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potterandpromises · 1 year

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where the spirit meets the bones

This is different from what I usually write, in style, structure and content. I hope some of you like it nonetheless!

Also on AO3

The trouble began twice, first in 1980 in Pula, Croatia when Lorena saw her first ghost, then again on a crisp October morning in 2014 when Lorena sees another of herself, dazed and staring at her from across the kitchen table.

Most ghosts just want someone to share their pain. Most are happy to share by talking.

Other ghosts, of all sorts but very often young men who died by violence, severely want to affect the world. They want to cause pain, and she’s always been the only part of the world who could see and hear them. She’s never met one who wasn’t surprised, who said: ‘ah, I’ve met people like you before.’

Often, she is happy to talk. In fact, she loves to help solve the occasional murder or missing persons case via information passed between a ghost and her and the anonymous tip lines. But not always. Sometimes, for example, she is taking her daughter to the park, yet can’t help looking at nothing for a little too long to try and guess the era of their clothing. Some ghosts will then shout at her and she tries not to look or flinch or react in anyway, but that is thus far impossible.

For her part, other Lorena, ghost Lorena, who happens to be dressed in the same pale pink nightgown as the living Lorena, does not speak. She watches.

The living Lorena does not speak to her either. Not because Iris is also at the table— she doesn’t know anything other then her mother speaking to no one, and honestly Lorena isn’t ready to rule out the possibility that she too will one day see ghosts— but because, just as Lorena has decided that ‘what are you doing here?’ is as good an introduction as any in this situation, Iris spills her juice cup into her cereal bowl and the bowl’s rattle echoes the room like a gunshot and anyway, Lorena does acknowledge she may still be crazy even if she is satisfied with faith and other explanations.

She doesn’t mention it to Garcia when he kisses her goodbye, either, because it is entirely possible she will go away. Not all ghosts mean to be where they are, and curiously, they can not just teleport.

She does go away.

Or, more precisely, Lorena catches a glimpse of her silvery form in the backseat of her husband’s car, next to Iris in her car seat, ready for kindergarten.

God knows she is open to other possibilities but basically, she’s been aware of ghosts for 34 years and she knows one when she sees one.

She is dead.

She is also alive.

Her ghost walks up to her at her desk towards the end of her work day. She tells herself: “hello.”

She does not answer, but her pupils, in her wobbly, watery form, do slide in the direction of her lips.

“Can you hear me?”

The other Lorena tilts her head a little, focuses more on her lips. Otherwise she is very still. Lorena has never been that still in her life.

“Did you call for me?” Lorena’s coworker, Craig, pokes his head through the door.

She smiles, tight-lipped. “No.”

So, ghost Lorena is deaf. Her vision seems to be intact. So far Lorena’s only theories are a collision of dimensions or a Dickens-esque message from God.

Some ghosts remember their lives very well. Others do not. Lorena has always suspected this is for the best. She tests her ghost’s memory.

She thinks for a moment, is startled by the window into that recent time in her life, holds up her hand and makes the appropriate shape.

Ghost Lorena perks up and signs back. Hi.

They both remember.

Lorena taught Iris baby sign language from a VHS tape and pamphlet she brought at the library discard sale. It’s not a proper language, she cannot, for example, ask herself how she died like she could if she knew ASL or Croatian Sign Language, but it should make simple communication easier then if she had to write absolutely everything or expect the other Lorena to read lips on top of everything else.

They smile at each other.

She picks Iris up from school and they spend the afternoon sticking pieces of construction paper together.

“Did you want me to use up the fish?”

Her ghost self is watching them, and she thinks, absurdly, despite all her experience: doesn’t she have anything else to do?

“What?”

“For dinner?” Garcia says, watches her more closely.

She shakes her head a little. “Anything’s fine.”

“Are you seeing ghosts?” he asks, tentative.

“Later,” she says, and turns back to Iris.

Iris wants them both at bedtime again. She’s developing a cough and Lorena does not, today, push anyone to be alone.

The other Lorena watches so very sadly, her face coming back in expression if not in color. She does consider gesturing for her to glide through the wall, just for a moment of privacy, but finds that she can not begrudge her this, although boundaries will likely be needed if she is not ready or perhaps not able in any sense to cross over.

“One more,” Iris says. “One more story?”

“One more goodnight,” Garcia says. “Two more goodnights.” He sets her plush stuffed snowy owl into the crock of her elbow. “Three more goodnights.” He kisses the top of her forehead and pulls away. Lorena follows suit, finds that she feels a bit out of body herself, and all three of them— Iris stays— make their way into their bedroom. Ghost Lorena takes the way through the walls and is there by the time her and Garcia open the door.

Garcia flicks his tongue, looks into her eyes, waits for her to share whatever crazy impossible thing she’s seen today.

“I, um.” She knows he believes her, took some time to wrap his head around it in the beginning but has always listened. Still, this is asking a lot.

“Are you alright?”

Lorena considers the ghost, looks at her own hand, her fingers splaying. “I mean, yeah. Now I am.”

That does not alleviate his concern.

Ghosts cannot touch people, even her, or animals or other ghosts. There are no exceptions that she’s seen or been told about, and she does ask plenty of different ghosts the same questions to be sure. Garcia also knows however, about that one very creative former teenage girl who discovered that by merging with the insides of Lorena’s car then sort of jumping in front of it, she could almost murder her.

“There is,” she glances down at the off-red carpet that she’s always disliked, then back at him with conviction, “a ghost right across the room.” She gestures in the ghost’s general direction. Ghost Lorena is looking at Garcia.

“Is it,” he starts. “Are they anyone we know?”

If anything, he looks relieved. It wasn’t a near accident or a near involuntary hospital stay or any of the things she’s had nightmares of ghosts doing to her come awake.

She had, in the past, seen his mother, back when Iris was a newborn. Her and Lorena had talked. Maria and Garcia had talked with Lorena as the go between. She’d gotten to meet her grandchild even if her grandchild hadn’t quite met her. She’d stayed for awhile. Maria and Garcia settled things between them.

Lorena bites her lip. “Sort of. I— it’s me, Garcia, I’m looking at myself, right there, as a ghost.”

Several things cross his face. He works his jaw. “But, you’re not dead,” he tries.

The other Lorena may not be able to hear but she must guess what’s going on by their faces because she reaches for Garcia’s forearm and her hand flutters through him.

“She’s trying to touch you.”

He looks around as if he might see.

There’s a look of devastation and increasing desperation on her other face that Lorena hopes she herself never feels but knows in her bones she will.

“it’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Although if anything she guesses it won’t be and certainly not for this other self— well, not yet, anyway. She could still cross over.

He runs a hand through his hair, pulls at it. “Have you asked her,” his voice falters, “I don’t know, what’s going on?”

“She can’t hear and I don’t think she can talk.” Lorena did not see her sit down at the table but that doesn’t mean she appeared there. She imagines her ghost waking up for the first time in her bed, with her and Garcia still in it, sitting up and screaming and triggering no effect. “I think it’s because she’s from another dimension, I guess?”

Another timeline? Another somewhere? She’d heard of those theories but has never considered it as an actuality. Mostly, she wants to know why. But if there’s a warning or an explanation to give, if that’s the reason she’s here, if she even knows why she’s here, then Lorena suspects she’d be able to tell her.

“Another dimension,” Garcia echoes.

“Or something like that, I think. This hasn’t ever happened before. I’ve never seen anyone I know is alive.

And she does look them up, if they give a name. She doesn’t always find proof of death but she’s never found proof of life. That’s why most days she’s at least 95% sure she isn’t crazy, or if she is, then the craziness is divine in nature and not actually a bad thing.

“I’m going to try writing down some yes or no questions, see if she can tell us anything.”

“Right,” Garcia says, and repeats: “right.”

Lorena thinks maybe she should’ve waited to drop that bomb until the weekend, let him sleep a few more nights, but Iris’ cough worsens and it turns out not to matter.

They both get up. All three of them go to her room. When Iris falls asleep in Lorena’s lap she asks him to find papers, a pen, the whiteboard and dry erase markers.

“Write down: ‘why are you here?’”

He writes what she says on one of the sheets of printer paper, hesitates, becomes stiff. “We need to ask her how she died.”

Meanwhile, ghost Lorena has perked up at the sight of words she can understand and is alternating between shrugging and shaking her head.

“Yeah, I— I guess. I do want to know, but I also can’t unknow, or know if I’ll die the same way she did or not.”

Iris stirs in her lap. “Mama, what are you talking about?” Her voice has grown froggy since they put her to bed.

Garcia answers. “Nothing, sweetheart, just some, ah, theoretics.”

Iris wrinkles her nose, both at the dental of adult information and at the unfamiliar word.

They wait in silence for a few minutes. Lorena strokes Iris’ hair. Garcia’s eyes take in every inch of her holding their sleeping child, committing her to memory.

“Wait,” he says, low and hoarse. “How did— how does she look? Does she look old?”

“No,” she glances at the ghost, who’s frowning, arms crossed. Being a ghost obscures wrinkles and sunspots noticed later in pictures from life, but her ghost isn’t significantly older then she is now. “She could be a little older, maybe, but she looks like I do now.” She is, of course, still wearing Lorena’s clothes, although no longer the clothes currently on her body.

“Do ghosts always look how they do when they die?” he asks. “I know you said the injuries can disappear, that what killed them isn’t usually visible. But do they ever look younger?”

She realizes she’s only ever described ghosts very generally except for his mother. He knew the shimmer and the haze and ripples through the walls like water from his mother only, and she’s almost always been open, and they’ve known each other for how long?

“No, they always look how they looked when they died expect for the injuries that never had a chance to heal into scars.” She’s met her fair share of thin and bald ghosts.

She can see him silently curse.

She lets the silence hang.

Iris’ other mother takes a few steps and tries to run her fingers through her baby’s hair and it’s probably a coincidence, but Iris stirs and sighs.

Garcia watches her track the nonexistent movement of her ghost stepping back. “Maybe she’s here so we can prevent it.”

“Maybe she’s here so we can give her peace somehow.” If there are multiple universes and multiple versions of herself, and this is the version where she lived and didn’t leave her child without a mother, then maybe the other Lorena will feel better just knowing that? But she hasn’t left yet, and if she doesn’t know why she’s here, Lorena suspects she isn’t close to satisfied.

“I need to know,” he says. “Even if knowing will make it worse I need to know.”

So they come up with the common ways to die, split into the categories of illness, accident, and murder, figuring the beauty of the whiteboard is that they can write down more specific questions once it’s narrowed down into a category.

Ghost Lorena looks on with enthusiasm.

But before she learns how her other self died and forgets her curiosities, Lorena insists Garcia first write down some simple questions about how the universe works because even though she suspects her ghost has not reached unity with God, she does not know for sure, and therefore must ask.

Future conversations ready, Garcia begins to write in huge capital letters on the fateful whiteboard and before he even finishes ghost Lorena is jabbing her finger through the word murder; in and out several times like tapping, so excited to finally tell someone even if it’s just herself.

Then she points to Iris.

Then to Lorena, then Iris, then Lorena then back at herself and at the word murder and at all three of them and at the word murder and not at Garcia and at the word murder and makes it so clear—

“Lorena?”

She pulls Iris up into her arms without meaning to. Her baby whimpers and with no warning Lorena bursts into tears.

Garcia crawls across the bed and she does not tell him because she wants him to keep writing questions and she does not tell him because she can’t breathe.

“Mama?”

She doesn’t tell him because Iris is crying now too and she thinks he might be as well and she knows nothing will ever be the same again and she knows it’s Wednesday night and neither of them will be going to work until at least Monday.

When no one’s sobbing and Lorena can mostly see again, although her eyes are tired, ghost Lorena puts a finger through the word fate and shrugs in an exaggerated manner.

Of course she tells him, whispers it in his ear in the middle of the night. She cannot hide the details of her pain and supposes her dead self and her living self have a lot in common.

He sucks in a breath. Iris is breathing inches from their faces, asleep and oblivious on his chest.

“She made it clear she doesn’t know what that means for us.”

Garcia doesn’t reply but reaches up and strokes Iris’ hair.

In the morning of her confused, shadow mourning, Lorena hears Garcia start to tell Iris that last night was nothing to worry about. Mamas get upset too, just like how Iris gets upset and she assumes he says it’s a normal part of life or whatever but she doesn’t stay to find out. She goes and sits on the porch for reasons she’s too tired to name.

Her ghost does not follow her, which is great because her ghost watched her whole family sleep last night and if she joined her now Lorena would start screaming.

It is, of course, not actually true that Lorena is normal. Iris will learn that in the coming years, or the coming days, weeks, seconds.

She pays attention to her breathing and begins to calm. Yes, her own ghost appeared and told her that her very alive child is (was?) dead. But actually, everything is fine, for now.

As if on sick queue, a mother pushes a stroller up the street. A little ghost, maybe seven years old, skips behind them.

The only dead children Lorena’s talked to were either murdered, said they were scared to leave their families or both.

She goes back inside.

Her ghost is standing by the calendar, waving her over as if ushering a plane landing. Lorena offers herself a tight lipped smile.

She points to a date, two days ago. The last day before she appeared, Lorena slowly realizes. Her ghost makes a cutting motion at her throat, then points to her chest, sort of spreads her hand in front, as if to reassure Lorena that the thing that was severed wasn’t her throat.

Lorena finds that she doesn’t really care how exactly it happened but does care how quickly and if her baby was in pain—

Iris must have died first, Lorena realizes, because her ghost doesn’t know anything about fate or God or why she’s here so Iris must have died first and during the last moment of her life she must have known her child was dead.

Her ghost signs: good, and it takes her several dull seconds to figure out what could possibly be good until her impatient ghost points again to the dates on the calendar. The day before she arrived and now and the days in between. It’s a good sign that her and Iris aren’t dead yet; a sign against insurmountable, unchangeable fate.

She gives her ghost a thumbs up.

No one dies who isn’t already dead. Iris gets sicker, then better, and the four of them settle into a routine. Her and Garcia begin to sleep longer if not deeper and Iris goes back to her own bed.

Lorena does a little research on Alternative and Augmentative Communication. She comes up with a white board full of words relevant to ghosts. Living with her ghost is a bit like having a new pet. It’s like taking in the shaggiest stray after finding it scavenging in the trash. It’s like figuring out the complex emotional needs of a raccoon, except the raccoon somehow actually is her, and also a constant reminder that she knows nothing, other then the fact that she and everyone she loves in the world will someday soon be dead too.

She also writes down ground rules, one rule per sheet of paper, and tapes them above her and Garcia’s bed. The rules include, ironically, staying out of the bedroom at night.

She does not, however, tell her ghost she can’t go to Iris’ room. Ghosts can’t sleep. It’d be inhumane to stop her from looking at her child for as long as she can. It would also be impossible.

Lorena does imagine Iris, some night over dinner, talking about her other mother. Although she doesn’t actually have any basis to believe the ability to see and hear ghosts is genetic, she always thought, in the way of parents, that her child might be like her.

Her own mother told her not to talk to anyone about the silvery, shiny people. So she didn’t. The only person she ever told for the first time as an adult was Garcia, and that was only because he heard her losing it at an uncommonly obnoxious ghost outside a bar she didn’t want to be at and he found her alone.

She did ask once, in her 20s, if her mother saw them too. She said no, she didn’t, that yes she always believed Lorena, and that for people like her, who knew things no one else knew, staying quiet was staying safe. If she told people what she knew she’d be lucky if she was dismissed. She’d be lucky if it made her an outcast with no friends. People like her were institutionalized. People like her were martyred before they were ventured.

The thing is, outside of the rare moments right after she is told about the car in the river, the blood soaked mattress, the bones under the moss, Lorena doesn’t feel like she has any special knowledge.

Ghosts don’t have any special knowledge beyond their own lives, deaths, and afterlives. For a few she’s met, it’s been so long that they barely remember a time before all this strangeness.

She hardly remembers a time before all this.

The better part of a year passes and they try to adopt a dog, but Lorena’s ghost comes with and the Labrador mix known as Maggie barks and lunges at her.

Her jaws snap through her translucent silver target, and she pauses for a moment, utterly perplexed. She turns and barks at the living Lorena instead.

“I’m so sorry.” The SPCA worker tugs on Maggie’s leach, guides her to the gate. “I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s always been friendly.”

Iris buries her face in Lorena’s hip.

“Not everyone can get along,” Garcia reassures.

They get a hamster instead.

Ghost Lorena grows bolder and experiments with her non-body. She messes around, half stomps through the floor then pulls herself back up. She punches perfectly nice strangers in the face just to get a reaction out of her living counterpart.

Lorena watches herself silently cackle that day in the coffee shop. She wants her ghost to heal, but also to be happy, whatever that means for her.

She can’t feel it when ghosts touch or move through her. Nothing. No coldness. Not even a twinge. She used to think there was something small there, a sensation like tickling, goosebumps almost. But this feeling, when it exists, is supplied by her subconscious. The matter is settled for her one evening when she is cooking dinner, and she glances down to see a silver hand with splayed fingers sticking out of her abdomen.

She gasps like she’s been stabbed, drops her spatula and burns herself.

She yells at her ghost, not that it does literally anything. But she does not stay mad for long, because it’s all exactly what she would have done in that position. And she writes it down, the fact that she really didn’t feel anything, because had the roles been revered she’d want to know.

Her ghost continues to pull pranks using her inability to manipulate objects, but to her credit, exercises better judgment most of the time.

The routines work. Anything can become normal.

The hamster grows old and Iris grows taller. Lorena and Garcia watch her grow. Lorena’s ghost watches her grow, too. She isn’t fated to die at five and life goes on.

One evening, as Lorena is folding laundry, her ghost stands by the whiteboard and shoves a finger through the word go. She then makes a movement with her hands that Lorena can’t decipher.

She shrugs and shakes her head, mouths her lack of comprehension.

Ghost Lorena jumps and flaps her arms like wings. For several seconds, Lorena thinks her ghost is telling her she’s about to cross over. That’s fine. That’s great. Lorena figured and hoped that she would be ready and able eventually, but grief surprises her, twinges in her midsection.

Frustrated, her ghost changes her gesture, more clearly mimics a plane.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Lorena says out loud.

Ghost Lorena signs: more. More words. Lorena learns after several minutes that her ghost plans to visit Alaska for an as-yet-unknown length of time. She may go elsewhere, too, but then she’s coming back.

Lorena has never wanted what little ghosts have, except for right now, at the thought of not being bothered by cramped airplanes, of riding the wing of the plane over Alaska, of walking right through TSA, invisible and invincible.

With a pink marker in big letters she writes: I am so happy for you!

Her ghost leaves, and comes back, and leaves and returns again, and tells Lorena as much as she can about her trips. It isn’t life. Lorena is not informed of any epic ghost love stories. But it is something. It’s what her ghost needs, and she seems sort of happy, certainly less burdened, as time goes on.

Years pass in that way, four since her ghost arrived, and one morning in late summer she wakes up and finds her ghost gone.

She’s stringent about communication, has never been gone more then a few hours without telling Lorena first.

She guesses, senses the permanence of her absence, and although she expected to get a goodbye like with Maria, she’s at peace with it.

Except Garcia isn’t in bed when she wakes up. He didn’t leave a note. She calls him, expects to find out he needed to go into work early even as her anxiety worsens.

He isn’t at work. He isn’t dying of a brain bleed at he bottom of the basement stairs.

The neighbors didn’t see him leave the house.

#timeless #lorynn #lorena flynn #garcia flynn #iris flynn #fanfiction #my fanfic tag #fic: where the spirit meets the bones #this was inspired by reading the dead romantics #(which i don’t really recommend; it was just okay)#i wrote the first draft on impulse in more or less one session #and held back when editing in order to preserve the dashed off style #quite a different writing experience for me

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