A Flight of Souls

I wondered how Marcilla even knew all this; after all, she hadn’t been here that long. I guessed she must have picked up the tip from another ghost, perhaps one who’d been unsuccessful in escaping after torture and forced down lower in The Underworld.

I grimaced. So those ghouls would “judge” us in a few hours… If Lucas didn’t move—heck, if he was incapable of moving—I felt certain that he would be thrust directly down to The Necropolis. His home had already been in some of the deepest levels of The Underworld, and now he seemed to be even more motionless than the other comatose ghosts who shared his pool. I doubted he could be put any deeper except for one place…

“Lucas,” I persisted. I was shouting now.

We had to leave this pond before the ghouls came for their inspection, to demonstrate that we still had life in us and deserved to be kept in the upper levels. Kailyn and I could try to get back to our pool in time and force ourselves to move around and demonstrate that we deserved to remain in one of the higher pools. But my uncle… We had to force some life into him somehow. But how could we, when he wasn’t even responding to my shouting his name?

Then my mind turned back to the last two visions that I’d witnessed—the unexpected visions that did not belong to me. Perhaps, because the same ghoul had been controlling both of our minds, some of his memories had passed through her and transmitted to me. I couldn’t think of any other way it could have happened. But whatever the case, I now had more information about Lucas’ darkest secrets and fears than ever before. My own mind was still foggy but, after fighting to keep my eyes open and then to sit up, I was better equipped to attempt thinking straight.

So if those really were Lucas’ memories… he knew all along that he had a child. Jeramiah’s mother—Anthea—had told him that Lucas never knew she was pregnant, but perhaps she had told her son that to make him feel better. Perhaps Lucas had been still in the area as a human even up to Jeramiah’s birth, but like a coward refused to have anything more to do with his lover. And I guessed not long after that, he would have turned into a vampire and been forced to leave their town.

Whatever happened, Lucas had known of his child’s existence. And then, based on his second memory, he knew that Anthea had given birth to a boy. It appeared from that last vision that Lucas had even tracked his son down after he became a vampire, in secret, without Jeramiah ever knowing. Perhaps that had just been out of curiosity to see what had become of his child, since he’d obviously made no attempt to enter his life, not even after Anthea had died.

To think that all that time, my uncle kept Jeramiah a secret. From his father, sister and brother. Nobody had known that he had a son. Abandoning Jeramiah was a decision that clearly tortured Lucas now.

“Jeramiah,” I said suddenly to Lucas, in a last-ditch attempt to rouse him. “Jeramiah, your son, wants to meet you, Lucas. Your son!” Jeramiah was what had gotten through to him before. Maybe it was the only thing that could get through to him now.

Kailyn joined me in reciting Jeramiah’s name, our voices echoing around the small, grim cavern. Slowly a slit formed between Lucas’s lids, which broadened until his eyes were half open. Encouraged at the sight, I began talking more animatedly. “You just need to hold on, Lucas. Uncle. Hold on. We’ll get you out of here,” I went on, even though they felt like empty words after our failed escape. “You just need to keep your eyes open and sit up.”

His eyelids remained half open, though his irises were still cloudy.

“You’re not ready to leave yet,” I urged. “Your son needs you.”

At this, his eyelids lifted further, and then a slightest sparkle of consciousness lit up his eyes. His lips began to mouth the word, “Jeramiah,” although no sound came from his mouth.

“Yes, Jeramiah,” I said, nodding with as much force as I could—which admittedly was not much. My movements were still so sluggish. “Sit up, Lucas.”

Now that his eyes were alive, or at least semi-alive, I knew that if I could just get him to sit up, the rest would fall into place more easily, just as it had done with Kailyn and me. It was the first assertion towards life, a step away from giving in.

Lucas struggled to raise his head ever so slightly, but it slumped down.

Oh, dear.

For all his willpower, what if he was incapable of sitting up? What if his mind had been drained so thoroughly that even the thought of seeing his son again wasn’t enough to infuse strength in him? What if he just… couldn’t?

Couldn’t. The word was jarring to my ear. I hadn’t grown up in a household of “couldn’ts”. The word triggered a saying my mother would often recite whenever Rose or I—or my father—admitted defeat without ever really trying:

“I know an excuse when I hear one. Don’t you dare deceive yourself into believing that you’re the victim.”

The saying was so engrained in my family’s history, it had even become something of a running joke between the four of us, like when someone refused to hang up the laundry or take out the trash. Though its meaning never lost its depth.

But now I found myself doubting my mother’s words. Of course, there were occasions when one really couldn’t do something. Where it was not an excuse and one was incapacitated. When one truly was a victim. My mother herself had been a victim on a number of occasions, even if she’d refused to act like one. But Lucas… as he struggled to sit up with what I was sure was his best efforts, he just looked so pathetic and helpless. It was gut-wrenching. If there ever truly was a victim, Lucas looked it to me now.