The Medium

“Reagan!” Liam shouted. He dashed behind Reagan, just out of reach of the hand aiming for him. The dim alleyway swallowed him up, but the fear in his voice echoed between the walls.

Reagan whipped around and grabbed the girl by the wrist, gripping hard. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice low, threatening, filled with a rush of anger.

The girl looked at Reagan, wide-eyed, and stammered, “I-I was just trying to help,” she said. Her voice was high, shaking. Her large brown eyes flicked from Reagan to Liam and back again. “I’m a medium. You have a ghost attached to you so I-”

“I told you she was looking at me!” Liam said. He maintained a safe distance from her, hovering in the shadows.

The girl regarded Reagan with a frown. “Reagan, listen-”

“It’s Alois,” Reagan said. He looked out at the street behind her, praying nobody had heard her use his real name. His heartbeat pulsed in his ears, and a chill ran down his spine, but he saw nobody else in earshot.

“But it keeps calling you-”

“My name is Alois,” he growled, cutting her off before he could say his name again.

“Okay, Alois, you have a ghost attached to you. I’ve seen it following you since you got here. I was trying to help.” She twisted her arm, but Reagan held strong. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Please, let me explain.”

Reagan hesitated. He waited until Liam had moved to a safer distance before complying.

She tugged her beige sleeve down to hide the black tattoos on her wrist, smoothed out the brown fabric of her dress, and tucked her purple hair behind one ear. Clearing her throat, she started, “Like I said, there’s a ghost who’s been following you since you came into this town. Ghosts cause misfortune and sap your energy -- that’s why you slept for so long at the inn. I can help. I can send it away and free you from that burden.” She fiddled with a black ring on her middle finger. “I know you won’t believe me but-”

Reagan couldn’t hold back anymore. His anger reached a boiling point, fueled by fear. It burned like bile in his throat. “Don’t you dare touch him.” That was all he managed to say before his voice gave out.

The girl looked at him, then looked behind him at Liam. In a low voice, barely above a whisper, she asked, “You can see it -- him -- too?” As though she had found the answer in Reagan’s eyes, she followed up with, “You two look so much alike. Is he your brother? Your twin? If you keep going like this, your body will give out. You don’t have much time.”

Reagan moved closer until his face was centimeters from the girl’s. Looking her straight in the eyes, he repeated, “Don’t you ever dare touch him. You leave us alone.” He made sure she saw him reach for the handle of his sword.

Fear flickered in her eyes and she nodded, stepping back and raising her hands in surrender. Her sleeves rolled down, revealing thick black lines that wrapped around her arms and came to a taper at her wrists. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then she turned and disappeared around the corner, shooting a wide-eyed look back at Reagan and Liam.

It took several deep breaths for the adrenaline to dissolve in Reagan’s veins. When he could finally think clearly, he turned to Liam and asked, “Are you okay?” He spoke at full-volume, forgetting that someone could overhear.

Liam, visibly shaken, nodded. “That’s the first time someone else saw me,” he said, looking behind Reagan to where the girl had disappeared.

Reagan wished he could offer Liam some comfort. He wished, not for the first time, that he could protect Liam.

I’m as helpless now as I was then, he cursed himself. Useless.

Before he could continue berating himself, Liam said, “Is it true? What she said.” He looked Reagan up and down.

Reagan brushed him off. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve been together for so long, if my body was going to give out, it would’ve done so by now.” He looked over his shoulder again before saying, “We can’t stay here long. Let’s stock up at the apothecary and general store tonight, then we’ll search the library and archives tomorrow. With any luck, we’ll be headed home by nightfall.”

The general store sat only two buildings away from Killian’s. Unlike Killian’s, the general store was neat, organized. Reagan walked in and quickly found everything he was looking for -- tinned beans, pickled eggs, some cured meats, and a needle with black thread to mend the hole in his coat. The prices were listed on small scraps of paper adhered directly to the shelves.

It’s more expensive than the traveling market at home, Reagan thought with dismay. He selected only the bare minimum, mentally planning how far he could stretch each item, how much he would need to make it back through the forest to their home village.

“You were a little harsh with the girl earlier,” Liam said between aisles of canned foods, pulling Reagan out of his thoughts.

Wedged between shelves that only came up to his chest, in a store small enough to hear the clerk breathe, Reagan couldn’t respond, something Liam would know perfectly well. He shot a glare in Liam’s direction, but the ghost pretended not to notice.

“You didn’t have to threaten her like that. I think she really was trying to help.”

You weren’t complaining about me “threatening” her when you were cowering behind me in the alleyway, Reagan thought, wishing Liam could read his mind.

The sour look on his face must’ve given his thoughts away, because Liam said, “Thanks for keeping me safe. I’m scared to think what would’ve happened if she’d touched me.”

I am, too, Reagan thought, and hoped his face would show that, too.

With the one-sided conversation coming to a silent close, Reagan finished purchasing the provisions and moved on to the apothecary several doors down.

There, he selected herbs for his healing salve, as well as bandages and a few small vials of alcohol for disinfecting. His throbbing arm reminded him he needed to change the bandages soon.

Night had fallen by the time he left the apothecary to return to the inn. In the dim light of the streetlamps, shadows danced. Reagan scoured them for any sign of the purple-haired medium, but saw nothing.

Liam waited until they were in their room with the curtains drawn to ask, “Do you think there are others?”

“Other what?” Reagan asked, suppressing a yawn. He peeled the bandages away from his arm and grimaced at the yellow puss sticking to the gauze. Gritting his teeth, he poured an entire vial of alcohol onto the weeping wound before applying more salve and covering it with a fresh layer of bandages. The relief was immediate.

“Like the girl. Others who can see me.” As he spoke, he glanced warily toward the window. “Others who can send me away, whatever that means.”

“I don’t know,” Reagan admitted with a frown. The thought alone dropped into the pit of his stomach like an anvil.

Liam, still watching the window, whispered, “If someone sends me away, can you bring me back?”

With a lump in his throat, Reagan shook his head. He struggled to say, “I don’t think so. I was only able to tether you to me because your soul lingered after you died. If you get sent away…” I don’t know what I’d do. He couldn’t finish the sentence aloud.

The silence hung heavily between them. It filled the room -- a room that was bigger than their home cottage yet seemed so much smaller. It pressed down on Reagan until he feared being crushed beneath its weight.

“Then, I’ll just have to be more careful,” Liam said finally. “That caught us by surprise, but now that we know… I haven’t seen the girl since, so hopefully your threats worked.”

“I wasn’t threatening her,” Reagan said, annoyed at being accused for a second time. “I wouldn’t have acted on it.”

“I know that, but she didn’t.” He gave Reagan a half-smile, then said, “You should sleep. You need more than one night, especially if what she said about the energy drain is true…”

“You’ve been tethered to me for so long, I think I would’ve disintegrated by now if she was right,” he said. The end of his sentence was cut off by a yawn, and, following an insistent look from Liam, Reagan extinguished the oil lamp at his bedside and crawled under the covers, begging sleep to claim him quickly.