WHO: Jude Maraschino and Jeremiah Blake WHERE: The cliffs, then the beach, then the hotel. Opposite of yesterday. WHEN: Day 3, Morning SUMMARY: Reunited and it feels so good...and then...less good. WARNINGS: Death. Pirates. Peril. Legit horror. Like...HORROR horror.
They were ghosts. As much as Jeremiah wanted to be in denial, or find some other explanation, they were definitely ghosts. All of them. Every single person he had managed to talk to so far.
It was...super inconvenient.
It was a ton of other things as well. Upsetting. Horrifying. Confusing. If Jer let his emotions run wild, they’d jump between so many different feelings, his head would probably explode. Maybe that would at least explain his headaches, but he doubted it. So Jeremiah was focusing on the inconvenience of it all. Being a person was kind of self-explanatory at this point. Jer had functioned as a human being for a while now. He knew the basic rules.
But being a ghost? Jer didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know how it worked. All the things he had managed to ignore, or explain away, all the illogical discrepancies, the gaps in time, they were clear now. They were bright and gaping and unavoidable. He remembered talking to Jack and Alisha in the hotel lobby at night. It was daytime now. Morning? Jack and Alisha were both gone. He knew, now, that time had passed. But knowing he was missing time didn’t explain how.
The only positive gained from blinking into an entirely new day was the thought that maybe, if he could just vanish from existence for hours, so could Jude. Jumping off the cliff made it more extreme, maybe, but still. It gave Jer hope, and hope was way better than the depressive episode Alisha had needed to knock him out of the night before.
Determined, Jeremiah made his way out of the lobby (eventually), and then headed back towards the cliffs. If Jude was going to blink back into reality, Jer thought he’d have to be there. That was the only ghost rule he was pretty sure of so far. Along the way, he zoned out a bit, but not completely enough to stop existing. It was weird, but Jer really didn’t want to focus on the sensation. He was on a mission, and understanding how the world around him seemed to move normally but also sluggishly at the same time just wasn’t on his current agenda.
It was pretty disappointing when he got all the way up the cliffs and found himself completely alone. Disappointing, but not entirely disheartening. Jer looked down for just a second, watched the waves crashing for only a moment, and then he turned back around and began walking back down the path.
“Jude!” he yelled. His voice didn’t echo, even though it really should’ve. His solution was just to get louder. “Juuude! I don’t know if you’re all...phased out or whatever, but wake up. Or make a noise. Or...say something? I. Will. Start. Singing.” When in doubt, alive or dead, Jer had a good threat at his disposal, always. “Heeeeey Jude…”
Once Jude felt like Wes would be okay for awhile, his first priority was to find Jeremiah. He could only imagine how freaked Jer was after what had happened on the cliffs. Since Jude figured if Jer was looking for him, he’d look around the cliffs, as soon as he was able, he headed that way.
Jude used to love walking in the rain when he was alive. As a dead person, he hated it. All those raindrops falling through him. If anyone needed umbrellas it was dead people, but they were the ones who couldn’t pick the umbrellas up. The sound of each drop hitting the ground under his feet was a reminder of something that Jude had no idea how to unwrap or process.
He was starting to realize why Wes had just wanted to be busy all of the time. ...Before he’d become a drunk who chose trees over women, anyway…
...That was definitely a thought that made Jude want to keep busier.
He was climbing up the rocks toward the cliffs when Jer started to sing. Immediately, Jude’s eyes narrowed and his jaw dropped all the way in affront before he bared his teeth. He dashed up the rocks and then made a flying leap in an attempt to close Jer’s mouth. “YOU DO NOT.”
If Jeremiah wagered a guess, he would’ve thought the singing might be met by a shout from the jungle, or from down the path a ways, but at that point, he was too eager to prove his theory about Jude’s welfare was correct to really care how the theory was confirmed. Yelling was only one possible option.
Running at him was perfectly acceptable as well.
“Ha!” Jer yelled back, his whole expression transforming in the momentary flash before Jude was too close for Jeremiah to still see him. He braced instinctively, because he was usually the one who did the tackling, and that kept the pair of them from smashing to the ground. Instead, he looped his arms around Jude, and they stumbled backwards a few steps before Jer managed to root them in place.
“Dude, you’re okay,” he exhaled, squeezing his friend even tighter. The tackle-turned-hug did not include a single manly bro pat on the back to preserve the appearance of their masculinity, but Jeremiah didn’t even care. He was totally secure in their friendship. And also in their masculinity.
“You’re okay, and it’s all because of my beautiful singing…”
Jude had not been worried that Jer was gone forever, but Jude had been awake and in pain for hours during what had definitely been the longest and loneliest night of his existence (He had to say existence now since he couldn’t say life anymore. Being dead at least made him more sophisticated in one tiny way.) When Jer caught him, Jude would have struggled and wrestled him under normal circumstances, but the singing had stopped, and when Jude saw Jer’s beaming smile, he crumpled in his friend’s arms, letting Jer shoulder all that weight for a moment.
But just a moment.
Jude stood and jabbed his friend in the shoulder. “I’ve been looking for you since I spent hours reconstituting all my ghostly molecules. It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. You’re not supposed to sing that song on this trip. We had a truce!”
All it took was one glimpse of Jude to make Jeremiah exuberant, but his grin faded once he felt how heavily Jude dropped into the hug. It said a million things at once without a single word, and Jer hated all of those words. He would’ve just kept clinging to his friend if Jude had let him because Jer could tell how much he needed it. And, really, Jeremiah thought Jude wasn’t the only one with the need.
But the moment passed, and Jude took a crack at him, and it was like their world found a little bit of balance again. Not enough to completely equalize, but it was a start. As long as they could drive each other nuts with bad song lyrics, and tackle each other, and hug it out, and throw punches when the feelings needed to be punctuated with friendly violence, things weren’t so bad. They could be way worse. That was the kind of perspective Jeremiah needed in that moment.
“Hey!” he shouted, even though the jab didn’t hurt the way he knew it should’ve. “Dude, I didn’t break the truce. I had no way of knowing this wasn’t cataclysmic. It’s not like I knew you took hours reconstituting your ghostly molecules.” Jer paused, and his smile slowly returned. One eyebrow went up curiously. “...weirder than that hula competition?”
Jude attributed the weakness of the jab to his incomplete recovery. Now that Jer wasn’t singing or talking about singing, Jude was over the whole thing. “Ghost Rule #1,” Jude said to his friend. “Salt is not our friend.” Jude didn’t think the hula competition had been weird, but it took a lot before Jude thought anything was weird.
The events of the past few days had really been challenging him on that lately.
The weirdest thing was that one day Jude wouldn’t think any of this was weird anymore. Eventually, it was going to be normal, the same way that London became normal and Connecticut became normal. Maybe all of the times Jude had been dropped into a new life against his will and beyond his control had prepared him better, in that way at least, for this.
Or maybe that was just life.
Jeremiah nodded. He knew there was a lot they didn’t know, but knowing that wasn’t exactly helpful. Acknowledging the massive scope of their ignorance didn’t grant him additional information. Jude had the right idea. There were things they both knew, stuff with the doors and with living people not being able to hear them, but comparing separate experiences as well could shine light on more of this whole ghost situation. Seriously, Jude had way more excellent ideas than he ever gave himself credit for.
“I kind of wish I’d actually been paying attention to Syd and Blaze talking about all their ghost stuff,” he said. They probably knew about the salt thing. They probably knew that was a super obvious ghost rule. They also probably knew a handful of other rules that would’ve been helpful at the moment.
But Jer couldn’t go back and change the past now. All he could do was add to their information pile. “I think...I think Hope drowned. I think that’s why I saw her the way I saw her when I touched her.” He paused, a frown starting to form. “And look, dude, I’m sorry you were the one who jumped. It should’ve been me. I would’ve done it in your place if we’d known the risks.”
Jude shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I wanted to be the one that jumped. I think that’s why I lost the race.” It made his arrival on the cliffs behind Jer but not remembering the actual climb make sense. Plus Jude had way longer legs and way more experience running away from policemen and other authority figures.
“And mate! Blaze is dead too. I just talked to him!” Jude sounded excited but it wasn’t about Blaze being dead. That would have made Jude really sad for Sydney if he was thinking about that part. But he was so excited to alleviate one of Jer’s concerns that the ramifications of Blaze being dead were a second thought. “You can ask him any questions about ghosts you want. You never needed to pay attention to him or Syd at all still.” He beamed.
He couldn’t think of anything comforting about the Hope thing. Jude couldn’t say he’d ever had a ghost friend come to him with a concern about a drowned girl. Still, Jude thought about it and tried. “Maybe that’s why your head hurts. Maybe you tried to save her, and you would have, but then you got hit by a rock.” But Jude didn’t want to think about any of his own internal clues. They creeped him out.
“I could’ve won fair and square,” he argued, because it felt normal to banter and not much else felt normal. If Jer thought about it, he knew not much would ever be normal again. Not by their old, living standards. But he didn’t like the thought. He didn’t want to think about it.
He could tell by Jude’s smile that he was trying to alleviate Jer’s concerns, but finding out another person they knew was dead was a difficult thing to feel good about. Losing Blaze really sucked for Wes’ girlfriend, but Jeremiah at least took comfort in the fact that Wes had somebody who’d get exactly what he was going through. “We’ll have to track Blaze down. Ask him stuff.”
“You can look for him while I look for Jack and Colton and the others,” Jude said. A part of him hoped he wouldn’t find them because they weren’t dead, but based on how bad Wes was, Jude had a feeling.
If Jude was right about his headaches, Jer thought it was good he’d at least gone out trying to help somebody. When he realized his nose was scrunched and he was frowning, though, Jer had to face the fact that he notion wasn’t sitting right. “Do you think…” he started, struggling for a moment to find the words. “If that was how I died, do you think it would click once you said it? Because...that doesn’t feel like what happened. I don’t feel like Hope was there. But, like...do you think that’s actually telling? Or is it possible that’s exactly what happened and it doesn’t ring a bell because I have no memory of dying?” Jer was hopeful that Jude might know more than he did. Jude knew about the salt thing, after all.
Jude raised his shoulders but looked sympathetic because he had no idea. “I don’t know,” Jude said. “Wes said that we all died in a storm. People drown in storms right?” Maybe they’d all drowned, but Jude didn’t experience the click that Jer was talking about. Jude didn’t remember a storm. A storm didn’t sound or feel familiar at all. “There’s this...crushing and then this other pain…” Jude gestured toward his chest before he thought better of it. “Nevermind.” It didn’t matter.
He was quiet before he changed the subject to what had been weighing on him since last night. “We’ve been here for three years, Jer. That’s longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere. That’s longer than we were in college.” They couldn’t jump off the island. There was salt all around.
“Jer… I think we’re stuck here. I think this is our home now.”
Jeremiah didn’t know how to even begin processing what Jude shared. He just stared. Jer didn’t think he even blinked. Distress was the first thing to win out across his face. Then...sadness. Heavy, choking sadness. If Jude hadn’t put a timeline to their deaths, he would’ve been able to focus on the pain Jude was describing. He would’ve focused on that, because Jude was clearly concerned and trying to brush it off meant it was Jer’s job to help him work through his confusion. It didn’t sound like Jude had drowned. Jer didn’t think he drowned either.
But Jude offered a timeline. That became the only thing he could focus on. It made Jer’s head hurt worse than it had already been hurting. “Three? How? What have we been doing for three years? What...oh god, what have our people been doing?” Jeremiah wanted this to be wrong. Almost more than he wanted the whole death thing to be a mistake. Almost, but not quite. Jeremiah’s lips parted, another question on the tip of his tongue, another desperate attempt to argue, but he was interrupted by a sound echoing through the trees. His brow furrowed. It sounded like a shout.
“What...was that? Did you hear that?”
Jude’s head turned toward the noise. Loud footsteps. A lot of them. Too chaotic to be a march, but with definite purpose. The sound of their voices and metal clinking against metal as they walked. Jude froze in fear, silent and listening. He didn’t unstiffen until he realized they were headed toward the beach and not up the cliffs, but there was still an urgency when he gestured to Jer. “Come on,” he said, hushed. “Let’s go around the other way and get out of here.”
And then under the din of what sounded very much like what Jude would have imagined the pirates Cassidy had told them stories about would sound like, there was another sound. A scream for help. Worse, Jude recognized it.
Jeremiah froze with Jude. In response to him freezing, seemingly, though the truth was they both stiffened at the same moment, bodies rigid and eyes wide. Jer was ready to follow Jude’s suggestion. He couldn’t pinpoint what exactly about the noises scared him, what precise reason he had to be so instantly, unbearably on edge, but his fear was pure and it was visceral, and instinct told him to leave as soon as Jude said they should go.
But then there was that shout. Jer’s brow furrowed, horror washing across his face in an immediate wave of realization.
“That’s Colton,” he said, looking at Jude. Jer realized he was hoping Jude would contradict him. Tell him he was hearing the voice wrong. That the person shouting was just a stranger. But it wasn’t. Jude wasn’t going to tell him that. “Colton. He’s in trouble. We have to help.”
If Alisha could see him, she would probably be pointing out how this was the exact sort of stupid thing she’d been so angry about during last night’s conversation. But it didn’t matter. Jer knew he couldn’t cling to caution here, even if there were consequences later. With another look Jude’s way, Jeremiah took off in the direction of the shouting, as quickly as he could manage while remaining as quiet as possible.
Colton’s easy smile was the one that had convinced Jude to pledge KOD when he’d first arrived at IUP. They hadn’t gotten to hang out as much as Jude had with some of his other fraternity brothers because Colton’s girlfriend actually lived on campus, but Colton was a good guy with a hilarious sense of humor and the sort of smarts and outlook that Jude could only aspire to. Colton always cooked extra mozzarella sticks and shared them with anyone in the commons area. Jude always took pencils and pens from Colton’s room because he knew Colton wouldn’t mind.
It was the small things. The little flashes. The tiny kindnesses that flashed through Jude’s mind as they ran down the cliffs toward the sound of their brother’s voice. The cry for help only happened once before Jude didn’t hear it again. As they made their way through the jungle toward the beach, the footsteps stopped.
Wherever the pirates had been headed-- they’d arrived now.
Jude could see them up ahead. They’d formed a mob around a flat part of the beach. There were about fifteen of them. Almost all men, but one woman. All armed with swords and pistols. The woman pirate was making a slow circle in the sand with her blade. Another pirate, a man in his early thirties, stood by her, separate from the rest. Colton’s arms were each held by two burley men who were dragging him toward the circle. His head was bowed.
Jude pulled Jer behind a bush before any of the pirates saw them.
If Jude hadn’t grabbed his arm, Jeremiah knew he wouldn’t have stopped. He knew, without a doubt, he would’ve just charged right at the pirates. He couldn’t even really stop to appreciate how absurd that statement was. Charging right at the pirates. Because there were pirates now. Real, dead, ghost pirates. And those pirates were dragging real, dead, ghost Colton across the beach. That was the only thing he could really focus on. Jude stopping him was the right call, but he still looked at his friend, eyes wide and expression twisted with bewilderment. With panic and fear and dread. Even though he knew exactly why Jude had stopped him, he was still stunned that Jude had actually done it.
He turned back towards Colton almost immediately. This felt completely ridiculous. He and Jude had hidden in bushes before. They’d been doing it since they were kids, because they’d been goofing around, playing pranks, getting into mischief since they were kids. And all of those things led to dramatic chase sequences that usually ended with them hiding in bushes. Or bush-like places. Bush-adjacent. Sometimes they got away. Sometimes they didn’t. But this was different. It was so familiar, but so different. Because, looking at Colton, the stakes were higher. They were real. This wasn’t a slap-on-the-wrist sort of situation. The pirates had swords. They had guns. Jer didn’t know if any of that mattered now that they were dead, but it certainly looked like it still mattered. The pirates sure seemed to think it still mattered.
Jer was about to whisper to Jude when the pirate marking a circle in the sand looked up and the other pirates fell quiet, watching her. The two men dragging Colton stopped, and the woman seemed to smile. Just barely, but her entire face was ice and fury and the chill that sight inspired kept Jer quiet. Long enough for her to fill the silence.
The pirate man next to her, also separate from the rest, looked at her with pure love and admiration as she spoke.
“Colton Grayson, you have committed treason against the true captains and crew of the Ava Lucia,” the pirate said. The accent and the way she paused between words seemed to suggest English wasn’t her first language. The way all the others were watching her, Jeremiah knew she was their leader. She had to be. “You have been caught conspiring with the Prisoner Down Below. For your crimes, you have been sentenced to the ultimate death so that the destruction of your traitorous spirit may provide strength to conquer our enemies, the very people that you would join against us.”
A cheer rose up from the men. It was vicious and cruel and cold. Animalistic excitement. One of them yelled “Hear hear! Sunder the traitor!!” Jer’s gaze shifted back to Jude.
Jude was frozen, scared to make a sound, but especially scared to let go of Jer’s arm. But when Jude looked down, his hand, his whole body, was flickering in and out, almost mimicking the drum of a rapid heartbeat. Jer’s arm slipped through Jude’s fingers during a pulse. Jude didn’t know the word sunder, but it sent a chill through him. In the context, his imagination created a fairly accurate image anyway.
“Sunder the—” Jer started, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Because it was nonsense, wasn’t it? This was a prank. But the cheering died like all sound had been cut from the beach in a single moment, and Jer’s gaze snapped back to the pirates. Back to Colton.
The woman had raised her sword. She handed it to the man next to her.
Without thinking, before Jude could stop him, Jeremiah jumped up from their hiding place, holding his hands out in front of him.
Jude jumped after him. “Jer!” But it was too late. The pirates’ eyes were on them. Hands moving to the hilts of their swords. Jude tried to pull Jer back. But Jer pushed forward.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” Jer shouted. Even though this was probably the most terrifying scene he'd ever faced, he couldn't stop himself. He kept going. “Hang on a minute. This is crazy. You don’t need to do this. There’s no reason to sunder anybody, okay? Literally no reason for sundering at all. It’s a mistake. Colton’s...Colton’s just a guy. He’s just one of us. He isn’t a traitor. Let him go, we’ll leave, no harm done. We won’t come back here. We’ll leave you whatever part of the island is yours. Just let him go. Don’t do anything. Just...just please. Whatever you want, anything at all, it’s yours...just let him go.”
“JEREMIAH. YOU GUYS. THERE’S...” the prisoner yelled. Ava Lucia had given him back his mouth so that he could say his last words. Her head flipped back toward him and she snapped her fingers to make it disappear again. Silence.
The pirate woman looked at the ant that had just crawled onto her table, unphased. “You have no authority to bargain with me.” She turned her head to the man by her side. “Do it, my love.”
The man sliced Colton in the throat and then stabbed him in the heart. A blinding light emanated from the cuts and grew. Colton’s mouth came back in time to open in horror and scream as the sword ripped his spirit apart like cutting paper. He was there. Then he was shreds. Then he was nothing. The light traveled through the sword and into the man. His body emanated with it as he absorbed the light into himself. He pulled the woman to him. With a heavy kiss, she seemed to pull the light from him into her. When they turned to look back at Jer and Jude, their eyes were glowing with it. Four bright shining orbs gazing at them with the same unearthly power. “They’re with the traitor,” they said. “Grab them.”
For the first time since Jude heard the sword make contact, his legs could move. He grabbed Jer hard, refusing to let go, and pulled him. “RUN.”
For a moment, there was nothing. Jer’s eyes saw the pirate open Colton’s throat. His ears heard Colton’s scream. There was a scent of heat, of burning, carried on the salt of the wind. But his mind wasn’t ready to accept any sensory input, let alone all of it.
So, in the moment of Colton’s death, there was just...nothing.
And then nothing became a single thought. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to work. Jer thought of Alisha then, of her calling that caveman logic. But the pirates and their weapons and Colton’s execution and the glowing eyes...how could any of it, all of it, be real? Everything all poured in, the sights and smells and sounds, and his stomach turned. This could not be happening. Jer tasted bile even though his body was empty, even though he couldn’t actually be tasting bile. If they were dead, they couldn’t die again. The salt hurt Jude, but he hadn’t died. Alisha had been certain, and she was right. So Colton wasn’t actually dead. Except...Jeremiah felt the loophole. He knew what he just saw was different…
And if it was different, then…
Jude’s grip, his demand, broke Jer free from the conclusion that he could still feel, the conclusion that heaved at his guts and begged for him to just collapse to the ground, pirates be damned. One wide, panicked look at Jude and it clicked, and the two of them were running. Not like they were racing. Not like they were just caught stealing garden gnomes again and they were trying to evade capture.
Like they were running for their lives. Because they were. They could die. They could die for keeps. And the pirates weren’t dissuaded when Jude and Jeremiah took off. They didn’t give up when it was evident the two guys weren’t going to just stand there and wait for their throats to be slit too. Jeremiah couldn’t stop to look over his shoulder, but he could hear the pirates. The pursuit. The pounding of footsteps and the calls for blood. His breathing was heavy even though he couldn’t feel tired. His heart pounded in his ears even though Jer’s heart couldn’t pound anymore. He and Jude wordlessly made the decision to run back to the hotel, and all of those noises followed them the whole way, until they were trying to beat down the doors that couldn’t see them or respond to them.
“Open up! Hurry! Come on!!” they both yelled, fists hitting the glass without making a single sound. And then a guest walked out, and as simple as that, they both scrambled inside.
And that was when Jeremiah finally looked back. He turned, facing out, and he took in the sight of the entire band of pirates lined in a neat semi-circle just beyond the hotel. They were motionless, all of them, standing rigid and aggressive, eyes fixed on Jude and Jer even though they were thirty feet away behind glass doors. A moment ticked by. If the wind wasn’t gently moving their hair, their clothing, Jer would’ve thought they were frozen. He was certainly frozen. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t look away.
And then the leader slowly sheathed her sword and turned. One step behind her, the others all turned as well. The entire group followed her back towards the trees. One by one, they vanished from sight. Jer finally drew another breath. The taste returned to his mouth. Without warning, his stomach heaved again like it had earlier. He turned and threw his arms around Jude. Everything that couldn’t be happening had happened. The only thing that kept him upright was his friend. His brother.
Jude’s expression was more shocked in that moment than grieving. Instead of his heart pounding like it would have been when he was alive, Jude felt it throughout his whole spirit. But looking at Jer’s expression, his friend’s face twisted into this gutwrenching mixture of horror and pain, Jude steadied. Jeremiah collapsed in his arms, and since Jer needed him, Jude found himself strong enough to hold his friend up.
Jer held on tighter than he had ever held anyone, his whole body shaking with dry tears and silent, violent pain, until the intensity of it all doubled into more than he could handle. And then, once again, there was nothing.
With the weight of Jer no longer keeping Jude grounded, Jude faded too. Tourists moved in and out of the hotel like everything was normal, but on the ghost plane, the lobby was as silent as the void.