by Tracy Lane
Frank’s eyes grew misty as he spoke, as if he still saw the Lido Lounge the way Toots and Slim did, despite all evidence to the contrary.
“Well, what about me, then?” Jake pressed. “They saw me, right? Didn’t they wonder what some bratty kid was doing here on a Saturday morning?”
“You?” Frank chuckled weakly and stepped offstage. He rested a very cold hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Well, you were just another guest, Jake. And there are no Saturdays in the spirit world. No Tuesdays or Fridays, either. There is no morning, no evening. There is only time, and endless amounts of it. You want me to break up their party? You want me to stop the music when it’s the only thing keeping them from feeling like ghosts?” Frank averted his eyes and murmured, “Let them be, kid. Just…let them be.”
Jake couldn’t help but pout. “But don’t you see, Frank? We need them. They were here the night it happened. They could tell us something.”
Frank’s expression grew grim, and Jake took an involuntary step back. “I said, nix it. We don’t upset my friends for selfish reasons. There were a hundred people crammed into this place that night, and at least a few of them are still alive. We start with them.”
“But where do we find them all?” Jake asked, turning to follow Frank off the stage.
He gasped. Mr. Murphy was standing there, a picture frame in hand, gaping up at him.
“Son?” he asked, unwittingly peering straight at Frank. “What on earth’s gotten into you? Who are you talking to?”
Jake blushed. He’d totally forgotten that he was the only one who could see and hear Frank, but Frank wasn’t the only one who could see, and hear, him.
Jake looked down at the stage beneath his feet, stalling for time. Suddenly, it hit him: “Oh,” he laughed slowly, blowing it off as if he talked to himself all day long. “I was rehearsing lines from a play we’re doing in school.”
Mr. Murphy looked back, disbelieving. “I dunno, kid. You sounded pretty convincing to me.”
Jake looked up, only to find Frank standing right next to Mr. Murphy. “Nah,” Jake sounded wary as he climbed down off the stage. “It’s just, you put me on a stage and I’ll go to town!”
“Funny,” said Mr. Murphy with that same faraway look in his eyes. “That’s what Frank used to say.”
“It’s true,” added Frank, nodding his head with the brim of his fedora inches away from Mr. Murphy’s head.
“What’ve you got there?” Jake asked, reaching Mr. Murphy and desperate to change the subject.
The old man looked down at the weathered frame in his hand.
“If you really want to know who killed Frank Barrone,” he said, “you can start with this.”
He handed it to Jake, who smeared the glass clean with the cuff off his hoodie sleeve. Inside the moldy, black frame was a large black and white picture featuring a crowd of eager faces. Jake smiled when he recognized the room they were standing in as the very same room he was in the middle of.
However, the picture was taken back in the club’s heyday. There were the tables Frank had told him about, the gleaming bar and the sparkling glass bottles; the sassy waitresses in short black skirts and, on stage, Frank in the very suit he was wearing today; next to him stood Toots and Slim, waving to the appreciative crowd.
Incredibly, the picture in the frame was exactly how the club had looked once Frank started singing “Barroom Eyes.” It had the same carefree swagger as the ghosts that had filled the room – so spotless and so clean – just minutes earlier.
Looking more closely, Jake saw that there were probably two, maybe three, dozen faces in the crowd he could pick out; they were in clear focus, smiling, waving, and enjoying a fun night out in the late 50s.
“Thanks,” said Jake, wishing he could hand the picture to Frank. Instead, he slid it under his arm and extended a hand. Mr. Murphy took it in a firm grip.
“No problem, kid,” the caretaker said and then headed for the kitchen. As he stood in the doorway, Jake took one last look behind him at the room that was once again dead and silent, and he couldn’t help but feel the heavy sadness it gave off.
He followed Mr. Murphy into the kitchen, where he noticed a cooler filled with ice. The old man took out a beer and cracked it open.
“I wish I could be of more help,” he said, sliding out a chair next to a kitchen counter. Jake recognized it as one of the wooden chairs that belonged back in the club. “The fact is, everything happened so fast, it was hard to tell what was what.”
“What happened?” Jake asked, leaning against the counter. He was aware of Frank standing right over his shoulder.
Mr. Murphy looked up and said, “It was a night just like in that picture I gave you: everyone was hootin’ and hollerin’, Frank and the band playing their hearts out. I was running around, trying to keep the place orderly. Everybody was dancing, having a good time, and then out of nowhere, the door bursts open and three thugs walk in.”
“Why do you call them thugs?” Jake asked.
Mr. Murphy looked up and snapped, “’Cause you can always tell a thug from a Normal Joe, kid. Big overcoats, big hats hiding their eyes, and masks — bandanas really — covering up their faces. They walked right up to the stage, said a few words to Frank and that was that. Suddenly, all three pulled out their guns and started blasting!”
Jake flinched, picturing the scene. “And then what?” he asked.
“Then? Then they turned around and hot-footed it out of there. I tried to stop one of them, the big one, and he bashed me on the head with the butt of his gun. I woke up a few minutes later, blood in my eyes, the place deserted, and cops swarming the joint. After that, well…what good was I?”
Jake thanked him and stepped across the kitchen, heading toward the door.
“When you find out who done it,” Mr. Murphy said, hoisting his beer can, “could you come by and let me know? I sure would sleep better at night…”
Jake nodded and promised he would. As he stepped outside and Frank followed, he heard the door close behind them, lock by lock sealing shut until the caretaker was safely locked inside.
“You remember any of that?” Jake asked as Frank hovered next to him on the way around to the front of the building.
Frank nodded. “A little. I was in shock, mostly.”
“What did they say to you?”
Frank shook his head. “Only one of them spoke, the big guy. He asked me my name, and I told him. Then, gunfire, and smoke, and that’s the last thing I remember…”
Jake felt the air grow chill around them. It was as if remembering his death made Frank give off the same gloom that haunted a graveyard.
Jake looked out at the tiny town of Dusk, so small and unremarkable. “Why here, Frank?”
Frank cocked one eyebrow. “Why here, what?”
“Why would there be mobsters in a little town like Dusk? I thought mobsters liked big cities, like Chicago or Detroit.”
Frank sighed. “They do, but they like to send the little guys to watch over their interests. And their interest, in the mountains and the hills, in the nooks and the crannies, was moonshine. Back when this lounge was a hopping joint, Dusk was one of the top five producers of contraband liquor in the south. Where there’s moonshine, there’s money. Where there’s money, there are mobsters.”
Jake wanted to ask more, but Frank had grown still, too still. There was something about the ghost’s expression that made Jake change his mind.
They reached the front of the Lido Lounge and Jake pulled out the picture from under his arm. He showed it to Frank, hoping to change the subject.
“You know all these people?” he asked.
“Every last one,” Frank said, half-smiling at the beaming faces frozen forever in black and white. “I know their names, where they live and, best of all, which ones are still alive.”
He winked at Jake. “There aren’t as many as you’d think.”
Chapter 5
“Frank!” Jake hissed as the lamp floated in t
he air. Or, at least, that’s how it would look to his Dad if he were to suddenly turn around from fiddling with his camera gear.
“What’s that, Jakey?” Mr. Weir asked, looking to his son with his Paranormal Properties cap on backward.
Jake blushed and gestured to his homework. “I’m just frustrated with this math problem.”
Mr. Weir wrinkled his face. “But, Jake…that’s a History book.”
Jake looked down and frowned. His Dad was right. As Frank chuckled in his ear, he struggled for something to say.
By the time he’d formed some random excuse, his Dad had already gone back to toying with the battery pack of his favorite camera.
“Can you hold this for me, Jake?” his mother asked from across the room as she struggled to stitch two plates of a new camera vest she was sewing. “I can’t seem to get these tight enough.”
Jake walked across the cluttered room, careful not to trip over electric cables or camera parts.
Wherever Jake and his parents went, it was always chaos. They’d rent a comfortable little place with sunlit rooms full of fresh air and by the time they moved in all the camera equipment, extra ball caps and battery packs, the place would look like a giant, stuffy storage unit.
Next to him, Frank hovered just above the floor. “Come on, Jakey Boy,” he said. That was his name for him: Jakey Boy. Jake hated it. It made him sound like a five‑year‑old. “Let’s go. I’ve got clues to find and this is taking too much time.”
Mr. Weir was using his electric screwdriver to tighten the bolts on his camera stand, and Jake’s mother was running her sewing machine so Jake hissed, “I told you I had to help my folks this afternoon. I’ll help you as soon as I’m done.”
“You’ll help me now, mister,” his mother said good-naturedly as she continued to hold out the unsewn seams.
Jake froze. Her sewing machine had cut off halfway through his lecture to Frank.
“Yes ma’am,” Jake swallowed as Frank guffawed.
“Here,” Mrs. Weir said, holding out a black piece of fabric. “You hold this end and I’ll try to sew it as tight as possible so the seam is twice as strong…”
The ancient sewing machine that traveled everywhere with them rattled as Frank croaked, “I recognize that sewing machine. I think my mother had it.”
“Shut up!” Jake snapped just as the machine rattled to a close so his Mom could check the seam.
“Jake Weir!” his father reprimanded from the other side of the room. “You apologize to your mother this instant!”
His mother’s look of confusion melted into hurt. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Jake,” she said as she yanked the fabric from Jake’s hands. “Ever since we moved to Dusk, you’ve been acting…different.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “I— I wasn’t talking to you, Mom. I was talking to that stupid sewing machine!”
His mother’s face softened, and she laughed. “I’ll admit I’ve been tempted to curse this old thing a time or two, myself.” She looked up at him from the wooden bench she sat at, the afternoon sun filtering through the breakfast nook windows and splashing across her warm, familiar smile.
“I really am sorry, Mom,” Jake said.
“I’ll be the one who’s sorry if we don’t get out of here soon,” Frank muttered, floating between him and his mother. Unlike the ghosts back in the Lido Lounge, Jake couldn’t see through Frank as his mother began tinkering with her husband’s camera vest again.
Jake struggled to ignore him. He thought it would be “cool” to be the only kid in Dusk, North Carolina who could see and hear a real, live – more like real, dead – ghost, but it wasn’t; not at all.
Between Frank and the rest of the world, it was like trying to play two video games at the same time. When one needed his attention, the other one usually did, too.
“Here, Mom,” Jake said, stepping around Frank to grab hold of the black material she was trying to sew together. “Honest, I’ll help. After all, if Dad has a better vest, I won’t have to always be bringing him camera batteries all the time…”
Jake’s voice drifted off as he gently clasped the material his mother handed him. Across the room, Frank was brewing up his own entertainment by dancing a low shuffle around his father.
Jake desperately wanted to get Frank to stop, but the only way he could was to shout – or throw something.
“Jake!” his mother scolded. “Focus. I need you to hold this tight—”
But Jake couldn’t help. He was busy watching one of his father’s beloved battery packs float in thin air as Frank tossed the thing from one hand to another.
“Jake?” his mother asked, threatening to look up from her sewing. Just when she did so, Jake scooted over so she couldn’t see the levitating battery pack.
“Here— I’m here,” he stammered, But it was too late.
“Honey, are you seeing this?” asked Dennis Weir as his wife focused on filling her machine with black thread.
“What?” She looked up just in time to watch the battery pack suddenly falling to the floor.
Frank looked at Jake like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, and under the gravity of the situation, Jake gave a nervous laugh.
But Mr. and Mrs. Weir weren’t laughing. Stephanie ran across the room, forgetting her husband’s camera vest on the still-running sewing machine. Jake turned it off, wondering how he was going to explain a camera battery pack floating in mid-air.
“W— what’s going on?” he tried to sound as clueless as possible while Frank shook his head.
“Sorry, Jakey Boy,” he muttered. “Guess I got a little carried away.”
Jake ignored him and asked, “What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Wrong?” his Dad gasped, wide eyed and looking ten years younger with his childlike expression of amazement. “Nothing’s wrong, Jake. We just had a confirmed supernatural incident in our own home!”
Jake watched his parents suddenly start acting like kids in a candy store.
“What exactly did you see, Dennis?” asked Mrs. Weir. She held a sleek, silver voice recorder up to her husband’s face, which was hard to do as Mr. Weir already had his camera out and switched to heat-seeking mode.
He pointed the camera at the battery pack, now lying limp and lifeless on the floor. Frank stood a few inches away, shrugging doubtfully at the flurry of new activity.
“Well, it was like we’ve always imagined,” Jake’s Dad said. “One minute I was tightening my camera stand, the next I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and, when I looked up, that battery pack was floating! I’m recording for any heat signatures.”
“Shouldn’t you record for colder temperatures?” Jake blurted before he could help himself.
On instinct, his parents turned around and pointed their equipment at him. “What do you mean?” his father asked.
“I just mean, why would a ghost emit heat? They’re deceased, right?” Jake paused, thinking of the icy mist that appeared whenever Frank altered in or out of his “human” form. “So…wouldn’t their ‘emissions’ or whatever—”
“Ectoplasmic signatures!” his parents blurted in unison.
Frank snorted.
“Right, yeah, uh…shouldn’t their ectoplasmic signatures be…cold?”
His parents looked at each other and shrugged. Mr. Weir took his face out from behind the camera and said, “But this doesn’t map for cold, only hot.”
“Well, Dad, I mean…you’re a ghost hunter, shouldn’t you—”
“You know we prefer the term ‘paranormal investigator,’ honey,” corrected his mother, patting her husband on the shoulder.
“…Either way, shouldn’t you invest in something that does pick up the cold?”
Jake’s parents exchanged that look: that uncomfortable look whenever Jake suggested – even unconsciously – that their TV show may be successful if anyone ever actually watched it.
“You know we can’t afford that, Jake,” said his mother.
“Yeah, and besides—”
“Just trying to lighten the mood,” said Frank, knocking a lamp over halfway across the room. “It’s getting way too serious for my tastes.”
“Stop that!” Jake yelled, but Frank was just getting started.
First the lamp tumbled over, and then a pillow started levitating from the couch. Before Jake’s Dad could try filming it, Frank whipped a homemade throw blanket off the couch and onto the lens.
“Honey, grab that! I can’t see,” his father sputtered, but almost as quickly as she reached for it, Frank crept near and began whistling the snazzy tune to “Barroom Eyes.”
Suddenly, Jake’s parents stood transfixed. Frank’s whistle grew louder; he knew they couldn’t hear it, but they could sense something changing in the room.
“Do you…hear…something?” Mr. Weir asked his wife, finally reaching over and sliding the woven throw from the front of his camera lens.
She looked at him, nodded, and then shook her head. “I don’t know. I think so. I’m not sure. It sounds like…wind, or…whistling?”
Jake stood frozen as Frank continued whistling. That’s all he did, whistle. After a few moments, Dennis Weir lost interest in the phantom sound, trying to zoom in on the damage Frank had been able to do in thirty seconds flat.
Unfortunately, he’d missed all of the action and now could only take pointless footage of a tumbled lamp and a throw pillow that had landed in the kitchen sink.
“Come on, come on…” Mr. Weir muttered as he prowled the room, unaware that he had a ghost at his back.
Mrs. Weir pointed her little digital voice recorder in the wrong direction, got frustrated, pushed “stop” and then “rewind,” but all she had managed to pick up was she and her husband’s voices.
As the two of them huddled in the corner, excitedly talking about this new “development,” Frank nudged Jake so hard, he staggered across the apartment’s hardwood floors.