by Angie Fox
The skunk took one look at the ghost and ran under the rocking chair.
“She was doing so well,” Bree said, confused at Lucy’s change of heart.
“I think she’s just surprised,” I said, glancing at Parker next to me. “I have a boy here who is looking for his lost dog,” I said to her.
“She’s not lost. She’s dead,” Parker said, as if I’d explained it wrong.
Bree followed my gaze. She couldn’t see Parker, but I was willing to bet she felt the chill in the air. Ghosts tended to run cold.
“I’d love to help,” she said, standing shakily. “When did he last see his dog?”
“When I was dying,” Parker said.
My heart stuttered. That poor, sweet baby. “Can you show me where?” I asked, glad that my voice held out.
They’d never found a body. His parents still held candlelight vigils on the anniversary of his disappearance. If I could at least tell them what happened, where to look for Parker’s remains, give them closure, I’d do it.
He shook his head firmly. “I’m not supposed to go there.”
“I understand.” Something terrible must have happened. I tamped down the urge to hug little Parker tight. He was so small, so alone. Still, any sort of touch between us would be cold, watery, and distinctly uncomfortable for both of us.
“You said you’d help me find Bailey,” Parker said, no doubt clinging to the only comfort he had.
“I will,” I promised. “Let’s go.”
“I’ll take care of Lucy,” Bree assured me as I left the shelter with the boy.
We stepped into the night and I scanned the property for the grayish-white glow of spirits. I didn’t see any dogs, but I did spot two men down by the dock.
“Maybe they’ve seen Bailey,” Parker said.
“Let me do the talking,” I told him, walking as fast as I could, trying not to trip over the ruts in the gravel drive.
We crossed the soft, grassy expanse to the tree line beyond and down to the dock. As we drew closer, I recognized one of the men: Frankie. He stood with his head bent close to a lanky, unshaven man with a potbelly pushing against his wife-beater undershirt.
Frankie saw me first and tried to wave me away.
Not happening. “Hi, Frankie.”
The other ghost turned. “You bring your old lady with you?”
“No,” both Frankie and I said in unison. Although he didn’t have to look that horrified.
“I need your help,” I said to the ghosts. “Parker and I are looking for his ghost dog.”
The potbellied ghost gave Frankie a dubious glance. “You gave her your power so she could do that?”
“I know,” Frankie said, removing his hat, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s embarrassing.”
“I’m not asking for opinions,” I told them. “I’m looking for a dog.”
“I don’t know what you expect me and Floats to do,” Frankie balked. “It’s not like you can put up signs around the neighborhood.”
The other ghost guffawed. I gave him my steeliest look as his laugh trailed away. “You know, I saw a dog last night, down the river a ways. Near Convict’s Bend. Had one of them smushy faces.”
“I bet that’s Bailey,” Parker said, jumping up and down.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” I cautioned. No telling how common ghost dogs were, but there had to be more than one in Sugarland, and legend had it Convict’s Bend was haunted by the ghosts of escaped prisoners. When I was tuned into the other side, I could be seized, shot, or killed by the spirits I encountered. Let’s just say I liked to avoid the criminal types.
Well, except for Frankie.
“It has to be her,” Parker insisted, reaching for me. I dodged out of his grip, afraid of the shock my touch would give him, but he persisted. “Bailey was with me when it happened.”
I didn’t understand. “When what happened?”
Parker dropped his hands. “I died on Convict’s Bend.”
Chapter 4
“I thought you said you can’t go there,” I told the ghost.
“It’s forbidden,” he said, eyes wide, “but I have to go if Bailey’s there.”
“I don’t even like to go to Convict’s Bend,” Frankie cautioned.
This was sounding like a worse idea all the time. “If we do this, I’ll need you with us,” I told Frankie. The gangster might be a lot of things, but I trusted him to have my back.
“We’re meeting a shipment,” Frankie barked, then snapped his mouth shut, as if he realized what he’d just admitted.
Lucky for him, I didn’t care anymore.
Floats held up his hands. “I ain’t fronting you the cash,” he said to Frankie. “If you ditch this, the boat sails on.”
Whatever deal he had going couldn’t be more important than this. “You know what it’s like to feel trapped,” I said to Frankie, “but at least you have your gang. You have people who know you exist and who care about you. This poor boy has lost his only companion. He’s completely alone unless we can find his dog.”
Frankie glared at me, his nostrils flaring. Then he threw his head back and yelled, “Arrrgh!”
Parker startled and I put a reflexive hand up to block him from Frankie, who might or might not have lost his mind.
“Frankie—” I began.
“Fine!” He threw up his hands. “You win! We’re leaving. I’m leaving.” He walked two steps away and then spun to face me. “I’m about to walk out on the first solid smuggling deal I’ve made in eight decades.”
The potbellied ghost eyed Frankie like he’d set a briefcase full of C-notes on fire right there on the dock.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I assured my ghost.
“I’m insane,” he said, “and it’s your fault.” He brushed past Floats to the shadow of a small boat bobbing off the dock. “Get in,” he told me, “before I change my mind.”
“Yay!” Parker jumped right into the boat, setting it lurching from side to side.
“Watch out!” I called to the boy. Water sloshed over the side of the boat. At this rate, he was going to sink it before we got started.
I pulled the keychain flashlight out of my purse.
The rowboat, tied with a frayed bit of twine to the dock, was old, small, and not very steady. For a moment, its gray hue made me think it might even be a ghost boat, but a touch revealed very old, very brittle wood.
“Sit in the front,” I said to the boy, “calmly,” I added when he made a hard scramble and the nose of the boat dipped. Oh my word. “This thing shouldn’t even be floating,” I said, watching it pitch hard in the water.
“You in or you out?” Frankie asked.
I turned and smiled brightly at Parker. “I’m in.”
And so I floated down the river that night in an antique boat with a little ghost boy at the helm, Frankie in the back, and the potbellied ghost glowing smaller and smaller in the distance.
“Heading to Convict’s Bend,” Frankie mused, as if he couldn’t quite believe I’d talked him into it.
“We made the right choice,” I said.
As long as the boat stayed afloat.
I knew better than to make a big deal out of my favorite ghost’s change of heart. It would only make him uncomfortable. So I focused on the issue at hand. “It sure would be nice to have a paddle.”
“We’ll get there,” Frankie grumbled. “Sooner or later, everything floating on the river ends up in the bend.”
I tried using my hands. The water felt cold despite the heat of the summer night. “It’s just that I’ve never been up a creek without a paddle,” I joked.
Yes, it was a lame joke, but I thought it was kind of funny. And it warmed my heart when Parker laughed.
The boy fidgeted in his seat, glancing at me over his shoulder. “Do you know why Batman and Robin quit going fishing together?”
“No. Why?” I asked, despite Frankie’s groan.
“Because Robin ate all the worms!” Parker giggled.
&
nbsp; “I like it,” I said, using my arm as a rudder as we steered around the first curve in the river.
“I chose this,” Frankie muttered behind me. “I said, ‘Let’s get in a boat. Together. Me and a kid and a dame.’”
“Thank you, Frankie,” I said, serious as I glanced over my shoulder at him. He appeared more unsettled than angry. “You did the right thing.”
“Keep paddling,” he ground out.
We floated downriver about a mile to where it took a sharp left, twining into the first hook of Convict’s Bend.
“Get your hand back in the boat,” Frankie said. “The river up here is fast.”
“It’s not like it’s going to suck me down,” I told him. Still, I did as he’d suggested, if only to be on the safe side.
The current sped up and took us with it.
“Steady,” Frankie said as we hit a narrow patch and the trees overhead blocked out the moonlight. I lost all sense of where we were in the dark. My stomach lurched as the boat went light and seemed to lose gravity. The water rushed around the curve, taking us with it.
We popped out on the other side, and just as I was about to let out a sigh of relief, Parker screamed.
“Row!” the boy hollered. “Row!”
“I don’t have a paddle,” I protested, struggling to see around the not-quite-transparent ghost.
“I see it,” Frankie barked.
Moonlight poured down on the water as the current swept around the bend and carried our boat toward a dark, swirling mass of rocks.
“Oh, no, no,” I said, leaning out of the boat to try to paddle us out of the current.
The ruined bow of another rowboat rose out of the abyss, and a long-dead hand clutched at the rocks. It wore a manacle and I could see the spiraling soul traces that always marked a death spot. The spiraling strands I’d seen before were white. These were almost black.
“Lean right!” Frankie ordered.
I did. I was the only weight in the boat.
The current swept us straight past the rocks and out of the reach of the grasping hand. We glided into a gentle spin sideways just beyond.
“Is that it?” I struggled to see if we were about to hit more rocks, or the shore, or some long-forgotten wreck.
Frankie had lost his hat and was breathing hard, even though he didn’t need to breathe at all anymore. “We’re light. We skated right past the rocks.”
“Yay!” Parker said, as if this were a grand adventure.
“Are we out of danger?” I asked as the boat ground up against the shore.
“No,” Frankie said, standing up in the boat.
“It’s him,” Parker cried, scrambling back toward me.
“Who?” I asked, still not seeing anyone.
I darned near capsized the boat when Parker slipped into the seat next to me.
“That man,” he said, pointing to a figure in the trees. “I wanted to look for my dog down here, but every time I came close, he chased me away. He’s really scary.”
I saw the glow of a ghost in the shadows. “All right,” I said, wondering just what we were getting ourselves into. “We’ll make it right,” I promised.
The current began dragging our boat away from the shore. “We gotta get in or out,” Frankie warned.
“In,” I said, going over the side. The cool water soaked me up to the hem of my dress, shocking me almost as much as my impulsive tumble off the side had. There was no turning back now. I took hold of the ragged twine boat tie and secured it to a tree branch stretching out toward the water. Parker had died here. His dog had been seen around here.
I sloshed out of the water, keeping both eyes on the stranger fading in and out of the wood.
“Run, Verity!” Parker squealed.
I’d definitely keep that advice in mind, I decided as the bearded ghost stepped out of the trees.
He wore a striped prison jumpsuit with the chest gaping open. His hands clenched into fists, and when I heard the drag of metal, I saw he wore a manacle and chain around one ankle.
“Hi,” I said, unable to think of anything else remotely coherent.
“Get off my river,” he snarled, with a heavy Southern twang.
“Ah,” I said, refusing to give ground as he approached. “Technically we aren’t on the river.” The air chilled and I had the distinct impression he meant me harm.
“Are you nuts?” Frankie’s voice hissed in my ear. “This guy might have killed the kid!”
“He didn’t,” I whispered, my heart pounding. I could see through the prisoner to the trees beyond. “He’s too dead.” Parker was a newer ghost. He wasn’t entirely see-through yet. This ghost could hurt me because I was tuned in. But he couldn’t have hurt a live boy on the other side.
Frankie cursed under his breath. “You and the kid: figure things out. Fast,” he said before gliding past me toward the menacing prisoner.
“So this is your river, eh?” Frankie asked, as if he’d run into the guy at the local pool hall. “You must know Muddy John at the dock a ways down.”
I had no idea what Frankie thought he was doing, but the prisoner didn’t attack him. He didn’t speak to him, but he did let Frankie lead him back into the trees, the gangster talking the whole way.
“Move, sweetheart,” Frankie’s voice sounded in my ear. I hated when he did that.
“All right,” I turned to Parker, staying alert in case the prisoner came back using Frankie’s head as a soccer ball. The boy glanced around, as if he were waiting for an attack. “This is a safe place now,” I assured him, ignoring the disembodied arm reaching out of the water by the rocks. “I know this might be difficult, but can you tell me what happened to you?”
He swallowed hard. “I just want my dog.”
I didn’t hold out too much hope, not with the ghost prisoner prowling the banks and heaven knew what in the water, but all right. “Let’s try.” I smiled at Parker before calling to his dog. “Bailey!” I shouted, walking along the tree line by the bank.
“Bailey!” Parker echoed, keeping close to me.
“I have a treat,” I said, knowing that word always got Lucy’s attention.
“Treat!” Parker repeated. The boy was a quick study. “Look!” he shouted.
A glow of light appeared between two trees up ahead.
“Hold on a minute,” I said, getting ahead of him. It might be another unfriendly ghost. “Bailey?” I called.
Chapter 5
A dog burst out of the trees up ahead. It glowed with an unearthly gray pallor and lolled out its tongue, like every other dog in the universe.
“Bailey!” Parker exclaimed, rushing for the little pug mix.
Parker dropped to his knees as the dog jumped all over him, licking and barking, her body radiating pure doggie joy.
“Were you waiting here?” he asked, rubbing Bailey’s back, her head, any part of the dog he could reach. Bailey jammed her smushed face against Parker’s chest, then flopped backward into the boy’s lap for belly rubs, then couldn’t stand it and had to jump up and start snuggling the boy’s neck, his cheek, his ear. “What were you doing here, girl?”
I knew exactly why the dog had lingered. This was Parker’s death spot.
“It was the last place she saw you,” I said gently, fighting the urge to hug Bailey myself. “She’s a good dog. She knew you’d come back.”
Parker held Bailey tight. The dog snuggled into his shoulder, and Parker began to cry.
“Hey.” I crouched down next to him. “It’s okay. You did it! You have Bailey back. Everything is going to be fine now.”
Parker lifted his head, his eyes shining. “I didn’t listen to my mom.”
I’d figured that much. I sat down in the grass next to him. “Tell me what happened.”
He returned his attention to his dog, stroking her ears.
“I won’t be mad,” I told him. “And I won’t tattle on you, I promise. Whatever you did, you can tell me.”
Bailey sniffed at my hand and I f
elt the unsettling, watery touch of the other side.
“She likes you,” Parker mumbled.
“I like you both,” I told him, letting the dog’s nose brush over my skin once more.
It felt very intimate and way too personal to let a ghost’s touch sink into me like that. When Frankie and I had accidentally touched, it sent us both skittering away. But with the dog, it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps Bailey had less to hide from me, and I could be less guarded around her as well.
Parker drew Bailey close. “Mom told me not to swim in the river,” he said quietly, “but I was bored and it was hot. Plus, how great would it be to tell my friends I’d been to Convict’s Bend. They were all too chicken to go. But I had Bailey with me. And I’m a real good swimmer.”
I glanced toward the river. “The undertow is really strong here,” I said. “The current that caught our boat sure scared me.”
He held his dog tighter. “I was only going to walk around in the water. It wasn’t a big deal. Bailey stayed on the bank. She doesn’t like to get wet. But I stepped in a hole and went under water.” Panic edged his voice. He began rocking back and forth. “I tried to swim out and I couldn’t.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to calm him.
But it hadn’t been okay. He’d made a deadly mistake.
Parker clutched the dog until Bailey wriggled out of his grasp. “Bailey started to swim in after me,” he said as the dog nosed him and settled back into his lap. “I couldn’t get out and she’s just a little dog. There’s no way she could get out.” He drew the dog into his arms. “I ordered her. I told her sit.”
The dog immediately dropped her rear into Parker’s lap.
“I told her to sit and she can’t sit in the water. But Bailey is a good dog and she listens, and when I told her to sit, sit, sit, she went and sat on the bank. And she was safe, and I saved my dog.”
The last thing he’d seen was his dog sitting on the bank of the river. Parker had lost his own life, but he’d saved his dog.
“I wish you could have been okay too,” I said. He was a noble soul. We needed more of those in the world.
He stroked Bailey’s ears. “It’s not so bad,” he said, looking at me sideways. “The light is really pretty. I’ve been wanting to go. I just needed to get my dog.”