“So what do you do on the show?”
“Everything. Directing, running sound, doing preliminary interviews, even grabbing lunch. We’re a small crew. Everybody moonlights.”
“Which part do you like best?” I didn’t picture her enjoying interviewing people. Or rather, I didn’t picture them enjoying being interviewed by her, with her pushy conversational style.
“Directing. I’d like to get into that more and direct some horror flicks.”
Of course she wants to make scary movies. She had a definite horror punk quality about her, and from the sounds of it, she was pretty comfortable with ghosts and other spooky stuff.
Ghosts. The memory of my dream the night before made my smile slowly fade into a deep frown. It had felt so real, and it’d kept me up all night. What if it hadn’t been a dream? What if I wasn’t imagining the Travelers? What if someone—or something—had followed me from the motel?
It had to be impossible. And yet, I had to ask.
“Do you know if Primrose House is haunted?”
She shook her head. “What, you think I want to bring my work home with me? No way. I checked that place top to bottom before I moved in. It’s clean.”
A wave of relief washed over me, replaced almost at once with a different kind of worry. I wasn’t prone to nightmares, and despite the stress in my life recently, my dreams were usually pretty bland. Why was I having such vivid, frightening ones all of a sudden? Was it a sign of a mental break or something?
“I mean, I’m a little surprised there’s no activity in Primrose House,” Kit went on. “Considering where it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, since Driscoll County is the most haunted place in the United States.”
“Really?” I didn’t know a place could have that distinction. I wondered briefly whose job it was to find all the haunted areas in the country and rank them.
Kit glanced sideways at me. “You didn’t know?”
“I knew about the Afterlife Festival. I just figured people here are really into ghosts.”
“They’re ‘really into them’ because there are more ghosts here than anywhere else. Donn’s Hill is famous for it. That’s, like, the whole reason most people come here. It’s why we moved here.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. We came for the festival when I was fourteen. Dad fell in love with the whole town, and we moved here that summer.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “If you didn’t come here for the ghosts, what possible reason could you have for relocating to such a weird little town?”
The suspicion in her voice put me on the defensive, and I frowned. I’d liked the conversation a whole lot better when it was about her.
But isn’t this what you wanted? I asked myself. A friend? That kind of thing typically involves long conversations and getting to know each other.
Minutes ticked by as I gathered my thoughts, and I stared out the window at the scenery as we passed. The road between Donn’s Hill and Moyard was a two-lane highway that cut through a dense forest. Compared to the dramatic mountains that surrounded the Salt Lake Valley, the terrain was flat and unvaried. I decided it had a drama of its own, though. With no mountains to orient myself by, I imagined it would be easy to get lost in the wilderness here.
“Well?” Kit said.
“My mom used to bring me here when I was a kid,” I said. “She loved the Afterlife Festival. When I was little, I thought we had family here because she always told me she was going to see her relatives. We didn’t have any living ones, so I thought she was visiting their graves or something. It wasn’t until I was older and looked this place up online that I figured out she was visiting mediums—talking to the dead.”
It’d been a bit of a shock when I figured that out. I wasn’t sure whom my mom was trying to contact, or why she never let me in on what she was doing. It was just one of many things she’d kept from me.
“Makes sense,” Kit said. “I mean, that’s what the festival is famous for. Did you ever go with her? To a séance?”
I shook my head. “She wouldn’t let me. She’d drop me off at a sitter for a few hours every night.”
“Where is she now?”
“She died.”
“Oh.”
We sat in silence again for a while. The wheels of the van hummed along the highway, and my mind traveled once more to my mother’s backyard, and the day Darlene came to help me pack up my life.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, after she died, I moved to Denver to live with my dad. Then I went away to college and ended up moving to Utah with my boyfriend.”
Kit was nodding, waiting for me to continue.
“A few months ago, my dad had a heart attack. I took some time off from work and moved back home to take care of him during his treatment. The doctors were optimistic that he’d get better…” My voice broke, and I stared out the window for a few moments. I cleared my throat again. “But he didn’t make it. I’m just glad I got to be with him at the end, you know?”
I looked back at Kit, smiling weakly. She was staring straight ahead, and I was surprised to see that her brown eyes were beginning to fill with tears. I looked back out the window, needing to barge forward with my story before I started crying too.
“Anyway,” I said again, “after that I decided I needed a fresh start.”
I left out the part where Josh had refused to fly out for my dad’s funeral. And how I’d come home a day earlier than planned and found him in bed with a woman he worked with. They say you shouldn’t make any big life decisions after you lose someone, but I figured that didn’t apply if the decision is one you should have made a long time ago.
After that I spent a lot of time in the past, pawing through the tiny pile of photographs from my childhood. I felt as though my time growing up had been split into two parts, half with my mom and half with my dad. The photos reflected this; there wasn’t a single picture with the three of us together in one place.
The photo I’d looked at the most was one of my mother and me, posing with an alpaca at the Afterlife Festival’s petting zoo. She’d taken the shot herself, so most of the alpaca’s head was cut off, but our faces and big cheesy grins had made it into the frame. She looked young and beautiful; her blue eyes sparkled, and she looked perfectly, genuinely happy. While staring at the photo after my father’s funeral, I realized that I was, in that moment, probably the same age as she was in the picture. We looked so similar that aside from the nose and freckles I’d gotten from my dad, it could have been a photo of an adult me with a younger clone.
“So why’d you come here?” Kit’s voice broke the silence. I realized I’d been staring out the window again, lost in my thoughts.
“I was happy here as a kid. I guess I wanted to reconnect with that feeling.”
Kit nodded. “I get that. Nostalgia. That’s every haunting. Ghosts, they get nostalgic for the life they left behind. So instead of moving on, they cling to their old life and hassle the poor schmucks who bought their house.” She smiled at me, her eyes bright and friendly once again. “I’m really sorry to hear about your parents, man. That sucks that you lost them both. My mom ran out on us when I was little, but at least I still have my dad. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to lose yours.”
I smiled back. For the first time, her bluntness was kind instead of abrasive. She reached forward and clicked on the radio, and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” carried us along the highway.
Chapter Eight
“How many cats do you have?” the teenaged Target cashier asked, eyeing the conveyor belt in her checkout lane. A ten-pound bag of cat food, a large litter box, one enormous cardboard scratching pad, an army of fake mice, and a huge jar of catnip were all waiting to be scanned.
“One. Why?”
Beside me, Kit snorted. “They call this ‘nesting,’ you know. And most people do it for their human offspring.”
The cashier didn’t bother h
iding her laughter, and my cheeks burned.
“You weren’t complaining while you helped me pick out those plates,” I told Kit.
“I’m not complaining. I’m mocking. There’s a difference.”
I ignored her, focusing instead on the cashier, who was shocking me with the 4-digit dollar amount I’d managed to rack up. I whispered a low “Thank you” to my father for leaving me all his savings and swiped my credit card.
In the parking lot, Kit helped me cram an entire wedding registry’s worth of stuff into the back of her van. It was a tight fit between the new mattress I’d picked up and Kit’s own purchases, which mostly consisted of a pile of used textbooks and an absurd number of extension cords.
My legs ached from all the shopping. I was asleep in the passenger seat before we even reached the highway. Compared to the night I’d spent on the window seat and the bathroom floor, the nap I took in Kit’s van had been the best sleep I’d gotten since I came here.
The sound of a honking horn woke me up. I blinked out the windshield and recognized the sunny backyard-turned-parking lot at Primrose House. Graham was walking from a large garage beside the carport toward the house’s back door.
“Hey!” Kit rolled down her window and leaned out the van to shout at him. “Landlord! Come give us a hand!”
I ran my fingers through my hair and searched through my purse for some gum as Kit pulled into her parking space beneath the wide carport. Graham ambled over to us, his hands in the pockets of his paint-spattered coveralls.
“Whoa.” He whistled when Kit opened the van’s back door. “Ladies be shopping.”
“Don’t even start with that fake sexist shtick.” Kit punched him in the arm. “Your newest tenant is the one responsible for this mess, not me. I’m just a good Samaritan.”
“And I’m guessing you expect me to help you lug this mattress up to the attic.”
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked, heat flooding my face once again. It felt presumptuous to ask, but I had no idea how we’d get the new bed upstairs without some help.
Exhaling, he interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of his chest. “Stand aside, ladies. Let the man handle this.”
An hour later, after much swearing and arguing about the best way to get a plastic-wrapped mattress up two flights of stairs, all of my new purchases finally made it into my apartment. The cabinet above the kitchen sink groaned as I unpacked the last of my new plates and stacked them carefully inside.
“Let me make you dinner.” I closed the cabinet door and dusted my hands off on my jeans. “We can eat off my new dishes.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Kit said.
“No, seriously. If you hadn’t helped me out, I would’ve been doomed to sleep on the taco impersonator mattress over there forever. I owe you. Big time.”
Kit raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I know. And I’ll remember you said that. But I have to take a raincheck. I’m meeting my dad for dinner and then have to drop off some books to a friend.”
She waved and skipped out of my apartment. I turned to Graham.
“What about you?” I asked. “Tuna sandwiches on brand-new Corelle dinnerware? We can eat right after we heave the old bed out the window.”
“We advertise the place as ‘fully furnished,’” he reminded me. “If you move out and take that nice new mattress with you, where would I be then?”
I stared at him for a moment. Was that a playful, almost flirtatious note I detected? Nah. He still wore that same expression he had while going over the repair and maintenance clause of the rental agreement.
He passed on dinner as well, apparently preferring the chore of dragging the old mattress off to rot away in a storage closet somewhere over my company. I finished unpacking by myself and collapsed onto the new mattress. My spinal column sang out in joy.
“Brrrlllll.” Striker announced herself as she hopped through the open window. She walked around the apartment, sniffing the new items and rubbing her face on every corner and edge she passed. She soon found her new pile of goodies near the kitchen, and I watched with amusement as she clawed at the cardboard scratching pad.
I spent a few minutes trying to get Striker to play with her new toys, but she seemed more interested in the packaging. Crumpled paper was the big winner. I made her a few balls out of my receipts then headed out the door. As much as I couldn’t wait to sleep on my new bed, there was another more important item on my to-do list: I needed to find a job.
If I was smart about spending, I could afford to live for a few months off my inheritance. But I preferred the idea of keeping that money in savings. And as bored as I’d been behind a reception desk, I had a feeling unemployment would be pretty dull too.
It was another temperate spring day in Donn’s Hill. The air on the light breeze smelled fresh, and the sky was a perfect, cloudless blue. The walk from my apartment to the town square was just long enough to warm up my muscles, and I pushed up the sleeves of my sweatshirt as I strolled down the sidewalk.
I started to cut across the square toward Main Street and spotted Penelope Bishop sitting at a folding table decorated with green and yellow bunting. When I reached her post beside the fountain, I tried to pack as much pleasantness into my voice as possible. “Good morning.”
Penelope looked up from her computer tablet, then sat it carefully on the table and folded her well-manicured hands on top of it. Her nails were the exact shade of pink as her blouse, and her long honey-brown hair was pulled back into an intricate fishbone braid. She looked as though she’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine.
“Good morning,” she replied, her voice cool.
Man, she really doesn’t like me. She didn’t even know me. I felt a burning urge to prove her wrong.
I glanced at the table and saw a sheet with “Volunteer Sign-up” scrawled across the top. A handful of names and phone numbers were scribbled below.
“Are you looking for volunteers?” I asked.
Penelope sniffed. “Yes, for the Afterlife Festival. I assume you’re familiar with it?”
“I am.” Ha! For some reason, already knowing something about the town felt like scoring a point against her.
“It’s two weeks away. We’re looking for volunteers to help with setting up and tearing down the tents and exhibits, running the raffle and auction, manning the information booth, et cetera. I doubt you’d be interested.”
A muscle in the side of my neck twitched. There was that snap judgment again. Well, I’ll show her. I pasted a giant plastic smile on my face and grabbed a pen.
“I’d love to help out,” I told her through gritted teeth as I added my name and cell-phone number to the list.
When I was done, I looked back up at her, expecting to see a look of surprise. Her expression was neutral, but the look of hatred in her cold, gray eyes took me aback.
“Thank you,” she said in a flat voice. She pulled the sign-up sheet back toward her and glanced down at it, and her eyes narrowed. “Ms. Clair,” she added with a final sniff.
I nodded then scuttled away across the square. The encounter left me confused and angry. What was her problem? Did she know me from somewhere? That look in her eyes just now betrayed something much deeper than I’d first sensed at the fountain… something almost sinister.
Main Street was bustling with the Saturday shopping crowd. Up and down the road, the little stores had their front doors propped open to let in the fresh spring air, and the locals were strolling down the sidewalks in light jackets.
One of these shops has got to be hiring. As I walked toward the coffee shop to check the bulletin board, I planned to keep an eye out for help wanted signs in the windows.
I crossed the street and stopped in front of the bookstore I’d noticed on my first day in town. It was one of the old houses that had been converted into a business, similar in style to Primrose House but quite a bit smaller. The clapboard was painted a deep cerulean blue. The sign above the window announced nin
e lives book exchange: new—used—trades. I rationalized stopping in by thinking the bookstore might have a community bulletin board like the one at The Astral Bean, and pushed open the door.
A bell tinkled above me as I stepped into the shop. The foyer opened into a large, sunny room filled with rows of heavy oak bookcases. The original cream-colored plaster walls and tall, wooden baseboards gave the store a vintage feel. Led Zeppelin’s “Four Sticks” was playing from a stereo on the fireplace mantle, and though the air was heavy with the earthy scent of nag champa incense, I detected my favorite smell beneath it: old books. My spirits lifted at once, driving all thoughts of that hateful Penelope Bishop from my mind.
I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. I associated this smell with my parents, who were both bookworms. Although my mother’s personal collection had been extremely small, she had taken me to our local library every Saturday morning without fail. While other children sat in front of televisions, eating cold cereal and watching cartoons, I lay on my stomach between the stacks in the children’s section, reading about fantastic adventures. Mom would let me check out a small pile of books to get me through the week, and by the next Saturday, I’d be hungry for more.
My father loved books as well. The whole time I was growing up, we would sit at opposite ends of the couch as we read together, my feet slowly growing closer to his. He had amassed an enormous collection of anthropological textbooks, biographies and other nonfiction, classics, and mysteries. The only books he didn’t have a taste for were fantasy, and we often argued about the virtues (or lack thereof) of that genre.
“Don’t you wish you had magical powers?” I’d asked him.
“I just can’t stand reading a bunch of made-up, difficult-to-pronounce names. I can’t connect with stuff like that,” he’d said.
I’d shaken my head, unable to understand that at all, and buried my nose back in a book about elves and dwarves and magic rings.
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