Silence » a.i

0.8

I couldn't help but just gape at Michael. He was dead? Meaning he was a ghost? I was sitting in a room with a ghost?

"Not just one, honey." Luke said from where he sat.

Not just one? How did he know I was thinking about that? Before I could ask anything, Calum sighed.

"Luke," he scolded. "One thing at a time, please. Let her process this. Okay, where was I? Yeah, so Michael's dead."

"Yeah," I said slowly, nodding. "I got that."

Calum pointed to the page in his book. It was the same article I read the other night about the motorcycle accident. Why would he have this?

"I know you asked Michael about this," Calum said. "And he got upset about it, right? He didn't want to talk about it. Because that was him, Bridgette. Michael died in a motorcycle accident."

My eyes flickered to Michael. He played with his fingers in his lap, not wanting to look at anyone. I brought my focus back to Calum, hoping he'd elaborate on what happened, but he didn't. He just moved on.

"Him and Luke were friends before the motorcycle accident," Calum continued. "Luke heard about the accident and came to me for help."

"Help?" I questioned. "With what?"

"The thing about me, Bridgette, is that I...dabble in dark magic," Calum said, scratching the back of his head with one hand while he flipped pages of his book with the other. "I can bring people back. Not necessarily back to life, but I can conger up the ghosts of the deceased. Luke knew that and came to me. No one knew what caused the crash and Luke had to know. But the thing with getting my help is that you have to pay for it."

"Pay for it?" I asked, wanting more elaboration.

"Yeah, pay for it," Luke nodded. "You have to give up something or have a burden put on you."

"What was your...payment?" I wondered.

"Truth." he stated.

"Luke knows what everyone and anyone is thinking," Calum explained. "He knows the truth. But someone found a loophole." he said, exaggeratedly looking behind me at Ashton.

"The sunglasses." I said slowly, putting two and two together.

"Luke gets into your mind via your eyes," Michael interjected. "If he can't see your eyes, he can't see your secrets."

"You can always tell if someone's lying by their eyes," Luke said. "If I can't see their eyes, I can't see the truth."

"We're getting off track," Calum sighed in annoyance. "Anyway, Luke was given the gift of mind reading. Michael was brought back and he explained that even he didn't know how the accident occurred. We don't know if we'll ever know."

"Sorry to get off topic, but where does Ashton fit in all of this?" I questioned. "And is the story of the Hemmings family actually true?"

"Oh, it's true," Luke said, almost smug about it. "Because I could see the truth about everything, I knew it was my dad who killed everyone in my family. He wasn't stable, that's all I know."

"Then why did you kill yourself?"

"I couldn't live with the fact that I killed my family. Plus, the gift was ruining my life."

"But I had to bring him back," Michael shrugged. "He was the only person I had."

"And this is where Ashton comes in," Calum added. "Ashton said he'd take the payment for Michael. He never said why."