Shawn, please, you have to wake up, the voice pleaded. You can’t die again. Please, Shawn. Wake up!
“Shawn!” Gus’ voice hissed. “Shawn, you need to wake up now!”
He sat upright the instant he was able to break free from the dream. Quickly, he took deep breaths to shake the feeling of suffocation. “Gus?”
“Shawn,” Gus said, more serious than Shawn had ever heard him. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
Shawn swallowed hard. “What time does the library close?”
Only when they were safely nestled into a quiet library alcove did Gus finally tell Shawn what he had seen.
“It happened the same as before. You fell asleep and you were okay for awhile, but then you entered the REM stage.”
“Like the band?”
“Be serious, Shawn. It stands for Rapid Eye Movement. It's the part of your sleep where you dream.”
“Ohhhh! Suddenly that name makes a lot more sense.”
“Focus. As soon as you started dreaming, your body went really… I don't know. Just weird. Not relaxed like somebody who's sleeping. Just… I don't know. Like your muscles didn't work anymore. And after a while, you stopped breathing again, just like before.”
“Makes sense, considering I was having pretty much the exact same dream.”
Gus slowly shook his head. “This time was different, Shawn. I'm not sure exactly what happened…but I could see a shadow standing over you.”
Shawn's throat went dry. “A shadow? Like…of a person?”
“Exactly like that. A shadow, but it looked like a person was there beside your bed.”
“Man or woman?”
“I'm pretty sure it was a man.”
“Did he say anything?”
Gus shook his head again. “No, but it looked like he was trying to wake you up.”
For a long moment, Shawn could only stare. “We need to find out everything we can about that boathouse.”
An hour of searching left them fruitless, and the library was set to close in fifteen minutes. Sighing, Shawn ran a hand through his hair. “We're not gonna find anything, Gus. Let's just go, I guess.”
“Let's ask the librarian first,” Gus suggested. “Maybe she'll know a better place to look. Something that we missed.”
Shawn shrugged and Gus led him to the circulation desk. The librarian looked up from the papers she was working on and smiled. “Hey, can I help you? We're closing soon.”
“We won't take too much of your time,” Gus assured her. “My friend here, Flimflam Van Morrison, has recently purchased a boathouse near the old boardwalk, and he was hoping to find out more about the history of the property.”
The librarian's face lit in recognition. “You mean the one on the beach, over by the pier? The wooden one?”
Shawn nodded furiously. “That's the one!”
The librarian nodded. “I know that place. I grew up in the neighborhood right next to it. We have all kinds of newspaper articles about it on microfilm, back from ‘66.”
“What happened in 1966?” Gus asked.
“It's a long story. It was in the papers for weeks, because everyone was trying to make sense of what happened. To make a long story short, there was a little boy found dead there under the boardwalk. The boathouse owner was the one to find him. Apparently the poor thing had early onset ALS.”
“ALS?” Shawn echoed. “What's ALS?”
“Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” Gus replied. “It's also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.”
“Lou Gehrig's disease? Wait, I've heard of that before. How have I heard of it before?”
“The Ice Bucket Challenge,” Gus reminded him.
Shawn snapped his fingers. “That's right! I remember now! Isn't that where your muscles stop working or something?”
“Pretty much. The paralysis starts at the feet and slowly spreads upwards to the rest of the body. Usually, people only survive for one or two years after they're first diagnosed. It's really sad.”
The librarian nodded again. “My grandfather had it. He passed in 1962. Nobody could diagnose him until after he died, and they only figured it out after the autopsy.”
A cold pit formed in Shawn's stomach. “What about somebody's lungs? Aren't they muscles too?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “When the paralysis reaches them, they stop. Same with the heart. That's when people start needing life support.”
“Gus---” Shawn started to say, but then he stopped. “Excuse me, but we need every single article you have on this subject, please.”
“Of course,” the librarian replied, adjusting her round spectacles. “I'm going to be working on this paperwork for at least half an hour, so you boys can stay and use the microfiche machines until I'm ready to close up.”
“Thank you,” Gus said. “Mr. Van Morrison and I appreciate it.”
The two of them pored over the host of articles, and what they discovered chilled Shawn to the bone.
“So, let’s take this from the top,” Shawn said as he and Gus sat at a table beside the microfiche to regroup. “This guy abuses his kids, and the oldest kid shoots him and runs away, taking his 16-year-old brother with him.”
“The 17-year-old was named Johnny and the 16-year-old was named Shawn,” Gus confirmed. “And they found the dad behind the Amtrak train station the following day, but the kids were still hiding out.”
Shawn frowned. “Either they were really good at playing hide-and-seek or the cops were really stupid. Where could they possibly hide for a week with one of them being half-paralyzed and sick?”
Gus shrugged. “Maybe the cops didn’t want to find them. After all, it was 1966. Even if someone knew those kids were living in an abusive home, it wasn’t like there was anything anybody could’ve done about it. Maybe letting them go was the cops’ way of admitting that their father was a terrible human being.”
“Could be, I guess,” Shawn sighed. “But it didn’t really matter either way, because a week later, the younger one died of complications from ALS. What happened to the older one?”
Gus shrugged. “Nobody knows. Johnny was never found.”
Shawn rubbed his face. “Gus… Look, man, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but… In the dream I keep having, the one where I can’t breathe… In the dream, I'm hiding under the boardwalk and I can’t move. And slowly I lose the ability to breathe. And…after that, I keep hearing a male voice telling me to wake up. Gus---Gus, what if this dream is reliving the kid’s final moments?”
Gus nodded slowly. “Then the shadow figure I saw standing over you---the voice must belong to him. What if that’s Johnny? What if he’s still trying to save his brother?”
“Shawn,” Shawn said. “That has to be it, Gus. Johnny’s brother was named Shawn. What if he’s gotten his wires crossed? What if the trigger--- Ghosts have triggers, right? Like, things that cause them to show up?”
“Sometimes. It happens.”
“What if Johnny’s ghost is appearing to me because he knows my name is Shawn? What if he thinks that I’m his brother?”
Both of them were silent for a long moment as this idea began to sink in.
“So what do we do?” Gus asked finally.
“I don’t know. Do we help him cross over or something? Like on Ghost Whisperer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think I should just move out?” Shawn asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Gus repeated. “Shawn, this isn't you pretending to be Wilting Flower anymore. This is a real spirit. Maybe one that isn't too friendly. …I'm scared, Shawn.”
“Me too,” Shawn said finally.
*********************
Despite everything that had happened, Shawn knew he had to go back to the boathouse. Maybe somehow he felt pity for this boy, this Johnny, who had lost his brother by trying to save him… And for his ghost, who was still trying to protect someone who died almost half a century ago. With a tape recorder and an electromagnetic frequency sensor in hand, he returned to the weathered old boathouse.
He stepped through the teal-colored door, shocked by what he saw. His sparse and eclectic collection of furniture had been ripped up, torn apart. The wicker chair was rolled on its side, cushion punctured with large holes. Tables upended, books shredded, computer screen cracked.
“Johnny,” Shawn said, switching the tape recorder on. “Johnny. This is Shawn Spencer. I know you're here. Can you talk to me?”
There was no reply that Shawn could hear, but a chill came over the room. Carefully, Shawn turned on the EMF device. “Johnny, I just want to talk. I know what happened to your brother. To Shawn.” He swallowed hard. “I know what your dad did to you.”
A shadow appeared at the corner of Shawn's eye. He remained still. The lights on the EMF flashed like a Christmas tree, lighting up amber and green. “I know that you were trying to protect Shawn by getting him out.”
The shadow seemed to ooze across the walls until it took shape directly in front of Shawn: the shape of a human being.
Shawn took a deep breath. “Shawn had Lou Gehrig's disease. There was no way you could've known. The doctors didn't even know.”
The shadow came closer to Shawn, inches away. Shawn didn't move. “It wasn't your fault,” he said softly.
The shadow hovered beside him.
“You did what you had to do to protect your brother. Nobody blames you. It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done to save him. Nothing at all, Johnny.”
The tape recorder made a sound of static. Shawn held his breath, stopped the recording, and played it back quickly.
No---ing?
The sound of the recording was garbled, but beneath the static, Shawn could clearly hear the voice he'd heard at night. He flipped the recorder back on.
“That's right,” Shawn replied. “You couldn't have done anything more than what you did. You did the right thing.”
The shadow seemed to grow smaller, somehow… Like someone hunching their shoulders. The tape sounded with static again, a long burst of it this time. Shawn played it back again.
So---y. ---give me, Sha--- S---y.
“You're my brother,” Shawn said quietly. “Of course I forgive you.”
At last, there was a long, slow, quiet sound, like an escaping sigh from a man holding his breath for a long, long time. And as the shadow drew its last breath, it slowly---very slowly---faded away.
“Goodbye, Johnny,” Shawn whispered. He grabbed the wicker chair and dragged it outside, propping it up in the sand beside the front door.
He never went back into the boathouse again.
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