Page 36 of Ghost Girl

Chapter 15

Rhodes

Icouldn’t stop my gaze from drifting towards the treeline as I left my house in the morning, even if I’d wanted to. My emotions were going haywire this morning. I couldn’t decide if the prominent emotion was anxiety or dread, but they were also warring with the excitement I felt over the prospect of seeing Kali again. I couldn’t have stopped my heart from fluttering when that excitement crested when I spotted the object of my most recent obsession already there, waiting for me just inside the treeline. She beckoned me closer with a wave of her hand, and like an infatuated idiot, I followed without question.

She could have been a siren sent to lure me to a watery grave, but I was dying anyway, so why wouldn’t I follow the beautiful, mysterious woman into the woods?

She led me further into the trees than we had gone before, and I kept checking for those little markers my parents had left to point out the property line: three vertical slashes on the bark of certain trees. I had seen them on the other side of the property plenty of times, because of the campsite boundaries, but I didn’t recall ever coming this way before. Or had I? The longer I thought about it, the more my head pounded and the fuzzier itbecame until I couldn’t remember what I was thinking about so hard. Why was I in the woods?

‘Rhodes?’ a sweet voice called out to me from somewhere to my right. I followed the sound to a vaguely familiar face, and I stared at her strikingly pale, ethereal features as I tried to place her. ‘Rhodes, are you okay?’

I blinked, the memories trickling back in as I finally realised why I recognised her. I grinned, shaking off the brain fog. ‘Kali, hi.’

‘What just happened?’ she asked, and though her tone was soft, they were also blunt. I decided that I appreciated it. I hated it when people walked on eggshells around me, because it went hand-in-hand with the pity I so detested. Talking to Kali was a breath of fresh air. What wasn’t, however, was the confusion her question brought on, and I glanced around me at the trees, wondering how and why I had walked into them. Seeing Kali before me, I realised I must have spotted her and followed her in, but I didn’t remember.

I gave her the only answer I could give, tapping my head with a mocking smile that I used to hide my wince. My head fucking hurt, and the tapping only exacerbated the throbbing. ‘Brain tumour. Sorry if I acted a bit strange. I don’t… my memory isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Your memory?’ she asked, concerned.

‘I… I don’t… um,’ I stumbled over my words, trying to piece together what was happening.

‘What was the last thing you remember?’ she asked, her tone so gentle and patient that it brought tears to my eyes. Not because of her kindness, but because she wasn’t making me feel like a burden just because I was sick.

‘Uh, I think… I was putting my shoes on, and then… I don’t…’ My head began to swim, my vision doubling, tripling, and eventually blurring into indecipherable blobs of colour.

‘Okay. I don’t think you lost much time…’ She paused. A white blur I deduced must have been Kali suddenly appeared right in front of me, taking up my entire field of distorted vision. ‘Rhodes, do you need to sit down?’

I nodded, then winced at the sensation of my brain smacking against the inside of my skull. I squinted my eyes and leaned my shoulder against a nearby trunk, completely disoriented, and barely even felt the scrape of the bark against my arm as I slid to the ground. Leaves and twigs crunched beneath my weight, but I barely heard or felt a thing as the thrumming pressure grew too much to bear. My hands flew up to the sides of my head, and I squeezed in a feeble attempt to relieve the pressure. When it didn’t work, a groan of pain escaped my mouth without my permission, and I tipped over to lie on my side, the trunk at my back the only thing letting me know where I was.

‘Rhodes?’

‘M-med… M-med’ca-tion,’ I slurred. ‘T-truck.’

‘Fuck, Rhodes. Shit. Okay, you’re medication is in your truck?’

My only response was a whimper of pain.

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t get it for you. You need to move. Can you sit up?’

Her words were simultaneously too loud and too muffled, and it took me a while to sift through them to finally comprehend. She couldn’t help, or wouldn’t?

‘W-why?’ I asked, my mouth struggling to form the word through the pain.

‘I can’t, Rhodes. I’m so sorry. There are so many things I can’t do yet, but I can sit with you. Would that help?’

I could hardly think over the sheer agony shooting through my brain that was slowly starting to travel down. My neck tensed, then my shoulders, and then I felt it. My mind was slowly shutting down in preparation for the seizure coming in hot.

The last thing I managed to think was how I found it strange that this mystery of a woman wanted to offer me moral support, but refused to retrieve my medication from my car.

∞∞∞

Everything hurt.

I wasn’t sure what happened, but my head pounded, my muscles were stiff and achy, and my eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my head. It was all-encompassing, and I struggled to push through the fog coating my brain to focus on anything else.

Sounds were muffled and incomprehensible, just like everything else. I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I tried to open my eyes to see where I was, but they were either glued shut or I was too weak to pry them open. A groan rumbled in my chest, but barely made it past my throat, which felt closed off. I wanted to panic that I was going to suffocate to death, but I didn’t have the energy. I felt weak, pathetic, and absolutely useless as I lay here, pushing my brain and my body to start working properly.

It came slowly, starting with my senses.

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