8 - Alone & Afraid

I thought they were my friends.

Something cold and damning crawls along my veins, like sentient roots curling around my ankles, my arms, my throat. Choking the breath from my lungs.

Sam's story, I realise, is a tragic one. The townsfolk got that right, at least. If nothing else.

"Can you remember them?" I ask softly, not wanting to accidentally coax another tornado out of him.

Outside, dark clouds swirl angrily, sending a fine mist of raindrops spraying against the windows. A gale tears leaves off branches and sends them twirling malicious spirals into the bleak sky. Overall, it's the start of a miserable day, which seems very fitting.

Sam nods stiffly, his vague eyes liquid and far away. "There were five of us. Nathan and Emily, Angela, Ryan, and me. We grew up together— same neighbourhood, sleepovers every other weekend. We did all the group projects together for school. We... we were close." He sighs heavily and messes with his hands. There's a conflict in his eyes, as though he's balancing on the precarious line between speaking about his trauma and reliving it— a look I know uncomfortably well. "It's blurry, but I remember we had just finished our exams, and we had the whole summer to look forward to. We used to come up here a lot— it was a hangout spot for loads of kids, but we were the only ones here that day."

That day. The day he lost his life; the day he became stuck here, condemned to exist in solitude. A lump forms in my throat; words of assurance piled up, ready but useless. There's nothing I can say to make this easier for him.

No wonder he's so eager to speak with me. After decades of being alone, it must be a relief to be seen and heard.

"Someone shoved me down the stairs. And they... they left me to bleed out. They didn't call for help. I died alone and afraid, and I— now I'm stuck here, and they're free out there. It... it's not fair." Sam's voice goes hard, lined with fury, and a shadow passes over his features.

Every word he speaks is a fist at my throat squeezing relentlessly. Choking the air from my lungs. It takes hold of my anguish and twists it into rage.

"Tell me about them. Everything you can," I say, grabbing my notebook. "Last names, birthdays, where they lived— everything."

He does. It takes a while, and I can't tell if he's simply lost to tainted nostalgia or cannot recall the specifics. But eventually, we build up a map of his closest friends. The people who he trusted most in the world. One of them shoved him down the stairs, and the rest left him to bleed out.

I think it's fair if my opinion of them is a little tainted.

Angela Beckett— a fiery girl who spent her time at school either cheating on tests or avoiding them completely. According to Sam, she was the sort to copy your homework and hand it in earlier than you just to watch you squirm beneath the teacher's fury. The only lesson she attended religiously was food tech, and not (as I had guessed) to steal Sam's pasta salad and claim it as her own, but because she fancied herself a cordon bleu chef. A real charmer.

Nathan Hayes— your typical school heart throb. Obsessed with football and lifting weights and dominating every room he walked in by mere presence alone. The teachers loved him, the students loved him. He had his pick of the litter in terms of friends, but he settled for Sam's little group. Maybe because he felt he could dominate them, too. He wanted to join the army, like his dad. But apparently someone wasn't keen on that idea.

That someone being Emily Jenkins— a gentle, quiet girl whose pastimes involved studying until the early hours of the morning and resorting to artificial means to stay awake during tests if only to see that perfect grade. Her dad was a priest and she — being, according to Sam, a people pleaser — felt compelled to follow in his footsteps by burning herself out with never-ending studying. She was the top of the class in every class, and hence was the main subject of Angela's sticky fingers.

And finally, we have Ryan Hendricks— a quiet boy who kept to himself and the music room, where the others often found him composing or avoiding all responsibilities. He stuck to his friends like glue, in class, and was always asking for approval or permission. Once, he confided in Sam that he felt he didn't belong, to which Sam reminded him that none of them did, and that's why they were so close. The band of misfits clinging to the life jacket of one another to stay afloat.

"Alright," I say, appraising our list. We've got each person figured out, but their relationships with one another are blurry at best. And the information is decades old, given Sam is stuck in the past. "This is good. Were you close with them all, or was it a friend of a friend sort of situation?"

Sam, for some reason, looks rather alarmed at my unwavering interest. He cowers a little beneath my attention. The dim room makes his features, vague though they are, sharp and gaunt with shadows. His eyes — always the most visible part of him, like a light drawing my focus — are wide and stricken.

"You have to promise," he begins fervently, brows furrowed, smudgy expression overcast with worry, "to keep helping me, no matter what I tell you."

I frown. "Uh, yeah, that's the plan," I assure him, absently messing with the pen as I wait for his explanations.

"Even if— if you don't agree with what I tell you. You have to help me. Promise me." As he slides towards genuine fear, his voice takes on an echoing quality— as though he's suddenly speaking from inside a deep well.

In blinded panic, he grasps my wrist and a shock of ice jolts up my arm. His touch is corporeal now — the sort that raises the hairs on my arms, his misty, cool echo of a presence made manifest — and I have to suppress a shiver. The more I acknowledge him, the more insistent his presence becomes.

I hold his gaze. A difficult feat; it's like trying to look through a foggy window. A part of my brain isn't convinced he's here and does a hell of a job convincing the rest of me that he's a mere figment of my imagination. A bout of dizziness, a frame of something wrong.

But his touch is solid enough. And his fear is palpable.

"I promise."

He nods, releases me, and tells me softly, "It was just me, Nathan and Ryan, at first. Then Nathan and Emily started dating, and that's how we became friends with Angela, too. She was Emily's friend. But... Well, I preferred how things used to be, because... when Nathan met Emily, he— I don't know, changed. And I realised I liked him, and couldn't do anything about it."

He watches me closely— waiting for the blow. Waiting for taunts, or laughter, or possibly even anger.

"I liked him as... more than a friend," he says slowly, perhaps taking my silence as confusion. He shrinks in on himself.

"Okay," I say with a casual shrug, scribbling down a little note— a line between Sam and Nathan, and another between Nathan and Emily. "Did he know?"

"Of course not," Sam rushes out, looking horrified. "You— you can't just go round telling guys you like them!"

I pull a face as understanding dawns, uncomfortable though it is. Sam is from another time. A bleak time. "Ah. The nineties. Well, these days you like who you want to like, and you're not judged for it. Well, you shouldn't be."

He watches me with wide, doe-like eyes. Hope glistens like a candle's flame behind his gaze. "You can?"

I nod. "Jamie wasn't just my friend, Sam. We were together for a while. Mum probably hopes I'm rekindling an old flame, or something. She always liked him. But we, uh... drifted, you know?"

His attention is unwavering and, frankly, a little startling, so I grab my phone and start searching online for his potentially murderous friends, deftly ignoring the heat crawling up my face. Everyone leaves traces of themselves on social media, I muse, so it shouldn't be difficult to find them.

It isn't, either. Mostly.

It seems Emily is an avid poster, to all twenty-eight of her followers. Small town, indeed. "Emily Jenkins is now Emily Hayes," I announce, grimacing a little as I glance up at Sam to gauge his reaction. "Seems she and Nathan tied the knot last year."

"Good for them," he grumbles, crossing his arms and scowling.

Vaguely, I wonder how I could have ever been terrified of him. When he's not shaking the foundations of the already precarious house, he's just a teenager stuck in an unfortunate liminal state. I figure I can forgive him the occasional breakdown because, if I had to be in this house on my own for decades, I'd go a little vengeful, too.

"Nathan owns a gym over in Lindenbridge," I continue, frowning as I study his little profile picture adorned with too many filters and his little business page adorned with too many protein shake advertisements. Lindenbridge is the town where mum works— the closest thing this place has to a city for fifty miles.

Angela, I discover, owns a bakery in Eden's Gate. When I check a map, it's in the same lane as the library I work at— Beckett's Bakery. I desperately hope it's one of the decent storefronts and not a desolate one. But then again, if Angela is the one who pushed Sam, I'm also kind of hoping her life has gone to shit.

It's principle. You can't be friends with a dead guy and be nice to his supposed killers.

I can't find much on Ryan— only social media accounts that haven't been active in years, with out-of-date profile pictures and nothing personal in his biography.

"Angela's still here— I can stop by her bakery and ask her a few questions before work," I decide aloud once I've written down all the relevant notes I can find.

Before me, Sam nods enthusiastically. "Thank you, Theo. Really."

"I can't make any promises that this will go how you want it to," I try and explain to him. "I can't tell people I can see you, or that I know you were murdered— they'll think I'm crazy. But I'll do my best."

"I know. You're helping, and that's more than enough for me. Whatever you find, I just... I want them all to know what really happened. I don't want to be a warning to little kids to watch their footing— I... I want them to know."

This time, I reach over and take his arm. His features soften, ice thawing, and he gazes at me attentively as I say, "None of this was your fault, Sam. And I'll do what I can."

I hope, as I rush upstairs to get ready for a day of playing detective, that the truth will unravel itself before me. I've got an awful, creeping sensation that it's only going to twist itself into a knot I don't know how to untie.

But I'll do my best, because Sam is stuck here, and he can't defend himself. I'm the only hope he's got.