by E. C. Bell
“He didn’t beat you up or something, did he?” I asked.
James shook his head. “Nothing like that,” he said. “But the guy knows his business when it comes to interrogation, I gotta give him that.”
“Did—did he charge you with anything?” He hadn’t. I knew that, because James was sitting beside me, and not in lockup waiting for us to find him a lawyer.
“No. Nothing like that.” He put his hands to his face once more and sighed deeply. “Hell, I’d suspect me, if I was him.” He pulled his hands down and looked at me. “I mean, can you believe the luck?”
“Yeah, actually, I can,” I replied. “Welcome to my world.”
He laughed, the first natural sound to leave his mouth since he got in the car.
“Wanna break and run now?” I said. “I even filled the car with gas.”
He smiled, but didn’t laugh. Like he was half thinking about it. “No,” he finally said. “Let’s go to your mom’s place and come up with a better game plan than that.”
“You’re the boss,” I said, and put the car in gear.
It wasn’t good. Not by a long shot. He was already caught in the Fort McMurray “if you’re with a Jenner you must be guilty” web that seemed to stick to everything and everyone I’d ever known.
Darn it.
Arnie:
Watching the Ghost
I WAS STILL out on Rosalie’s balcony when I saw something moving around in the cemetery, under the trees. Thought it was a coyote, though it would have had to be a pretty stupid coyote to go looking for something to eat in a cemetery, in my opinion, but I kept my eyes on it all the same. Dirty grey and sneaky was how it looked to me. Almost impossible to see, even when you had your eyes dead set on it.
Which was why I thought it was a coyote.
As the dusk thickened, I realized I could still see the coyote, or whatever it was. In fact, I could see it better than I could when the sun was higher. Now, that made no sense, and I knew it, and I found myself leaning way over the edge of that balcony, trying to see—really see—whatever it was that was wandering around that little plot of green and dead.
Then it was standing upright. Like a man. And I muttered, “Son of a bitch! It’s a guy down there. A glowing guy.”
That was the first time I thought—really thought—about the chance that I was actually seeing a ghost.
Pretty funny, right? A ghost seeing a ghost? Fucking hilarious was what it was.
“Hey, buddy!” I called. “Whatcha doin’ down there?”
He slowed, and then stopped. Turned around and stared in my general direction. But he didn’t say a word.
“Hey!” I called again. “You! In the graveyard! Whatcha doin’?”
He looked around, like he was trying to see who I was talking to. Which was fucking hilarious, too. But it didn’t make me laugh. It just pissed me off.
I never did take well to being ignored.
“Hey, Fuckhead! Answer me!”
And then, somehow, I was standing in front of him, down in the cemetery. Staring right into his scared-stupid face.
“You can see me?” he asked. Then his face twisted. “What did you call me?”
“I called you—” Now that I was face to face with the guy, and he wasn’t just a guy, he was a ghost—I could tell because the dirty grey light was coming from him in soft waves—I didn’t want to piss him off. “Forget it,” I said. “I thought you were somebody else.”
“Those were pretty nasty words to speak to anyone, young man.” The ghost’s lips tightened primly, and for a second he reminded me of my father.
“Sorry, sir.” The words popped out before I could stop them. That old son of a bitch—
“What are you doing here?” The tight look was still on his face, but he was starting to look around, like he was looking for someone else—anyone else—to talk to. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’m dead,” I said. Like that explained everything.
“Well, of course you’re dead!” the ghost snapped, turning so he could glare at me properly. “That’s not what I asked. Why are you here?”
He was starting to piss me off. “This is a cemetery, isn’t it?” I snapped. “Why the hell wouldn’t I be here?”
“Because no one gets buried here anymore,” he replied.
That surprised me. I always thought cemeteries were used until they were filled up. “You don’t say,” I said.
“I do say.” His glowing eyes stared into the gloom behind me.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“My wife,” he said, and sighed. “We had a fight, and I’m afraid she’s run off.”
Okay, so those weren’t the words I thought would come out of his mouth.
“Your wife?” I said, knowing I sounded stupid, but unable to stop talking. “Your wife?”
“Yes.” He sighed again. “We’ve been here, together, since 1957.”
I glanced up at Rosalie’s balcony on the second floor of the apartment building I could just make out through the trees. Wondered if he’d seen us, up there.
Hoped he hadn’t. He didn’t need to know my business.
“You’ve been hanging around here for nearly sixty years?” I asked.
“That’s right,” the guy said. He pointed down at the two graves at our feet. “It’s been good, for the most part. You know how it is with a woman, sometimes . . .”
“I do,” I said. I squinted at the names carved into the low cement tombstones. “So you’re Roy?”
“That’s me.”
“And your lady is—” I squinted even harder. “Laurel? I got that right?”
“Yep.”
I squinted again. Read the words beneath their names and had a serious “oh shit” moment. “It says here you drowned.”
“Yep.”
“Both of you.”
“Yes.” His voice took on a strained sound, and when I looked at him, I could see his mouth working.
“Sorry, man. That’s tough.”
“That it was.” He shook his head. “But after, we were together. Together. And it was supposed to be forever.”
I watched a tear drip down his face. It glowed as it hung on his chin, then disappeared in the grass by his grave.
“I don’t understand why she’d leave,” he whispered. “All I said to her was I was glad we were going to move.”
“Move?”
“Move,” he said. “The good burghers of this town are talking about relocating this cemetery. I’m quite partial to following our bodies to wherever they decide is our final resting place.” He nudged the cement cover with his translucent toe. “I wouldn’t mind the change. We’ve been here a long time. These are starting to look pretty run-down.”
“I’m confused,” I said. No frigging lie there. “Where is it you want to go?”
“Wherever they move us. A change is as good as a rest, I always say.” He shrugged. “The wife didn’t take it so well.”
I still didn’t understand, and that made me mad.
“What the fuck are you talking about, old man?”
He blinked his way back to the present and stared at me. “You do have a foul mouth, don’t you?”
No saying sorry, this time. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His face closed like a slap. “I think it’s time you left, boy. If you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head, I don’t want to speak to you anymore.”
And with that, he was gone. Poof.
As soon as he disappeared, I popped to Rosalie’s apartment like I was on a bungee cord. I tried to snap myself to the cemetery again, but no go.
So, I ended up watching the graveyard, like a hawk.
That Roy guy could move around. He obviously knew how this being dead stuff worked, and he could teach me. All I had to do was catch him when he returned to the cemetery, and I was pretty sure I could do that.
After all, I’d had lots of practice with sweet little Marie Jenner. I’d learned
how to be patient, and watch until it was time to spring my trap.
I’d catch him. Just like Marie.
Marie:
Open for Business, Just Like Always
WHEN WE ARRIVED at Mom’s trailer, I saw the “Open” sign on her blood-red door. Mom had used that “Open” sign since I was a little girl, to let the ghosts know she was receiving.
All right, sounded a bit silly, but it worked, for the most part. Sometimes they ignored it and moved right in, but that happened a lot less often than you’d think.
What that “Open” sign meant to me was, Mom was working with a ghost.
I felt a jolt of sudden fear. Had Arnie arrived already? Was he in the house with my mother?
“What’s up with that?” James pointed at the door. “She got some kind of business?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sort of.” I wrestled with the door, fear making me clumsy. “Why don’t you stay in the car while I go make sure she’s all right?”
James stared at the sign on the door for a long, long moment, and I knew he was working stuff out. But he didn’t ask me anything. Just said, “Nope,” and clicked his seat belt open.
Dammit.
I tried to jump out of the car after him and nearly strangled myself on my own seatbelt in my haste.
Then I heard Millie yap three times, sharp, like she was saying, “I know you’re out there! I can hear you, even if the ghosts can’t.”
“Shit,” I muttered. Caught up with James just as he put his hand out to knock on the blood-red door. “Just go in,” I said. “We have to shut that dog up. Mom hates being disturbed.”
What Mom hated was trying to carry on those stupid three-way conversations with a ghost and someone who couldn’t see the ghost. So I reached past him and slowly opened the door. Pushed it open, scooped up Millie as she made a frantic dash for freedom, and then tried to keep her from licking my face too much as I followed James into the middle of a frigging séance.
Mom sat at her teeny kitchen table, and a ghost sat opposite her. I breathed a quick sigh of relief when I saw it wasn’t Arnie.
This ghost was old. I don’t mean this was a ghost who died old; I mean this ghost had been hanging around for a long, long time. She was wearing a dress that reminded me of the forties, even down to the little pork-pie hat perched on top of her head with teeny little white plastic flowers holding the bit of netting that served as a half-assed veil.
The ghost turned and stared at the three of us, her eyes glowing deadly green in the early evening sunlight that managed to peek through Mom’s front window curtains.
“Who’s that?” she asked, her voice sounding like gravel clattering across the bottom of a flooding river. I didn’t recognize the accent, but it sounded faintly European to me.
“My daughter,” Mom said. “And her friend.”
“Hi, Sylvie,” James said.
“Time to be quiet, James,” Mom said. “While I work.”
James’s mouth snapped shut, and he glanced at me, mouthing the word “ghost”.
I nodded, trying not to sigh. Millie roiled around in my arms, so I set her on the floor and she trotted over to Mom and jumped up into her lap.
“When will you be done?” I asked.
“Give me an hour,” Mom said. “If that’s all right with you, Laurel?”
“That would be fine,” Laurel said, though she didn’t sound like it was fine. Or ever would be again.
“Let’s go,” I whispered.
James nodded and reached for the doorknob behind him, and then we were both out in the fresh night air.
James took a couple of deep breaths. “Did it smell like dirt in there?” he asked. “Musty, kind of like—”
“Old death,” I finished for him. “Yep. That happens sometimes.”
“And there was a ghost in there?”
“Yes.” I gestured at the car. “You want to go get something to eat? I know a pretty good place.”
“Jesus,” James muttered. “Jesus.”
“Come on,” I said. “Food will help.”
WE ENDED UP at Ms. B’s on Franklin. Hey, you go where you know, right? It had always been the Newfoundland restaurant, no matter what the name. A place for the poor, homesick oil workers from Newfoundland to go for a meal that tasted like home.
We parked in front—angle parking still there, which proved, in no uncertain terms, that we were in the old part of town—and walked through the beat-up double doors and into the restaurant itself.
It wasn’t much, truth be told. Kind of grubby, with a huge bar taking up most of the space right in the middle of the place. We squeezed past it, and I took note of the display case filled to the brim with homemade goodies. Squares and cakes and pies, so many that my sweet tooth nearly took me down the “let’s eat cake for supper” road, but James pulled me from the brink.
“We’ll take some back to your mom,” he said. “But I need real food.”
Ms. B’s homemade bread took the whole meal over the top, as far as I was concerned. Since I couldn’t pork out on cake and pie.
The food was good. Maybe not great, but plentiful and good enough to fill the gap. And the homemade bread was fantastic.
James was starved, so there was no talking until we’d nearly finished eating. I decided I would rather talk about what had gone on at the cop shop than what was going on at my mom’s place, so I set aside my fork and started.
“What did Officer Tyler want to talk to you about for six whole hours?” I asked.
“Stillwell,” James replied, shortly.
“Not me?”
He looked up at me from the remains of his meal. “Not really,” he said. “Why? You disappointed?”
That brought me up short, because I actually was feeling a bit disappointed. Before I’d left, whenever anybody—usually a cop—mentioned Arnie’s name, mine was sure to follow.
“No,” I said. “Not really.” I picked at the last piece of homemade white bread on my plate, then pushed the plate away. “Did he tell you what happened? How Arnie got out of jail? What the hell he was doing up here?”
“He didn’t tell me much, to be honest. He wanted to know about my ‘relationship’ with Stillwell. How it was that I ended up here hours before he was killed.”
“That took six hours?”
James looked down at his plate. “He was thorough,” he finally said.
“And he didn’t mention me?”
“Narcissist!” he said, and smiled. “No. He never mentioned you once.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah,” James said. I looked at him, and he finally looked deadly serious. “I thought so, too. Maybe watch yourself.”
“I always do,” I said. “Especially here.”
WE HAD ONE more cup of pretty good coffee, picked out a cherry pie for Mom, and our hour was up. We could return to Mom’s trailer.
We waited long minutes for a break in the never-ending rush hour that was Franklin Avenue so we could escape our parking spot and head home.
Franklin Avenue ran the length of the old part of Fort McMurray called the Lower Townsite. It used to be my old haunt, when we’d lived on Golosky Avenue, in a little old house that had been in my father’s family for generations.
I knew every nook and cranny of this area of town. At least I used to. My high school, the John J. Fitzsimmons Memorial High, was just a few blocks northeast. I’d hung out at the restaurant we’d just vacated. I’d even worked there, briefly. It wasn’t called Ms. B’s when I worked there, but the name and the homemade pies were the only things that were different.
The new parts of Fort McMurray grew around the Lower Townsite. Up in the hills, away from the Clearwater River. With the building came the traffic.
True, much of the traffic stayed on Highway 63, but a lot of it—a lot—syphoned down Franklin, making it bumper to bumper, most of the time.
“Good grief,” James huffed. “I’m going to lose my frickin’ mind if we don’t get out soon.”
“Relax,” I said. “You’ll get out.”
“Eventually,” James said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Eventually.” I looked down at my hands, then up at him. “Thanks for not bugging me about what’s going on at Mom’s place,” I said. “I really don’t know how to explain to—”
“A mundane?”
“A what?”
“Someone who doesn’t see ghosts, I guess.” He shrugged. “I was trying to think of something I could call myself around you and your mom. You know? Like a joke? Kind of?”
“Well, that’s no good,” I said.
“But—”
“No,” I repeated. “No good.”
“All right. But can we talk now? I have a couple of questions about the whole process.”
“I guess,” I said.
It was strange, even thinking about opening up to James about ghosts. But he wasn’t acting weird about it, so I decided to do the same. If he was honestly trying to figure out how things work—and he wasn’t secretly looking at me like a freak—I could return the favour.
I waited for all the usual questions. Wasn’t it scary growing up in that house? No. Were you ever attacked by one of them? Only once, and it was my fault. Don’t you kind of hate your mother for giving you a horrible gift like this? Sometimes . . .
But James asked a question I’d never heard before.
“So,” he said. “Is it just ghosts you see, or do you and your mom see demons, too?”
I blinked. This was so far outside the realm of what I would have considered a usual question, I could barely hear the words.
“What?” I finally asked. Then I said, “There’s a gap,” and he threw the car into reverse to catch the teeny little hole in the never-ending traffic that ran down Franklin Avenue like a flood.
“This traffic is insane,” he said, when he got honked at by a big ol’ Ram three-quarter-ton truck that appeared, as if by magic, right on our rear bumper. “Seriously.”
“Welcome to the oil patch,” I said.
We drove for a couple of blocks in silence, and I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he was going to forget his question, but, of course, he didn’t.