Friday Feature: Jessica Araújo
- Jae Nichelle
- 11 minutes ago
- 13 min read
Jessica Araújo (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island. She has her MA in Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from William Paterson University. Her works have been published in Sad Girl Diaries Literary Magazine, Wingless Dreamer, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Midnight & Indigo.
Call More Dead
Mama hasn’t rested since the shooting. But not for the same reason as me. When I close my eyes, I see his face disgorging blood on a loop, as if some sick fuck has the VCR remote and keeps rewinding so I can rewatch him spurt blood on his white tee.
Bullet casings littered my driveway, right outside my bedroom window. He could have easily sprayed my bedroom window while he stalked behind my car.
My chest tightens every time I think of it, because what if it happens again and I’m asleep? What if I’m awake? Taking deep breaths to try and relax soon turns into shallow gasps, and I feel like him, like I’m retching on the last breath of life. That’s why I can’t rest.
Mama, she just stares out the window, eyes rooted to where it all went down.
“All them candles and pictures, but no one had the sense to put a cross. Calls more dead if there ain’t a cross.”
As if Death loitering in the parking lot behind my house is just what I need.
Mama squints like she’s trying to see clearer, keeps mumbling to herself. All that squinting she’s doing, I know she can see him. Probably counting how many of the fifty rounds actually hit him.
It had sounded like fireworks. We’re used to hearing fireworks. When I heard the racket, I kept sifting through the endless stack of papers analyzing “There Will Come Soft Rains” and how mankind will be its own destruction, and nature will scarcely remember us when we’re gone. The fireworks were a happy distraction. I didn’t clock that it was raining bullets a few yards away.
Until I remembered it was almost October.
Until I looked out the window and saw a black car, headlights off, speed past the stop sign.
Until I ran to the window and saw people dust themselves off as they got up off the ground.
Until I saw he was the only one who didn’t get up.
“Mmm,” Mama tuts. “That poor boy was no more than nineteen.”
“Kevin,” I frown. “The news said his name was Kevin.”
“Shame. Look at him, standing there, face covered in blood, disbelieving he’s dead.”
Mama doesn’t know I’m scared of ghosts. She could see the dead since she was little, like her mother, her mother’s mother, and the many mothers before them, and like me. I learned conjuring before I learned my ABC’s. I love working with herbs and the elements to heal, to ward, to reverse. But certain parts of spirit work frighten me. Spirits carry burdens with no vessel to hold them. Sometimes they seep into you and lay anchor, mooring you to their energy—sometimes without permission.
I’m fine with the sporadic visits from my ancestors because they come to protect me. I’m sure they shielded me the night of the shooting. But the dead should stay on the other side. And they mostly do. The ones who tend to linger on this side are the ones who have something gruesome about them, be it their deaths or their intentions. They’re not meant to stay on this side of the veil. Staying too long risks them turning to haunt. That’s why I’m scared of ghosts. A spirit doesn’t stay, but a ghost refuses to go, and it grows more dangerous the longer they’re here.
Mama won’t budge from the window, barely moving like a sentinel on guard. “You need to seek some help, baby. You can’t swallow this and think you won’t fall to shit. I came here because you need me, but you know I can’t stay too long. Besides, some things I can’t protect you from.”
“I just need to move out of here,” I groan over my fifth mug of chamomile.
“I didn’t know moving erases traumas. What you need is help.”
“What I need is sleep.”
They come sometime after midnight. Mama and I watch from the window—from a sliver between the shades—in the kitchen. I had turned off all the lights, hoping to invite sleep. We watch three guys smash the candles lit in vigil for Kevin. One of them is filming it all with his phone. They all laugh when one of them whips out his dick and pees on the large picture of the dead guy whose ghost phases through their unwavering bodies. Kevin roars in the leader’s face, and I feel the ripples through the window, though they feel nothing—or pretend not to. It doesn’t take a conjurer to arrive at my next thought¸ That’s Kevin’s murderer.
The news reported no leads as no one wanted to testify. The neighbors murmured how his brother, who had stormed onto the scene too late for Kevin, and was said to be the real target, would seek “street justice.” But a week later, here the killer is laughing it up with his boys like getting away with murder is the world’s funniest joke. And maybe it is. After all, what is a life worth?
He tries to shove them all away from his makeshift memorial. His rage thrums in my chest. Fortunately, he is too recently dead to turn vengeful. We can see it, though, Mama and I, how he wants to be the death of that guy and the losers applauding him. He will turn to haunt if he doesn’t move on.
Choking back sobs of impotence, I wipe my eyes and crouch down by the refrigerator, wanting to scream but scared that the killer might hear. That I might be next. My face is flushed with a million tingles that feel like spiders scurrying across my cheeks. The walls start closing in on me, and suddenly there isn’t enough air in the world for my lungs as I try to gulp enough oxygen to stay afloat, but all I keep thinking is that I might be next, might be next, will be next.
“Don’t be silly,” Mama sighs, as if reading my mind. “You don’t even know that guy. Why would he hurt you?”
Because he can. He already has my peace in a vice grip and doesn’t even know it. Imagine how he’d act if he knew. He’d piss on my pain for sport.
Counting to ten, I focus on the kitchen table, on the vase of wilting roses in dirty water, taking deep inhales and slow exhales in between numbers. Inhale peace, exhale worry. I am safe, I am safe. I am safe. When I reach ten, my breathing steadies enough for fear to take a backseat to the wave of anger rippling through my body. My upper lip curls as a snarl escapes from behind my gritted teeth. My tongue feels dry and heavy in my mouth, parched with a new thirst. For blood.
“Mina,” Mama cautions. “Don’t.”
“I need to end this, Mama,” I roar, tired of her just standing there. “You saw the same as me. Kevin’s going to turn vengeful as soon as he’s strong enough. I can end this right now.” What I don’t say is that I don’t blame Kevin for wanting revenge. That bastard stole his life. He shot into a packed park and didn’t care if he hit anyone else. Now he comes back and taunts the living by defacing the dead. Now I want him dead too.
“Don’t you go turning vengeful now. You’re still alive. You’d be more dangerous than any old ghost.”
“I know,” I smirk, knowing that I am powerful enough to bring a killer to his knees, to bring justice to a ghost.
Invigorated by the current of rage, I pop into my bedroom to grab what I know will quench my new thirst. A conjurer has many tools, and I learned to use them all. After collecting what I need into a sling bag, I grab a ski mask and a hoodie from my closet.
“You’ll only fuel him with this, Mina. And you’ll hurt yourself. I can’t guarantee I can help you if you go down this road.”
Ignoring her, I disable the security system and crouch out of the side door to the driveway. I slink down behind my car, just like witnesses say the killer did, and watch them. They are passing a blunt between them while Kevin crackles like an old TV. His ghost has grown. His wavelength is like a strong radio signal, and I am tuned all the way in.
I mix a few ingredients—knotted string, High John, and hemlock— into a small cloth bag, whisper a brief incantation, and fling it over my car to the basketball court. I’m right behind the bag, knowing they won’t have a breath to react after the pouch detonates. One of them notices me and reaches for something in his pants, but a silent flash goes off and they are all swept across broken glass and stomped bouquets to the same spot where I watched a cop give Kevin CPR until the ambulance arrived, until he died before it came.
“What the fuck?” the murderer exclaims. The others are probably questioning if it is the high, if their blunt was laced, because they look confused, lost.
“You murderer!” I hiss, my voice sounding deep, guttural, not my own.
“Who the hell are you? How are you doing this?” He struggles against invisible bonds, but it is futile. Until I release the spell, they can’t move. And they won’t be able to when I release it either.
Like a flower girl at the world’s saddest wedding, I scatter petals of wolf’s bane around us, uttering an incantation to conjure a cloak of invisibility. Even if they squinted hard in our direction, no one would see us, and not even a bat would hear us.
“Now, we can have some fun,” I leer. “You ready, Kevin?”
He looks at me, confusion spreading across his blood-stained face. I squeeze my eyes together to shut out the memory of him spurting blood and choking on air as he died. “Y-you can see me?”
“Better than see you,” I wink, my voice still gruff. “I can help you.”
“Yo, who are you talking to?” someone says from the ground.
“Help me what?” Kevin continues, ignoring the grumblings of the others. He approaches slowly, cautiously, his wavelength piercing my skin as he does.
“Get revenge,” my lips stay parted as I hiss the words, my tongue firmly rooting to the roof of my mouth. The words are titillating, exciting me for what’s to come next.
Kevin’s ghost flickers brighter as he mirrors my sneer. He gets so close I could wipe the blood from his ashen cheeks if he were still flesh. The current of anger gets stronger, exciting and nauseating like sailing through a hurricane. He reaches for my hand, unable to touch me, but oh, I can feel him. I can feel him. I can feel him. He lays anchor in me, and I see it all, a game of dice, a livestream from the park, the sound of fireworks, realizing it isn’t fireworks, a pinch in the shoulder, another in the chest, another—I break the connection. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know. I want to let go. I want to…
I bowl over and vomit bile that smells like chamomile and regret. What am I doing? I look back at the guys on the floor, at Kevin who is now hovering over them. I can’t focus. I’ve never channeled the dead, always avoiding mediumship out of fear a ghost would lay hold of me and never leave. Now, Kevin’s rage has latched onto my own, overpowered my own, and has made it foreign, has made my body attempt to eject anything that steals my control. The nausea of fighting possession is too much for me.
“Let’s kill them all,” he says in a grating voice not unlike mine. “Right where he killed me.”
Pointing his fingers like a gun, he mock-shoots each guy in turn, but it’s my chest that jolts. Clutching my knees, I bend over and vomit again. This isn’t the way. My body keeps trying to unmoor itself from the weight of Kevin’s energy. I cannot be his vessel.
“Revenge ain’t justice, baby,” Mama’s voice echoes throughout the dome. I look up, relieved that she’s here, come to make me right, but she is focused on Kevin.
“Who are you?” He whirls on Mama. “You can see me too?”
“I can,” Mama nods, approaching him slowly. “And I can tell you that killing them won’t help you find peace.
“I had peace until this asshole came and took it from me,” he says, kicking right through the torso of his killer. But the guy flinches, as if he felt something. Latching onto me has made Kevin stronger. “I shouldn’t be dead!”
“You shouldn’t,” I say, fighting a renewed wave of nausea. “It’s not fair what happened to you. It’s not fair he keeps getting to go around and do more hateful things.”
“But,” I continue when I see him clench his fists, his eyes stirring the rage in me once more. I swallow it and continue, “Killing them here would tie them to this place, just like you’re tied to it. And if you stay here and we add them to the mix, horrible things might happen to more innocent people. There’ll be more dead here, more people dying, and some of them might even be your own family.”
He softens a bit when I mention his family, easing my nausea a bit, and mutters, “But he can’t get away with this.”
“And he won’t. I said I can help you, and I will, but you need to move on. You’ll get justice, I promise.”
His ghost dims, the frequency weak enough for me to break it with a quick incantation. Our connection severs, and I gasp for air, lungs heaving as if recovering from almost drowning. My body feels untethered until I focus on a shard of glass on the ground. Inhale peace, exhale worry. I am safe, I am safe. I am safe.
Mama takes the chance to reach for Kevin’s hand. Flinching at first, then dropping into her embrace, Kevin cries into her shoulder, and I want to run and join them, to lose this past week in a hug. Mama calms him so easily, but I know she won’t always be here to ease our hurts. Sighing, I remind myself I can’t fall apart again. Spirit work takes resolve. Living takes resolve. I cast a sleep spell over the three losers on the floor. I’ll deal with them later.
“I’ll be right back,” I say as I jog back to my apartment. The dead-end street is dead silent at this hour, and for the first time in a week, it isn’t disquieting. I dart to my room and lift my mattress, leaning it against the wall so I can yank two loose slats from my bed frame. They’re far enough from each other that they won’t disrupt my sleep, if I can ever reclaim it. As I pull at the pieces of wood, I wonder if a mattress can slow a bullet.
Each strike of the hammer sounds like a gunshot, startling me each time it hits the nail, even though it’s me doing it. Tears burn in my eyes as I hammer harder than I should, not caring if I hit my hand. When I finish hammering the last nail, I notice the angle of one slat is a little crooked, but a cross is a cross.
I fill my sling bag with florida water, rue, ammonia, coffee grounds, a lighter, and a white seven-day candle. The cross is longer than me, but not heavy, so I manage to place it in the crook of my armpit. Back at the basketball court, Mama is holding Kevin’s hands, consoling him in a way she can no longer console me. Whatever she is doing is working. His ghost no longer flickers like an old television. Actually, he’s gaining some of his old color back, with blood smeared across a ruddy brown face. He’s more spirit than ghost now. But he still has to go. The longer he stays among the living, the greater the chance his spirit will get too far gone to be saved.
I take the florida water and sprinkle it on the cross and in a circle around us. Speaking prayer and liberation over the area, I sweep shards of glass and candle wax aside with my sneaker and stand the cross against the fence, positioning it so it won’t fall over, bending over to slap the ground in front of it three times to call on Spirit and my guides. Once I feel myself drop in, connecting to the spiritual energy on the other side, I am separated from the anger and panic of the past week, my tether to Kevin completely severed. I am just a blade of grass swaying in the breeze.
Rubbing rue and coffee grounds together, I call on the most high and my spiritual team to allow me to work in the name of all that is good, to free all the dead holding on to this place past their time, to cleanse this space of any residue of evil here. I sprinkle the rue and coffee mixture in the four directions, followed by three drops of ammonia. After lighting the candle, I hold it above my head, turning as I present it north, east, south, and west. Then, I kneel, eyes closed and palms to the sky, and continue praying as my body continues humming with spiritual energy. A white light grows around Mama and Kevin when I finish my prayer.
Hesitant at first, Kevin takes Mama’s proffered hand and lets her guide him into the veil. He looks back at me, nodding as he dissolves into the brilliance of the beyond.
“You find your peace too now. I’m more comfortable protecting you from the other side, so don’t make me come back,” she admonishes with a smile as she fades into light.
Body still swaying, I rise from the ground and fight the urge to reach for Mama, knowing it’s futile to try and touch her one last time, so I place my hands over my heart and nod. Breathing deeply as I ground myself, I rub my hands and neck with florida water and walk back to the house. I inhale deeply, feeling more peace than I have in weeks. And more resolve. Back in my apartment, I call the police and report the vandalization of the memorial and how I heard them bragging about killing Kevin.
“They’re still there,” I say to dispatch, which is true—I didn’t undo their bonds. I don’t release the dome of invisibility until I hear the sirens, and I don’t release the binding spell until I see the cops through my kitchen window, struggling to lift them off the ground. Relief manifests itself in the form of tears streaming down my face, and I cry until, for the first time in a week, I collapse onto my bed and finally rest.
###
Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
