THE PRESENT

Liv used a magnetic pen to drag a ball through a wooden maze inset into a table at the kitschy little restaurant Graham swore had the best pizza in the county. Half listening to him talk about hikes he and Helina used to take along with a recent ex-girlfriend of his named Alissa or Alicia or Alice, she solved the maze, unsolved it, solved it again.

"Uh-huh," she said a few times at what seemed like appropriate moments. "Sounds fun."

Sometime between the pizza arriving and them settling the bill, Liv realized she'd signed herself up for a five-mile hike in the Washington wilderness.

"It's winter," she told him.

"That's the best time to hike in the rainforest. Why would you want to go when it's warm and dry and not raining?"

"The answer to that seems too obvious to state out loud."

Undeterred, and despite the look of wide-eyed horror she was giving him, he continued his insistence that this hike was a positive activity for her to undergo. "You've never seen anything so majestic as these old growth trees reaching into the sky, their trunks carpeted with moss and lichen. Besides, we should go to some of the places Helina loved most. Maybe we'll find her car, or a clue of some kind. I don't think we'll figure everything out from her computer."

"It's too early to say that," she said, still hoping to avoid his resplendent romp in the cold, damp dreariness. "I've only had a day to look at all her stuff."

"You ever hear of forest bathing? Get into nature, breathe clean air. It does wonders for the nervous system."

"So does a fireplace and a hot toddy."

His pro-hike speech paused while he scarfed down the last slice of pizza. "I have this feeling that we'll connect to Helina in the natural world. Is that dumb?"

Swirling waves and a turbulent sky.

Liv wiped grease from her fingers. "Where is this rainforest anyways. Is it far?"

Graham frowned. "You really weren't listening, were you."

"I'm paying attention now."

"Three hours, give or take. It's on the Olympic peninsula. Near the coast."

The end of terra firma. A door leading to an unimaginable world.

"The coast?" Liv had played around all day with this question: should she tell Graham about Helina's drawing or not? Obviously, the best course of action was to show it to him. It was a potential clue, after all, and one he was capable of drawing his own conclusions from. And yet, she hesitated. Graham's conclusions wouldn't necessarily work in Liv's favor.

He wiped his beard with a napkin, studying Liv. What was she to him? She'd thought about that as much as she had Helina's drawing. He believed Liv was capable of something. Solving his sister's disappearance, opening portals to ghost realms, saving Helina from spirits and himself from despair. Liv seemed to represent hope to him.

What a disaster this was going to be.

"I'm going to do a deep dive tonight," she told him. "If I don't turn up anything, we can go bathe amongst the trees." For whatever good that would do. Helina wasn't a wood nymph. She hadn't sprouted delicate, sparkling wings or taken up residence in an amanita mushroom.

The rainforest was a dead end... but it might be near a junction.

Satisfied with her response, Graham flashed Liv a smile and waved their waitress over to take his credit card.

"No leftovers tonight?" A teenaged girl with long, glossy hair pulled back into a ponytail took his card.

"Is there ever? By the way, Mazie, this is my friend, Liv. Mazie's parents own this place."

Mazie studied Liv for a moment longer than what Liv considered comfortable.

"Nice to meet you," the girl finally said. She leaned in towards Liv. "Be careful."

On alert, Liv's whole body tensed. "Excuse me?"

Mazie nodded. "I heard you talking about going to the Hoh rainforest. There's supposed to be high winds off the coast the next few days."

"Oh," She willed her body to calm down, but it insisted on staying wound up tight. "Duly noted."

Back at the house, Liv issued Graham a stern warning: "Unless you hear me screaming or the house is burning down, stay out of Helina's room tonight."

"I could help you sort through—"

"Nope. You gave me an orientation, now I need to explore on my own, without you hovering. Go eat an edible and we'll talk in the morning."

He gasped. "Are you kidding me? I'm staying stone cold sober until all of this is over. Remember what happened last time?"

"No and I don't want to." A lie and then a truth. "Just stay away a bit. I'll let you know if I need you."

"You probably will," he said, heading out of Helina's room. "I'll be on the other side of that wall. All you have to do is give it a tap."

"Bye now." Liv closed the door, waiting until his footsteps moved down the hall and the door to his bedroom creaked open before sitting down at Helina's desk.

She re-opened the file Graham had shown to her earlier and which she'd spent a good chunk of the afternoon perusing. In it were several papers form scientific journals, all which Liv was familiar with and expected to see in Helina's possession. In addition to these, the file contained a less than scholarly essay by someone named Eugene Farrow, who led with the belief that the universe vibrated at a specific frequency, and all we had to do was learn another world's frequency to cross into it. Of all the multiverses, Farrow insisted, the one closest to our own vibrated at 18.98 hertz.

This premise seemed simple enough, logical even, if it could be proved. But it was towards the end of his paper, in which he delved into something he coined frequencing, that stuck out to Liv as both remarkable and potentially dangerous. If you crossed over, he wrote, you would be fundamentally changed because your own frequency, once in line with your world's, would have to adapt to the visited world's frequency.

What would you be like in this other world? He pondered. A shadow of yourself, perhaps. Not entirely whole, a spectral presence. A ghost in their world, just like they become when they enter our own.

After emailing this article to herself, Liv closed out the file and returned to the online forum she'd looked at with Graham. Having avoided it all day, here she was again, faced with an inbox of DMs. Discomfort set in. These messages were perhaps the last communications Helina had had with someone before... before she went where she went and did what she did.

Curiosity got the best of her. She clicked.

The most current items in her inbox contained unanswered messengers from forum members contacting Helina to find out why she'd gone dark.

You said some frightening things.

I hope you're okay.

Come back and say hi.

Let us know you're alive.

We love you.

Further down were several lengthier conversations with people Helina seemed to have developed a deeper connection with.

She read through a thread with someone named GnocchiGhost, who, unsurprisingly, listed their interests as ghost hunting and Italian cooking. Reading their correspondence made her feel slimy. She had no business intruding in these personal matters. But Graham wanted her to. He expected her to. She couldn't walk out of this room without something to hand to him beyond Eugene Farrow's untested frequencing fantasies.

GnocchiGhost and Helina had been chatting on and off for several years. They'd first approached Helina with a financial question regarding her investigation business.

GnocchiGhost: What invoice/billing system do you use? Any advice for a newbie?

Helina had answered them and from there struck up what seemed to be an unremarkable friendship between two people in the same unconventional, business. The chats continued with this type of discourse until the last several months when instead of Helina giving advice, she seemed to be asking it instead.

Freakuency1898: I've made progress on my research.

GnocchiGhost: That's great!

Freakuency1898: Maybe it's too much progress?

GnocchiGhost: It's serious, this work you're doing. If you have misgivings, it's okay to talk them through. Pace yourself.

Freakuency1898: I should be braver. At some point, you have to take the plunge.

GnocchiGhost: That depends doesn't it.

Freakuency1898: On what?

GnocchiGhost: On how high the cliff is.

That conversation took place two days before Helina's disappearance, but she'd confided in GnocchiGhost several times previous about feeling uncertain. Mixed in with the uncertainty, however, were bouts of ecstatic self-confidence.

Freakuency1898: I'm going to be the first.

GnocchiGhost I'll be the first to congratulate you when it happens. Drinks are on me!

Liv exited out of this conversation, wondering about that last line. Drinks are on me. Was this person solely an online friend, or had they met up in person? If they had, their DM convo didn't indicate it.

She hovered over another set of messages between Helina and one of the people who had commented publicly on her forum post: DaughterOfNyx.

These two had chatted for the past year or so, and unlike GnocchiGhost, DautherOfNix expressed little hesitation about what Helina was doing. She sent Helina some of the articles Helina had filed away and seemed to be as knowledgeable about the Ghost Frequency as Helina was.

DaughterOfNyx: I figured it out.

Freakuency1898: What?

DaughterOfNyx: What you need to do. To open a connection. Not just a glimpse. Break the worlds wide open. Do you want to know what you have to do?

Freakuency1898: I've only been waiting my entire life for this! How did you figure it out?

DaughterOfNyx: I can't tell you, but I can show you.

DaughterOfNix sent a link to Helina that Liv refused to click on.

After that, there'd been a gap in communication until the day Helina went missing.

Freakuency1898: I'm ready now. Do you think they'll listen to me?

DaughterOfNyx: They already are. I'll see you on the other side. 😉

And then... one more entry, from later that day. Reading it sent a chill up and down Liv's spine.

DaughterOfNyx: I hope you're sorry now.

Liv wished she'd been reading this on a laptop so she could slam the lid down dramatically. Instead, she had to settle for backing out of the conversation and changing Helina's password to the forum so only she'd be able to access it from now on. No need to rile up Graham. She'd tell him whatever he needed to know whenever he needed to know it.

A heaviness followed her around the room, as though the planet had doubled in size while she sat here staring at a screen, gravity gaining twice its control over her.

She made her way out of Helina's room, but the weight remained. Flying to this state, staying in fucking Helina's house for fuck's sake, with her damned brother—what was she thinking? This was the poorest judgement she'd displayed since she'd gotten drunk and slept with that wannabe vampire she'd met at a bar three years ago.

Liv wrapped her knuckles against Graham's door.

"I need you," she said, not knowing how she expected him to interpret those words.

He opened his door, face flushed. "What's wrong?"

"Do I look like something's wrong?" She had meant that as a legitimate question, but it came across with her typical snark.

"Yeah, you do. It looks like you've seen—"

"If you finish that sentence with the words 'a ghost' I'm going to smack you."

Sighing, he leaned against the doorframe. "What do you need, Liv?"

"A bath in a rainforest," she said. "When do we leave?"

____

Author's Note: Popping into say hi!  Readers of YOU IN REAL LIFE will have caught the connection in this chapter to that story. Hope you liked that tiny bit of cross-over fun!

Liv is a difficult character to write. She makes  decisions I would not make and her intentions are sometimes obscured. Why do you think she's being so illusive?

Thank you so much for reading this story! So far, it's been a challenging but rewarding book to write and I am grateful for all your support on it. XOXOXO