It had happened on a hot June day. She was eight and walking home from school. Raindrops began to fall from a bright but cloudy Miami sky, and the air became thick with an earthy smell. From a distance, she saw her grandmother waving to her from the bedroom window of her parents’ house. Her mother and father worked long hours, and so her grandmother was always home to greet her in this way. She was easy to recognize from a distance by her short, white hair. It was exceptional for its lack of gray or yellowish tint. Jennifer had often marveled at that hair. It was symbolic of a purity that she had always associated with her grandmother.
Jennifer waved and smiled as she continued walking. She stopped for a moment, held up the index finger of her right hand, and closed her left eye. The blurred image of her grandmother was no bigger than her fingernail. It was a trick her father had shown her some time ago, but the optical illusion still amused her.
In the split-second between lowering her hand and her eyes re-focusing, Jennifer thought she saw an orange glow surround her grandmother. Then the figure disappeared from the window. It was odd, but she put it down to a trick of the light. Continuing to trudge onward, lugging her book-laden backpack on her small frame, she felt nothing unusual or any sense of dread. She stepped with relish into newly formed puddles in her bright red sandals. The rainwater was just starting to seep through her white cotton socks, making them feel mushy, when suddenly, she felt an icy breeze wrap around her. The sensation caused her to stop abruptly and gasp for breath. A shiver raced along the skin of her exposed legs, then her arms, leaving the tiny hairs standing momentarily upright. The icy feeling lingered a moment on her face and neck, giving her the impression of the gentlest of caresses, then just as suddenly, it was gone, replaced with the dense warmth of the summer rain.
Jennifer was, by then, just a few steps from her parents’ front door. She felt a strange hesitation overcome her, a sensation of inexplicable fear. Finally, she proceeded and rang the bell. Time appeared to slow down as she waited, the harsh mechanical ring of the doorbell gradually fading into silence. She finally heard footsteps approaching the door. They sounded heavy and hesitant. Too heavy to be made by Grandma’s frail frame. The lock clicked open. Her father, David, greeted her with a warm smile, but his shoulders were slumped and his brow was furrowed. He spoke softly, battling against pressed lips and an inward gaze. He told her that her beloved grandmother had died in the hospital from a massive stroke three hours earlier. The words floored her.
By the time John reached the landing between the first and second floors, he had climbed three flights of stairs, each one requiring a little less concentration than the previous one in order for him to maintain contact with the floor’s surface. A window provided a welcome opportunity to look at something other than the harshly lit concrete walls and to take a rest.
It was night, but New York never sleeps, is never completely dark, and a hospital in Queens was no exception. Despite the hour, which he guessed must be sometime in the early morning, the nearest rows of spaces in the visible part of the brightly lit parking lot were already full, and the street beyond busy with a constant flow of traffic. The faint bounce of jackpot lights from an emergency vehicle on the windshields and paintwork of the parked cars indicated that the entrance to the ER must be nearby.
All was as it should be, with one exception. Amid the groups of people urgently making their way to the emergency wing and those returning to their cars at a more casual pace, John could see glowing areas of orange light. There they were! More spirits, just like him and the old man. Each one of them must be a perfect copy of a once-living person, he figured. And each one was a part of an unseen, additional layer to the physical world that he had thought he knew and understood. He looked out toward the distant street and noticed these spirits everywhere—part of the nighttime illumination––specks of orange moving with cars, buses, and taxis. He noticed the glowing figure of a girl, probably no more than twelve years old, following a couple who may have been her parents to their car. His heart went out to her as he imagined her fear and loneliness. As he did so, he felt himself slipping through the floor.
Fighting to regain his focus, he saw his father’s silver Maserati pull up just as the spirit of the girl and her parents drove away. John saw the burly figure and shining bald head of Jim Donovan exiting the building below him. The Irishman hustled awkwardly toward John’s father. His hairy, tattooed arms were slightly raised and he was patting the air with his downward-facing palms in a gesture, indicating to John’s father to calm down. They had been good friends since their schooldays in Ireland, but the contrast between them couldn’t have been greater. John’s father was wearing a tailored suit and his short, steel hair was neat and well-cut above a pair of steel-framed glasses. He was the very picture of a successful property developer. John doubted if Donovan even owned a suit—he seemed to always wear the same scruffy jeans and faded black t-shirt—and his only business, O’Donnell’s Irish Pub, looked like it was on its last legs, even with all the financial help John’s father had given him.
He followed the
