And, mercifully, the shadows of Others were dropping away as this ghost drew nearer.
“June Burlison,” I said.
She stuttered again, then closed half the distance in a single leap. The remaining Others disappeared in that same moment, ducking away.
The warmth I felt caught me off guard. That warmth proved short-lived. It became a prickling heat, with a burning sensation in my extremities. She’d covered half the distance, but the intensity of what I was experiencing had increased ten times over.
“She’s… affecting me,” I said.
“On two levels,” Rose said, her voice quiet. “She’s drawing power from the blood you’re using to forge the connection, and she’s giving off a kind of radiation, related to whatever impression she made on the world.”
“Cumulative,” I murmured. Louder, I said, “June Burlison, I want to talk.”
The burning was getting worse. It was getting to be too much, to the point that I couldn’t stand still.
June spoke in a voice that was barely above a wheeze, oddly childlike, given her apparent age. “I fell asleep too close to the fire. I’ve burned myself.”
What was I even supposed to say to that?
June spoke in an alarmed voice, her voice feeble considering the intensity of what she was saying. “I was cold, and so I curled up near the fireplace. I’m burning. Oh god, it’s so hot. I’m burning.”
Fingers so frostbitten that they could barely be called fingers clawed ineffectually at her clothing.
She stuttered, disappearing for a moment, then reappeared. A small whimper escaped her lips as she fumbled at the ruined, muddy, and damp clothes with fingers that were so ruined they couldn’t cooperate..
I could feel the heat. Worse with every passing second.
“It-” I stopped myself. I’d almost said ‘it is hot‘. But that could have been a lie. I wasn’t sure if it really was hot or if I was just feeling an illusion of heat. “It does feel hot, yes.”
As if my words were a kind of fuel, the heat increased a fraction.
“Make it stop. I’m done with this. Make it stop,” she said.
Her words did the same, ratcheting up the heat.
“Rose,” I murmured. My voice was a touch hoarse. “I don’t know if I’m up for this.”
“If it gets to be too much,” Rose said, “Break the line of blood. You can also dash salt on her. It ends the moment you do.”
June Burlison screamed, sudden, disappearing in one moment and reappearing in the next. I might have called her movements thrashing, but they were too feeble. She was playing a different image for me, one of her in the throes of helpless agony.
I realized I was screaming, too, at the wave of heat that rushed past me. The screaming only seemed to make it worse.
When she started flickering and disappearing again, I had a moment’s relief. The pain didn’t linger in the slightest, though the pounding of my heart did. I was left cold, instead.
“Blake?”
I shook my head a little. It was Rose talking to me, I reminded myself.
“Get answers. Open a dialogue,” Rose said.
“June,” I managed, panting for breath after the screaming. I tried to stay calm, even as speaking her name seemed to fan the fires. But June wasn’t responding.
Rose tried, instead. “June Burlison. Do you remember what happened before you went to sleep by the fire?”
Abruptly, she was standing. Hugging her body with her arms. Her injuries had taken a leap backwards in severity, and her clothes were more intact.
I experienced a wave of cold emanating from her instead. It didn’t make the memory of the fire I’d experienced any better.
Rose spoke. “Do you remember? What happened before you went to sleep?”
“I’ve been left outside in the woods. I fought with my husband, and I demanded he let me out by the side of the road. I couldn’t be in the car with him any longer. Now I have to walk home.”
“It’s cold, isn’t it?” Rose asked.
“It’s so very cold,” June agreed.
“Do you fight often?” Rose asked.
“Yes. Nobody agreed with the idea, but I married him. They were right, I was wrong. Soon, I’m sure I’ll pick up the courage and admit it to my mother and father. It is shameful, but I don’t want to fight all the time.”
“Did he hurt you?” Rose asked.
“No. But we fight so much. We’re so different. It’s so cold.”
“It is,” Rose said.
She wobbled, then fell to her hands and knees. There was a stutter, and the injuries were worse. Fingers devoured by frostbite. “I’m almost home. I can’t walk anymore, but I can crawl.”
The cold was starting to get to me. Enough that I wondered if I risked frostbite myself.
How much was she taking through this blood connection? Was Rose wrong? Was a ghost capable of taking this much from me?
Did it have something to do with getting salt in the wound? Was the circle compromised?
Or, the idea dawned on me, am I already being drained by another source?
When I thought of what other sources might be out there, the only thing that sprung to mind was Rose.
“Stay focused, Blake,” Rose said.
Momentarily, I wondered if she was reading my mind, answering the thought. But it didn’t fit.
“It’s cold, you’re almost home,” I said.
Nothing.
“Are you?” Rose asked. “Almost home?”
“I’m so cold. But my husband will be waiting. I’ll apologize, and he’ll have a fire going in the fireplace, our little electric heater running. The house will be warm, and I’ll be able to rest easy.”
“But that isn’t the way it happens, is it?” Rose asked.
I could see the look of sheer bewilderment on June’s face. The dawning look of betrayal.
Over long seconds, I watched her expression twist in slow motion, beyond the bounds that people were normally capable of, to show a monstrous kind of despair and betrayal, so deep it altered her very being. For many of those seconds, I thought the emotion was directed at me.
I was seeing her as she had been in the moment she’d opened the door and found her home empty and cold. An imperfect replay.
The wind picked up around me. My fingers were throbbing now, almost numb.
“June,” Rose said, her voice gentle. “Was that it? You started a fire in the fireplace and went to sleep?”
A disconnect, a jerk, and June Burlison was writhing in pain again, crippled and bent low by it. I staggered, nearly stepping outside of the circle.
Heat and cold. But why the disconnect? Why wasn’t the narrative more complete?
Did it only include the moments she was awake?
I flexed my numbed fingers.
Or was it something else?
“Was the fireplace on?” I asked.
There was no response. I clenched my hands into numb fists.
“The fireplace was on,” Rose said, “You were asleep…”
“Rose,” I said. “The fireplace wasn’t on. I think maybe she doesn’t want to talk to a guy, because of the issue with her husband. You’ll need to ask her. Did she get the fireplace going before she fell asleep?”
“June,” Rose said. “Did you start the fire before you fell asleep?”