, while Roman had been unconscious her mother called the police. She listened to them converse in low tones but could glean little. She sighed, then returned to her little slice of hell.

“Hello, Lydia,” said Officer Madelaine Ellory, the red-haired police woman currently indulging the spiraling anxiety of Cecelia Roman.

“How are you?”

“I’ve been worse.”

“Ah – your mother told me about your troubles.” Joy. “Could you tell me about what happened today?”

Both the cop and the interrogator had a hard time swallowing that Roman didn’t know her attacker, didn’t know why anyone would want to bash her brains in, and in fact had very little memory of anything since stepping off the bus. She was smart enough to play dumb, since last time Roman tried to tell her mother about shards she’d ended up pumped full of antidepressants and seeing a therapist three times a week. She stuck to her guns until Officer Ellory loosed a sigh so heavy it signaled defeat.

“We’ll be in touch,” she told Roman’s mother, then she offered a smile that someone, somewhere might mistake for sincere. “Feel better.”

Lydia Roman, patent holder of such expressions, returned the smile the same as she would a middle finger. Once they were alone, Roman’s mother put the full weight of her searchlights on her troublesome daughter. Roman donned a perfect mask of innocence.

“Sweetie, I have to ask.”

“What?”

“Did you… hurt yourself again?”

“Do you really think I busted my own skull open? Ugh. Come on, mom,” she groaned. “What about the guy at the grocery store? Didn’t anyone talk to him?”

“Oh, now you remember,” her mother shot back, a veteran of their trench war in her own right. “As a matter of fact they did.”

“And?” Vindication hung within her grasp, but her mother’s wan smile suggested today was not Roman’s day yet again.

“Officer Ellory said the man who found you thought there was another girl with you, but he wasn’t sure. So they looked at the surveillance tape from Ralph’s…”

Roman hissed. “And there was nobody on the tape but me.” Of course not. You couldn’t record a shard without special equipment. Her mother just raised an eyebrow. Roman pleaded exhaustion.

God. Damn. Fuck.

~

By the time she made it home Roman felt utterly squeezed empty, like a used up tube of toothpaste. Bonus, she had a boomer of a headache despite the medication still making her thoughts murky. She begged off dinner and collapsed into the open arms of her bed.

For most of her life Roman’s dreams had been lucid. She often spent her unconscious hours wandering fantastic landscapes or mapping out the streets of cities she’d never been to while awake. To her delight she had discovered the places she dreamwalked, assuming she could find them, looked much the same in the waking world.

She had never had a nightmare, not once, but tonight Roman awoke tied to a chair in a musty basement. She struggled against the ropes and focused on wiggling one hand free from the scratchy bindings. She had almost succeeded when she heard a crash from behind her. A door thrown open, then heavy footsteps coming down rickety wooden stairs. Her heart pounded but she couldn’t turn around.

Her captor chuckled. Breath, sickly hot and reeking of cigarettes, caressed the back of Roman’s neck.

“Fly away, little bird,” the voice rasped. Pincers clamped down on her wiggling hand and jerked it up until her shoulder creaked. Roman whimpered.

“How high can you fly on broken wings? Let’s find out.”

Roman threw her body back, chair and all. The back of the chair smashed into her captor, then her head rebounded off the chair. White hot pain blinded her–

–Roman awoke with a start, sweat drenched and twisted up in her sheets. Her head throbbed afresh. Something trickled down the back of her neck.

Lovely, she thought as for the second time in less than a day she assessed her damages in a bathroom mirror. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks, but her stitches still held despite a little bleeding. She cleaned up, then sighed. What the hell was that?

Roman flopped down on her bed. Wide awake, she contemplated a middle of the night staring contest with her ceiling. Her eyes strayed to her phone.

‘R u up?’ Eddie’s answer to her text came back quick enough to confirm that he was.

‘What’s up?’

‘Can’t sleep. Headache. U?’

‘Bad dreams,’ he texted back.

“The plot thickens,” she murmured. ‘About what?’

‘Being trapped. Haunted by the past. U know the drill.’

Of course – after midnight the dark, tragic stranger’s enigmatic past rears its head once more. Roman contemplated, then asked ‘what’s ur ghost?’

Her phone rang.

“Hello,” she whispered. She prayed her mom didn’t wake up and come smother her.

“Sorry, I’ve got a migraine and staring at the phone screen feels like screwdrivers poking out my eyes,” Eddie said. “I’m laying in the dark with a towel over my face.”

Roman’s head throbbed in sympathy. “Do you get headaches in the middle of the night a lot?”

“I figure this one’s just a residual benefit from earlier. The gift that keeps on giving.”

“What was that about, anyways? That was more than just high school bully leftovers.”

Eddie sighed. Then, “if I tell you, you’re going to think I’m an asshole.”

“Who cares what I think?”

“I don’t have many friends, is all.”

“We just met twelve hours ago.”

“Ouch. Fine. You remember why I got expelled?”

“Not really.” Roman’s own problems more or less consumed her back then – she hadn’t spared much thought for anyone else’s. “Something with drugs.”

“Kind of. I mean yeah. I used to be the go-to guy. I had an in, you could say.”

“And someone caught you, and you got kicked out of school for it.” Roman wrinkled her nose. Drug dealers were slimy by nature. If Eddie was a criminal, she might be better off keeping her distance.

“A girl died and I got blamed for it, but they couldn’t prove it. So instead of prison I just got the boot.”

“Died from your drugs? It sounds like you got off easy, then.”

“Listen, just forget it. I’ll talk to you later, Roman.”

“Wait.”

“What.”

Roman kicked herself for being a jerk, for jumping to conclusions, for not letting him explain himself. For acting like her mother.

“Just tell me the story. I’ll shut up.”

“Alright, look – I never sold real drugs, I just told people I did. My mom worked for a pharmaceutical company. She was a sales rep so she always had all kinds of crap laying around. And, she was like that old commercial – ‘I’m also one of their best customers!’ – so she never noticed what I took from her treasure chest.”

Eddie laughed, but it struck Roman as bones-deep bitter. “My dad had a real bad temper. Growing up was… not fun. Once I realized a few of mom’s pills made everything hurt a lot less I got loaded all the time. By high school I needed to supplement to keep pace.”

“I’m sorry.” Roman really felt like a heel now. Her folks were just grossly invasive; he’d grown up in a warzone.

“Anyways… I hooked up with this girl Sharon who took having a habit to a whole other level. We would crush up the good stuff and mix it with random junk to bulk it up. Sharon knew the whole in crowd – all those preppie assholes looked down their noses at me, but they were the ones snorting half an oxy mixed with baby aspirin instead of smack.”

“But… if it wasn’t real, how did the girl die?”

“She killed herself. I didn’t even really know her. Deenie – Deanna Drinkwater, that is.”

“Marlon’s sister?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “She drove her car off Dog Canyon Bluff. The cops found certain drugs in her system and started asking questions.”

“She got them from you?”

“From Sharon. But she made a deal with the prosecutor, and her dad is a lawyer. So all of a sudden I was Deenie’s connection, and I was threatening to cut her off, and she owed me all this money, and she just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“But that’s not true.”

“It doesn’t matter what’s true in court, Roman. It just matters what you can make people believe. Only it blew up in their faces once they turned my parents’ house upside down, because they couldn’t find any heroin.”

“I thought she was on your little medicine cabinet cocktail.”

Eddie snorted. “Yeah, but the autopsy showed real stuff in her system. I’ve never even seen heroin, let alone sold it. But…”

“But everyone thought you did, because you’d been lying about it for so long.”

“Bingo was his name-o,” Eddie said. “So – the case went away, but I got expelled, and my mom got fired, and sent to rehab in lieu of her own institutional vacation. My dad got so blitzed he kicked both our asses until the neighbors called the cops. And dad went to prison, mom went to divorce court, and Golden Boy Eddie went on his merry way skipping.”

“And Marlon still blames you for his sister’s death.”

“Every chance he gets. But to be fair, the district attorney spent so much time riling him up after the case fell apart that I think he wanted Marlon to take me out.”

“That’s a hell of a story, Kid Hooker.”

Eddie laughed, sounding less like a bubble from a bog of misery. “Now you tell me out.”

“Huh?”

“‘Superfreak’? What’s that about?”

Roman cringed. Definitely not a road she wanted to travel back down, but fair was fair.

“I had a hard time in school. Girls like Carly Newton and her gaggle of bitches went out of their way to remind me that everyone thought I was a total head case.”

“Why did they think that?”

“Because Carly’s a goddamn snoop,” Roman said. “She went through my bag in gym once and struck gossip gold. She found my meds. And told everyone. And then everyone decided I must be a loony, because the high and mighty head cheerleader declared it so.”

Roman burned just remembering how Carly had cackled, waving around the fistful of antidepressants and antipsychotics Roman’s stupid parents made her take because she wouldn’t shut up about shards.

“You didn’t deserve that. A lot of people have issues.”

“Do a lot of people slit their wrists in the locker room shower after they get into a screaming match with their nemesis in front of the whole goddamn school? Because survey says, that’s unique to Lydia Roman.”

“Wow. What–?”

“If you’re the one person on planet Earth who didn’t know,” Roman rolled on, “Cheer Captain Carly – go Pumas! – was leading a pep rally, making all her who-cares announcements and snarky little jabs at the people the hierarchy deems unfit to suffer in silence. Even the teachers were laughing. Then, she got to me.”

“What–”

“Carly just wouldn’t shut up, Eddie. Really, I thought I was having one of those dreams where I woke up in hell. Except I don’t have nightmares. Except my life is a nightmare. Was. Is. I don’t even know anymore. But Carly kept going, and going, and going – then the next thing I knew I was up on the podium with her, screaming at her, cussing at her, calling her a cunt.”

“…wow.”

“Yeah. Like I actually called her that, in front of everyone, my teachers, the volunteer parents, the world. I’ve never used that word before. It’s gross. But that’s Carly Newton for you, bringing out the worst in everyone.”

“Then what happened?”

Roman borrowed one of those tortured not-a-laugh chuckles from her confessor. “Then, Eddie dear, Lydia Roman Lost Her Shit. That’s what everyone said. I don’t remember. I ran off. I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was crying so hard I threw up – all over my shirt. I ran into the locker room to clean up but I couldn’t stop. I realized this was my life, that this was never going to end. Because bullies love it when you lose your shit, and I gave them the gold standard: I went red alert, DEFCON one, nuclear fucking meltdown. So I smashed the mirror and I grabbed a piece of glass big enough to do the job and… I guess I even fucked that up because I woke up in the hospital with the rerun of my same shitty life. Hi, I’m Roman, nice to meet you.”

Click, she thought. Her eyes were wet. She willed her heart, ratcheting up to panic levels just reliving her train wreck to relax. Eddie was quiet for so long she checked to see if he really did hang up. Then, he sighed.

“I’m really sorry you went through all that. But how are you now?”

Roman laughed. “What?”

“I mean, because however bad all that was, you seem like you made it through OK. That’s good. It’s proof of how strong you are.”

Roman smiled at that. Truth – whatever else, she was a survivor. “I’m alright. I stayed in the psychiatric hospital for a year and a half, and I did an outpatient program for another year. I still check in with the Headshrinker once every two weeks but I’m off medication entirely. And you know, I’m not foaming at the mouth anymore.”

“That’s a good thing,” Eddie said. “How’s your headache?”

“Still sore, but less. I had an accident earlier.”

In the spirit of disclosure Roman told Eddie about the attack and the E.R. visit. She knew she skirted dangerous territory even bringing it up; she didn’t want to lie, but no way in hell was she going to start telling him about shards either. So why was she still rambling on, tempting a fate that thus far seemed disinclined to ever break in her favor? Mostly, she realized, she just didn’t want to hang up. Once she finished, Eddie asked the last question she expected.

“What did the girl look like?”

“Long dark hair, yellow shirt, kind of haggard. Shorter than me. I don’t know – I told you, I’ve never seen her before.”

“Did she have totally rank breath?”

“Eddie,” Roman said, swallowing hard. “You’re kind of freaking me out. Why–”

“Hold on.”

She waited. A minute later her phone buzzed. Roman gasped when she saw the photo.

“How did you get this? Who is she?” The girl in the picture looked less worn ragged and her clothes were different, but there was no mistaking Roman’s assailant. Except a phone couldn’t take a shard’s photo.

“You said she attacked you yesterday?”

“Yeah – it’s the sort of thing you don’t forget, having your head smashed into a wall by some random psycho!”

“Roman, that’s Deenie Drinkwater.” A pause, like the end of a good thing just begun. “Are you telling me you got attacked by a ghost?”

Roman flipped her middle finger at the ceiling, and if any power higher than that took notice she hoped they bit it hard for doing this to her. “I’m not saying anything.”

“So it wasn’t the girl in the photo?”

Roman grimaced. Asshole. She didn’t know if she meant him or her, but she wouldn’t start lying now. “Look, I know how it sounds. That’s why my parents put me on those stupid pills – which, by the way, never helped for one second. And I know nobody believes in ghosts, and I know it sounds stupid, and I know I sound crazy. But I’m not crazy. And I’m not a liar.”

“Roman.”

“What.” She sniffled. Crying like a total freak show. Again.

“I believe you.”

“No, you’re just being nice because you’re afraid I’ll hurt myself if I think you don’t like me, or whatever.” Cue the hang up, cue the death of the tiny seed of hope Roman didn’t want to admit she’d been nursing. Cue the end of another sad little chapter of ‘The Tragic Tale of Lydia Roman, the Girl who Lost Her Marbles’.

But Eddie didn’t hang up. Instead he said, “I’ve seen Deenie too. She’s been haunting me for years.”

~

After staying up all night discussing shards Roman walked on zombie feet. She shuffled through the steps of the endless dance with her mother, drifted through her two classes, then shambled to the cafeteria to meet up with Eddie; while the Notorious Kid Hooker hadn’t realized shards besides Deenie existed, Marlon’s dead sister had been making his life a living hell ever since his father left the position vacant.

Deenie had never outright attacked him, which made Roman wonder if she had only recently become strong enough to do so. Only, that didn’t fit with anything she knew about shards. Some were strong – bigger fragments became more durable spiritual presences, Roman supposed, but none of the shards she’d cataloged over the years ever changed.

So what the hell? Was Deenie the most complete shard Roman had ever encountered, or had she always been capable of attacking someone and something about Roman triggered her extreme reaction? Or had the whole game changed? Were all the other shards able to behave more purposefully? And why?

A million questions, but no answers. Roman sighed. She felt like a shard herself, missing some essential piece of the whole. Bugger.

When she got home Roman found a note from her mother: her parents had gone to dinner, and sustenance could be gleaned from the fridge via the microwave – farm to table! – and mush and blah. Roman breathed a sigh of relief that she could for the moment exist without being forced to justify her every idle expression and flopped down on her bed. Peace.

Lovely as it was, the armistice in the ongoing battle of wills quickly grew boring. Her roaming eye fell upon ‘Speaking with the Dead,’ the book all but forgotten in the chaos her life had become since she bought it. She flipped through its pages and saw a number of familiar methods to set a mood, meditation tricks to get her mind into a properly receptive state, and so on.

“But where’s the good stuff,” she muttered, ignoring the appetizers as she looked for the meat. Halfway in, she speared a juicy bite.

The core of ‘Speaking with the Dead’ centered around three different ways of doing just that. The first required a Ouija board, a tool of the occult trade Roman didn’t possess since her mother ‘created a healing atmosphere’ – by throwing out all Roman’s cool shit – while darling daughter was in the loony bin. The second achieved the same result using tarot cards, which had been spared in the Great Bedroom Raid, and the book’s third method was something called ‘Blood Transfixion,’ which Roman had never heard of.

“Oh, hell no,” she said as she looked through the gruesome diagrams. She’d seen more than enough of her own vital fluid splashed about during her short stay upon the mortal coil, so she pulled out her tarot cards.

‘Speaking with the Dead’ employed a spread called ‘the Gate,’ unfamiliar but simple enough with a handy drawing on the opposing page. Roman shuffled her cards, sat on the floor, and cracked her knuckles. She laid out nine cards face down in a ring, then lay four more in an X across the center: a summoning circle of thirteen cards, thirteen influences.

The four central cards – the Manacle – were the keys by which the spirit she called up would be bound. Roman turned over the first card, unsurprised to see the Fool.

“Sounds about right,” she chuckled, though she couldn’t help but wonder whether she was still just playing around. Knowing what she knew about shards, she had a hard time brushing this off as a mere parlor game.

But, the Fool represented more than simple stupidity. The card called to mind a readiness to take risks, among other things. She flipped the second card.

Prince of Wands: intensity, blossoming love, revealing secrets, out of darkness into light. She flipped the third.

Sorrow: lack of clarity, tension in a three-sided relationship, the need for clear, unequivocal decision-making.

So be it. Roman turned over the fourth card as she spoke Deenie’s name and held an image of the dead girl in her mind.

Ruin.

Roman shivered. The last card she wanted to see. Ruin represented lots of things, none of them good. Broken hearts. Shattered dreams. The destructive potential of unvented rage. Insanity. Roman’s card if ever there’d been one –

She shivered again. Why was her room so goddamn cold all of a sudden? She rose to grab her sweater and caught a whiff of sewers and sour milk. She froze, then very slowly turned around. Roman screamed.

Deenie stood in the circle of cards looking like she’d just skipped over from her car wreck. Her skin and clothes were scorched, her neck obviously broken, half her face gone. Her eyes flared when they met Roman’s, two little pockets of an abyss no living being could imagine. Deenie lunged.

Roman sprang back onto her bed. Deenie screeched when she slammed into an invisible wall – the Manacle held her, but the fact that a few tarot cards could keep a wrathful ghost at bay barely pinged on Roman’s awareness. She’d summoned a shard!

“I’m really not crazy,” she whispered. Her words made a frosty vapor cloud.

Deenie hammered on the barrier several more times, then seemed to exhaust her ghostly self. She ceased, and instead focused all her energy into the hateful daggers she glared at her captor.

“If looks could kill, huh?” Roman snorted. “Hi, Deenie. So, you’re probably wondering why I called. Well, Eddie–”

The shard howled, a curious blend of outrage and anguish. She threw herself at the barrier with such force that Roman took a step back. Once Deenie wore herself out, Roman sighed.

“You seem like an angry chick. I get it. My bunkie in the ding wing was too. They called it an intermittent explosive disorder. But like she told me, the psycho bitch act only goes so far.”

“Understaaand,” Deenie breathed.

The stench in the room redoubled. Roman gagged. The girl needed a toothbrush in the worst way, but first she had to get the shard to stop trying to kill her. Baby steps.

“Talk to me. What do you want me to understand?”

“Killyou. Tellim.” Deenie’s words came out in spasms, as if it took her tremendous effort not to scream.

“Tell him what? That you want to kill me? I think we’ve established that much.”

“Tellimiknow! KillerkillerkillerKILLER!”

And we were shrieking again. Roman ignored the girl’s fit. “Eddie’s a killer?”

Deenie stared at her as if Roman’s brain was a bowl of mashed potatoes. The shard spoke again, her words falling to such a low register that Roman could hardly hear them. She leaned in, careful to stay out of grabbing range.

“He. Kill. You. He. Killed. Me.”

“You didn’t commit suicide?”

Then Deenie pulled a Lydia Roman and totally lost her shit.

The shard moved in a blur. Roman watched in slow motion, every moment taking an eternity. One broken, gnarled claw snatched up her bedside lamp. Before Roman could so much as blink Deenie tore the cord off and pitched the lamp aside. It exploded against her wall, but Roman swam through molasses. Her hands rose up to fend off the attack, a million pounds apiece. Her arms were wet noodles.

“Tellim!”

Deenie whipped the lamp cord towards her. Roman ducked, too slow. The cord wrapped around her throat just under her chin. Who was this shard, Indiana Jones? That was her last thought before her air vanished. Deenie shrieked as she garrotted Roman. Roman clawed at the cord but her captor jerked her close enough to grab hold of. Roman’s bones turned to ice as she was drawn into the circle. From far away she could hear many, many voices screaming.

She struck Deenie in the face with all the effect of slapping at a bear trap. The shard’s fingers dug in, burning her flesh as if she were made of liquid nitrogen. Roman’s vision blurred as she strangled. She got a finger under the thin strip of rubber and copper stealing away her life.

She managed a sip of air, then the strength to raise her arms fled from her. She was going, but not into the light. The screaming grew louder. Eager. Roman put all her force of will into one last act of defiance. Her mighty kick came as no more than a leg spasm, an awkward teenager’s fledgling dance move under the merciless regard of her peers.

Black dots swam in front of her face, then the pressure relented in one fell swoop. Roman fell. She sucked in a huge gulp of air and promptly threw up. She cringed, but no further assault came. Blinking away her tears she saw no sign of Deenie Drinkwater.

As her chest heaved, Roman saw her foot had come down on the Gate cards, scattering them. She grimaced at the mess soaking into her clothes, but she retained the presence of mind to offer the bird to the book laying on her bed.

“That little nugget wasn’t worth mentioning, huh?” Roman laughed, then winced at the broken glass inside her neck.

Still she was glad to be alive, another first. She threw her soiled clothes in the laundry hamper and took a steaming shower to dispel the chill still riding her bones. She sipped cool water afterwards, but could only swallow a thimbleful at a time. Only once she felt halfway sane did she dare to look in the mirror.

God. Damn. Fuck.

Roman just shook her head. Deenie hadn’t killed her, but her parents would. She could already hear them commiserating as they packed her back off to the nuthouse after they saw the dark purple bruises encircling her throat and her bloodshot eyes. ‘College was just too much for Darling Dear – she’s totally crackers, you know.’

As if Roman had enacted another summoning spell, the front door slammed open at that cheery thought. Roman rushed to shut off the bathroom light. She flung dirty clothes from her hamper over the mess on the floor and dove under her covers. The warden’s footsteps came down the hall. Roman feigned sleep. Too late, she realized the broken lamp in the corner would cook her ruse’s goose.

“Honey, we’re home.”

The door creaked open. Thankfully the Inquisitor didn’t rouse her for interrogation. Once Roman’s mother closed the bedroom door she cleaned up the evidence as quietly as possible. She packed the broken lamp and the glass into her backpack to throw away tomorrow, then went to sleep.

The next morning the radio made the glorious announcement that it was cold as hell outside with slim chance of getting less nasty. Roman happily bundled up in layers, wound a scarf around her throat, and trooped downstairs for breakfast before even being called. She put on a big dope grin that her mother ate up.

“Morning, sunshine,” Cecelia beamed.

“Hey, mom,” Roman croaked. Damn – she’d forgotten. Predictably her mother freaked.

“Oh my God – are you sick?” She pressed a damp hand to Roman’s forehead and made her squirm. “You don’t have a fever. How do you feel? I hope it’s not strep. Oh, dear. Well – there’s no way you’re going to school like that.”

Roman struggled not to show her agony as she spoke. Every word was a hot knife. “Really. Mom. I’m fine. Just a. Sore throat. I’ll live.”

Her mother looked dubious. “I’m making you a thermos of lemon tea and honey. And if you start feeling even the slightest bit crummy you call me right away, and I’ll pick you up. You can afford to miss a class or two if it means not running yourself ragged. And I’m sure your classmates will appreciate you not spreading whatever bug you’ve got – oh my God.”

Her mother’s scrutiny ratcheted up about a hundred levels. “It isn’t mono, is it? Have you been sharing sodas? Or… kissing?”

“Mom!” Roman wriggled free from the searchlight that nailed her as she ran for the barbed wire fence. Bloodhounds howled in the distance, so she made her exit before her mother got it in mind to check under her scarf for hickies. At least she’d been too distracted to bring up the lamp.

Roman chucked the evidence in the dumpster by Ralph’s, then hopped on the bus. Nobody gave her a second look, and the shard across the aisle from her didn’t so much as look up from his book when she slumped six feet from him.

“You know, you folks really need to learn to use your words,” she ribbetted.

The long-dead student furrowed his brow and put a finger to his lips. Roman rolled her eyes.

“Right, because you think you’re in a library.”

At school she noted several potential shards but none were her tormentor. She headed off to Abnormal Psych, thinking she might have the world’s best topic for a final essay: ‘dead people want to kill me, and living people think I want to die; what mental illness am I?’

She sat in the back taking notes. For a moment her life seemed to be slipping back onto a normal track, then of all the childish things a paper airplane landed on her desk. Roman looked around for the jokester. She blinked when she saw Surfer Dude sitting by the door. He grinned.

Roman blushed. Had he been here on Monday too? He pantomimed unfolding the paper. She did, and inside she found a note.

‘Hello Lydia.

Been thinking of you. Want to get to know you better. Maybe dinner?

Unless you have something else you’d like me to eat.

Just playing. Or am I?

Tell me something I want to hear.

Adam’

Roman found the note, crude as it was, impossible to dismiss. Never in a million years would she believe she’d have a chance to describe herself as titillated, yet here they were. She knew her cheeks were burning but she looked back up at Surfer Dude. At Adam.

She scribbled her number on the paper before she could change her mind and folded it back up. She tried to fly it back to her mystery guy but it curved to hit a girl in the next row in the back of the head. She turned, giving Roman a dirty look. Adam leaned over and whispered something to her. The girl laughed, then pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders.

Adam retrieved the note. He read it, then frowned. He gave her a mysterious guy smile, quirked an eyebrow, and slipped out the door.

Roman snorted. She toyed with the idea of following but she wasn’t ready to cut classes for cute smiles. Screw it – didn’t absence make the heart grow fonder? It was about time someone grew fonder of her. Suck it, Dr. Burdick.

After class Roman didn’t see Adam anywhere. Her heart jumped when her phone buzzed. She checked, then made a face. Just Eddie.

“Yeah?” She growled in her choked-out corpse voice.

“Roman? What’s the matter?”

“I’m peachy,” she said, then giggled even though it felt like she was gargling razors. “What’s up?”

“I’m at the library. Where are you?”

Shit. She’d forgotten. Their plan was doubly important now that she had all kinds of new information to tell him. Surfer Dude strikes again – damn that distracting smile. She was already halfway to the bus stop.

She hustled to the library where Eddie took one look at her and flipped. He badgered her into a full confession of her experiment, as if he’d gone to the School of Doting Mothers. While she gritted her way through her explanation, he kept shaking his head. Roman found it annoying, and dumb, and condescending as all hell. Then the Notorious Kid Hooker made a play for Asshole of the Year.

“That was really, really stupid, Roman.”

“Who are you telling,” she croaked.

“No, I mean it – what the fuck were you thinking?”

“Are you actually mad at me? I’m the one who got hurt!” 

“I should have been there.”

“In my room in the middle of the night? You wish.”

“I didn’t mean it like that–”

“So now you’re pretending to not be all possessive of me? I’m not your girlfriend, dude.”

Eddie sighed. “I know that. I just want to watch out for you.”

“I can take care of myself, Eddie Hooker – but thanks for assuming I’m just a pathetic mess!” Ugh. Was there anyone on this planet who didn’t feel the need to be up in Roman’s business twenty-four seven?

Eddie appropriated a Lydia Roman eye roll. ” Are we going to do this or what?”

In the dead of night, looking up records to identify the other shards Roman saw most often had sounded like a good idea. Now it just sounded childish, the bright idea of a lonely loser with a head wound. And Roman was tired, and sore, and Eddie’s kicked-puppy expression grated on her last nerve. Screw it.

“You know what, you go ahead and knock yourself out,” Roman rasped. “I never had any problem with shards until I met you, so maybe this is all your fault. Say hi to Deenie for me.”

Eddie’s dumb mouth hung open as she walked away. Maybe it was a bitch move to stomp on him like that but Roman had left her tact in the laundry hamper today. He wasn’t a bad guy, but if she wanted to subject herself to a guy’s hormonal attention she would prefer it was Adam – at least he made no bones about his motivations.

So, she left him standing there. She ignored his texts when they came, smothering under the weight of everything people were shoveling on top of her. Roman similarly had no patience for nattering mothers, so she headed for the park next to the college to clear her head.

In spite of the sun the mercury barely topped forty degrees. The blowing wind made it feel like thirty. She shivered even in her heavy coat, tuque, and scarf. Resolute in her chosen course, Roman wrapped her arms around herself and wished for ducks.

As far back as she could remember Roman always loved ducks. They were pure joy. They were soft and cute, they made their funny little sounds – quaaack! – and ducks never, ever judged her. Ducks didn’t fret over Roman’s difficulties at making friends, or harp on her because she didn’t smile ‘like she used to,’ or give her grief about her clothes, her attitude, her habits, her damned tone.

Nope. Ducks just quacked around, puffed up their feathers, and went about their lives. They took little bird baths, they ate bread from your hand, and generally did nothing to make Roman feel like a bitched-out freak of nature.

But of course today was too cold for ducks, so the freak sat by herself freezing her ass off with her hands shoved deep in her pockets because everywhere she could go would have someone asking dumb, nosy questions she couldn’t answer even if she wanted to. Not having anyone breathing down her neck was sweet enough to brave a little wind.

Right on cue her phone buzzed. She sighed, her breath visible in the frigid air. Eddie. Again. She thumbed through his texts: sorry, just want to know you’re OK, can we talk, blah, blah, and fucking blah.

“If I wanted to talk I’d text you back, dummy – hur hur hur.” Roman’s mocking sent her into a coughing fit. She probably deserved it.

“Who are you talking to?” Roman jumped at the voice.

She turned, then cringed. Adam. Stalking her again? And he’d caught her doing a stupid voice, sitting alone in a park yukking it up like an idiot. Lovely.

“You could have called.” She glared. Rather than being mad, she found it thrilling to be… pursued. She could count on her fingers how many times any guy showed real interest in her and still have a whole hand to spare.

“I don’t use the telephone.”

“I mean text, you weirdo.”

Adam frowned. Then he raised an eyebrow. “You look frozen.”

At least he hadn’t asked if she was sick. Roman grinned. Her teeth chattered. “It’s nice out.”

“Lydia – your lips are blue.”

She shivered. “Why do you call me that?”

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“I go by Roman.”

“Lydia’s a beautiful name. Like you are.”

“It’s just so… Beetlejuice-y. I hate it.”

“Beetle juicy?”

“You know, from the movie.”

“A film? I don’t go to the cinema.”

“Cinema? What are you, a hundred? And by the way, you look like a popsicle too.”

Adam grinned. He grabbed her hand and squeezed. Even through her glove it was cold – and this goof wasn’t even wearing any.

“What, do you have liquid nitrogen in your veins?”

“Maybe you could warm me up.”

“I was wondering where Mr. Pick-Up Line had snuck off to,” Roman snorted. “So, Adam. Why are you following me? Not that I’m complaining. It’s just… not what I’m used to.”

“From the moment I saw you, I had to have you.”

Roman blinked. “Just like that?” Was this still flirting, or had they turned down Serious Street?

“Just. Like. That.” He smiled, his eyes a million miles away. He reached up to brush a dark lock of her hair that had slipped free from her tuque out of her face. “Lydia. You are… perfect.”

Roman’s heart fluttered. A teeny, tiny voice in the furthest reaches of her mind whispered that this was a little weird, a little too good to be true. The voice sounded a lot like Carly Newton, so Roman told the bitch to kick rocks.

“So,” she said. He was still staring at her. “I believe you offered to take me to dinner?”

“Anything you want,” Adam whispered. He leaned in for a kiss. Alarm bells rang.

“Whoa, stud – I’m not that kind of girl,” she said. She kicked herself because she had nothing against it, he’d just startled her. Then he grabbed her wrist. Hard.

“Lydia, you’re whatever kind of girl I say you are.”

And cue the curtains. “Let go. Now.”

“A saint on a pedestal,” he said, his fingers digging into her arm. “A sinner on your knees. A filthy, rutting whore in the mud–”

“Let go!” Roman slapped him across the face. His grip was a vise. “Help!”

“I’ll. Never. Let. You. Go.” Adam ran a finger down her cheek. His touch burned. She screamed.

“You leave that young lady alone, you hear me?” An older woman appeared by the duck pond like an answer to Roman’s prayers. She stood with her hands on her hips, giving Adam the death stare. “I’ll call the police!”

Adam sneered. He stood, yanking Roman towards him. His voice cut her like a jagged knife. “When I want you, I’ll take you. And when I’m done with you, I’ll throw you away like the trash you are, Lydia.”

He shoved her and Roman went sprawling on the icy slick ground. She watched the bastard walk down a bike path whistling, then disappear behind into the trees.

“Are you alright, dear?” The old woman helped Roman to her feet. Her hands were ice cubes even through her mittens. Roman felt numb where she wasn’t frozen. Definitely not a good day for ducks.

“I’m fine.” She sniffled, probably not from the cold.

“Don’t fret now. He’s just dust in the wind. Do you live around here?”

Roman shook her head. All she wanted to do was shower. Or curl up and die. She’d felt just this way after she walked out of the pep rally. Even after all her therapy and treatments, another creep managed to tap into her most primal fears and lay them bare. To humiliate her, and make her feel like nothing. And she thought she’d come so far.

Roman assured the woman she was fine and ran off towards the bus stop. Once ensconced within the bus’s warm confines feeling returned to her limbs and her face, except where Adam touched her. The ache refused to relent, and the bus window offered her a dismaying reflection: an ugly purple bruise just beginning to bloom.

God. Damn. Fuck. Couldn’t cover that up with a scarf. Roman rolled up her sleeve and hissed. Livid marks where Adam grabbed her covered her wrist.

Roman groaned. Her mother would never believe anything she said, lie or truth. Roman looked like she’d just fled for a domestic abuse shelter, and the ring around her neck promised to land her back in the ding wing.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, then kicked the seat in front of her. Nobody was ever on her side. Nobody ever listened to her. Why were people all such assholes? And Adam won Jerk of the Year. Roman shuddered – his words made her feel dirty inside.

A whore in the mud? What the fuck was that about? The guy was a sicko, twisted, a total freak show–

Her phone buzzed. Roman flinched, but she doubted it would be Adam. God, how stupid was she to give that psycho her number? She breathed once she saw it was just Eddie again.

Eddie! Roman really was an idiot. She ignored his text and called him. He answered on the first ring.

“Roman, what–”

“Eddie, shut up.” He did. “I need help.”

~

Roman snuck into her house like a ninja, in and out before anyone realized she’d struck. Once she hopped back on the bus with her stuff she texted her cover story to her mom: feeling a hundred percent better, and –miracle of miracles – she had a date! Roman then promptly ignored the firestorm of questions her proclamation ignited.

Eddie met her at the bus stop by the college. He gasped when he saw her face.

“Jesus – what happened to you?”

“Just Roman here,” she croaked. Eddie scowled. She sighed. “Like I said, just some bullshit. This guy –”

“Whoa, some dude beat you up? Who is he?”

Roman bit down on a flare of annoyance. “Look – I need a friend right now, not some macho douche. I’m scared.”

“OK. Tell me what happened.”

She did as they walked. After Roman finished Eddie just stared at her. She felt like a jerk but what else was new. She studied her feet as she groped for something not shitty to say.

“I didn’t mean to give you mixed messages. I didn’t plan to go out with him. It just happened.”

“I don’t care who you go out with,” Eddie said, only twisting the knife in a different direction. “But you said his name is Adam?”

“Yeah, why?”

“After you left I did some research. Roman, I think you’re in real danger.”

“Who are you telling? He practically –”

“Roman.” Eddie opened the folder he had under his arm. He showed her a grainy black and white photo. “Tell me this isn’t the guy.”

The crap quality didn’t matter – after today, she’d recognize that smirk anywhere. “I really, really want to. But…”

“Shit.”

Roman jabbed him in the ribs. “What the hell is going on?”

“So, I haven’t been a hundred percent honest with you.” Roman waited, giving Eddie doom eyes. They turned down a street to some less than reputable neighborhood, but all her focus was on him.

“I read Deenie’s autopsy report again. I still have it, but I haven’t looked at it since all the court stuff got dropped.”

“Oh my God, rip the fucking band-aid off already.”

“The coroner basically says her injuries were consistent with being inside a car that took a hundred foot plunge, then caught on fire. But.” He took a breath and continued before Roman could strangle him like an angry shard. “There’s a note in the margin. It just says ‘hyoid?’ That’s a tiny bone in your throat, and hers was broken.”

“And I guess that doesn’t happen in car wrecks?”

“Not so much, but it’s the hallmark of being choked to death.”

Roman frowned. “So someone killed her before she crashed?”

“That’s what it suggests, at least to me.”

“That’s a pretty big difference, Eddie! That’s murder – but they never brought it up?”

“It didn’t fit their theory of the crime. They knew I was nowhere near her before she died. If they said someone murdered her, they’d have to look at someone else.”

“God forbid they do their jobs.” The police had never gone out of their way to do Roman any favors either, and they’d been integral to her being committed against her will to the psychiatric hospital – a danger to herself, don’t ya know.

Roman pondered the implications, then touched her throat. “I guess she did try to tell me, in her own way.”

“Right. So, I looked up other cases of girls committing suicide.”

“As one does.”

“With more than one suspicious look from the nosy librarian, believe me. And I found… a depressingly huge number of them. But once I narrowed it down to girls around high school or college age who died in ways that could mask their cause of death, I saw a pattern. Assuming whoever killed Deenie had other victims he strangled too.”

“That’s a big leap, Mr. Criminal Minds. But don’t keep me in suspense.”

“This is me.” Eddie let them into a dumpy little apartment that looked worn but well cared for inside. Everything was cheap but clean, nothing fancy but nothing trashy. Roman liked it.

He plunked his folder down on the kitchen table and started to spread out stacks of articles. Roman’s heart sank. “Dude, there’s like a million articles here.”

“…yeah. And this is just back to the late fifties. I got as many as I could before the librarian refused to do anymore. But it’s more than enough to illustrate my theory.”

Roman stared at the pictures. So many of them… “Your theory, that someone’s been murdering girls and covering up their deaths with fake suicides?”

“Dark haired white girls with troubled pasts, yeah.”

“For sixty years.”

“Yeah. And not someone – this guy.” Roman shook her head as Eddie tapped the photo.

“That’s nuts. Adam isn’t… like, ninety years old!”

“Sure he is – meet Adam Wheeler, born in Santa Cruz, California right before World War II. He got shot in Vietnam – he’s a shard, Roman.”

“No way. I’d know –” Roman thought of his cold hands, the bruises, the ‘cinema.’ He didn’t use a telephone. Everyone had a phone. But a ghost wouldn’t, just like a ghost wouldn’t have seen a movie that came out decades after their death. Like Beetlejuice.

“I… am totally fucked.”

“Well, it isn’t great. But I’ve got your back. And now that we know, we can make a plan.”

“Wait – so you think this guy, Adam, was a serial killer and just never got caught?”

“Well, there’s no TV specials about him, and if I’m even halfway right he murdered way more people than Ted Bundy.”

“How is that even possible?”

“We’re talking about a lifetime ago, Roman. They didn’t have our technology, or our psychological insights, or our obsession with ‘true crime.’ And even if they did, the suspect’s been dead for most of his criminal career.”

“Too freaky. How many of these girls do you think –?”

Eddie shook his head. “Only God knows, really. But there’s a lot of reasons to be suspicious here. There’s other car crashes like Deenie’s, fires where houses or dorm rooms burnt up with someone inside, even a couple who poured gasoline on themselves. I mean, who does that?”

“Those monks protesting the war,” Roman said. “I bet it was the same time, wasn’t it?”

“Three in a row, right after. Some inspiration.”

“He is… ” Roman shivered, chasing away the memory of his touch. “I believe it. I don’t know how it’s possible, or why. But I believe he could do anything.”

“So – what do we do about it?”

Roman studied the swath of articles. Eddie’s research showed a trail of death and misery stretching from its origin point – Santa Cruz, in 1958 – across the country in an arc like a reaper’s scythe. The blade petered out just west of Racine, Wisconsin about six months ago. 

“Until today I didn’t know a shard could think, or… travel the damn world murdering and doing God knows what else to people. And I have no idea how to kill one.”

“Well, shit. Nice knowing you, then.”

Roman stared at him. “What happened to ‘I’ve got your back’? You asshole–”

Eddie laughed. “Relax – sorry, bad time to try to cut up. Do you really think I would have dropped all this on you if I didn’t have an idea?”

“I’m dying to hear it before I’m just dying, Kid Hooker.”

“You brought the book, right?”

Roman snorted. “I don’t think a few Tarot cards are going to phase Sir Killsalot. Adam’s shard is so strong he’s practically a whole person.”

“Forget the cards – what about the serious one, with the needles?”

Roman made a face. “‘Blood Transfixion?'” She pulled out the book and opened it to display the diagrams. The sketches depicted a human body with its arms and legs outstretched in an X. Each limb had a series of long needles driven into its joints, pinning it to the floor in a circle the book recommended one draw in human blood.

“Yeah, I’m not doing that, Eddie.”

The whole thing was crazy – ‘Speaking with the Dead’ claimed the Blood Transfixion ritual could summon the spirit and trap it within the pinned person’s own body, allowing the caller to speak directly to the shard without it manifesting a physical presence. In theory it was the safest method of making contact, supposing one could take the pain. But…

But for what purpose? To pit her will against a dead serial killer’s desire to hold on to his wicked existence from beyond the grave? To assert her dominance, and make him wary of messing with her? Maybe that would work on a shard like Puma Pride, but against Adam Wheeler? No way.

“We’re both survivors,” Eddie said. “We get our hands dirty. Yeah, it’s nuts, but together we can beat this motherfu–”

“Please, just stop.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Besides everything?” Roman scoffed. “Eddie – under no circumstances is anyone turning me into a human pincushion to imprison some pervert sadist psycho’s ghost in my body.  Not if you paid me a billion dollars. Not if you could fart Beethoven.”

“What about Bach?”

Roman laughed. She punched him in the arm. “Still no.”

“What about if it was me?”

“What? Hell no, Eddie. It’s too dangerous. Adam’s too powerful. He could kill both of us.”

“If we don’t stop him, he’ll keep coming after you.”

Eddie trailed his fingers over the pages of photos, the young women Adam Wheeler had probably tortured and murdered on his cross-country trip from hell. Dangerous as this mad plan was, Roman held no illusions that the son of a bitch would forget about her. What if she did nothing? How long until her face joined that ghastly line up? Would she end up like Deenie, some mind-shattered shard shrieking about vengeance and reliving her death over and over for eternity?

Fuck that. Roman met Eddie’s eyes. She saw resolve there, but also something else. Hope? Desperation? Fear? All of the above? Eddie had lived under the shadow of Deenie’s death for years. Did he see this as his last chance for redemption?

“Are you sure?” Roman asked. “I’m as green as you are. Even if we did imprison him, then what?”

Eddie grinned. “He’s an arrogant prick. Take him down a few pegs.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Tell him what a coward he is, how pathetic he is, how impotent. Find his buttons and push them until he snaps.”

“You mean until he pulls a Lydia Roman and absolutely loses his shit?” Roman smiled at that. “But won’t that just make him even more determined to destroy me?”

“This guy is just like a bully, only worse. If you embarrass him, shame him, show him you’re not afraid of him, he’ll lose his power over you. If Adam can’t terrorize you he’ll slink off to whatever rock he crawled out from under. Maybe it will even stop him from hurting other people.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

“Then… we’ll be about as screwed as we are right now. Or we’ll be dead and it won’t matter.” Eddie gave her a weak smile. “It’s up to you, Roman. I just know Wheeler could come for you at any time and – I don’t want to lose you. Especially not to a knob like that.”

Roman grimaced, but she felt the same way. “I guess we should go hunting for some needles.”

“Actually, I have that covered.” Eddie opened a cabinet and pulled out a small wooden box. Inside were a hundred or so acupuncture needles, so thin and sharp their points were nearly invisible.

“You just happened to have these laying around?”

“I got them at the flea market a few years ago. When I was kicking those pain pills I tried every kind of alternative medicine you can imagine, but only cold turkey worked.”

She touched one and it stuck in the tip of her finger. “And you’re really going to stick these in yourself?”

“Hell no – you’re going to stick them in me.”

Roman blanched. “I don’t know the first thing about acupuncture!”

“You think I do? Why do you think I gave it up – it hurts like hell when you do it wrong.”

“Eddie!”

“Just follow the diagrams, Roman. Do you want to do it here?”

“In your kitchen?”

“You’re right – inviting a ghost to possess you is really more of a dining room thing.”

“Don’t be so flip!”

“Sorry. I’m scared.”

“Me too.”

They cleared a space on the kitchen floor. Eddie took off his shirt and pants, shivering in only his boxers and a tank top. He laid down on the linoleum and stretched into an X. Roman knelt over him with the first needle.

“This is insane.”

“Totally,” he agreed.

“This is for luck,” she said, then darted in to kiss him. Before he could react she thrust the needle through his wrist.

“I’m sorry. It has to go all the way through.”

He clenched his teeth and nodded. Roman forced the steel point out of the back of his wrist until it touched the floor. A thin trickle of blood ran down to pool beneath it.

Eddie groaned. “Thirteen to go.”

Both wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Both hips, knees, and ankles. And one on either side of his throat. Whatever else, Eddie was tough. Roman kissed his sweaty forehead once the last needle hit home but he didn’t open his eyes. His breathing came slow and even. He looked pale, his waxy skin sheened in perspiration. Tiny pools of blood gathered at the end of every needle.

“Are you still with me?”

“A hundred percent,” he whispered. Roman wiped the tears beading at the corners of his eyes. Her nerves were frayed. She’d made a bloody mess and she was horrified at how much she’d hurt him.

God. Damn. Fuck.

“Make the circle,” Eddie wheezed.

Roman dabbed her fingers in one of the pools. She drew a ring around his still form, stepping out of the ward as she completed it. She envisioned her target and began to chant.

“Adam Wheeler. Adam Wheeler. Adam Wheeler.”

The temperature in Eddie’s kitchen dropped. Their breath made frosty plumes. Roman’s teeth chattered as she kept up her mantra.

“Adam Wheeler. Adam Wheel–”

“What do you want, you bitch!” Eddie’s mouth distended, his voice alien and sounding as if it echoed off the caverns of hell. His neck creaked as his head twisted to look at her. When his eyes opened they had become full black.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Eddie’s body twitched. More blood leaked from the punctures but he stayed pinned like a butterfly on a corkboard. Roman took a deep breath.

“Fight him, Eddie!” Eddie’s whole body rippled like a pond someone threw a stone into. The chill in the air made Roman’s bones ache.

“I… Will… Ruin… You… Lydia…”

“You’re a real shit, Adam Wheeler!” Roman yelled. His unearthly threats ceased at once. The full weight of his void stare fixed on her.

“Do you hurt girls because you’re such a creep that no woman can stand to be around you? Or just because you hate your mother?”

Adam screeched. Take that, Abnormal Psych!

“Oh, does that make you angry? Well, guess what, cool guy – you can’t do a goddamn thing about –

Adam roared. He tore Eddie’s right arm free with such force that Roman heard the wrist snap. Heedless of pain, the limp hand clawed at the needles pinning his neck. Roman’s mind reeled over an endless chasm of panic.

“Fight him, Eddie Hooker! He’s no tougher than Marlon–”

“You. Dumb. Bitch.”

Icy wind brushed the back of Roman’s neck, bringing along the stench of rotting chum and dead teeth. Deenie snatched Roman by the hair and flung her aside like a paper doll. Her vision blurred as her head smacked into the oven door.

Roman watched in slow motion as Adam in Eddie’s body sat up, ripping half the needles free. His eyes went wide when he saw Deenie, but the shard grabbed a butcher knife from the chopping block and plunged it into his back. Roman screamed. Deenie ignored her, the crimson blade pistoning up and down with savage ferocity. Roman lunged at her but Deenie knocked her sprawling with an elbow.

The last thing Roman saw was the smile on the shard’s ruined face as she buried the blade in the Notorious Kid Hooker’s heart.

~

Roman gasped, jerking up from where she lay on the couch. She wiped her eyes, pissed to be caught crying. Again.

“Lydia, how do you feel?” Dr. Sonya Burdick asked, scratching notes onto her clipboard.

“Like you’re one sick witch who just loves torturing me,” Roman snarked. “Why do we have to keep doing this?”

“The purpose of hypnotic regression is to get to the root of your delusions. I know it can be painful to relive your trauma time and again, but it’s important that you face the truth.”

Roman glared. “And what truth is that, doctor?”

Dr. Burdick sighed. “Lydia, we’ve been over this. Three years ago, remember?”

“Enlighten me.”

“You were under tremendous pressure to fulfill your parents’ expectations and you were suppressing your emotions. You suffered a psychotic break, and you murdered your friend Edward Hooker.”

“I did not! Deenie–”

“Deanna Drinkwater died in an automobile accident years before you say she came into Eddie’s apartment and killed him in front of you.”

“No, she killed Adam Wheeler! Dammit,” Roman said, her eyes watering anew. Nobody listened!

“Lydia.” Dr. Burdick of the Church of Ineffable Patience. Effing twit.

“Lydia, Adam Wheeler was killed by a Viet Cong sniper in Southeast Asia long before you were born. He wasn’t a serial murderer, just one of many young Americans drafted and tragically lost in the conflict. I did the research myself as part of your therapy.”

“As part of my sentence, you mean.”

“You were found not guilty by reason of insanity. That’s why the judge remanded you to the hospital instead of sending you to prison.”

“The Racine Institute for the Criminally Insane,” Roman scoffed.

“We call it Racine Behavioral Health now, Lydia.”

“Are we done here?”

“Why don’t you go back to your room? I’ll ask Dr. Ancharo to speak with you later.”

“Great, more pills not to take. I’m not crazy, goddammit!”

Roman stormed back down the hall to the ding wing. She flagged down Dennis and he unlocked her door. The orderly smiled, then the lock clicked behind her.

“Just holler if you need anything, Ms. Roman,” he said through the safety glass.

“How about I holler for a break from this goddamn nuthouse,” she muttered.

“Hey, Roman,” her roommate said. “How was your session?”

“Dr. Burdick still doesn’t believe a word I say.”

“Do you want me to go talk to her for you?”

Roman sighed. “No, Eddie. She’d just pull a Lydia Roman and completely lose her shit.”

Eddie grinned. “You look cold. Want to share the blanket?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

Roman snuggled up with the only shard she still saw, closed her eyes, and wished for ducks.