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Chapter 6 - Friends Old and New

"Will you just GO AWAY?"

I was yelling to an empty room. But I was not alone.

Avery sat there on the window sill, kicking one of his legs and frowning in concern. He still had his familiar hat and vest. He looked exactly like I remembered him from London. This wasn't possible.

"I can't," he said quietly. "You're bringing me here."

"I am NOT bringing you here! You aren't real! You're a... a..."

"Ghost?" Avery finished for me. "That's right, Simon, I'm dead." He said without any emotion in his voice. "But I'm still your friend."

My heart hurt at that very moment. It had been days now and Avery was almost everywhere I went. Sometimes walking with me across streets, sometimes sitting on tables in the rooms I was in... the only time I didn't see him was when I was having sex. For some reason Avery never showed up during those moments. I won't lie, figuring that out had made me a bit more eager to hop into bed with some men, to keep this... awful memory away. I don't know what was wrong with me.

"I must've hit my head or something," I said calmly, leaning my back against the wall, looking at Avery briefly before turning my head away. "You're a hallucination."

Avery jumped down from the window and walked over, sitting on the floor in front of me with his legs crossed under him. He always tried to adjust himself so I couldn't help but stare at him.

"If that's true, Simon, then you're bringing me here."

"No, it's not!" I growled, sliding my back down on the wall and laughing with exhaustion. It was hard to fall asleep when you had a ghost watching me. "Why would I be calling YOU here?"

"You tell me," Avery said calmly. "If I'm a ghost I'm missing out on Heaven though. I can't say I remember it, but that's probably because I wouldn't want to be here if I remembered it. You know we're probably naked in heaven?"

"I can't believe this," I mumbled, sliding my hands over my face and through my headfur. I flicked my ears back some and cleared my throat. I had an idea.

"Go away!" I said, looking at Avery with hopeful eyes.

He did not vanish; he just continued staring at me.

I growled in annoyance. "I said go away! You're here because of me, right? You should be listening to me!"

Avery shrugged his shoulders. "Clearly there's something more to it," he said in that damned calm voice of his.

I growled and grabbed something near me, a book, and threw it at Avery. I watched him tilt his head as if he was alive and it passed his head. The book thumped against the wall behind him.

"Hey, books are expensive!" Avery said, getting up from his seat and walking over to where the book fell. "You need to treat your things with more care and respect."

I watched with rapt attention as Avery bent down to pick the book up. This would be the clue I needed. Could he pick it up? If he could, he would be a spirit... something otherworldly, and I wouldn't be crazy. I swallowed and leaned forward but just as he was about to pick the book up my bedroom door opened, blocking my view of Avery.

"Dammit!" I looked up. Standing in my doorway was a concerned-looking Rut in just his trousers and purple vest and Fiz holding his precious knife. Both looked wary.

"Are you okay?" Rut asked, looking around my room. I wasn't bothered that it was a bit messy. At least it wasn't like Fiz's room; his looked as though a hurricane blew right through it.

"I'm fine!" I got up onto my feet and smoothing my headfur back with both my hands. "Just...having a bit of a stressful moment."

"Possessed?" Fiz asked curiously.

"What? No! I'm not possessed."

"Hit head?" he countered.

"No! Fiz, I'm not hurt. I promise you, I'm just stressed out." I sighed and frowned at my friend. He cared, but he was also a little wary. I did notice the knife in his hand after all.

"Talking to ghosts," Fiz said suddenly and it made me stiffen up and stare at the other black furred fox. How in the world did he...?

"W-what..?" I said, grinning. "I don't see ghosts, Fiz."

"But you do talk to yourself lately," Rut said, coming farther into my room and looking around curiously before stopping at my face. "You try not to make it obvious but we see you sometimes. You make weird faces at nothing, or whisper something. Fiz was certain you were crazy."

"That's rich, coming from him," I said with a scowl, trying not to give any credence to their observations.

"Hey!" Fiz said, flipping his knife with one hand and catching it smoothly at the hilt. "Not crazy. Smart." He tapped the side of his head with the tip of his blade, grinning. "Saw Simon is crazy. Smart."

"No! Look... I'm not... god dammit." I groaned and sat on the edge of my bed, putting my face in my palms. "Fine, fine you want the truth?"

"Possessed," Fiz said, which earned him a glare from both Rut and I.

I looked back at Rut and sighed again, hanging my hands between my legs. "Lately, I've been...seeing things." I tried to gauge what either of them thought about this revelation. "Someone from my past who died."

"So a ghost?" Rut said, not giving away anything about what he was thinking.

"It's either a ghost or I'm going insane," I said with a frown again. I watched Fiz rapidly walk out of my room. Where was he going...?

"Who are you seeing?" Rut asked, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pants pocket. "You sound like you knew them well."

"It's... an old friend from London. He was my best friend for most of my life." I said it with a bit of pain in my chest. I had to quickly push it down. I had grieved for Avery for years, I thought I was beyond this. Tears didn't really do anything, anyway. No one cared when I cried, so why bother?

Rut then asked, "And what do you two talk about? It sounds like you're angry at him for being here."

Damn. Rut was definitely paying more attention than I thought. These two... they were incredibly dangerous, as I had to constantly remind myself. Together they were perfect in terms of skill overlap. It was also so easy to assume something about one twin because the other acted a different way. They probably used that to their advantage.

"Well..." I cleared my throat again and reached into a pocket to grab a cigarette. I put the end in the candle and took a drag before continuing, though not really focused on the tobacco. "I don't know, we just argue. He shouldn't be here, he should be back in... whatever it is ghosts go to when they die."

At that moment we heard a door slam and a loud crash of something falling over, followed by a yell of glee and I swear, to this day, a live chicken squawking. Rut and I exchanged a glance and got up, looking into our shared living space.

Fiz was running down the small hallway from the many hidden closets and compartments, grinning like a madman. He had on bright silk, a sash, a headband, three of them on his tail in a burgundy, a forest green and a dark purple. He had things tucked under his arm and quickly sat down at the table, dropping the contents onto it.

"Come hither!" the black fox said, motioning to me and waving me over. "Let the Master of the Spirits guide you, Simon."

Fiz was puting onto a small stand a genuine crystal ball when Rut slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand and groaned, then pinching the space between his eyes. "Not this again..."

I was almost too stunned to speak, but I looked over at Rut and tilted my head to the side. "There's a story behind this?" I asked with a look of confusion.

"We went to a séance once, and he thought he heard the spirits when even the mystic couldn't. She was lying about everything, but Fiz swears--"

"That's Master of the Spirits, Fizminton," Fiz interjected.

"...That The Master of Spirits, Fizminton, can hear spirits around him. The last time he 'heard' something, it was just me mumbling in the other room about it going to rain but he swore up and down that a ghost had told him."

"So... why the costume?" I looked between the twins, one looking like he was having the time of his life laying out tarot cards, the other looking like he was having a horrible headache.

Fiz answered my question: "I can't talk to the ghosts if I'm not dressed for the occasion."

I felt my jaw drop. I stared at Rut, who shrugged. "He isn't Fiz right now, not to... himself, so he talks differently when he does things like this. He completes sentences. It's not the kind I warned you about."

I watched as Fiz--I mean Fizminton-- polished the crystal ball with his sleeve and looked up at us, motioning to the table for us both to sit.

"Come on come on!" the fox said. "If Simon only recently talked to the ghost, it may be gone and then I'll need to get the blood of a virgin to summon them back here."

I turned to Rut, who just shrugged again, while Fizminton sat down across from me. "You would really do that?" I asked nervously.

"What makes you think the great Fizminton doesn't have a bottle of virgin blood already in his trunk?" Fizminton said with a raised eyebrow. "A good spiritualist always has all the ingredients necessary to talk to the undead."

Fizminton reached under the table and put in the middle a hefty jar of something... it was red looking and nearly full. I sat back a little bit and gulped.

"Wait a minute," Rut said as he reached out and picked up the jar, turning it over in his hands. "This isn't blood, it's tomato paste! My tomato paste!"

"Virgin blood," Fizminton countered.

"No! I made this the other day to make stew with but it went missing. I thought I had misplaced it and was looking all over the place because I didn't want to buy more tomatoes. FIZ!" The white fox frowned at his brother.

"Fizminton," the black fox held up a hand with a single pointer finger up as if to remind a child they were misspeaking.

"Is this why all my garlic is gone, too? Because you heard something about vampires killing people around the city?!"

"A good spiritualist must always be prepared for the unknown. If I come up against vampires I want to be ready." I watched in mild horror as Fizminton dropped onto the table several bulbs of garlic.

I could see the vein twitch above Rut's eye and saw him barely push back his anger. He grabbed the garlic and put it next to his jar. "For the last time," Rut said through somewhat clenched teeth. "My kitchen is not your laboratory."

"Yes, Yes," Fiz said with a wave of a hand in the most dismissive manner I think I've ever seen him. He pulled his crystal ball closer to himself and looked between us. "Let us talk to the ghost now, shall we? I will open the gateway and speak for the lost soul. Do not be alarmed." And he sprinkled some white dust onto the globe.

Rut, already done with this game, touched some and licked his finger. His tail floofed out some in a way I rarely saw. "This is my sugar!"

"Shhh," Fizminton shushed, "I am communicating with the afterlife."

---

It was well into the evening before "The Great Fizminton" was done. Oh, we had met many spirits during our séance -- I had spoken to my great-great-grandmother, apparently, a talking parrot that had belonged to a long dead third uncle, and I found out I'm descended from Egyptian nobility.

But no Avery.

When Fiz got tired or bored of the show, or he felt like he had done enough, he had put everything away and cleared up, coming out as if he had been in the bedroom napping. He stretched his arms above his head and smiled at the two of us. Rut looked ready to murder him. I still didn't know what to make of all this shenanigan.

Afterwards, I thanked Fiz for his efforts--to which he innocently replied, "Not me. Thank Fizminton. He great!"--and went to my window and out, climbing up the side of the wall with a skill I had never lost from my days as a chimney sweep. Having longer, stronger limbs was so much better to scale things than it was when I was a cub. But with longer limbs, wider shoulders, and everything else to match, it made being a chimney sweep that much more impossible for older guys like myself.

I got to the roof of the building and hauled myself over the edge, sitting on it and looking over at the chimney flume to my left. It looked so tiny. It was weird to think I used to go up and down those things like I was greased up. I was skin and bones back then--though we all were, save for Billy. I wondered what he's up to these days.

I sat on the ledge and kicked my feet for a while and just watched the New York skyline, listening to the sound of people below as twilight turned into night. This city was so familiar and yet so alien. Buildings looked new, everything seemed to be made of brick, roads were wider than I had ever imagined, and there was space and place for everyone if you just looked hard enough.

I wasn't sure where I belonged now. Was it here? London? The ocean? I felt like I had become so many things I didn't have just one thing that defined me anymore. If I was going to go home, where was that? Was it even here in New York?

I looked eastward and felt a weird pull deep down. Was home that way? I grinned a little as the wind ruffled my headfur and tail and was setting back down to watch the city when two men sat down next to me -- rather, on other sides of me. One was holding out a beer bottle. Rut.

"Figured you could use the company," he said as he fished out his bottle opener and popped the cap off his beer, Fiz's and then mine. He pocketed the bottle caps and the opener.

"Thanks," I said, looking down at the beer. This was a treat for sure. I can't remember the last time someone even bought me a drink and didn't expect anything in return. Still, I wasn't going to turn the offer down and took a mouthful of the stuff.

Not bad.

"Let's go do something tomorrow," Rut said, looking around the city below us. "You don't work tomorrow and neither does Fiz. Let's go to Central Park. I think we could all use some greenery in our lives."

"You sure?" I said with a smirk, taking a mouthful of the beer once more. "I thought you said you were allergic to nature or something."

That got a chuckle from Rut who also drank his beer. "I may have embellished my reaction to the plants, but it is also a sacrifice worth making."

"Rut not like trees," Fiz said with a sip of his own drink. "Fell out of tree once. Like drunk squirrel. Hate trees ever since." And he made a motion of something falling out of a tree, complete with sound effect and a splat sound.

"Fiz!" Rut shouted with a playful growl. "I swear to you, you keep telling people our secrets..."

But it made me laugh. A real life. For the first time in a long, long time, I felt like I had a place that I belonged. It felt familiar. Like the days I would sit with Billy and Avery and imagine our futures together. Was home here, with my friends?

I wasn't sure, but I was ready to find out.