Warmth and Cold

Comfort

The next day comes and everyone leaves, the house is silent again.

Henry finds himself in his, Jake's, his- room and sitting curled up in the only clear corner. He's thinking and watching the shadows move along the floor with the changing sun.

Before he knows it the door is opening downstairs and the loud voices and footsteps of Jake and Jess begin to fill up the cavernous house. They quickly go their separate ways, Jess further downstairs and Jake up the stairs.

Jake opens the door and when he sees Henry sitting in his room he only pauses for a moment before sighing and putting his backpack down onto his bed. "Why are you hiding in here?" he asks.

"This was my room," Henry says quietly.

"Does that mean..." Jake begins, sitting down on the bed and looking over at Henry. "That I died here," Henry offers, "yeah."

He can still see how he lay, on his back and broken. He can still see the blood pooling and the stains that they couldn't get out of the wood. But Jake doesn't need to see that.

Henry would stand up and leave but he's still a bit unsteady. He got stuck in a long loop today, dying over and over and over until he was only pain and the scream.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, making Jake pause in his search through his backpack, "I- I'm a bit unsteady right now. Please don't be mad with me being in here." "It's okay," Jake says, "really, I don't mind. I actually think I'm the one doing the intruding."

"No," Henry counters, his voice quiet, "I have no real claim on this house anymore, by all rights I shouldn't even be here." He feels tears collecting in his eyes and his chest tighten.

"It's okay," Jake says, "no one blames you. It's just odd to think that a ghost lives in your house. You have to give it a little time."

It's more acceptance than Henry expected. He looks up and finds Jake looking at him, his backpack sitting open next to him and his hands loose at his side. Henry looks at him with tears in his eyes that begins to fall down his cheeks.

"I didn't know that ghosts could cry," Jake says, probably in an attempt to change the subject. "Have you ever heard about weeping women?" Henry says, "I think it's the same concept." The sentence would have been light if his voice didn't crack in the middle of it.

"Man," Jake mumbles, slowly getting up and walking closer to sit down a couple feet away from him, "why are you crying?" He doesn't say it unkindly, rather in a soft voice.

"I don't know," Henry says, "I'm sorry." His breath hitches and he begins to shake. Jake wordlessly opens up his arms, inviting the dead boy in.

Without stopping to realize what he's doing Henry uncurls and moves over the couple feet to fall into Jake's arms. A sense of comfort comes with the fact that he doesn't just pass through.  

"I'm not going to reject you ya know," Jake says, wrapping his arms around Henry as Henry wordlessly shakes and tears fall, only to disappear before hitting Jake's shirt, "I can't begin to understand what you're going through, what you went through, and I can't-." He sighs. "You have nothing to fear from me."

Henry says thank you five times over in his head but he can't translate it into speaking words, instead letting his eyes gaze out over the exposed wood floor.

If one stares hard enough they can see where he lay, where all of him lay, too much within with too little without to contain it once a force acted upon him. He feels so fragile in this moment, held together by Jake's arms.

He remembers not his death but the moments after.

The yelling downstairs, the desperate thumping on the stairs, the disparity of sounds upon his discovery, his mom falling, him sobbing and not able to do anything- the pain still fresh and the breaths unable to compensate. The flickering of states, the solidity of being stuck, the paleness of death, the smudged shadow of an invisible cavity now painted across his chest and his clothes. The cold, the sensation of every ounce of warmth draining. Dying being drawn past the point of sight.

These are the memories that he hides away and hopes he doesn't have to relive. He will get caught in loops but these are the memories that break him the most. These are the ones that leave him lost and silent and shaking.

His limbs go limp in Jake's arms but Jake doesn't let go.

They sit like that for a long time, living and dead, quiet and loud, warm and cold.