“We should start with the house,” he said. The image of the mansion flashed in his thoughts; gooseflesh popped up on his arms. “I don’t mean going there. That’s the last thing I want to do. Let’s see what we can find out without setting foot on the property.”
“I was going to suggest the same thing. I can pull public records, dig into the background of the owners and the estate. It should give us a good start.”
“Can we start today?”
“You couldn’t stop me from starting today, honey. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.”
She smiled at him; he returned her smile.
His wife had his back. He was so grateful to have her that he wanted to drop on his knees and thank God for blessing him with her.
“You’ll start with the research, then,” he said. “And I’ll talk to Andrew today and see what’s going on with him.”
He spoke the words smoothly, but what he proposed was easier said than done. Open, direct communication with his son had always been a problem for him. Oftentimes, he was tongue-tied around the boy.
Or he’d say something, and it would be the wrong thing, or something superficial and meaningless, like a joke. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a serious, personal conversation with Andrew.
He realized, then, that there was one thing in the world that scared him far more than his nightmares ever could.
Fatherhood.
Chapter 19
Thursday morning, Andrew busied himself by browsing at a Borders in Buckhead. He was supposed to meet his father for golf at two o’clock, which gave him a few hours to burn.
His first step upon entering the store, as always, was to check on his books. He made a beeline to the “J” area of the fiction section. The store stocked all three of his Mark Justice novels; he turned the copies of the newest one so that they were face-out, a little trick to gain some extra visibility on the shelves.
As he walked the other aisles, he frequently swiveled to survey the edges of his vision. Looking for a darting motion or a blur—any sign of his ghostly accomplice. Each time, he spotted nothing.
Sitting at a table in the café, he cleared his mind and drew deep breaths, trying to fine-tune his extrasensory awareness and tap in to whatever psychic wavelength the ghost occupied, as if it were the equivalent of locating the right channel on a radio station. But after sensing nothing whatsoever, he started to think the whole thing was stupid.
“This is how the journey to the nuthouse begins, man,” he said to himself. “Next thing you know, I’ll be listening for voices, too.”
He left the bookstore, but avoided going home. Returning to his house would mean establishing a dialogue with the entity. He both anticipated and dreaded the encounter and delayed it for as long as he could. Instead, he cruised through Atlanta’s neighborhoods and retail districts, whittling away time. Being prevented from following his daily routine bothered him, but if he had to choose between annoyance and the sheer terror of facing something supernatural, he’d choose a little frustration any day.
At two, he arrived at Atlanta International Golf, a course in Decatur, a city near the eastern edge of Atlanta. Since he and his father lived on different ends of the metro area—he on the south side, his dad in the far eastern suburbs—the location was close to a middle point for both of them.
He’d been looking forward to the golf outing all day. It would be a nice break from the madness that had stormed into his life.
His dad was already there. Swinging away, he wore sunglasses and a Kangol hat to block out the brilliant afternoon sun.
Andrew took a driving iron out of his golf bag in the trunk and went to meet his dad.
They shook hands.
“Good to see you, young buck,” Dad said. “I got here early.”
“I know. I saw you flailing away from the road.”
Dad grinned at the good-natured ribbing. He was in a much better mood than when Andrew had seen him at the cookout.
“Got a bucket of balls for you,” Dad said. “Try not to land all of ’em in the trees.”
“There you go.”
Things were back to normal between them. Andrew didn’t know what had been going on with his dad over the past couple of weeks, but he seemed to have gotten over it. If he wasn’t, he sure acted as if everything was cool.
Andrew wished he could say the same about his own life.
He set up on the spot beside his father. He stretched, took a few practice swings without the ball. Then he lined up, swung, and sent the ball soaring.
“So you were out when I called last night,” Dad said. “Sowing those wild oats, huh?”
Dad loved to talk about women. In addition to sports and work, girls were a frequent topic of discussion for them. It had probably been that way since Andrew was thirteen.
“I stayed over Carmen’s last night,” Andrew said.
“Is that right? Now she’s a sweetie, cute as all get out, too. You and her finally getting together?”
“We haven’t talked about it yet.”
“It’s coming up, trust me. Women like to have those talks, young buck.”
“You called it,” he said, thinking of how Carmen had been expecting him to initiate a where-is-this-going chat last night.
“You’ll know when the time’s right,” Dad said. “But don’t wait too long. I want me some grandkids before I’m too decrepit to enjoy them.”
“Judging from how you’re swinging that club, I’d say you’re already there,” Andrew said.
Dad laughed. He pulled off his sunglasses.
Setting up for a swing, Andrew hesitated.
The bags still hung under his father’s eyes. But even worse, he looked disturbed, too.
No, not disturbed. Haunted. That was the right word. His dad looked haunted by something.
“Is anything else going on, Andrew?” Dad asked.
He wasn’t going to tell his father about the ghost. He’d sound like a fool. His dad was a no-nonsense kind of guy, a man’s man. And he respected Andrew—admired him, even. He didn’t want to lose his dad’s respect by telling him a nutty story about being followed around town by a ghost who couldn’t spell. Hell, it sounded like a crazy story to him, and he was the one living it. He didn’t know his father well enough to be confident that he would react with anything other than complete disbelief.
“Nothing much going on,” Andrew said. “Working on a new book, you know?”
“Nothing else?” Dad asked. “Business as usual?”
He wasn’t going to tell his dad about Mika, either. Although they often discussed women, they typically kept the conversation lighthearted and funny, like guys in a locker room swapping stories about girls. He never told his dad about real problems he had with women, never sought his dad’s advice about dating, and definitely never cried on his shoulder. It had been the pattern of their talks for as long as Andrew could remember.
“Business as usual,” Andrew said.
“Just wanted to make sure things were okay, since we haven’t talked lately.”
Why did his father appear so troubled, and why had he asked these probing questions? What was the deal with him?
“How have you been doing, Dad?”
Dad slid on his sunglasses and prepared to strike the ball. “I’ve been all right. Finally getting a little more sleep. I had a touch of insomnia for a minute, made me cranky as hell.”
“Glad you’re feeling better. Now I can get back to making fun of you on the greens.”
“And I can get back to schooling you.”
They spent the next hour cracking jokes and knocking balls across the range. Andrew had a lingering suspicion that his father hadn’t given him the full story about his condition—he couldn’t forget his haunted gaze and curious questions—but he didn’t say anything about it. If there was one thing he knew for certain about his father, it was that he didn’t like to be pushed. The last time Andrew had pressured him, at the cooko
ut, Dad had bitten his head off. He’d learned his lesson.
After they had exhausted several buckets of golf balls, Dad said, “I’m ready to head out, son. Want to play this Saturday? Eighteen holes?”
“Saturday’s good. Bring your best game.”
“Bring yours, too—once you find one,” Dad said.
Laughing, they went to their cars.
As Andrew pulled out of the parking lot, his good mood faded.
He couldn’t avoid it any longer. He had to go home.
To face whatever awaited him there.
Sitting in his Ford Expedition, Raymond watched his son speed out of the parking lot.
One of his biggest regrets was how he had largely missed Andrew grow up to become a man. These days, he was trying to make up for lost time. But the painful truth was that the past was forever lost to both of them.
He’d asked Andrew about what was going on lately, seeking to learn about any problems that his son might be dealing with, a clue of something that could confirm his own nightmares. But Andrew had given him only a bland “business as usual” answer.
The thing was, he believed Andrew was lying to him.
But what was he going to do? Strangle the truth out of his son? He was in no position to demand anything of Andrew.
His boy didn’t trust him enough to be honest with him. That was the bottom line. And Raymond couldn’t blame him one bit. Until recently, he hadn’t acted like a father who deserved to be trusted. Building a bridge of trust between himself and his son would take years.
He admitted that hadn’t been forthcoming with Andrew, either. When Andrew had pointedly asked him about what had been going on with him, he’d been only half truthful. He wondered if his son picked up on that, too.
They were two grown men, father and son, and they couldn’t have an open talk with each other. It saddened him.
The past wasn’t lost to them. The past was here and now.
And both of them were prisoners to it.
Chapter 20
The cats were back. When Andrew pulled into the driveway of his house, he spotted the trio of felines. They cavorted around the garage and the lawn as if they owned the place.
Why were these cats hanging around? He hadn’t fed them a thing. Did he have an infestation of rats or something?
He pressed the remote control to raise the garage door. One of the felines crouched beside the door and watched him pull the car in. Its green eyes reflected an almost unsettling intelligence.
Welcome home, Andrew. We’ve been waiting for you.
In his imagination, he’d given the cats an eerie voice like Vincent Price, the star of those old Hammer horror movies.
The cat was still watching him when he got out of the car. It didn’t venture inside the garage, however. He was glad. The idea of getting close to the creature made him uneasy, though he didn’t know why—it was just a cat, after all. But it was yet another of those strange but powerful gut feelings that he’d been experiencing lately.
He pressed the button to lower the door.
The cat stared at him until the door closed.
We’ll be watching you, Andrew.
Andrew did a quick walk-through of the house, to see if anything had been disturbed in his absence. Everything was as it should be.
“Of course it is,” he said. “Casper the Friendly Ghost spent the night with me at Carmen’s.”
Before fleeing the house, he’d dared to turn off the computer. The laptop sat on the desk, lid shut, just as he’d left it yesterday.
He settled into the office chair and turned on the computer. He drummed the desk as the machine progressed through its boot-up cycle.
He couldn’t delay any longer. It was time to try to communicate with the ghost.
He blotted his sweaty palms on the lap of his jeans.
He couldn’t remember ever being so nervous. During his last book tour, he’d delivered a speech to a group of two hundred people gathered at a public library in Phoenix, and as much as the event had stressed him, it was nothing compared to the anxiety that currently twisted his stomach. He was getting ready to reach out to something in the Beyond, and he had no idea what to expect, no written speech to follow, no scheduled time to do his talk and get off the stage. Anything could happen.
He opened Microsoft Word. He’d viewed the plain white screen thousands of times, but now it looked as mysterious to him as a smoky crystal ball that might convey a message from another dimension.
He typed a question.
WHO ARE YOU?
He gazed at the screen. Waited.
The telephone rang.
He jumped so fast that he nearly fell out of his chair.
The call was from Sandy Clark, his literary agent in New York.
“Hey, Sandy,” he said.
“Hi, Andrew. Is this a good time? I wanted to give you an update on your book.”
He glanced at the screen. Still no answer.
“I can talk.” Speaking to Sandy would be a welcome reprieve to waiting for a response from . . . well, whoever he was trying to establish a dialogue with. Due to the drama that had colored his life the past few days, he’d become disconnected from the world of his writing career. A nice chat with Sandy would ground him in the ordinary world again.
“I spoke to Tina this morning,” Sandy said. Tina was his editor at the publishing company. “She promised that they’ll have an offer ready by tomorrow. A very lucrative offer. She wanted to make sure that I told you that.”
“All I can say is, show me the money, baby. Talk is cheap.”
“No kidding,” Sandy said. “But I have a feeling that they’re going to do right by you this time. They know that your stock has risen quite a bit. They don’t want to lose Mark Justice to another house.”
Her words made him smile. It was funny how things had changed.
When he reflected on the growth of his career, it amazed and humbled him. He’d started out as a self-published novelist who couldn’t get so much as a personalized rejection letter from an agent or publisher; he spent his weekends driving around the country to expos and festivals, peddling his book out of the trunk of his car and doing book signings whenever stores agreed to allow him in. Then, Sandy Clark—one of the few New York agents whom he hadn’t already queried and gotten a rejection letter from—happened to pick up a copy of his novel from a street vendor in Harlem. She E-mailed him, said she loved his writing and wanted to represent him. Flattered and ecstatic with her confidence in his talent, he signed on with her. She sold his book to his current publisher in less than three months. For peanuts, really. He was one of the few African American writers who wrote thrillers, and as such, his publisher had regarded him as an experiment.
The first novel sold decently, but not spectacularly. The second one performed better, but didn’t light up the world. Then, after he had written the third book but before it was released, he sold film rights to all three novels for almost a million dollars. The national media discovered him, which led to soaring sales for his third book when it was published six months ago. His first two novels experienced a dramatic sales boost, too. At long last, his publisher had stopped viewing him as an oddity and hopped on the bandwagon.
As he talked to Sandy about the impending deal and other business matters, he went downstairs to get a bottle of water. A glance over his shoulder as he left the office only confirmed that no answer awaited him.
He began to feel stupid. Typing a question to a ghost. What could be dumber than that?
Sipping water, he returned upstairs.
Someone was typing on the laptop. Letters appeared on the screen.
But the room was empty.
“Sandy, gotta go. Call you later.”
Coldness filled the air, as if a freezer door yawned open somewhere nearby.
He shivered. Slowly approached the computer.
The keys stopped moving.
But there was an answer to his question.
MY NAME IS SAMMY
Chapter 21
He stared at the words on the screen. My name is Sammy.
He blinked, opened his eyes again. The sentence was still there.
He wasn’t dreaming. This was real. He was talking to a genuine spirit.
A pocket of cold air had gathered around the computer. The coldness had weight, too, as if the very ether had thickened into syrup.
Gooseflesh pimpled his arms.
Wonder and fear flushed through him in equal amounts, immobilizing him. He stood there, still, for perhaps thirty seconds, staring at the computer screen.
Confusion clouded his thoughts, but he knew one thing for certain: his life was never going to be the same again. This was going to change everything with him, forever.
My name is Sammy.
His thought processes shifted into gear. Sammy, Sammy. He didn’t know anyone named Sammy, not who had died. The name drew a blank.
He settled into the chair again. Stroked his chin.
He typed another question.
WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?
He lifted his hands off the keyboard, and waited.
Ghostly fingers tapped the keys.
I WAS LONLEY
He was lonely. Jesus.
He asked another question: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
The ghost responded: SAD PLACE
He didn’t think it was possible for him to feel any colder, but a bone-numbing chill seeped into him.
He asked: WHERE IS THE SAD PLACE?
NOT HEAR
“Good to know that it’s not here,” he said under his breath. One of the things he had feared was that his house had been built on an old Indian burial ground or something, like a plot device out of a Stephen King book.
He typed: WHERE IS IT?
FAR FROM HEAR
“Good to know that, too,” he said. But it frustrated him that Sammy hadn’t given him a specific answer. The ghost had limited language skills.
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