Out of Hand

I Can Call You Stupid in My Dreams

"What part of our humanity decides there exists a right and a wrong?"

Naru met me in the darkness. But no, the smile he gave to me was not Naru's.

"You're Eugene," I said.

The young man nodded. There were familiar cool blue fires flickering in the distance, like stars. I thought I could see some of the walls or faint outlines of the chapel's storage room and hallway. It was all transparent, as though I stood in a 3D blueprint of black with white lines.

"Why...why can I see you?"

He turned his head away and shrugged, the softness to his expression turning sad.

I felt more than heard his answer.

"Naru can't see you. I'm the closest you got."

He bowed his head to hide his expression at that.

I drew closer, carefully, unsure of whether this dream was one of the fragile ones easily broken into nonsense or not.

"Hey, I'm okay with that. You got something you have to do for him before you go, don't you?"

There was a long moment of silence, or perhaps only a breath as time is difficult to track in dreams, where Eugene simply stood there, face hidden, shoulders slumped.

But, finally, he turned to meet my eyes, and his gaze shone just as blue as his brothers.

"He's an idiot," he murmured.

"In some things, yeah."

"He needs to stop the stupid black for mourning thing. Nobody does that anymore, and I just think it makes him look more stupid."

"Or more sad," I whispered.

Eugene's blue eyes, the same color except somehow so much warmer, jumped about my face. Meanwhile, the foxfires drifted, sometimes near, sometimes into nonexistence.

"I'm worried about you too," he said. "Your abilities are like mine, but...unstable. Changing. Different."

I cocked my head. "What, you don't think I'm rather pathetic and sad too?"

That made the spirit flinch back, and for a moment I thought he'd disappear into the darkness along with those distance fox fires.

But when he spoke, the words were sure.

"No. I think you're strong. Strong enough to be what he needs. Or at least smart enough to stop him from doing something truly stupid. See, he gets so caught up in how book smart he is sometimes and, ugh, how arrogant he can be, that he totally misses the common things that everyone knows—that everyone must know—to survive."

"Like what?"

"Like how a human will die if left alone. Or that picking at someone's flaws doesn't make you friends. And that he even needs friends. Or," a full blow return of the smile came back. "Why he needs you. Or heck, sometimes it's even just stupid food or sleep or damn Nyquil that he just glazes over because he thinks he's in a higher realm."

I smiled. "Stupid scientist?"

Eugene nodded, though this time I could see the fondness in his face. "Stupid scientist, but...a good man."

Suddenly, our surroundings shifted. The transparent walls become clearer and the white lines less distinct. Somehow, Eugene had gotten hold of my hand without me being aware that he had come close enough to take it in the first place.

And, with the sensation of gliding through water, he pulled me into the cool, empty chapel, moonlight gleaming on the well used, polished pews.

"Do you know what makes a place sacred?" he asked.

"Well, John said something about consecration and prayers and stuff over the foundation stones."

Eugene shook his head. "Not quite. Not wrong, but not the bigger truth." He gestured over the expanse of the chapel. "It's people who make a place sacred. By deciding it is special and treating it thusly through their actions and their attitude towards their own self-improvement and sense of morality, a sort of...atmosphere is created that most people's natural sixth sense can pick up from one another. We are highly social creatures after all, and there's a reason psychics are born every now and then. That active effort to create a safe place, a holy place, and to protect it from outside influences that would wish to sully that, makes it so." He walked passed a pew, tracing his hand along the back. "It's remarkable how much control we really have over our environment simply through our choices, thoughts, and actions."

It took me a moment to digest that. I didn't claim to be the brightest bulb in the pack, and I didn't want to make any mistakes.

"So, when that feeling is gone," I said slowly, "That's because something has been allowed in to ruin that?"

He shook his head. "Not something. Someone. People make it sacred."

"And people can undo it as well," I finished for him.

He nodded.

"So..." I glanced at the floor, where I could almost see the gaudy good-bye room. "If there are bad spirits here—"

"No," he broke in. "The spiritual plane is all affected by perception, and spirits go where they perceive they must be. Good calls to good, bad calls to bad, pain...calls for justice. They can't take away what the living have lain down. They can't move stones or even see the entirety of the holy space. They can only feel their way through the world and what they can perceive of it."

I thought about that, the gold and scarlet room growing clearer through an ever-growing transparent floor.

"Are you telling me," I said, slowly. "That...that the awful feeling Father Brown called us in to investigate about isn't caused by the ghosts, but by someone who is alive?"

Eugene gave me a winning smile.

"I heard from several religions I studied that the blood of the innocent cry unto God, or the gods, for justice," the words came out strangely, as though quoted through a different person. "Or they simply cry, hoping someone will hear them and rescue them from the hell their mangled perceptions have dropped them into due to the cruel actions of others."

And even as he said so, I thought I could see them again. Lanky, prepubescent boys, with some baby pudge ones mixed in, leaning against the walls of the good-bye room, each attached to an angel as though they hadn't planned it that way, just staring into the center of the room. The longer I looked, the more I could see. Sullied clothes, blood, bruises, dried crusted vomit about their faces, eyes impossibly deep and dark in faces pale as clouds.

And the rich decorations looked more gawdy than ever.

"Eugene," I murmured. "What happened to them?"

But when I turned to hear his answer, the chapel had turned into the dark red of the back of my eyelids. Sunlight warmed my cheek where it reached me through the window.