When not writing, Quincy Lee works as a certified American Sign Language interpreter with the Deaf, and as a Co-Navigator and Protactile interpreter with the DeafBlind. Their short fiction has appeared in Speculative North, the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings podcast, and The NoSleep Podcast.
Touch
by Quincy Lee
I’m what they call a support service provider or Co-Navigator. One of my newer clients is a woman named Merry (her name sign evokes a smile at the corner of her mouth, so it fits). Most of my clients before her had limited vision and could see me signing up close, relying on their white canes when they wanted to get around. Merry is fully DeafBlind and is the first person I’ve really “co-navigated” with—meaning I inform her, through touches, taps, and signs on her arms or into her hand, what I see or hear around us, and we walk through the world as a unit.
From the beginning, I’ve felt like a poor fit for this job. The first couple weeks, I’d forget to warn her about the tree branch swinging low and into her face, or I’d move things without telling her, like setting her cane against the wall so it wasn’t rolling on the floor where people might trip, only for her to pat around for where she’d left it and not find it. At first, she’d patiently explain my errors and then draw a smile on my arm and say, “You’re new.”
But it’s clear she really misses her previous Co-Navigator, Jeremy. He’s been ill recently, so she had no choice but to train someone else. I assumed he’d soon be back, but as days turned to weeks, “You’re new” changed to “You’re learning.” Lately she’s taken to patting my arm and adding, “Learning is a lifelong endeavor, Lark.”
Because she has a dry sense of humor, I have a hard time telling when she’s joking. I’m trying to improve, but I have no idea if she likes me or just tolerates me.
A couple days ago, she told me about a haunted museum with spooky artifacts, the most famous of which is a bell that, when rung, is said to summon ghosts.
“I was going to wait for Jeremy,” Merry admitted. “But he’s still too ill. So, how would you feel about handling some haunted artifacts? Maybe even that famous bell?”
I picked Merry up from her apartment the next morning and drove the forty-five minutes to the museum. I was nervous—I’d never co-navigated with her in this sort of information-dense situation. I was worried I wouldn’t describe things properly, that she wouldn’t get the full effect of the tour. From outside, it seemed just a historic old mansion, and I did my best to describe the columns lining the portico, the sculpted relief above the double doors, the gothic pointed windows, the red brick and the two chimneys—
Merry interrupted my description to suggest we actually touch the brick. We ran our fingers along the mansion exterior, feeling the roughness. “Oh, so it’s actually stone bricks,” she observed to me, “not regular red bricks.” Then we touched some of the carefully sculpted hedges, and felt an old bronze sculpture of a dog in the front garden, a St. Bernard with a barrel on its collar. Merry’s fingers traced the contours of the barrel, and she guided my hand to feel a small compartment, which she opened. How she found it I have no idea. I would never have noticed on my own—I have sausage fingers with very poor tactile perception.
Really, I don’t think I’m a good fit for her.
After finding the St. Bernard’s secret compartment, Merry and I went in and approached the front desk.
Merry addressed the staffer in sign language as I interpreted: “I am interested in the tour. Is it really haunted?”
“Lots of people report seeing ghosts, especially in the afternoons and evenings.” The staffer smiled.
“Would there be a way for their presence to be felt?” mused Merry. “A temperature drop? A supernatural smell? Tell your ghosts they’re not here as far as I’m concerned unless I can touch them!”
The staffer laughed, and Merry pulled out her wallet and asked for one ticket. Then the staffer turned to me and said, “And for you?”
Merry said, “Oh. That’s my Co-Navigator. They’re here to interpret for me.”
“Ah… I’m afraid they still need a ticket.” The staffer adopted an apologetic expression and stared hard at me.
Merry interjected: “My Co-Navigator is on the clock, right now, interpreting. They are—sorry, Lark, but it’s true—they are too boring and serious a person to enjoy something like this tour, and would not be here were I not paying them to be here, voicing what I’m signing.” (I think my face reddened at this part, but I’m a professional and kept interpreting, matching her tone.) “… If I have to pay for a ticket for my Co-Navigator on top of already paying for their services, it means I am paying more than double to experience the same exhibits as your other patrons. It’d be like charging a wheelchair user for the ramp…”
But ADA violation or not, the staffer refused to budge, instead summoning the manager, who also refused to budge. And as we repeated the same frustrating conversation, I turned to Merry and mentioned to her (without voicing for the staff) that I could just pay for my own ticket. She was right that I don’t believe in ghosts. But I do believe in people milking the idea of ghosts for money, which was clearly what was happening here, given their insistence Merry pay double. I was frankly shocked. And I wasn’t worth the cost. I’d already bored her outside and she was having to basically train me how to do my job better. The very least I could do was pay for my own ticket.
But she stopped me as I reached for my wallet. “No, no, absolutely not. That’s very generous of you, and you have a good heart. But you are working for me right now and shouldn’t have to pay your way while you’re on the job. That’s ridiculous. No. I’ll just eat the price of the second ticket.”
I started to argue, but she waved me off and pulled out her credit card. And while I silently raged at the staff for being so awful, Merry tapped my arm and urged me to let it go.
“Are you going to sue them?” I asked.
“Over a twenty dollar ticket?” Her fingers tickled my arm in a chuckle. “Lark. This is just how it goes sometimes. Stop acting so scandalized. You’re not that new, are you?”
“It’s just…” I felt so appalled. “It’s just… I hate them.”
She laughed at me. “Come on. Let’s go find some ghosts.”
The tour was a disaster.
A middle-aged tour guide spouted facts about how the house was built, what style and era the columns were from, which family members owned which items, etc. I struggled to keep up with the infodump, clumsily alternating between trying to describe objects hidden in glass cases and interpreting the tour guide’s endless babble. After enduring about ten minutes of this, Merry put a hand to her forehead and shook her head in exasperation, and said to me, “Let’s escape.” As soon as we left the group, I began apologizing, but she swiped a “no” on my arm and told me, “I expected this. If I wanted the tour experience, I’d stay home and feel my window glass and read about the exhibit on their website. Get the same effect. Instead, show me, what in this room is not under glass?” I started to describe an antique writing desk in the corner. “Where?” she interrupted. Moments later we were touching the desk.
And thus began our tactile tour, examining anything and everything that wasn’t under glass. We climbed past the velvet rope around an old chair in which supposedly one of the family members had died (“Very uncomfortable,” was Merry’s assessment of the old upholstered chair. “If I died, I’d definitely pick a better chair to end in.”) We ignored another rope to touch an old piano that supposedly played itself on occasion. Merry grazed her fingers along the piano keys and nudged me. “Hey, seen any ghosts yet?”
“There’s the ghost of a security staffer behind us.” I glanced over my shoulder at the scowling uniformed staffer who followed us from room to room—assigned to us, apparently, because we kept touching everything. But he hadn’t made a move to stop us yet.
“I really want to ring that haunted bell that supposedly calls the ghosts…” said Merry.
“They will for sure kick us out.”
The antique silver hand bell rested on a cushion in a roped-off glass case. The case looked as if it could be opened. According to the signs posted, the bell was rung at specific times daily in big ceremonial events. Big events that cost a few dollars extra to witness.
Merry’s fingers drummed on my arm, little taps and whirls of thought. And then she remarked slyly, “What are they gonna do, arrest an old DeafBlind woman? How will that play? Especially after making me pay extra. They’re regretting it now, that’s why they’re letting us ignore their velvet ropes.” Her fingers tickled my arm. “Let’s ring it.”
Hoo boy.
We made our way toward the exhibit, and Merry unclipped the velvet rope that cordoned it off—
“Ma’am!” barked the security staffer.
Predictably, he threatened to kick us out if we stepped any nearer the glass. Also, it was locked—I belatedly noticed a keyhole. When I informed Merry, she sighed. “Well, shucks. I guess we’re done.”
“Do you want to stay for the bell ringing later?” I asked. But just like with the tour, she’d be stuck listening to me describe it—and she could get a more detailed description reading the website. It didn’t surprise me when she swiped her hand “no” on my arm, and told me we should head back.
“Sorry it was a let down.” I felt like I’d disappointed her. “Um… I’m just gonna use the bathroom before we drive back.”
“Sure. I’ll wait on the bench,” she said.
I left Merry on a bench while the security staffer stalked us nearby, looking briefly unsure who to follow and finally deciding to watch Merry, posting himself at the corner glaring as if expecting her any moment to leap up and start bounding over barricades and making off with their fake ghostly artifacts.
On my return from the bathroom, I went back to the bench.
Merry was gone.
I straightened and looked around, trying not to panic. Did she do something outrageous, like play the piano or pry open the bell’s glass case? Did the security staff escort her out? Or maybe she decided to follow my example and use the bathroom before the long drive. But when I went to check, I didn’t find her. The mansion was quite large and labyrinthine—where would she have gone without me?
Was there a worse Co-Navigator in the whole entire world? How could I lose my client? I walked rapidly from room to room, poking my head in hallways. The security staffer who’d been watching her was now fixated on some teens instead. I did not hear the clack of her cane anywhere. I made a full circuit of the mansion. It was when I returned to the main exhibit room that I at last caught a glimpse of her—she strolled along with her cane folded in her bag, hands gesturing. There was a cluster of people in front of her, but she avoided the crowd as if she knew they were there. Then she headed in a beeline for the bell at the corner of the room.
I should have gone up to her and let her know I was nearby. But my eyes followed her, mesmerized.
How was she finding her way without using her cane?
When she patted at the air and nodded, as if conversing with someone, the blood in my veins turned to ice. Someone… someone was in co-presence with Merry… Someone I couldn’t see. She didn’t seem afraid. She communicated easily and naturally. But there was no one there.
Whoever it was guided her to the bell. The case popped open. She reached in and rang it.
A dull chime sounded.
Merry’s head cocked. She touched the bell and its tongue, then set it back on its cushion and shrugged, apparently underwhelmed. The sound really was just a dull clank. Her eyes crinkled, and she turned, laughing at someone or something as she moved away from the case.
I finally came to my senses and rushed over, reaching Merry just as the security staffer reappeared to scold her. He ushered her to the correct side of the velvet rope, then turned to me, saying, “She can’t be there—it’s supposed to be locked—”
“I’ll tell her.” I made my name sign on her upper chest—
“Oh, Lark!” She squeezed my shoulders, telling me before I could ask what happened: “I rang the bell! Did you hear it? Did any ghosts appear?”
“Who were you chatting with right now?”
“Huh? Oh—Jeremy. Can you believe it? Jeremy was here! Have you met him? Let’s find him—”
I gripped her arm, hard, in the way that conveys strong emotion.
She paused. “What’s wrong?”
“There was no one there,” I told her.
“Huh?”
“You said Jeremy. But I was watching you. I’m sorry… I should have told you I was watching. But I was so stunned. You were walking down the corridor… alone. There was no one with you. And you rang the bell alone, too. Just now.”
“Oh, come on. Is this you trying to make a joke?”
“I’m serious.”
Merry sobered up. Her fingers tapped thoughtfully on my sleeve. She finally asked, “You really saw no one?”
“No one. Everyone was staring, and you walked alone to the bell and rang it.”
A long pause. The staffer was still glowering at us, and I finally expressed to Merry his reprimand about touching the bell. She nodded and we both moved away. Eventually she turned to me and said, “Well… he told me he’d just come in from outside, and apologized for it… but it was strange, how cold his hands were.”
“He wasn’t there.”
I couldn’t tell if Merry believed me. Hopefully she knew I was too serious and unimaginative to pull pranks. In the car, she took out her braille display and connected it to her phone to check emails, texts. I drove us out, and was just getting on the highway when her hand gripped my thigh and squeezed in the way that meant something had happened. Something bad. I reached my hand across to her and she said: “Jeremy is dead.”
“What?” I wasn’t very skilled at tactile signing and driving simultaneously, and was tempted to pull over so we could converse, but she told me simply and quickly:
“This morning. Dead in hospital.”
I squeezed her leg, she squeezed mine back, and then she was lost in her braille display, no doubt fielding messages of condolence, and offering condolences herself to the family of the man she’d worked with so closely for so long.
The drive was a prolonged stretch of the deepest silence I have ever felt.
It was only as we finally arrived at her apartment that, as I parked, she reached for me. “I’m still in shock,” she admitted. “He was emailing me last week… he seemed in good spirits. He was cheerful, joking just like always today at the museum… He told me he was on his way somewhere, but wanted to stop by with me. I thought it strange how he felt… but when you told me you didn’t see him at all, everything clicked…”
“Yeah… I don’t know what to say.” I really didn’t. Finally I asked, “So… you really did meet a ghost then? Can I ask… what was it like?”
I’d been wondering the whole drive. I mean, I was right there in the same room, and saw nothing. I almost wonder if… for me, and the rest of the crowd in that room… maybe with our eyes, seeing no one there, we negated any chance we could have of feeling the ghost. Because our minds closed to the possibility when our eyes told us the space was empty. Maybe the only way to sense him would have been to be blind… if I’d closed my eyes and then approached her, would I have felt him, too?
I have no idea.
Merry’s fingers drummed on my leg. “I can’t adequately describe it,” she said. “I knew it was him by his touch, the way he signed. Everything was like how he was in life. But his hair, his wool coat when I hugged him, his hands… the texture was wrong. Less substantial. It was like… feeling his coat was like feeling the memory of rough wool. Rather than feeling the actual wool.” She fingered the edge of my coat in demonstration, then pulled her hand away. “I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
I felt my coat and pulled my hand away, trying to remember how it felt. “I guess…”
Silence settled between us. She just sat with me, our hands together for some while. It seemed something was still on her mind. And then, her hand on my leg gave a squeeze. Not a hard squeeze, but a tight one, a prolonged one. A squeeze that must have been for Jeremy, for his loss, for everything she felt. At least that’s what I assumed at first, until she informed me gently and reluctantly, “Jeremy said something to me that I… should probably tell you, Lark. I’ve been debating whether it’s right to tell you or not. What would be better. For you. I…”
“What?” I asked.
Another long pause. There were tears in her eyes. And she patted my leg and then gave another long, sustained squeeze. Not for Jeremy. I knew now it wasn’t for Jeremy. She told me, “Please be very careful on your drive home. And… these next few days. Don’t come to work. Just… Lark, you’re a really good Co-Navigator. I hope you know that. You’re doing well. And I hope we can work together a lot more, but… Jeremy says he’ll see you soon…”
Another squeeze, and she left me, retreating into her building. I just sat there in the car, staring after, feeling my heart rate increase, feeling the weight of those words and their import… I don’t know whether the warning is true or not.
I guess I’ll find out soon.
Copyright 2026 by Quincy Lee