1
Briannen Arey
109 Stadium Dr.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
The Way Down
The old, empty house creaked as it settled around Josh. He stood at the kitchen sink, washing the dishes that had accumulated throughout the day. His reflection stared back at him from the window—a pale face set against dark glass, the background faded away completely.
The cheap plastic dishes he’d bought from IKEA clacked against each other in the water, nearly drowning out the voice from behind him.
“Where’s Ana?”
“At Marie’s,” Josh answered automatically, before realizing who’d spoken. The plate between his hands slipped and bounced against the hardwood floor as he turned around.
He wasn’t sure what he expected—not really—but the pale, shimmering form in the corner seemed to fit the rumors of any ghost he’d ever heard of.
“Hi Josh.” His twin said calmly, smirking (possibly. He couldn’t really tell.) as Josh sank to the floor, propped against the cabinet. “Why isn’t Ana in her bedroom? I want to see my niece. Where’s Marie?”
Josh’s head spun alarmingly, so he forced himself to focus on the question. “We divorced. After you died.” His tone became bitter and biting.
It looked like the shape wavered for a minute, then brightened before settling back into the soft translucence. “Could you not yell at me?” Daniel sighed, sounding exasperated. “I haven’t really got the hang of this yet and when you make me emotional, it’s harder.”
“Jesus,” Josh groaned, leaning forward to set his head against his knees. “Ana told me she’d seen you. I told her she was making things up. Jesus Christ.”
“I just wanted to see her. She’s so big now.”
“You’ve been…gone for a while, Dan.”
“I haven’t changed—she shouldn’t either. I liked it when she was a baby.”
Taking a deep breath, Josh forced himself to look back up, squinting in an attempt to make out specific features on the form. Daniel was right—he hadn’t changed in the three years since his death. His brown hair was still shaggy in his eyes (Josh could practically hear their mother complaining about it) and his tattered Yellowstone National Park sweatshirt hung off his lean shoulders. His older brother was forever frozen at the age of 24.
“You look like shit,” Daniel observed, apparently also scrutinizing Josh. “I can see you better when I’m more…solid.”
“Can we not talk about it?” Josh asked. “It’s…weird.”
He jumped as Daniel reappeared beside him, a shadowy, gray form. “Life is weird, little brother.”
“You’re weird,” he muttered, moving out of habit to shove his shoulder. He yelped as his hand appeared to pass straight through his brother, sinking through the gray mass. A sharp chill slid up his forearm, making his skin prickle painfully. “Oh God. Oh, my God. You’re real.”
“Yep,” Daniel said cheerfully. “Now can you get your hand out of my lungs? It’s a little uncomfortable.”
“I’m going to puke,” Josh muttered, before doing just that.
“How are you doing this?” Josh asked, lifting his head from the rim of the toilet. “Not that I’m not thrilled to see you and all, but this doesn’t happen to normal people.”
“When have I ever been normal?” Danielwas sitting—no, floating a few inches above the bathroom counter, a gap clearly showing between his legs and the laminate.
“Not the point,” Josh retorted. “Answer my damn question.”
Daniel shrugged—indicated only by a little shift in the air around his form. “You know how sometimes you fall asleep, but you can still tell what’s going on around you?” His voice grew softer. “I could hear you guys sometimes, like, in my head. Like I had headphones on or something. At first, I just thought it was like…a perk. Of being dead. But then, it didn’t go away. As soon as I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t fake, things weren’t dark anymore and I found myself here.”
“Here? In my house here?” Josh felt faint and his stomach rolled again, but what was left of his dinner stayed down.
Daniel nodded. “I can’t leave. I tried, one of the first days I was…back. I can’t pass through the exterior walls, but I can go through the doors. Still, it seems like I can’t leave the property. The boundaries are like…invisible walls.”
“Okay,” Josh exhaled shakily and pushed himself up from the ground, turning to the sink to rinse his mouth. “Then why are you here?”
“I have a theory,” Daniel said slowly, drawing each word out like he could taste the syllables.
When he didn’t continue, Josh prompted him. “Well? What is it?”
“It’s like what they said—like if a soul, me—can’t leave…it’s because I have a reason to keep to me here, right? I have a purpose.” He was pacing around the small bathroom as best he could, floating two inches above the ground.
“What do you think your purpose is, D?”
At Josh’s question, Daniel paused and his form became clearer than ever before. He looked solid, the tile behind him disappearing. Faded colors surfaced on his clothes, replacing the gray. His skin pinked considerably, but still obviously lacked blood beneath it. Josh had to close his eyes and breathe through his mouth as wounds also revealed themselves on his brother’s body. A stain spread across his sweatshirt—blood radiating from a bullet. A line of red traced its way down his forehead from a gash just below his hairline.
Daniel looked straight at him, gaze intense, his brown—now turned deep gray—eyes empty of life. “I can’t remember how I died.”
From then on, Josh took discovering the cause of Daniel’s death as his personal project. Daniel still was unable to leave Josh’s property, so on lunch breaks from the accounting firm where he worked, Josh collected anything that seemed relevant and took it back to his house. Daniel’s obituary, written by Josh himself; the police report from where Daniel’s body was found in an alley beside his dentistry practice; the coroner’s conclusion. Officially, Daniel’s death had been ruled as a homicide, with no perpetrator found.
Josh told him the last part one night several months after his reappearance, while Ana was at Marie’s. Daniel tended to keep his distance on the alternate weekends when Josh’s daughter was there, knowing it’d be difficult for the three-year-old to understand—and even more challenging to keep her quiet.
They’d spread the papers across the floor of the living room, Josh lying on his stomach while Daniel floated beside him. The fire illuminating the room reminded Joshof the camping trips they used to take as teenagers, escaping to the mountains for a weekend and coming home smelling like dirt and fire.
“Well I obviously didn’t shoot myself,” Daniel retorted dryly. “So someone must have done it.”
Josh glanced down at one of the headlines from their local paper. It was bold, stark against the patterned rug:LOCAL MAN FOUND DEAD, FAMILY HAS NO EXPLANATION. His stomach twisted at the memory of the phone call that had awakened him (and Marie and Ana, who’d only been eight months) in the middle of the night, informing him that his twin, his physical other half, had been discovered dead and could he please come identify the body.
“How much do you remember?” He asked softly—almost not wanting to know.
Daniel stilled, from where he’d been bobbing gently up and down, and seemed to sink a little closer to the ground as he thought. “I remember some of my appointments that day—Mrs. Cox had to get a new crown; her second in six months, I swear, that woman’s teeth—and I had to go back to turn off the lights before I could leave, but that’s it.”
“They, um, found your body in that alleyway back to the parking lot,” Josh paused to clear the lump out of his throat before he could continue, “and they identified the kind of gun based on—based on the bullet, you know.”
“Did you look?” Daniel asked before his body faded away again. “Dammit, I’m emotional.”
Josh snorted at the disembodied voice, breaking the tension of the moment. “Of course we looked for him. Mom didn’t sleep for months and she visited the police station constantly, but we never found anything that seemed to link to you, so eventually…” he forced himself to say the next words, “we gave up.”
“Oh,” Daniel’s voice said quietly and gradually he reappeared. “This time will be different, I’m sure. Maybe—maybe I’ll remember something. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen. Go get those notes we made last night.” He floated through the wall into the kitchen, but soon returned. “Come on, Joshua, let’s go.”
Josh stayed seated on the rug. “Dan…”
The translucent figure clouded and Josh could practically see him pouting. “Josh, what are you doing?”
“I don’t know if I can do this again,” Josh said quietly, almost as an aside to himself.
“What do you mean you can’t do this again?”
“I got divorced last time, okay?” Josh rose to his feet, glaring at his brother. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and my life is finally fixed. I don’t want to do this again.I didn’t sleep for week and I damn near drank myself to death. What difference is it going to make anyway? You’re still dead.”
Daniel swore at him and in any other situation, it would have been funny. “Well I’m supposed to be resting eternally but instead I’m stuck here because I don’t know who killed me. Do you think it’s fun floating around your stupid house all day?” He was nearly solid black from anger, features shadowed as his voice echoed around the room. “It’s uncomfortable and I’m stuck. I don’t want to be here! I’m not human anymore, Josh, and I don’t want to be here forever.” His presence seemed to expand with his frustration, permeating throughout the room.
“Then leave,” Josh said coolly and turned on his heel, walking out of the room.
“Dan?”
The screen door slamming shut behind him was Josh’s only response as he walked into the empty house. So he tried again. “Danny?” They hadn’t talked in three days, ever since their fight, and it felt a little funny to be addressing the thin air. He hadn’t seen Daniel either, but knew, logically, his brother was still on his property.
“Here,” a glum voice muttered from somewhere in the region of his upper kitchen cabinets. “As if I had any other choice.”
He didn’t reappear and Josh wasn’t sure if it was because he couldn’t…or didn’t want to, but he kept talking anyway. “I went back to the station today and saw Sergeant Culp. I don’t know why I didn’t think to ask him before—like, last time—but he said he found an interesting report the other day. It was—it was filed five days after your death.” He tossed a photocopy onto the table, spinning it around so Daniel, who had solidified himself just enough to be visible, could read it.
“Thirty-four year old male…found in field…self-inflicted gun shot wound—Josh, isn’t that the kind of gun they identified for me?”
“Keep reading,” Josh told him, not bothering to hide the emotion in his voice.
“Suicide note discovered in truck…’it was just an accident’…” Daniel trailed off and looked across the table at his brother. “You think this guy killed me?”
“What do you think?” Josh held his breath as Daniel, now entirely visible and clearer than ever before, considered.
“I think I know,” he finally said, looking at Josh and laughing, just a little. “I think I’m fading.”
“Yeah,” Josh managed, “you are.” Slowly, Daniel was becoming more transparent—literally disappearing in front of his eyes. “I guess we figured out your purpose.”
“Thanks, little brother.” He was almost entirely invisible and speaking more quickly. “Give Ana my love, okay? When she’s older, tell her everything. She’ll probably think you’re crazy.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll figure out some way to come back,” Daniel’s voice told him as he vanished entirely. “See you soon.”
Josh turned in a slow circle in the kitchen, realizing that Daniel was really gone—this time for good. As the emptiness of the house surrounded him, it occurred to him that after all, he’d been right: it really hadn’t made a difference—his brother was still dead.