July 7, 2014, 7 p.m.
Leaving Behind Ghost: Chapter 7
E - Words: 3,268 - Last Updated: Jul 07, 2014 Story: Complete - Chapters: 19/? - Created: Apr 28, 2014 - Updated: Apr 28, 2014 159 0 0 0 0
Sorry about the long wait for this chapter, but I had to work some things out in upcoming chapters before I knew if this one still worked. Big thanks to Gleeker1982 for being my beta and for talking me trough a plot point I was stuck on. And thanks to all of you for reading!
The days started getting colder as fall slowly began to drift into winter. The leaves started to fall at a steadier rate and Kurt unpacked his and Blaines heavier coats from the back of the closet.
It had been a couple of weeks since he started journaling his dreams, and nearly two whole months of having them. He was amazed at how little sleep the human body could function on. Though he supposed college students had been discovering this for years.
His class work was suffering some, but not enough for a noticeable slump in his grades, though one professor did pull him aside one day to ask if everything was alright at home. Hed fallen asleep in class, and though he was sure many college students could say theyd done the same, it was out of character for him.
Kurt had apologized and started to put extra effort into that class.
So far, his journaling hadnt helped him find anyone in time to save them, or help them in anyway. Blaine was constantly by his side as he recorded his dreams, and even had found a few obituaries that could be for people Kurt had dreamed about.
To say it was discouraging was a huge understatement. It was one thing to know, in a broad sense, that people died all the time. It was another thing to have a face and a story to go with it.
Kurt was sitting at the kitchen table, his journal and the newspaper to the side, along with his homework. He really couldnt focus on anything, he was just so tired. He didnt even hear Blaine come up behind him, until he felt his strong hands on his shoulders.
Blaine started to massage the knots out, leaning down to kiss the side of Kurts head, as Kurt hummed in contentment. God Blaine gave good back rubs.
"Keep doing that." Kurt murmured as he plopped his head down on the table, folding his arms underneath it, enjoying the feel of Blaines fingers working out the kinks in his neck and shoulders.
Blaine chuckled a little. "You always turn to putty when someone does this."
"Rachel gives good back rubs too." Kurt agreed. "But no one is as good as you."
"Flattery will get you nowhere." Blaine said as he started to work out a particularly stiff knot.
"I happen to know for a fact, Blaine Anderson, that flattery will get me into your pants."
Blaine laughed loudly at that. "Honestly, it takes you very little to get into my pants. I might be easy."
Kurt smiled into his arms and hummed out a response. He wished life could be more like this moment. More Blaine, less stress. He knew Blaine was it for him; he was going to be with Blaine for as long as Blaine would have him, he just wished that didnt mean bringing all of this drama into Blaines life.
Blaine must have been looking over the newspaper and journal Kurt had been looking at as he rubbed his shoulders, "Any luck with your journaling?"
"Not really. Nothing more than the obituaries you found that match a few of my dreams from last week. Mostly its just... morbid."
Blaines hands stilled for a moment, "Im sorry Kurt, we dont have to do this if you dont want to. Ill follow your lead on this."
"No." Kurt said, sitting up again, so he could turn to look up at Blaine. "I want to keep going with this. I want to find something positive about having these dreams... I just dont know what else to do."
Blaine sat down beside him, and looked at the journal, reading over some of Kurts latest dreams.
"Maybe we should talk to Camille about it." Kurt said.
Blaine looked up at that and lifted his eyebrows. "Really? Are you sure?"
"Camille is a friend, and youre right she is the only one we know who knows about these sort of... things. If it could help me save someone I dream about, anyone, it would be worth telling her that Im a freak."
"You are not a freak." Blaine said firmly. He had said it before, but it didnt really stop Kurt from feeling that way.
"Well, maybe Camille will know what I am then."
Blaine nodded. "I think its a good idea."
It turned out, getting in touch with Camille wasnt as easy as they thought, since Kurt had "come back", theyd been in touch with Camille several times. She came to Lima to meet Kurt officially and they had hit it off. She was funny and quirky, knew about Kurts past, and didnt think he was weird.
They kept in touch as best they could, with her living in California, and Kurt and Blaine moving to New York. She promised to come visit them in the city that never sleeps, but he hadnt heard from her much since he started FIT. Hed been busy.
Now though, it seemed, she must be the busy one. Over the next couple days, both Blaine and Kurt called her a several times, leaving messages she never returned. Eventually Blaine decided to call Cooper, who hopefully could talk to Camille, and have her call them.
"Hey little brother!" Cooper answered cheerfully when Blaine called. "Hows life in the Big Apple? Are you calling to say a producer you know wants to offer me a part in a big Broadway production?"
Kurt snickered as he listened to the conversation on speaker phone. Blaine rolled his eyes. "Sorry, not yet, but if you are giving up Hollywood for Broadway, it might help for you to actually come out here."
"I know I know! I owe you to lovebirds a visit."
They chit-chatted for a little while about Coopers latest role, and how Blaines job is coming along in New York, with Kurt chiming in about school here and there, until Blaine got down to the reason for their call.
"Hey Coop. Have you talked to Camille lately?"
"Oh Cam..." Cooper said wistfully. The two of them had a playful relationship that Kurt couldnt quite figure out, sometimes it seemed flirty, but sometimes it seemed more like a bother/sister kind of friendship. He left Cooper to figure that one out.
"No I havent. I called and invited her to dinner a couple days ago, but she never returned my call. I havent seen her in a few weeks actually."
"A few weeks?" Blaine said surprised.
"Well, Ive been filming, and you know how immersed I get in my roles. But yeah, now that I think about it, its kind of weird that I havent heard from her at all."
Kurt worried his bottom lip as he started to feel anxious. He had a feeling something was wrong.
"Well, Kurt and I would really like to get in touch with her, and she isnt returning our calls either."
"Huh." Cooper said, and Kurt wondered if he felt nervous about that too. "Tell you what. Ill drop by her apartment tomorrow and talk to her. Hows that?"
"Great thanks Coop." Blaine said. "Tell her to give us a ring."
"Will do." Cooper said, before launching into another story about something that had happened on set.
When Blaine hung up, Kurt looked at him, and tried to read his face. "Do you think its weird the no one can get in touch with her?"
"I dont know..." Blaine said. "Maybe shes working a case. Or busy with a wedding?" Not only did Camille moonlight as a physic and ghost expert, she also ran a wedding planning business. She said it was good to have a more legitimate business to avoid questions she didnt want to answer.
"Yeah." Kurt said and nodded, but the worried feeling in his stomach wouldnt go away.
That night, he woke up sweating and gasping as another nightmare tormented him, and Blaine held him tight as they feel back asleep. Kurt just wanted to find a way to make them stop.
The next day Kurt went to school and shot a few texts to Camille.
She didnt reply.
When he got home Blaine was pacing the living room, rubbing the back of his neck the way he always did when he was nervous.
"Whats the matter?" Kurt asked, putting his school bag down. Blaine stopped, and looked up at him, worry etched on his face.
"Cooper went to see Camille today."
"And?"
"And her neighbors said they havent seen any sign of her for weeks. He somehow charmed the landlord into letting him into her apartment..." Blaine paused and looked around the room with nervous energy. "And it was ransacked Kurt. Shes gone. She hasnt shown up for meetings with any of her clients. No one has heard from her at all. She just... disappeared. Cooper is freaking out a little."
Kurt slumped down on the couch, feeling a little hollow. This had something to do with his dreams... or at least something to do with him. He knew it was a little egoistical to think that, but somehow he just knew it was true.
Blaine sat down next to him on the couch. "Theres more." He said, sounding like he was forcing himself to sound calm.
Kurt closed his eyes. "Okay." Kurt took a deep breath, before he looked at Blaine, trying to be ready for whatever was coming next. "What else?"
Blaine got up for a moment, grabbed his laptop from nearby, and sat back down, clicking through a few things, before tilting it towards Kurt.
"Ive been doing some research."
"On what?"
"On Camille actually. It started with me just trying to find some relatives of hers or something. Cooper said he didnt know anything about her family, and you know, they might know where she is. But what I found was... weird. So I kept digging, until I found something about Camille Evelyn Shaw. She uh..." Blaine rubbed his neck. "She kind of died."
Kurts heart clenched and thudded in his ears. Died?
She died?
"In 1952."
Kurt sat silent for a moment, trying to process what Blaine had just said, but he couldnt, it didnt make any sense.
"What?"
"Camille Evelyn Shaw died in March of 1952." Blaine said.
"Not our Camille."
Blaine nodded down at the computer. Kurt looked down to see a black and white photograph on the screen, it was a picture of two young women and a young man standing in front of a wooden planked house, surrounded by rose bushes.
The picture was clearly old, not just black and white, and there in the middle of the trio was a young woman with dark hair and a bright smile. It looked like Camille, exactly like Camille, except maybe just a little bit younger.
"The names are listed as Mary and Jack Shaw." Blaine said, pointing at the man and the woman Kurt didnt recognize. "And Jacks sister. Camille Shaw."
"She... must be a relative or..."
"It looks just like her."
"But..."
"Camille Shaw was killed, her body found in an alley way in Los Angeles March 8th, 1952."
"What are you saying?"
Blaine took the laptop back and clicked a few more times. He turned it back towards Kurt to show a picture of Camille with a bandanna around her hair the way Kurt had seen it styled dozens of times. It was clearly the woman he knew, even though the picture was dated 1950.
"Maybe... she was like you." Blaine said. "Maybe she came back too."
"You think she died in the 1950s, but is alive today, because she came back?"
"It makes sense." Blaine answered.
Kurt shook his head, something that strange shouldnt make sense.
Kurt spent the rest of the afternoon and evening researching more about Camille. Blaine was right, it was weird. The first modern day reference to Camille Evelyn Shaw was in 2012, when she got an apartment in Los Angeles. Someone by the name of Levi Jackson co-signed for the apartment with her, but Kurt couldnt find anything on him at all.
There was absolutely nothing about Camille before 2012, until you went back to 1952, where there was short write up in a small California newspaper about a young woman by Camilles name, who had been murdered and left in an alley in downtown Los Angeles.
It gave Kurt a headache.
Blaines theory, that maybe Camille had died and come back some 60 years later, made a strange kind of sense. At the same time it made no sense at all, because if Camille was like Kurt why had she never told him anything about that?
And none of this helped him find out where she was now. They had decided not to tell Cooper about what they had found for that very reason. Besides, they could still be wrong.
Kurt spent the next couple days counting the hours down to the weekend. If anything the nightmares were getting worse, and while hed still have them during the weekend, at least he didnt have class to worry about.
Blaine seemed to be home more often than normal. Kurt knew things were busy with the show Blaine was writing for, but still he seemed to find time to be at the apartment when Kurt was there. Neither of them mentioned it out loud, but Kurt knew he was here because he was worried about Kurt.
By Saturday, Kurt was thoroughly exhausted, Blaine was in his music room tinkering with a song, while Kurt spread out on the couch in the hopes of catching a few minutes of sleep. Blaine stopped playing when his phone went off. Kurt recognized it as Coopers ring tone, and sat up trying to hear Blaines side of the conversation, he didnt really catch anything, but a few minutes later Blaine came to the living room with his tablet in his hands.
"Good news or bad news?" Kurt asked, watching Blaine carefully.
"I dont know. Neither really." Blaine said and sat down. "Well, good news I guess. Camille sent Cooper a letter.
Kurt let out a deep breath, as worry he didnt even know he was holding onto, loosened in his chest. "So shes okay then?"
"She was when she sent the letter at least."
"What does she have to say for herself?" Kurt asked, now that he knew his friend was alright, he was a little angry at her for worrying him.
"Nothing." Blaine said and opened his email account. "The letter is post marked from Cheyenne, Wyoming of all places. But it isnt a proper letter it is more of a list."
"What kind of list?" Kurt asked, and Blaine and handed him his tablet, where Kurt could read an opened attachment from Cooper of Camilles letter. It was nothing but a list of names and dates. No explanations or anything. It consisted of over 20 names with dates next to them.
Kurt recognized Camilles name with the date June 19th, 2011 scribbled next to it in Camilles messy script, and the name of a Levi Jackson with the date January 1, 1989.
He looked up at Blaine in confusion.
"Keep reading to the bottom."
Kurt looked back down. The last name on the list was his own.
Kurt Hummel - December 2nd, 2019
Kurt bit his lip as his heart started to beat faster. That was the date he had woken up in his dads backyard, alive and well, after five years of being a ghost.
Kurt felt a cold shiver go down his spine as realization hit him.
"Do you think it means that..." Blaine started and stopped as he tried to catch Kurts eyes. "That everyone on that list came back?"
Kurt couldnt answer; he didnt know what to say, instead he immediately pulled up a search engine, and started looking up other names on the list. They had already found everything thing could find on Camille. Levi Jackson was untraceable all together, even with the added date by his name; there were just too many Levi Jacksons in the world to narrow him down.
Three hours, and some Chinese delivery later, Blaine and Kurt sat on the floor of their apartment, papers all over the floor. They had made a timeline of dates from Camilles list, as well as other important dates that came up, Kurts birth and death dates, along with Camilles, and any other people they could find from the list.
What they found out wasnt pretty.
Out of the 23 names on the list 12 of them they couldnt pinpoint online, as there were too many people with those names, and not enough information to narrow it down.
However, out of the remaining 11 one was Kurt, one was Camille, who was missing, and then they found 5 other people on the list, who seemed to have left their jobs or homes and disappeared, recently. One was a 24 year old, also living in New York, whose boyfriend had filed a missing persons report.
Then the other 4 were even worse. Four people on the list were dead, and theyd all died within the last few months. One house fire, two "muggings", where the thief left the wallets behind, and a car accident that was suspicious, and under police investigation.
As the number of deceased people from Camilles list increased, Kurt began to get a heavier and heavier feeling in his gut. He glanced up at Blaine, who was reading an article on Preston Chatterjee, who died in the fire; Blaines face was pale, and a little sick looking, his eyes wide and worried.
"Blaine." Kurt called quietly, looking out over the articles they had printed, scattered over the floor. Blaine glanced up and ventured a smile, which came out looking more than a little grim.
"I dont know what youre thinking right now." Kurt said. "But whatever it is Im sure it is the worst case scenario. And we... we dont know enough to be jumping to conclusions."
"What conclusions are you jumping too?" Blaine asked.
Kurt worried his bottom lip and looked down, pulling at the threads of the living room rug, not wanting to say what he was thinking. "That... that Camille might be in trouble, or..."
He shrugged, not able to say the word "dead".
He glanced up to see Blaines reaction. His brow was furrowed, and he wore a frown that looked completely foreign on his usually cheerful face.
"What conclusions are you jumping too?" Kurt asked.
"That you might be in danger." Blaine said simply. "Its like..." He looked Kurt in the eye and held his gaze. "Like something is going after the people on this list."
Kurt nodded. Hed thought of that, but was hoping Blaine hadnt. "If everyone on the list came back, like Camille and I did… its almost like someone wants us all dead again. I dont know. Conclusion jumping again."
Blaines already too pale face, grew a shade whiter. "No one is getting near you." He said evenly.
Kurt smiled a little, and then put his laptop to the side, and crawled over to where Blaine was sitting on the floor. Kurt scooted up so that he was straddling Blaines lap, and wrapped his arms around the back of Blaines neck, leaning their foreheads together. Blaine held onto his waist, and looked up at him with a lost look on his face that look nearly broke Kurts heart.
"No one can touch us or what we have." Kurt said and then leaned forward to kiss him. Blaine kissed back a little desperately.
Kurt stayed close to Blaine, sliding off his lap to sit next to him on the floor, keeping their sides touching, knowing how comforting Blaine found physical contact.
"We should leave town." Blaine said.
"We dont even know anything yet."
"Kurt."
"And I have school. And youre working."
"But Kurt..."
"Blaine. I dont want to run."
Blaine winched a little and Kurt mentally chided himself. He knew Blaine always berated himself for running from things, even though Kurt didnt really see that in him, but Blaine was hard on himself. Kurt hadnt meant it to seem like a dig though.
Blaine sighed. "Okay... but we keep trying to get in touch with Camille, and... just lets be really careful and alert."
Kurt nodded, and then leaned forward again, pressing his lips against Blaines.
"Everything will be fine." Kurt said.
He just hoped he was right.