Stalking the Dead

by E. C. Bell

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” she said stiffly. I noticed she hadn’t opened the door any further than she absolutely needed to.

  “Sorry,” I said. I never did anything the way she felt it should be done, so her reaction didn’t really surprise me. It tired me to death, of course, but it didn’t surprise me. “Is Mom here?”

  “Yep.” Rhonda still blocked the door. I could hear the step-on dog worrying the other side of the door with low growls and snorts that didn’t give me any indication what breed it was, past stuffed-up and pissed off.

  “You going to let me in?”

  Rhonda sighed, as though I’d just demanded something seriously untoward. Like asking her for a sisterly hug and kiss, for example. Then she stepped aside and pulled the door open.

  “Of course,” she said. “You and I need to talk.”

  Around the door flew a little ball of black and white fury. It growled and jumped and snapped most ineffectively at my feet.

  “Control your dog,” I said.

  “It’s not mine.” Rhonda sneered, as if the idea of a dog like that was so completely beneath her that she could not believe I’d actually and for even a second thought it was hers. “It’s Mom’s. Can you believe it?”

  “Not really,” I whispered, as she reached down and scooped the furious furball away from me.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ll try to keep this thing under control.”

  “Thanks.”

  I stepped around her and into the living room. It was empty.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Backyard,” Rhonda said. “With your boyfriend. Or boss. Or whatever he is to you.” She frowned even harder, if that was possible. “What is he to you?”

  I shrugged and stepped away from her into the living room. Sighed when I saw the photo albums on the coffee table. Good grief, Mom hadn’t shown James those things, had she?

  I felt something touch my leg. Stared down into the big soulful eyes of the little black and white step-on dog that had tried to attack me at the door.

  “What’s its name?” I asked.

  “Lily or something,” Rhonda said.

  “Hey Lily,” I muttered, reaching down to pat her head.

  The little dog’s eyes bugged, and she threw herself to the carpet, belly exposed. Seriously? First she tried to eat me, and then she was sucking up?

  “Bit of a schizo,” I said, hesitantly patting the little dog’s chest.

  “No doubt,” Rhonda replied. “But what would you expect, with Mom?”

  “Mom’s good with animals—” I started, but Rhonda cut me short.

  “It’s all the ghost business,” she said. “It drives me crazy. Why not a dog?”

  I snapped my mouth shut and straightened. No way I was getting pulled into one of Rhonda’s more than famous rants about Mom’s chosen profession.

  “They’re out back?” I asked instead.

  “We need to talk, first,” Rhonda said. “About Mom—”

  “She sees ghosts,” I snapped. “Can’t you just let it go, Rhonda?”

  “That’s not it,” she said impatiently. “I can’t look after her myself anymore. Something has to be done.”

  “Oh come on!” I cried. “I just got here. Can’t this wait?”

  Rhonda sniffed. “We have to have this conversation whether you like it or not, Marie.”

  “I know,” I said. “Just not right now. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she sighed, and then asked, “Can you find your way?” Like I’d been away for ten years and not just one.

  “I think so,” I said dryly, and walked to the front door, which in the trailer was the only door. The little dog whined, and I looked around for a leash. Found it on top of the TV and attached it to her rhinestone-covered collar, and she immediately fell into line. “I’ll take Lily with me.”

  “Don’t let her get away,” Rhonda said. “She runs like the wind.”

  I didn’t say, “If you were chasing her, I wouldn’t blame her,” but I thought it. Kept my mouth shut and walked the dog out the red door and down to the hardscrabble grass and weeds that led to the “backyard” of Mom’s trailer.

  Jesus, was all I could think when I finally realized that the skeleton sitting in the folding chair beside a small metal table loaded with iced tea and glasses was my mom.

  “Hey,” I said, when I unlocked my tongue. “Got enough iced tea for me?”

  “Marie,” the skeleton said, using my mother’s voice. When I saw her eyes, I finally saw my mom for real. “I didn’t think you’d make it here this fast.”

  “Not quite fast enough,” I said. “I noticed the photo albums. You sure pulled them out quick.”

  “Oh, come on, Marie!” Mom said, her dark eyes sparkling and snapping in her wasted face. “You were cute as a button growing up. Wasn’t she, James?”

  James Lavall, who was sitting with his back to me, stood and turned. Smiled down at me, though I did notice the warmth didn’t quite touch his eyes. “She was that, Sylvie.”

  I tried to smile at him, but my lips felt positively frozen. He reached out a hand, almost touched my arm, but ended up pointing at the little black and white dog at my side. “I see you met Millie,” he said. “She’s a sweet little thing, isn’t she?”

  The dog’s name was Millie. Trust Rhonda to get the name wrong. I pulled my lips into something resembling a smile.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sweet.”

  Actually, the little dog was acting sweet. She sat obediently, even as she stared longingly at my mom.

  “You want to go see Mom?” I whispered, and stepped around James. The dog came most compliantly, and jumped into Mom’s lap. I watched, mesmerized, as the little dog turned three tight circles before dropping, with a small sigh, into a ball. Mom patted her head gently, and the little dog licked her fingers before settling with one last sigh.

  “She’s a nice little dog,” Mom said, smiling up at me. “Keeps me company.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. I leaned down and touched Mom’s sunken cheek with my lips, trying not to wince away as the smell of her sickness suddenly overwhelmed me.

  Oh heck, it might not have been an actual smell, but it was something. Something hot and red and tight. Something that should have smelled like putrescence, but instead smelled like patchouli.

  I never could stand the smell of patchouli.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked, before really thinking.

  “Like I’m dying,” she said lightly. “You?”

  “Like I drove five hours without stopping,” I said. I smiled, and she smiled back. “It’s good to see you, Mom.”

  “And James?” she asked. “Are you happy to see James, too?”

  “Not so much,” I said. Felt a surge of anger that gave me enough energy to turn and face him. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I wanted to know about you,” James said, a strange half-smile on his face. “And you wouldn’t tell me, so I decided to come to the source.”

  “The source?” My voice got high and tight, which was never a good sign. “My sick mom is the source?”

  “Dying,” my mother said. “Not just sick. Dying.”

  “You’re not helping, Mom.”

  “I’m not trying to help.” And she laughed.

  Thanks a lot, Mom.

  I turned to James. “So, what have you learned?”

  “Quite a bit,” James said. He smiled, and it felt like a slap across the face. “Your mother is quite forthcoming, aren’t you, Sylvie?”

  “Absolutely,” Mom replied. “After all, I have nothing to hide.”

  Well, I did. I glared at Mom, and snapped a quick look at James, but could read nothing, absolutely nothing, on his face.

  “So, what did she tell you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice all light and cheery like I didn’t have anything to hide. “All about my childhood?”

  “Among other things,” James said. “Want a chair?”

  Among other things. Those words ma
de me want to run, screaming, out of my mother’s mock yard. I didn’t want to sit with James—and my mom—and talk about the good old days. Too many ghosts hanging around. Way too many.

  “Sure,” I said, and looked for a chair. Saw one leaning against the trailer. It didn’t look like it had been moved in a long while, and I momentarily wondered about spiders. I pushed the oogey thought aside, pulled the chair free from the weeds, and popped it open. Set it down next to my mom’s, and stared out at the small woebegone-looking garden Mom had fashioned behind her trailer.

  “I see the raspberry bushes have taken over,” I said.

  Mom laughed. She sounded happy, and I snuck another glance at her skeleton profile, wondering where all the happiness was coming from. It couldn’t be because I came home. Could it?

  “I’ve never been able to control those things,” she said. “They just do what they want—much like a certain daughter of mine.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about Rhonda that way,” I said, and snorted something close to laughter. “It’ll piss her off.”

  “Everything pisses Rhonda off,” Mom whispered, and then glanced behind her, as though expecting Rhonda to magically appear. “And I wasn’t talking about her.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “I figured you would.”

  Silence descended on our little group after that. Even the dog stopped snoring. From somewhere—probably three trailers over—I could hear the thin wail of a kid not getting what he wanted. The sound was cut off as a screen door clapped shut, and though I was happy the kid had stopped crying, I hoped it wasn’t because his mama had slapped the wail out of him.

  “So, what were you two talking about?” I finally asked. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask, so the words came out as easily as teeth being pulled. One at a time and covered in blood. “Are you gonna tell me, or do I have to guess?”

  “Now, that would be entertaining,” James said. The damned half-smile had returned. “Take a guess.”

  I stared at the overgrown raspberry bushes and thought about everything I didn’t want him to know about me. It was quite the list, to be honest.

  Seeing—and interacting with—ghosts was just one of the things I never wanted him to know.

  I didn’t want him to know how long I’d actually dated Arnie Stillwell—my stalkery ex-boyfriend who’d gone from stalker to something a lot scarier when I’d moved to Edmonton, and who was now in Remand awaiting trial for his troubles.

  I didn’t want him to know that I was one of the broken toys that all the bullies—and there were a ton of them—used as a punching bag every year I went to school in this town. I didn’t want him to know that I had played softball for one horrifying season when my dad decided that sports could make me a better person, and that I’d been fired from a coffee shop for dumping a pot—not just a cup, but a whole pot—of coffee on someone who’d dissed my dad. That had happened exactly six weeks before my dad and mom had split—and that was another thing I didn’t want to talk about, to James or to anyone else, for that matter.

  “My poetry,” I said. “She was probably telling you about my poetry.”

  James chuckled. I wheeled around and stared at him.

  “Jesus,” I gasped. “Did she show you some of my frigging poetry?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You had quite the talent.”

  “Mom.” I turned to her, and tried to glare down her grin. “Tell me you didn’t do that! I was in grade seven, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh, Marie, come on! That one about the cows in the moonlight,” James said. “It was inspired.”

  “I was in grade seven!”

  “Relax, Marie,” Mom said. “I just showed him the one.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I always liked that poem.”

  “I know, but—” I had no more words, so I grabbed a glass of iced tea from the small table by my mother and guzzled it. I didn’t care whose it was; I just needed to do something with my mouth so I didn’t say something that could really hurt her.

  But good grief! Not my poetry!

  “Want to take another guess?” James asked as I set the empty glass aside. He looked like he was enjoying himself. “We’ve had hours, you know. Hours.”

  “Baby pictures, I suppose.” The photograph albums had been out. I hoped Mom had stuck to baby pictures, because things got pretty dicey in junior high.

  What was it about junior high that brings out the worst in people? Bad poetry, bad school photos—and then there was my fourteenth birthday, when the ghosts decided to invade my party. All right, so that bus had crashed and most of the spirits ended up at our house, patiently waiting their turn to be moved on by my mother—but it would have been better for all concerned if she hadn’t invited them to the party.

  Spirit photography had nothing on that batch of pictures.

  True, to anyone who couldn’t see ghosts, the pictures only looked like me and my mother and my sister sitting at the tiny kitchen table with silly party hats on our heads. A small birthday cake—chocolate, that year—sat before me, the little white candles still smoking. Around us floated fifteen small balls of white light.

  It looked like whoever took the photographs had screwed up, somehow. But it wasn’t that. For Mom and me, the fifteen little balls of light were actually fifteen dead people, crammed into that little trailer, singing “happy birthday” to me.

  Rhonda’s face had looked particularly pinched in those pictures, because Mom told her the ghosts were there to celebrate with me. That was the year that sealed the deal for Rhonda. Mom was crazy, I was going down the same road, and we were both doing it just to embarrass her for all time.

  I had tried to get Mom to burn the pictures, but she wouldn’t. “They were a nice bunch,” she’d said. “I liked working with them.”

  With my mom, it was always about the ghosts.

  Rhonda popped her head out the teeny back window of the trailer as though she’d read my mind. “You have company,” she said. “I’ll send him to you.”

  “Who?” Mom asked, but Rhonda was already gone. Mom struggled to rise from her chair. I put my hand out and touched her arm.

  “I’ll find out,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She sank back in her chair, relief on her face.

  Before I could get up, another ghost from my past stepped around the side of the trailer. I stood, wishing, not for the last time that day, that I could just get into James’s Volvo and get out of town.

  “Marie Jenner,” Officer Jackson Tyler said. His hair had greyed a bit, but other than that, he looked exactly as he had the last time he’d shown up at the door of this trailer, unannounced and unwanted. “As I live and breathe. I didn’t think I’d see you here.”

  “Just visiting Mom,” I said, gritting my teeth as his eyes rolled over me, taking in my unkempt hair, my Salvation Army clothing choices, and the great big coffee spill down the front of my sweatshirt that I hadn’t, until that moment, noticed. I took an ineffective swipe at it, then gave up. “How did you know I was in town?”

  “I didn’t,” Tyler said. He glanced at Mom and touched his hat. Mom nodded at him, and I could see that her good mood had been reduced by at least half. Officer Tyler had that effect on most of the people in my family. “I came to see you, Sylvie. How you doing?”

  “Well enough,” Mom said primly. She touched the scarf wrapped around her shoulders, pulling it closer to her throat as though she was suddenly chilled. “How can I help you, Officer Tyler?”

  “I have some news for you.”

  “Good or bad?”

  Like a cop ever brings good news.

  “Just news, Sylvie,” Tyler said. He adjusted his gun belt, and then his hat, as though taking a moment to collect his thoughts, and I wondered if seeing me had surprised him more than a little.

  A nice thought, because he’d always surprised me, usually in a bad way, when I was growing up here. Turnabout. Gotta love it.

  “Spill it,” Mom said, her
lips pursed in that way that told me—and Officer Tyler—that she was running out of patience. “What’s your news?”

  “It’s about Arnie Stillwell,” he said.

  At that name, my heart—and everything else in my whole body—turned to ice. Arnie was the reason I was homeless. But he was in Edmonton, awaiting trial—

  “He’s still in jail, isn’t he?” The words blurted out of my frozen lips like chunks of ice. Fell to the ground and froze the browning crabgrass. “Isn’t he?”

  James touched my arm, and impulsively, I grabbed him, to keep upright. Arnie Stillwell, my stalkery ex-boyfriend, had burned down my apartment building and had tried to burn down James’s. He kept finding me. Why couldn’t he just leave me alone?

  “Sit,” James said.

  “No.” More ice falling around my feet, but I still clung to his hand for support. “I’m fine.” I turned to Officer Tyler. “What about him?”

  “He was released on bail,” Tyler said. “Yesterday.”

  “Jesus.” James breathed out the word that rocketed around in my brain pan. Arnie was out in the world. With me. Again.

  “How?” I asked, my voice a frightened squeak.

  “I can’t say,” Tyler said. “But he didn’t stay in Edmonton. He came home.”

  “Home?” I whispered. “When?”

  Tyler adjusted his cap, one more time. “He got into town last night.”

  My God, I’d followed my stalker to Fort McMurray.

  “And he died.”

  “What?”

  That was my mother, asking that. I had gone back to frozen.

  “Yep,” Officer Tyler said. “He’s dead as the proverbial doornail.”

  “How did he die?” Mom asked.

  “I can’t say,” Tyler said. “But we’re treating it as suspicious.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked at me, hard. “When did you get into town?”

  “She got here a half hour ago,” Mom said. “Didn’t you, Marie?”

  I was still frozen, so James answered for me.

  “Yes,” he said. He put a protective arm around me, and I leaned against him, hoping that his warmth would thaw me enough to respond. “She just got here.”