Chapter 4

"What did you say?" Elroy whispered into the phone, his voice trembling. "Say that again."

"Annis Travis is dead, sir. It was ruled a homicide. The case is still open. Korey Vinson was the one who identified the body."

Elroy slowly lowered the phone, his eyes wide and unseeing. He looked at Korey, then at the empty room, then back at Korey. A tremor started in his hands and spread through his entire body.

Are you sad, Elroy? I thought, my voice a hollow echo in my own mind. You should be happy. This is what you always wanted.

"Is... is it true?" Elroy asked Korey, his voice barely a croak. "Is she really... dead?"

Korey's face was a mask of grief. A single tear traced a path down his cheek. He didn't need to say a word. The answer was in his eyes.

Then, his grief turned to pure rage. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a manila envelope.

"You want to know if she's dead?" Korey snarled, flinging the contents of the envelope at Elroy's face. "See for yourself!"

Photographs scattered across the floor.

They were crime scene photos. Horrific, graphic images. My body, or what was left of it. Dismembered. Unrecognizable.

I turned away, unable to look. The coldness inside me deepened, a permafrost settling over my soul.

Elroy fell to his knees, his hands shaking violently as he picked up one of the photos. He stared at it, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He picked up another, and another, his face a canvas of disbelief and dawning horror.

"No... no, this can't be her," he muttered, shaking his head. "Who did this? Who would do this?"

"You want to know who the real killer is?" Korey's voice was like ice. "It was Ivonne. Your precious Ivonne. She killed your mother, and she killed Annis because she knew Annis had found out the truth."

"Liar!" Elroy screamed, scrambling to his feet. "You're lying! You're just trying to protect yourself! Ivonne would never... she loves me!"

He looked at the photos again, then at Korey, his eyes wild with a desperate, clinging denial.

"Annis deserved to die," he said, the words a twisted mantra. "She killed my mother. She deserved it."

That was the moment I finally let go. Any lingering, microscopic speck of feeling I had for this man vanished. He was a lost cause. He was a monster.

He turned to leave, stumbling over the scattered photos of my mutilated body.

As he walked out the door, a strange thing happened. A force that had always pulled me along with him seemed to slacken. I felt a slight release.

I looked back. Korey was standing by the window, his shoulders slumped. He was humming a song, an old lullaby my mother used to sing to me. A song I had sung to him once when we were children and he had scraped his knee.

His eyes were red, and he was staring right at me.

The humming stopped.

"Annis?" he whispered, his voice cracking.

I blinked. It had to be a hallucination, a trick of my spectral mind. Living people couldn't see the dead.

But he was looking right at me. Right into my eyes.

He slowly raised a hand and gave a small, hesitant wave.

My non-existent heart lurched. He could see me. After a year of being invisible, of being a helpless witness, someone could see me.

Korey could see me.