A/N: I'm so sorry that this update almost took a month. This IS going to be somewhat of a Jonah/Wendy and this is the first time they sort of "meet" so I wanted it to be as perfect as possible...it still didn't really turned out like I had hoped but I did my best... And I wanted another touching Matt-Jonah scene at the end, and that took a while. And that's the shining gem of this chapter.
Thanks to all those who have been reviewing. It means so much to me that people like my ideas. Thought I'd formally mention that before I start begging for more at the end note ;) Enjoy.
The wind blew through her hair. Her father had the top down on their Touring Car, exposing her to the outside air. They chugged along at fifteen miles per hour.
"…It'll do you good to have a small holiday, you know that…" Papa was saying. She hardly caught this phrase, for she gazed at the enormous, intimidating brick institution they motored past at that moment. She had experienced such unspeakable horror in that building, but all that horror had not accumulated over time; they were all developed within one incident inside that wretched mental hospital.
She never guessed they would abandon him like that. It just showed that parents, especially in families of high status, could so quickly turn on their young if they fail to do and act as they'd been taught to glorify the surname. And how the most unlikely person, the seemingly most bitter person in town, would open up and help the desperate child. And the case was so much more extreme than any Scrooge and Tiny Tim scenario. More like a Fitzgerald-esque situation of a violent fall from high social class, and landing at the very bottom with a profound "splat."
The asylum disappeared behind them, beyond her now blurred-with-tears vision. She turned back to face forward and tried to hide the grief and sorrow from Papa.
"See?" Papa said, for her attempts had failed. "You sure could use a vacation, dearest Virginia. He'll be fine."
"That's what you said before," she murmured, her throat painfully tightened with the most extreme heartache—
----
A furious tickle rose in Wendy's throat and she broke into a coughing fit. She realized she had fallen asleep at only 4:30 with all her lights on and using This Side of Paradise as a pillow. How could she have fallen asleep anyway? No-Longer-Dead Kid had arrived, and he was just down the hallway, hopelessly sick, so she'd heard.
Glancing down at her book to make sure she hadn't bent it up too severely, or perhaps drooled on it, she quickly realized: This Side of Paradise. Classic, essential 1920s literature. She swallowed. Had Jonah read this book? That is, if he even knew how to read. Illiteracy wasn't so unusual back then, and if he was a sixteen-year-old training to be a mortician, then maybe he didn't know. Maybe he was too poor for school, or just chose not to go, or he wasn't allowed to, being a medium and all…and so he wound up at a dead-end (literally) apprenticeship at a mortuary.
She rubbed her temples; she really needed to keep him out of her mind, away from her thoughts, before she developed a bias in the mystery of Virginia Hayes.
After a minute or two of more coughing, she headed out of her room with intentions of getting a glass of water. As she wandered down the hall, she stopped and tip-toed past Sara and Peter's bedroom.
She tried not to think about what it would be like when he crawled out of the room and she met him for the first time outside of the text of an old newspaper or a disturbing photograph of ectoplasm. She barred from her mind the thought of what his voice might sound like—a soft tenor? a warm bass?—or how much taller he would be than her, how thick or small his frame might be. How would he act? How depressed and sick could he actually be at that moment? Matt knew; he'd seen more of him than all the rest of them combined. And he'd already been to see him in the hospital. Perhaps Wendy could wander to the basement and have an informative chat—
Wait. Stop. Don't think about Jonah…Just keep walking.
Wendy continued padding down the hall.
"Ohh…"
She abruptly halted, her sneakers making a scuffing noise on the hardwood floor. A moan. She'd heard a moan, from her aunt and uncle's bedroom. A post-pubescent male voice which had unquestionably come from Jonah. Then followed a loud, harsh series of gagging, gasps in between.
The floor disappeared underneath her, the room shifted, and her vision tinted a blue-ish green. Wendy gripped her abdomen. She was listening to Dead Kid throwing up.
Yet, amidst all the resentment, a considerable amount of concern and sympathy hatched inside of her…An indomitable magnetism willed her feet to turn and head back in the direction the Campbells' bedroom. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced over her shoulder, thinking maybe it was something supernatural, and not a sudden desire to play nurse to Jonah, that tugged her backward.
I'll go back there and peek in the door, perhaps through the key-hole, she reasoned. Hopefully he won't notice me, I'll satisfy my curiosity, and I can continue downstairs and socialize with the sane around here.
So Wendy gave into the tug and sauntered back to the dark-stained door.
The door was latched. She wondered if Jonah had a bat-like sense of hearing that came along with his super medium powers as a sort of package deal. If not, she could probably twist the knob and get a look at him—she'd never seen him in color before, she realized.
She reached out for the knob. It's not latched anyway! So Wendy nudged the door open just a small crack…she tried to peak in very, very, quietly…
Jonah's motionless, presumably sleeping figure suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight up at her.
—"Wendy? Is that you?"
----
Sara had begun setting the table, with Matt's help, while Peter stood leaning against the counter, going through the mail. He flipped through the many white envelopes as if looking for a specific letter.
"Aha," he said, finally.
Sara paid very scarce attention, not on purpose, but because her mind was permanently glued on the boy upstairs. Every time she looked at Matt, she'd see Jonah. The way "those two dead boys" were connected, even in life, she found especially poignant.
After the first haunting was over, they gathered up Jonah's ashes from the reverend, with intentions on doing research, finding his full name, and giving him a proper burial near his family, if applicable.
Once the little mound of gray powder and blackened portion of skull were safely nestled in the Adidas shoe box, Sara couldn't help but gape with misty eyes. She didn't care right then if that boy had been good or evil, if he'd saved her son or almost killed him. If he'd been a medium or a big fraud, a true aspiring mortician or a teenager who'd gotten on the wrong path. She didn't care about any of that. What mattered was that, inside that box, there was a person. A young man who, one way or another, had had a long life ahead of him.
Most of all, there was someone's child. A mother's baby.
Now, Sara looked up at her son once more. What was she going to do?
She felt compelled, in a way, to contact Jonah's real mother somehow, and tell her he was being well taken care of. It sounded crazy, but she wished they could be Two Dead Moms, like their Two Dead Boys…
Across the room, Peter removed a few papers from the envelope he was looking for. He flipped through them.
"What's that, Dad?" Matt asked. Sara noticed he seemed much more interested in his father's work now that he knew what he studied.
Peter seemed to hesitate. "…Paycheck," he said.
An expression of grave, angry realization molded to their son's face. "Paycheck?" he said accusingly. "Paycheck? I suppose you made a bunch of money off of Jonah, didn't you?"
"He's the first reincarnated person on scientific record, ever. It's kind of revolutionary, a huge discovery that, although it has to be kept extremely quiet, is going to change a lot of things in the science world forever," Peter reasoned. "There's somewhat of a reward for that. The reverend got paid, too—"
"How much is it?"Sara asked, to prevent a quarrel from arising.
Peter swallowed. "A—about $1,800,000. It's a revolution, I'm telling you—"
----
Jonah leaned over the edge of his bed and, so composedly, allowed it all to come up and into the wastebasket positioned next to him. He had become an expert at puking, ever since his first successful ectoplasm materialization. For one, vomiting didn't require a quarter as much energy, and wasn't nearly as painful as ectoplasm. And it helped that the stomach contents obeyed the laws of gravity and didn't float upward. And he could breathe in between gags, instead of being nearly suffocated by the protoplasmic stuff. Upchucking was a luxury, compared to materializing the dead.
He let his head drop limply over the edge for a while, to make sure it was all over, before sucking in a breath of precious oxygen and trying to get over the sour taste. When he lifted his head to lay it back on the pillow, he spotted a dark-haired girl, half-hidden behind the door. She was peeking in at him.
He blinked; waited for his vision to focus.
"Wendy? Is that you, Wendy?" he inquired.
She jumped back a little. Jonah felt a heavy mixture of remorse and nervousness course into his blood. He remembered the night he was visiting his old bedroom, making sure he kept himself invisible to the living, but for a moment he faltered and she woke up and saw him. He'd scared her. Poor Wendy. Please go away.
"Uh—hi. I was just—stopping by. To check on you. I heard you weren't feeling well," she stammered. "You okay?" she asked, and Jonah noticed the little spatter of sick on his chin, which he quickly took a tissue to wipe away with. One thing about ectoplasm was that it would clean up after itself.
"I'm fine," he said. His face got hot. He was blushing—actually blushing.
"Are you sure?" She took a step or two into the room. "Is there anything I can get for you? How about a glass of water, to kill the taste?" By now she was all the way into the room and sitting herself on the edge of the bed, just a few inches away from his toes. Jonah fretfully shook his head. He was sure she didn't like him. Sara had probably instructed her to come in and be nice. He just wanted her to go away…
Wendy blushed too then, as if suddenly becoming aware of herself and what she was doing. She looked away. "I'm sorry, Jonah. I just—I have a habit, I guess, from when Matt was sick."
Jonah propped himself up on his elbow, feeling himself relax a little. He felt empathy for her now, understood her reason—he had, after all, witnessed how sick Matt had been, and how much Wendy had cared for her cousin. He asked, his voice soft, "Do you like taking care of people?" Wendy shrugged and nodded. "Maybe you could be a nurse."
"Maybe…" She seemed to have dazed off, caught deeply in her thoughts. "Jonah," —He decided he liked the way she said his name, not stern like Aickman's or condescending like Peter's or sugary like Sara's— "I'm sorry if I stared. It's just so surreal, seeing you. I mean, the only time I ever saw you was…in those newspaper articles…" She swallowed. Neither of them mentioned the other time she'd seen him. "Your eyes…" she murmured.
Jonah took the pressure off his elbow and sat up all the way. "I know. I get that a lot," he said gently.
"God—you're so…real," she whispered.
During a time of pause that followed, Jonah considered Wendy, just Wendy in general. Before the fire, he hadn't paid her much mind. She and Billy were the two he never put much effort towards. Matt had obviously been the focal point of his attention, Sara the overprotective mother whose love he knew he could use, Peter who brought back the achingly familiar scenario of an alcoholic father, and Mary the innocent child whom the spirits often preyed on until he stopped them. Wendy snagged his curiosity, though, when he saw her reading The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke on the porch one day. He knew she was a studious type, the way she would spend so long reading even the short poems, analyzing them and trying to grip every symbolic meaning. He knew she could help Matt help him, so with a little remorse he let Mary's leg fall through right where the box was.
What he never intended was to scare her…The poor girl had been oblivious to the fact that she slept in what had sixty years ago been his bedroom. Thankfully, or at least for the moment, she didn't seem to be angry with him about it.
"I'm feeling a lot better now," Jonah said.
"I'm glad," said Wendy.
"It was nice properly meeting you, Wendy."
The two smiled at each other. "It was nice meeting you, too, Jonah."
----
Matt slid down the wall so that he was sitting on the floor and peeked around the corner, into the kitchen. Their voices travelled out to him. He was participating in the art of eavesdropping on one's parents. They were discussing the massive amount of money Dad had earned with his breakthrough and what to do with it.
"You do have to admit, Peter," Sara said, "it does seem slightly wrong that you made almost two million bucks off of a boy that hardly wanted to be reincarnated in the first place."
"I know, Sara, I know. But you have to admit that I've hardly ever done anything—especially of this size—just for the money. I did it for the thrill of the breakthrough. And maybe to give this—this poor kid who died too young a second chance…"
Matt's chest gave a hallow squeeze at that. He wished he could go see Jonah.
"…And, you know, we can always put it to good use," Peter continued, "It's not like we're gonna go out and buy a Ferrari or anything. We do have another kid to take care of now, another one to send to college…"
An extremely long pause stretched over the better part of a minute. Then Sara murmured, "Jonah. College." Something in her voice indicated a calm, tired smile. "Only a few years from now. If he chooses to go, anyway."
Peter whispered, "Wow," and there was a rustling noise, of the two coming together for a hug.
Matt's throat tightened, too. So much more than Jonah ever could ever have had…
"You know what, Peter?" Sara whispered, her voice so faint that Matt had to strain to hear her. "I think we could take some of that money and use it to get out of here. Buy a new house. Just think of how much easier it'll be for Jonah if we get out of the place he has so many terrible memories in. and it could be a really nice house, too. No lost secrets, no gruesome pasts, no creepy basements…We could just all move on…" She sniffled. "To think, it was not even five months ago, we moved here, we were scared we were gonna lose Matt, and now look at us. Millionaire scientists, with a reincarnated little ghost boy joining our family…"
—"Little ghost boy?" This voice, also hushed, appeared in front of Matt. He looked up and his gaze locked naturally, magnetically with Jonah's. His heart leapt; not entirely in the same way that Carrie made his heart jump, but still, everything about Jonah caused him to feel an odd, comforting shock. Comforting shock. An oxymoron, like in English class, Matt observed.
"Jonah—How are you? You feeling better—?"
The little ghost boy lowered himself to the floor next to Matt. He pulled his knees up by his chest. "Quite a lot better," he whispered. "You know, it's rude to eavesdrop on your parents…But I do admit, the conversation is very interesting."
"They're talking about getting a new house, Jonah. A new house. Wouldn't that be great? No more smelly old funeral home—" Matt halted his words, appalled with himself. His dad had told him how upset Jonah got when he insulted Aickman. "Look, Jonah, I'm real sorry, I didn't mean it…" he stuttered.
"No, Matt, it's okay." Jonah gave him that open, sincere look of understanding similar to the expression he bore while they were in the graveyard together, that crucial fiery night… "For one, that's about the fiftieth time I've been uselessly apologized to today, and in all honesty, the smell, the bodies—it was rather awful." He smiled, a delicate lifting of the corners of his mouth just dramatic enough to be noticed. Matt had never seen him smile before. He took this milestone as calmly as he could, thanking God that at least he kid knew how to.
"Okay. It's just—well, Dad said you got kind of…I dunno…offended when he acknowledged how Aickman was…I dunno…not taking care of you like he probably should have…"
Jonah's smile disappeared, but he otherwise remained tranquil. "I wasn't feeling well to begin with. And, well, maybe he was sort of right…Maybe Mr. Aickman could've been more considerate, but I—" Jonah's words caught in his throat, and his mouth remained open for a moment or two as he struggled with words. "I'm sixteen, Matt. I wasn't his full responsibility. I sort of just gave up on myself…and the ectoplasm; it harvests fluids and phosphates and what-not from the medium, and that drained a lot out of me…"
Matt set his hand on Jonah's arm. "It's all right—"
Jonah shrugged away from the touch and continued on, "I guess I really don't know who's to blame yet. I don't even know what to think of Aickman. Everyone thinks I should hate him, but I—I can't. He's all—he's all I—" He bit his lip and hugged his knees closer to him. He shook his head. "I've decided I'm going to figure all of that out later."
Matt nodded. "That's right, Jonah. Just deal with things a little at a time." He knew the remainder of the sentence Jonah had stopped himself at. Aickman was all Jonah had left. And it tore him apart, really. He wanted to know everything that happened, how Jonah got here. But he would just have to wait. There would most likely be a day where Jonah could open up and tell them everything, but it wasn't now.
"You sound just like your father when you talk like that," Jonah said.
A/N: You know what I realized? The name Virginia. The actress who played Sara is named Virginia Madsen. I knew that before but didn't realize it until this chapter "Hey...Virginia... Madsen and Hayes..." Is that cool or creepy?
So review, review, for they all keep me going, keep me updating, keep me passionate about my stories. And if I stay passionate, the writing quality is better. :)
