I could tell my daughter was nearby from the sound of her voice. Visiting hours were over, but she refused to leave my side until, eventually, my wife said, "C'mon Maya, your dad needs to get some rest."
All I wanted to do was give them a sign—some small, subtle gesture to let them know their messages of love and support had gotten through—but I'd become a prisoner inside my own body.
The events leading up to the accident were still a blur. If I squinted my memory, pictures came swirling back. I was late for an important event and speeding along the highway. After that, there were only confused glimpses of a moving ambulance, doctors sticking needles into my skin, and a cold, metal table.
Sometimes I couldn't tell whether I was asleep or awake. There was a bright light in front of me, though, and I had this almost unbearable urge to follow it. But then my wife would call my name, and I'd return to the land of the living.
For the longest time, the only sounds were the rhythmic beeps of a heart monitor and oxygen hissing through my respirator. Then, after the whole ward quietened, there was something else: footsteps. Unsteady, awkward footsteps, slowly drawing closer.
Before I knew it, moist fingers—so cold they felt as though they'd been submerged in snow—began to probe my forehead. There was this repulsive, slimy sensation, like slugs slithering across my face. Then I found myself floating in a deep, dark ocean, surrounded by floating humanoids paler than marble statues.
I'd never been so scared, not even when Maya was three and somehow got out onto the window ledge.
Bitter brine forced its way down my throat, invading my lungs. I thrashed around, desperately searching for the surface, already hungry for air. And then…nothing. Just that rhythmic BEEP BEEP BEEP of the heart monitor.
Sometime later, my wife gently ran her fingers through my hair and said, "We're here honey. We love you so, so much."
I sorely wanted to reach out to her, to scream: Alex, I can hear you! I love you too!
Just then, fractions of a blurred, distant memory rushed back; the two of us in the kitchen, our tempers flared. But what were we arguing about? Something to do with Maya?
The footsteps returned that night. That awful icy hand caressed my cheek, and then, after the slugs enveloped my face, I found myself back in the dark ocean.
As those pale humanoids drew closer, it became clear they were decomposed figures, grotesquely pale except for where their flesh had peeled away like brittle parchment. There were hundreds, possibly even thousands.
Unable to tell which direction was up, I picked a direction at random and started kicking, bubbles spewing from my mouth.
When it became impossible to hold my breath any longer, I squeezed my eyelids together, sucked water deep into my lungs, and discovered…I could breathe?
I slowly opened my eyes. Around me, the rotted figures floated peacefully.
"Where am I?" I asked, my gargled words reverberating in every direction.
As the figure's lipless mouths moved, their replies came back clear inside my mind; countless voices, all speaking at once.
Beneath.
"Beneath?"
They nodded, their exposed teeth chattering away.
"Beneath what?"
Everything.
I thought for a moment. "How did I get here?"
She brought you.
"Who?"
The one who harvests.
"Harvests? Harvests what?"
Souls.
I gulped. "What is she?"
Don't know.
"What are you?" I asked, even though the answer seemed obvious.
We were like you, once.
I gulped again. "Before she…"
More nodding.
I suddenly found myself back in the hospital ward. Back in my useless, stationary body. Except this time, that awful, chilling sensation lingered long after 'she' departed.
My family didn't visit that day. Without them, the temptation to go into the light grew stronger. More intense. Don't ask how, but I knew everything would be okay if I follow it—that there'd be no more pain or suffering. No more black ocean.
At one point a doctor propped my eyelids open, shone a torch into my pupils, prodded my feet, checked the equipment, and then exited the room.
Later that night, the cold hand dragged me back to the murky depths, deeper than ever before.
You don't have much time left, the figures said, anxiously. She's almost finished harvesting.
"You have to help me," I said. "How do I stop her? What should I do?"
Go into the light. She won't be able to follow you.
"I can't. My family…"
The figures finally broke formation, speaking over each other.
-couldn't bear to move on without my husband-
-mother was sick. I wanted to stay and take care of-
-needed to goodbye to my two boys. Now I'll never get-
"No," I shouted. "I just have to wake up."
She won't let you.
"I'll find a way. I'll—I'll—"
Go into the light, or you'll be trapped here with us. Forever.
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. Back in the hospital, something felt odd. Different. Now there was a second, fainter light—a halogen bulb mounted against the ceiling.
Was I awake? I looked at my hands. No, through my hands. I was floating like a balloon, untethered from my physical self which lay motionless beneath me, more stitched up than a voodoo doll.
The world and everything in it looked like an old, faded photograph. I half-walked half-levitated toward the hall, where nurses darted around answering phones and fussing over noisy patients who refused to sleep.
From behind, a porter pushed a wheelchair through my torso. My spirit scattered like steam before quickly reassembling.
I screamed and waved my hands in front of doctors' faces, trying to force somebody—anybody—to notice me. But it was hopeless. An invisible barrier separated me from the world. I'd become a phantom. A shade.
That temptation to leave this world behind grew stronger than ever. However, even though others couldn't, I firmly believed my family would be able to see me. Or at least sense my presence.
Beyond the window at the far side of my room, the sun slowly rose above an empty parking lot. Nurses rotated shifts and patients got discharged after teary reunions with loved ones, which made me feel a slight pang of jealousy.
I rushed to embrace my family the second they appeared. "I'm here," I shouted.
As they approached the bed, oblivious to my yells, the temperature seemed to plummet.
Soon the doctor from before stepped into the room and asked to speak with Alex privately.
Kitted out in her baseball uniform, Maya took a seat by the bed and gave me the play-by-play of her latest game, in which she'd hit another home run with her lucky bat.
Baseball! Of course. A clear memory came rushing back: before the accident, my better half and I got into a giant row about me missing things that were important to Maya.
Things like baseball games…
I promised to change my selfish ways, but within a week I'd reverted back to letting work chain me to my desk, and by the time I realized my mistake, Maya's latest game was already half over.
Desperate to at least make the final inning, I barrelled along the highway doing twenty over the limit. And that's when the truck t-boned me...
After that, there was only pain intercut with swirling darkness.
At one point my daughter glanced around the room before leaning close to my left ear to whisper, "I'm sorry I made you get into an accident Daddy. I'm sorry I told Mommy I wished you'd come to my games. Please just wake up."
"No," I shouted. "It wasn't your fault. Maya, it wasn't your fault!"
My wife shuffled back into the room, her lips pursed tight together. I didn't like that expression; she only made that sour face whenever someone gave her bad news. Shivers raced along my spine.
Solemnly, she said, "Come on Maya, it's time to go."
Maya set her lucky bat on the chair next to the bed. "You need this more than me Daddy."
Overwhelmed by the gesture of love, I reached out to brush her hair, and as my fingertips passed over her forehead, she shivered.
Was there a connection? Quickly I cupped her cheeks with both hands and pressed my forehead into hers. "Maya, I'm here. I love you so, so much." A comforting warmth emanated from within her.
Maya shuddered, her beautiful brown eyes welling up. We were connected.
Before I could work out what to do with this information, Alex put a hand on Maya's shoulder and ushered her out into the hall.
"NO WAIT," I screamed, my feeble voice echoing on endlessly. "COME BACK."
At the doorway, Maya whipped her head around, as if in response to a sudden noise.
Her mother smiled thinly. "C'mon. Let Dad get some rest."
"WAIT!" I screamed, quickly floating after them.
As I drifted further and further from my body, a thick mist enveloped the ward. The gloom swallowed my family and everyone else. Now there was nothing now except for my physical body, the bed, part of the room, and that terrible bright light, still beckoning me to leave this world behind—to move on to the next. Okay buddy, you've said your goodbyes, now it's time to go. You really don't want to go back to the ocean. Trust me.
Wait, had the light actually spoken, or was it my imagination? It didn't matter either way, because the thought of abandoning Maya made me sick. If I moved on, she'd spend the rest of her life racked with guilt. I had to confront this strange entity and put a stop to its 'harvest'.
Long after sunset, the footsteps returned. A sour odor wafted throughout the room, stinging my nostrils, and then 'it' appeared from nowhere. Some kind of twisted lady.
Her long hair floated above a shrunken, mummified skull. Rotted cloth hung from her shoulders like a coat hanger, and her top half bent at an extreme angle against her legs.
She made her way towards my body, leaving behind wet footprints with every step. But halfway there, the withered figure stopped to look from me to my body, back and forth. In the corner, the heart monitor accelerated.
I gulped. "Whatever you've been doing. This…harvest. It ends now." My thin voice echoed on and on.
She threw her head back and let out a series of phlegmy coughs and grunts; a horrible sound masquerading as laughter. I moved to prevent her from stepping closer to the bed, but she leaned straight through ghost me and clutched my physical face, dragging me into the deep, dark depths once again, likely for the final time.
Surf from a wave boomed against the bed and sprayed foam everywhere. Now, I could see both the ocean and the hospital room.
With a gnarled finger, the entity reached into her own throat and pulled out blackened strips of flesh, each capped by a bulbous eyeball. The slimy creatures looked vaguely like leeches.
One by one, she carefully laid them across my forehead, cheeks, and throat, then they attached themselves to my flesh.
As the leeches began swelling up, becoming fatter and even more grotesque, the bright light flickered and dimmed, before disappearing entirely.
You should have listened, the pale figures said. Now it's too late.
From the feet up, my body broke down and dissolved like dust in the wind. The figures were right: this time, there'd be no coming back.
No. This couldn't be the end. My daughter's lingering memory of her father would not be a missed baseball game. I had to fight.
Summoning all my energy, I flew at the twisted lady and passed straight through her, straight through the bed, and landed halfway across the room, now almost completely disintegrated.
There was nothing I could do. This really was the end. Goodbye Maya. Maybe I could help convince the lady's next victim to go into the light…
Just then, there was a hollow thud as Maya's lucky bat rolled across the floor, stopping directly in front of me. Had I knocked it over? After a quick, silent prayer, I reached forward.
My fingers slid around the wooden handle. I could touch it!
By now I was little more than a floating pair of hands—there was no time to lose. I grabbed the bat, popped up into a stance, and swung wildly.
The wide end connected with that grotesque, rotted face. A torrent of brackish mud water spewed from the lady's mouth, splashing across the heart monitor and part of the wall. In the ocean, the figures looked on, amazed.
My tormentor snarled and shrieked as I swung again, connecting once, twice. She contorted her neck, the skin around her mouth now dangling loose beneath her chin, only narrowly attached by a thin strip of flesh. The inside of her jaw was crammed with wriggling eyeballs; countless leeches packed tight together.
I let one hand slide halfway down the bat and stabbed it forward like a pool cue. It exploded out the back of the twisted lady's neck, sending leeches sailing through the air.
Falling backward, my attacker disappeared behind the bed. And then, as the horrible draining sensation eased off, my spirit began to rematerialize.
That's when I woke up.
My eyelids felt like they'd been tied together, but I forced them apart and took a deep, desperate inhale, still somehow connected with the ocean.
Every breath felt like a desperate struggle for survival. My body refused to budge a single inch. I just hoped I'd be able to get enough blood pumping to command movement again.
The twisted lady sprung back up, her withered fingers clasping around my throat. Beside us, the heart monitor began to race. Grief, shock, and terror hit me like a series of ice baths.
My aching muscles felt like rusted machine parts grinding back to life, little by little. I flexed my fingers several times and then awkwardly plunged both hands inside the lady's skull.
Before the slimy leeches could crawl along my forearms, I made a tight ball with my hands, drawing a symphony of little squeals. As more water fountained from the lady's skull, the intense pressure around my neck eased. Her chest heaved, and then a torrent of brown mud spouted from the hole in her face.
For every leech I killed, a figure floated to the top of the ocean and vanished. Those remaining took up a chorus of cheers. You're hurting her! Keep going!
Now regaining my dexterity, I grabbed the twisted lady's skull and pulled, squeezed, and twisted. With very little pressure, her skull snapped in two.
An avalanche of leeches spilled on my face, momentarily blinding me. I furiously plucked them off my eyes and lips, squashing two or three or four at a time.
My attacker collapsed backward and dragged me out of bed onto the tiled floor, still attached to the medical equipment by clips and wires. Around us, leeches flopped around. I spun onto my chest and hammer-fisted them into a lumpy, foul-smelling paste.
Don't stop. She's almost dead.
Desperate to survive, the creatures tried to squirm away, but I didn't let up. Squish, squish, squish. They hid underneath the bed and in my hair, one especially sneaky bastard even sought refuge inside my right nostril. I had to rip it out like a long, stretchy booger.
Before long, there was only one figure in the ocean. The lady had become little more than a filthy skeleton oozing brackish liquid from every orifice.
My eyes whipped about frantically. There was one final leech, halfway toward the door. As I crawled after it on my elbows, the twisted lady gave a feeble, defeated rasp.
I pinched the creature between my thumb and forefinger. In the ocean, the sole remaining figure gave a salute and said, Thank you.
Squish. The black ocean vanished as the lady erupted into a torrent of brackish water, which quickly evaporated into clouds of putrid mist.
Exhausted and groggy, I collapsed flat against the floor, darkness already seeping into the corners of my vision. The last thing I remember is a nurse sprinting into the room.
When I woke up Maya was nearby, her brown eyes all red and puffy. "Daddy?"
A feeble, 'Mrra' was the best I could manage. Immediately she threw her arms around me. On the other side of the bed, my wife threw a hand against her mouth, covering that unforgettable smile, before finally joining the hug.
All three of us cried hysterically, and when a nurse came to check what all the commotion was about, she cried harder than anyone.
The doctor called my recovery a miracle. My vital signs looked worse every day—they even had the 'pull the plug' conversation. Fortunately, Alex found herself agonizing over the decision.
After my confrontation with the 'leech mother', a nurse heard the heart monitor go crazy and rushed in to find me unconscious along the floor, close to Maya's lucky bat. So far as I could tell, there was no trace of the entity that came to harvest my soul.
A few weeks later the doctors discharged me, heavily bandaged and still sore. Alex said she wouldn't blame me for skipping Maya's next game, but I insisted we go.
When the kid absolutely blasted that ball over the fence, I jumped up and instantly regretted the action. It felt like somebody jabbed a red-hot poker between my ribs.
For the remainder of the game, I stayed glued to my seat, quietly chanting, "Woo, go Maya."
Afterward, on our way back to the car, my daughter looked at her bat with a sense of awe. Of sheer wonder. "Three home runs in three games. This really is my lucky bat."
I smiled and tousled her hair. She didn't know how right she was.