Final Breath

movie Anchorman.

Eli also had a ghost, and he wanted to know more about it.

He sat on top of the spare bed, placed the movable indicator on the board's starting point, then gently rested his fingertips on it. 'Does the undead person dwelling in this house have a name?' he whispered.

Eli listened for the muffled voices. He waited for the room to get warmer--always a sign he was about to have a visit. But he didn't hear or feel anything. All he heard were the waves rolling onto the shore at the nearby beach. He must have waited at least two or three minutes before the indicator started to move. He felt a chill race through him. He wasn't moving it. He expected it to gradually move over to the YES sign. Instead it started spelling something: C-A-R-L. Then the planchette moved to GOOD BYE at the bottom of the board.

'Carl?' Eli whispered. 'Your name is Carl? Are you here right now?'

He closed his eyes this time, because he didn't want to cheat. When he felt the indicator move, Eli kept his eyes shut tight--until it stopped. He glanced at the board. He thought the indicator would be on YES, but it was on the letter I. Eli's hands started to shake, but he kept his fingertips on the indicator. The planchette inched over the board again--to the letter, M, and then to the word GOOD BYE.

'I-M?' Eli murmured. 'Oh, my God, 'I am.' You're here right now. Your name is Carl, and you're here with me now. Did you die in this house?'

Eli wasn't sure if it was his imagination, but it felt as if the room was getting warmer. The planchette seemed to move on its own now. He was barely touching it. Eli watched the indicator move to YES.

Eli didn't even wait for GOOD BYE. 'Did you die in this room?' he asked.

The indicator moved to YES again.

'How old were you when you died?' Eli whispered.

Then the planchette seemed to stall on him. Finally Eli gave it a nudge toward the row of numbers. He knew he was cheating, so he closed his eyes. The first number the indicator stopped on was 1. Then it moved to 4, and then GOOD BYE.

A fourteen-year-old named Carl had died in this bedroom. 'How?' Eli asked. 'How did you die?'

The planchette slowly skimmed across the board to the letter L, and then A. It seemed to take forever for it to move from letter to letter. After eight letters, Eli wondered if it was ever going to make sense: L-A-C-E-R-A-T-I. But the disc kept moving until it spelled out the word: L-A-C-E-R-A-T-IO-N. Then it said GOOD BYE.

Eli climbed off the bed and went to his desk. He grabbed his Webster paperback dictionary, and looked up the word. He found something under lacerate. 'To tear roughly,' it said.

He glanced up at his Dad's Root Beer clock and realized it was 3:40 in the morning. The bedroom didn't feel so warm anymore. Eli figured that last GOOD BYE from Carl would be for a while.

His mother was wrong about the Ouija. Instead of stirring up their ghost, that long session with the Ouija board seemed to have made Carl more docile. The next few nights went by without any otherworldly incident, though Eli felt more scared than ever--sleeping in that room where someone was murdered. He tried to get more information from the Ouija about fourteen-year-old Carl and exactly how he'd died. But it was frustrating, nothing at all like that first night. When he didn't come up with letters that spelled gibberish, Eli knew he was controlling the planchette himself. So he wasn't sure about Carl's last name, who had lacerated him, and how long ago it had happened.

His mom used to say that he quickly grew tired of his toys. And the Ouija wasn't much different. After a few days, the Ouija board went up on his closet shelf and stayed there.

Then on the night of July Fourth, when they'd found the front door open and that strange mess in the kitchen, Eli had figured Carl was back. It had been their first unexplainable incident in a while-- unless his mother had been keeping something from him. Eli realized the next day--when he'd overheard her and the neighbor lady talking outside--she'd been doing exactly that. Obviously she'd known all along about a suicide in the apartment, but she hadn't told him. Eli wondered what else she was hiding.

Well, he could keep secrets, too. His mom didn't know about Carl. The whole thing started to make some sense to Eli. The woman who had lived in this apartment years and years ago had lacerated her fourteen-year-old son, Carl, before killing herself. Eli still wasn't sure what that meant, and he casually asked his mother at the breakfast table the other morning.

'Lacerate?' she repeated. 'Oh, it means to tear something up, cut it up.'

'You mean--like cut it with a knife? A knife could give someone a laceration?'

She nodded over her coffee cup. 'That's right. Why do you ask?'

'No reason. Somebody used the word on a TV show yesterday, and I wasn't sure what they were talking about.' He went back to eating his Honey Nut Cheerios.

Eli wanted to find out more about Carl and his mother. But he didn't even know their last name--or when they'd died. He'd tried to google Tudor Court, Seattle, murder-suicide, but his search results had been a weird mix of real estate listings for the apartment complex and articles about different unrelated murders in the Seattle area.

He'd thought about asking his neighbors in Tudor Court about the murder/suicide, but he was worried it might get back to his mother.

Eli hadn't been sure how he could learn more about Carl--if that was indeed the kid's name--until he'd heard Marcella say just a few minutes ago: 'Someone dead is communicating with you.'

Her hand was still on his forehead. 'I see a person very much like you,' she said finally.

'Is it a teenager?' Eli asked. 'Is the dead guy a teenager--like me?'

She took her hand away, sat back, and sighed. The dog lazily got to its feet, then rested his head on her thigh. She scratched him behind the ears. 'It might be you in a past life, Eli. I can't be sure. Do you have any reoccurring dreams? Sometimes, that's your past life trying to communicate with you.' She lit up another cigarette.

'So you're saying this dead guy who's communicating with me is actually me in a past life?'

Marcella took a long drag from her cigarette and nodded.

It sounded pretty screwy to Eli. 'Well, do you know what my name was in my previous life?' Earlier she'd figured out his name had three letters. Maybe she could tell him something about the name of this dead teenager. 'Does his name start with a C?'

'The answer is in your dreams, Eli,' she said cryptically. She set her cigarette in the ashtray, then reached across the table. 'Give me your hand again.'

Eli obeyed. He glanced outside the booth. The sun had disappeared behind some clouds. He didn't hear any more speeches from the guest celebrities over by the mega-store. His mom was probably looking for him.

Marcella set his hand down on the table, palm up, then stroked it. 'I usually don't tell people bad news unless they ask to hear it,' she said. 'In your case, I think I can help you. Shall I tell you what I see here?'

His mouth open, Eli nodded.

'You're in danger. I see dangerous forces all around you, Eli. And I'm sorry, but you will face a loss--very soon.'

Eli stared at her. He felt a sudden tightness in the pit of his stomach--like a warning. He tried to tell himself that she was just jerking him around. But lately--ever since the Fourth of July--he'd felt something bad was going to happen. Maybe it had to do with their ghost; maybe not. But the danger was there.

Even if he didn't want to believe Marcella's prophecy, in his gut Eli knew it was true.

Sydney tried not to lose sight of the man with the blue 59 T-shirt, but it was difficult. They'd finished up the interview portion of the program, and placed a long table in front of the celebrity guests. This setup gave audience members had a chance to come up on the stage and get an autograph or chat privately with her, Terri, and the Channel 6 weatherman. People kept crowding in front of her on the other side of the table, blocking her view. Then someone would step to one side or move their head a little, and she'd see the