Old Ghosts

Chapter 5

He remembered the rain. He remembered the cold of it trickling down his neck, stinging his cheeks, pinging against his arm. People kept their heads down in the rain, huddled against it, hurrying on their way. They never saw him coming. And then, when it was done, the rain would wash it all away.

He stared down at his hands, watching the water flow between his fingers. He'd attacked those morons in the bar, the man in the park. He'd done it without thinking. Had he really thought things could be different? He might have failed in his mission, but he was still wiping blood from his hands.

He rubbed at the knuckles of his good hand, scrubbed until they were cracked and raw. The water ran red again, but the blood was his now.

But this wasn't rain, wasn't cold. The water beat warm against his scalp, the shower filling with steam. He turned his back to the spray, letting it pound against his shoulders as he braced an arm on the wall. Warm, but not warm enough. He'd spent so long in the cold. Twisting the dial, he felt the water grow hotter. He kept twisting until it burned.

The steam thickened, turning the world white. The ghosts were whispering again, but not of rain, not of blood. He could remember training, letting the shower soothe away the ache in his muscles. Every night they had trained and every night she had met him here, safe beneath the water, hidden by the steam. He pinched shut his eyes, but he could still feel her behind him, slipping her arm around him to trace her fingers down his chest. The red-haired ghost. He kept his eyes closed, uncertain if he was more afraid of seeing her there or seeing that she wasn't.

"James." Her breath was warm against his ear. "You have to stop this."

He shrugged her off, the elbow that he thrust behind him finding only empty air. With a growl, he drove his fist into the wall, remembering too late that he'd already opened his knuckles. The tile cracked, sending red rivulets running toward the drain.

Turning off the water, he peered outside, getting his bearings. The homeless shelter. The girl, Gina, who had brought him here. At least he was alone, the other shower stall empty. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he stepped to the sink and wiped the fog from the mirror.

The man who stared back at him was a stranger, a pair of wild eyes peering out from a tangle of dark hair. Smoothing it back from his forehead, he leaned closer, studying the details, trying to find something familiar, something that made sense. He thought about the museum, the smiling man from the old newsreels. But this face was stern, cold. A man made all of ice. How many of the ghosts had looked up at this face before the end? How many had realized it would be the last thing they ever saw?

His eyes moved lower, over his beard, his chest. There were scars there, though he couldn't remember which were real and which the ghosts had made when they visited him in his dreams. The worst were on his shoulder, the puckered red grooves that separated metal from flesh. He didn't think much about the arm, could barely remember a time when it hadn't been a part of him. But now he forced himself to look, his fingers gingerly tracing the scars, flinching away even though there was no pain.

He raised the arm, studying the flesh beneath. It moved differently than the metal, another reminder that he was something broken, something pieced back together, something wrong. He stretched it higher, watching in the mirror as his skin pulled and strained. The arm was strong, whirring eagerly. How high could he stretch it? How much force would it take to snap the thing off?

With a sigh, he let it fall, bracing both hands on the sink. Someone had laid out a comb and plastic razor. Slowly, he ran his fingers over the blade. The ghosts stirred, their whispers rasping and angry.

He did his best to block them out. Soaping his face, he picked up the razor, watching as it cut away the shadow to reveal the man beneath. His hands remembered shaving well enough. He must have done this before. It was something normal, something for himself. It didn't matter that he didn't know who that was.