Keep the Ghost

16. Are you Sean Reilly?

Hot, musty, dark. The rough fabric of the trunk's interior scrapes against my cheek, and my neck aches from the awkward angle I'm forced into. I lay flat on my side, with my weight on my good leg.

Morgan makes a sharp right turn, and I struggle for balance, instinctively pushing against the side of the trunk with my broken leg.

I bite the crook of my arm, throat flexing in a silent howl. My knee dangles, ruined thing, from my thigh. I can feel the tissue, inflamed and angry, furiously sensitive to every disturbance. The muscles seem torn, disconnected, and I sense the bottom half of my leg is connected to the top half only by my skin.

When the car straightens out, a white waxy cylinder rolls against my face. It's the candle from Kayla's vigil, fallen from my pocket. The things we have in common.

Except she stayed in the gulf, and I crawled out. Sean Reilly is dead, but I'm still here, and I'm in pain.

All thanks to Jack. Jack, who almost certainly killed Kayla, slashed her throat and tried to hide the body in the ocean. Set me up to look guilty. Wanted me to be executed for his crime.

Jack's crime, which I confessed to. His crime that I wrote a suicide note claiming I committed, a note that says Jack Vickery is a creation of my guilty mind. A note I put under the McPherson's door this morning.

But, he's not a creation of my mind. He's sitting in the car, and for some reason Morgan is allowing it.

The front wheels pop over a pothole, and I brace with my good leg and two arms as the rear wheels follow. I'm jolted from position; the pain is tremendous, and the journey nauseating. Just pitch black, all signals coming through the roll of the car, the mechanical conversation between engine and transmission.

After ages of bumps and turns, the car settles into a straight and steady path. A highway, maybe.

The fabric from my drenched clothes is harsh and stiff as the seawater evaporates, leaving behind a layer of salt and sand that grates against my skin. I listen to the clutch engaging, the gear shifting, the throttle opening. We roll forward, and I roll backward. We stop, and I roll forward. Each movement brings fresh torment.

We drive for hours. My only companions are the pain, and the slow-dawning realization of what I've done.

"Are you Sean Reilly?"

How many times have I been asked that, in the past week? A dozen? Every attorney, cop, and consul I've come across?

For the rest of my life, if anyone asks me that, my only response will be to deny it—deny it and run. Sean Reilly is no more—jumped to his death after leaving a suicide note at the McPherson home. So, who am I?

*

The car stops; the engine dies. Doors open, then slam shut.

I roll over so that I'll be facing whoever opens the trunk. A key is inserted; the latch releases. As the lid opens, the sun beams through and dazzles me, leaving me momentarily blind.

Morgan stands, one arm up high, resting on the open trunk lid. The sun is angled directly behind her head, so a glaring halo shines from behind, leaving her a darkened shadow by contrast.

The blue hood is tight around her hair, and that impenetrable calm radiates from her face. The same wall; that surface which all of my unanswered questions bounce from.

"We can rest here," she says.

"Where's Jack?"

She extends a hand. "Jack is gone, don't worry about him. Worry about you, first. The police are probably looking for you, and you're not exactly mobile."

I take her hand and pull; testing that she can support my weight. Morgan stands steady. I position the working portion of my body around my broken knee, disturbing the wound as little as possible.

"I'm going to need a wheelchair," I say. "And a doctor."

"I'm working on it." Morgan pulls a strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it back into the hood. "For now, you get a room. We can't risk a trip to the emergency room yet. They might be watching."

Fantastic. With her help I sit up in the trunk, good leg hanging out while the broken knee rests inside. I feel faint; the blood seems to drain from my head. I lean back, rest against the car. I see we're parked behind a long, white brick building spotted with a dozen brown doors, and there's no one in sight.

"Where's Jack?" I ask again, breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Come on," Morgan says. She withdraws a key from her purse; it's attached to a rectangular keychain that reads Comfort Suites. She pushes this into the brown door nearest the car and twists, then pulls it open.

Another musty hotel room, like the last. Morgan steps to me, gets on my bad side and kneels under my arm. Can feel as the brittle material of my shirt resists her; bits of salt flake away.

We hobble into the room. "The bathroom," I say, when she stalls beside the bed. She nods, and we limp a bit further. When we reach the cramped sink and shower, there's no room to assist me. I cling to door frames and handicap hand-railings, propelling myself forward. I sink back into the hard porcelain bathtub, letting my broken leg rest elevated over the side.

"It's okay," I mumble to Morgan as she stands in the door frame, watching. "I'll shout when I need to get out, okay?"

She nods, thumbnail perched between lips. After a long stare, she shuts the door.

I struggle to pull the salt-stiff shirt from my body, knocking over the little plastic-wrapped bar of soap and bottle of shampoo, sending them rattling around the dry tub. When the shirt is pulled free, silt shakes off and into my hair and eyes.

I reach and turn on the shower. The water rains down cold at first, and I bear the shock until heat slowly comes. I lean back, feeling it soak my socks, jeans and boxers.

What the hell have I done?

I spend the better part of an hour removing my pants: a multistage process that brings smoldering waves of pain at every step.

Once the last of my clothes are in a filthy pile on the bathroom floor, I can inspect my knee. It's a deep purple, swollen and bloated; the flesh looks oxygen-starved and near death. The ball of my knee rests below and in front of the space it belongs, an obscene bulge. From the middle of my shin down to my foot, though, things seem normal enough.

I'll need a doctor, for sure. I broke my wrist once, and they put me through surgery, put pins in my body to hold everything in place while it healed. I can't just wrap this up and limp around: it'll never work again.

I lean back in the tub, pulling my broken knee in with me. With it floating, the pain lessens to a dull throb—enough so that my exhaustion outweighs the pain, and I fall asleep.