by Lyla Payne
Ever since August arrived, I’ve been driving my car more often, stinky or not, but when Glinda appears beside me in the passenger seat, it makes me wish I would have walked.
Then again, the smell of chemicals is a marginal improvement over its normal stench. Beau even cleaned my car for me a week or so ago, but the stench seems intent on clinging to my car the way these ghosts are glued to me.
The hairdresser’s ghost watches me with an expectant expression that she turns toward the glove box every couple of seconds. The only things in the glovebox—to my knowledge—are a tangle of years-old receipts, the service records that came with the car, and a crumpled map. And I doubt ol’ Glinda has organizing my finances on her mind.
“Glinda, the last time I let a ghost give me driving directions I was missing for a day and a half, Gramps got sick, and my Aunt Karen showed up. I’ve got to be at work in less than an hour.” The speech comes out stern enough, but she just rolls her eyes at me. It makes me miss Anne’s relatively stoic expressions. Not only do I get a ghost, she’s a smart-ass, too. “Fine. But unless you can give me some kind of clue as to where we’re headed, there ain’t no way I’m driving you around all aimless-like.”
That seems to stump her, at least for now, and I take advantage of the moment and back out of the driveway. Her agitation grows as we coast toward the library. It infects me, tightening my fingers around the steering wheel and encouraging my teeth to gnaw away more of my bottom lip.
I don’t see her move, which isn’t odd given that my eyes are on the road and she’s mostly invisible, but there’s no mistaking the bone-deep, freezing cold that bolts from her hand into my forearm. I have to stop the car because my arm is numb from fingertip to shoulder—the kind of cold that aches all the way to the bone, that would turn into a million tiny needles under a stream of hot water.
Once the car screeches to a halt, luckily without causing an accident, I yank free and close my eyes, listening to my teeth clack in my head as heat slowly circulates back into my limb.
Then I glare at Glinda, a gesture that’s totally wasted since her gaze—and finger—points toward the highway that leads south. That she’s found a way to direct me toward her goal bleeds all of the fight and denial right out of me, and my shoulders slump from where they’re hunched around my ears.
She turns her dark eyes back toward me, pinning me with the most beseeching look she can muster—which is still pretty far from asking nicely—then pokes again toward the highway.
If I’m going to keep doing this, my ghost business is going to institute a no-pointing rule. It’s damned annoying. And rude.
“Fine. I’ll get on the blasted highway and head south. But don’t ever touch me again, got it?” It doesn’t hurt when they do, and as far as I can tell there aren’t any lasting negative effects, but the shattering cold is the only thing about the spirits that well and truly gives me the willies.
She doesn’t agree, but doesn’t disagree, either. The hope on her face pushes a sigh from my lungs. As we turn onto the freeway, I wonder if there’s any possible way I’ll make it to work on time. In fact, I consider calling my cousin but dismiss the thought, not in the mood for a lecture before my morning coffee.
I follow Glinda’s excited pointer finger through several turns that take us south, then west, until we’re surrounded by hills and trees. The scent of woods, sweet sap, and sharp pine chases away the salty smell of the ocean, and paved roads give way to gravel, then to rutted dirt. She tries to grab me twice more when I almost miss turns and doesn’t seem concerned that my attempts to stay clear of her touch came close to flipping the car over in a ditch.
Probably because she’s already dead. I, on the other hand, prefer to not have to call AAA and then explain why I’m driving around hillbilly country when I’m supposed to be at work.
Or what I’m doing out here in the first place. Literally chasing ghosts.
The farther we go, the tighter the knot previously known as my stomach cinches. It could be all the stupid shows I’ve been watching, or my lifelong prejudices about folks who don’t live in the coastal regions of my adopted home state, but all I can think is that the kind of people who live around here probably don’t bust out lemonade and tomatoes for strangers. Certainly not clueless chicks in half-broken-down cars bearing the flimsiest of excuses: My ghost made me do it.
Glinda makes a motion that would be pounding on the dashboard were she able to get her fists to connect with my car, so I pull off into an abandoned gas station and turn off the ignition. Before the question What now? can fall off my lips, the spirit is through the passenger door and hovering with an impossible amount of impatience outside my window.
“I guess we’re going for a walk? Glinda, I never saw you walk more than fifteen steps without stopping to sneak a hit off your ‘tea’ or ask someone for a ride.” I swing my arm in an arc, indicating the trees and underbrush smothering the world around us. “All of the sudden, now that you’re dead and you’ve got me at your beck and call, you decide to take up hiking?”
She doesn’t respond, of course, and unease threads between the ropes shanghaiing my intestines. A glance at my phone reveals a mocking no service in the upper left-hand corner, adding to the overriding thought pounding in my temples: I’d like to be anywhere but here.
Aside from the bumpy dirt lane and thick forest, the only piece of visible landscape is the crumbling Exxon station in front of us. Me. Whatever.
The once-blue paint has faded to almost white, with lighter marks that bear the outline of the old company logo on the front. Weeds and saplings split what used to be a sidewalk leading to the door, and vines wrap the two pumps in the parking lot full of broken asphalt. The windows are broken or boarded up, and I’d say the whole thing looks as though it’s haunted, except that doesn’t seem like an insult anymore since so is my whole life.
It looks like meth heads might congregate inside, sleeping on filthy pallets and noshing moldy Cheetos with broken teeth, waiting for unsuspecting coastal dwellers to wander into their clutches.
Or maybe I’m misremembering The Hills Have Eyes.
“Okay, Glinda, you got me out here to the land of creepy woods. What are we doing?”
She’s across the parking lot, stalking over the dusty road and into the edge of the trees before pausing to motion for me to follow. It goes against my better judgment, but that’s never stopped me before, and we’re all the way out here. Maybe if I do what she wants this will all be over and I can go back to having only one spirit interrupting my life.
The woods are even thicker than they look. My legs are going to be scratched all to hell. Mayor Beau isn’t going to be too pleased with my decision-making skills, but that’s nothing new. It seems he likes me in spite of them, which is something I’m still adjusting to. Maybe part of me thinks if I keep exasperating him he’ll give up.
Sunlight filters through the leaves, skittering and hopping through the underbrush like fairies as Glinda hauls ass deeper and deeper into the trees. The uneven path wraps around my ankles and twists more than once, but I manage to stay on my feet. It’s pretty in a wild, untamed way, the blistering morning set to the soundtrack of rustling foliage and birdsong. Ferns and flowers and bushes boasting bright red berries distract me from the memory of the last time I followed a ghost blindly off the trail. Anne Bonny had abandoned me in the middle of a storm.
For all her faults, Glinda’s too motherly to do something like that. I think.
She stops so fast I almost stumble through her, which I imagine would be a hundred times more uncomfortable than her touching me. My hand scrapes across the mossy bark of the nearest tree to break my stride, but my eyes are glued to the way she cocks her head. As though she’s listening.
Then I hear it, too.
There are voices—men’s voices—up ahead. Glinda’s face twists with disgust, and she jams her hands onto her hips. When she starts forward like she’s going to give them a piece of her mind, though, I hiss
at her to stop.
“You’re already dead, you know. I don’t have any desire to meet up with anyone or anything else traipsing through these woods.”
The expression on her face lets me know what she thinks of my lily-livered response, but I cross my arms and hold my ground. Except the voices grow louder, clearer, which means staying put and obscured aren’t going to be the same thing for long.
“Where can we hide?” I whisper, looking around in a sweeping arc. The only possible place appears to be up a tree, but even though climbing used to be one of my specialties, by the sound of it there’s no way I’d make it out of sight in time. “Never mind.”
I’m trying to decide whether or not there is a single tree wide enough to hide my admittedly too-thin frame when I realize I’m too late.
“What have we here?” A gruff drawl expands, filling up the empty space in the morning.
I look back where Glinda had been and find a rather rotund man instead. He’s wearing overalls and nothing else, as far as I can tell from here, and his filthy, dirt-brown hair is pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He’s shoeless, and one hand curls around the collar of the good-sized brown-and-white-spotted dog at his side.
“I’m, um, no one.”
“Well, that ain’t the truth.” He squints at me, exposing deep fissures around his eyes that reach nearly to his hairline. They contrast with his leathery brown skin to paint an interesting, if mildly revolting, portrait.
At least I know he’s not a ghost, since he’s talking.
“I just … I’m lost?” It sounded unconvincing even before I turned it into a question. Curse my lack of confidence. In this particular instance, the old Gracie, the one with a sackful of lies slung over her shoulder, ready to go at the barest hint of trouble, would be more than welcome to show up.
Maybe I should have gone with the truth. Well, my good man, I followed a ghost.
Maybe not.
He snorts in response to my obvious lie, but there’s nothing playful about his ice-blue eyes. They hang on my every movement, as ready to pounce as his drooling mutt. “Don’t nobody get lost in these woods, darlin’. I’d say try again, but apparently you ain’t friends with the truth. Which means you’re hiding something, which means you gotta talk to Clete.”
“Who’s Clete?” I wonder aloud.
He snorts again. “This is Clete’s land you’re trespassin’ on.”
“Then who are you?” My brain fires wrong, asks too many questions, but as usual, my tongue chooses speech over silence.
“Big Ern.”
“Well, Big Ern—can I call you Big Ern?” He doesn’t answer, continuing to study me as if I’m a bloated tick on his dog’s ass—half disgusting, half fascinating, but all inconvenient. “Then it seems you’re trespassing, too.”
He shakes his head. “Naw. I live on the land. Handle certain aspects of Clete’s business in exchange for not bein’ run off.”
Big Ern nudges me forward with a jerk of his head. I could run, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything except me actually getting lost. Or bitten by a dog. This Clete is probably some kind of badass moonshining country Mafia leader, but at least if I go with Big Ern there’s a chance of my getting back to civilization with only a warning.
So, even though in my recently acquired experience criminals aren’t exactly accommodating, I step in front of him and head in the direction indicated. Big Ern falls into step next to me, his giant feet crunching the sticks and debris that stab and scrape me. I manage to hold my tongue for once, focusing on keeping up, not falling, and trying to somehow keep track of my location. The rest is occupied wondering if Amelia will be able to find me with the GPS in my phone, since all I said in the text I sent her was that I had to run an errand and might be late. Which could mean she doesn’t miss me for at least another hour, with my particular track record of timeliness.
We pass a run-down log cabin in a clearing, traipsing across what might have been a back lawn at one time. The place appears abandoned—broken windows, flowerpots knocked off the wooden deck railings and smashed into the weeds and dandelions that choke the grass.
“Who lives there?” I ask before I remember I’m supposed to be holding my tongue.
“No one.”
“Fine, who used to live there?” Sheesh. Who knew hillbillies were such sticklers for semantics?
“Old Merle Davis. He died, and his wife came out every once in a while. Let the place go to shit, but she still owns the land.”
“Glinda?”
He gives me the side-eye. “If you’re friends with her, I wouldn’t mention it to Clete.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask about the apparent bad blood between them—whether it was Merle and Clete who had the issue, or Clete and Glinda, or if it’s one of those Hatfield and McCoy things where no one remembers the details of how it began or why it got so bad, but decide to save my questions for this Clete. If Leo’s right and moonshining has something to do with what happened to Glinda, then there’s a good chance I’m going to have to learn at least a few things about the business in the process of helping her go away.
I’m still hoping it’s something more simple than solving her murder. If I can figure out where in the Sam Hill I am right now, going back to check out that dilapidated cabin seems as good a place as any to start. It could be where the ghost was leading me all along, but of course, she’s made herself scarce in the presence of Big Ern.
It’s not long before we run up on a second house. It’s also made of logs and is also unkempt and overgrown, but there are touches here and there that make it obviously lived in. The picnic tables covered in half-skinned squirrels that sit on the lawn, for instance, and the cheap, dirty toys scattered beneath them. The pots sitting on the porch railing overflowing with marijuana plants give the place just the right touch.
As does the guy sitting on one of those blue canvas chairs that parents tote to their kids’ mind-numbing soccer games, a shotgun resting lazily across his lap.
The sight of him stops me in my tracks, causing Big Ern to heave a giant, put-upon sigh before grasping my upper arm. It’s not painful, but it’s tight enough to convey the idea that lurking in the yard won’t be acceptable.
I stumble a little as he pulls me up the sagging porch steps behind him.
The man—Clete, presumably—studies me with dark brown eyes. They travel from my head to my toes, but not in a sexual way. More like I’m in a circus or some kind of menagerie of curiosities, and he wants to get his money’s worth.
“Who’s this?” he demands in a level, scratchy voice that suggests he’s more than a social smoker.
“Girl I found wandering around ol’ Merle’s property line. Claims she got lost on a hike, but she’s not exactly dressed for it, ya think?” Big Ern hooks his thumbs in the straps of his overalls, rocking back and forth from heel to toe.
The entire scene almost makes me laugh; it’s so something that would happen on those television shows. Almost because it’s not a scene I’d cast myself in, were there a choice, and as much as I’d like to blame Glinda, that’s not fair. I’m the one who has a pulse to lose, and the one who should have at least asked around before wandering out here on private land.
“Thanks, Ern. I need you to take care of that business for me tonight, you got it?”
“Course.”
The question is a dismissal—I hear it, and Ern hears it—and a moment later I’m alone with the man who still hasn’t introduced himself.
He stands and stretches, reminding me of a cat. A thin cat, because he’s tall and covered with tanned, sinewy muscles. An older one, too, but even though he’s got to be at least forty-five, there’s no doubt in my mind he’s lethal. The tom that rules the neighborhood and has the scars to prove it.
“So, what do we do with the pretty girl wandering around uninvited?”
I swallow, then force confidence into my posture with a pop of the hip. “Give her a ride back to her car at that bro
ken-down gas station because she’s late for work?”
Nothing. Not even the barest hint of a smile.
“Do you know who I am?” Clete asks, working a wad of tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other.
I shake my head, biting down on my lower lip. I wonder if this is like not knowing who Princess Kate is to normal people.
“Cletus Raynard. This is my land, and because of various business concerns, I don’t appreciate folks knowing where it is. Most people don’t, because it’s tucked away right nice, yet here you are.” He pauses, coming a little closer, then closer still. His breath smells like tobacco, and the scent of those dead squirrels swirls around him. “What’s your name?”
The odor surrounding him translates to fear in my body, until my hands shake and my mouth goes dry. Telling him my name seems like a bad idea, but there doesn’t seem to be much point in lying. I’ve gone and told him where my car’s parked, and my purse is in the trunk. He can find out the hard way if he really wants to, but I don’t think I’m interested in forcing Cletus Raynard’s hand.
“Graciela Harper.”
“And what are you doing out here, Graciela Harper?”
The edge to his voice tells me that being cute won’t get me anywhere, but there’s no way he’s going to believe the truth. So I go with something halfway between. “My friend Glinda just died, and she asked me once if I’d come to her old country house and get a letter for her granddaughter when she’d passed.”
There we go. Gracie’s grab bag of lies resurfaced just in time.
“Glinda Davis?” His eyes narrow to slits. The joints in his fingers pop as he curls his hands into fists.
It’s not until that moment that Big Ern’s warning about saying anything about Glinda echoes in my mind. Oops.
“Um, yes?” I lick my lips. “I mean, we’re not good friends or anything, but …”
“She’s dead? Woo-boy, it’s about damn time.”