I blink at him, my chest tight with fear and confusion, and then I look away, at the fireplace, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
It’s my reflection in the window, distorted by the moonlight.
It’s not my ex-business partner who betrayed me, slept with my wife, brutalized her, and who in turn was graphically murdered by the two of us.
I take in a deep breath and look again.
He’s still sitting there.
That fucker.
Just sitting there as he always did, with his stupid Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, like he just got back from the motherfucking beach. His hair is wavy, brittle, his face ugly as a rhino’s ass, with a scar running down the side.
That Esteban.
“Hola, Javier,” he says to me. “Bet you thought you’d never see me again, eh?”
This is a dream. Some awful fucked up dream.
I look down at my hand, thinking about pinching it, to wake me up.
Then Esteban reaches over and does it for me.
I watch in slow motion as his hand, his very real and corporal sun-spotted hand, comes for me, pinching the skin on my forearm between my fingers until it stings.
“What the fuck?!” I yelp, jumping to my feet, rubbing at my arm.
“Shhh,” Esteban says, raising his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake Luisa. We both know how…curious she can get in the middle of the night.”
“What the fuck.” I can’t stop saying it. “What the fuck?” I press my hands into my temples, trying to rub sense into myself. I look around the darkness of the cabin. Why the fuck are all the lights out anyway, shouldn’t they be on? Where is everyone?
“Just calm down,” he says, patting the space next to him on the couch. “Have a seat. I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“This is a dream,” I tell him. “You’re not real.”
“Want me to pinch you again?”
I shake my head. “No. Just…stay where you are.”
I need a knife. Why don’t I have a knife on me?
Ah, the fireplace poker.
I reach for it, grasping it in my hands.
“I wouldn’t do that yet,” he says to me. “You need to listen to what I have to say first.”
I raise it up, brandishing it like a baseball bat. “Why the fuck should I listen to you? You’re dead.”
“That’s exactly why you should listen to me, brother,” he says. “Because I’m dead. No thanks to you.”
“You fucked my wife!”
“She was willing.”
“You had her raped!”
He sighs and, fuck me, if that doesn’t look like regret on his face. “There’s a reason why I’m here, Javier. It’s that there’s a place for people like us. A place where you wear chains. A place where your soul is eaten alive, shit out by things that your brain can’t even describe. It’s a place of pure horror and pain. Relentless. Eternal.”
“Oh god, please don’t tell me you’ve become a Jehovah’s Witness.”
He gives me a sharp look. “I’m dead, you prick.”
I raise my brow. “Speaking of pricks, do you still have yours? Did it grow back after Luisa cut yours off?” I can’t help but grin. I mean, I know I’m fucking crazy now because I’m standing here holding a poker, trading barbs with the very dead man I saw die right in front of me.
Even so, he died dickless, so that counts for something.
“Javier, I’m only going to say this once and then I’m out of here. If you continue down this path, you’re going to end up just like me.”
I scoff, lowering the poker. “Dead, you mean?”
“In hell,” he says emphatically. “Wearing much heavier chains than I am.”
“You’re saying I’m worse than you are?”
“I’m saying…yeah. You are. You always have been. You were my victim, Javier. That’s the only difference. You’re not used to having it the other way around, eh?”
“Fuck, you’re still annoying.”
He gets to his feet and I hate that even as a ghost, or in a dream, or whatever hallucination I’m having, he’s still taller than me.
“And you’re going to be in trouble if you don’t listen to me. You’re going to be visited by three spirits after this. You’re going to have to listen to each of them, I mean really take what they’re saying to heart, or else you’re going to be confined to a worse fate than mine.” He pauses, studying my face. It feels like he’s really looking into my soul here, which isn’t good. “You can change, Javier. Just a little bit. Just enough. And that might be enough to save you.”
“Why do you care about saving me?”
He gives me a crooked grin. “I’m in hell, aren’t I? Trying to save you is just extra punishment.” He walks past the couch, giving me a dismissive wave. “Take care, old friend.”
I watch him as he walks toward the front door, opens it, and then disappears into the night.
What the fuck?
I keep holding the poker and run outside into frozen air. My breath freezes into a cloud, but Esteban is nowhere to be seen.
My god, I am truly going crazy.
I’m overworked.
I’m stressed.
I’m having some sort of mental breakdown.
That has to be it.
I walk back into the house, locking the door a million times.
I need to go to bed, for real.
I start walking to the fireplace to put the poker away when I stop dead in my tracks.
Someone is sitting on the couch, back to me.
It’s a woman.
Long brown hair, highlighted blonde streaks.
The air fills with the scent of freesia.
Achingly familiar.
“Who are you?” I ask. I’d love to say my voice isn’t shaking, but it is, because fuck, what now? Was Esteban right? Has he ever been right? “Hello?”
The woman doesn’t respond.
But she doesn’t need to.
I find myself walking toward her, drawn like a moth to a flame, driven by curiosity because my heart is filling with pain and I know that this can’t be her and yet it is her.
I walk around the couch and stare down at the woman.
My sister is sitting there, wearing a white dress. Her legs crossed, looking up at me
