Chapter Three: September 8th, 2015

Johnathan McCreary has a secret. Well, he has quite a few. More than he has sons, and he has plenty of those.

The door to Johnathan McCreary’s house is wide open, blowing in the breeze. One of the boys has left it open again and gone running off somewhere without a care in the world for things like closing the door. Mikkel, probably. Out of the eight of them he’s the most careless.

                Johnathan laughs softly as he watches his third youngest son disappear down the driveway. Nineteen years old, and he still can’t remember to shut the damn door. Almost as quickly as Mikkel disappears, two more boys appear. Fowler and Thomas, coming home from school. Johnathan can see Fowler’s red shirt and Thomas’ white cane from a long ways away.

                “Thomas, watch out, Brandon parked his quad in the wrong place. It’s right in your way.” Fowler guides his older brother through the front yard to the house, letting him know if anything is where it shouldn’t be. It’s not that often that Fowler has to help Thomas. Thomas has long since memorized where every tree in the yard is, and since everyone’s supposed to put their stuff away in the same pace every time, usually he’ll be fine.

                Thomas cannot see. He never has and never will be able to see. People like to ask, with pity dripping from their lips, what it’s like to have a blind son. Johnathan will just stare at them and say nothing, letting the silence sink in.

                When Fowler comes inside, he tracks mud all over the basement floor. He kicks off his shoes and tosses his backpack across the room, nearly hitting Johnathan in the face. His hair sticks up when he pulls his toque off, making him look a little like a porcupine, albeit a very large one.

                “Hey, Pa. How’d your day go?” Fowler asks.

                Truth be told, Johnathan has spent most of his day sleeping. He works at the mine, four days on, four days off, and today was the first of his off days. “Great. I finally got some sleep for once. How was your first day of school?”

                Fowler and Johnathan head up to the kitchen, and Thomas heads to the bedroom he shares with Fowler. Johnathan’s wife Astrid is doing dishes while Henrik, another one of Johnathan’s sons, stirs a pot of something on the stove.

                When Astrid sees Fowler enter the room, she drops the plate she’s washing back in the sink and walks over to him to give him a hug and kiss his cheek. Fowler doesn’t resist, but he rolls his eyes and brushes soap bubbles off his shoulders as his mother goes back to the dishes.

                “I survived,” Fowler says, speaking of his day at school, “I managed to read through half of one of my course outlines before it all went to crap. And I met this really neat kid in the library. He can name every street in town off the top of his head!”

                Henrik snorts. “Because memorizing street names is interesting. Right.”

                “Yeah, whatever, Henrik. His name is Lyn Kayani, and he’s actually super interesting, whether Henrik thinks so or not.”

                Lyn Kayani. When he hears the sound of that name, Johnathan freezes. He knows the name Kayani like one knows an old and familiar song. But the first name is one he doesn’t recognize. And if Fowler met this boy at school, he must be Amar’s son. Somehow, someway, Johnathan hasn’t heard any talk of Amar having children or even getting married. And now his youngest son is spouting off about meeting a boy who cannot be anyone but Amar’s son.

                “I’m just saying that it’s sort of weird to memorize street names,” Henrik says.

                Fowler punches Henrik in the arm. “Shut up, you lug. Anyways, he seemed like a real lonely kind of kid. I asked him if he wanted to hang out or something, and he invited me to his house on Thursday. I can go, right?”

                “I don’t see why not.” Astrid takes a long look at Johnathan, and he knows he can’t say anything against her. She knows exactly why he might not want Fowler to go to Lyn Kayani’s house. She’s just made the choice to ignore it.

*****
The McCreary house sits on top of the highest hill on Greywatch Island. On the other side of the hill is a rocky Cliffside and then the sea. There’s a little spot past the end of the McCrearys’ yard where the trees break away, leaving an outlook point from which you can see for miles. It would make an excellent touristy spot, if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a favoured spot for suicides.

                When he was younger, Johnathan used to come up here and look out at the ocean when his mood turned foul. Watching the whirling waters below used to be so calming. He hasn’t been up here in twenty-five years. The last time was when he made the decision to leave for Norway, abandoning everything he ever knew and loved for the promise of a lucrative job.

                This is the kind of place where the whispers of the dead are rarely far away. There’s a lot of people who have died here, choosing death over life for fear that life will be less pleasant. Their voices creep now into Johnathan’s ears, faint words without meaning. Then, finally, one stands out clearly.

                “Johnny.”

Only one person ever called him Johnny.

                Jonah Stone is standing next to him when he turns his head. Of course, it’s not really Jonah. Jonah’s been dead for almost twenty years now. All that remains is his ghost, a figment of the past that still lingers in the world of the living. It makes sense that Jonah would be here. In a couple of weeks, it will have been exactly nineteen years since he jumped from this very cliff and died upon the rocks below.

                “Jonah,” Johnathan says. He should have said something else, but his throat caught the words before he could speak them. Even after all the time he’s known, speaking to the dead is still jarring.

                “You haven’t forgiven him yet.” Jonah’s talking about Amar. He has to be.

                “No, I haven’t.”

                Jonah stares straight at Johnathan, his dark brown eyes just as sad as they always used to be. “You’re an idiot, you know. It’s just stupid to still hold a grudge so deep that you get your pants in a twist just because your son wants to hang out with his.”

                “Jonah, you don’t know how it really was,” Johnathan grumbles.

                “I know exactly how it was. I knew from the very beginning. The two of you never did fool me.”

                Then Jonah turns his gaze away from Johnathan, and to something on Johnathan’s other side. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth as if to say something, but he makes no sound. When Johnathan turns to see what Jonah is looking at, his heart misses a beat, and the world seems to grow awfully silent.

                Looking back at them is Lenore, her hair blowing in the wind. The sun hitting it makes it look like fire. She doesn’t say anything, but instead steps towards Johnathan and takes his hand in hers. Lenore never did say much, but that simple gesture says enough.

                The sensation of touching a ghost is peculiar. It’s like touching air, like there’s nothing there at all, but at the same time it feels as though you really are touching something. If Johnathan wanted to, he could stick his hand right through Lenore’s, but he knows exactly where the air ends and she begins, so he doesn’t.

                To everyone but Johnathan, Lenore and Jonah are gone. There is nothing left of them to most people but memories and photographs and moments of grief. They have truly died in the hearts of many. They are worth a passing thought in people’s heads, perhaps nothing more. In death, they have been forgotten, just like almost every other

But for Johnathan, the dead are never really dead. Still they remain, pushing and pulling for access to the one man who can see and hear them. For as long as he can remember, Johnathan has spoken to and seen ghosts. They have whispered in his ears and tugged at his shirt sleeves since he was just a boy.

Very few people know. He told Amar once, but Amar didn’t believe him. Jonah knew, because when it came to secrets, Jonah always knew. Logan knew, but to be fair, Logan was a little strange too. Johnathan’s sons don’t know. Astrid knows all of Johnathan’s secrets but this one. Even now, the fact that he hasn’t told her tears at his insides, the guilt making him feel rotten, like a living corpse.

It’s a unique connection that as far as Johnathan knows, no one else has. The part of bridge between the worlds of living and dead was never one he wanted to play. He never seeks out ghosts, and blocks them from speaking to him with as much force as he can muster. All he wants is to just be a man, a living man, with no link to those who have passed.

But for someone like him, someone with a gift beyond comprehension, that’s nearly impossible. Both his life and the lives of the people he loves and has loved are too deeply linked to the kind of things that would send shivers down every man’s spine.

Author's Note

Anything goes.