"Are you alive?"
The fish market's back room is a dim, overcast gray, as if the rain clouds stirring just beyond the window somehow permeate the walls. Neo's slumped over a fat binder that's brimming with invoices and weekly schedules, his hair a spill of dark, coiling ink upon the white pages. He turns his head, squinting up at Bernie's wrinkled face. He mumbles, "No."
"Weird. Dead people usually don't talk."
"You see, I'm a very intelligent zombie."
Bernie lets out a humored scoff. "You certainly look like one."
"Even the 'very intelligent' part?" Neo smiles crookedly at her. "Thank you."
"Alright, troublemaker," says Bernie with a roll of her eyes, knocking a gentle fist against his head. "We've got ten minutes till the shop opens. Do you want to tell me why you look like a very intelligent zombie, now?"
Neo winces—the impact of Bernie's hand, along with every noise and splinter of light this morning, is inexplicably painful, like a speck of shattered glass in the bottom of his foot. That, along with the headache stretching from temple to temple like an elastic band tied around his head, has made the day quite difficult thus far.
Not that he regrets even a second of the night before—Kit's drunken dancing, Kit's drunken laugh, Kit's drunken lips. If all Neo's life was only a night, he would hope it would be that one.
It takes all of Neo's energy—which isn't much in the first place—to drag himself upright, every vertebrae cracking as he does. He lets out a sigh. "Bernie?"
Bernie, reaching to pull on a pair of bright yellow gloves, eyes him from underneath a risen eyebrow. "Wait. Don't tell me. I know that look."
Neo blinks. "You do?"
"Yes," she stammers. "No. I don't know. I just think—you're about to tell me you're in love, aren't you?"
The word should bring a flush to his cheeks. It would have if he were younger, maybe, if last night and every moment spent with Kit before that hadn't made him so sure. "Damn," Neo says. "You're good."
Bernie scowls. "I'm not good. I'm just old. So, who's the lucky lady? It's not Elsie, is it?"
"What? No. Actually, it's not a lady at all."
"Ah. Forgive me for assuming," Bernie says. She slides on the gloves with a flourish, then rests an ample hip against the table. "So, who's the fortunate fellow?"
Neo tries to stifle a laugh, and fails. "'Fortunate fellow?'"
"What? It doesn't sound the same if it's not alliterative."
"Okay, okay. Fine. He's...." Neo says, and now he hesitates, because though he's gotten to this point without thinking of it, now it strikes him again like a bitter nostalgic scent. It doesn't really matter how he feels about Kit. It doesn't matter if meeting him was like walking again after years confined to a bed; it doesn't matter if every time he smiles Neo is torn apart and rebuilt again, an earthbound phoenix. None of it matters if they don't break the curse. None of it matters if Kit dies.
Neo's eyes lower to his backpack where it rests, half-open, underneath the break room table. In the desk's shadow he can just make out the ragged leather corner of the book Maeve gave them. He remembers the look on Elsie's face, all her features drawn into a taut scowl, as if she was on the brink of explosion. He knows how she feels, though he could pretend not to, for a while. But now the futility of it all comes rushing at him again in a sickening wave.
"Hey. Neo?"
His gaze shoots up. "Oh. Sorry, I—"
Bernie clicks her teeth. "I see."
Neo doubts that. He doubts that very much. Nevertheless, Bernie casts a glance towards the storefront, then down at her watch. She sighs and heaves herself onto the table, legs dangling off the edge. "It's about Kit, isn't it?"
Neo's muscles pull taut, a strange, nerve-racking sensation he recognizes as shock. "You—you know about Kit? You knew?"
Bernie, for whatever reason, seems pleased at the surprise on Neo's face. "Who do you think made sure they kept the water running in that house? And that he didn't run out of food?"
"But he said the ghost brought him—"
"A ghost can't buy Popeye's, Neo," Bernie says with a sigh. Neo's still staring at her, scarcely blinking, every assumption he'd ever made about how Kit survived in that house reworking itself in his brain. She raises an eyebrow, then adds: "Listen, kid. I owe a great deal to the Kawamotos. Not only are they some of my best customers, but Kit and Elsie's father, Fred? We were good friends back in college. So when I heard their boy had gone missing I was devastated. I had to do some digging around myself, I decided."
"Wait." Neo squeezes his eyes shut. Suddenly his headache is worse. "I don't understand."
"Because I'm not done talking yet, you fool. I told you to listen."
So Neo listens.
"I took my time, searching every part of the island, you know. A lot of times I took Fred and Alicia—that's Kit and Elsie's mom—with me and we all looked together. But they got tired. I mean, everyone did. So eventually I was just looking by myself," Bernie says, something in her gaze faraway, as if she's looking at something not just behind Neo, but behind this time. "I didn't check that old house on purpose. I knew it was there, obviously, but there was no reason for Kit to be there. But my car broke down in the middle of a monsoon, so I didn't have anywhere else to go.
"Kit's not as stealthy as he thinks he is. Or at least he wasn't back then. Because I heard the floor creak and I looked up and—just for a second, I saw his face. I asked if anyone was there; I begged him to come out, but he wouldn't," Bernie goes on, the tiniest of twitches in her furrowed brow. "Anyway, then there's this flash of lightning. Classic horror movie shit, I know, but that's when I saw the ghost—just for that split second. And I don't know how, but I understood. I understood what was going on."
There's a slow crescendo of rainfall then, an audible patter of raindrops hitting the windows rising between them. Neo's eyes trails one of those drops as it skids down to rest on the window pane, recalling the night Kit finally told him everything, the smell of wet earth and ink hanging in the air as he wrote in watery ink, I am cursed. "Kit never mentioned anything like this," Neo says. "Could it be that he doesn't remember meeting you?"
"He didn't meet me. I was just an intruder in his house—there have been a lot of those, as you'd imagine. I was more affected by the experience than he was."
"But you didn't go to the police. Or tell his family. Why not?"
Bernie's gaze on Neo is grave, her mouth a grim, harsh line. "I saw that ghost, Neo. You only need to see him once to know the sort of power he holds. I figured it was better for Kit's sake and for my own if I kept my mouth shut, though I hated myself for it."
"Bernie..."
"I'm right, aren't I?" she says, her eyes so wide he can see the whites over the top of her irises. "That ghost is the reason he won't leave that place."
Neo lets out a long breath, sinking his face into his hand. Telling the Irvines and Elsie had been daunting enough. Now he's supposed to tell his boss, too? "He's cursed," Neo says. "It would be bad enough if he was just confined to that house, but that ghost took his voice, too."
"His voice?"
Neo shakes his head. "He hasn't spoken a word since that night. Since he...went missing."
Bernie hops onto her feet, the table shaking as her weight leaves it. Unconsciously both of them glance toward the clock, and Neo waits for Bernie to leave this conversation where it stands, to order him to start his work as if this were any other day, as if the impending doom of Kit Kawamoto weren't hanging around both of their necks now.
But she doesn't.
"Tell me you know how to fix it," she says. "Tell me you know how to bring his voice back, how to get him out of there."
Her voice is soft, softer than Neo's ever heard it. Is it possible to care so much for someone you barely know?
Yes, Neo thinks. Yes it is.
He snakes an arm below the desk, working his fingers around the leather-bound book and yanking it up into the light. He drops it down on the table with a low thoom. "Elsie, Joey, and me got this book from a weird psychic lady in Haleiwa—"
"Oh, Maeve?"
"You know Maeve, too?"
"Yeah. We get tea sometimes. Nice lady. Weird, sort of reminds me of a rat, but nice. Anyway, what about it?"
Neo wants to ask more about that—how she knows Maeve and why, inexplicably, she reminds Bernie of a rat—but instead he just exhales and nudges the book in Bernie's direction. "If we can figure out how to translate that—whatever that is—then we may be on our way to breaking the curse. Only problem is that it's all gibberish."
Bernie makes a small Hm noise in the back of her throat and picks up the book, the pages whipping by in a twirl of yellowish white as she flips through them. Another Hm, and then she flips the book upside down.
Neo gawks.
"Oh," Bernie says.
"Oh?" Neo repeats. "What do you mean 'Oh?' Don't tell me—you know what it says?"
"Duh," says Bernie. "Didn't I ever tell you how big of a nerd I was in college? I studied ancient languages. Outside of class. For fun. And this, here—it's very obviously Sanskrit. It just threw me for a loop for a second because Maeve bound the book the wrong way."
Neo doesn't know whether to laugh or sob. He's hysterical, euphoric. He wouldn't be surprised if he blinked and sat up straight in his bed.
But Bernie's smile as she claps the book shut and looks at him is so very real. "Give me a day, Neo," she tells him, "and I can translate it for you."