Ghost Seer

by Robin D. Owens

  They continued driving, following the specter, and then it zoomed away, and back.

  We’re close! the ghost said, hovering in front of the truck in a manner that made Clare’s stomach lurch.

  “Can you hear me, Jack?” Zach asked.

  The phantom’s face solidified more, and Clare swallowed. Tell the driver I can hear him.

  “Yes, he can hear you,” she relayed. Her nerves began to twang in anticipation of what she’d have to do.

  “Stick to the roads,” Zach said. From the sound of it, he spoke between clenched teeth. “And don’t make us go through any damned barbed wire.”

  The ghost frowned, appearing more raggedy: no feet, his legs ending in filmy white streamers. Clare sensed that he had a pinpoint focus: to get through this night, one way or another. She gulped.

  I will lead you to the best place, he finally said in her mind. I will trace the modern roads. He vanished.

  Clare’s doom came closer.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THEY WOUND THROUGH the narrow streets of a shabby trailer park. Now and again off to the left or right were short gravel drives that went nowhere, where there’d once been access to fields that now only showed thrusting grass in faint dirt ruts.

  Zach cursed mildly but continually as he wove through the lanes that were more country than town.

  There is a sharp turn, here, follow me! Jack Slade said, indicating the bend, then flickering out. Due to his excitement or some other paranormal phenomenon that she didn’t know about?

  “I saw him,” Zach said, and Clare realized she’d left her fingers on his leg, but they’d traveled up more toward the crease in his thigh. He didn’t seem to mind, though she was sure he noticed. A trickle of easy contentment mixed with the excitement churning through her blood. She was so, so lucky to have him with her.

  No matter what happened in her life, she needed to remember and cherish this moment. No matter what happened with her and Zach . . . and she hoped they were only on the beginning of their journey together . . . she had to remember what he was doing for her tonight. Not leaving her alone to face her first major ghost laying . . . transitioning . . . passing on into the light . . . heading through the door to the next world or whatever came after death. She’d had little religion or personal spiritual philosophy but figured she’d be developing one soon. Her mouth twisted; she’d have to, it would be a necessity, wouldn’t it?

  A bump jolted her from the thoughts she’d wrapped around her like an insulating blanket.

  “Damn washboard road.”

  They proceeded slowly, but it wasn’t more than five minutes before the ghost appeared again.

  “There! There he is, and more distinct than I’ve ever seen him!” Clare said.

  “Yeah, yeah. I see him pretty damn good, too.” A slight pause. “Well, crap.”

  “What?”

  “Look ahead and a little up.”

  She sucked in a breath. “A ridge. Full of houses. Some of them with porch lights on.”

  “Damn it! All of the huge state of Wyoming with farms and ranches of thousands of acres and the damn site is near a damn suburb of Torrington.”

  “The trailer park isn’t that far behind us, either,” Clare said.

  “I know it.” Zach turned into dirt ruts that his headlights illuminated. They also caught the shine of white letters on a sign: POSTED. NO TRESPASSING. KEEP OUT.

  “Well, darn,” Clare said. She was breathing fast. “At least there’s a draw . . . a tangle of bushes and cottonwoods, and it looks like we’ll be below another ridge, maybe hidden a little?” She kept her voice quiet but couldn’t stop the anxious rise in tone.

  “Not good enough,” Zach said grimly, killing the lights. He jutted his chin. “Did you see the irrigated field? I betcha anything the damn station will be in the middle of that wheat.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  He opened the door and she did the same and hopped out, landing on dry grass that crackled under her feet. A mass of crickets went quiet.

  “Let’s head on along the bottom of the ridge,” Zach murmured. He rubbed the back of his neck. “At least there’s no moon. It’s a new moon tonight. And let’s do this fast. Ted’s around. I just feel it.”

  Clare smiled at him and his heart squeezed. He’d do a lot for that smile. “I know I can trust you.”

  She will not be aware of the normal world, Enzo said in a fussy tone.

  All Zach’s muscles tensed; he had to pry his teeth open to say, “What?”

  Patting him on the arm, Clare turned on a small flashlight she must have pulled from her pocket. She outlined the continuing dirt rut between the ridge and the wheat field, heading toward a glowing blur a couple of yards away. The thing winked out when she raised her hand from his arm. “I trust you.” She stopped a moment, her face pale but her big eyes wide. “Time to confab with the notorious Jack Slade and send him to his . . . on.”

  “To his just reward?” Zach asked dryly.

  Clare shivered a little and he wondered if she felt the cold of ghosts. Zach himself felt warm, though the sky began to rapidly cloud over, blocking even the starlight on this night of the dark of the moon.

  “I hope there is a great deal of mercy,” Clare murmured.

  Zach would second that. “I’ll follow close.” He clicked on his Maglite.

  She nodded, said nothing about him being crippled, as usual. She trusted him as backup and he trusted her. She’d do her job to the very best of her ability. And she’d be a good partner, take charge of the situation and spare him what she could.

  Some partner he was. He should have asked one of the special forces guys to help them . . . help Clare. He wanted her safe, and he couldn’t protect her the way he could have a few months ago.

  The going was rough. He had to watch every step, and each step hurt. He should’ve gotten a goddamned brace. Clare was at least three yards ahead of him.

  “Hey, Jack,” she said softly.

  From one step to the next, as if she crossed some invisible boundary, the night sliced in two. Instead of the subtle tones of night, the blasting uber-rich color of a hot August day hit her eyes. Instead of fragrant scents of grass and crops and land drifting to her nostrils, horrible odors assaulted her nose—horse poop, blood, and death.

  The man slumping on the post before her had voided himself. A pool of dark red liquid surrounded by buzzing flies marked the packed dirt at his feet; two holes on the opposite sides of his head were red, horrific.

  She screamed but heard nothing . . . except Jack Slade as he stepped before her, still in his shades of black and white, worry lines dug into his face. He wasn’t the only man there, but the two other cowboys, both vivid in life as Jules Beni was in death, stood with disgruntled expressions, waving at the body and seeming to yell at Jack. Clare couldn’t hear them.

  Jack angled to follow her gaze. “They aren’t really present, just part of my torment, the continuing loop. I just told them that they wouldn’t be getting the larger reward for Jules Beni, since he wasn’t alive.” Jack sounded as if he spoke, words forming in air, not mind-to-mind.

  The apparition turned fully around to survey the scene with her. His hands rose and dropped in a futile motion. “You know I went to Fort Laramie and told the commanding officer I’d be hunting Beni. He gave me his blessing, such as it was. I’d boasted I’d cut Jules’s damn ears off and wear them, and I had to do it.”

  A deeper timbre entered his voice along with an edge. Jack rubbed his chest over a couple of the bullets left in him. “I’d been avoiding Jules as long as I could.” Jack’s lips curled. “Scared then of getting shot and more hurt, like I’m scared now I won’t pass on.” He didn’t look at Clare. “I had to cut off his ears, to keep my reputation, and once I saw him dead, I wanted to. So I did.” He shook his head, sighed, glanced sideways at her. “All right, maybe
I was a little wrong about the first part. I didn’t have to cut off his ears.” Jack rubbed his own. “I knew no matter what happened that day, people would say I was the one who killed Beni; my rep woulda been fine without the ears.”

  Clare nodded. “They said you tied him to a pole and shot bits of him for hours.” Instinctively, she looked at the dead man again. He’d lived to be significantly older than Jack Slade, and she couldn’t tell how many times he’d been shot because his shirt was so stained she couldn’t separate the fresh blood from anything else . . . but she didn’t think he’d had a six-shooter emptied into him like Jack had.

  “I didn’t torture him or kill him,” Jack Slade said simply.

  Enzo appeared. Why are you still here, Clare? The cold is killing you and you haven’t even merged with Jack yet? The ghost dog asked telepathically.

  “I had to tell her my story,” Jack said.

  Enzo snorted, glaring at Clare. You don’t have to listen to their stories. You can’t afford to.

  She moved cold lips, answering aloud. “I think I do. To understand my . . . my place in this . . .” So hard to lift a hand and gesture, her fingers a tiny flick instead of a wide movement. Alarm flared in her mind and sent a spurt of warmth through her.

  Jack sighed and it was more hollow and otherworldly than his words had been.

  “Do you have the ears?”

  They were in her jeans pocket. She nodded. Her lips turned down. Time to get on with the whole weird business.

  Take my hand. Slade’s voice was back to ghostly thought echoing in her mind.

  She knew what that meant; when she initiated contact with the ghosts, the cold was so much worse. Freezing enough to stop a heart. She stared and stared at his hand. For once Enzo didn’t prod. Zach wasn’t near, but he wouldn’t attempt to stop her from doing her job. He understood. She wished she did.

  • • •

  “Just what are you all doing on my land at two in the morning, messing around with my crop?” snapped a weathered older man in a cowboy hat, holding a shotgun.

  Zach didn’t answer, more focused on a blurry movement in the brush to his right, the crack of the breaking of dry branches. If he pulled his gun, the farmer might shoot him.

  “Well?” the guy demanded.

  The tiniest glint on a gun barrel in the draw. Zach leapt forward into the big farmer, knocked him aside, fell himself.

  Ted rushed from deep shadows. The bastard had another gun. “You can’t make Jack Slade move on before he tells me about the gold.” He shot but missed Zach since he was already rolling away.

  “What the hell!” shouted the farmer.

  “I’ll get her, slow her down.” Mather panted, pivoted, and aimed at Clare.

  Zach reached for his gun, shot.

  So did the farmer.

  • • •

  Take. My. Hand, Jack Slade said.

  She was too tense, too wired, all her muscles tight, her nerves quivering through her body, but Clare reached out, grasped the ghostly hand. And it seemed he moved into her, slowing her motions, stopping her heart in truth for one terrible second before she, they, took up a stance before the ever-running, looping scene. He settled in her, not as a man, but as a hard ball of ice in her torso.

  And she was blazing color, too, seeing the events take place, feeling what Jack did, his continual agony of the bullets and buckshot still inside him, his fury at Jules Beni.

  She strode up to the corpse and a knife was in her hand, and then she watched as she deftly cut the ears off with a couple of slices. “He’s dead right enough,” Jack said, the only words she’d actually heard, though the cowboys had come and their mouths had moved and arms waved in a heated discussion with Jack. He poked a hole in one of the ears and threaded his pocket watch chain through it, the ear now a bloody fob. Then he stuck the other in a pocket. Her gorge rose and she stumbled a couple of yards back.

  Got the ears? the phantom asked. It’s time.

  It’s time, Clare! Enzo chimed in.

  She wanted to rub her arms, but her hands were bloody and one held a knife and the cold numbed her fingers. She could feel her energy draining as she swayed.

  THE EARS! both Jack Slade and Enzo shouted.

  The gunfighter’s image rose in her mind, his determined expression let her know he wouldn’t let her give up. He’d haunt her for sure, as a mad specter, if she didn’t do this for him, she just knew it. His face began to fade to a skull, then gained substance again . . . repeated the cycle.

  Reaching into her jeans pocket, she fumbled to find the opening. She should be able to see her breath, she was so cold . . . dangerously cold.

  Clare, Clare, hurry, hurry, hurry. You have to do this fast! Enzo whined and jumped around her. When he lit on her feet, she could swear she could feel his weight.

  Better get it done, Slade said. Or we’ll both die . . . or go mad.

  Her focus narrowed to one thought, too late to think the whole thing was weird and crazy and unreal. She managed to thrust her fingers into her pocket and touched the earlobes. They felt warm and plump and throbbing.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  ZACH GRABBED HIS cane, levered up to his good foot, went over to where Mather shrieked and thrashed. Zach scooped up his gun, then hit the kidnapper’s jaw harder than he had the night before, and Mather lay still. Zach took the handcuffs he’d had attached to his belt and restrained the perp.

  “Godamighty,” said the farmer, slower getting to his feet. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s a kidnapper,” Zach said.

  “He’s a crazy.”

  “That, too.”

  “And who might you be, Mr. Colorado License Plates?” He examined Zach top to toe. “What are you doing here? And what the hell is she doing?” The farmer turned and stared at Clare. She seemed to be sleepwalking, her fingers curved around what Zach knew was a pair of ears. Zach tensed in case he’d have to hold back the man if he went after Clare.

  “Getting rid of the ghost of Jules Beni?” Zach offered.

  Scratching the beard stubble on his chin, the farmer’s gaze slid toward Zach. “Is that so?”

  • • •

  She smelled death and lurched forward to the remains of Jules Beni with the holes on each side of his head. No longer dry and leathery, the ears pulsed in her hands, seeming all too real. Hauling in a breath, teetering, her mind fogging with cold, Clare aligned the ears against the corpse’s head.

  It vanished . . . and the whole scene drained of color, tinted browns, like shades of sepia.

  Jack Slade pulled from her and it hurt, hurt, hurt, ice slicing her guts. She wobbled where she stood.

  • • •

  Mather groaned. Zach looked at the farmer. “I appreciate the help in getting this one.”

  “He after your lady?”

  At hearing Clare called “his lady,” the adrenaline zooming along in Zach’s bloodstream went straight to his groin. “Yeah. He’s also on the run from the Denver cops.”

  The farmer shook his head. “Well, he’ll spend some time here, I reckon. Trespassing, attempted murder. Though I s’pose the sheriff will be glad enough to hand him over to your Denver boys.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Now why don’t you finally give me your name?”

  “Zach Slade, ex–deputy sheriff out of Montana, current private investigator from Denver.” He offered his hand. “I don’t have a card.”

  “I don’t want one.” A grunt. “Slade, huh?”

  “No relation to Jack.”

  “Didn’t think so.” The man tipped his cowboy hat up, scrutinizing Zach. “You look a little familiar, though. You got family around here?”

  Zach pulled a face. “No, the family home is in Boulder, Colorado.”

  A crack of laughter came from the farmer. He slapped Zach on the back with his fre
e palm. “Not a place I’d feel comf’ble in.” Now he held out his hand. “I’m Mike Gurey.”

  Taking his tough-skinned hand, Zach shook it briefly, a firm grip from both of them.

  “Boulder is better left to the university and New Age crowd. How did you know we were here?” Zach asked, trying to keep the man’s attention on himself. Clare stood in a trancelike state.

  The guy hesitated; his wide flannel-covered shoulders shifted. “Just had a feelin’.”

  “Uh-huh,” Zach said. He moved wrong and his left foot dragged on the ground. Heat rushed under the skin of his neck and cheeks.

  Gurey glanced at Zach’s ankle. “Foot drop, eh? You need more than a lift in your shoe. You need a brace, son,” the man said, not unkindly.

  “I’ve figured that out,” Zach said.

  A wind whipped in from nowhere, shrieking through the still night. The farmer flinched. “I think I’ll head off my neighbors and meet the sheriff on the road.”

  Zach wished he could go, too. “I guess I’d better stay here.”

  Gurey clapped him on the shoulder as he gave a last glance to Clare, who was gesturing widely, then wrapped her arms around herself and trembled.

  “I’ll be glad when the weirdness is out of this part of my land,” the farmer said, and added, “She’s one in a million.”

  “Yeah.” And Zach was damn glad that the man strode away without saying more or giving advice.

  He hurried as fast as he could to Clare. He’d be faster and steadier with a brace.

  • • •

  The ghost of Jack Slade stared at Clare, and for the first time the dark lines worn of worry, of drink, had vanished from his face, and undimmed joy shone in his eyes. “Thank you for helping me.” He inclined his torso slightly. “And thank you for being willing to help those, like me, who are trapped. Hello, Jackson Zachary Slade.” He smiled beyond her, then she felt Zach’s strong arm around her waist.

  Jack Slade angled his head at Zach. “Those who keep the law are not only the lawmen, you know. Those who find justice for others don’t always wear a badge.”