Molly was at the counter, only lit by the gloom of the sleeping city outside Ash's windows. The shutters had been drawn up but all the lights were off, and had been that way since she'd arrived.
She watched the coffee drip into the pot at the bottom, absently running a finger up and down the countertop. Molly hadn't had coffee this late since her time as a student, and usually it had been with Ash.
He hadn't moved from the table for some time, his arms folded on top with his head nestled in the middle. They were both twenty four and twenty five now, yet as she looked at him, he had barely changed from his quietly charged self of eighteen. Ash was like a locked box of frogs, only opening in the company of close friends.
“It's a good job I don't have work tomorrow,” she said to the slumped figure at the table as she poured the brewed coffee into two identical white cups. Ash didn't move as she set the mug down beside him and took a seat.
Ash was a quiet person, usually happy to go with the flow, but Molly had seen him at his neurotic, perfectionist worst. It usually ebbed out when he was drunk or stressed, and she knew under that bundle of arms and hair piled on the tabletop was a pressure cooker waiting to explode.
“Thanks for coming,” he mumbled, “I know it's late.”
Molly smiled and rumpled the top of his head. “Anything for the one that got me through Harry Galvin's lectures.” She took a sip of coffee and leaned back in the darkness. “But yes it is late, so are you going to tell me why you dragged me here?”
He looked up, relieved of the bandage he had been wearing when she'd last seen him. The soiled linen lie in a heap under his head. Molly couldn't ignore the scar that stretched right across his face. She had only seen it once about a month ago, but it seemed so much angrier now. The sides were raw and scabbed, and the skin around it seemed red and pinched. Molly didn't want to say just how bad it looked. Luckily, Ash answered her thoughts anyway, perhaps noting her expression.
“It won't stop aching, like someone keeps prodding and poking it.” One of his hands reached up and tenderly touched the outside of the scar, wincing as he did so. Molly took another sip of coffee.
“Shouldn't it have healed by now?”
“Yeah, but it's like I just did it yesterday. I don't really understand...well, I might understand but -” He stopped himself, biting his lip and looking over at the steaming coffee beside him.
“What's wrong, Ash?” She leaned closer, trying to catch his eye.
*****
There was a disconcerting and heavy silence in his head. A silence he wasn't used to. Molly's question hung in the air between them, and there was something inside him that screamed to not reveal his secret. If anyone knew he'd been hearing voices, even a close friend like Molly, his career would never recover.
He looked up, into her eyes that coursed with concern and warmth. Eyes he had crushed on for years and years.
“Ever since the crash, something is different,” he whispered into his cup as he gripped the handle. “In my head, something's...something's inside there.”
He held his breath and fixed his gaze firmly at the wooden tabletop. He had said it, and his heart spiked. There was a glimmer in the mirror that hung on the wall.
Maddie materialised behind him, and instinctively he looked over his shoulder to find nothing.
“Inside? What do you mean, exactly?”
“Shh!” He sliced his arm through the air to kill the conversation, looking back in the mirror, “it's finally shown up.”
“What has? Ash…?”
He held up his arm again in a second warning, and rose to his feet, eyes fixed on the mirror. Molly turned to look, and knit her eyebrows when she looked back.
“It tried to kill me! That right there!” He pointed accusingly at Maddie, who remained frozen. “When I performed the jump the other day, I almost died. I almost died and -” He stopped himself, unable even to admit what was dancing on the edge of his tongue. It was too alien to him.
The back of his left ear stung, and he gasped.
Left. Left meant no, a negative. “Wait,” he said aloud, “She said no, she didn't try to kill...did she? Did she understand me?” Ash looked back to the mirror, at her hand raised by his ear. “Hit my right ear if you understand me.”
His right ear was flicked. He looked down with amazement at Molly, who was clutching her coffee mug with white knuckles.
“Sorry, sorry. Let me explain, please don't look at me like that.”
“Like what?” she said somewhat tentatively.
“I know I sound stupid or crazy but just hear me out. During that crash four months ago, I should've died, but I didn't.” He sucked the inside of his cheek. “Mol, do you remember when we got baked at that house party and ended up talking about possession?”
Molly didn't look particularly convinced. “What are you getting at, Ash?”
“Not typical possession like The Exorcist, but something inhabiting a body, benign or otherwise.” He was practically bouncing from foot to foot as he explained to a rather nonplussed looking Molly. “Something from another dimension, maybe. Remember discussing about planes of reality we couldn't see? Well what if things lived there? We said ghosts could be these creatures trapped between two dimensions.”
“Ash, we were stoned off our asses.”
“Let me prove it. Watch.” He pulled off his shirt, too caught up in his own theories to be shy around Molly and turned himself upside down. “Just watch this, Molly.”
He exhaled, slowly, looking at the upside down image of Molly as she watched from the upside down table. In the mirror, he could see Maddie also, or at least her shadow.
His left hand left the floor, and his right leg countered in the air. Balancing now on one hand, Ash began to lift himself down and up.
“I can do this as long as I like,” he said as he moved, not taking his eyes off Molly, who had been quiet for some time but was watching him intently. Ash lowered himself and could feel his heart thrumming in his chest. “You know there's no way I could do that before, or get strong enough to have done that since my crash.”
Molly looked unconvinced. “Maybe. I'm not sure I'd call it proof though.”
Ash flipped back onto his feet, too excited to really listen to Molly. He began thumbing through the stack of papers on the table, past all the reams of official paperwork Derek had made him sign until he found the familiar piece he'd drawn on.
Her beautiful, ethereal face shone back at him, black sclera and pristine white pupils. He set it on the table and went to the drawer, rummaging for a pencil.
“Ash, what's gotten into you?” Molly asked, but he barely heard her.
“Just a sec. Here!” He held the pencil above his head in triumph before setting it beside the paper. “Let me try something.”
Finally, perhaps at seeing how Ash was almost jumping around with an energy she hadn't seen in him since his college days, Molly acquiesced and nodded, pulling her cup towards her and looking at the paper with interest.
“Did you draw this?” she asked.
“Mmm, but anyway.” Ash could feel his heart thundering in his chest, and in the mirror, Maddie was becoming more visible the more his chest thumped. He looked directly at her, and she seemed to be looking back. “Maddie, can you pick up the pencil? Copy?” With his left hand, he wrote the word ‘Maddie’ and held it out to her.
Maddie's hand reached, and lingered for a second. “Try it,” Ash prompted gently.
“Ash, this is crazy, you're reaching out to -”
The pencil levitated mid air, and floated to the table. Ash looked at the mirror, and his heart was almost threatening to leap from his throat as Maddie began to write.
Molly had been stunned to silence, watching the pen, gripping her cup as a makeshift ward from the phenomenon before her.
Maddie put down the pencil and reached with her other hand, flicking Ash's right ear and nodding.