Brighter than the Stars

I looked up at the creamy blue sky which was spotted with indistinguishable stars and screamed.

*48 hours earlier*

I reached out to tap Izzy on the shoulder, and hesitated. What do you say to someone who had just lost their brother? She must have felt the air shift around her, because she turned around and smiled at me. I pretended not to notice the bags under her eyes and the slight sag of her shoulders. I opened my mouth, probably to apologize for what felt like the thousandth time, but I was interrupted by the feedback of the mic as Mrs Anderson asked everyone to take our seats in the auditorium in a low, tensed whisper. Everyone had been speaking in that same whisper-y voice that entire week.

"What did your mum say about visiting the optometrist?" 

I looked at her blankly.

"The eye doctor," she clarified patiently.

"No, I haven't had the chance–"

“You’re late,” Sahaana said bluntly as Izzy and I sat down on the cool metal. She pointed at me. “He is always late, but you too, Iz?”

“Sorry,” Izzy said quietly, and Sahaana’s expression softened, and she opened her hand, palm-up, offering it to Izzy, and I mirrored her action, but snatched my hand back almost immediately. I didn't know Izzy's brother all that well, and it felt wrong for me to say that it will be fine.

“We have gathered here today,” Mrs Anderson started, “to mourn the loss of one of our students–”

“I always imagined that my wake would have more,” a voice said beside me, “pizzazz.”

I twisted my neck at a painful angle to see Mark Ravenhood sitting next to me. 

"Shit!" I stood up, leaning towards Sahaana and Izzy, away from Mark, my body trembling violently. 

The entire room was silent, and standing above them all, I could see the dark blanket of grief that had settled over everyone. A few heads turned towards me; I sat down slowly, positioning myself away from Mark. 

I reluctantly turned to face him after Izzy gave me a perplexed look when she saw me pointing at the apparently-empty seat beside me. “Why can’t others see you?” My head sagged from my shoulders, the exhaustion from the past week catching up to me. I rubbed my forehead. “I’m going crazy.”

“Not crazy. Mediumship,” Mark stated philosophically. “The power to see the souls of the dead.”

I ignored him, and pulled my knees up, resting my chin on them. “You are just a figment of my imagination. A nightmare?” I dug my nails into palms, and a sharp pain shot through my arms. 

“Seems real enough to me,” Mark said in a cheery tone.

I shook my head at him incredulously. “Dead. You’re dead.”

“Rude.”

*****

I bared my teeth at him. “You’ve been talking for an entire hour. Can you leave me alone now?”

“Can’t do that,” he said, shrugging. “You need to make our last wishes come true for that.”

I looked up with dawning horror. “Our? There’s more of you?”

“Yes. They’re waiting for us at Java Jones. Can we go? The atmosphere here is too grim for my liking.”

“Get lost.”

Mark hooked his legs over the arm of his chair, and I noticed that he was barefoot, his toes hazy, like an image in mist. “I just told you; I can’t, even if I want to.”

I gritted my teeth. “Go bother someone else.”

"There aren't any other mediums here," he said, looking around. 

"Where are the others?" I asked cautiously. "Spirits or souls or whatever."

He smiled, as if it were a secret. "Come, I'll show you."

*****

The bell tingled as the door to Java Jones swung open, and I stepped in. Mark brushed past me as soon as we were inside, as if he were waiting for me to open the door for him. It must be weird to be able to pass through solid things. I wondered briefly whether he kept his distance from humans and refrained from going through doors and walls because he hoped that it could keep a part of him human. Izzy once told me that Mark always said that hope was a cruel illusion. It had seemed dramatic to me at the time, but now I was tempted to ask him how it felt to be a prisoner of that illusion, not to spite him or make him feel bad, but to satisfy a genuine curiosity.

Mark’s voice snapped me back to reality. “I brought a guy who will send us to Coelum.”

I walked over to the booth Mark was standing in front of. On one side sat a girl, and I held in a gasp when I saw her face. Just a coincidence. She was probably five years older than myself, with a petite frame and a small tattoo on the inside of her wrist, and a man who seemed to be in his early twenties with an unlit cigarette between his teeth.

"This is Matthew," Mark said, sliding in after me. "And that is Naomi."

"Okay, so I just need to make your last wishes–whatever that is–come true and you'll leave me alone?" 

Mark smiled at the other two, as if sharing an inside joke. They didn't smile back. "I promise."

“What’s your last wish?” I asked, resigned. 

Mark’ smile flickered for an instant, but resumed almost immediately. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why the hell not?” I demanded, and ducked my head when the mild crowd turned to me with alarmed expressions.

He shrugged, and stood up, sauntering over to the coffee machine—the translucent one— and tapped his fingers rhythmically on the wooden table as he waited.

I hadn't noticed it before, but as the minutes passed, the images which I had thought were a result of double vision were getting sharper and clearer, and now I could see two worlds. One real, solid, and opaque. The other was translucent, hazy and probably an outcome of my dawning insanity.

I turned my attention to the man–Matthew. “What did he mean by Coelum?”

“The three factions of the spirit world. Coelum is basically Heaven; if a spirit’s medium decides that they are worth their last wishes, they are sent to Coelum.”

“Then why can’t all spirits keep their last wishes simple?” I asked, nibbling on a piece of chocolate.

“Well, you cannot decide what your last wish is. It is the last thing you desire in the moment before you die. Your final, most overwhelming regret.”

“So your last wish is already set in stone before you know about the spirit world?”

“Exactly.”

Naomi leaned in. “Inferna. Hell. I heard that if you are sent to Inferna, you will die a thousand times more.”

“You go there if your last wish cannot come true?”

“Not quite.” Naomi touched her wrist again, where her tattoo was. “You will be sent there if your medium refuses to even try.”

“Who would do that?” I asked vehemently.

“Ninety percent of mediums,” Matthew said, stretching. I realised that my body was stiff too, and flexed my fingers. 

I opened my mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Mark’s return. He sat down beside me, but he was looking far away, as if he could see something I couldn’t. “Chamenos, the land of the lost. That’s where you go if your last wish can’t come true. Mediums have powers, so if they decide to grant us our last wish, we can reach Coelum without much effort. It is extremely rare for spirits like myself to stay in Chamenos.”

“So who does? Go to Chamenos, that is.”

“Spirits of mediums,” Matthew said, with the same far away look as Mark. “Like me.”

*****

I fell on my bed and curled into my pillow. Matthew and Naomi told me to rest for today, and that my real job was starting tomorrow. I already had the map of my escape route etched into my brain.

“Open up,” I heard Mark’ muffled voice say from the other side of the door. 

I groaned. “Leave me alone.”

He paused. “I’m not kidding when I say that I will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

I groaned again, and pulled myself up and walked to the door in long strides, and yanked the door open. Mark walked in with a triumphant smile. 

I sat down on the floor and sprawled over the carpet, too lazy to walk over to the bed again.

“You’re going to catch a cold if you sleep there.”

"What do you want?" I mumbled into the carpet. 

He ignored me, and padded barefoot towards my nightstand. “You look happy in this,” he said, his long fingers brushing, though not touching, the thick frame of the only family picture we ever took. “This girl–she looks a lot like Naomi…”

“I look fat in that,” I said without looking. I ignored the second half of his comment.

He hummed. “Really? I think like you better like that. See, with the toothy smile and all.”

I scoffed, but the action soon turned into a yawn. “Like you have any idea how painful it is to be different.” My eyes slipped shut, but I could hear Mark's voice, in that small yet long gap between the darkness of my closed eyes, and the beginning of a dream. “No, I don't.” I could tell that that was his final regret; being the same as everyone else.

I had a terrible nightmare that night.

*****

Naomi looked at me with a small smile, the sunlight pouring in through the skylight illuminating her face. “What is your last wish?” I asked bluntly, since there was no point in beating around the bush.

 “I--I, well--” she looked taken aback by the question, but regained her composure quickly. “To look at my true love once last time,” she muttered, looking at the tattoo on her wrist. My eyes followed hers and I finally got a clear look at it. It looked like two simple arrowheads, one below the other. And over the tattoo, a deep scar. Suicide. I looked away.

I tried not to judge her for her honestly-quite-childish last wish, and tried to momentarily change the subject. “What does your tattoo mean?”

“Nothing,” she said, immediately pulling her sleeve over it. 

"You can navigate," Mark said. "You can see where her fiance is with your powers." 

"How do I do that?"

"Give her your hand," he said, taking a huge gulp of his coffee. I noticed that he drank a lot of coffee, an unhealthy amount, but decided to keep my mouth shut.

"She will think about him. And you will know."

*****

Hospitals, even slightly abandoned ones, aren't supposed to be creepy.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" I asked, trying to stay as close to Mark as possible, though he can't possibly protect me, even if we were to encounter something dangerous.

"How am I supposed to know, you coward? You were the one who said that he was here."

"Yeah, but–"

"Noah," Naomi yelled, and ran into one of the rooms, and gasped. Noah was in a white hospital bed, his entire body hooked with tubes and machines. He was in a coma.

Cruel. The word kept getting scrawled over itself inside my head. It was cruel to give me the power to find something–someone– and not the power to heal them.

"You can save him," Matthew said, leaning down, his voice close to my ear. "You can save them. It's very easy, really."

Mark tensed beside him.

"Just repeat after me," Matthew said. Mark was glowering at him now. "If you want to. If you want to make sure that Noah and Naomi are together in Coelum, that he doesn't get lost in Chamenos or end up in Inferna. Remember that it will be your only wish. You can change the world with it, and you can destroy it."

I hesitated, and hated myself for it. Right now, Naomi– who looked so much like my sister–and her happiness should mean the world to me.

I turned to Matthew. "Teach me the words."

*****

The color of her soul was a muddy brown, and purplish in a few spots, as if beaten and… broken. Beneath it, though, I could see a faint blue-green glow. The colour of loyalty, of confidence and stubbornness. She looked up at me, and said, “create your own reality.”

“Huh?”

She coughed. “My tattoo. You asked me what it meant, right? It means ‘create your own reality’. Noah made me get it. He was the only one who believed that I could. When he didn’t show up in the day we were going to elope, I imagined that he left me, and...” She paused. “You shouldn’t have wasted it on me. You could’ve had anything with it. If other spirits get to know, you will not be able to live happily.”

“I don’t care,” I lied. “As long as you’re happy.” I clenched my fists so Naomi wouldn’t see how scared I actually was.

And just like that, she closed her eyes and died.

 Only with a smile this time.     

*****

“What’s Mark’s last wish?”

Matthew hesitated. “Someone to fall in love with him.”

“What did you use it for?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee from the cup. It was bitter, and sweet, and I was grateful to have something to do. "Your power?" 

Matthew looked over his shoulder, and pointed at himself, as if to ask me if I was talking to him. I nodded impatiently. 

He scratched the back of his neck, and frowned. “Well, I can’t remember.”

He was lying, but I kept quiet and nodded again, trying not to look dejected. He sighed. “Not very different from yours. There was a girl, Lucie. Just twelve years old. She was murdered by a serial killer—he was an inmate on death row by the time I met her— and her final wish was for his soul to disintegrate. She didn’t want him to live for another second, and she didn’t want to risk him going to Coelum after he died. I was surprised to see that much hatred in a small child, but I learned later that she hated him, not because of what he did to her, but because he had done the same to her sister, though she had survived. But her life was ruined.” Matthew shrugged. “Who was I to deny her?”

“What happened to the sister?”

“They gave her a new identity, away from the town where it happened, but she suffered from severe PTSD. Stealing, drugs, rehab. She never really escaped him, and I felt guilty for making Lucie think that her sister got the justice she deserved.”

“Never a happily-ever-after,” I muttered.

Matthew leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table. “Do you read books?”

“Of course.”

“Do you wonder what happens after you run out of pages?” I hesitated, and Matthew sat back. “Happily-ever-after don’t exist, kid. You shouldn’t expect one, either.”

*****

Mark was lying on the grass with his jacket bunched up beneath his head, acting as a pillow. I’d always seen him in the hallways at school, lost in his own world. He didn’t do that anymore.

"Hey," I said, raising my hand in a short wave.

He hummed in greeting.

“Matthew told me,” I muttered.

He looked up with his eyes closed, and when he opened them again, I realized that he was glaring at the stars. He extended an arm towards the sky, and his hazy skin glowed softly in the starlight. “Why do the stars always look so far away?”

 Something about those words made me fall. Fall for him, but not like how they describe it in books. I just realized that I wanted to spend the day with him. I wanted my eyes to fall on him every time I walked into a room, and I wanted to hear his voice over the shouts of others, even if it was just a whisper. I wanted him to laugh at my jokes, and read my mind. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe I just wanted to fall in love with him. And somehow, that was enough.

Enough to make his last wish come true. He coughed, just like Naomi had. And the realization decided to strike me then. I yelled, yelled at time to stop, yelled at the world to stop revolving, but it didn't listen to me. And before I could fully comprehend what was happening, the last time I would get to see Mark was over.

His soul was violet. Arrogant, mysterious. Heartbreaker.

“Do you understand now?” Matthew said, hovering behind me. His voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “In our line of work, it is impossible to not fall in love. In fact, it doesn’t take more than forty-eight hours to fall in love. That is why almost all mediums refuse every spirit that comes their way, and why mediums are doomed to remain lost in Chamenos. Your last wish would be to go to him, but you can’t reach Coelum unless you are actually with him. You will be stuck in an infinite loop.

“Spirits of mediums cannot be sent to Inferna, either. If one medium refuses you, you can always go to another one.” He placed his misty hand on my shoulder, and I thought, for a fleeting moment, that I could actually feel it. In that fraction of a second, I could feel Matthew’s pain, and see his battered soul. “I told you not to expect a happily-ever-after. They will never understand, Liam. We die a thousand times before our spirits actually leave the body.”

He stepped back, and I screamed and screamed until I lost my voice. Then, helplessly, I looked up to gaze at the stars, though my mind thought of the boy who burned brighter than any of them as the stars gazed back at the boy with the unseeable scars.