Chapter Three

“Where the hell am I?”

 

Gray’s vision came back into focus as if he were emerging from darkness into light. He looked around, feeling disoriented and confused, and saw he was in Afghanistan, standing among buildings that had been bombed out, their walls pocked with bullet holes. In the street around him were burned-out cars and chunks of debris. But the world around him was silent. There wasn’t a sound to be heard, or a breath of wind upon his skin, or a soul to be seen. He was completely alone.

 

“Hello?” he called out.

 

Gray expected to hear his voice echo along the empty street, but it was as if something were swallowing all sound. The sun was high overhead, but Gray didn’t feel the heat beating down on him. He wasn’t cold, but he didn’t feel warm either. And if there was one constant in Afghanistan at daytime, it was the damned heat. As he looked around, Gray realized the light had an eerie quality to it. The colors were sharp and vivid—more so than before. But his vision had a fuzzy quality around the edges. He shook his head, trying to understand what he was seeing.

 

Somehow, everything just seemed… wrong. Gray couldn’t explain it to himself in any way that made sense, but there was a strange quality to the world around him. It almost felt like a façade, like a studio set in a way. It made no sense, and it was a poor way to explain it, but Gray felt like he was in a movie.

 

“Hello!” he called out again. “Is anybody there?”

 

He looked down at himself and saw that he was dressed in his digi-cammies—his desert combat utility uniform. Gray realized he had his pack and helmet on and carried his M-16. It added to his confusion because he was sure that hadn’t been the case just a moment ago. But when Gray tried to think back and remember what came before, where he’d been before, he couldn’t recall. He racked his brain, trying to recall what he’d been doing—and how he’d ended up here—but came up empty. He couldn’t remember anything before waking up, for lack of a better term, there on the street.

 

“Hello?” Gray yelled once more. “Is anybody out there?”

 

“What’s up, Snowman?”

 

Gray turned around, M-16 at the ready. A choked gasp passed his lips when he found himself face to face with his old squad leader, Marcel Reeves. A hard man with a strong, square jawline, Reeves could be meaner than a rattlesnake but had a heart of gold underneath it all. He was 5’11” with close-cropped dark hair, dark eyes, and built like an NFL linebacker.

 

Gray shook his head, feeling like he was being battered by waves of disbelief. “Sarge, how are you here? You’re—you’re dead.”

 

Reeves grinned. “Am I, though?”

 

Gray lowered his weapon and rubbed his eyes. The feeling of confusion welling within him thickened and deepened, and Gray felt like he was walking through a dream. That had to be it. He had to be dreaming. He ran a hand over his face and tried to gather his wits about him, sure he’d lost them at some point.

 

“This is a dream,” he said.

 

“Is it?” Reeves replied.

 

“It has to be. I watched you die, Sarge. I held you as you died—”

 

Gray bit off his words as the reality of the situation set in. Gray turned and looked around the bombed-out street again, finally recognizing it. This was the neighborhood where he’d seen his first action on his very first tour out of boot camp. This is where he’d cut his teeth in the war.

 

He’d had three confirmed kills that day, and because he’d shown no emotion—and truthfully, he’d felt nothing about killing three enemy combatants—Reeves, his squad leader, had dubbed him Snowman. It was partly because of his white skin and partly because of his cold, icy demeanor. It was a name that stuck with him until he rotated home.

 

“How’d I get here?” Gray asked.

 

“You tell me, brother.”

 

Gray racked his brain but still couldn’t remember anything before showing up on that street. It was like all his memories were behind a wall, and no matter how hard he battered at it, he couldn’t break through. But he’d appeared on that street out of nowhere. He knew he wasn’t in the Corps anymore. Knew he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He knew that everything felt—wrong. That place felt wrong. It left him with only one real conclusion to draw. He didn’t know how it happened—the memory was locked behind that wall—but it was the only thing that made any sense to him.

 

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” Gray asked.

 

Reeves shrugged. “Are you?”

 

“Why are you answering questions with questions?”

 

“Oh, am I?”

 

Gray growled in frustration, making Reeves laugh. “You were always wound a little too tight, Snowman.”

 

“If I’m dead and this is heaven, I feel like I got screwed big time.”

Chapter Seven

It took Gray another week before he felt well enough to go back to work. It wasn’t that he felt well enough really, he was just tired of sitting at home watching daytime television. That and obsessing over the things he’d seen. It seemed like every time he went out, he saw some nightmare vision that chilled him to the very bone.

 

Gray had no idea what was happening to him. He didn’t know if they were hallucinations brought on by—he couldn’t even guess at what—or if he was losing his grip on reality. But every time he stepped outside his front door, he was confronted with a creature that looked like it had walked straight out of a Stephen King novel or something. The only positive to this unraveling in his brain was that it convinced him to get rid of all the booze and pot he enjoyed on a daily basis. Oftentimes a little too much.

 

Gray figured by removing those, he’d at least eliminate two possible reasons that could be making him see things. But so far, it hadn’t had any effect. He was still seeing them wherever he went. After the incident in the alley with that tall, freakish creature, none of the ones he’d seen had approached him. None of them had tried to harm him in any way, nor had they given any indication they even cared about him. Whenever he passed by, they just stared at him like he was an exhibit in some circus freakshow.

 

The array of absolutely freakish creatures he’d seen were terrifying. Or at least they had been, at first. Gray got so used to seeing them around that he’d quickly become kind of desensitized. They still freaked him out but because they kept their distance, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. He just didn’t know why they watched him the way they did. That was the most unsettling part of seeing them. For the most part, Gray did his best to ignore them, to pretend they didn’t exist. It seemed to be the only way he could maintain his hold on sanity.

 

The day was sunny but cool. A stiff breeze blew in off lake Michigan, making him pull his flannel around him tighter. Gray was hanging some drywall, doing his best to take it as easy as possible and not overdo it. But he had a lot of pent-up energy from having laid around for the last month and was anxious to get some of it out. Not to mention the ocean of nervous energy that had built up inside of him after he started seeing… ghosts? He didn’t know what to call them, but in lieu of something better or more accurate, Gray decided that’s what he’d call them. He thought it was just easier to put a name to them.

 

“You doin’ all right, brother?”

 

Gray looked up and saw his work buddy and crew supervisor, Derek, coming through the doorway. He handed Gray a cold bottle of soda. He nodded, then opened it and took a long swallow, relishing the feeling of the cool liquid on his throat.

 

“Thanks,” Gray said.

 

“Anytime,” Derek replied. “Just checkin’ to make sure you didn’t keel over on me in here or anything. Can’t afford to have you die before the job is done.”

 

“Appreciate your concern, man,” Gray replied with a grin. “But I’m good. A little stiff and sore but good so far.”

 

Derek chuckled. “That’s because you’ve been sittin’ on your ass and loungin’ around on your couch for a while.”

 

“You’re not wrong.”

 

Gray took another swig of his soda, almost choking on it when he saw the woman standing behind Derek. She was dressed in a dark blue pantsuit with a cream-colored blouse beneath the jacket. Half her face was covered in blood, and there was a long, jagged gash across her neck. Blood marred the front of her blouse and jacket, and her skin was pale. Her once blue eyes were dull and milky. She had crimson splatters in her golden hair.

 

“Hey, you all right, bud? You just got pale all of a sudden,” Derek said. “You look like you seen a ghost or something.”

 

Gray almost choked again. If only Derek knew how right on the money he was. But he wasn’t going to say anything about the dead woman standing behind him. He’d learned pretty quickly that although he could see them, other people couldn’t. Gray didn’t know why that was or what that meant, but it was a fact that he had to puzzle over—one of many recent facts that were keeping him puzzled.

 

“Yeah. No, I’m good. I’m good,” he said. “Just overdid it a bit today.”

 

He’d been seeing ghosts out here on the worksite since he came back, and none of the other guys had ever reacted to them, which told Gray they couldn’t see them. He’d managed to keep himself in check and avoided flipping out in front of everybody, at least, so far. But there were times one would pop up in his face unexpectedly and freak him out. They seemed to enjoy doing that to him. He guessed there wasn’t a whole lot of entertainment to be had when you were a ghost or whatever these things were.

 

“Damn, how long are you gonna milk this thing, man?” Derek teased.

 

“As long as I can. If it gets me out of work, I’m going to get myself shot again.”

 

“You do that, I’ll come by and shoot you myself. Only this time, you ain’t gettin’ up from it,” Derek fired back.

Chapter Eleven

The first thing Gray did when he got home was take a shower so hot it bordered on scalding. His skin was an angry shade of red when he finally climbed out. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at himself for a long moment, replaying what had happened in that alley. There were dark purple bruises on his cheeks, an abrasion on his forehead, and a split on his lower lip. That thing, whatever it was, had gotten a few good licks in.

 

Gray was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of demons and monsters walking among humans, and now he was faced with the fact that he’d killed one. The beast had been strong. As well-trained as Gray was, there had been several points in that fight when he thought he might lose. He could still feel the creature’s hands—they were like leather, stretched tightly over hard bone. The feel of those cold and dry, almost skeletal hands touching him, despite how brief it had been, still made him shudder.

 

Trying to push the unpleasant thoughts out of his mind, Gray toweled off then got himself dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He needed a beer to settle his still racing nerves. Hell, maybe he needed two or even three beers. His heart was still racing and his head was spinning just as fast. Gray wanted to settle onto the couch, power down some beer, and watch some senseless, pointless, and vapid as hell television.

 

He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator. Gray twisted the cap off then threw it into the trash can before taking a long swallow. He’d just walked into the living room again when he stopped dead in his tracks.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

 

Sergeant Marcel Reeves sat on Gray’s couch watching TV, which was currently tuned to SportsCenter. He looked over at Gray and grinned.

“What are you doing here?” Gray asked.

 

“Came to check the scores of tonight’s games and watch the highlights,” Reeves replied, motioning to the TV. “Had fifty bucks on the Knicks.”

 

“Shut up,” he replied but couldn’t help laughing. “And if you put money on the Knicks, you deserve to lose.”

 

Gray sat down in his beat-up, old recliner and took a long swig of his beer. Reeves was silent as he did. He just sat there watching Gray drink his beer. There was something about a ghost sitting on his couch staring at him that unnerved Gray even more than fighting that beast in the alley had.

 

“Okay, this is getting creepy,” Gray finally said. “Why are you just sitting there staring at me like some kind of freak?”

 

“Don’t you know? That’s what ghosts do most of the time, man. They watch you. I’m watching you.”

 

“Yeah, that’s not disturbing or anything.”

 

“Hey, at least I wasn’t watching you in the shower,” Reeves said with a grin. “Some of these folk aren’t that considerate. I’m convinced some of these dudes refuse to cross over just so they can watch people in the shower.”

 

“Great. Paranormal perverts.”

 

“I ain’t gonna lie. There are some perks to being dead,” Reeves said with a laugh. “Speaking of which, I’ve got a list of celebrity showers I need to go take a peek at.”

 

Gray laughed despite himself. “That is so wrong on so many levels.”

 

“Some things never change, huh?”

 

Gray drained the last of his beer then got up to retrieve another one. He felt after the night he’d had, he deserved to have a few. Or as many as he wanted.

 

“Man, I miss beer,” Reeves said. “I miss havin’ a cold one while watching the game. I miss wings and beer.”

 

“Don’t they feed you in the afterlife?”

 

Reeves chuckled. “Yeah, things work differently on the other side of the veil, brother. You don’t need the same things you did when you were alive,” he said wistfully. “But that doesn’t stop the cravings—or the memory of those cravings is probably more accurate to say. It’s like a residual feeling. They say it’ll fade over time but damn, what I wouldn’t give for a plate of wings and a pitcher right now.”

 

“Well, if you could eat and drink, I’d make sure you got ’em.”

 

“Appreciate that, brother.”

 

Gray took a short swallow of his beer, suddenly in no hurry to get himself all blotto. It was still unnerving and taking some time to get used to, but he liked having Reeves around. It wasn’t the same as when his old friend was alive, but Gray took some comfort in having Reeves popping in to check on him.

 

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Gray asked.

 

“Came to talk.”

 

Gray grinned softly to himself. “You know, for a little while, I convinced myself that you were just part of some fever dream I had while I was out,” he said. “Something my brain cooked up because it was all screwed up—”

 

“News flash—your brain is all screwed up. Always has been.”

 

Gray shot him the finger and laughed. “I thought you were like a hallucination I was having when I was in a coma or something.”