THE PRESENT

Like his sister, Graham was a quick study. Or maybe they both had the sort of intelligent, suggestable minds, the minds of curiosity seekers and problem solvers, designers and artists, that lent themselves to the process of brain recalibration. What took Gene three days to accomplish took Graham less than twenty-four hours.

Unlike Gene, Graham wanted Liv in the room with him as he played the special sauce ghost frequency track Gene had developed. They set up in Helina's bedroom because Graham believed it would aid him to be close to where she had presumably achieved the same goal. Liv complied, staying near but without making contact, only leaving the room to eat or take care of bodily functions. She slept on Liv's bed, her body pressed against Helina's linen sheets, head resting on the same downy pillow Helina used.

All the while, Graham listened, swayed occasionally, eyes open but soft, unfocused, gazing at nothing in particular on the floor in front of the chair in which he sat. He didn't get up to use the bathroom, didn't eat. His head never slumped to the side to indicate he'd fallen asleep.

Liv waved a hand in front of him every few hours and the response was always the same in that there was no response at all. She wondered if maybe he was already gone, his mind taken hostage by the same hostile forces that had her in their clutches all these years.

Ghosts, monsters, spectral beings, kin.

Nearly nineteen hours after they'd begun, the process was complete. Liv clocked it. Nearly nineteen. 18.98.

Those bastards. They would never stop toying with her. She was their marionette doll, strings tangled, arms and legs pulled in all the wrong directions whenever they tugged at her.

Graham's eyes focused. He raised his head. "I feel them." He sounded like his throat had swallowed a desert. Liv offered him the glass of water that had been sitting untouched since the day before.

"What do you see?" she asked. To her, the room was just a room. The monsters of the ghost realm had been oddly calm, letting them do their work undisturbed.

"Only you," he answered, taking her hand. "You feel like them and that's enough to know it worked."

Such a different experience from Gene's. Had Helina been like this? Had her introduction to the ghost realm been so peaceful? She thought about Helina sitting alone in this same space, headphones on, eyes glazed. Did those eyes bleed like Gene's had?

"Helina's drawing." Graham lifted her off the bed. "Someplace close to home. I know now. Let's go."

He seemed the same person that he'd been the day before but also someone Liv had to reacquaint herself with, like he'd moved away for college, done some traveling, and then returned home, more self-assured and wise. Same old Graham, whole new way of being. A new vibe.

I did this to him, she thought as they drove down a long road Graham told her would end at the tip of the peninsula, with views of the Puget Sound's shipping channel, vast cargo ships carrying goods from abroad enroute to the shipyards to the south. He hasn't realized yet what it means.

Gene wasn't someone she'd spoken much to Graham about, other than showing him the essay he'd written. It would have been fairer to throw it all out there for Graham so he could fully evaluate the risks. I slept with Gene for information, sat on that information, and now I have it, here you go, and by the way, he pulled a Helina and disappeared from the universe after listening to this track I just gave you to listen to. Have fun! Even if she had said all this, Liv reasoned, he wouldn't have decided any differently. He'd choose to do what was necessary to find his sister. To save her.

Her body recoiled at these thoughts. She had to grip the car seat to keep herself from curving into a C-shape, resting her head against the dashboard, wilting like a cut flower in a waterless vase. She had done this to him. For what? To avoid being held accountable. To feed the ghosts another hapless victim. To make herself feel powerful. The list of Liv's possible, evil motivations went on and on.

"You all right?" Graham glanced her way, his placid face threatening to break into a concerned cringe. "You look pale."

"Why do you think it has to be this specific place?" she asked, changing the subject. "And if she only traveled twenty minutes from your house, why hasn't her car been found?"

"I'm hoping we can answer those questions once we get up there."

One of them was, in fact, answered almost immediately. They entered a tiny, populated area with a car repair shop and a bakery on one side, a general store straight ahead, and to the right, several small dilapidated wooden structures with faded, peeling paint that looked like they may have been used as fisherman's quarters once upon a time. Graham turned to the right, following a street with mid-sized vacation homes on each side. A minute later, he slammed on the brakes.

"That's her car," he said, pointing to a red Honda hatchback parked in the driveway of a two-story wooden home, drapes drawn in all its windows. "And that's Betty and George Johnson's house. They've been friends with our parents for decades. Their main home is in Everett. It's been years since they've been here in the winter."

He parked the car, and they wandered over to inspect Helina's abandoned vehicle, but there was nothing remarkable about it. Liv pressed her forehead to the driver's side window, looking through the tinted glass at an ordinary car interior.

"Let's go." Graham motioned Liv up the road. "The beach is only a little way off."

A drizzle heralded their arrival at the shoreside park, stretches of sand interrupted frequently with tented structures constructed from driftwood. A lighthouse framed the skyline, white tower with a red roof creating a whimsical feel to the park that seemed like something out of a storybook about mariners, sea monsters, and shipwrecks.

"Point No Point," Graham told her. "Funny name, right? "

A name of contradictions. Liv approved.

In the summer months, Liv could imagine the beach filled with families, little kids with feet immersed in the mucky tidelands, collecting rocks smoothed over from the caress of ocean waves over millennia. Today, the damp, chilly air meant she and Graham walked the beach alone. Only a few short weeks ago, Helina had done the same, probably buzzing like Graham was beside her now.

"You're like a tuning fork," she told him. "I can almost hear you, and I can definitely feel you."

He didn't respond, but the wide smile on his glowing face seemed to indicate that he was pleased with her assessment.

They walked past the point of land in which the lighthouse was located, and as they stepped beyond it, there it was, the largest otherworldly opening she'd ever seen. Not even the cloud at the wind turbine could compare.

She swallowed her gasp, waiting for Graham's response. It would be such a disappointment if he kept wandering as though nothing was amiss.

"How did Helina know?" He asked, his gaze directed at the ghost realm gateway.

"She just felt it. Same as you did. That's why you knew to come here. For whatever reason, this is the place where your connection to the ghost realm is strongest."

"But why? Why can't it just appear anywhere, like it does for you?"

And like it had for Gene. All Liv could do was shrug. "I don't make the rules." If she did, none of this would be happening.

"So, what now?" He shuffled forward.

"You don't have to go." She grabbed his shoulder, forcing him to stop. "It's better if you don't."

"Better for who?" he asked, then slid from her grasp.

As he approached the swirling ghost matter, he turned back to her. "You aren't going to let me go in alone, are you?"

"Of course not." She hurried in his direction, fear of the ghosts snatching him away from her overshadowing her uncertainty over what was about to go down. She clamped her hand around his. "Don't let go of me once we're transported. Remember that, okay? It's important."

The cloud hovered in the air where sand met sea. "What do we do?" he said, holding out his free hand to play with its silver strands. Do we just—"

No need to finish that thought. Graham and Liv were no longer in that in between place where the worlds met. Had anyone been walking near them, or riding in a boat, they would have seen two people disappear into thin air. As for the travelers themselves, they found themselves in the nightmare realm that Liv had been sliding in and out of for so many years. 

Author's Note: The images in this chapter are my own photographs, taken earlier this month near Point No Point beach in Hansville, Washington, where Graham and Liv traveled in search of Helina. They're taken from the town (I'd stopped at the local bakery with my family and then we crossed the street to walk on the beach), so the lighthouse is  off in the distance in the second photo. Just as it was when Liv was there, the day I took these, it was drizzling, with an overcast sky. 

This is a long chapter so I have divided it into two parts. We'll be traveling with Graham and Liv to the ghost realm next. Will they find Helina?