It was dark when Caleb opened his eyes. He turned his head  on his pillow to the tiny amount of light leaking through the blinds. Then he rolled over and stood, adjusting his boxers before he pulled the cord and looked out the window. Admittedly it was reckless instead of pulling two blinds apart to peek out at the street, what he had just done was much more conspicuous.

He immediately regretted it, as a dark car that was stopped across the road in front of the Liquor and Tobacco store turned on its dome lights. The faint glow came through the front in the dead of night. Caleb pulled on the string so hard the blinds swung and clacked on the baseboard below the window. He breathed heavy, frozen as his mind went back and forth immediately on what to do.

He should get clothes on and walk right down there to demand what they were doing. Caleb slid on a pair of basketball shorts and opened the door slowly, closing it so that it didn’t make a sound as he stared at the wall in front of him. He wasn’t sure why he did that; the car was outside, it didn't matter how quiet or not quiet he was being. Caleb crept down the short hallway and stairs, without fail creaking on the bottom step. He set his foot down slowly, a cold stone in his chest as his eyes locked on the door of the bar.

As if to prove a point against this vague, nameless well of fear, Caleb quickly approached the door and wrenched on the handle, but the door didn’t open. In fact, Caleb hadn't pushed the knob down at all. He stayed there with his fingers locked around the slender, curved metal, breathing into the solid surface that protected him from the outside. The peephole was an inch above his face, but he didn’t look into it.

Caleb was gripped with the conviction that if he opened that door, something absolutely horrifying would be there on the other side. His heart jettisoned through his chest. Caleb ran up the stairs and through the hall, then slammed the door to his apartment. He locked it and stood against it, arms held out on either side, close to hyperventilation. After a moments hesitation he ran back into his bedroom, eyes blindly sweeping the bedroom.

What the hell is out there!

“Liam?” he whispered.

Was Liam in the room right then? Caleb was afraid to turn on the light, afraid to do anything else that would give his location away to anything that was waiting for him outside, even if they already knew where he was. He whimpered, wishing he had a gun.

Two hands passed through his arms. They never made contact but had suddenly appeared so bright before Caleb as he threw a punch and shouted. Heat coursed through his fists as they went through the spirit. 

“Woah Caleb, it’s me!” Liam said.

In an instant Liam had materialized, glowing softly yellow and focusing Caleb’s attention who had been flailing a moment before.

“Oh,” was all Caleb could say.

His face burned, feeling a little foolish.

“I’m back! Yep, you keep dragging me back down with you, my little crab,” Liam said.

Caleb blinked. “What?”

Liam shrugged. “You know, crabs in a bucket. I try to escape from what happened, you pull me back down because you think you need closure. I stay around because you’re trying.”

“What's that supposed to mean, Liam?” Caleb glared at his incorporeal form. Did he really just make this about him? “You know, maybe we shouldn’t do this at all if you’re going to be so mean-spirited.”

Hah.

“That wasn’t a joke,” Caleb snapped.

“It wasn’t supposed to be.” Liam grinned.

“You know what, Liam?”

They locked eyes in the dark room, Caleb’s shining from the faint glow being emitted from his dead husband. He was staring down at Liam who unintentionally lit up the inches between him and the side of their bed. Liam’s energy glowed brighter, fluctuating oddly and frayed red around the edges like a sunset.

Liam said something that snapped Caleb back into the present. He realized that he had been lost for a moment when Liam spoke. “Did you bring me back in hope of closure, or what? Because I’ve seen that look Caleb and I’m pretty sure that’s necrophilia at this point!”

Caleb covered his face as the blood rushed back up to his head.

“No, that was a memory, one of better times,” Caleb said bluntly. He felt anger rise to his chest all over again, similar to how he felt the day before when Liam had abandoned him.

Was he going crazy? In the months after Liam died he felt like that. Caleb felt their distance between them in what he could only describe as fear. Actually, if he thought about it, terror. Every day he hid away from the world, the realization that he was trapped in a nightmare that he could not escape came to him over and over again. He would think that he was asleep, except  he could not wake up. How could he still be in love, still have these feelings, this want, for someone that he would never be close to, never to actually see again?

What was he going to do with this undying thing in his chest when the object of his affection wasn’t there anymore? It was trapped in him now, he was trapped, never to give this love to the man who he was supposed to be with, forever. Caleb wanted to be angry, he wanted to feel anything else, but he could not. Any time he was angry, his heart was still Liam’s. Any time he wanted to give up on it, Caleb knew that he still belonged with Liam. It was in his very core in a way that made no sense and perfect sense.

“Liam, why do you think I’m bringing you back?” he asked. All he wanted was to listen from Liam’s perspective. He softened inside when he realized that he ignored the one thing that truly mattered, the reason for it all.

“Well,” Liam began. He fidgeted as if taken off guard by this sudden genuine display. It broke Caleb’s heart, but he stayed silent and gave a nod in encouragement. 

Liam’s face scrunched up. “You’re bringing me back so you can use me!”

“Why do you think that is?” Caleb asked. His voice was so flat and level, his response took Liam off guard once again.

“So you admit it!” Liam threw up his hands.

“Liam.” He stepped closer. “I am doing this for me, okay? I need to know what happened to you, but I’m also trying to help you. Don’t you want to know?”

“No!” Liam shouted.

Caleb blinked in rapid succession. “No?”

Caleb began to spiral in his mind. How many times had he asked that question only for Liam to avoid it? How much was Liam just agreeing with him to go along or hiding what he really thought?

“How oblivious are you?” Liam spat angrily. Liam went to shove Caleb but he forgot himself, his hand going right through Caleb’s chest. Caleb arched slightly as he felt a rush of heat course through him, a million tiny, electric pinpricks that felt like he was in a fever dream. “Of course not!” he shouted. “I don’t want to think about me…dying,” Liam’s voice rose and deflated oddly, as if on the crest of something, a memory perhaps.

Caleb tried to remain calm. “Liam, please,” his voice rose high in his chest.

“I don’t want to do this anymore!” Liam yelled. He tore at his hair.

Caleb just stared at him sadly. “My love, I never wanted us to have to be in this position in the first place.”

“Not us Caleb, you! You think that you have to know what happened to me but you know what?” Liam’s voice cracked.

Tears filled Liam’s eyes. Vaguely Caleb wondered how it was even possible for a ghost to cry, as if any of this made sense. Their connection was beyond physical barrier, beyond anything that Caleb would have thought possible. Liam flitted back and forth as if he were caught by it. He could never escape Caleb’s promise to him, for better or worse, even when he wanted to. Even in death.

Liam would be pulled back until this mystery was solved, until then, Caleb’s soul would not rest. It was almost as if Caleb were the ghost.

“Nothing changes because…it’s just too late, Caleb! No matter what the answer is, it doesn’t change anything!”

Caleb wanted to say that it would. He wanted to say a lot of things but his mouth was frozen. Instead he stared at Liam’s tears; if they fell to the ground, would they shine like stars like the rest of Liam did or would they just disappear? As that thought entered his brain, Liam flew through the corner of the ceiling, running away again with every trace of him gone.