HALF-DROWNED HOUND

The Smell of Burning Flesh

The thing is, the boy sitting in the chair across from Ray certainly looks normal. Average weight and height for an eight-year-old boy, no visible illnesses, no sign of what might be going on with him. Still, his parents were insistent, and he can't turn down a client.

“So, Jamie,” Ray says, glancing down to his blank notepad and up to the boy again, “why do you think your parents took you to see me?”

“They say I’ve been misbehaving.” Jamie looks away, not meeting Ray’s eyes. “I don’t get it.”

“What do they say you’re doing?”

Counting on his fingers, Jamie answers, “Breaking plates, writing on the walls, hurting people on purpose… but I don’t remember any of it.”

Ray hums to himself and jots down dissociative disorder? on his notepad. Still, it doesn't hit quite right; he's reported no other obvious signs of trauma, seemed to have no aversion to his parents when they met in the lobby ... Why, then, does he not remember lashing out? Is he just lying? “That's odd,” he says under his breath.

"What?"

"Hm? Nothing."

At the second appointment, Ray resolves to delve deeper.

“So, tell me about your parents,” he says, crossing one leg over the other. He’s got his pencil at the ready, about to jot down any important, groundbreaking details, but there’s… nothing.

“They’re good,” Jamie replies. “They don’t yell at me often. They don’t even make me go to church or anything.”

Good parents; not religious. “Well, that’s good,” Ray says, and it is, but the information doesn’t lend itself to a simple conclusion. “Are you being bullied at all at school?”

Jamie shakes his head. “People like me. There’s nothing wrong with me, Dr. Coleman; I don’t know why I’m here.”

“You can just call me Ray,” Ray murmurs, paying little attention to his own words. “So what changed, then? When did this all start?”

He made a donation.

The voice that comes out of Jamie’s mouth isn’t his. It sounds more like a little girl’s, but there’s something else wrong about it- it’s hollow, cold. Ray stiffens as if a shock had coursed down his spine, then, with a wavering voice, asks, “...Pardon?”

“I said, I don’t know,” Jamie says, as if nothing had happened.

Ray cracks a bewildered smile and pretends to write something in his notebook, but all that comes out is a scribble that looks vaguely like ‘donation’.

One little auditory hallucination, Ray could write off as a stress-related fluke. He has been stressed more lately, after all; Jamie’s is a tough case to crack, and he’s not that experienced of a psychologist, so it’s extra hard to handle.

This was not, however, one little auditory hallucination. This was bigger- it was every week, at least three times a session.

Make a donation.

“What?”

“I said, I got a B on that math test.”

And again:

Make. A. Donation.

“Sorry, repeat that?”

“Five plates. Are you deaf or something?”

There’s no malice in Jamie’s voice, but still, Ray says, “That’s not polite to ask. And I’m not, sorry… it’s just…” Could he tell Jamie? It’s not his place to vent during his client’s session- in fact, it’s highly unprofessional- but if he just phrases it like a question, then it should be fine, right? He clicks his tongue. “Jamie, I’m going to ask you a weird question. Is that okay?”

“Um… yeah,” Jamie says. “All of your questions are weird, though."

“Weirder than usual, then.” Ray clears his throat and asks, “Have you made any… donations lately?”

Jamie’s face blanches, and he retreats into himself, pressing against the back of the chair he’s seated in. His knuckles go white as he clenches his fists. “How did you know about that?” he demands.

Ray raises his eyebrows, blinking. So he’s not going insane ... though perhaps that would be better than the alternative. “Know about what? Jamie, what are you keeping from me?”

“I wasn’t keeping anything from you,” Jamie says. “I just didn’t know it was a big deal.” He looks down at his fists, then loosens them, shaking out his hands. “It was just a dream.”

“What was just a dream?”

Jamie sighs out, a weary exhalation, and raises his eyes to meet Ray’s. “I dreamt about this girl… I don’t know, my age, maybe younger. She was all burnt up. I could smell her, too.”

Dream: little girl, burnt. What I’m hearing? “Did she say anything to you?”

“She wanted me to make a donation,” Jamie explains, “and, since Mom and Dad always told me making donations to charity is good, I said yes.”

“Well, your heart was in the right place. Did she say what kind of a donation it was?”

Jamie shakes his head. “I woke up right after that. I guess that's when all this started happening, but it wasn't ... It was just a dream!”

Ray's heart falls, and he swallows sharply; this changes everything. He glances toward the clock- 12:30- and sighs. “We'll talk about this next time, okay?”

Jamie nods, still pale, still shaking his hands slightly. “Bye, Ray,” he says, but his words lack any warmth.

The first thing Ray notices when he wakes up one Wednesday morning is the acrid scent of burning flesh. He frowns, eyes still closed, then starts- this can't be happening. It can't. Ghosts aren't real, monsters aren't real; he has a PhD, for God's sake- he knows this. And yet…

And yet, when he opens his eyes, Ray is met with the exact sight he was expecting.

The girl looks to be around seven, with pale skin, but those are the only details Ray can make out. Half of her body is blackened with burns, cinders still shining in some areas, and one hand has been wholly burned off; as Ray watches, her arm begins to disintegrate and fall in an ashy heap to the floor. The melted remains of her eyeballs drip from their sockets.

“Wh- what do you want?” Ray asks, startled by the sound of his own voice.

Despite being eyeless, Ray can tell the ghost is looking at him when she says, “I want you to make a donation.”

“What kind of donation?” His blood? His bones? His life? His-

“I want this.” The girl reaches out with her unmangled arm and places her hand on Ray’s chest. The touch is gentle, but still, he flinches away from it.

“My body? What do you want with my body?” Ray’s voice is trembling, feeble; he barely makes a noise.

“This,” the girl hisses, and plunges her remaining hand into Ray’s chest. His ribcage doesn’t stop it; it goes right through, and the heat emanating from it is unbearable. Every inch of him is set ablaze, fire coursing through his veins, and he can’t help but shriek, calling out into the unforgiving night.

And then he wakes up.

Ray blacks out two times the next day.

The first time, he wakes up surrounded by broken plates, shards pressing into his palms and leaving bloody indents in his skin. He sweeps it up, hands raw on the handle of the broom, and collapses into bed.

The second time, he wakes up in the shower, sitting on the floor, water as cold as it can go.

Heal the burns.

Ray starts at the booming in his head, so large and imposing for the voice of a young girl. Water drips into his mouth as he asks aloud, “What do you mean? What do you want from me?” He shakes, skin prickled with goosebumps, and barely manages to choke back a wail.

Heal my burns. Heal my buRNS HEAL MY BURNS HEAL MY BURNS HEALMYBURNSHEALMYBURNS-

Ray shouts in pain as the voice in his head raises to a fever pitch, louder than anything he’d ever heard before. Glancing to his side, he notices rivulets of blood falling into the water; his ears are bleeding.

Resigned, he rubs water into his skin until the screaming in his head subsides, replaced by whimpers and muffled sobs.

“She came to me,” Ray says during a lull in the conversation. He taps his pencil against his notepad, scattering shining silver dots across the page.

"Who? Who came to you?"

"The burning girl. In a dream." What he's doing is wholly unprofessional, or at least a bit too Freudian, but the words don't stop coming. "Except, I'm not sure it was a dream. I- I think it was real. ... I've started blacking out."

"Well, I stopped blacking out. Ever since ..."

"Since Wednesday?"

"Yeah."

So it's contagious. And if it spreads from person to person, that means ... Ray sighs, eyes falling back down to his notepad. “... I need to end this. She’s going to keep terrorizing people and using their bodies.”

“You’re scaring me, Dr. Cole-”

“This needs to stop!”

"What are you going to do?” Jamie whimpers. It dawns on Ray, then, that he’s been shouting.

“What I have to do,” he answers. "Whatever that is ..."

The sharp tang of the gasoline’s scent hits Ray’s nostrils as soon as he pours it. Staring at the pools of translucent amber liquid, he muses to himself: how did he get here? Would this really bring it to an end? Would she even let him do it? Isn’t it ironic how this is exactly the thing he was trained to prevent, and yet here he is, doing it himself?

A quick strike against rough paper lights the match, dispelling his introspection, and the flame springs to life with a hiss; Ray twitches at the sudden heat. This is it. This is the end. Yet, he’s as at peace as he could possibly hope to be; it's what he has to do.

And so, he drops it.

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