What if they were already inside? What if Michael...?
She heard a soft, silvery note, and knew that Michael was playing downstairs. Something about that helped - pushed the shadows back, turned the sounds into something normal and soothing. It was just a house, and they were just kids sharing it, and if there was anything wrong, well, it was outside.
She must have slept then, but it didn't feel like it; some noise startled her awake, and when Claire checked the clock next to her bed it was close to five thirty. The sky wasn't light outside, but it wasn't totally dark, either; the stars were faded, soft sparkles in a sky gradually turning dark blue.
Michael's guitar was still going, very quietly. Didn't he ever sleep? Claire slid out of bed, tossed a blanket over her shoulders over the T-shirt she wore to bed, and shuffled out and into the still-dark hallway. As she passed the hidden door she glanced at it and shivered, then continued on to the bathroom. Once she'd gotten that out of the way - and brushed her hair - she crept quietly down the steps and sat down, blanket around her, listening to Michael play.
His head was down, and he was deep into it; she watched his fingers move light and quick on the strings, his body rock slowly with the rhythm, and felt a deep sense of...safety. Nothing bad could happen around Michael. She just knew it.
Next to him, a clock beeped an alarm. He looked up, startled, and slapped it off, then got up and put his guitar away. She watched, puzzled.... Did he have someplace to be? Or did he actually have to set an alarm to go to bed? Wow, that was obsession....
Michael stood, watching the clock as if it were his personal enemy, and then he turned and walked over to the window.
The sky was the color of dark turquoise now, all but the strongest stars faded. Michael, holding a beer in his hand, drank the rest of the bottle and put it down on the table, crossed his arms, and waited.
Claire was about to ask him what he was waiting for when the first ray of sun crept up in a blinding orange knife, and Michael gasped and hunched over, pressing on his stomach.
Claire lunged to her feet, startled and afraid for the look of sheer agony on his face. The movement caught his attention, and he jerked his head toward her, blue eyes wide.
"No," he moaned, and pitched forward to his hands and knees, gasping. "Don't."
She ignored that and jumped down the stairs to run to his side, but once she was there she didn't know what to do, didn't have any idea how to help him. Michael was breathing in deep, aching gasps, in terrible pain.
She put her hand on his back, felt his fever-hot skin burning through the thin cloth, and heard him make a sound like nothing she'd ever heard in her life.
Like someone dying, she thought in panic, and opened her mouth to scream for Shane, Eve, anybody.
Her hand suddenly went right through him. The scream, for whatever reason, locked tight in her throat as Michael - transparent Michael - looked up at her with despair and desperation in his eyes.
"Oh, God, don't tell them." His voice came from a long, long way off, a whisper that faded on the shafts of morning sun.
And so did he.
Claire, mouth still open, utterly unable to speak, waved her hand slowly through the thin air where Michael Glass had been standing. Slowly, then faster. The air felt cold around her, like she was standing in a blast from an air conditioner, and the chill slowly faded.
Like Michael.
"Oh my God," she whispered, and clapped both hands over her mouth.
And muffled the scream that she had to let out or explode.
She might have blacked out a little, because next thing she knew, she was sitting on the couch, next to Michael's guitar case, and she felt kind of funny. Bad funny, as if her brain had turned liquid and sloshed around in her head.
Weirdly calm, though. She reached over and touched the leather cover of his guitar case. It felt real.
When she flipped up the latches and pulled her shaking fingers across the strings, they made a wistful sort of whisper.
He's a ghost. Michael's a ghost.
He wasn't a ghost. How could he be a ghost, if he sat here - right here! - at the table and ate dinner?
Tacos! What kind of ghost ate tacos? What kind of...?
Her hand went right through him. Right through him.
But he was real. She'd touched him. She'd -
Her hand went right through him.
"Don't panic," she said numbly, out loud. "Just...don't panic. There's some explanation...." Yeah, right.
She'd stumble over to Professor Wu's physics class and ask. She could just imagine how that would go over. They'd toss a net over her and pump her full of Prozac or whatever.
He'd said, Oh, God, don't tell them. Tell who? Tell...? Was he gone? Was he dead?
She was about carried away by panic again, and then something stopped it cold. Something silly, really.
The alarm clock sitting on the table next to the sofa. The one that had gone off just a few minutes ago.
The one that had warned Michael that sunrise was coming.
This happens...every day. He hadn't acted like it was odd, just painful.
Shane and Eve had both said that Michael slept days. They were both night owls; they were sound asleep right now, and wouldn't be up for hours yet. Michael could have...disappeared...daily like this with nobody paying attention.
Until she came along, and got nosy.
Don't tell them. Why not? What was so secret?
She was crazy. That was the only rational explanation. But if she was crazy, she wasn't rational....
Claire curled up on the sofa, shivering, and felt cold air brush over her again. Ice-cold. She sat up.
"Michael?" she blurted, and sat very still. The chill went away, then brushed over her again. "I - I think I can feel you. Are you still here?" Another second or two without the icy draft, and then it drifted across her skin. "So - you can see us?" Yes, she figured, since the warm-cold cycle repeated. "You don't go away during the day? Oh - um, stay where you are if it's no, okay?" The chill stayed steady. "Wow.
That's - harsh." A yes, and weirdly, she felt a little cheered. Okay, she was having a conversation with a breeze, but at least she didn't feel alone. "You don't want me to tell Shane and Eve?" Clearly, a no. If anything, it got colder. "Is there anything - anything I can do?" Also a no. "Michael - will you come back?" Yes. "Tonight?" Yes, again. "We are so going to talk."
The chill withdrew completely. Yes.
She collapsed back on the sofa, feeling giddy and strange and exhausted. There was a ratty old blanket piled near the guitar case; she carefully moved the instrument over to the table (and imagined an invisible Michael following her anxiously the whole way), then wrapped herself in the blanket and let herself drift off into sleep, with the ticking of the grandfather clock and memories of Michael's guitar as a soundtrack.