Phantom Prey

watching people. You couldn’t see me; but now you can! I’m amazed. Nobody can see me.”
    “Really . . .”
    “Really.”
    “What do you want?” Fairy asked.
    He smiled: “Not much. A little time, a little conversation. A little piano playing, a sing-along.”
    “I’m crazy, aren’t I?”
    “You have to be a little crazy to see me, but you’re not insane, if that’s what you mean. I’m really here.”
    “I’m insane,” she said, and she turned away from him.
    “No, no,” he said, the anxiety high in his voice. “Don’t go away. Don’t go. I can help you. . . .”
    He told her about death. About rising up from his own body, then losing sight of it. He’d been in water, he thought, with other people around, but he couldn’t see them after he died. He’d been wandering in a fog forever, it seemed like, coming upon little shafts and rectangles of light, and looking through them, realized that he was looking out of mirrors. All over St. Paul, all over the whole area. . . . He’d been inches from living people, but they’d never seen him.
    And then he’d seen Alyssa, first drawn by her body. Then one day, he’d played a few notes on the piano that was in the mirror with him, a reflection of the piano in Alyssa’s music room.
    And he’d seen her react.
    “I can’t tell you how excited I was. You heard me.”
    He knew about Frances. Knew she was dead. Could feel her there, on the dead side of things.
    “She’s gone for good, isn’t she?” she asked.
    “Not yet from this plane,” he said. “She’s restless, she wants to move on—but can’t, not yet. She can’t find peace.”
    “Could you find her for me?”
    “No. I can’t see anybody else here. It’s like night, like a foggy night. . . .”
    “Maybe she’ll come to me,” Alyssa said.
    “Finding the way is . . . hard,” Loren said. “From here, you can’t see anything but lights from the mirrors, and other shiny things, little threads of light here and there, and rectangles and circles of it, the mirrors. I found your mirror, at random. The mirrors look like camp-fires around a lake. When I go back, during the day, I sit there, waiting for night to come, so I can see the mirror again. And the light. I’m afraid sometimes that night will come and your mirror will be gone and I’ll be wandering, crazy, looking for it, seeing all those people on the other side, eating and fucking and playing music, and all I get are shadows. . . .” He was running on, and he shuddered.
    He said, “Frances can’t leave here until she has justice. She can’t go on.”
    “Go on to what?”
    “To heaven. To rebirth. To whatever it is—I don’t know myself.”
    “Why haven’t you gone?”
    “I don’t know. I just can’t . . . I can’t . . .”
    "Let me help you find justice,” he said.
    She was skeptical: “How will you do that, mirror-man?”
    “We can work this through. We can explore it. We can get . . . documents. Talk to people.”
    “People will talk to a ghost?”
    “No, but I can advise you. I can come with you when you hunt them . . . you can pull me through.”
    “Pull you through,” she said. She stepped back, out of reach.
    “Pull me through,” he said. He couldn’t hide the eagerness in his voice. “Take my fingers, pull me through. I can’t stay, I fade when the sun comes around, but for a few hours I can be with you.”
    “You’ll hurt me,” Fairy said.
    “No, no.” His eyes widened, and his hands spread, palms up, in supplication. “I could never hurt you. You’re the only person who can see me—you’re the only person I can talk to. Without you, I’m alone.”
    “You have a cruel lip; I can see the cruelty in it.”
    “No, no . . .”
    The relationship took time.
    She walked away from him the first night, heard him crying as she left the room; and when she came back, he wasn’t there, nor was he there the next night. The third night, he was back again and she walked away. She walked away for three, four nights.
    “You almost ruined it,” he said, almost choking on the words, the words tumbling in his rush to get them out. “You didn’t believe in yourself, you thought I was imaginary. I’m not imaginary, I’m right here. I’m human.”
    On the fifth night, she pulled him through. The night after that, he touched her; and the night after that, they made love, though that wasn’t exactly what it was.
    Loren was cold as ice. He didn’t really want sex; he wanted heat. And as they