“Departures” is a supernatural thriller and love story published as a serial novel with new episodes dropping every Tuesday morning. Anyone can read or listen for free. Paid subscribers gain early access to new episodes. Watch the trailer or visit the table of contents to browse all the published episodes.
Previously…
In the last episode, it’s 1988 and Wild has been admitted to a mental health facility where he meets Juniper, a member of the staff who leads his group and happens to be someone he grew up with. He told her the story of his trip to South America and the ceremony with the medicine man that he believes is the cause for his bizarre condition. June doesn’t believe him.
In the weeks that followed their strange exchange by the pond in the rain, Wild had completely changed, like a switch had been flipped. He immediately started sharing in group which surprised everyone. He spoke about his verbally abusive father and the immense amount of pressure he was under to take his position at the family firm or one of its many owned subsidiaries. He even cried a little in one session.
But Juniper wasn’t fooled. She saw in his performance the same false bravado she had encountered so many times throughout their parallel childhoods. He was acting but he was very good, at least good enough to convince the psychiatrist treating him. Juniper was annoyed, but feared she was confusing her personal feelings with work, so once again, she pushed Wilder Thorne into her periphery. It wasn’t hard to do because he never attempted to speak to her privately and he never met her gaze when they passed in the hall. On the day he was released, he never came to say goodbye.
A week later, Jillian had invited her to go up to Lake Lanier with a group of friends to spend a lazy Saturday drinking beer on a pontoon boat. This kind of activity was far outside Juniper’s comfort zone, but she had said yes partly because Jillian wouldn’t take no for an answer, and partly because she was beginning to get tired of spending her Saturday afternoons roaming the aisles of Blockbuster in search of something to watch that could give her a few hours of escape from her sad, solitary life.
Being on a boat with other humans her age and drinking to excess had been more fun than she had imagined. It helped that it was a small group. She hadn’t even minded that she had been set up with Jillian’s friend visiting from Raleigh. He was sweet, and not a total idiot. As the afternoon wore on, the couples paired off. One couple staked out the front deck of the boat to sunbathe. Juniper’s blind date, Blake asked if she wanted to grab a couple of innertubes to go and float for a while. She agreed after Jillian, who was by then completely plastered, made enormous eyes at her and mouthed the words, go you dumb ass.
The guy, Blake, had grabbed another couple of Bartles and James wine coolers along with a small radio and they settled onto a pair of inner tubes bound together with some rope and went out on the water. The sun was lower in the sky, and there was a welcomed breeze rolling across the slightly skunky smelling water. Juniper was pleasantly drunk, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her eyelids and Blake’s fingertips caressing her neck. “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House came on the radio and she felt a thousand miles away from her boring self. A ski boat powered by and rocked them gently in its wake. They were a few hundred feet away from the boat but she could hear Jillian’s single note trumpet-blast laugh. Then Blake asked if he could kiss her and she allowed it but found that she was imagining someone else. Wild. This annoyed her so she doubled down, opening her eyes to be in the moment and her mouth to meet Blake’s sandpapery tongue. He was a terrible kisser and any hope of something more vanished. She just wanted to be back on her couch with her cat.
She pulled away from the embrace and took a couple of long drinks of the wine cooler which had gotten too warm. Her head was thick and her thoughts woolen when she heard a piercing shriek from the boat followed by the men shouting.
By the time they got the boat back to the marina and an ambulance arrived, Jillian was dead. Only an hour earlier, her body had been ruddy and sunburned but now her bare legs were cold and white as milk. Her boyfriend was shaking visibly as he held her head in his lap. His Panama Jack board shorts were stained crimson.
After the ambulance took her away, the local police asked their questions so they could make their report. The boyfriend just kept saying over and over again, “I should have caught her, I should have caught her. It was so slippery.” Juniper hadn’t seen what happened, but she understood that Jillian had decided to jump off the side of the boat, but had slipped and pitched backward, knocking her head before falling into the water.
Blake offered to drive Juniper back home to Atlanta. Neither of them spoke for the entire hour in the car. Juniper was in shock. No one close to her had ever died before. She kept replaying the accident, each time, her imagination inventing more gruesome details that brought the horrific scene to life in her mind. It was unreal and yet what was more real than death? This was the kind of thing that happened in movies or in the news to other people. When they reached her apartment in Buckhead, Blake asked if she would be okay and offered to come up with her. She said no, thanked him, and got out of the car.
Inside, she drew a warm bath and soaked, trying desperately to remove the chill from her bones and to get the scene to stop looping. Eventually, the heat and exhaustion won and she began to relax. As she did, her mind turned to Wild, his broad chest and kind, sad eyes, and then she recalled his weird confession to her and the list. The fucking list. She shot up out of the bathtub, splashing water onto the floor and spooking the cat. She wrapped herself in a towel and hurried into her bedroom where she began frantically searching for her patient notebooks. Eventually she found the one she used to log group sessions. She flipped through the pages quickly until she found it, a wrinkled, water-stained piece of college-ruled paper that was folded four times on itself, one side ragged with the fringe where it was torn from Wild’s notebook. Shaking, she unfolded the paper. There, as she remembered, was the list of names and dates, and there, three rows from the bottom, underscored with blue ink, she saw Jillian’s name and that day’s date.
Juniper’s life broke in half in that moment, sitting there, her wet towel soaking through the comforter on her double bed. There would forever be the time before when Wild was just a distant weirdo she’d known from childhood, and the time after when he loomed larger in her life than any single human being ever would.
She pulled on some sweatpants and a t-shirt and started looking through the phonebook. It took three calls before she was able to track down Wild’s phone number. When she called, he picked up on the first ring.
“Wild?” she said.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he said, his voice low and soft. There was a pause. She was crying silently. “I’m sorry,” he added.
“How? Please, just tell me how this is happening?” she asked. “There must be some explanation.”
“June, I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to understand it. The last eight years of my life have been hell. I don’t think I can do it much longer.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Any of it,” he said. “It’s too much. It’s a curse.”
It was silent again, she could hear him breathing, but nothing else. It was like nothing else was moving in the world. No upstairs neighbors yelling, no television playing Cheers or The Wonder Years in the background, no sirens, only silence. Juniper was suddenly overwhelmed with fear that Wild would hurt himself. It seemed all too possible given what she’d witnessed that afternoon.
“Wild, promise you won’t do anything. Promise you won’t hurt yourself. I believe you. I believe you now.”
“That’s not really what I wanted. I wanted you not to call and tell me she was dead. I wanted to be wrong. I’d rather be crazy than have this thing.”
“But promise me,” she said. “I can’t… I couldn’t handle it if you did something.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like. I don’t sleep. I don’t want to be around anyone anymore. It’s not worth it.”
Until that moment, Juniper hadn’t entertained the idea that Wild’s fantastical condition could be real so she had never truly thought about how debilitating it must have been for him. He had just been another sad schizophrenic. The weight of this new knowledge settled into her and she understood his loneliness.
“Where are you?” she asked. “I’m coming to you.”
“What? No. I’m fine, really. Besides, you wouldn’t believe me, if I told you where I’m living.”
“Try me, after this. I’m not sure I will ever doubt you again.”
That first night she visited Wild, he met her out on Peachtree Street in front of the Century. The marquis was lit up, making the entire block filled with concert goers look like mid day. The words “Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble” were featured in block letters on the sign above the grand tiled entryway that led to a bank of shiny brass-framed glass doors that led into the plush crimson interior of the newly renovated theater. Wild was standing off to the left, well away from the crush of the Wild Turkey and Marlboro smelling crowd pushing to get through the doors to their seats. When she saw him, something fluttered inside her, like a monarch unfolding its wings for the first time. He looked different. Even from across the crowded sidewalk she could see the way his face lifted when he saw her. His eyes sparkled. His hair was combed back and he wore a fresh white linen shirt with no collar. In that moment, shouldering her way through the crowd to meet him, she completely forgot that her friend had died just that afternoon.
“Hi,” she said when she finally made it over to him.
She moved in close, intending to hug him, but then saw the look of terror cross his face and she stopped.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got good seats.”
She followed him around the side of the theater, amazed at how dark and quiet it suddenly was. Looking up, she could see the Arabian style turrets and the decorative masonry of the beautiful structure. At the back of the theater, they made their way toward a small door off the opposite side of the loading dock. There was a cluster of men huddled near it laughing and smoking. One of them was tall and wore a wide-brimmed hat. To Juniper they looked like a group of gypsies with their long scarves, billowy shirts, and snakeskin boots. A beefy security guard hustled out to stop Wild and Juniper but Wild showed him a pass he had on a lanyard around his neck and they were allowed to continue.
The group of musicians fell silent as Wild and Juniper approached.
“Y’all got everything you need? We’re lookin’ forward to the show,” Wild said, leaning into his Southern accent, stretching out the words like taffy. Juniper smirked to stifle a laugh.
“Yes we do, man,” the tall one in the hat said, his accent distinctly Texan and not played up. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
His arms were crossed, cradling a tobacco-sunburst Stratocaster to his chest. To June, the instrument looked either well-loved or carelessly left out in the yard for weeks.
“Excellent,” Wild said. “Stevie, this is my friend June. June, this man here is about the best guitar player God ever made.”
The tall musician winced like this praise was a blow. He nodded shyly to acknowledge her and when she extended her hand, he took it delicately in his enormous, calloused fingers. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said, softly.
“Have a great show,” she said, and then they were inside.
The backstage area of the theater was so dark it took June a while for her eyes to adjust. Despite the darkness, she could sense the expansiveness of the space and feel the kinetic energy of thousands of people who would probably spend more than they could afford on this one night as they talked excitedly and settled into their seats on the other side of the curtain. Juniper followed close behind Wild so she wouldn’t get lost or run over by a guitar tech running with instruments in hand. He stopped briefly to grab a couple of beers out of a large galvanized tub filled with ice and then they were climbing a narrow set of metal stairs like a catwalk. Looking down through the grates she got dizzy but Wild wasn’t slowing down. At the top of the stairs, they passed through a metal door that opened onto a long hallway. When it closed, she was momentarily deafened by the silence, not having realized how loud the ambient noise of the theater was before a show. The hallway was featureless, like an institution and smelled of drywall dust and new paint. They passed a ladder with some folded tarps and several five-gallon buckets.
“It’s just up here,” Wild said, continuing ahead of her.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” he said.
“That musician, Stevie. Do you know him?”
“No, I just met him today when they were loading in. But I’ve been a fan for a long time.”
Juniper couldn’t help but notice how different Wild sounded now that they were alone and he wasn’t performing. He didn’t sound like someone who just met one of his musical heroes.
“Here we are,” he said, stopping in front of a dark wooden door with wainscoting trim. “It’s not finished yet, but I wanted you to see it.”
It was a big space with high ceilings, like a museum. The walls were mostly bare and there were only a couple of leather club chairs flanking a small mahogany table with a colored tiffany lamp that cast a pool of warm light on a rich looking Persian rug. Wild twisted the top off one of the bottles and set it on the table for her.
“Wow… this is um… really cool. You’re going to live here?” she asked. Understanding her tone sounded judgey, she added. “I mean, it’s great, but there’s no windows and…”
“It’s a place for me to hide away without giving up entirely on the world.”
“Look,” she started. “I want to talk about…”
He stopped her with a shake of his head. “Not tonight, June. You’re not at work and I’m not your patient. Besides, this is something special, seeing him play tonight. It’s likely my last chance.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, but looked down at his beer and began to peel the label. Then she understood.
“You mean, you know he’s going to die soon.” It wasn’t a question.
Wild nodded. “Yeah, he is.”
“Jesus,” she sighed and fell heavily into one of the chairs.
She took a long drink from the beer and then the whole room rumbled like they were inside a storm cloud. She felt the bass vibrating up through the chair and into her body.
“They’re on stage now,” Wild said.
“Shouldn’t we go back down to watch?”
Wild smiled. “We don’t have to go back down. I’ve got a better place for us.”
He turned away from her and with his beer, pointed at a narrow door at the back corner of the room.
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