Wraith, Nonetheless || fiction by NM Whitley
with art by Rowan Finn
‘Wraith, Nonetheless’, fiction by NM Whitley
Often in the narrow shower stall as he passed the washrag between the folds of his mother’s torso, Joseph wondered how it felt to have the life drained out of you. He’d formed a rough idea, having seen the women’s reactions, the swooning and carrying-on, but he suspected he would never quite know for sure. Other times he’d wonder what Mama would say, what questions she might ask had the power of speech not permanently failed her. Since when, for instance, was he such a fan of high school girls’ soccer? What compelled him to haunt the dirt trails and byways on his ten-speed, destined for the weedy soccer fields in Burlington or Union or Brownesville and other little towns in the vicinity? What was it that kept him there till sundown, watching through the chain-link fence?
The subject had never come up, but if it did, Joseph knew what his response would be, had rehearsed it many times in his mind: The solitude, he’d say as he wrung out the washrag.
A little solitude can do a man a lot of good.
#
On Mama’s birthday, Kenny and Joy drove in from Burlington, twins in tow, all four equally plump and sporting the same moppy bowl cut. Kenny brought party favors, including a paper hat which he put on Mama’s head with the elastic fixed beneath her flabby chin. No candles this year—the waxy red 6 Joseph had kept for years in the drawer was unrecognizable, melted and deformed by years of re-use, and the poor woman could barely draw breath to blow them out anyway. So they simply sang “Happy Birthday” and cut slices of store-bought cake and opened the presents: another tiny perfume bottle, a couple packs of underwear from Target. Afterwards, the twins went outside to throw the football, Kenny and Joy helped themselves to seconds, and Joseph led Mama unsteadily back to her rocking chair and put on the TV, so that the cable news might soothe and absorb her in the endless repetition of its headline crawl.
“Are you seeing anybody?” Joy asked, chewing her cake, a froth of icing at the corners of her mouth.
“I think you know the answer to that.” Kenny pivoted in his flimsy chair. “Don’t she?”
“Not currently, no,” Joseph said.
“I hear Elissa’s back in town,” Joy said.
Kenny dabbed a napkin at a stain on his shirt. “That fellow who runs the BP in Brownesville gave her a job. The Han-dee Hugo’s store or whatever they call it. You believe that shit? Han-dee Hugo’s, I declare.”
“You could ask her out,” Joy said. “Or at least go talk to her. Would it kill you to go talk to her?”
Joseph rested his Pepsi on the card table, focusing the fullness of his attention into flicking the pop-top of the soda can. He willed away the embarrassment, the visceral gnaw and tingle that name still caused, and as nonchalantly as he could, which was not very, he asked, “Which one was she?”
#
Joseph knew too well who Elissa was. Studious, long-legged Elissa, the neighbor girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. He had, in fact, already tried to ask her out once, one afternoon years ago, towards the end of high school. He’d hidden behind a tree near Elissa’s grandma’s trailer, crouching amidst pine straw and spiny brown sweet-gum balls, spying on the girl as she did her chores. Trying to work up his nerve. Graduation was rolling around. It was do-or-die time, forever hold your peace and such. That had been the genesis of it all.
He could not describe how it felt that first time the visions overcame him, and at any rate he’d never dared try to describe it to anyone. The sick thrill of it, of her life-force flowing and vortexing into his eyes like water down a drain, cold and satisfying, each glimpse of her a smooth caress down his insides. He saw her brushing her straight brown unadorned hair, saw her staring out of a schoolroom window. He saw Elissa, in stolen increments, always elsewhere. Meanwhile, beyond those visions but somehow in the same plane, in the here and now, he saw her poised on her tippy-toes, clipping a striped rag to a clothesline, and yet at the same time she was now also flat on her back and gasping for breath alongside a puddle of her own sick.
Joseph knew as he lay awake in bed that it wasn’t right. He could not sleep that night, or the next, for the unshakeable certainty that such causes and effects, his visions and her reactions, were no coincidence.
Sometime later he began haunting the cineplex in Burlington, spending what little pocket money he could scrape together, trying to content this newborn thirst of his by means of the silver screen. But as certain monster flicks made clear, no well-meaning vampire can survive solely off of Dixie cups of cow’s blood, or plastic pouches stolen from an unattended bloodmobile. No wraith could live off mere images. The thing he craved had to be natural, vital, fresh.
He'd search for victims on his ten-speed, and on the off chance he could track down a suitable prey and catch them unawares in their natural habitat and most crucially, if he could tough out the nerves, which was hardly ever, the cycle would unfold. But then Mama took ill, and Joseph got his job at the Post Office, and who had time anymore to go skulking around spying on women and sucking away their life-force till they choked and collapsed in the dirt?
Plus, people might get suspicious. Might get the wrong idea.
No one ever had, not once in all these years. But they might.
Hence, soccer practice. By spreading his attention across the field, he could lessen the strain on any one victim. And if by chance he got a little greedy and the team’s star striker fell over puking, well, the coaches would simply chalk it up to exhaustion and who would be the wiser?
And yet, as he peered through the fence, Joseph couldn't help but think: Yep. Mama would be heartsick if she knew.
#
After the birthday party Joseph took the rug out back to shake out the crumbs.
Where’d Kenny get off, coming around here trying to tell him how to run his life and what not? To Joseph of all people, a full-time employee of the US Postal Service down in Union, who had never so much as smoked or drank, who hadn’t permanently screwed up his life with those pills like so many had done. What room did Kenny have to talk? He’d been out of work for damn near a year, buying lotto tickets with whatever spending cash Joy gave him from the job she miraculously still had at the Toyota plant. Sure, the lucky bastard won some money a couple of times, but so what.
Anybody can get lucky now and then, can’t they?
It was getting dark, but the last rays of pink sun still shone low between the pines. He gave the rug one last violent beating against the back steps of the trailer and went inside.
#
Not far down the state highway was the sad little shell of downtown Brownesville, the brick-and-mortar husk where a town once stood. A few square blocks of boarded-up storefronts bisected by a railroad line long fallen into disuse. A knot of men hung around the steps of the old municipal building, drinking tallboys of cheap beer in brown paper bags, while another wearing head-to-toe camouflage traced long slow donuts across the parking lot on a moped. Their eyes followed as Joseph's ten-speed rolled past.
The BP parking lot was empty save for the gas pumps and the rusted Dodge sedan forever stationed out front. Joseph dismounted the bike and walked it to the entrance. He stopped to check his reflection in the panes of plexiglass and swiped a hand across his dull, lank hair. On the other side, the cash register stood unattended.
Knew this was a dumb idea, he thought. She’s not even here.
It was warm inside and smelled of nachos. A tiny bell jingled against the door, announcing his arrival. From behind the snack aisle emerged a head of crimped, blond-streaked hair: Elissa? She was on her phone, glossy lips moving as she neatened a shelf of potato chip bags. Colorful cellophane crinkled at her touch. She glanced at him and then away, not recognizing him.
Joseph headed straight for the restroom.
Rust-colored stains crept around the base of a lone commode with a smear of feces stuck to the bottom. Sordid messages covered the walls. Joseph watched his urine flow into the dirty commode. He flushed with the heel of his shoe and washed his hands with the last pink dregs in the soap dispenser. In the mirror, his face looked spent and angular, carved with a dull chisel from some fleshy stone, and he had a feeling like his reflection, the mirror, the angles of the bathroom walls had all gone a few degrees off true.
Joseph inspected the lines between the floor tiles, their solid right angles, as he marched up the snack aisle and halted at the counter. Elissa was at her post now, bowing her head over a thick, well-worn paperback, still chewing her gum.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Joseph knew she could not. Her broad smile, her lip-gloss, the careful styling of her tresses and her neat little teeth cracking her chewing gum had all fused into a façade, hermetic and unnatural, safeguarding her life-force from his predations.
Joseph bought an extra-long beef jerky and went home.
#
“What do you mean you didn’t talk to her?” Kenny asked the next day over the phone. “The hell’s the matter with you?”
It was a fair question. “Guess I lost my nerve.”
“I don’t know if you had a nerve to begin with.”
“Yeah, well.” On the other end cartoons played in the background, and Joseph’s nephews yowled about something or other. You don’t know what it’s like, he wanted to say. You don’t know what it’s like to be accursed with these wraith-like inclinations. To do a thing like that. To be compelled to that, to crave that.
“I’ll call her my damn self,” Kenny said.
“Like hell you will.”
“Think I won’t, I dare you. You know she ain’t got nothing else to do but talk on that phone. Joseph, we worry about you, you know. Me and Joy.”
“That so?”
“She says you got something wrong with you.”
Fear flared and billowed through Joseph as he switched the phone from one ear to the other, less sweaty one. Could Joy know? Know about him? Again, louder this time, he asked: “Is that so?”
“Yeah. She saw it online, I think. ‘Caretaker Syndrome’? Or ‘Caregiver’? Some damn syndrome, hell if I know.”
“Oh.” Joseph snorted in relief. “Well, in that case.”
“Okay, smart ass. You just remember what I told you, about calling her up. All right?”
“All right.”
And with that, Joseph slipped the phone into the cradle to charge, there on the little end-table next to the rocking chair where Mama slept, belly rising and falling, the ebb and flow of breath rustling through her nostrils, in and out, in and out.
#
That Wednesday after soccer practice, he returned to Brownesville. It was nearly dark, but the same group of drunks was still congregated on the steps of the municipal building, the same guy in camos doing donuts on his moped.
Further down, the BP parking lot was illuminated. Grease splotches glistened in fluorescent rainbows on the pavement. A tang of gas fumes hung in the air. The rusted Dodge sulked in its usual spot near the entrance. Joseph leaned his bike against the wall and checked his reflection in the glass again. The same spent-looking face with the same weedy strands of hair stared back.
When he tried to pull the door open, it wouldn’t budge. He checked the sticker over the door handle: PULL, it said. He cupped his hands over his eyes and peered through the glass. The overhead lights and the ones in the coolers were all on. Back in the corner the heat lamps showered their glow upon the nachos, the hot dogs spun on their tireless rotating grill. It didn’t look like they were closed. He knocked on the door, the little bell clinked mutely against the glass, but there was no response. Just my luck, Joseph thought. The one time I get up my nerve and what happens.
He grabbed the handlebars of his bike and raised one leg to straddle the seat. Then, pausing with his leg cocked up like a dog marking territory, he thought: Nope. No way. Whatever was going on with Elissa, he meant to figure it out. He let the bike fall and took a couple steps back to survey things. Along the left side of the building was a walkway of poured concrete peppered with cigarette butts and shards of brown and green glass. It led around back to a small window with vertical bars covered in peeling green paint.
Joseph got on his tiptoes, gripped the bars with his fists, and peeked inside.
The window looked onto a storage room, stocked with a full spectrum of colored soda bottles lining the walls. In the middle of the room, on top of a pallet stacked five-high with flats of twelve-ounce beer cans, there was a twin-size air mattress. And a pillow and a purple sleeping bag laid any which way across it. Strewn around the mattress he spied women’s clothing. A pink jacket on the ground. A black brassiere.
In the shadows, half-naked, stood Elissa. She was changing into her work clothes with her back to the window, black panties stretched across her hips, pale white legs exposed as she lifted first one foot and then another, pulling up each trouser leg and cinching them tight around her waist. I’ll be goddamned, Joseph thought. Had this poor woman moved back to town only to find herself sleeping in the storage room of the Han-dee goddamn Hugo’s? How in the hell? Joy didn’t mention anything, was she not aware? Joseph felt his pupils dilate, felt life slip through the window, between the bars, into his eye sockets, down his insides. One moment after another—school bus rides, puking in the backyard, stocking shelves, ringing up customers, curling up to sleep alone atop a pallet of beer cans—all seeping through him. He averted his eyes. Inside he heard a hacking, anguished cough. He knew what was next.
Except next thing he knew, he was face down on the ground, with no idea how he got there or why his mouth tasted like blood. Four or five men surrounded him. He recognized the one hollering at him: the moped guy in full camouflage.
“You like that? You like spying in people’s windows? Spying on people and pounding your pud?”
Joseph scrambled to his feet, limbs and gut flush with adrenaline. He made a run for his bike until a boot swept him down, and he lay there, forearms clamped over his face, lost in a cloud of dust as their feet kicked again and again. Cruel laughter came from up above, and voices with watery echoes through tears and blood. “You like pounding your pud? Well, how you like it now, you sorry piece of perverted shit?” That’s not it at all, he wanted to say, as if they’d listen. He coughed instead, and up came something thick and purulent from deep inside him, something that had been there far too long. But then the kicking stopped. His assailants had held back, only half-heartedly kicked the shit out of him. Was he that pathetic, that he merited even that kind of pity?
Somewhere, a woman started hollering, and Joseph lay there a while longer and did nothing.
Soon Kenny was on the scene, with blue lights from a Highway Patrol car strobing over his face. The two brothers sat with their backs against the rusty old Dodge in the parking lot. A little ways off, Elissa was clutching her stomach, looking nauseous and harassed as she spoke to the highway patrolman jotting notes in a little spiral pad.
“Damn,” Kenny said. “What the hell happened?”
“They jumped me. They jumped me and they beat my ass.”
“You reckon?” Kenny sucked air sharply through his teeth. “They get your wallet or anything?”
Joseph patted himself down with one hand, shook his head.
“Huh,” Kenny said. “Didn’t take your wallet, didn’t take your bike…”
“My bike?”
The ten-speed lay on its side by the door to the convenience store. By herculean effort, Joseph managed to get to his feet and stagger towards it. Pain stabbed him in a thousand places as he dragged up the handlebars.
“Hey,” Kenny said. “Hold on, now.”
Joseph's reflection in the plexiglass wasn’t so bad off, just his bottom lip bleeding on the one side. Any real damage done would be under his clothes, under his skin, where no one else could see. With a groan, he mounted the bike and started pedaling. The highway patrolman looked over and said something that did not reach Joseph’s ears. He mouthed the words ‘I'm sorry’ to Elissa as he rode off, turning quickly down a trail through the woods where no squad car could follow.
Much to his relief, Joseph came home that night not to TV and Mama snoring in her rocking chair, but to darkness.
He slipped off his sneakers and crossed the stillness in stocking-feet. In the bathroom, he pulled the thin chain that clicked the light on over the mirror. The blood on his lip and chin had dried. He cleaned it off, brushed his teeth and went to the bedroom. Silently, he put on his pajamas, eased toward the edge of the mattress and pulled back the covers.
His mother lay next to him with her back turned, massive and inert. Her snoring was the only sound as Joseph lay staring at the ceiling. God, it’s tough. Being this way, doing these things. He never signed up for this. Nobody asks to be a soul-sucking wraith. Never in the history of the world has anyone ever asked a child what they wanted to be when they grew up and gotten “wraith” for an answer. These things just happen to you. You are who you are and that's all there is. He couldn’t help being who he was, could he? But then Mama stirred, and only then did Joseph even realize he was whimpering aloud. She wriggled under the blanket to face him, eyes blinking.
“Hey,” Joseph said.
She didn’t speak, of course, but Joseph felt a trickle in response, pooling and flowing together drop by drop. Mornings alone with the cable news; the daily humiliation of bath-time, with himself as accomplice; the silent worry on her face, of which he was the primary cause; the pendulous movements of the rocking chair, days and hours, minutes and seconds, each ticking by same as the one before. The grueling countdown. He rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Go back to sleep, Mama. Everything’s fine.”
He stared into her eyes, taking it all in, until the pallor fell across her face. When the rustle of her breathing ceased, all was quiet, and Joseph took his hand from her shoulder and rolled over and slept.